New ‘Avengers’ Film Saved after Captain America’s Plea for Government Healthcare Was Cut
Marvel’s Avenger film hits movies theaters May 4th. The writers tried to sneak in a campaign ad for President Obama’s healthcare legislation. NewsBusters reports “that Captain America nearly got political in the upcoming ‘Avengers’ film before writer/director Joss Whedon snipped the scene for rhythm reasons.” Whedon said:
“I really do feel a sense of loss about what’s happening in our culture, loss of the idea of community, loss of health care and welfare and all sorts of things. I was spending a lot of time having him say it, and then I cut that.
The Avengers is a team of superheroes (e.g., Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Black Widow, Nick Fury, Hawkeye) that debuted in The Avengers #1 (Sept. 1963) and published by Marvel Comics.
It’s not the first time that comic book characters have gotten political — from Superman fighting Japanese saboteurs (Japoteurs, 1942) to Captain America doing battle with Adolf Hitler in the first issue of the series.
Superman was an adopted American who fought for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” In one storyline it was changed to “truth, justice and hope” (after the 2005–2006 Infinite Crisis miniseries) in order to downplay the idea that American exceptionalism.
In the 2006 film Superman Returns the phrase was reimaged by Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet, who says “truth, justice, and all that stuff.” Much of this has to do with the international markets that movie studios depend on to pay for the heavy investment they make in their films.
In Action Comics #900, written by David S. Goyer, Superman tells the President’s national security advisor that he intends to speak before the United Nations and renounce his “U.S. citizenship.”
In recent years, comic books have pushed the homosexual agenda. It’s a subtext in the X-Men franchise. In 2011, the Archie Comic book franchise announced that it was adding a homosexual character to join Archie, Jughead, Veronica, and Betty. “Life with Archie,” issue 16, features an “interracial, same-sex wedding of character Lt. Kevin Keller, a white American soldier wounded in Iraq, and Clay Walker, the black physical therapist who helped him recover.”
In the March 1992 issue of Marvel’s Alpha Flight comic book series, Northstar, a former (fictional) Canadian Olympic athlete, decides to come out of the closet after seeing the ravaging effect that AIDS has had on an abandoned baby. He decides to adopt the infant AIDS victim. At one point in the story, he cries out, “I am gay.” Here’s the full panel:
“For while I am not inclined to discuss my sexuality with people for whom it is none of their business — I am gay.”
The goal of parading homosexual “heroes” is to get young people — who will one day be decision makers — accustomed to seeing homosexual characters in positions of leadership and authority.
The homosexual community’s strategy is evident: To soften public opinion to adopt the homosexual lifestyle as morally acceptable. One of the latest comic characters to normalize homosexuality is the reintroduction of DC’s “Batwoman” as “a ‘lipstick lesbian’1 who moonlights as a crime fighter. . . . The new-look Batwoman is just one of a wave of ethnically and sexually diverse characters entering the DC Comics universe.”2
There is no neutrality. Conservatives have also used popular culture to propagate their ideals, as the early days of comic books and films attest. As I write this, the film Red Planet Mars (1952) is playing in the background on my TV. Earth scientists receive messages that they believe come from Mars. The message?: Earth’s people only can be saved if they return to the worship of God — “to love goodness and hate evil.”
- A non-stereotypical feminine lesbian. [↩]
- “Batwoman hero returns as lesbian” (May 30, 2006). [↩]
