Domenika Marzione (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
domarzione) wrote2021-03-10 03:13 pm
domarzione) wrote2021-03-10 03:13 pm
Wandavision
I got an ask over at Tumblr and that spurred me to organize my thoughts on the series:
(Tumblr part one: stuff I liked)
(Tumblr part two: that big problem)
Reproduced here:
I have watched Wandavision and I’m honestly still deciding what my reaction is. Or, rather, I’m still deciding what to do about my reaction. Which is why I’m splitting up my response into two parts because there’s a lot of smaller stuff I would like to address and the Giant Honking Problem that deserves its own post.
[Your estimation of my pop culture knowledge is greatly overstated, for the record. It’s fairly comprehensive to a point and then spotty beyond because when Wandavision hit the 1990s I was lost. I’ve never seen a minute of either Malcolm in the Middle or Modern Family and would not have even known that those were the shows they were riffing on if I hadn’t seen it explained elsewhere.]
If you’d asked me before the finale what I thought, I would have had a very different reaction and tone than I do now. For the record, I watched Ep.1-4 and then 5-8 in separate binges and then the finale on its own.
Stuff I liked from 1-8:
* After the first binge, I was honestly uncomfortable because of how gutted I felt – I have experienced a lot of grief and loss in my life and the scale and depth of the depiction of Wanda’s pain hit me like a hammer to the funnybone. That part hurt, not in ‘good’ ways but rather in effective ways that signify well-turned storytelling. Had this been a straight drama, I would have filed it under ‘that was well done but I’m not sure I want to see it again,’ but it was a comedy-drama at that point and so a re-watch to catch missing details would probably have been in the cards.
* I really did genuinely enjoy the pre-1990s sitcom history homages, although I can see how they might have been a little tiresome or frustrating week-to-week (instead of in a binge) because the plot advancement was really quite slow and subtle. But I’m Young Gen X and even though I never really watched any of the shows as a routine event, I was exposed to them sufficiently that they form a part of my cultural worldview.
* Kathryn Hahn’s a joy and a treasure and if you didn’t know who Agatha Harkness was, you might not have seen it coming. She also had to handle a lot of exposition – a lot – and did it relatively nimbly. She narrated both an expansion of the occult world in the MCU as well a complete overhaul of the Scarlet Witch character and she did it without dragging the story down with her.
* The commercials, gosh I loved them.
* The comics references. I had zero interest in looking up obvious references to particular issues, but the smaller and not-so-smaller touches were great.
* I appreciated the rehabilitation of Darcy Lewis, a character I honestly grew to hate because of how she became fandom’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl back in the day. I’m glad they retconned her into an actual scientist and stopped making her a bubblehead to go with the Betty Boop voice the actress has, although I don’t think her character was particularly well-served in any other way. She’s still essentially a plot shovel, present to move the story from here to there and put away when not in use.
* The introduction of adult Monica and especially the un-snapping scene were well done, as was the method of granting her powers. The trauma of her return from the snap had real impact, although I don’t think this was how anyone wanted to see Maria Rambeau’s arc go.
But... but Monica is also saddled with the most awful and appalling and disgusting line in the entire series and this is where I go from “this was a fabulous series” to “I’m not sure if this will smother my burgeoning re-interest in the MCU.”
My ultimate problem with Wandavision is that Wanda is the villain of the story but the show waves it away at the end. Wanda is not the only villain, let me be clear – Agatha and Heyward are Bad People with Bad Motives. But Wanda is the main villain and the show ends telling us she’s the heroine. The enemy of your antagonist is not necessarily the good guy.
I know this series was the MCU-ization of House of M. But if you’re going to ground everything in the ‘reality’ of the MCU, you have to be consistent all the way through and that includes recognizing that behaviors previously established in the MCU as evil are still evil.
Wanda did to the people of Westview what HYDRA did to Bucky Barnes: she held people hostage within their own bodies, violating them and destroying their agency for her own purposes, and every single person who broke free for a moment was hysterical with terror and pain. She did it for the reasons Zemo methodically plotted the downfall of the Avengers: out of grief. But HYDRA and Zemo are understood to be villains in-universe and Wanda is not.
Not only is Wanda not recognized as a villain, instead Monica praises her for her sacrifice! What is her sacrifice? Taking apart the prison camp she built for her own benefit. Who is benefiting from her sacrifice and should be grateful for it? The prisoners!
Monica is telling her this, btw, while the freed citizens of Westview are all circling around with looks of utter hatred and revulsion on their faces. They should not be mad! They just don’t understand the bigger picture because they’re little people! Heroism is about being dramatic and doing incredible things, not about actually saving people. Which is all the worse because a key part of Wanda’s MCU story is the explosion in Lagos that accidentally killed so many innocents and how she deals with that burden of guilt and how the world reacts to her role in it (and the role of the Avengers as an entity). None of that matters anymore!
As a not-quite comparable, let’s shift planets for a second. Loki’s arc in the MCU is spurred by his finding out his true history and its ramifications; he starts off with the more noble if still damnable idea to demonstrate that Thor isn’t as ready to be named heir as Odin thinks he is and things take a bad turn once Odin’s (first set) of deceptions are revealed. Loki was a charming asshole with a good heart who became a villain mostly out of grief and his villainy was no less genuine for its painful origin. Thor and their parents wrestled with the idea of his inherent goodness winning in the end and he seemed to be trending that way, but there was a redemption arc present because there had to be. Loki had done too much to have it simply chalked up to a bad day.
Wanda had more than a bad day, too. She doesn’t get to skate from this just because nobody died like in Lagos.
The true hero of Civil War is T’Challa, who tells Zemo that grief is not a justifiable cause for destruction, for perpetuating the cycle of pain by inflicting it on others. It is presented to us as a moment of nobility of character. It is a moment the MCU has forgotten existed before Wandavision, but in a series that buffed out other bad narrative choices and expanded the universe in its new incarnation, it’s not a good sign that this remains lost.
(Tumblr part one: stuff I liked)
(Tumblr part two: that big problem)
Reproduced here:
I have watched Wandavision and I’m honestly still deciding what my reaction is. Or, rather, I’m still deciding what to do about my reaction. Which is why I’m splitting up my response into two parts because there’s a lot of smaller stuff I would like to address and the Giant Honking Problem that deserves its own post.
[Your estimation of my pop culture knowledge is greatly overstated, for the record. It’s fairly comprehensive to a point and then spotty beyond because when Wandavision hit the 1990s I was lost. I’ve never seen a minute of either Malcolm in the Middle or Modern Family and would not have even known that those were the shows they were riffing on if I hadn’t seen it explained elsewhere.]
If you’d asked me before the finale what I thought, I would have had a very different reaction and tone than I do now. For the record, I watched Ep.1-4 and then 5-8 in separate binges and then the finale on its own.
Stuff I liked from 1-8:
* After the first binge, I was honestly uncomfortable because of how gutted I felt – I have experienced a lot of grief and loss in my life and the scale and depth of the depiction of Wanda’s pain hit me like a hammer to the funnybone. That part hurt, not in ‘good’ ways but rather in effective ways that signify well-turned storytelling. Had this been a straight drama, I would have filed it under ‘that was well done but I’m not sure I want to see it again,’ but it was a comedy-drama at that point and so a re-watch to catch missing details would probably have been in the cards.
* I really did genuinely enjoy the pre-1990s sitcom history homages, although I can see how they might have been a little tiresome or frustrating week-to-week (instead of in a binge) because the plot advancement was really quite slow and subtle. But I’m Young Gen X and even though I never really watched any of the shows as a routine event, I was exposed to them sufficiently that they form a part of my cultural worldview.
* Kathryn Hahn’s a joy and a treasure and if you didn’t know who Agatha Harkness was, you might not have seen it coming. She also had to handle a lot of exposition – a lot – and did it relatively nimbly. She narrated both an expansion of the occult world in the MCU as well a complete overhaul of the Scarlet Witch character and she did it without dragging the story down with her.
* The commercials, gosh I loved them.
* The comics references. I had zero interest in looking up obvious references to particular issues, but the smaller and not-so-smaller touches were great.
* I appreciated the rehabilitation of Darcy Lewis, a character I honestly grew to hate because of how she became fandom’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl back in the day. I’m glad they retconned her into an actual scientist and stopped making her a bubblehead to go with the Betty Boop voice the actress has, although I don’t think her character was particularly well-served in any other way. She’s still essentially a plot shovel, present to move the story from here to there and put away when not in use.
* The introduction of adult Monica and especially the un-snapping scene were well done, as was the method of granting her powers. The trauma of her return from the snap had real impact, although I don’t think this was how anyone wanted to see Maria Rambeau’s arc go.
But... but Monica is also saddled with the most awful and appalling and disgusting line in the entire series and this is where I go from “this was a fabulous series” to “I’m not sure if this will smother my burgeoning re-interest in the MCU.”
My ultimate problem with Wandavision is that Wanda is the villain of the story but the show waves it away at the end. Wanda is not the only villain, let me be clear – Agatha and Heyward are Bad People with Bad Motives. But Wanda is the main villain and the show ends telling us she’s the heroine. The enemy of your antagonist is not necessarily the good guy.
I know this series was the MCU-ization of House of M. But if you’re going to ground everything in the ‘reality’ of the MCU, you have to be consistent all the way through and that includes recognizing that behaviors previously established in the MCU as evil are still evil.
Wanda did to the people of Westview what HYDRA did to Bucky Barnes: she held people hostage within their own bodies, violating them and destroying their agency for her own purposes, and every single person who broke free for a moment was hysterical with terror and pain. She did it for the reasons Zemo methodically plotted the downfall of the Avengers: out of grief. But HYDRA and Zemo are understood to be villains in-universe and Wanda is not.
Not only is Wanda not recognized as a villain, instead Monica praises her for her sacrifice! What is her sacrifice? Taking apart the prison camp she built for her own benefit. Who is benefiting from her sacrifice and should be grateful for it? The prisoners!
Monica is telling her this, btw, while the freed citizens of Westview are all circling around with looks of utter hatred and revulsion on their faces. They should not be mad! They just don’t understand the bigger picture because they’re little people! Heroism is about being dramatic and doing incredible things, not about actually saving people. Which is all the worse because a key part of Wanda’s MCU story is the explosion in Lagos that accidentally killed so many innocents and how she deals with that burden of guilt and how the world reacts to her role in it (and the role of the Avengers as an entity). None of that matters anymore!
As a not-quite comparable, let’s shift planets for a second. Loki’s arc in the MCU is spurred by his finding out his true history and its ramifications; he starts off with the more noble if still damnable idea to demonstrate that Thor isn’t as ready to be named heir as Odin thinks he is and things take a bad turn once Odin’s (first set) of deceptions are revealed. Loki was a charming asshole with a good heart who became a villain mostly out of grief and his villainy was no less genuine for its painful origin. Thor and their parents wrestled with the idea of his inherent goodness winning in the end and he seemed to be trending that way, but there was a redemption arc present because there had to be. Loki had done too much to have it simply chalked up to a bad day.
Wanda had more than a bad day, too. She doesn’t get to skate from this just because nobody died like in Lagos.
The true hero of Civil War is T’Challa, who tells Zemo that grief is not a justifiable cause for destruction, for perpetuating the cycle of pain by inflicting it on others. It is presented to us as a moment of nobility of character. It is a moment the MCU has forgotten existed before Wandavision, but in a series that buffed out other bad narrative choices and expanded the universe in its new incarnation, it’s not a good sign that this remains lost.
no subject
We want, in other words, story karma."
https://www.vox.com/culture/22325656/wandavision-finale-justice-disappointment-story-karma
(no subject)