This post was brought to you by a reader. Sulagna Misra’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
When I first saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I walked out with my head spinning. As my friends and I discussed the movie (it would take a couple more viewings for me to distinguish all the fight sequences), one of my friends asked, “How would he not be incredibly racist if he was from the 1940s?”
My gut reaction, garnered from my years-long academic interest in World War II and volunteering at the local Veterans’ Affairs hospital in my hometown, was a solid no. But the more I thought of the generation of American history Steve Rogers came from – the “Greatest Generation,” which Nick Fury references in the film – the more I realized that I had very little actual comprehension of the gritty details of a “man out of time.” I decided I would have to do my own research, though I struggled to find out where to begin.
In any case, I became engaged with fandom on Tumblr, discussing the name of the third movie, debating different ships (relationship pairings) in the movie, and reading funny fanfiction like this:
credit: actualmenacebuckybarnes (read the rest, you won’t be sorry)
But while doing so, I found that throughout Tumblr, people were asking and answering the same question my friend had posed. I was finding historical breakdowns of Steve Rogers’ reality, both before and after being frozen in the ice.
Have you ever seen the research capacity of fandom? It’s incredible. Turns out he had Snickers and Hershey’s in the 1940s but he’d be pretty alarmed to find the kind of apples he used to eat are extinct and chickens are now three times as big. Turns out his sex education would be better than the kind in schools now, and that living through the Great Depression might put him into a state of grim nostalgia regarding the failures of the current banking system. Turns out Steve Rogers lived in a queer neighborhood, six blocks from an “artsy queer house,” and he wouldn’t say “under God” during the pledge of allegiance.
Abby B., the creator of the Historically Accurate Steve Tumblr, regularly writes, reblogs, and adds to these historical discussions. She created the blog because she was frustrated with the idea of Steve’s conservatism and bigotry floating around in fandom discourse, and was inspired by the article by Steven Atwell on the makeup of Steve Rogers’ ideologies and belief system. Having an academic background in history, Abby debunks these theories using sources such as the New York Public Library, the New York Historical Society, the Brooklyn Collection, etc.
Abby brought up the idea of “the past being less liberal or less progressive shows up everywhere, not just in fandom.” She said this on the blog, but reiterated, “history doesn’t move in a straight line…it cycles back on itself, and things that were once unthinkable become thinkable again.” She cited the idea of interracial marriage, which was uncommon but legal and acceptable during the Colonial period, “only to be made illegal as part of institutionalized racism and segregation as slavery became more and more profitable,” before being declared legal again thanks to Loving v. Virginia. Tumblr user mswyrr cites the medical journal DSM, noting that while homosexuality was taken out in 1973, it was only put in 1947, years after Steve became a Capsicle.
Tumblr’s users skew younger, which makes me wonder if their (all right, our) interest and fascination stem from the fact that Millennials, in their teens and twenties, have little connection with the “Greatest Generation,” who, like Steve at 95, would be in their nineties or hundreds, if alive. The references Steve writes in his little notebook in the beginning of the film had highlighted this empty space in cultural understanding – seeing that list, I realized I couldn’t easily think of a pre-1945 reference Steve and I would have in common, at least not one I see in my daily life. The current conversation on culture and politics is shaped and dominated by Baby Boomers, the Greatest Generation’s influence in these everyday aspects of American life being quieter, less visible.
Marvel has explored these ideas several times when unfreezing Steve Rogers in earlier decades. Mark Waid’s “Man Out of Time” focuses on the 21st Century much as fandom does: through Steve’s politics.
But Captain America: The Winter Soldier doesn’t go explicitly into historical notions, establishing Cap’s politics in subtler ways. In Steve’s interaction with Sam Wilson, where he immediately rejects the “good old days,” citing better food and vaccines, which makes sense considering Steve’s sickly childhood was during the Great Depression, but acts as a breath of fresh air against the way Baby Boomers take on a moral authority stance as they put their 1950s childhoods on pedestals.
This left an empty space for fandom to fill: How Captain America would exist in this newly connected and socialized world. Abby covers some of this on her blogs, answering questions from fans about how Steve might react to certain things in the future, including companies like Lyft and Uber, but in spaces like Twitter, there are accounts called “Official Bucky” or “Official Falcon,” that create a living version of the character. One of my favorites, @official_capn, demonstrates a forthright liberalism:
In a recent article in Vulture, Abraham Riesman explored the idea of Captain America as a bigoted jerk being compelling. But fandom is very much drawn to this moral, progressive, and a demonstratively kind Cap:
Why? In the movie, Steve Rogers reads as easily likeable but unassuming, disinterested in trading on his fame or power by hiding at his own exhibit and most interested in taking down bullies. He demonstrates leadership qualities not in a showy, charismatic way, the way politicians would do after the Nixon vs. Kennedy debates were broadcast, but in a speech-giving way, akin to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fireside radio chats (which Steve Rogers was listening to both before and after he entered the war). In terms of political figures, he’s very much a product of his time, but definitely an exception during this one.
While Captain America is fiction, fandom seeks out parallels among the real. One of my favorite posts about Captain America was this piece of fanart, about Captain America reading Kurt Vonnegut’s strange, lovely novels:
The line between Kurt Vonnegut and Steve Rogers works well, considering Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five is about a WWII soldier becoming “unstuck in time.”
Seeking out these real figures, sorting out these historical details, and mapping progressive politics lends a special aspect to being part of the Captain America fandom – a better understanding of the past through the tangible connection of Steve Rogers.
Tags: captain america, comics, fandom, history, sulagna misra
I LOVE this, Sulagna. Going to spend some time with the Historically Accurate tumblr!
So many links in a fandom-ish post! This is a happy post! Brb, bookmarking!
Ok, I came back to this post after watching THE WINTER SOLDIER last night, and thank you, I have so many links to go through (I don’t feel guilty, essays and exams, not at all). My point is, that awesome Fury ambush scene jolted me like whoa because: black man and cop cars. Though I’d watch Fury and his buddycopbro car being bamfs in their buddycopbro movie.
It’s true–attitudes change, drastically, even within cultures throughout history. I say this all the time, but really, history is not a monolithic entity. This comes up most constantly in discussions about premarital sex, because discourse dominated by an idealized representation of middle-class America in the postwar years frequently focuses on “virginity until marriage,” which is of course also heavily influenced by certain strains of religion becoming prominent. BUT. But. But. The middle class is not ALL of American history, and there were many many many many lower-class and poor women who weren’t virgins when they married. (And frankly, lots of middle-class women weren’t either, so.) For heaven’s sake, the Puritans had something like a third of brides who were pregnant when they were married. This is already a long tangent, but really just a really exaggerated demonstration of why we can’t even go back a hundred years in our own culture to see consistent attitudes. Every single little thing is so wildly affected by your class and socioeconomic status and region and religion and a million other things.
I’m not familiar with Captain America or comics in general, but the idea of history as a solid, unchanging entity in popular culture is one that worries me a lot and I’m so glad to see other people engaging with it thoughtfully.
Yes. Likewise, people were also ideologically diverse in the past, though not always in ways that map neatly onto today’s categories.
Yeah, that! My WWII-era grandparents were all generally politically liberal, and the variances in their attitudes about different things is interesting to me. And none of them were racist, including the ones who grew up poor in the South.
And in re: sex, my grandmother was telling me stories of the girl who always drank too much and ended up upstairs at parties that sounded exactly like my own college experience! (Not that I was that girl.)
A REALLY good book about the way we think about historial attitudes towards marriage is “Marriage a History” by Stephanie Coontz. I love books that debunk what people in the past were like, and this one, I loved it.
A valid criticism is that its sort of narrowly focused- you have to understand that even though it reads past to present, it’s tracing a certain kind of middle class marriage backwards, so she doesn’t necessarily focus on lots of human history- she’s pretty focused on Europe and white populations in the US and middle to upper class, so it does exclude important things.
But if you want your brain to explode about when we came up with certain persistent social ideas, and enjoy a trip into customs of the past- like there was a time in victorian-ish to edwardianish eras where the woman had to make the first move- she would invite a young man to call on her, and then he’d come over to her house and court her, and it would have been very improper for the man to ask the woman out. In medieval times, women were the lusty ones and men were warned that women’s nature was to be sinfully lustful (I think one quote is “gluey snares” or something) and told that they’d have to be careful because women were just about that ONE THING, and their wives would all be trying to sap that virtuous man essence. Etc.
The 1920s were just this crazy trip, I loved reading about the morals and the insanity going down in 1910-20.
Also a good out of time read is Time and Again by Jack Finney. I like how the author deals with what a dude would get right and wrong if he travels back in time.
Yeah whenever I hear boomers going on and on about their “sexual revolution” (snooze) I always think, “Man if you think the sixties were interesting, the twenties would really have blown your top off.”
Literally!
The television series Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls by English historian Dr Lucy Worsley really illustrates why the 1660s were, in their way much more revolutionary in Britain than 1960s. Especially when you consider the years of extreme religious conservatism that the country had been through under Oliver Cromwell prior to the restoration (monarchy was restored under Charles II in 1651) .
Yeah, there’s always been a quality about the act of projecting bigotry onto the people of the past that seems less about exposing the reality of history and more about excusing modern bias.
Sure, racism was prevalent in the 1940s, but there were also a lot of people who weren’t racist, who were actively opposed to racism. White people, even! As it turns out, there REALLY ISN’T an excuse for being a racist bigot, no matter what era you’re from!
I mean, if you think that everyone who fought in World War II must have been a racist prick, then does that mean that you think that, in the 1960s, there was no one supporting the Civil Rights Act who was in their 40s? What?
Like, yeah, Captain America was born in the 1920s. So were Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and James Garner. Here are those three guys with Diahnn Carroll and James Baldwin at the March on Washington in 1963.
http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxvmk5lh3E1qg9t…
Sorry everyone! Your racist grandpa isn’t a product of his time! He’s just a racist.
I had one deeply racist grandpa and one deeply anti-racist grandpa. Anti-racist grandpa would be 103 now — that’s older than Captain America. He was teaching his kids anti-racist stuff *in 1950.* All of five years after Cap would have been frozen. He wasn’t that unusual, he was just a good person.
(I miss him.)
And even the racist one was complicated, it wasn’t just “I am From The Past, I have never heard of this Not Being A Dick Any More of which you speak,” it was more “I am perfectly capable of being downright charming to real life PoC, but Iike to say horrible racist things mainly to my white family in order to upset and disgust them because I am deeply insecure and need to feel I am having a visible impact on the world, even though when I have successfully upset them I don’t like it any more, what am I doing.”
(He deserves it less, but I miss him too.)
Yeah, radicals existed before 1960. I was raised venerating a liberal’s pantheon of saints. You got your Eugene Debs Emma Goldman, Sojourner Truth, Fredrick Douglas, Susan B, Helen Keller. Mark Twain was a pacifist, a supporter of communist revolutionaries, anti slavery, anti imperialist, feminist, and he was strongly opposed to animal experiments. He’d fit right in at your local co-op.
People weren’t necessarily versed in nuances of our time, but people did think about these things. They read newspapers and followed debates about things like this. People knew about people being gay, and in some ways, they were more accepting of it at certain times- boarding schools certainly had queer culture for men and women both. The 1920s was a sex crazed time with lots of innuendo and straight up sex talk. White people got into eating chinese food as a cool thing in NY and SF during the 20s.
I think that people veer too quickly from, people in the past had certain common assumptions to they were all one kind of person. And they fail to recognize complexity. People overall are complicated and a famous and important feminist might also have been racist, or into eugenics. A man of science in the past might also be into fairies, just as someone today might really be into “detoxes” or cleanses.
You can’t go all the way to the reverse of liberal time travel fantasies- like Downton Abbey, where everyone is just a bit too liberal all the time and comes around a bit too fast to the “right thing”, and make everyone bad and mean in the past either.
l feel like Downton Abbey isn’t liberal ENOUGH. I was heartbroken when that Irish guy ended up just moving in and being steward of the estate, or whatever, instead of burning everything down.
Yeah sorry, I don’t really mean liberal. It’s more about like… the kindness of the ruling class and how they were pretty liberal and kindly and nice. Like, our current…psuedo liberal capitalist gloss smeared on the lenses. Where everyone is ok and we don’t need to protest anymore because people are all tolerant and who needs unions when the nice master will come around eventually because he’s really a loveable grump not a meanie. Portraits of the past as selfies.
I agree with you that poor tamed Tom is a sad shadow. Why is he Mary’s therapist?!. I wanted him to emigrate to America myself and get down with the Wobblies and dance with Emma G. And I want Mary to take her share of the $$ and head off to france and get herself impoverished irresponsible italian nobles as lovers.
I think it’s because people tend to associate historical people as “types,” much like we do today, not realizing that ideologies lined up way differently in the past. You might be super into abolition, but hardly be supportive of non-white people in the way we generally are today, and then also strongly believe that a woman’s place was in the home. And none of that was necessarily contradictory!
I hate reading historical fiction where everyone’s ideals line up with current mores: where people are super liberal and tolerant in the way we are Today, rather than being liberal and tolerant in a different kind of way.
(Awesomely, in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Francie and her date go for Chinese food–poor people, eating Chinese food in Brooklyn during World War One! That is not something you think about very often!)
In The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery, Valency and Barney go out for Chinese food! I think that’s the 20s.
ahhh historically accurate captain america fandom on the toast! and i’m currently eating a waffle? this bodes well for the day.
i’ve read some stuff on tumblr about the lack of cohesion between CA:FA cap and avengers cap and then back to CA:TWS cap. CA:FA did a pretty good job of establishing steve rogers as a little shit on the side of the angels—he can’t keep his mouth shut, he steals planes to save his friend, he lies and cheats to do what he thinks is right, he’s got a stubborn streak a mile wide, etc. then all of a sudden avenger’s cap was…all straight-laced? was mad at tony for not following orders? said weird stuff about what god would look like? it was just…not right. then CA:TWS got it all right again. here’s hoping that the next avengers movie doesn’t backslide into weird staid cap characterization again.
This would only be better if you were eating toast!
Yeah, I’ve read those critiques! A lot of critiques around Joss Whedon’s characterization: too much focus on Iron Man, terrible characterization of Cap 2, and using the tired trope of sexuality and femininity with Black Widow, who as a spy wouldn’t be so easily shaken. Not really looking forward to Avengers 2 because of all that. CATWS is just the BEST in general.
CA: WS is really the only one of the Marvel *about* something other than the main superdude, making political points by smashing a huge drone into the HQ of the Superhero NSA.
Also, Avengers Cap is missing the element that makes him a unique element in the MCU: Steve’s story is about loss, of people, concepts, trust. More than anything WS turns on Steve’s most exquisitely sad face. He lost everything, even his suicide *Your death means nothing! screams Zola* was undone. They took away his ending and his entire world. The end of WS suggests that he might be able to start putting things back together.
It makes reading about Evan’s depression and wincing through interviews much more painful because how much of his perform depends on Cap looking like he’s about to burst into tears.
right, there’s that one deleted scene from the avengers (youtube link here) where steve watches old footage, reads the files of all his deceased friends, considers calling peggy, before going out by himself and then it basically segues into that scene of him demolishing the punching bag.
it’s really the only scene in the avengers that addresses what cap is going through, and it got deleted. womp womp. the characterization would still be off (i’m adamant that cap would never say “there’s only one god”) but it would have at least provided some more context.
oh no i watched and made myself sad again
I am also DEEPLY FOR reminding people at Steve is an artist at every possible moment.
Also he speaks French. Two Francophones in the Howling Commandos, you know his ONLY FRIENDS.
ugh yes it is so sad. his hunched shoulders on the subway ride!
every time i think about this scene, i get mad that they deleted it. without it, the avengers doesn’t have a single mention of steve, y’know, having any internal life at all, really.
Thank you for sharing that scene!
The different ideas about what Steve’s character were in fandom actually drove me to watch all the movies he’s in and YES! His character is all over the place, and it drove me crazy.
What’s even more interesting to me is how Captain America: The First Avenger is being retconned by the Winter Soldier fandom, as the Bucky/Cap relationship in the first movie set them up more as rivals and Winter Soldier is more about them being… er… very, very close friends.
huh, i didn’t read the rivalry in the first movie at all—except for maybe the moment where bucky tries to hit on peggy and she won’t even take her eyes off steve. i’m really interested in hearing more about that interpretation.
in my view, i think TFA really suffered from not having substantial pre-war backstory for steve’s life and his friendship with bucky (since we first meet bucky in his uniform..and i thought WS benefitted from having that one “end of the line” flashback) but it did a pretty good job of showing how bucky always had steve’s back—pre and post-serum—and how far steve was willing to go to save bucky.
Well, instead of “rivalry”, maybe it’s better to say “So poorly characterized that I, a relative Marvel virgin at the time of seeing Captain America, didn’t understand that Cap/Bucky were supposed to be great friends”?
Like, Bucky doesn’t do a lot of things that would make him a *good* friend in TFA. As a friend of mine put it, in his introductory scene it looks like “his life is going well and he is kind of smug about it”. When Cap rescues him, Bucky says “Three cheers for Captain America!” but while people are cheering he seems to run through a lot of pained or jealous facial expressions: http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/… And then, of course, there’s him being shaken that Peggy isn’t interested in him and he blurts “I’m turning into you!” (Who SAYS stuff like that?)
And as you mentioned, there’s no background for Steve & Bucky’s prior friendship (unless you count the one mention of Bucky making Steve going on a roller coaster so he’d puke). They also completely miss an opportunity to show their relationship in the Howling Commandos sequences (which were mainly explosions.) So by the time we get to the scene where Cap is trying to get drunk and failing, my main feelings about Bucky were still “Who the heck IS this dude?” and “Why are you crying over this jerk?” 😛
Well there’s the Bucky trying to talk Steve out of joining the army bit which read pretty strongly to me as him trying to keep his stubborn friend from getting himself hurt. And I think the post “Three cheers for Captain America!” facial expressions are a ‘Ok, everyone cheer for Steve because he’s great and now that no one’s looking at me I’m going to have an emotional break down because I was just tortured and my tiny friend is now somehow massive’.
But the pacing and background characterization on FA are shit, last time I watched I just skipped all the red skull nonsense that doesn’t involve Captain America.
“Well there’s the Bucky trying to talk Steve out of joining the army bit which read pretty strongly to me as him trying to keep his stubborn friend from getting himself hurt.”
I mean, that’s the thing, right? Bucky basically ping-pongs between saying stuff like THAT, and then “I’m turning into you!” You can’t make a final call as to whether he has an actual supportive friendship with Steve or whether their relationship was based on Bucky feeling good by comparison to this disabled kid who’s bad with girls and then watching it all crumble to the ground after Steve gets the serum.
“But the pacing and background characterization on FA are shit”
COMPLETE SHIT 😛
Sebastian Stan has has talked in interviews about how Bucky’s role was taking care of this guy and suddenly he no longer has to, so he’s having a slight identity crisis while also having just been tortured. Of course that would be wildly more apparent if they had stuck in like two more scenes of them interacting instead of that horrible montage and red skull fist shaking at the sky like a scooby-doo villain.
I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one who thought that…? Fandom has created a backstory for Steve and Bucky where the two grew up together (in an orphanage sometimes *baffled shrug*) and their pre-FA history always characterises them as two incredibly close, forever entertwined, homoerotically co-dependent duo where Bucky took care of poor little sick Steve like a (still very homoerotic) big brother. I haven’t read the tie-in comics or followed the actor’s interviews, but I just…never got that impression in the movie.
I think it would have been a more emotionally complex movie series if Steve and Bucky were more rivals than lovers, or at least close in the way that Finny and Gene are close in A Separate Peace. Fandom makes Bucky the loving caretaker, but I want him and Steve to have a slightly bitter and jealous relationship. You know, like that certain type of male friendship where one or both of them are obsessed with their feeling of inferiority and they’re engaged in a perpetual dick-measuring contest.
It would be a more complex emotional journey if Steve and Bucky weren’t very good friends in the 40’s, but Bucky still symbolises home to Steve, a reminder of old pre-super serum 40’s Brooklyn. Both the plane crash into the Arctic and Steve’s attempt to save his friend from the Winter Soldier brainwashing are ways for Steve to deal with the loss of his pre-Captain America life. Like, imagine if the only thing left of the Wizarding World is Draco Malfoy, I bet Harry Potter would be equally desperate as Captain America to save him.
Wish I could find some fanfic that takes the Steve/Bucky relationship in this direction, but alas.
The only real justification for Steve as straight-laced rule-following guy is…he’s only recently been unfrozen, which was pretty damn traumatic, and he’s been thrown into a time and situation that he doesn’t entirely understand (including Thor and Loki being, basically, aliens, and Bruce Banner -> Hulk) and he’s falling back on the most useful aspects of his military training for the context. And, of course, Joss Whedon wanting to play up the Cap Is A Hero, Through And Through aspect — when, really, Steve Rogers is a complex person with a tendency to do the Right thing, even if it involves breaking the rules. (Which is why I like the character.)
Also: Chris Evans.
This was a fantastic read, thank you!!
Oh this is the BEST start to my day EVER. I’ve somehow never seen the Historically Accurate Steve tumblr, but now I’m so so so excited to read it! Fandom perpetuates so many awesome conversations on so many topics, and I love all the mileage we get out of Steve being a Man Out Of Time, and all the opportunities to talk about history and how, as you said, it’s not a straight line. For example, lots of people in fandom get it right, but I’ve always been sort of baffled by how so many fic writers assume Steve would have some deep-seated homophobia. Occasionally I want to comment and recommend that they read Gay New York because uh, even if Steve WAS religious (which I personally tend to argue he probably wasn’t, when it really came down to it) he almost certainly didn’t have a huge problem with gay people.
ANYWAY, thank you for this. I love taking fandom seriously. This was wonderful.
Nice work, Sulagna! This was a blast to read and really educational!
Steve Rogers is the kindest and most honest humanitarian of all the Avengers and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.
Yeah, but is he THE WORLD’S GREATEST MARKSMAN?
Seriously, though, if we’re talking about MCU, this is definitely true. Once Falcon’s on board, he’ll have some competition.
word.
somewhat related, i got into a VEHEMENT argument with a friend about which superhero (not even avenger) would be the ideal romantic partner, and i was like, captain america obviously. like, part of his superpowers is that is he A GOOD PERSON.
she said iron man or thor. i think she was basing this off of sexual charisma.
(in which case steve rogers still wins i mean excuse me, sometimes i sound like one of those perfume commercials i remember from middle school, all “omg your bod. hot bod. check out that bod.”)
I can’t believe that was even an argument – you are 100% correct on all counts.
Seriously. I mean, the friend is entitled to her wrong opinion and everything, but…
I get so engrossed in watching his butt when this gif pops up…
I’ll just look at this for the rest of the day. Thanks!!!!!
Look at the chiaroscuro on DAT ASS.
Mulder: His jiggling it’s ..hypnotic
Scully: Yes …it’s like a lava lamp.
I…I just want to lick him. Like, everywhere.
FALCON FOREVER. But Steve is also a great option.
oh yeah, falcon is a close runner-up to steve in my book. but social worker/VA therapist sam wilson, not the early comics-verse “snap” wilson (i’ve never read these comics, cause the storyline didn’t really appeal to me).
Sam Wilson is my ROLE MODEL *sighs*
I read some early 70s comics before the ones where he got retconned as “snap”, and he’s a really good guy in those. I was so mad when I heard what they did to his characterisation afterwards – like you can’t just have a black superhero who is a good guy and tries to help his community, he has to be an ex-thug. I mean, I haven’t read those post-75 issues so it may be 200% more reasonable than it sounds, but it sounds really bad.
On the Mindy Project there’s an ongoing joke that Mindy’s answer is also, “OBVIOUSLY, Captain America!” when asked which Avenger is best.
Have you taken that BuzzFeed superhero quiz? My friends and I discussed our answers! Sooooo fascinating.
I took that and apparently I’m going to bang Tony Stark someday! Not my top choice but I bet his sexual prowess is nothing short of INCREDIBLE!
How could there even be a question about that? CAPTAIN AMERICA. OBVIOUSLY.
I don’t know, definitely not Iron Man but Thor seems like pretty good competition to me. He’s got a certain goofy quality to him, and he doesn;t know anything about Midguardian dating so he’s pretty much yours to inform. Plus gender politics are better in Asguard. Not that Steve Rogers is sexist but in that respect you’ve pretty much got a wash.
I’m going to have to go look at some comparison photos and picture them kissing before I decide.
I’m going to have to go look at some comparison photos and picture them kissing before I decide.
This line, right here…
It’s what we should do before every decision, probably.
Maybe MCU Thor, since his development into a good person is a major part of the arc, but comics Thor… Well, it all comes down to the hammer. Traditionally, Steve Rodgers can’t lift it, because he’s too democratic, too little of a straight-up warrior. That’s why Beta Ray Bill – lizard horseman from outerspace, warrior-guardian of a dying people – can lift the hammer but Cap can’t. There just isn’t enough capacity for righteous violence in Captain America, which I think speaks in Steve’s favor.
Steve has def. been able to lift the hammer in comics at some point, unless fandom has been lying to me.
My belief has always been that hammer-wielding also relies on self-doubt. Thor is not a dude you expect a lot of conflicted feelings from, but Steve is full of internal questions and conflict. It’s what makes him nuanced and awesome.
But Cap would hold the door for you and view you as his equal, plus he lacks the intimidation factor of being an actual god. Also, dating him would probably not attract the immediate attention of a petulant God of Mischief.
And DAT ASS.
Mister, Captain, the Rogerses are just the greatest in the world.
New headcanon: Fred Rogers and Steve Rogers were cousins who just went different directions in saving the world: Steve chose to punch fascists in the face, and Fred chose to tell them that they didn’t have to take over the world or kill everybody, because somebody loved them very much.
All the internets, lady, all the internets! Fred Rogers was a real-life, flesh and blood saint.
Fred Rogers and Steve Rogers were cousins who just went different directions in saving the world
Agreed with redwoods301. You win the internets today. Yessssssssssssssssssssssss.
No love on The Toast for Bruce? He always seems like an angel to me, with his soft-spoken dithery ways. I mean, here’s a guy *so nice* that his dark side has to actually go be a separate person in order to see the light of day!
Okay, maybe I’m stretching. I just really love Bruce, okay? (Also, you know what’s fun? When you get to the part of Avengers where Tony and Steve are arguing and Bruce is like, “ummm, I just want to do my work…”, imagine him as Brian from The Breakfast Club. “Guys, I really think we should just work on our essays!”)
Bruce is a great guy, but imagine how your first fight would go.
I’ll hold your earrings.
This is a great read! I really like the respect to fans, and people generally here: nope, people are not all stupid and bigoted, not even sixty years ago, and although we may not be moving in a straight line toward progress, there are still enormous populations of people who value kindness.
Thank you! And I love this thought process so hard. I love wrapping myself in the cozy blanket that is the Cap 2 fandom.
I love it when The Toast and Tumblr collide 😀
The fandom is AMAZING.
Aaah that Vonnegut bit aahh. What a well done tiny story.
I think you know how much I LOVE seeing this on The Toast. I think in addition to mischaracterizing the past, it’s always interesting to me how many people think “traditional” and “progressive” are mutually exclusive in any era. I’m always like, “But…Johnny Cash.”
(Steve would LOVE Johnny Cash.)
steve would listen to “man in black” on repeat for a whole week and would get all conflicted over wearing the red, white, and blue vs. wearing black.
And Pete Seeger! The man played a banjo, for heaven’s sake. You can’t get much more traditional than a banjo.
This article is awesome! I’m gonna be spending so much of my free time on that Tumblr. I may have once given a speech after a giant margarita about how Captain America is the greatest man who ever lived. More drunken speech fuel!
I liked this! (But Cap is my favorite anyway). This does a good job of debunking historical bigotry, but I think that even if it would be historically accurate or whatever for Cap to be racist/sexist/homophobic, he’s also a COMIC BOOK SUPERHERO meant to serve as an inspiration for all Americans to be better, more just and compassionate versions of themselves. Therefore, he’s not racist, sexist, or homophobic. Period. My two cents. It’s fiction, we don’t have to rationalize anything! Haha suckers.
(I also think that a more canonical rationalization could follow as such: the superserum is supposed to take what is already there, and amplify it. Pre-serum Steve Rogers was an amazingly compassionate, great guy. The serum expanded all that WAY OUT, obliterating any trace of bigotry in him, so even when he travels to the future he is able to interact and understand with new ways of thinking about oppression and discrimination. I bet he’d be down with “Feminism Is For Everybody”)
Yeah, I don’t know jack about the official canon or anything but I thought he was supposed to be the *best possible* American, not like a statistical representation.
Even then, there were plenty of non-racist people in the 1940s, just like there are plenty of racists now, so……
I feel like the only thing i don’t like about the idea of a canonical rationalization for it is that I don’t like anything that tries to make excuses for goodness. I think any time we express the notion that a person needs some kind of tool — like a serum or some kind of epiphany or magic or anything — in order to become a basically decent human being (and I’m of the opinion that “Feminism for Everybody”, just as a for instance, actually is basic human decency, not some kind of super-moral attitude that only the best among us can have), then we undermine that same quality of human decency.
I don’t feel like we need a canonical rationalization for Captain America coming to the future and not being a bigot. He’s not a bigot because he isn’t a bigot.
I agree somewhat, that in fiction in can be “it is because it is” but at the same time “rationalizations” are another name for storytelling. It is because it is, but it’s also fun to come up with backstories that create lore about why. For fun, and if people argue that’s why we have “it is because it is” and also “it’s fiction, suck it.”
Well, I guess I disagree that “rationalizations” are another name for storytelling. Also I disagree that backstories and lore are storytelling. Also I disagree that, even if rationalizations, backstory, and lore ARE storytelling that “magic serum” is a particularly good or useful storytelling device to explain a person’s basic humanity. In fact, I would argue that a much better storytelling device would be that the super-serum didn’t have any effect on Captain America’s morality at all — that his basic human goodness is something he brought with him, rather than something that was chemically engineered into him.
Exactly, Steve was a super great guy before the serum, that was why he was chosen. The serum externalised his extra-decent personess, it’s a physical change, it didn’t change his character one bit.
Slightly off-topic: everyone please feel free to rec your favorite Cap fanfiction right here.
OH NOOOOOO I’M ON MY PHONE. I’m leaving this comment as a warning and a promise: I will be back, and you will have unleashed the kraken.
I’m ready. I’m living some kind of garbage life right now and fanfiction is my solace. Especially smutty fanfiction.
OKAY. *cracks knuckles* I’ll put all the particularly smutty stuff in a category together so you know where to find it. I’m nice like that.
Maybe Home Is Somewhere I’m Going is Steve/Sam and also sort of Steve/Sam/Bucky, and it is CONSTANTLY ADORABLE; especially the second installment, wherein Tony Stark takes on handling the media circus that is their wedding. Incredible. Simply incredible. In fact, everything by astolat is really just top-notch and you should read all of it.
Middletown: A Study of Suburban Life by our own Morgan Leigh Davies; LITERALLY AN EPIC NOVEL, ALSO A HIGH SCHOOL AU.
You or Your Memory is a work in progress, but it’s an AU where Steve’s the super in the building Clint owns in the current Hawkeye book, AND IT’S AWESOME. IT’S SO GOOD. I DON’T EVEN MIND THAT IT’S NOT FINISHED.
Kiss and (Don’t) Tell – In which Tony Stark, an asshole, assumes Steve Rogers must be all hung up on the gays and the blacks and what have you, and is, in fact, very wrong.
Every Friday After the War – Steve and Clint have a talk, post-Avengers.
Make Way For Ducklings – There’s a lot going on in this series, but the title refers to the fact that Steve starts training a group of SHIELD recruits, who are his ducklings, and they are hilarious.
till i wake your ghost – Sort of hard to summarize. Steve thinks he’s losing his mind; he’s not losing his mind.
Gender-swap: Steve and Peggy (Steph and Gary) – Speaks for itself
Chapter 2 of a longer fic (but each chapter is a standalone, so hey): December: Christmas – Steve and the Church
Phil Coulson Is Not the Avengers’ Public Relations Consultant – In which Steve stumbles into a gay rights protest.
Through the Dark Tide of Memory – Pacific Rim AU, if that’s a thing you’d enjoy.
I (created from fantasies) exist solely for you – SHIELD sends Steve undercover to work at a comic book office. The comic is blatantly about a satirical version of the Avengers. As it turns out, the people making the comic…are also the Avengers. (In this universe, the Avengers are considered to be villains by most. AT FIRST.)
People have already recced some of copperbadge’s fics, but I’ll add Feed the Body, Nourish the Soul, in which Steve owns a food truck. But seriously, everything copperbadge.
Sweet hell, I just found out astolat posted a new one and it’s glorious: http://archiveofourown.org/works/2130618
I just emailed this to you but I should have known you’d get here first hahaha
KNOWING ABOUT CAP RELATED THINGS ON THE INTERNET IS MY SUPERPOWER
this has happened with morgan and me like six times. she’ll send me something and i’ll be like “i literally queued this on tumblr and tagged you mere minutes ago HAHA OOPS”
What If? stories are BASICALLY just company-sanctioned AU fanfic, right?
(context: What If Captain America wasn’t brought out of the ice until the present day? [the 80s, at the time of this comic] Answer: America is turned into a racist, fascist police state [okay, more of a racist, fascist police state than it is already], helmed by a ultra-right Cap impostor, and real Cap has to overthrow the government with the help of the Black Panthers, led by Sam Wilson. COMICS ARE GREAT YOU GUYS)
also: SULAGNA THIS WAS FANTASTIC
ahhh i want to read this. this sounds amazing.
it’s great, it’s so great. What If? volume one, issue 44. “What If Captain America Were Revived Today?” Looks like it’s selling for 2-3 dollars on a certain internet auction site. It’s probably on the marvel unlimited app too? don’t quote me on that.
yay, thanks for the info! i’ll definitely hunt it down.
AMERICA IS A PIECE OF TRASH.
-wipes tear- so beautiful, so true. god bless our garbage country.
“A nation is NOTHING! A flag is a piece of CLOTH!” gives me chills every time.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.
A Partial Dictionary of the 21st Century, by Copperbadge — Steve’s notes on the new things he discovers, and the things he discovers have stayed the same, in the future.
Copperbadge is SO AWESOME.
That was gorgeous. Thank you for sharing!
Copperbadge is amazing.
That entire story is pretty much my Steve Rogers headcanon, right there.
THIS FIC MADE ME CRY HAPPY TEARS AND BELIEVE IN HUMANITY: http://archiveofourown.org/works/312527.
“Steve and Tony accidentally start a national do-gooders association and fall in love.”
OMG, I love Average Avengers.
Copperbadge’s Moving the Furniture is a VERY NICE virgin!Steve/Natasha fic.
Reccing Steve Rogers at 100 sort of feels like crossing the streams since Morgan writes here. Is it some kind of Toast critical mass?
Feather’s Your Blue Eyed Boys is not just my favorite Cap fanfiction, it’s one of the best things I’ve read all year.
The Hip and The Dead is my favorite Cap fan fiction. What if Steve moved back to Brooklyn?
Not technically a fanfic but the American captain comic on tumblr is excellent. I can’t post a proper ljnk on my phone but you can find it at americancaptain.tumblr.com
The premise is that steve rogers is writing a diary comic to cope with PTSD and adjusting to modern life. It’s mostly little vignettes but there are longer stories. It’s thoughtful and poignant and definitely worth a read.
Ok, I love three things: Peggy Carter, 20th century Americana, and feminism criticism of pop culture. These are 3 of my favourites fics that showcase all of them.
http://archiveofourown.org/works/1564184/chapters… – Reconstruction, by rageprufrock.
In which Stephanie Rogers is the complicating element in the sweeping romance of Bucky Barnes and Lady Liberty. AKA. GENDERBENT STEPHANIE ROGERS IS HERE TO SMASH YOUR HISTORICALLY INCORRECT NOTIONS OF PRE-MARITAL SEX AND THE INTERSECTION OF POWER AND FEMININITY
http://archiveofourown.org/works/1994169/chapters… – May Memory Restore, by nimmieamee
PEGGY CARTER THROUGH THE AGES. Ugh, beautiful characterisation of Peggy, Howard, and a stunningly realistic meditation on the tragedy of growing old. It mainly involves good people making tough choices in the political turmoil of the 20th century, and it also answers vital questions like why has no one at SHIELD noticed that the Winter Soldier is the famous dead best friend of Captain America? Hmm?
http://archiveofourown.org/works/1799623/chapters… – A Long Winter, by dropdeaddream, WhatAreFears
STEVE SURVIVES WWII AND MARRIES PEGGY AND LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER, EXCEPT DECADES LATER BUCKY BARNES’S LOVE LETTERS ARE DISCOVERED. It’s a grand, sweeping view of America in the 20th century, livened by a very real cast of characters. I especially love Steve Rogers’s reaction to Vietnam, and how he later recruited a young Nick Fury after they were both thrown in jail for a protest. Also, this fic has Peggy slowly coming to terms with her husband’s bisexuality, which is an interesting case of how even a kind and open-minded person can be shaped by the attitudes of their time. Interspersed with hilarious excerpts from “historical” texts, the fic also amazing at showing how homophobia, racsim, sexism, etc. can be a failure of society as a whole rather than cases of individual sin.
I will just leave this here.
And then I wondered whether this whole conversation was a kind of test for him, to see if he could be both the regular dude from Boston and the famous movie star from Captain America at the same time, to do all the goony things he’d do if there weren’t a recording device between us on the table, and trust that his actual normal self would be enough to accurately and appropriately fill a celebrity profile.”
http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201…
Help me California.
This is the best story ever and now I want to party with Chris Evans. CHRIS EVANS WHY ARE YOU SO ADORABLE GOD DAMN IT.
And now I have a celebrity crush. Great.
EDITH DOES ALL THE FUN THINGS
THIS STORY IS LEGENDARY. I HAVE FORMED WHOLE FRIENDSHIPS BASED ON THIS STORY.
Oh my goddd I have never read this before. I’m on page two and I’m dying, thank you so much.
Oh my gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood this story makes me into That Girl who falls for the persona and really, really wants to believe that if she ever met Celebrity, they’d fall super in love forever and be obnoxiously cute and happy and have babies.
Stop it why can’t you just let me be cool and aloof
Looking at how the fandom chooses to engage with the political ramifications of Steve’s history is also really illuminating in terms of What Fandom Needs – what it is we’re feeding in ourselves when we wrestle with this. Fandom really cares about homophobia. Fandom is not so invested in labor activism or immigration. In historical settings, fandom is all over the place in whether and how it approaches racism; modern day, mostly it’s the homophobia thing again.
I’m not saying all this to particularly criticize or condemn anyone; it’s just an interesting piece of meta-historiography, a particularly clear glimpse at our underbelly.
such a good point.
There is a small, but excellent, subset of stories where he’s casually a socialist (pre-soviet style obviously)
Got any links? I’d love to read those!
AO3 search is failing me, I’ve definitely read more than these:
http://archiveofourown.org/works/2070315 and http://archiveofourown.org/works/2104332- Slightly connected, both involve Steve getting arrested at occupy wall street
http://archiveofourown.org/works/461335- Tony Stark is extra douchey but the other bits are delightful (and Sam Wilson!)
and someone in the rec thread already mentioned the excellent copperbadge one .
Oh wait, it’s this one, not the copperbadge one http://archiveofourown.org/works/312527
Yes! I think that depends on demographics. The same thing applies to how ships with PoCs and women tend to be much, much less popular than ships with two white guys. And it’s funny because a character like Darcy will get tons of traction shipped with characters she’s never even met because she’s a white young female so she’s used as the, ahem, “fandom bicycle.”
Racialicious did an analysis of this in 2009 in connection to the Uhura/Spock romance in the Star Trek reboot movie because of the vitriol Uhura received and how that highlighted the idea of how and who people of color can relate to versus who white people can relate to in a story.
I FOUND THIS TUMBR LAST WEEK AND IT IS THE GREATEST THING ON EARTH.
*Said the person who got photos of the bathroom at Tiffany’s so he could accurately write Clint and Natasha having a little mission there to explain why she’s got an arrow necklace from Tiffany’s in Cap 2*
Sulagna, this is fabulous. Thank you so much for writing it, and thank you to everyone who’s carefully investigated and written about Steve Rogers and his time period. This is the kind of thing that makes me wish my grandparents had lived a little longer, and that I had been smarter about talking to them about what life was like for them growing up. A few months ago we found my grandparent’s (and my dad’s- his occupation was “Infant!”) World War II rationing booklets. It was incredible to hold them; it brought home the fact of the war and the homefront in a way I hadn’t felt before.
In the parlance of tumblr, FUCK YEAH SULAGNA MISRA.
shut up I can listen to the CA:WS end credit music again you’re not the boss of me.,
This article has absolutely made my day, you have no idea how many PASSIONATE FEELINGS I have about progressive!Cap.
I actually got super into 1930s and 40s Hollywood just shortly before I got super into Avengers and Captain America, so I was already into that mindset by the time I was mooning over Steve with stars in my eyes. For a nice little slice of period pop culture, Warner Bros does some great DVDs – look for the “Night at the Movies” special feature. They have a little historical introduction, then a cartoon, a newsreel, and a musical short before the feature. (Alas, I haven’t found a double-feature disc yet, you have to stick in the second film on your own time.) There’s a newsreel interview with a gangster’s moll, some clips of FDR visiting an aircraft carrier (and clinging on to an admiral to keep himself vertical for the camera, I have so much fucking respect for that man), lots of advertisements for war bonds and victory gardens. It puts things into context, even if you’re already familiar with the movie, which I absolutely love.
Even though I’ve seen the first Captain America movie (wasn’t impressed) and Avengers (more impressed, but not so much by Steve [coughexceptthatasscough]), this article really makes me want to watch Winter Soldier and get into the fandom a little. I love all the meta fandom stuff like this!
CATWS blows the rest of it out of the water, Steve-wise. (Also, there is so much Natasha in it.) It makes the first one retroactively better.
I watched the avengers and was really surprised by how much I liked the captain. Definately the kindest, and interested in justice, so it never crossed my mind that he would have any issues with Falcon. I think being the underdog/weakling/trod upon young man that he was made a difference in his outlook on life.
Also at one point in the comics Cap had a gay best friend.
http://trelkez.tumblr.com/post/28072827300/starri…
If this position is still open I’d like to submit my application immediately
YOU WOULD BE SUCH A GOOD ARNIE ROTH
My application http://johnleavittlives.tumblr.com/post/946741461…
Oh, also, apparently the kind of banana that everyone used to eat went extinct sometime in the 50s, and the bananas we eat now taste completely different.
oh wow, thank you for this article. give me all the steve rogers meta! All of it!
No, Captain America is not boring just because he’s good. We keep getting superhero reboots in which we’re told that a hero is someone who’ll make the hard choices, who’ll do what needs to be done, and that the hard choice is always the dark, violent one.
Captain America also says that a hero is someone who makes the hard choice. But in this case, the hard choice is to be kind. The hard choice is to stand up for the little guy, even when absolutely everybody else is against him. The hard choice is trying like hell to put yourself in harm’s way because there’s injustice being done, and that’s unacceptable. The hard choice is seeing a mob teetering on the edge of violence and saying “stop.” And Steve Rogers stood for all those things even before he became Captain America.
Anger and revenge are easy. Standing in the light of day and being the lone voice of justice is hard. And that, Abraham Riesman, is why we don’t need Cap to be a jerk. The world has plenty of those already.
Also, a brief passage from my fanfic novella about Captain America, because all the food would taste welder to him
“Steve’s food preferences are deceptively simple. Yes he likes classic staples, sauerkraut is about as spicy and exotic as it gets, but his tongue has not caught up to 70 years of food science and factory farming so Steve’s meals are outsourced to niche little hipster places that make their own sausages from pigs that have never once been made to feel bad about themselves. These places are not very good at responding to e-mail. He also developed a taste for greasy British fare when overseas so it took a very large bribe to convince a downtown fish and chip shop to deliver to midtown.
..from a chapter called All About Steve. http://archiveofourown.org/works/466404/chapters/…
Also one time on twitter we realized Steve would be the best wine and spirits critic in the world cause he literally can just drink them all day without getting drunk and appreciate them on a pure taste level.
Thank you, this finally drove home the value of fanfic for me. I used to snigger at fanfic and I’ve mostly killed that nasty condescension in myself, but it was a revelation to see how fanficcers can take, say, some careless set dressing on Steve’s apartment and turn that into a new premise. That made fanfic “click” for me, as it’s the same move made by many celebrated authors, especially of sci-fi and satire.
And this sort of thing is why I love fandom. It’s absolutely what the internet is for – popular history that is relevant to the readers and detailed and nuanced, with some theory (“watch out for linear assumptions of progress!”) behind it. On a day when, frankly, nearly everything seems terrible, this actually reminds me of what regular people can do.
hey, I’m a boomer and believe me I do NOT put my 50s childhood on a pedestal! The 50s represents everything we fought AGAINST in the 60s.
The only part about this post that let me down was when it ended. I could have kept reading more about this, for a much, much longer time. You had me hooked, and did an excellent job transitioning from the world of comic book fiction into something that just…resonates well. And I’m not the only one that feels that way, obviously. 🙂 Keep it up.
Ok, I came back to this post after watching THE WINTER SOLDIER last night, and thank you, I have so many links to go through (I don't feel guilty, essays and exams, not at all). My point is, that awesome Fury ambush scene jolted me like whoa because: black man and cop cars. Though I'd watch Fury and his buddycopbro car being bamfs in their buddycopbro movie.
One, it’s possible that Steve and Bucky lived in an integrated neighborhood in Brooklyn. It’s possible. Burt Lancaster grew up in Harlem. Although he lived in East Harlem, which mainly consisted of immigrants, he did interacted with African-Americans. I suspect that a good number of working-class neighborhoods throughout the U.S. in the early half of the 20th century were integrated. A good number of working-class neighborhoods here in Los Angeles were.
Thank you! This article describes about 75% of why I like Captain America more than any other Avenger. One of the essays linked (the history lesson one) should be required reading for ANY future Cap writers, along with the comic issues from the 70’s where he shows he doesn’t hold to the United States and its government, he holds to the ideals, often expressed but sadly not as often demonstrated, of the American Dream, the idea of Liberty and Justice for All, and that one man can make a difference.
Capitao America
Capitao America