This post contains some spoilers for the Premiere of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.
So, I guess this is a thing I’m doing now. As I opined upon, at length, in my previous post, Marvel comics and the ensuing movies are of some matter of great import to me. Chief among those being Captain America. Possibly the most misunderstood of all of the newly mainstreamed characters Marvel has to show, and yet, I find, the most compelling.
In the last few weeks I’ve found myself discussing this with close friends, and trying to express that what they assume Captain America is, is not only far from the fact, but also that that presumption is really the fascinating jumping on point for a character with a very long history of being a conduit for political commentary. A white, blue eyed, blonde American man with the oh so wholesome name of Steve Rogers, with the flag on his chest and a giant “A” emblazoned across his forehead. I don’t really blame anyone for thinking he might be the personification of yawning propagandism. But, in truth, that is the exact legacy and expectation that Cap himself is in constant struggle with.
I’m not going to pretend that there isn’t something “Rah Rah America!” about seeing Cap deck Adolf Hitler on the cover of Captain America Comics #1. Especially in this day and age, I feel we could really use a more clear reminder of this country laying out the Nazis. But, even for the time that was a controversial stance. The comic dropped in March of 1941. A time when, not only were we as a country making a concerted effort to not get involved in World War 2, but there were large scale pro Nazi groups making their stances known clearly. It was only two years earlier that Madison Square Garden hosted a massive rally for American Nazis. So, two Jewish men from New York deciding to wrap a man in our flag and plaster him all over Newsstands across the country, fist squarely set against ol’ Adolf’s glass jaw, was a far more bold move than modern America is generally willing to admit. So, from the jump Captain America was political commentary rather than propaganda. The change really came post Pearl Harbor, when all of a sudden the American Nazi party seemed to just disappear. Suddenly, the controversy was the rally cry.
The war eventually ended. A thing wars used to do. The comic continued on through the 50s out of shear popularity, but eventually sales started to decline in favor of Tales From the Crypt and Mars Attacks style creature feature books. Cap started fighting Vampires like Baron Blood, and the thread was just generally lost. That is until Marvel Mastermind Stan Lee came up with the idea to revive the War time Cap in 1964. In the 4th issue of his newly minted mega crossover, The Avengers, it was revealed that the real Cap had been on ice, lost at sea ever since an ill fated fight against Baron Zemo. A fight that would claim the life of his long running boy sidekick Bucky Barnes. Eventually the 1950s appearances of the characters would be explained away as a government initiative to hide his disappearance by casting new heroes in the rolls of Cap and Bucky.
The newly thawed Steve Rogers would go on to struggle with the legacy of shifting American values. It had only been 19 years since his supposed death in 45, yet the nation had changed so much in that time. Emboldened by our defeat of the Nazis, The United States had set out on an imperialist campaign to “bring Democracy to the world.” We were indisputably the good guys? How could it possibly go wrong? (I don’t have the time or desire to give you a rundown on the past 70+ years of foreign policy, but just go ahead and google “Operation: Condor”, “Banana Republics", “The Dole Fruit Company in South America”, “Iran Contra”, “Operation: Paperclip", and pretty much anything in the Middle East since the Gulf War.)
In 1974 Steve Rogers would drop the shield and give up the mantle of Captain America, becoming “Nomad: The Man Without a Country.” In the comic it was reasoned as a response to learning that a “High level government official” (implied to be Nixon) was the head of a terrorist organization. In our world, this lined up with the end of the Watergate investigation and Nixon's eventual resignation. Yet again, the legacy and expectation of what the name, costume, and shield were meant to represent, came to logger heads with real world geopolitics. This would harken the arrival of John Walker “The U.S. Agent”, but I’ll come back to that.
As many of my generation are coming to understand these days, the America we learned about in our history classes is closer to Fan Fiction, baring a passing resemblance to the real historical place we hold in the world. Steve Rogers is a man who grew up believing in the best of what we could be. He put his body and his life on the line to fight for an Ideal that we as a nation don’t really adhere to regardless of what we tell our children. Be it belittling the historical contributions of other races, cultures, or sexes, whitewashing our own numerous sins, or wrapping our imperialism in a quest for democracy.
But here’s the thing. I fell in love with the fan fiction version of this country. Growing up outside Philadelphia, history wasn’t just in books. It was something very real that I could reach out and touch, at times literally, in the case of The Liberty Bell. I believe in the same country Steve Rogers does, even as I myself grapple with the truth that lies beneath our patriotic veneer.
So, where does this leave us with the new series that just dropped on Disney+? Picking up after Captain America’s retirement and handing off the shield to his friend and confidant, Sam Wilson, we watch as the new man to wield the shield has also come to find himself struggling with that legacy. Everything Captain America is meant to represent, mixed with the complicated experience of American blackness, let alone a black member of the armed forces. A population who has time and again put their bodies and lives on the line for the promises of the American social contract.
In the first episode we see Sam’s refusal of the call, and simultaneous fight to keep his family business alive while coming face to face with the subtle but stinging racism of the American banking structure. Made all the worse by the Banker’s fan gushing at meeting a real life Avenger. The flip of the coin is to watch as Sam’s co-headliner Bucky attempts make amends for his life as the War criminal and assassin The Winter Soldier. A journey brought to searing emotional life in the eyes of the elderly man he befriended , knowing that he killed that man’s son for no reason other than being in the wrong place. A soul tortured by full knowledge of the horrors he’s inflicted while being used as a weapon in someone else’s war.
Vague allusions to a shadowy new organization of anarchists' called the Flag Smashers ( a nice reimagining of one of Marvel’s least subtle villains.) set up what is to come, but the most stinging moment is in the final minutes when Sam sees that his decision to turn Cap’s shield over to the U.S. government for the Smithsonian's Captain America exhibition has yielded a bureaucratic rebranding and recasting of the symbol. Placing it in the hands of the aforementioned John Walker. The stage is set to tell a story complex and compelling enough to live up to the mantle Steve Rogers once bore. But the question that once graced the cover of many a comic in my personal golden age, is left hanging in the air. “Who will wield the shield?”