Genocidal hippie

Avengers: Endgame (d. Russo Brothers)

It is about genocide. For that reason, it’s worth examining who are notably absent or disregarded since it is their very unrepresentability that signals that they are the likely victims of erasure. It’s a bit ironic that for a film about wiping out of half the universe’s population, it is overcrowded with surprise cameos of primary and secondary characters from the MCU. This indicates that there is an oversupply of a certain demographic while the there is an underrepresentation of another.

In addition, the film approaches the subject of genocide ambiguously. One of the superheroes ventures to say that, with half of earth’s population gone, the environment has improved. This is said in passing and is quickly dismissed by another character, but let us push this line just a bit and connect it to the racially underrepresented people in the movie. Endgame, rather daringly, seems to say that by we can escape or delay the inevitable environmental crisis by shedding whole swaths of human population. So, who in fact, are the ones who are imagined to be eliminated? Thanos disappeared living beings at random, but, in following the racial and class logic of the film, the ideal demographic for genocide are the ones who are not on screen: Asians, Latinos, Middle Easterners, and indigenous populations.

Consider the dramatically important killing of a yakuza gangster, the only signifying Asian in the movie. His murder, and let us be clear on that, is justified by the fact that he isn’t a good man. The man is seen wielding a samurai sword in what looks to be Tokyo. Not only is this an inconvenient weapon of choice, but it clearly a tired Orientalist cliché. Moreover, the superhero turned vigilante connects this murder with Mexcian narcos that he too has killed in abundance as a form of convoluted vengeance. His reasoning is that how could these evil people survive the genocide when his family has been killed. Notice that the vigilante justice meted out is conveniently located outside the US territories, mimicking justifications of atrocities committed in the name of American national security abroad. These deaths faintly signal, intentionally so, where the film locates its ideal demographic for genocide.

The film then insinuates that if certain groups of people stopped existing in our current planet, we can cut down on pollution and stave of the “inevitable”, another key term in the movie. Thanos’ ideology, if we can call it that, isn’t portrayed as an evil plan, rather, the villain is characterized as living in harmony with his environment. He’s a post-modern hippie. It is benevolent genocide that he is advocating or a kind of right-wing environmentalism. It may seem like a perverted idea but it’s right there being pushed by the film: perhaps it’s not so bad to sacrifice entire groups of people, coded as non-white and non-First World, so that the other half can live.

This might be the reality of our world. The film seems be conditioning its viewers to this pernicious solution. There was no “to be continued” as usually concludes an MCU film and that’s more than fitting as we all slide into the darkness outside the movie theatre.

#2019 #105