O Imaginário Fascista na Cultura Pop: é possível escapar?

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Ora Thiago

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Subtitles: Gabriela Spinola In July 2022, Neil Gaiman gave an interview to the website Omelete. In his conversation with journalist Carol Costa, the author made a comment on the controversies about changes in gender and race in Netflix's adaptation of Sandman . But hold on.

Let's rewind a little bit. In July 2022, the TV series Sandman premiered on Netflix. It adapts the comics published by DC Comics between 1989 and 1996, created by Sam Kieth, Mike Drngenberg, and, obviously, Neil Gaiman, who is also one of those in charge of adapting the same story into a TV series now, this year, 2022.

In the comics, the plot is partially told from the POV of the protagonist: Morpheus, the Twink. Who is sort of the embodiment of dreams, something like that. Thus, he is also called Dram.

This character is one of the seven Endless, the anthropomorphic manifestations of some aspects of human existence, such as Destiny, Death, Destruction, Desire, Despair, Delirium, Damnation and Derangement. Kidding. Originally, in English, the names of these characters start with the letter D.

So, "Sonho" and "Morte" would be Dram and Death, respectively. Hi, Dick Ryder, congrats! XOXO, Tidinha!

To translate all this to TV these days, the writers made some changes that diverged from the original work in several different points. For example, the time the story takes place, the sequence of some events, and the ethnicity and gender of some of the main characters. Which, as expected, didn't cause any reaction from anyone.

It definitely wasn't a topic of conversation anywhere online. Kidding. Everyone knows what happened.

The same thing that happens every day. Gossip, chit-chat, mess, rumor mill, blabbering, broken glass, mice on the street, cat giving birth at the door. .

. Which brings me back to Neil Gaiman's interview with Omelete. When the journalist asks the author about.

. . Gossip, chit-chat.

. . All this, this is his answer: Interesting answer, isn't it?

But this isn't a video about Sandman . I want to talk a little bit about this approach Neil Gaiman uses. When he says "the people who are shouting either didn't read Sandman , or didn't understand what they read", that is a relatively common kind of answer.

You may have already read some version of this answer a few times. I've probably already talked about this subject in those terms at some point in my life. The authors themselves often say this.

Fans who have at least one brain cell also say that sometimes. Even the specialized media engages in this kind of point, every now and then: that the "average geek" didn't understand or doesn't have the ability to understand the political subtexts of Star Wars , The Boys , Sandman , and Xuxa in The Mystery of Feiurinha . Don't get me wrong, there is some truth to this point.

The world is filled with stupid, ignorant people, I'm not denying that. But I feel like this is, at best, an incomplete way to deal with this problem that keeps popping up on our timeline, week after week. It's the same discussions, it's the same points, and the same counter-points.

Does the problem only lie in this. . .

"average geek" who can't understand movies? No. But calm down, I'm not defending the geeks, God forbid.

What I want to show is that, as usual, the "rabbit hole", this political, aesthetic, ideological, epistemological rabbit hole we're stuck in, it's a little bit deeper. I'm going to give you guys a whole tour down this hole today. Let's go.

. . down this rabbit hole?

Together? So, girls, about Neil Gaiman. .

. I'll sip some water here. I like him!

I have nothing against him, particularly. I'm even friends with. .

. Neil Gaiman. I even have a book of his short stories, which is somewhere here at home.

. . Hold on.

Hold on. Hold on. It's this one here: Smoke and Mirrors .

I read it when I was about 16 or 17, and that book became a very important reference for me. That being said. .

. I think the answer he gave to this whole thing with the crazy, racist fans is a rather superficial answer, in my humble opinion. And my goal with this video is to rise a bit above that superficiality.

I think there is indeed a text literacy problem, but that's not the only problem, and it goes beyond that "average geek" character everyone talks about. To illustrate my point, let's go back to 1997. PART ONE: THE STRANGE CASE OF THE MOVIE NO ONE UNDERSTOOD When Paul Verhoeven took over the gig of adapting the book Starship Troopers into a movie, a sci-fi classic written by Robert Heinlein and published in 1959, the director ran into a little problem.

This book is a piece of sh. . .

Ok, here's the 411. Starship Troopers is a very important book for science fiction. Various elements in that book have influenced different works in the genre in the following decades.

Particularly, the robotic armor, that have visually inspired the famous Japanese mecha, and a whole strand of Hollywood militaristic science fiction which includes movies like Elysium , Edge of Tomorrow , Iron Man and Elite Squad 3: Shinji, Get In The Black Maria. The plot takes place in the near future, and shows us a war between humans and Boris, the Spider. Throughout the book, we follow the military career of the main character.

And what happens in the military during an intergalactic war. And this story. .

. let's just say it has a. .

. an aftertaste. It glorifies war in itself, and it explicitly stands up for violence, especially through militarism, as an instrument of progress.

This thing here, my darlings. . .

is a fascist book. I'm serious. There's a character in here who's a history teacher and former military officer.

His function here is to provide us, in an exaggeratedly didactic way, with the main theses of this book. And what I'm going to read you now, I even marked here, is one of the lines this character has during the film. "The basis of all morality is duty.

No one has preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand. " That is, by beating them. "But the society they were in has informed them countless times about their.

. . 'rights'.

" Between quotes, right. You know, right? That old story.

"Human rights for the right humans! " I threw the book away, but I still need it. This book revolves around the idea that society is "growing weak" due to the lack of "discipline".

The answer the book presents to that is that militarism would be the great solution to this problem. Where have I heard this before? Anyway, back to 1997.

Paul Verhoeven, the same director of Robocop , Showgirls , and the movie Gals Being Pals , had to tackle the task of adapting Starship Troopers into a movie in 1997. But here's what the director says about the book. "I gave up after two chapters because it was too boring.

It's a really awful book. I asked Ed Neumeier, the screenwriter, to tell me the story because I just couldn't finish reading. It's a very right-wing novel.

With the movie, we've tried, and I think we've at least partially succeeded, to make a comment on it. All while shooting it, we were battling against fascism and ultra-militarism. I wanted the audience to wonder: 'are these people insane?

'" Yeah. The solution the director found for this ideological dissonance was to turn the film into some sort of parody of the book. Instead of toning down the fascist aspects, Verhoeven pushed the ultra-militarism to the max.

At times, he even literally replicated the N*zi aesthetic in order to portray not the aliens, not the villains, but humanity itself. That scene that just played here is the first of several military advertisements that are displayed throughout the film. There are several recruitment videos, which aren't in the book, produced with the aim of encouraging the population of this fictional version of our planet to join the army, to support the war, and to show the warlike conflict and the atrocities committed by the military as something not only justifiable, but also glorious.

That insert that just passed is the very first scene in the movie. And this type of intervention is sort of the director's trademark, who had used this resource in Robocop before, also as a way of making it very clear the moral and ideological absurdity that is being shown on the screen. In Starship Troopers , the director uses advertising in order to make it obvious that the film is mocking the fascist bias this story has.

Plots like this are, indeed, vessels for ideological indoctrination and military recruitment. Paul Verhoeven has deliberately constructed a fascist utopia in order to demonstrate, very didactically, why fascism is bad, and how it permeates the Hollywood imaginary and US imperialism. This is not a heroic movie.

It's a warning. It is an acidic and pertinent critic. Now, do you think people understood this?

I'm not just talking about nerds. Were there nerds back then? I'm talking about professional critics.

A journalist named Rita Kempley, in a Washington Post review at the time, said this about Starship Troopers . Here's what she said. "Verhoeven's tone, which varies from camp to cynical, is so inconsistent that it's impossible to decide whether he's sending up the Third Reich or in love with it.

" "It's impossible to decide. " So close, right? "Impossible to decide.

" In a review by the LA Times, also from back in 1997, a journalist named Kenneth Turan said the film was. . .

"a cheerfully lobotomized, always watchable experience that has the simple-mindedness of a live-action comic book. " "The simple-mindedness of a live-action comic book. " That's pejorative, okay?

He's saying the film lacks nuance. And he wasn't alone. Many people interpreted Starship Troopers literally as a movie about an intergalactic war that lacks nuance.

An average starship movie. All the parody, irony and mockery just flew over many people's heads. And the movie's box office reflected that unfamiliarity, this misinterpretation.

But why did this happen? I have a theory. Starship Troopers was released a year after Independence Day , a movie that's also about the devastating encounter of humans with one-dimensional, evil aliens who need to be unceremoniously annihilated by the military, following orders of the President of the USA.

And that was the most watched movie of 1996. This is the cultural moment Hollywood is living in. That's why people go to the movies in the USA in 1996.

To escape reality, to praise their own patriotism, to feel that they live in the best country in the planet, and to consume the narrative that, when the US military is fighting, anything can be justified, as long as the American dream remains. When a movie tells that to the people, in a moment like that, even if it's ironic, the audience, or rather large chunk of the audience, tends to agree. Fine by me!

Paul Verhoeven's work was too subtle for a world that was already living, in a way, the dystopia he was parodying. In the 1990s, the USA was involved in two major military conflicts, the Gulf War and the Bosnian War. Both had direct American interventions overseas, and the support of most of the local population.

Fine by me! Now, Starship Troopers is being rewatched as an underestimated classic. Nowadays, there's a deeper understanding of the meaning of this work, and the messages it tries to convey.

But back then, at least that's what I think, there was a lack of comprehension about who was the audience that was going to dive into this story in 1997. Maybe that's why it failed. People just weren't "ready" to understand that kind of irony.

Perhaps. I don't know. I love Starship Troopers .

The movie, duh. I think it's brilliant, incredible, amazing, a milestone. But I don't know what I would've thought, had I seen it 20 years ago.

I was pretty dumb back then. And if it even flew over the critics heads, of course it'd fly over mine, 20 years ago. I'm bringing this movie to the table here to show an example of this dissonance between what a work tried to say and how it was interpreted by the audience.

Who is to blame for Starship Troopers' failure? The audience, who didn't get it? The critics, who also didn't?

Or the director, who didn't know how to get his ideas across to the audience he trying to achieve? I don't know. It's up to your subjective imagination, for now.

Perhaps there is more than one answer to this question. But we'll get back to it in a moment I want to get another possible answer to the table. Put a pin on this question.

Pin! For now, I'll say this: I've thought a lot about this movie. As I said, there's a different perception about it today.

Starship Troopers is currently seen as a misunderstood classic. A work ahead of its time. And you can understand why, I agree.

But regardless, one little thing got stuck in my head. Actually, it's because of that little thing that I brought this example specifically. Starship Troopers is a movie that says, ironically, that militarism and war are good, necessary things.

"Wow, you're so necessary! " Without the sense of irony, the work may seem silly, simple, mediocre. But imagine if people had liked it.

Like, genuinely. Imagine this scenario. Imagine creating a story aiming to criticize fascism and people, in addition to not understanding the criticism, start glorifying the very same thing you are criticizing.

Imagine how insane it'd be that a parody, a critique, would be perceived not only as something genuine, but also as something worthy of praise. PART TWO: THE STRANGE CASE OF THE TV SHOW NO ONE UNDERSTOOD The Boys is an Amazon Prime Video TV series produced by Eric Kripke, which premiered in July 2019 and is based on the 2006 comics created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. The story takes place in a world where superheroes exist, wow!

And they are managed by a mega corporation that isn't exactly focused on the welfare of society. The series is a very cynical portrayal of not only the superhero "genre", but of the way capitalism tends to commodify everything around us. If, in capitalism, everything is a product to be consumed and fetishized, then, according to the show, that's exactly what would happen to superheroes if they really existed.

On the one hand, they'd be walking Happy Meals, on the other, a kind of super powerful military force serving under the capital. I know I've talked about The Boys before. It's one of my videos that has gotten a certain crowd riled up the most.

And I say that with great pride. We need to be proud of what we have. If you watched that video I made back then, you might remember I don't actually like The Boys all that much.

I think the criticism the series presents is a bit simplistic, empty, and a little counterproductive, because the plot revolves a lot around shock mechanisms. Violence! Sex!

Death! Brutalized women! All this in a superhero story?

Wow, how grown-up! Despite me seeing the criticism as kind of silly, I can't deny that the criticism. .

. is there. And one of the characters in the series that best embodies this criticism it's him.

. . the human Ken!

Homelander, or Capitão Pátria, in Portuguese, is a character played by Antony Starr, and one can say that he is the villain. . .

in The Boys ? Can I say this out loud? Okay, maybe he's not the biggest of the bad guys in The Boys , but I know he's not a hero, right?

No one thinks he's a hero, do they? No one says that. Am I crazy?

Okay, this character is like a fusion of Superman, Captain America, and Cristina from the telenovela Soul Mate . He's white, blonde, has blue eyes, his cape is the US flag, and, in the universe of the series, he's advertised as a symbol of nationalism, an inspiration. The epitome of a true hero.

But the real Homelander, behind the scenes, is a sociopath. He doesn't represent justice, morals, truth, or any other value. Homelander is chaos.

He's an awful person who uses his extraordinary powers in selfish ways, to control others, to get what he wants, or out of plain, sheer sadism. It's power, just for power's sake. And of course, obviously, this character is idolized by the right-wing youth in the United States.

What else could have happened? In November 2020, after the results of the US presidential elections came up, Supporters of Former President Donald Trump gathered in front of the Washington, D. C.

City Hall, to show their support for the Potato With a Wig with US flags and banners that read "America First". All normal. The icing on the cake is that one of these protesters got there dressed as Homelander and wearing a Trump mask.

This guy here, look. Fine by me! After this photo was spread on the internet, the creators of The Boys reacted to it mockingly.

Eric Kripke said: "um, are they actually watching the show? " And the actor who plays Homelander referred to the whole ordeal as: "the art of ignorant dumbfuckery". Ha ha, they didn't get it!

It leaves the impression that this specific situation hit a switch in the heads of the screenwriters, who, in the following seasons of The Boys , upped the ante on this character's fascist nature and the satirical tone of the show, which is something that has been making some fans very upset and surprised when they finally realize the show they like is a political satire. Who would've thought? In 2022, Eric Kripke admitted in an interview with Rolling Stone that part of the inspiration for Homelander came from none other than the Potato With a Wig himself.

He elaborates a bit further. Here's what he says. "He’s always been a Trump analogue for me.

I’ll admit to being a little more bold this season than I have in past seasons. But the world is getting more coarse and less elegant. We’re angrier and more scared as the years go on, so that is just being reflected in our writing.

But part of it is where Homelander’s story naturally goes. He has this really combustible mix of complete weakness and insecurity, and just horrible power and ambition, and it’s just such a deadly combo. All he ever wants is to be the most powerful person he can, even though he’s completely inadequate in his abilities to handle it.

So it’s white-male victimization and unchecked ambition. And those issues just happened to reflect the guy who was fucking president of the United States. And it’s a bigger issue than just Trump.

The more awful public figures act, the more fans they seem to be getting. That’s a phenomenon we wanted to explore, that Homelander is realizing he can actually show them who he really is and they’ll love him for it. Sounds familiar.

I liked what he said. I think this quote of his shows he has a certain knowledge about the world and how severe things are, and that he's aware of his responsibility as someone who's telling stories. I think The Boys became a better show after those things.

It still doesn't really float my boat, But I admit it got better. But look what happened after that. These statements really pissed some fans off.

They simply refused to perceive Homelander as the villain, or, even if they understood The Boys as being critical, they were offended for being the target of said criticism. The show has been making its satirical and political tone more and more explicit, with the third season directly approaching racial issues and drawing very obvious parallels with the issue of police brutality in the United States. So, yeah.

The online repercussion, particularly after that scene, was, as it seems, the final straw for right-wing The Boys fans. It wasn't the only straw, but it was. .

. a straw. Hell breaking loose.

What do you mean, the guy who says "all lives matter" in front of black people is it wrong? What do you mean there's PC stuff in the TV show I like? What do you mean the guy who dresses in the US flag is a fascist sociopath?

My god, the SJWs! Journalist Ryan Broderick reported in detail on Twitter the collapse of this crowd on Reddit. Reflecting on the problem in general, he says the following: "The users who complain about The Boys' third season want Homelander to have a tragic backstory so that they don't have to think about why did they feel so drawn to that character in the first place.

" That's the catch, isn't it? Why do people like Homelander? Why are there people who insist on glorifying this guy, even with the show going absolutely out of its way to portray this character as a villain?

It's okay to like villains. There's nothing inherently wrong with liking the witch from The Little Mermaid , or thinking Maleficent is an LGBT icon. It's all fine.

But, when it comes to The Boys , people weren't just having fun with the character they liked. They were embodying the aesthetics of this character in political gatherings. Someone literally dressed up as Homelander at a demonstration in favor of Donald Trump, the guy who was allegedly being parodied in this show.

Like. . .

Guys. Y'all. Darlings.

What's with this trip? It makes me want to go there, grab the mic and say: "guys, you won't get back the affection your fathers didn't give you as kids. There's no use running after it now.

" I'm talking about The Boys , but you do know this phenomenon goes beyond The Boys , right? This has been happening, over and over. There's this notion that some works of fiction are and have always been progressive, left-wing, anti-fascist, politically correct.

But for some time now, they have been. . .

"misinterpreted" by an ignorant, reactionary fanbase. The famous, traditional. .

. "average geek". Strange people who can't understand what Star Wars is and always has been an anti-imperialist story, for example.

Or that X-Men is an allegory about social minorities. And a TV show that shows a group of people in debt enduring a sadistic and violent competition that's like a spectacle for half a dozen billionaires is a perfect description of life under capitalism, contrary to what our deputy Kim Kardashian might say. I remembered that, although that's not what the video is about.

Familiar? And the answer to this strange phenomenon is almost always very similar to that statement Neil Gaiman gave. "They just didn't get it.

" Which paints the picture as this: on the one hand, we have a group of creators, screenwriters, directors, who are doing their best so that their avant-garde, progressive ideas are understood by the audience. On the other hand, we have a monolithic mass of ignorant, misogynistic, racist nerds who became fans of these stories almost by chance. Because if they had gotten it right from the start.

. . the situation would be different.

The world if people understood Star Wars . The barrier of media, political and ideological comprehension lies in the stupidity of this group of ignorant people. But is it just stupidity?

As I said at the beginning, I'm not entirely dismissing stupidity. Stupidity exists. But isn't there something more?

Couldn't there be a. . .

semiotic trap in this whole situation? It's a semiotic trap, isn't it? PART THREE: SEMIOTIC TRAP Leni Riefenstahl was a German filmmaker in the early 20th century and huge piece of.

. . She produced a series of propaganda flicks for certain parties, and she was one of the main advocates for the aesthetic ideal this little.

. . cool gang used to blabber about.

The image on the screen is an excerpt from a movie of hers from 1938 called Olympia , which documents the Olympic Games that were held that year in Berlin, Germany. The movie was heavily awarded at the time mainly due to its technical expertise and the innovations it presented to the film language. The film mainly focuses on the athletes' bodies, on their performances, and in its visuals, overall.

This darling here was a pioneer in various shooting techniques, and much of what she did keeps being replicated up to this day. After World War II, she tried very hard to distance herself from certain people. And to rebrand herself as merely a great enthusiast of beauty.

Lots of film scholars and professors, to this day, refer to this noble lady as a great visionary, and her connection to. . .

sometimes is written off as merely an uncomfortable detail that shouldn't take up much more than a mere sidenote. Come on! Let's separate the artist from their crimes against humanity?

It's as if Leni Riefenstahl's aesthetic contribution had been separated from everything else. But that's just not true. Everything Leni Riefenstahl has done reeks of Naz*sm and white supremacy.

The way she portrays athletes' bodies and the way in which she glorifies the triumph of the individual in contrast to the collective is fully consistent with the ideals of the Third Reich. That's not coming from me. That's what experts and scholars say.

Writer Rainer Rother, specialist in Film History, explains it like this: "In Olympia , she shoots the athletes as if they're ideal humans. Since then, the portrayal of the athletic body has turned into propaganda and became the modern ideal of beauty. Olympia glorifies N*zi Germany as a heir to Ancient Greece, both aesthetically and politically.

The act of highlighting the aesthetics, that 'purified' ideal, cleansed of all imperfections, has been swiftly inserted into racist propaganda. This gem here, this darling, wasn't influential only in the art of filmmaking. When she glorifies an object, a leader, a person, an athlete, an individual, she makes a series of aesthetic choices.

And these aesthetic choices keep showing up everywhere to this day. Our way of glorifying things, of identifying what deserves to be glorified, is still very similar to her way of doing all that. And it's not just her.

A 1915 film called The Birth of a Nation is considered the work that basically codified the language of cinema. It's the first time a movie had a close-up, an original soundtrack, parallel editing, and many other resources used to tell a cohesive narrative. Much of audiovisual grammar began with the techniques that were first used here.

The director, D. W. Griffith, used these techniques to tell a story that glorifies the Ku Klux Klan, justifies racism, and that praises white supremacy.

I'm not trying to cancel these old movies. I'm trying to say that these movies can't be detached from the ideological context in which they are produced. These techniques, these ways of making movies, can't be dissociated from their ideological objective.

That doesn't mean we need to forget that they exist, or that these movies need to be erased from History. Again, it's not about cancelling. It's the opposite, it's about remembering, it's about critically rescuing.

The way in which certain moral and political values are glorified in the audiovisual has a lot to do with N*zism and white supremacy. A good portion of our cinema still reeks of N*zism and white supremacy. A good part of our art and many other things is still permeated by these ideas.

And we need to understand how and why this happens. In my opinion, that's what's wrong with The Boys , and so many other movies and TV shows. As much as the script might spell out that this character mustn't be worshipped, he is aesthetically worshiped because of the way he is filmed, because of the way he is presented to the audience.

Of course, The Boys isn't the only example. Pop culture has plenty of white, male, morally questionable characters that are read as pristine models of morals by a group of resentful white men. Which doesn't mean that it's necessarily wrong for you to like these guys or these stories.

You like what you like. Far be it from me to judge you. But it might be interesting to reflect about how we interact with these products.

Because there are many of them, and they're not restricted to the US. We even have a Brazilian version of this character. Look how cool that is!

Perhaps they're the most didactic example there is, not only in Brazilian cinema, but in cinema as a whole. What an honor for us! Look how powerful our art is!

This example is so representative, so iconic, that maybe you already know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about. Don't you?

Huh? ELITE SQUAD Elite Squad is a 2007 movie directed by José Padilha and starring Wagner Moura, who plays a captain of the Special Police Operations Battalion from Rio de Janeiro, the infamous BOPE. BOPE was created to intervene when ordinary police can't handle it.

And, in Rio de Janeiro, this happens all the time. The movie follows this guy as he narrates the daily life of the war on drugs, and the training of a possible replacement for when he'll finally, allegedly, at some point, get brave enough to leave the squad. It seems to be what he wants.

I've been in that was for long. And I was getting fed up with it. This character is suffering, having anxiety crises, his marriage is crumbling, he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to constant exposure to violence and the horrors of the world of crime and the police system.

I immediately have an anxiety attack. Elite Squad is a movie. .

. that criticizes the police as an institution, and the use of violence in the favelas. But it's a bit of a weird criticism.

At the same time the movie criticizes the horrors committed by police officers and the way this institution is corrupted from within. . .

Our symbol shows what happens once we enter the favela. Got it, man? Knife in the skull, bro.

Let's just say. . .

When I see marches against violence, man, I want to go out and punch them all. To put it nicely. .

. That's just how we have to be. -Ask to leave!

Ask to leave! -No sir! Filthy bastard!

Go back to where you came from! Our men are punched into the mold. It's a movie that has serious trouble getting away from certain.

. . semiotic traps.

Check this out. Our symbol shows what happens once we enter the favela. Knife in the skull, bro.

I know I'm taking several scenes out of the context of the story, but that's the point. When you hear this song, what do you think about? Even better: what do you feel induced to think about?

A: "Wow, what a corrupt, structurally harmful institution this is to society"? Or B: "here's motherfucking BOPE"? Elite Squad is a movie that uses a supposed criticism of the police force to make a show out of the violence against the favela and to feed hatred against left-wing thinking, and it gave the main character, a policeman, that spice of a tortured anti-hero who fights the system and unleashes his own demons over poor people and women.

It's a film that was eager to craft an attractive aesthetic to reach a large audience, so it makes a point of repeating the same phrases that any average punitive fascist raised on crime shows hears every day on TV. You're the one who killed him, you f*ggot! You're the one who's funding all this shit right here!

You pothead, piece of. . .

Even if the movie theoretically says this guy is wrong, I don't think it really does. Look at what it says aesthetically. Look at how this guy is presented to the audience.

Look at how glorified he is. And look at how he is transformed into a symbol of a resentful society. Our symbol shows what happens once we enter the favela.

It's no wonder this character is idolized by so many people who are there, sitting on the fence of the fascist imaginary. It is no wonder so many people have embraced the aesthetics of Elite Squad . BOPE's skull, the songs, Captain Nascimento's one-liners, which were repeated everywhere.

And it's no help that the director of Elite Squad , José Padilha, became a huge pain in the arse. One of the main names in the anti-Worker's Party sentiment, which gave birth to Bolsonarism, which is just like the Brazilian fascism in the 21st century. Don't question it.

Elite Squad didn't invent Brazilian fascism, but it did an excellent job of rebranding that imagery for our times. It crafted an aesthetic where these thoughts become acceptable and mainstream. I don't know if Padilha did it on purpose because I don't read minds, but intention and logic matter very little, because the fascist imaginary is more aesthetic than logical.

I'm not necessarily talking about the great leaders, but rather the average person that gets on board with these ideas. The seductive part of this fascist imaginary, for an ordinary person, who might not even know what fascism is, is precisely the feeling of power, the aesthetics of power. The narrative of reclaiming a power you feel has been taken away from you.

And both Captain Nascimento and Homelander stand precisely in that place, the place of the aesthetics of power. Even if the scripts of Elite Squad or The Boys spell it out that it's not right to idolize these characters, they are aesthetically idolized. I'm not making this up.

Let me quote something here to sound smart. A Yale University professor named Jason Stanley puts it this way: "Part of what fascist politics do is to disconnect people from reality. You get them to join in this fantasy alternate reality, usually on a nationalist narrative about the country's decay, and the need of a strong leader to bring it back to its glory days.

From then on, they're not anchored to the world around them, but to their leader. When there's no literal leader, the fascist imaginary makes the person look for this anchor in other places. And pop culture has plenty of characters who can fill that void.

From Captain Nascimento to Homelander, but not only them. There's a whole audiovisual grammar that's built, for the most part, from a military, individualistic aesthetic that glorifies individual actions to the detriment of the collective. The great leader, the chosen one, the guy who handles it alone, the one who stands out in an amorphous crowd, white men with sculptural bodies that have no libido whatsoever, bodies that only serve for war performance.

So, when you show a character. . .

like that, it doesn't matter what he says. Their aesthetics tell the whole story before any words are uttered. And we are surrounded by this aesthetic.

It's everywhere. In advertising, in movies, in music videos, on the Internet. It is virtually impossible to escape it.

Which brings me back. . .

to 1997. Starship Troopers was a failure in 1997. And it's understandable.

It wasn't just the cultural context of that time. It wasn't just because people didn't understand it. It's because the movie is a semiotic challenge, it's a tough one.

It's because Paul Verhoeven was trying to subvert the aesthetic itself. He didn't want to fall into the traps The Boys and Elite Squad fell into. The director doesn't use the conventional codes and symbols that point to the audience who should they root for in the story.

As a result, the film feels empty, basic, even though it's the exact opposite of that. It's weird to watch Starship Troopers even if you get all that context. It's a movie that's very different from everything we're used to watching.

The protagonists are not heroic, but apathetic. The moments that were meant to be triumphant or something like that seem. .

. lethargic. It's all a bit numb.

That makes it stand out even more in a narrative genre and in an industry that are so dominated by triumphant narratives of militarism and individualism. There is a bigger problem than just the alleged stupidity of some fans. Our codes, our grammar, our way of communicating ideas are already naturally biased.

There is history behind the codes and symbols that appear in our cinema. There are values, there are implied ideologies behind a camera angle, a use of light, and a color palette. These elements can tell entire stories before any sentence is spoken.

So, it's easier for people like Neil Gaiman and Eric Kripke to simply blame it on a group of crazy fans. To say that a guy who went to an anti-democratic gathering dressed up as the character you created is simply "the art of ignorant stupidity" or something like that. "He didn't get the story.

" It's easier to use that kind of rhetoric than trying to understand what you, as a creator, did wrong. What is it about the story you wrote that makes so many people interpret exactly the opposite of what you actually meant? It is easier to join in this type of argument than trying to find new ways to build narratives and escape these semiotic traps.

I say this as a creator, too. As a person who makes videos on the Internet. As a person who is often misunderstood.

As a person who struggles with this, too. It's not easy, or simple, or a switch. But we have to keep working, improving, and all.

And I know it's hard, since, as we've shown here, this is not a problem that can be solved just with individual decisions. Still, when someone like Neil Gaiman is asked about the racist fans of the comics he created, I'd expect a better answer than just "they didn't understand it". Because yes, maybe they didn't understand.

But why didn't they? And what do you think needs to be done for you to be better understood? Or at least to protect people who are targeted by the hate speech that is partially promoted by your work?

There is a level of accountability there. The author doesn't have to carry this burden alone. But that burden exists.

And the way things are. . .

You know. From this side of things, as those who watch, as those who follow press coverage, far be it from me to insinuate anything, but. .

. seems like the hate speech turns out to be kind of. .

. lucrative for you who are over there, on the other side. If you look at Sandman coverage in the weeks before the show's premiere, it's even hard to find an article that had nothing to do with the racist comments.

When I finished watching the show, I was very interested in reading texts by black people talking about the race changes with some characters. I really wanted to know if any Black critics had had an interesting output about this topic, about Death, and about racial issues as a whole in the show. I was very interested in it, but it was very hard to find something.

These texts exist, but in order to get to them, I first had to be bombed with the extensive press coverage of the hate speech. It's almost as if the hate speech had been used as marketing for the show. Maybe you're thinking right now.

. . "It's the press' fault, then, not Netflix or the authors.

" But I'd like to remind you that media relations is a thing. Press coverage of a particular cultural product. .

. is not as organic as it looks. It's partially driven by the companies that produce these contents.

Alright? Partially. Far be it from me to insinuate anything.

Like, far be it from me. Real far be it from me. Like, far.

. . Far as fuck.

Like, as far as Florida. Far away. Very far away be it from me.

Just bringing something back up. Remember when I said The Boys fans were melting on Reddit after the series made a reference to the Black Lives Matter movement? Yeah.

Several of these racist comments made it to the news because they first came up on the TV show's official Twitter profile. To promote the new season. Fine by me!

See, I'm not saying it's Neil Gaiman's fault, or the person who runs The Boys' Twitter profile. I'm saying that there is a bigger problem than all these people. A problem that encompasses pop culture and professional critics, and the business model that keeps those two things going, and the way these reviews are distributed on the Internet, since it manufactures controversies so that the content reaches further, and so that half a dozen billionaires can profit at the expense of the indiscriminate dissemination of fascist ideas.

Capitalism is to blame, basically. Thank you for your attention. That was a lot of work.