I guess we'll agree to never agree

[yvannairie]

Content warning: Interpersonal abuse

I haven't even seen the movie but I'm already getting the urge to excise myself from the Marvel conversation, and it's for the same reason I eventually grew tired of the neverending Infinity War hot takes.

So, primarily just the fact that the one genuinely insightful and engaging aspect of Thanos as a character has been lost to the fucking avalanche of people wanting to disavow his actions but going about it in the most tiresome, self-involved way possible.

Like, here's the thing, everyone who's said a variation of "abuse isn't love!" w/r/t Thanos getting the Soul Stone -- y'all watched GotG Vol.2, right? Y'all saw the disconnect between Yondu's behaviour and his intent? We all saw Peter call him out on the abusive effects of his actions while accepting that his behaviour did not fully reflect his motivations? Did we all just, like... forget that motivations are value-neutral, suddenly, just because Thanos is unlikeable and wrong?

And by all means, disagree with Thanos' actions. His critical flaw is that he maximalises the consequences of his own actions in his head (fancy that, a genocider with an elevated sense of self-importance) and as such he has to keep doing the worst thing to ensure he's still getting the best result. Hate him, if he reminds you of your own abuser, hate him if you find his writing is hack and only makes him another in a long line of delusional villains who think the ends justify the means.

But this insistence on rejecting and entirely rewriting his motivations, born purely out of an insistence that "true love" can only result in pure, healing, safe action is fucking disingenious and I am disgusted by the amount of times I've seen people insisting that they know "better" what motivates someone just because they're able to see the consequences of their actions, instead of just sticking to calling the behaviour abusive. Because it was.

I'm off to find somewhere to have this conversation that isn't a gaslit room.

Comments

[zenolalia]

IMO, what Thanos feels is irrelevant to the fact that he just gets to win by murdering his own abuse victim. And like, that's just sort of gone with.

Saying "abuse=love" is a convenient shorthand for that, because it's a common narrative convention that happens in film and other media which depicts abusive relationships, especially between parents and children. They do it for love, because they want you to be stronger or better or safer or tougher. And it's a common enough rationalization in real life, too, which is what makes it compelling in fiction. But the thing that is so rarely addressed in these fictions (the thing I loved seeing addressed in GOTG2), is that the motivation doesn't matter. The feeling is irrelevant. It's still super fucked up.

Except, of course, in IW, and throughout Endgame, Thanos is never really treated as fucked up. Misguided, miscalculating, but not actually wrong. He wins. Again and again. He wins the soul stone by killing his child. He wins the war at the end of infinity war. I don't want to give too many spoilers for Endgame, as you mention having not seen it, but suffice to say that he dies happy--he won.

Were there a line of dialogue that separated the abuse from the love, anywhere in Endgame or IW, as there are in GOTG2, then sure.

But in Endgame, as in IW, Thanos's abuse is just continually treated as a natural manifestation of love. Indeed, there are extensive themes of parenthood and parental love throughout the film, and Thanos's treatment of his children in Endgame, rather than being contrasted against these other figures, is simply placed among them in a way that serves to downplay the abusive behaviour of OTHER abusive parents too.

It's really kind of a step backwards for everyone involved.

[yvannairie]

So if Thanos' motivations are irrelevant, why does everyone insist on bringing them up? Why do people insist on treating "abuse" as an emotion instead of simply going "it doesn't matter whether he loves anyone or not, because his actions are violent, self-centered and abusive." Which they are. Which are recognised in the narrative as what they are. The damage from Thanos' behaviour is the thing that is set out to be fixed in Endgame, regardless of if he meant it, regardless of what he gained from it.

Thanos is an unrepentant abuser who got ahead with that abuse. People like that exist. We live in a culture where people get rewarded for fucked-up actions all the time, because we're not truly incentivised to be kind to each other, but rather construct circles of influence where someone is always suffering the consequences of someone else's actions. If the problem everyone has with this is that they didn't want the MCU to work like that, again -- you can make that point without insisting on getting into Thanos' motivations.

That shorthand is actively damaging and I'm tired of hearing it. It simply acts like this "cannot be" because "abuse isn't love" when even you make the point that people do think exactly like Thanos and they can insist on their own rightness and other people can agree on their rightness and still refuse to accept the consequences of their actions and work to undo them.

People get ahead by doing terrible things all the fucking time and I'm tired of people telling me I cannot find catharsis in that still being wron because the villain doesn't end up undone because "abuse isn't love". Like yeah imagine that, action isn't motivation. None of my abusers were undone by their actions. I wasn't undone by my actions. That doesn't mean the consequences of those actions didn't need repairing.

If you feel like being aware of his motivations downplays the consequences of his actions then more power to you. I literally said in my post that if you feel the writing validates Thanos' actions, then you're free to criticise it. The consequences of his smug self-assurance are left for everyone else to deal with, and if you feel those consequences are downplayed, more power to you. To me, that's the whole goddamn point of his character being understandable.

Yet everyone insists on fucking telling me "no, that's bad writing actually, he should have been portrayed as delusional and even more self-absorbed and utterly, utterly devoid of anything that is relatable or cathartic because abusers are less than human and normal people cannot have even a single point of connection with them". It is to me. It's cathartic and painful and real. That's what someone abusive is like, fully rounded motivations and all. He's the bad guy, he is validated because the consequences shake out the way he was prepared them to, he got what he wanted. Him being the only one who doesn't see what he did as bad is what made him work for me, and being told over and over that I'm wrong about that is getting really fucking tiresome.

[zenolalia]

I suppose we've taken different things from the portrayal, then. Which is, of course, fine. I just thought perhaps I had been unclear in some of my past criticism of his characterization and writing. As that was not the case, I'll leave the subject be.

[yvannairie]

Yes, I realise that most people have had a significantly different experience with this character than I have. The whole reason I am at the end of my wits with this is that I seem to be the only one who's neither camp The Russos Are Thanos Apologists nor Camp Thanos Was Right About Everything, and I keep getting told I'm a fucking eugenicist genocider in the making because I see every abusive situation I've been in represented in how he wins, and wins, and wins, and leaves everyone else to deal with the things he doesn't care about. If people are frustrated by abuse being represented as a highly effective method for getting what you want, then that's fair and I agree -- but it only makes him more interesting to me, not less.

Fixing mistakes and repairing what has been damaged and dealing with consequences that are too big has been a theme in the Marvel movies since Iron Man 1. The things that are done to "make everything better" never making everything better is what grounds all these characters for me. If that isn't compelling to people, then... that's fine. There are other themes, which other people find more compelling. But to me, Thanos is that thinking brought to its absolute pinnacle, and him having no regrets shows why any thinking that relies on miracle solutions is loathsome.

[queermermaids]

I kinda agree with you, there are multiple things in endgame that definitely validate your take here, especially in scenes involving other characters (like direct parallels and what not) but I don't want to spoil it for you.

[yvannairie]

Oh no, you're free to spoil it for me, I just mentioned that I haven't seen it because I will be talking off of just the plot synopsis and have no idea how good the execution actually is. I knew I wouldn't bother going to the theaters for it, because frankly post-fact I felt like I shouldn't have bothered going to the theaters for IW, either.

[queermermaids]

ok cool! So there are some parallels that tell the audience that thanos did love his daughters, but that can happen in the same space as him treating them awfully.

There were a lot of different things, like thor killing thanos early in the movie as he tries to apologize to nebula "Maybe I should have treated you better" kinda showing that he felt some semblance of remorse, but his motivations skewed and made that apology extraordinarily subpar, and when thor decapitated him I read that as not just an extension of his own anger but anger on the behalf of Gamora and Nebula's treatment by thanos, and the multiple scenes with parents and the avengers, (I blanked out when Thor talked to his mom but supposedly it was really good because she was an amazing parent) like when Tony talked to Howard and the audience learns (once again) that Howard was an awful father but as a 50 something Tony has moved on from his childhood and only looks back remembering the bad to make sure he doesn't repeat that with his kid, showing another actual good parent

but the main comparison was when clint and nat had to get the soul stone, the same way thanos got it. They loved each other, validating the reading that thanos did love gamora, but they also fought each other to see which one would die (it was natasha) showing that while the love was there, the contexts were different, one being a deep friendship and trust that their death would not be in vain, and the other showing a different love that many could read as something different, but the universe's rules meant both had to be love for it to work

ultimately the movie shows that your reading is right (love doesn't equal non violent actions) and it also shows that just because thanos loved his daughters didn't mean he wasn't abusive and genocidal

oh and if its any consolidation the movie as shows that thanos' actions (explicitly because he said this) were not about balancing the universe but about him wanting control and gratitude, which the universe did not give him and so he switches his plan to complete genocide

[yvannairie]

Okay! I kinda wish they didn't even show him showing remorse, or reconsideration, or changing his goals, because I feel like the cycles of consequences and escalation have already been present in the movies, but I do like that different types of behaviour stemming from the same motivation are shown. It fits, though, this is just a personal preference.

I think I wrote about this after I'd seen IW the first time, about how it redeemed Ultron as a villain for me by solidifying that theme of the consequences of the solution exceeding the problem that everyone was trying to fix. It happened in IM-IM2, it happened further with Fury in Avengers, with Tony in Ultron -- it's the reason neither Tony nor Steve "won" in Civil War, and why T'Challa won there and in Black Panther. Big solutions are shown to fail all the time, and then the people undertaking the big solutions are the ones who are stuck in a cycle of repairing their mistakes. SHIELD. Tony. Thanos. It doens't work, and the consequences of your actions will define you.

Even Tony doesn't fully break out of this, because he dies in the end. This is why, as much as I dislike it, Steve is the one who lives. Because he's never been one for big solutions -- he ends up representing an opposing big solution in CW, but even there his motivations are just "protect Bucky".

Bad is inherited. Bad passes on. There is no single character in the MCU who doesn't have to fight not to pass the bad on, and a lot of characters who think that necessity of passing the bad on necessitates they create a greater good to pass on with it. Thanos being the extreme end of that thinking is what makes him for me.

[stardust_rifle]

This...

This's frustrated me too. I think its part of the "abusers can only be written as one-dimensional villains with no motivation other than They Like To Abuse otherwise you're excusing their behavior" type nonsense.

[yvannairie]

There's also an element of, like. The Russos not realising that his plan is a non-starter so everything else they say about the character must be equally wrong, I feel. They correctly clued into Thanos' warped thinking in some aspects, but entirely failed to consider other parts of it -- but it feels like any time I try to talk about the stuff they really nailed (the self-elevating delusion, the doubling down, the inability to compromise) I get told that I'm defending malthusian eugenics. It's an argument to inherent nature.

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

Okay, I literally tried to have the "did Thanos love Gamorrah?" conversation with one of my good friends after we saw Infinity War, and she said he absolutely did not and I said he did and then she had to #nope out of the conversation because it was triggering for her to consider that he actually did feel love. Which is like... understandable? Although it was very frustrating for me not to be able to talk about something as simple as character motivation and also something something I think there's some fuzzy crossover with aphobia in the very reactionary idea that bad people don't feel love, and those who don't feel love use other people.

But yes, for me, Thanos absolutely felt love. I haven't seen Endgame or either of the Gardians movies, for context. But it's like... people keep holding the act of his killing his own daughter to be this morally unambiguous Horrible Thing which only loveless monsters could be capable of.

I'm rewatching Hannibal right now for the dozenth time and the first serial killer literally has the motivation of wanting to kill his own daughter out of love! And the way the show explores that and the way that desire manifests in his murders is beautiful and poetic. I think people are so fucking unwilling to understand that sacrifice is about elevation. Serial killer dad is a hunter who honors every piece of the animals/people he kills by eating the meat, selling the fur, carving the bones, etc, and he doesn't compartmentalize between "this doe was beautiful in life" and "I killed her and am going to eat her" (the way his daughter does), but instead essentially blesses her death for allowing his family to live, and repays that kindness of her's by honoring her.

So again........ it's so "easy" for Thanos to push Gamorrah because he has a higher purpose which, if fulfilled, will honor her and elevate her to levels of holy martyrdom. "I have to sacrifice my loved one so something greater/more beneficial to humanity can happen" is a trope that appears all the time for protagonists, so why is it only fucked up for villains? And if there's more concrete abuse explored in the Guardians movie I don't know about, it's pretty irrelevant, because whether or not somebody abuses the object of their love says nothing about whether they do in fact feel love.

And honestly, hot take, but I think motivation does matter in abuse--at least it does for me, as a victim. There was one day at work when I got treated like crap by two of my coworkers and yet here I am down the line and I genuinely like one of them a lot, whereas the other is the scum of the earth, and it comes down to their motivations in lashing out at me. And even though my parents were horrible parents, I nonetheless recognize the ways in which they loved me and failed to translate that love into something that met my needs, and it would be dishonest of me to say that none of that mattered just because it fucked me up, because the fact that they love me--even if I feel they don't actually know me--does matter.

Do I think it's utterly ridiculous that the side of good never wavers from treating "kill half the universe" as a legitimate but misguided opinion that should be debated? Yes. Do I think Thanos's whole plan and logic is flimsy and poorly written and the least compelling philosophy 101 shit there is, and that it pales in comparison to his original story in the comics? Yes. But will I refuse to believe that somebody could kill the person they love, and potentially even see the act of killing as noble and a horrific necessity in the face of (supposedly) benefiting the entire universe? No.

[yvannairie]

👏👏👏👏👏

And I mean, the movie even makes a point of it not being "easy" on Thanos, it being a decision he experiences as one he made under duress. That, to me, was the part that really solidified that the movie gets the way abusers think, the way everything becomes about the control you exert on yourself, the control you exert on your environment. He did it, but he "had" to do it. "Look at what you/them/the circumstances/society made me do."

I gotta disagree on the side of good treating Thanos' plan like a legitimate but misguided attempt, though? To me, the way his interactions with characters played out were more everyone realising that he's a maniac... and then being thrown by his self-assurance, by his composure. That, also, read very true to life -- a lot of abusive people can on the surface have that charisma that even when you know exactly what they did, you're put on the defensive.