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.