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.

[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.

[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.

[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.