#we have to look at how history was rewritten and how they allowed a genocide and massive cleansing to happen

[smonk-wonk]

how are you a holocaust survivor if you're POC?

I'm not a Holocaust survivor I'm 25?

I'm gonna guess you mean descended from Holocaust survivors & victims. In which case it's really sad that you think this way firstly? POC and non Jewish people did in fact die during the holocaust and many were targeted for not fitting the Nazis' idea of the "superior Aryan race".

From The Holocaust Encyclopedia: "When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933, there were several thousand Black people living in Germany. The Nazi regime discriminated against them because the Nazis viewed Black people as racially inferior. During the Nazi era (1933–1945), the Nazis used racial laws and policies to restrict the economic and social opportunities of Black people in Germany. They also harassed, imprisoned, sterilized, and murdered an unknown number of Black people."

Also contrary to what some believe, and this may sound farfetched and I hope you're sitting down but bear with me- some people are actually more than one race. Some people are POC and white. We call this being biracial. Or in grade school, being an "Oreo". A mutt if they really want to dehumanize you

But while my relatives weren't targeted for their skin color as they were white, many people were. Black Germans and other POC did exist, were murdered and traumatized, and have passed down that generational trauma. Just as other persecuted populations even if it was much less it was no less a part of the genocide and ethnic cleansing.

#i was actually never called an oreo but my siblings were #the fun thing about my racial ambiguity is no one irl knows what racial slur or term to call me #anyway there were Holocaust victims that were POC and it's even more reason to compare these events. #we have to mention the holocaust by name. we have to say hitler's name. i feel if we don't we're forgetting that this has happened before #because millions did not die during the holocaust just for us to justify more ethnic cleansing. more destruction of people's land& history #we have to look at how history was rewritten and how they allowed a genocide and massive cleansing to happen #and given my background i can't wrap my head around seeing everything that i heard of the nazis and even the USSR doing #and just going “but hamas”. israel is the cause hamas is the effect. i will never be happy that innocent people died #but people are wrong to say it was because they're jewish and muslims/palestinians/arabs hate jews. furthers the us vs them #they were already being killed and there's a reason colonized ppl & BIPOC see through the propaganda #the “they kill babies and rape women and hate you for how you were born and want to take things from you!” #we are familiar with it bc this isn't the first time it's happened and we remember the result of that mentality #and how it was weaponized #when i say mention it i do not mean above the current genocide. but we know how serious the holocaust was #the scale the lasting impact the destruction the things that were uncovered so much later #there is no “aftermath” of gaza yet bc the genocide is ongoing but we've seen the aftermath of genocide before #if we ignore the parallel we are forgetting history and there's a saying about those who forget history #free palestine #palestine #gaza #free gaza

[geenawrites]

'Black Widow' and undermining Dramatic Intent (II)

[PART ONE]

The 'Civil War' Effect

4): Elements that could’ve made Black Widow Natasha's personal journey are reduced to quick conversational bites told to Natasha instead of experienced by Natasha and the audience first hand.

The film could've built the story around her family selling her off to the government (on some eugenics mess). It could've set the stage for the subplot regarding her mother’s search for her until she was murdered, and Natasha trying to learn about her past pre-assassin.

For all the moments where we simply see her on her own, a lot of that alone time isn't used to explore how she feels, what she's thinking, or a personal throughline. It's just a montage of her looking gloomy and wearing comfy sweatshirts.

The only time Natasha truly feels like she is the emotional center of the movie is the opening act of the film. There, she’s portrayed by Ever (Gabo) Anderson and not Scarlett Johansson.

And as a film touted-as a vehicle for Johansson, that is bad. But also underlines why Florence Pugh’s Yelena was considered the real protagonist of the movie.

Black Widow could've been about Natasha wanting to reclaim her past from the Red Room (her abductors) because she reunites with her sister and parents (her surrogate family), and needed to finally deal with the consequences of killing Antonia (her ghost).

Instead, Black Widow is really Yelena’s story and emotional journey. Yelena justifies the presence of Alexei and Melina more-so than anything in Natasha’s history. As centered as Natasha was in the prologue, it works more as a establishing point for Yelena versus something like Natasha’s lost family or working with Clint Barton in Budapest.

Yelena being tasked to save the Widows (by the elder Widow who created the mind control cure), killing Dreykov, and destroying the Red Room are immediate issues that directly impact her arc and development as a character. Natasha is largely along for the ride, bringing Yelena where she needs to be in each act.

Natasha isn't as centered in her own her film as she should be. Simply compare the structure of her story to the structure in the Captain America (x2), Ant Man (x2), Thor (x3), and Iron Man (x3) films, and how those narratives focus on Steve Rogers, Scott Lang, Thor Odinson, and Tony Stark. Those films are about their emotional journeys while maintaining a healthy supporting cast that don't overshadow them.

Black Widow in comparison feels more like Captain America: Civil War, which is more of an Avengers film than it is a Captain America story. The emotional center of Civil War is Tony Stark and Zemo. Steve and his cast are simply underpinning Stark and Zemo's arcs. It also tries to introduce a new character (Black Panther) with the exact same story beat (revenge) as Stark and Zemo, and a MCU-wide subplot (Sakovia Accords) that ultimately goes nowhere later on.

The consequences of Civil War "Avengering" a solo film are on display in Black Widow in a big way. It's introducing new characters, and trying to tackle a trilogy's worth of storylines (the Red Room, Budapest, the Widow family, Civil War-fallout).

She doesn't even get a decent postmortem send off. The post credits, wherein Yelena mourns Natasha, is turned into a comedic skit and a teaser for the Hawkeye series. It's not allowed to remain a moment of mourning between two sisters separated by literal death.

As an Executive Producer of the film, I know this was not lost on Johansson. She might be an awful person, but she doesn’t strike me as someone so unaware of her environment that she set the stage to be undermined by her co-star. No, I think, given the timing, Johansson knew this was always going to be about setting up her successor.

Wrong Time, Wrong Place

Choosing to set Black Widow after Civil War was just a poor choice on Marvel’s part. Natasha circa 2016 has more or less come-to-terms with her history as a state-sponsored assassin for both Russia and the United States. Her arc as seen throughout the Avengers and Captain America films has come full circle following the events of The Winter Soldier. Now all she has left going forward is the arc dealing with Thanos' genocide and resurrecting everyone.

There is nothing to mine in terms of personal character drama because, at this point, she has laid it all to rest. It's nothing that torments her akin to Bucky trying to square away with his past as an amnesiac assassin.

All of Natasha’s threads are focused on the break-up of the Avengers. At first, seemed like her arc was going to be about not falling back into bad habits (being mistrustful of everyone). That it was going to deal with how she felt let down by the team (after trying to be the reasonable party among everyone), but the film doesn't really commit.

After that one conversation in Budapest, "getting the Avengers back together" isn't even a focal point. We just get awkward callbacks that tell the audience that Natasha isn't on the same level as Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor.

Yelena forgiving her family is used to tack on the sudden parallel idea that Natasha has been convinced she can personally bring the Avengers together again as a surrogate family once things work with her Widow Family.

Again, even in her own film, Natasha is playing the sacrificial matriarch of a Boy’s Club (whose event films she features only as a supporting character. Something I think people are only just realizing). That says to me the MCU never valued her beyond her ties to the male Avenger cast.

”You’re such a mom!” becomes a lot less funny in that context.

If this film was immediately set after The Winter Soldier or even Age of Ultron, wherein all of her history and SHIELD’s was leaked for public record, then there might’ve been a chance for an emotionally resonant story arc.

How would a Natasha scrambling to create new covers, and new ways to protect herself, deal with the sudden public attention of the world knowing that she was a foreign assassin that bought her way into the United States and became a celebrity superhero? How would a post-Winter Soldier solo film deal with Natasha’s past in way that she didn't become overshadowed by her own supporting cast?

How would a post-Age of Ultron solo film handle her past as informed by her nightmare (which stuck closer to her history as a trained dancer in the comics) on top of the events of The Winter Soldier?

But even as a post-Civil War narrative, Black Widow should've really cared to explore how Natasha felt about having to revisit her history with the Red Room, on top of being betrayed by Alexei and Melina. Instead of giving all those emotional beats to Yelena, actually show us Natasha confronting them beyond “it wasn’t real!”

How would the story turn out if parent with the biggest hand in the facilitation of her abuse (Alexei) wasn't turned into a flat comic relief character? What if he actually got chance to really consider her grievances, show remorse for his actions, without being turned into a “ha, ha, he’s do dumb (and fat)!” punchline (after setting him up as the total opposite in the prologue)?

Melina could've been an interesting co-antagonist working with Dreykov, but the film skirts past how she is complicit in the harm that her daughters faced (Yelena especially) with a fake Heel Turn moment that only undermined Dreykov as a threat.

And that’s really the problem with Black Widow. The film, or rather Marvel Studios, doesn’t want to really tackle Natasha’s past or pain like they were willing to do with Steve Rogers in The First Avenger, and The Winter Soldier.

Maybe because that would mean approaching the story with the emotional maturity of The Bourne Identity, a PG-13 film that was plenty violent without being excessive. It was also emotionally resonate by dealing with the fact that Jason Bourne was, pre-amnesia, a US assassin that did awful shit.

Instead we get a plot about mind-control, and magic red dust that can break said mind control (that apparently requires invasive surgery of the brain).

Whedon seemed comfortable with getting close to the actual violence that was asked of Natasha (vs. done to) by the Russian government as a kid. The screenplay for Black Widow can talk past Natasha willingly doing awful things, but doesn’t want to confront that by having her or Yelena deal with an army of assassins who are walking down the same path Natasha did, fighting and killing for another government without any sort of mind control.

This is why Natasha's assassination of “Dreykov’s Daughter” (Antonia) as the thing that happened in Budapest also doesn't land. The movie doesn't want to deal with how Natasha learned to live with murdering a child to buy her freedom into America. They make it so that she didn’t kill her, actually, just gave her a bad case of pizza face. She’s not even the one that pulls the trigger, the film suggests that it was Hawkeye.

Her mustache-twirling villain of a father, who somehow survived the explosion and building collapse with zero burns or broken bones, is the one who does all the truly horrible things to his daughter (turning her into a mindless slave).

The Original Sin that Natasha is defined by is swept under the rug in the same way her history as a killer is blurred by the script. It’s akin to rewriting Xena’s history with Callisto as the killer of her family and village, and deciding, “No, Xena didn’t kill them. They all survived with minor burns! Callisto can now forgive Xena!”

Natasha's Antagonist

Dreykov is a weak antagonist/villain because the screenwriting seems determined to accredit the abuse of the Red Room entirely to him instead of making a systemic issue. What started off as a clandestine organization for the KGB throughout most of the MCU is rewritten in Black Widow as the personal playground of a thinly veiled Harvey Weinstein analogue who puppeteers his personal assassins to do bad things, thus rendering them all innocent of their wrongdoings. It makes them "perfect victims" in way.

(Johansson has gone on record saying that this film was influenced by the #MeToo Movement. Well, celebrification of it, anyway)

Dreykov doesn’t challenge Natasha, or her family. There’s never an immediate danger or stakes being driven by Dreykov. He’s not doing something they have to stop “before time runs out”, he doesn’t have anything on any of the characters that could push their actions.

He takes a backseat to the family hijinks, so the journey to finding and destroying the Red Room has no urgency (Natasha being dead already notwithstanding). As the supposed architect of their misery, he’s about as threatening as Mason (Natasha’s Black Best Friend who buys her things while in hiding).

Dreykov fails like the rest of the MCU’s villains (not named Erik Killmonger) because there's no depth to the character. There's no real loyalty to the character as a demonstration of his power or influence. Again, all his victims are blameless in their violent actions. No one with speaking lines or face time (that isn't a G.I Joe grunt) is working with him because they believe in his goals or ideology.

Complicating that matter is that the script never reveals what his goals or ideologies are besides, "I can create chaos with an army of assassins. I am so evil."

It’s wild to me that so many are rushing to defend the implementation of this sloppily written (and miscast) character because, “he works as a villain because he's a human trafficker” and “he mind controlled his own daughter.”

“He does terrible things”, or a character representing awful things that happen in the real world, isn't enough to make an effective villain. If that was all it took, then 90% the MCU’s villains wouldn’t be so forgetabble.

(He’s not real, I shouldn’t be reading posts like, “he doesn’t deserve screentime b/c he’s an awful human being! He earned his lazy death scene.” Girl, what???)

If you’re gonna tackle human/child trafficking as defined by one antagonist, then really make it part of the story. Make it something that Natasha and Yelena are actively trying to stop. Don’t montage it over a bad Nirvana cover and then shift gears into a G.I. Joe scenario in a floating fortress.

If you're gonna make Dreykov the abuser of so many women, then make it crucial to your protagonist's narrative. Don't add a silly Angry Beavers plot where his stinky musk can control a woman's bodily functions because as a weak analogue to "how men police women's bodies".

Because Natasha has no real conflict with Dreykov, confronting him in the climax goes nowhere. Dreykov is Yelena’s antagonist. It's why Yelena gets to kill him instead of Natasha, so it would've made more sense for her to confront him instead.

The film eventually establishes he's no real threat to Natasha because the writing pulled a Xanatos. The character feels like he exists only so Johansson can sass him, and make a callback to the Loki Interrogation scene (a scene that only worked because of the audience misdirection.)

Dreykov could've been an effective villain if he was anything like the Headmistress characters in the Samee-Waid Black Widow series from 2016.

The Headmistress and Anya (the new Headmistress later on) were characters with emotional connections to Natasha and the Widow children she was trying to save. They taught these girls to believe in the totalitarian philosophy of the ruling class. Natasha and the other Widows couldn't live without them until they were able to escape their influence.

The Headmistresses were women, which makes it plain that women are also perpetrators of abuse. It isn’t just something that men do, which is how this script has approached this subject entirely (Captain Marvel did the same thing as well). Abuse being exclusively a male theater of action.

Antonia's death could've been meaningful in regards to Natasha and Dreykov as characters if Dreykov cared that Antonia was murdered by a Red Room assassin. Natasha admitting that she killed his daughter and regretted it would've made a lot more impact than just having him shrug it off because he's so heartless and so evil.

Or, as other people have said, imagine if it was Antonia who was the antagonist gunning after Natasha because of what she did, not only to her, but her father as well.

It would not only render the mind-control plot pointless, it would re-center the focus on Natasha, and force the writers to do something else with Yelena, Alexei, and Melina (assuming they're even necessary in this scenario). Then, Natasha would have a genuinely threatening antagonist because the stakes are personal on both sides.

It would've been a hellva lot more meaningful than using Taskmasker as a plot-twist (after hyping the character up as the controller of the Red Room and Natasha's personal nemesis).

Callisto’s story as a villain resonates because she cared about what she lost, and Xena knew there was no real forgiveness for what she did to her. Imagine if they approached Natasha’s role in Antonia’s death like that.

(But that's probably asking for too much nuance from Disney and Marvel.)

Conclusions

In story that wants to be about the abused reconciling with their past and family, the film effectively robs the abused of their autonomy by going the extra of mile of making them zombies. In the same way the Star Wars sequel trilogy avoided Finn’s history as an indoctrinated and enslaved Stormtrooper, Black Widow doesn’t want to deal with the ramifications of indoctrination.

How people buy into and protect organizations that strip them of their humanity by making them complicit in violent systems. Oh, sure, they’ll nod and wink at it (as they do with Natasha and Melina’s past), but they won’t go any further than that.

Instead of dealing with how a forced hysterectomy effects Natasha physically and emotionally, we get a joke that isn’t any better than Natasha calling herself a monster, or the “time of the month” joke that got rebuked by the director and the cast.

Instead of reflecting on her time with SHIELD and the United States, the United States is portrayed as "the good-guys who gave her a real family” (ignoring even the half-hearted criticism of the US that The Winter Soldier made), while Russia is still out there doing nefarious Cold War Things and ruining people's families. All of which just feeds into uncritical Russian stereotypes and Red Scare that the film’s foundation is built on.

I enjoyed the film, but the more I think about it, the more I realize Black Widow really does nothing except undermine Natasha's darker elements and self-imposed redemption arc (as written by Whedon).

On top of rewriting key elements about the Red Room (the movies being broken as the comics is a true irony), It minimizes Natasha's violent past to make her into a clean, and boring superhero whose solo film thinks lamp-shading sexism is the same as subverting it.

#geenawrites #black widow #natasha romanov #mcu critical #scarlett johansson #ever anderson #writers on tumblr #bw spoilers #black widow spoilers #mcu meta