Speaker 1: Before we dive in, here's another show you can enjoy
Speaker 1: in the True Story FM Family of Entertainment podcasts.
Speaker 2: Ever wondered what happens when a Zoomer who grew up
Speaker 2: on the Clone.
Speaker 3: Wars, millennial, Anakin Defender.
Speaker 4: And a grumpy old gen Xer walking to a canteen
Speaker 4: and at talk Star Wars.
Speaker 5: Then we've got the podcast for you.
Speaker 3: Star Wars Generations is a place for fans of all
Speaker 3: backgrounds to come together talk about what we love the franchise
Speaker 3: and what we can learn from each other.
Speaker 4: With so much new Star Wars content coming out, we
Speaker 4: take a deep dive into all of it. We talk
Speaker 4: stories and characters, what we learned about the Force and
Speaker 4: the Empire, Republics old and new, and how each story
Speaker 4: adds to the larger picture.
Speaker 6: Besides episode by episode coverage of the new shows, we've
Speaker 6: been going.
Speaker 4: Back to watch the movies and release order.
Speaker 5: We talk about Star Wars novels and video games, along
Speaker 5: with fam content and cosplay.
Speaker 3: And with each episode, we're just starting the conversation and
Speaker 3: we hope you jump in. We'll read your feedback, answer
Speaker 3: your questions. We've had full episodes dedicated to questions and
Speaker 3: raised by listeners.
Speaker 4: Like you find us under Star Wars Generations on your
Speaker 4: favorite podcast app or by going to the Ethical Pana
Speaker 4: dot com. May the Force be with you Now, this
Speaker 4: is podcasting.
Speaker 1: Hey, there are true believers. Andy Nelson here from the
Speaker 1: Marvel Movie Minute Podcast with the rest of the team
Speaker 1: mate right, Kyle Wilson, Rob Cobosco, and Matthew Fox. This
Speaker 1: is the podcast where we dissect the Marvel cinematic universe,
Speaker 1: one minute at a time, exploring every detail of this
Speaker 1: epic superhero franchise.
Speaker 7: In our season, looking at Ironman three, we're gonna mix
Speaker 7: things up a bit.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: Rob and I are your guide, but instead of our
Speaker 1: usual minute by minute format, we dive into five minutes
Speaker 1: of the film in each weekly episode.
Speaker 7: It's a totally new approach, but one that still allows
Speaker 7: us to explore all the depth and detail that makes
Speaker 7: these movies so special, even if Ironman three isn't all
Speaker 7: that's special. Hold on, that's where you're wrong, extremists. Shane Black, Yeah,
Speaker 7: would you like to look at the Mandarin and Maya Hanson?
Speaker 2: So, whether you're a die hard Marvel fan or just
Speaker 2: love deep dives into movies, there's something for everyone on
Speaker 2: Marvel Movie Minute.
Speaker 4: Suit up and join us on this epic audio adventure.
Speaker 4: You can find us a true story dot FM or
Speaker 4: by searching Marvelmovie Minute on your favorite podcatcher.
Speaker 1: Because in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, every minute is packed
Speaker 1: with excitement.
Speaker 8: Enough said, Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics.
Speaker 4: Today, we're kicking off something we've been talking about doing
Speaker 4: for far too long, our special members only series on
Speaker 4: the fundamental ethical questions that come up all the time
Speaker 4: in Superhero Ethics. Now, if you're listening to this and
Speaker 4: you're not a member, you're probably thinking what's going on.
Speaker 4: Because this is the first one of these episodes we're doing,
Speaker 4: we wanted to make it available for everyone to give
Speaker 4: you a taste of the kind of content that our
Speaker 4: members is going to get going forward. We're going to
Speaker 4: keep doing all of our awesome week to week episodes,
Speaker 4: but once a month, we're going to take a special
Speaker 4: time to step back from talking about one specific movie
Speaker 4: or TV show or thing, or even one specific, like
Speaker 4: very specific question and look at what are the kind
Speaker 4: of general questions that come up again and again and
Speaker 4: again as we look at superhero media along with all
Speaker 4: the other kind of genre media that have we've expanded
Speaker 4: that to include such as sci fi, fantasy, chess and kids,
Speaker 4: karate and all the like. And because on these topics,
Speaker 4: Because on these topics, we are going to be talking
Speaker 4: about all the things that we love to talk about.
Speaker 4: Here on Superhero Ethics, we are going to be talking
Speaker 4: specifically about superheroes quite a lot. To really help kick
Speaker 4: us off, I've brought back comic book expert Extraordinaire Jessica Plumber. Jessica,
Speaker 4: how are you doing today?
Speaker 9: I'm doing good.
Speaker 4: How are you good? I'm good? So really, thank you
Speaker 4: so much. You've been giving so much your time to
Speaker 4: the show. I've not figured out exactly how much of
Speaker 4: Jessica's time and going to dragoon once the Daredevil show
Speaker 4: comes out, but we will definitely be having Jessica on
Speaker 4: for a couple episodes around that time, so I really
Speaker 4: looking forward to that. Today, we're talking about one that
Speaker 4: I think goes to the heart of so many of
Speaker 4: the things we've talked about, which is the idea of
Speaker 4: vengeance and the role that vengeance plays in our superhero
Speaker 4: and science fiction media like that. And we're talking about
Speaker 4: vengeance as a motivation for a hero, for a motivation
Speaker 4: for a villain or an anti hero, the role, how
Speaker 4: we think about it, and things like that, and in
Speaker 4: further framing the discussion we're about to have and why
Speaker 4: we chose vengeance for this particular month, I think it's
Speaker 4: important that I kind of take a step back and
Speaker 4: talk about like why we like doing especially I like
Speaker 4: doing this question this topic of superhero ethics, And part
Speaker 4: of it's because for me, like these are kind of
Speaker 4: fun trolley problems talking about you know, like, well, you know,
Speaker 4: what do you do with a superpowered person and the
Speaker 4: jail system or you know, kind of person with telepathy
Speaker 4: play poker? Like I mean, there are fun intellectual exercises.
Speaker 4: But as I've said many times, what I love most
Speaker 4: about superheroes, about science fiction, about any of this kind
Speaker 4: of media is when it holds up a mirror to
Speaker 4: our own world, When it takes an issue from our
Speaker 4: own world and says, okay, well let's use the context
Speaker 4: of superheroes or something like that and change things, but still,
Speaker 4: you know, give you a chance to think about something
Speaker 4: in a new way. For example, the way you know,
Speaker 4: the X Men comics have at times been a metaphor
Speaker 4: for racism or a metaphor for LGBT issues or things
Speaker 4: like that, depending on the different times it was used.
Speaker 4: So before we start talking about vengeance specifically, just kind
Speaker 4: of this general idea of these fundamental questions, what are
Speaker 4: other kind of questions that are of interest to you
Speaker 4: all or that you see coming up again and again
Speaker 4: in the media we talk about.
Speaker 5: This is sort of related to today's topic. But one
Speaker 5: thing that I think about a lot is.
Speaker 9: Who going to say?
Speaker 5: Who gives superheroes permission to do what they do? That
Speaker 5: might not be the best way of framing it, but
Speaker 5: like what authority do they have? And is it okay
Speaker 5: that they're taking that authority on themselves? I think Civil
Speaker 5: War is a huge example of how that gets really messy.
Speaker 9: But like.
Speaker 5: There are plenty of stories where characters are going into
Speaker 5: countries that they are not citizens of and involving themselves
Speaker 5: in the politics and governance of those countries. Like do
Speaker 5: they have a right to do that? Do they have
Speaker 5: an obligation to do that? If there are human.
Speaker 9: Rights violations at play?
Speaker 5: Like there's these are big questions and there's a lot
Speaker 5: that we can talk about there.
Speaker 4: For sure, For sure. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean when we're talking about these things, there's a
Speaker 6: question of law, like whose laws, And even if we're
Speaker 6: just talking about human law, there are different countries. There
Speaker 6: are international organizations that are kind of conglomerates, like the
Speaker 6: United Nations, that decree things to be against the law,
Speaker 6: and yet you know, some people defy that, or some
Speaker 6: countries maybe are so powerful that no one can enforce
Speaker 6: the laws is they are written right. And I think
Speaker 6: a similar thing comes up in especially in superhero media,
Speaker 6: because these beings are often so powerful that the humans
Speaker 6: are powerless against them, and it's like, well, you're doing
Speaker 6: stuff that is against the law, but we can't actually
Speaker 6: stop you. So I think it brings up a question
Speaker 6: of does the law matter? Like power makes right is
Speaker 6: a thing that comes up a lot in these situations.
Speaker 6: And that's why like Superman, right, when there are evil
Speaker 6: versions of Superman, like an Injustice, He's like, I'm just
Speaker 6: going to make my own law, and people are like, well,
Speaker 6: guess that's it. We're for living in a dictatorship now, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, I think I think those are all great ones,
Speaker 4: and I think a lot of the you know, the
Speaker 4: questions of do we see superheroes as metaphor for law enforcements.
Speaker 4: Do we see them as metaphor for soldiers? Do we
Speaker 4: see them in something totally different? Ties into all that, Rikiana,
Speaker 4: you often talk about the idea of whether killing should
Speaker 4: be a part of superhero media or whether the importance
Speaker 4: of not non lethal violence being used, and I of
Speaker 4: course have questions about the viability of that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well for me, like it really comes down to
Speaker 6: the media neess of it. And this is like an anime.
Speaker 6: Why I love it so much is that Japanese anime
Speaker 6: is you know, is enjoyed by older people, but it's
Speaker 6: still always like with a mind towards the younger audience
Speaker 6: and trying to teach certain fundamental lessons. So I really
Speaker 6: enjoy that an anime most well, I'll just say most
Speaker 6: of the protagonists don't kill, and that's like a very
Speaker 6: clear demarcation line between you know, the hero and the
Speaker 6: villain and the story, and I think it's an important
Speaker 6: lesson to draw from that media and to impart upon
Speaker 6: the audience.
Speaker 5: Right well, and still thought of like ohole, Like I
Speaker 5: got really excited about this, but I'm just going to
Speaker 5: throw out the ethics of time travel which is not
Speaker 5: really relevant to us, but like, should you go back
Speaker 5: and change things or should you not go back and
Speaker 5: change things even if it means that a woman you
Speaker 5: love has to die, which.
Speaker 9: Kind of seems like how that plot line always goes.
Speaker 5: Number two when the villain goes, we're not so different
Speaker 5: you and I, which they always do. And number three
Speaker 5: does a superhero create super villains? And please have me
Speaker 5: on if you do that one, because so mad.
Speaker 4: I think it's a really good one. You know, the
Speaker 4: vision line from Civil War of you know, do vite
Speaker 4: conflict and stuff like that, which is a really good one.
Speaker 4: And to me that those also tie into.
Speaker 6: I mean, Matthew knows the time travel is Mike, Yeah,
Speaker 6: so I'll always I'll always talk about that time.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it does create lots of questions, especially
Speaker 4: with the ideas of you know, when you have timelines,
Speaker 4: is like erasing a timeline? Are you killing the people
Speaker 4: in that? You know? And I think that comes up
Speaker 4: a lot with also things like AI you know, Ages
Speaker 4: of Shield, the great plot line. So yeah, all these
Speaker 4: kind of great questions and I think, and like you.
Speaker 5: Were saying, very relevant to the real world.
Speaker 4: Exactly the exactly one exactly so, you know, and and
Speaker 4: it's with that relevance to the real world is why
Speaker 4: I think we're talking about vengeance today. And I think
Speaker 4: for many people it's probably not a far grasp to find,
Speaker 4: but just kind of spell it out. I think late
Speaker 4: last year, we had the killing of a healthcare CEO
Speaker 4: that brought up a lot of feelings for a lot
Speaker 4: of people about you know, how do we feel about
Speaker 4: you know, the healthcare industry, and a lot of people
Speaker 4: not really feeling too bad about this because of those
Speaker 4: feelings or praising the person who did that. And I think,
Speaker 4: you know, to be clear, we're not going to go
Speaker 4: into a deep analysis of all that. I think I'm
Speaker 4: pretty confident in saying all of us say that, you know,
Speaker 4: murder is wrong, killing is wrong, but we also understand
Speaker 4: kind of the wealth of emotions that this has brought
Speaker 4: up for people. And I think for me, the reason
Speaker 4: why that's interesting for us today is that what we
Speaker 4: saw was an act of vigilanteism in the real world.
Speaker 4: We saw an act of a punisher type of a
Speaker 4: person who has said, you know, for whatever reasons, like
Speaker 4: this is someone I decided was bad and I'm going
Speaker 4: to act on that kind of just go to what
Speaker 4: you were saying, like one person creating that own authority.
Speaker 4: And to me, my goal today isn't for us to
Speaker 4: decide the ethics of that. It's that I want us
Speaker 4: to discuss how those ethical questions play out in the
Speaker 4: media we discussed, because I think that helps shape how
Speaker 4: we think about these things and how we Because for me,
Speaker 4: at least, I've always been kind of fascinated that there's
Speaker 4: a lot of revenge fantasy vengeance fantasy type things that
Speaker 4: I can find really enjoyable, even though sometimes I'd be
Speaker 4: goot horrified of it happening in our own world. And
Speaker 4: so there's just so much there to play in. And
Speaker 4: there's got three fundamental questions I wanted us to get
Speaker 4: into today, and I was just gonna spell them out
Speaker 4: and go through them one by one, and the first
Speaker 4: being like, you know, how is vengeance a motivator for
Speaker 4: some of the characters we love? Why do we enjoy
Speaker 4: vengeance stories if we do, which I don't want to
Speaker 4: speak for all of us, I will admit that I
Speaker 4: do at times, and sometimes I'm troubled by that, sometimes
Speaker 4: I'm not. And then lastly, like, what are the differences
Speaker 4: between what we can enjoy on screen and what we're
Speaker 4: okay with in real life, and how do those things
Speaker 4: blend into each other. So let me first just kind
Speaker 4: of start by it. Let's kind of just throw them
Speaker 4: things out. What are examples you see? And we can
Speaker 4: focus mostly on superhero comic book media specifically where vengeance
Speaker 4: is an important part of the story for a hero
Speaker 4: of villain and anti hero anyone like that, and I'll
Speaker 4: throw out the Punisher. To me, the Punisher is a
Speaker 4: great example of there's often this kind of veneer of
Speaker 4: I'm doing this to make the world a better place,
Speaker 4: doing this to prevent these people from harming others. But
Speaker 4: also like Frank Cassel, you know, had his family killed
Speaker 4: and he was portrayed and he wants vengeance. What are
Speaker 4: other kind of examples do you guys see a lot
Speaker 4: or do you that think interesting?
Speaker 6: Well, you and I just did Full Metal Alchemist slash Brotherhood,
Speaker 6: and the character of Scar who was the survivor of
Speaker 6: a massacre slash genocide coming to the nation that institute
Speaker 6: at that tragedy and taking vengeance upon people soldiers from
Speaker 6: that nation for that I think was one of the
Speaker 6: most interesting parts of that show, and he was a
Speaker 6: very fascinating character.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the Punisher is a big one for me.
Speaker 5: I feel like, if you scratch any superhero, you can
Speaker 5: find a story about vengeance, and it works for some
Speaker 5: of them better than others. And I have I have
Speaker 5: a lot of thoughts about vengeance as a structural tool
Speaker 5: and how.
Speaker 9: Like the difficulties that it causes.
Speaker 5: But the other thing that immediately came to mind was
Speaker 5: I don't know if either of you ever watched the
Speaker 5: TV show Revenge with Emily Van Camp from like fifteen
Speaker 5: years ago.
Speaker 9: It was great.
Speaker 5: My friends and I used to call it a revenge procedural.
Speaker 5: It's like very very loosely based on the Count of
Speaker 5: Money Cristo, but not really, and it's Emily Van Camp
Speaker 5: plays It's like what if the Count of Money Cristo
Speaker 5: was set in.
Speaker 4: The Hampton's Fair And.
Speaker 5: Emily Van Camp plays this woman who, like as a child,
Speaker 5: her father was framed for funding terrorists by these rich
Speaker 5: Hampton's people, and so she's come back to the Hamptons
Speaker 5: under a false name to destroy their lives systematically. And
Speaker 5: it was so over the top ridiculous and so much fun.
Speaker 4: Well, and that point you just made I think actually
Speaker 4: ties into something you were saying a little bit ago
Speaker 4: wreaky about anime, and something I think we're gonna talk
Speaker 4: about a lot is that. I think, for me, at least,
Speaker 4: my feeling about how I view vengeance, particularly from a
Speaker 4: hero type, has a lot to do with how seriously
Speaker 4: I'm being asked to take it. And then sometimes I
Speaker 4: feel like the more ridiculous it is, the more over
Speaker 4: the top it is. I've often talked about the movie Desperado,
Speaker 4: which I absolutely love, which is one a brutal murder
Speaker 4: spree for vengeance, but it's played so much for humor.
Speaker 4: You know, the the a guy gets shot and a
Speaker 4: criminal baddie gets killed because they shoot the ceiling fan
Speaker 4: that's above him and it hits him. And you see this,
Speaker 4: this shot of the fan continuing to go because the
Speaker 4: motor hasn't stopped, hitting this dead guy in the face.
Speaker 4: I say that it sounds horrific. If you want, you
Speaker 4: could shoot that as a horrific scene. But in Desperado
Speaker 4: it's done purely for comedy, and there are times when
Speaker 4: I'm like, why in the world I'm not laughing at this?
Speaker 4: Oh wait, there's Antonio ben Eras in Black Leather. I'm
Speaker 4: not thinking anymore. You know, that's the whole point of
Speaker 4: that movie.
Speaker 5: I mean, kill Bill. It's not a comedy, but it is.
Speaker 5: It also steers very hard into being as over the
Speaker 5: top as possible, so you stop taking the violence seriously.
Speaker 4: I think those are all great examples. I think one
Speaker 4: of the one that I see a lot in particularly
Speaker 4: in Batman, but I think I've also seen this with Arrow,
Speaker 4: A Bunch and others, is when you have a character
Speaker 4: who is a vigilante, who is their claim is that
Speaker 4: they're doing for justice. It does seem like a lot
Speaker 4: of times the writers will introduce another character who is
Speaker 4: more on the vengeance side as kind of a foil
Speaker 4: to our hero. And Batman Mask of the Phantasm is
Speaker 4: one of my favorite examples of this, but I think
Speaker 4: you also see it in Birds of Prey with the
Speaker 4: Huntress character kind of shifting from a vengeance and then
Speaker 4: having her kind of redemption as she moves more into
Speaker 4: a justice mindset. Talk about that in terms of how
Speaker 4: you guys feel about this kind of examples of where
Speaker 4: vengeance is used as the our hero could fall into that.
Speaker 4: So we're gonna show the an example of someone who
Speaker 4: does that to keep them away from it.
Speaker 6: Well, this kind of encapsulates what I've been thinking about
Speaker 6: on this topic, which is the question of when does
Speaker 6: vengeance end? Because you all mentioned the Punisher. I believe
Speaker 6: his family was killed by some crime boss, and so
Speaker 6: like in the Punisher movie, we see him go after
Speaker 6: the crime boss, gain vengeance by killing him and his minions,
Speaker 6: and then the movie ends. But like for comic books
Speaker 6: that the story keeps going. He keeps doing stuff no
Speaker 6: longer against the people who personally harmed him and his family.
Speaker 6: So is his vengeance over and what is he doing
Speaker 6: after that?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: Like, that's kind of my question about vengeance and justice
Speaker 6: because after that, I think we can argue that Frank
Speaker 6: Castle is pursuing justice in a kind of way to
Speaker 6: prevent other similar tragedies from happening. I guess, like a
Speaker 6: preventative justice or vengeance on behalf of other people who
Speaker 6: have been wrong perhaps, But it is that still vengeance
Speaker 6: at that point.
Speaker 5: And I think the Punisher is a really interesting character
Speaker 5: to bring up in that context of like is he
Speaker 5: a cautionary tale for other heroes Because the answer to
Speaker 5: that depends entirely on whose name.
Speaker 9: Is on the cover of the comic book. Yeah, so
Speaker 9: if he's showing up.
Speaker 5: In a Spider Man or Daredevil comic, then he's absolutely
Speaker 5: in the wrong and he's a cautionary tale and they
Speaker 5: can't cross that line. There's literally a Daredevil story where
Speaker 5: Daredevil goes to jail and the Punisher gets himself arrested
Speaker 5: and sent to jail so he can be like, don't
Speaker 5: be like me. It's very funny. But if it's a
Speaker 5: Punisher story, then all of a sudden, Matt Murdocher Peter
Speaker 5: Parker is ridiculous and naive and they're completely wrong about everything,
Speaker 5: and the Punisher is going to kick their ass. So
Speaker 5: it really is very much about framing.
Speaker 4: Well. And it's funny that you say whose name is
Speaker 4: on the comic book because what I felt you were
Speaker 4: going to say was whose name is on the Netflix
Speaker 4: MCU show, because I think that perhaps my favorite scene
Speaker 4: in all of the Netflix MCU and not my favorite,
Speaker 4: definitely in the top five. He is the Punisher in
Speaker 4: the Daredevil TV show where he's pushing Daredevil on. You know,
Speaker 4: you arrest people and then they go to jail and
Speaker 4: they get out when I kill them and they never
Speaker 4: get back up. I'm butchering the line, but something like that,
Speaker 4: and it's this wonderful moment yea, yeah, yeah, exactly, and
Speaker 4: where we you know, And he's, uh, why can't remember
Speaker 4: the name of the actor who plays Frank Castle phenomenal
Speaker 4: at that and I I disagree with him, but he's
Speaker 4: so close to convincing me, and I get that he's
Speaker 4: so close convincing man. And then we had the Punisher
Speaker 4: TV show, which I liked, but frankly, by the end,
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe him as a hero anymore because I
Speaker 4: thought he was too far into vengeance. And we had
Speaker 4: some great discussions about that, and I think you're right. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's that when he's there for Daredevil, he's the foil
Speaker 4: for Daredevil, but when he has his own show. And
Speaker 4: this is kind of a related question I want to
Speaker 4: talk about, which is like, is is Vengeon something that
Speaker 4: should be for heroes, for anti heroes, for villains or
Speaker 4: all three? Because for me, at least with a Punisher,
Speaker 4: it works for him as an anti hero or as
Speaker 4: a foil when they tried to make him the hero
Speaker 4: for me at least that show which went too far.
Speaker 4: I couldn't I couldn't buy.
Speaker 5: It well also, and I want to go back with
Speaker 5: this just something that Riki said before about when does
Speaker 5: vengeance stop? And what I was saying before about the
Speaker 5: structural issues with vengeance, which is again like when does
Speaker 5: it stop?
Speaker 9: And who are you avenging? And so.
Speaker 5: In the comics, Frank's mission is very much framed as
Speaker 5: eradicating all organized crime, or sometimes just eradicating crime, because
Speaker 5: he's not after the guy who pulled the trigger that
Speaker 5: killed his family, He's after the system that killed his family,
Speaker 5: which I think was a smart choice because it allows
Speaker 5: you to keep telling Punisher stories indefinitely, Whereas and one
Speaker 5: of the problems with the TV shows was that they
Speaker 5: were like, you know, in season two of Daredevil, he's
Speaker 5: after the guys who were behind his family Seath, and
Speaker 5: then he gets them. And then in the season one
Speaker 5: and The Punisher, he finds out there was a whole
Speaker 5: different thing behind that, and so he gets those guys,
Speaker 5: and then in season two it's like, oh no, there
Speaker 5: was a whole It's like how deep does the rabbit
Speaker 5: hole go? Like how many people were in Central Park
Speaker 5: that day trying to kill Frank Castle for this like
Speaker 5: Russian nesting doll of reasons.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so when.
Speaker 5: You're doing these ongoing stories when it's comics, it's a
Speaker 5: TV show. I mean, if we have a Superhero movie,
Speaker 5: you know, the Marvel Studios is going to bleed that dry.
Speaker 5: You're going to get five more movies.
Speaker 9: You have to.
Speaker 5: Figure out a way if you want a character to
Speaker 5: be motivated by vengeance that they're you can't have it
Speaker 5: be against one guy or one group of guys, because
Speaker 5: then either they get them and the story is over,
Speaker 5: or they don't get them. And you're like, why does
Speaker 5: this guy suck at vengeance?
Speaker 4: Right? Well, it's interesting that you say that that's what
Speaker 4: you meant by where does vengeance end? Because I completely
Speaker 4: agree with you, but Riki I actually thought you were
Speaker 4: going to go in a different direction, which is that
Speaker 4: a lot of times also, when we scratch the surface,
Speaker 4: we find out, you know, this person wants to kill
Speaker 4: Frank Castle or you know Frank Castle kills those people,
Speaker 4: and then the ten year old son of that guy
Speaker 4: grows up and wants to come back and kill Frank,
Speaker 4: and then that person's need you know where It's just
Speaker 4: a going back and forth and back and forth. And
Speaker 4: I love that we're getting more and more motivations for villains,
Speaker 4: and often it's vengeance. Now that is the motivation for
Speaker 4: a villain, and a lot of times it's kind of justified,
Speaker 4: you know, not where we might say like, okay, we
Speaker 4: I don't want you going this far with your vengeance.
Speaker 4: But I get why you're that pissed at Tony Stark.
Speaker 4: I get why you're that pissed at you know, Bruce
Speaker 4: Wayne or whoever it is. And I think that's another
Speaker 4: kind of interesting question, is about you the ethics of
Speaker 4: vengeance in general. Is it never stopped?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: How does it just become a cycle of every time
Speaker 4: someone from the side that just got vengeanced upon them
Speaker 4: now wants vengeance upon that person and on and on
Speaker 4: and on.
Speaker 6: No, I mean, it doesn't stop. And that's what made
Speaker 6: the story in Full Metal Alchemists with Scars so powerful,
Speaker 6: is that Winry chose not to take vengeance upon him
Speaker 6: for literally killing her parents, and then that opened his
Speaker 6: eyes and made him choose a different path himself. So yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 6: I also I was also reminded with the whole like
Speaker 6: who's responsible for Frank Castle's family dying? Thing? Of Drax
Speaker 6: the Destroyer and Guardians of the Galaxy, where they're yeah, well,
Speaker 6: now you've avenged your family because we killed Ronin the Accuser.
Speaker 6: He's like, well, but Ronan was working for Thanos, so
Speaker 6: we still got to go after Thano's.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, well, and the flip side of that. And
Speaker 4: this is actually the only one I can think of
Speaker 4: of the character got vengeance? Now what do they do?
Speaker 4: Moving outside of the realm, although I think it's fairly
Speaker 4: comic bookie in Ingo Montoya a Ningo Montoya want vengeance
Speaker 4: on the six Fingered Man because he killed his father,
Speaker 4: very clear vengeance story. And in this, by the way, again,
Speaker 4: I think because it's fantasy, we're okay with it. And
Speaker 4: Ningo Montoya is straight up a hero. He's not an
Speaker 4: anti hero at all. I mean, he's an antagonist who
Speaker 4: becomes a protagonist, but he's straight up a heroic character.
Speaker 4: There's never a moment of moral doubt about the goodness
Speaker 4: of his quest. And then he kills the you know,
Speaker 4: the sixth Fingered Man, and he literally goes, I don't
Speaker 4: know what to do with myself. Now this has been
Speaker 4: my quest for twenty years. What comes next? Well, have
Speaker 4: you thought of piracy something of it. I can't think
Speaker 4: of anyone else in fiction of the kind of as
Speaker 4: we're talking about at least who gets that vengeance and
Speaker 4: then has that honest moment of what do I do now?
Speaker 5: Well, and he does, but he also I don't think
Speaker 5: it's not framed as like, oh, I've wasted my life.
Speaker 5: He's like, well, that's done. Maybe I'll take up gardening.
Speaker 5: Like he's super happy about it. He's very satisfied, and
Speaker 5: the audience is satisfied.
Speaker 4: Right, well, and let's talk about that, because I like,
Speaker 4: at least I was saying that I am a little
Speaker 4: bit troubled by the Punisher in the TV show when
Speaker 4: it becomes he's so focused on vengeance and I'm a
Speaker 4: lot of other problems, like I think the collateral damage
Speaker 4: that he tolerates and stuff like that. But Ingo Montoya
Speaker 4: I'm totally rooting for, Like I'm totally rooting for. I
Speaker 4: think I'm saying I don't want a world of vigilantes
Speaker 4: each killing the people they think of wrong them. But
Speaker 4: when Inga Montoya does it, When Antonio Benderas in Desperado,
Speaker 4: I think the only character name he ever gets is
Speaker 4: am Mariachi. You know when when Poison Ivy is killing
Speaker 4: off corporate CEOs. Like, I think there's another great example
Speaker 4: I've been thinking about a lot, in the very first
Speaker 4: episode of the new Harley Quinn Quinn Show. Here here's
Speaker 4: the one that's probably actually the most equivalent to the
Speaker 4: events that happened last year. You know, Poison Ivy has
Speaker 4: found these CEOs of companies that are polluting the environment,
Speaker 4: killing off vegetation that she obviously loves so much, and
Speaker 4: she's brutally murdering them. And Harley finds it and it's
Speaker 4: like cool, you go girl, and we the audience are
Speaker 4: one hundred feeling like, yeah, you go girl. Why is
Speaker 4: it you think that that that? Sometimes vengeance can be
Speaker 4: troubling and sometimes it can be like yeah, we're totally
Speaker 4: rooting for it.
Speaker 6: Well, to me, that's on the storyteller, like how the
Speaker 6: story is told, like what the world building that they do,
Speaker 6: and then the way that they are framing the villain
Speaker 6: or whoever's gaining the vengeance and the the uh the
Speaker 6: victims that they are killing hurting right, Like you can
Speaker 6: tell these stories in a way where your sympathies lie
Speaker 6: in one direction, like the Inigo Montoya one. We don't
Speaker 6: know anything about the six Finger man. Heck, I can't
Speaker 6: even remember his name, right, Like, so he's oh, well,
Speaker 6: there you go.
Speaker 4: My father read that story to me every night when
Speaker 4: I was a kid, since the reason I know it.
Speaker 6: But at least in the movie, he's not really a character, right, Like,
Speaker 6: he is a he is the subject of Enigo Montoya's vengeance,
Speaker 6: and and that's really the only context we see him in.
Speaker 5: We do know one other thing about him, which is
Speaker 5: that he likes to torture people, like he tortures Leslie.
Speaker 5: And that's the only other piece of information, which, right
Speaker 5: it continues to make us feel a certain way about him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And then so in this story, like, he is
Speaker 6: very much framed as a bad, bad guy. And I'm
Speaker 6: not saying that there are good aspects to him. We
Speaker 6: don't know anything. We don't like, we don't know anything.
Speaker 6: We're not told anything about him. So I like to
Speaker 6: think it's very easy to be like, yeah, that guy
Speaker 6: should die, especially when Indiego has been repeating the line
Speaker 6: over and over, and you know, we get behind that,
Speaker 6: We're like, yeah, okay, Like I think the repetition of
Speaker 6: that line is in fact meant to get you into
Speaker 6: that mindset of like if it were me, yeah, I
Speaker 6: wouldn't want to kill the guy who killed my father, right,
Speaker 6: Like that's that's the whole point of all that.
Speaker 4: Right, because right it's very humanizing. And I think that's
Speaker 4: why part of what I love so much about the
Speaker 4: Netflix MCU and other kind of media like that that
Speaker 4: is really trying to be so realistic is that there's
Speaker 4: nobody who's a cardboard cutout. You know. Every character we find,
Speaker 4: for the most part, they try has their own motivation,
Speaker 4: you see, why they're the hero of their own story.
Speaker 4: Like I kind of feel like if we had the
Speaker 4: Netflix MCU version of The Princess Bride, which please God,
Speaker 4: don't anyone make, but we'd find out that an Ingo's
Speaker 4: father was actually this like exorbitantly priced, like had you know,
Speaker 4: made a deal with Count Rugen and then tripled the
Speaker 4: price and you know, or like he had done something
Speaker 4: terrible with Count Rugan's family or Count Rugan you know,
Speaker 4: because he was a six fingered man, was so treated
Speaker 4: terribly in the world because of his physical deformity, you know,
Speaker 4: whatever it was, Like, we'd have that kind of a backstory.
Speaker 4: But you're right, and it's it's a lot easier to
Speaker 4: hate someone and to just enjoy the idea of their
Speaker 4: vengeance when they're not a character, when they're just that person.
Speaker 4: They're just the corporate ceo the poison ivy is going after,
Speaker 4: or the six fingered man, or the dawn of the
Speaker 4: mafia family that killed your parents or whatever.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 5: Well, and I think it also has to do with
Speaker 5: a couple of things that we've touched on, and one
Speaker 5: of those things is tone.
Speaker 9: Like The Princess Bride.
Speaker 5: Is a comedy. Yeah, Hard Quinn is a comedy, like
Speaker 5: we're right, And like I think that the Punisher often
Speaker 5: works best, Like obviously the TV show is not a comedy.
Speaker 9: The movies are not comedies.
Speaker 5: Even the comics are not, but they are often so ridiculous,
Speaker 5: Like they are so completely over the top that you
Speaker 5: you get swept up in it. It's like I was
Speaker 5: saying about the show Revenge before, like it's so zany,
Speaker 5: it's so ridiculous that you're just along for the ride.
Speaker 5: And the other thing is collateral damage. And I mean,
Speaker 5: Enigo Montoya is not killing other people. He's killing the
Speaker 5: one guy that he's after. He's not like slaughtering his
Speaker 5: way through armies to get to the Six Fingered Man, kills.
Speaker 4: One of the things Man's personal guards. But yes, I
Speaker 4: agree with.
Speaker 5: You, You're right he does. I mean, like.
Speaker 4: He's not killing civilians.
Speaker 5: No, no, you know he does kidnap Buttercup, but they're
Speaker 5: friends after that, so it's fine. I don't know how
Speaker 5: it's handled on Harley Quinn, but it sounds like she's
Speaker 5: targeting the CEOs very specifically. And it made me think
Speaker 5: of the first season of Arrow, when they were trying
Speaker 5: really hard to like do some kind of occupy Wall
Speaker 5: Street thing, but they weren't very good at it and
Speaker 5: it was like way too complex of a topic for
Speaker 5: them to handle, and so every episode you just had
Speaker 5: Oliver killing a bunch of hired bodyguards and getting to
Speaker 5: the CEO and being like be less greedy, okay bye.
Speaker 9: And leaving and like okay, this city right, like doing.
Speaker 5: Absolutely nothing about the people causing a harm. But I
Speaker 5: remember once keeping track, and I think he murdered forty
Speaker 5: seven people in season one if you don't count explosions
Speaker 5: where you can't count how many people it is, but
Speaker 5: like none of them was the actual person doing something bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it's.
Speaker 6: Because Oliver Queen himself is rich, so like those are
Speaker 6: his pains.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think doesn't doesn't the Huntress actual characters
Speaker 4: show up in in like season two or season three
Speaker 4: of Era, she does.
Speaker 9: And they use it.
Speaker 5: They use it that way to have to have her
Speaker 5: as a character where it's like, don't cross the line, Oliver,
Speaker 5: and it's like, what line? He can't even see the
Speaker 5: line anymore?
Speaker 4: Well, And I think that's sometimes the point is that
Speaker 4: you will sometimes have like someone is not our character
Speaker 4: is bad, but this person is clearly worse, and so
Speaker 4: that like it kind of makes our person better by association.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I'll say it's one thing that I really
Speaker 4: liked about as a contrast to that Black Panther, because
Speaker 4: in that I think there is a good deal of
Speaker 4: vengeance behind the feeling of kill Monger. But but but
Speaker 4: also there's clearly an idea of his his bare his
Speaker 4: base critique that Black Panther is wrong, that Wakanda needs
Speaker 4: to be more involved in the world is correct, and
Speaker 4: by the end of the movie, you know T'Challa is
Speaker 4: doing exactly that.
Speaker 5: But then what do you do with like, you know,
Speaker 5: we have so many villains now who are from some
Speaker 5: sort of marginalized identity and or tragic backstory, and they're
Speaker 5: attacking like.
Speaker 9: Someone who is powerful and privilege.
Speaker 5: And then the superhero steps and is like, no, no,
Speaker 5: you can't kill Lex Luthor. That's wrong. And it's like,
Speaker 5: but Lex Luthor ate my family. Well, if you do this,
Speaker 5: you're just as bad as him. Like I just I
Speaker 5: struggle with that because I feel like it's a way
Speaker 5: to dismiss the valid points that the villain is making,
Speaker 5: and it's all in the framing of the story, Like
Speaker 5: you take those valid points and you put them into
Speaker 5: the mouth of a character that you can then disregard
Speaker 5: because they are evengeful vigilante and we don't have to
Speaker 5: listen to them, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I actually think there's a really pertinent example at the
Speaker 6: end of Falcon in the Winter Soldier or Captain America
Speaker 6: in the Winter Soldier, right where the flag smashers are
Speaker 6: seeking vengeance against the rich people and the politicians for
Speaker 6: the things that are wrong in the world and Captain
Speaker 6: America Sam stops them. But then he makes that speech
Speaker 6: and he turns to I believe a senator and he says, Senator,
Speaker 6: you need to do better for these people. I think
Speaker 6: that to me, like in this discussion is the follow
Speaker 6: up is like, yes, I one hundred percent believe that
Speaker 6: murder is wrong, like even in even in the pursuit
Speaker 6: of vengeance against someone who has wronged you or a
Speaker 6: lot of people, but those with power have to do
Speaker 6: better to stop the bad things from happening in the
Speaker 6: first place or in the future.
Speaker 5: I mean, I get your point, but to me, Falcon
Speaker 5: in the Winter Soldier is like it fails at doing
Speaker 5: that because it the face of the flag smashers is
Speaker 5: a young woman of color who's lost everything, and it's like, well,
Speaker 5: ultimately she was irredeemable, and the other antagonist is a
Speaker 5: white guy who just like gets too full of himself
Speaker 5: and then causes a lot of problems, and they're like, well,
Speaker 5: he can get he can be redeemed, he can become better,
Speaker 5: which like really did not sit well with me. And
Speaker 5: then to turn around and like give that lip service
Speaker 5: to the person in power and be like, but you know,
Speaker 5: they had a point. It to me, it's it undercuts
Speaker 5: the point that was made because you can have the
Speaker 5: hero make a speech, but the actual actions of the
Speaker 5: plot are about stopping this person because they're wrong, and
Speaker 5: it's sort of like making a speech about justice after
Speaker 5: the you know, it's closing the barn door after all
Speaker 5: the animals are ound like it. It's they've already shown
Speaker 5: visually that that person.
Speaker 9: Is not righteous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, talking our Soldiers. Probably my most disappointing of the
Speaker 4: uh MCU shows that are the MCU shows on Disney,
Speaker 4: and for exactly the reason. And I think, Rique, I
Speaker 4: very much here what you're saying. I think there's a
Speaker 4: lot of truth to that, but I think I also
Speaker 4: think it kind of proves what Jessica, what you were
Speaker 4: saying there about, like how it's a way of undercutting
Speaker 4: the villains, because for me, the way they set that up,
Speaker 4: the villains were really trying to do a We're doing
Speaker 4: these acts so that people understand how much anger there is,
Speaker 4: that people understand how broken things are. And when it
Speaker 4: became vengeance, I just didn't believe it. Like I was
Speaker 4: watching it, going, this is horrible pr which until now
Speaker 4: the people have been very good about pr. This is
Speaker 4: absoline going to backfire, and all of a sudden, this
Speaker 4: character has this motivation of vengeance that they have not
Speaker 4: shown in the past. And I know that was a
Speaker 4: show that got very affected by the pandemic, and they
Speaker 4: did a lot of rewrites, and I think that the
Speaker 4: original version it probably would have really thread the need
Speaker 4: a lot better. Yeah. I think that's a great example
Speaker 4: where it feels like the fact that sometimes that if
Speaker 4: a person has a very legitimate point about how angry
Speaker 4: they are, the fact that that anger can turn to
Speaker 4: vengeance is then used to delegitimize the anger, which which
Speaker 4: to me is really frustrating because I do want to
Speaker 4: see kind of more what you're saying Riki of Winter
Speaker 4: Soldiers speech there, Falcon speech there, Now we're so Captain
Speaker 4: America's speech there is him saying like, Yo, we may
Speaker 4: disagree with what they did about the anger, but we
Speaker 4: have to pay attention to the anger and realize our
Speaker 4: fault and causing so much harm that's leading people to
Speaker 4: be so angry.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I agree with all the points you
Speaker 6: made about the character herself, Carly right more Morgenthau and
Speaker 6: the Flag Smashers like being kind of a jumbled mess
Speaker 6: in terms of motivation and basically like taking the actions
Speaker 6: they did to serve the plot, which is never great
Speaker 6: versus you know, kind of being true to your own
Speaker 6: character and doing things that make sense logically for that character.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, I think it could have been much better. And
Speaker 6: the whole thing about us Agent too, right, the failed
Speaker 6: Captain America being exonerated like getting I guess joining the
Speaker 6: Thunderbolts now, it's it did not sit right, especially given
Speaker 6: what else that show was trying to tell us about
Speaker 6: race and all that. But maybe it was being true
Speaker 6: to the real world in that sense that this guy
Speaker 6: like basically failed up and did like the most despicable
Speaker 6: thing possible in that situation, and yet he's he's being
Speaker 6: given yet another chance.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I like, we'll see, We'll see what happens with that character.
Speaker 6: I'm actually probably the most curious to see what they
Speaker 6: do with him in the in the movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I have such mixed feelings about the Thunderbout movie
Speaker 4: because there's some of the characters that really love so much,
Speaker 4: and then some might have no interest in where.
Speaker 6: Where's Baron Zimo?
Speaker 4: Right? Right? Obviously I just watch him dance for two
Speaker 4: more hours? But that's a whole other story. So let's
Speaker 4: talk about another aspect of this. Uh, this kind of
Speaker 4: ties you into a question about why do we why
Speaker 4: do we sometimes enjoy it? And but also it was
Speaker 4: about kind of like when when it's right or when
Speaker 4: it's wrong in terms of how we see it, uh
Speaker 4: revenge fantasy, And Jessica, I wonder if you would talk
Speaker 4: a bit about, like, we have a lot more attention
Speaker 4: being paid recently to uh movies that are often being
Speaker 4: referred to as like the coming of rage story that
Speaker 4: that we're seeing a lot more like women's vengeance, women's
Speaker 4: violence being portrayed as like a you know, uh heroic,
Speaker 4: and I think really import I'm curious about your thoughts
Speaker 4: on that trend and how that kind of plays in
Speaker 4: all this.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 5: Women are angry. Like not to speak for all women,
Speaker 5: but I think I speak for all women when I
Speaker 5: say women are angry. And it is not always easy
Speaker 5: to get those stories through, given especially like film and television,
Speaker 5: given how many layers that are to get through and gatekeepers,
Speaker 5: but it is it isn't a narrative that we see
Speaker 5: audiences responding to, especially female audiences. And I think you know,
Speaker 5: the last time I was on here, we were talking
Speaker 5: about Superman, and Superman is a power fantasy, but specifically
Speaker 5: the fantasy of like what if you could protect people,
Speaker 5: what if you could keep people safe? What if you
Speaker 5: could make the world better? Not a fantasy of like
Speaker 5: violence or harming others, right, And this is the flip
Speaker 5: side of that that, like there's also an equally valid
Speaker 5: power fantasy of like what if I could go after
Speaker 5: everyone that hurt me and go after everyone who hurt
Speaker 5: people like me and kick their ass. Like we've talked
Speaker 5: about kill Bill, We've talked about the Birds of Prey movie,
Speaker 5: also Harley Quinn's flotline in the Second Suicide Squad movie.
Speaker 5: These are really satisfying things to watch. They're cathartic in
Speaker 5: a lot of ways.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't remember it was you who said this
Speaker 4: when we talked about Birds of Prey or someone I read,
Speaker 4: but I remember someone talking about that. Like the power
Speaker 4: of the Harley Quinn storyline in Birds of Prey is
Speaker 4: anyone who's had a shitty X, anyone who's been broken
Speaker 4: up with in a terrible way, and it just you know,
Speaker 4: you have the fantasy of like, you know, going like
Speaker 4: the person from TLC. I think it was Left Eye,
Speaker 4: you know, burning down David Justice's house or you know
Speaker 4: what Harley Quinn does of just like yeah, and that
Speaker 4: cathartic point to me is so interesting because I think
Speaker 4: often these kind of revenge fantasies we think of, like
Speaker 4: the term guilty pleasure comes to mind. But I think
Speaker 4: it's important to go beyond that, that there is something
Speaker 4: useful and helpful about not that, like, you know, I
Speaker 4: don't think millions of people went out and watched Harley
Speaker 4: Quinn and then went out and burned down their x'es
Speaker 4: homes or you know, did terrible things. But the chance
Speaker 4: to imagine that, to imagine, oh, you know, wouldn't it
Speaker 4: be satisfactory to see that horrible thing happen or to
Speaker 4: me to do the horrible thing to this person who
Speaker 4: in my mind has wronged me with a capital W.
Speaker 4: That that can tick a box in a way that
Speaker 4: people can be psychologically healthy, for people can be can
Speaker 4: be well.
Speaker 6: I also think it's important like talking specifically about like
Speaker 6: women's revenge movies. Like there's a French movie that's literally
Speaker 6: called Revenge about a woman who goes after men who
Speaker 6: have sexually assaulted her. It's a very heavy movie, but
Speaker 6: it's the violence in it like serves this purpose of
Speaker 6: reflecting back the violence that was done to her, right,
Speaker 6: And I think it's important for me, like as a man,
Speaker 6: like to think about that and what the world is
Speaker 6: like for women specifically like in these situations and obviously
Speaker 6: like to not do that and perpetrate that, but also
Speaker 6: to think about the way that when we talk about
Speaker 6: issues like this, that we often excuse things. Maybe not literally,
Speaker 6: but there are ways that discussions about these topics happen
Speaker 6: that minimize the damage or you know, sometimes exonerate manner
Speaker 6: all the stuff you know that happened around what was
Speaker 6: it the depth heard trial, right, and the discussions on that.
Speaker 6: It was men excusing other men's actions, whether it was
Speaker 6: literally saying like well, he didn't do it, or just
Speaker 6: like oh, that's just you know, we've heard terms like
Speaker 6: locker room talk, like all of that kind of stuff
Speaker 6: is is wrong. And these movies or these fantasies, these
Speaker 6: revenge fantasies should not only highlight, you know, how vengeance
Speaker 6: is taken, but what they are taken for and what
Speaker 6: we need to do to correct it. Like I I
Speaker 6: still like come back to that of we need to
Speaker 6: be better, right, like Captain America is at Senator, you
Speaker 6: need to be better. But these are cases where all
Speaker 6: of us need to be better in a sense because
Speaker 6: we all have power over very personal situations like this.
Speaker 4: Well, there's two things that come to mind here, and
Speaker 4: I'll say the first and then and then get into
Speaker 4: a second like you guys talk about it and get in
Speaker 4: a second. But the first one being I feel like
Speaker 4: a lot of times vengeance movies really hit us and
Speaker 4: I fulfill that revenge fantasy when we see people getting
Speaker 4: away with doing bad things and that the system that
Speaker 4: we would want that would have a fairly reasonable consequence
Speaker 4: isn't happening. And so the fantasy of the completely unreasonable
Speaker 4: or not unreasonable, but completely like you know, far over
Speaker 4: the top happening is incredibly Part of why we want
Speaker 4: that is because nothing else is happening. You know, we
Speaker 4: want someone to shoot the bad guy because the justice
Speaker 4: system has failed and they've gone free. We want someone
Speaker 4: to you know, finally figure out that the the white
Speaker 4: guy is not actually being very successful and do something
Speaker 4: about that, because they do keep failing upward. You know
Speaker 4: how much you think that is part of revenge fantasy
Speaker 4: as well, is that it's the someone has to do
Speaker 4: something because the normal systems aren't working.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, I think like in the case of like
Speaker 6: a big picture thing like that, like a CEO or
Speaker 6: a politician, right, Like, those are people we think of
Speaker 6: as having a lot of power, and when there's a
Speaker 6: revenge story against them, it's because like we are so powerless, yeah,
Speaker 6: in our in our regular lives to really do anything
Speaker 6: against them. So it's like, oh, well, like someone actually
Speaker 6: did something and that can resonate due to our powerlessness.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I want to bring that back to a
Speaker 5: gendered framing for a minute, because when you talk about
Speaker 5: these vengeance stories, like we were just talking about stories
Speaker 5: where a female character is getting vengeance, but that's not
Speaker 5: the role women usually play in vengeance stories. The role
Speaker 5: they usually play is the object that's being avenged. I mean,
Speaker 5: look at the punisher, his family, including his wife and
Speaker 5: daughter are killed. Look at Drax, his family is like
Speaker 5: the over and over again. I mean that's where the
Speaker 5: term friging comes from. When you talk about frigging, it's
Speaker 5: not just a woman dying. It's a woman dying or
Speaker 5: being sexually assaulted or beaten or kidnapped or whatever in
Speaker 5: order to further a male story. And so there's something
Speaker 5: particularly cathartic about sort of coming out of the fridge
Speaker 5: and going after your own yourself exactly.
Speaker 4: Well, there was, and that kind of ties into the
Speaker 4: other thing. I was gonna raise that this is what
Speaker 4: you know, brought it from me. The term punching up
Speaker 4: is often used in humor. You know that, like people
Speaker 4: making fun of their oppressors feels a lot better than
Speaker 4: making fun of the oppressed people. And I wonder can
Speaker 4: we use the same framework for vengeance movies, because like it,
Speaker 4: You know, there are men who have been wronged and
Speaker 4: cheated on or treated terribly by women in relationships. You know,
Speaker 4: it can happen in any kind of gender combination. But
Speaker 4: as I'm thinking about it, like and I was in
Speaker 4: this happened to me once or twice. I've also been
Speaker 4: a terrible partner of times. But like the idea of
Speaker 4: a movie about a man whose head is heart broken
Speaker 4: by a woman and thus goes on a revenge fantasy
Speaker 4: quest that's horrific to me in the same way of
Speaker 4: like you know, but yet I'm sure that's a power
Speaker 4: fantasy that unfortunately is very popular among some folks.
Speaker 6: And they exist, but they're weirdly romantic comedies. Yeah, that's
Speaker 6: the problem is that these men go on like do
Speaker 6: terrible things in this quote unquote comedic context because they
Speaker 6: were wronged by a woman there there, because their feelings
Speaker 6: were hurt by a woman, right, Like, so they don't
Speaker 6: fit into this vengeance thing we're talking about.
Speaker 4: Right and like with humor, Like there isn't the systemic
Speaker 4: system of sexism that's playing into it. And and like
Speaker 4: another good example I think of this is the movie Shaft,
Speaker 4: which any of you u seeing the documentary about the
Speaker 4: movie Shaft, They make a really big deal about how
Speaker 4: it was turned into the beginning of this black exploitation
Speaker 4: uh genre, which you know is the whole lot of
Speaker 4: complicated stuff about that I'm not even gonna get into.
Speaker 4: But like the director very much wanted a movie where
Speaker 4: the black guy gets to get away with all the
Speaker 4: things that the white guys normally get to do. You know,
Speaker 4: that he sleeps with the white woman, he kills a cop,
Speaker 4: he's a drug dealer, he's not but he's but he's
Speaker 4: a heroic guy, and he gets away with it because
Speaker 4: that had never been seen And is this a fair
Speaker 4: framework to think about then? Like the kind of we
Speaker 4: feel a lot better about vengeance movies when it kept
Speaker 4: punching up.
Speaker 5: I mean, to bring back arrow, Like Oliver Queen is
Speaker 5: a member of the one percent, so seeing him scolding
Speaker 5: other members of the one percent is not that satisfying.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's fair, And yeah, I don't even know if
Speaker 6: it would be a vengeance plot if some powerful person
Speaker 6: I mean, like Bruce, Bruce Wayne. Okay, we're gonna talk
Speaker 6: about Batman.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he is the Knight, so yeah, but he's
Speaker 4: not right.
Speaker 6: Like that line is very famous from Batman, the animated series,
Speaker 6: and they they riffed on it again and the patentson
Speaker 6: Batman of calling himself vengeance. But I feel like in
Speaker 6: comics he has not been vengeance really ever. So it's
Speaker 6: kind of weird that like the modern version of Batman
Speaker 6: has become.
Speaker 5: This well, and that goes back to sort of the
Speaker 5: structural thing of like who would he be avenging? Because
Speaker 5: if he's going after the guy who killed his parents,
Speaker 5: that's just like a mugger. Like, I mean, we know
Speaker 5: who he is. His name's Joe Chill. They've done a
Speaker 5: million comics with him, and they all suck because who cares.
Speaker 6: But they've also weird storylines where Joe Chill was hired
Speaker 6: by I know, it's.
Speaker 9: The worst, It's the worst.
Speaker 6: It's the thing we're talking about earlier, like you gain
Speaker 6: vengeance on the person who personally wronged you, and then
Speaker 6: what like well, like they're part of an organization.
Speaker 5: Well, and then I think it also goes back to
Speaker 5: like it's a way to make Batman the underdog, like
Speaker 5: Bruce Wayne is a an insanely wealthy white man, like
Speaker 5: he has almost every access of privilege available to him.
Speaker 5: But what he's fighting is the notion of crime itself,
Speaker 5: and that allows to be punching up in a way
Speaker 5: that any indi of ctual villain, Like.
Speaker 9: When he fights the Joker.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm on record as nothing Joker fan, but
Speaker 5: also that guy can't throw a punch, look at him
Speaker 5: like one. But when he's fighting against like the the
Speaker 5: evil and depravity within the human spirit, then it's like, ah,
Speaker 5: you can do it, little buddy. Like that's when we
Speaker 5: want to root for him because that is something that
Speaker 5: he can punch up against.
Speaker 4: I think some of my favorite Batman stories are the
Speaker 4: ones that I think, I think this is kind of
Speaker 4: the year one idea. Often where he does start out
Speaker 4: very motivated by vengeance, but then gets to a point
Speaker 4: where he realizes, like, I, you know, this isn't going
Speaker 4: to serve me at all. Often because he does the
Speaker 4: vengeance or someone else does, you know, someone kills Joe Chill,
Speaker 4: or he realizes Joe Chill just you know, was just
Speaker 4: looking to score for that night, to get money, to
Speaker 4: get his next fix, or to get a meal or
Speaker 4: whatever it is. And now we say that, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe what should have happened is Bruce willis Bruce Wayne
Speaker 4: should realize that, like the best way to fix Joe
Speaker 4: Chill to give him a job instead of beating him up.
Speaker 4: But that's that's another story. But I think I really
Speaker 4: love those stories where he starts out wanting that and
Speaker 4: then has that flip of realizing, no, I shouldn't be
Speaker 4: about trying to punish. I should be about trying to protect.
Speaker 4: And You're right, that is about It's not about one
Speaker 4: particular crime family. It's about how do I fix the corruption,
Speaker 4: how do I fix the police department? How do I
Speaker 4: give people hope again, which where I think is so
Speaker 4: revolutionary about the end of the Robert Pattinson movie. And
Speaker 4: also I love the Penguin TV show. I want to
Speaker 4: talk about it, but it kind of ignores the most
Speaker 4: important part the Batman movie in ways that make me frustrated,
Speaker 4: but the whole other story. But yeah, and it to
Speaker 4: pull it back into the real world. One of the
Speaker 4: political causes that I've been most involved with is anti
Speaker 4: death penalty work, especially when I was in California, a
Speaker 4: state that has the death penalty and carried out the
Speaker 4: death penalty a number of times while I was a
Speaker 4: citizen there, and there was something I was very very
Speaker 4: opposed to and did a lot of protesting work. And
Speaker 4: one person I saw at a number of protests was
Speaker 4: the father of I think it was a daughter, I'm
Speaker 4: not sure, but someone who had been killed, and he
Speaker 4: had been as the father of the murder victim, campaigning
Speaker 4: for the murderer to get the death penalty, and the
Speaker 4: person he it happened, they were caught, they were given
Speaker 4: the death penalty, they were killed. He was there and
Speaker 4: he now speaks in anti death penalty rallies because he
Speaker 4: talked about how he kept telling himself that he would
Speaker 4: feel better once he saw the son the murderer of
Speaker 4: his child killed, but then he said that he's just
Speaker 4: haunting words I'll never forget. You know, I woke up
Speaker 4: and my son was still dead. I'm say done. I
Speaker 4: think it was son, but whatever it was, but you know,
Speaker 4: I woke up and my child was still dead, and
Speaker 4: that hit me really hard. And I think, is it
Speaker 4: kind of flip side a lot of these things of
Speaker 4: that that that's kind of also the difference between the
Speaker 4: personal vengeance story and this kind of like striking a
Speaker 4: blow for the oppressed group, you know, or the abused group,
Speaker 4: is that it's not about I want to kill this
Speaker 4: person to deal with my grief. It's about I want
Speaker 4: to kill this person or do the thing, or bring
Speaker 4: this person down so that this doesn't happen to somebody again.
Speaker 5: But then I think that that's no longer vengeance. If
Speaker 5: you're doing it to make.
Speaker 9: A better world, that's justice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, well, And I think that's where one of
Speaker 4: the things that I think is most interesting when these
Speaker 4: stories explore it, because I think it happens all the time,
Speaker 4: is self deception. And I think that in the same
Speaker 4: way everyone thinks that they're the hero, I do think
Speaker 4: almost everyone who's out for vengeance is can convince themselves
Speaker 4: that they're doing it for justice, and sometimes you know,
Speaker 4: and there's a question of like who are we to
Speaker 4: sit and judge them? But the whole point of the
Speaker 4: podcast is that we sit and judge them, you know.
Speaker 4: I think that's an interesting example. It's an interesting exercise
Speaker 4: in when when do we think they're right? When do
Speaker 4: we think they're wrong? And with someone like Batman, I think,
Speaker 4: for the most part, I think he's right, but I
Speaker 4: think a lot of times he does stumble and get
Speaker 4: it wrong. And this pains me to say, Jessica, but
Speaker 4: there are times in the Justice League cartoon, for example,
Speaker 4: where I think Superman is the one who has to
Speaker 4: pull him back some And yes.
Speaker 5: I I've had to sit in so many episodes to
Speaker 5: get to this point.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 5: And I also think there's different, for lack of a
Speaker 5: better word, there's different ways of somebody.
Speaker 9: Being quote unquote right.
Speaker 5: There's like what we would want to happen in reality,
Speaker 5: and there's what we would want to happen in an
Speaker 5: abstract like moral exercise, and there is what is satisfying emotionally,
Speaker 5: and those are not always the same thing. And it's like,
Speaker 5: I mean, you started this episode saying that you know
Speaker 5: none of us are here going oooh, murders the solution
Speaker 5: to everything. But certainly in fiction there are times that
Speaker 5: you're not even going well, you know, of course I
Speaker 5: would disapprove of this. In real life you're like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I get him, Frank like, it's it's fun and it's satisfying,
Speaker 5: and it feels right. I mean, Inigo Montoya killing the
Speaker 5: six Fingered Man feels right, is it.
Speaker 9: That's a different question, yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean what's shocking to me is the number of
Speaker 6: Disney movies that end with a villain dying. Like I
Speaker 6: was watching what is it? Beauty and the Beast, and
Speaker 6: I was like, oh, he just fell from the top
Speaker 6: of this tower. He's he's dead, right.
Speaker 4: He's like yeah, But I think that's the key. Is
Speaker 4: that an awful lot of them. And I read something
Speaker 4: about this that this was a very intentional policy for
Speaker 4: a while. The hero never kills the villain right feeling
Speaker 4: kills himself like I'm the The best example that's used
Speaker 4: is that the dragon in Sleeping Beauty, which I think
Speaker 4: is maleficent, I don't I maybe mixing up my uh,
Speaker 4: but she charges at the Prince Prince Philip, I think,
Speaker 4: and he dodges and she falls off the edge of
Speaker 4: a cliff and dies well.
Speaker 5: And also the sword like magically flies into her heart.
Speaker 5: But that's a magic sword. That's yeah. But there's a
Speaker 5: lot of gaston falls to it, like, and I think
Speaker 5: there's even a moment where the Beast is trying to
Speaker 5: save him and.
Speaker 6: He stabs the beast, which causes him. It's his own fault.
Speaker 5: But my point was, like act of God, She's on
Speaker 5: a cliff that gets hit by lightning. She falls, like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I didn't do it, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 6: Well, my point was that the death like of a
Speaker 6: villain is so satisfying to audiences that it's happened. It
Speaker 6: happens even in Disney movies that we think of as
Speaker 6: like these clean, happy things. It's like, oh, like yeah,
Speaker 6: like this is this is just part of our cultural thing,
Speaker 6: is that we that guy is so bad we wanted
Speaker 6: to die.
Speaker 5: I mean, in the Little made Ursula gets skewered with
Speaker 5: a boat.
Speaker 9: I couldn't watch that scene until I was like twelve.
Speaker 9: It messed me up so bad.
Speaker 6: It's a lot, it's a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, and it's funny because I've come to realize
Speaker 4: that I no longer find those satisfying. But it's not
Speaker 4: for some like morality reason. It's that what I want
Speaker 4: is I want the villain to realize they were wrong,
Speaker 4: you know, that that the person they thought would never
Speaker 4: come back to get them has come back to get them,
Speaker 4: or that the police would would never actually rise against them,
Speaker 4: or whatever it is, you know, like you know, you
Speaker 4: know whatever, that that that the people they think they've
Speaker 4: bought don't stay bought, And so I'm always frustrated when
Speaker 4: they just die instead of having that moment of realization
Speaker 4: of like, oh no, I was wrong. But yeah, it's
Speaker 4: the same kind of thing. Well, we've been talking for
Speaker 4: a while here, and I want to kind of just
Speaker 4: I think we've already been kind of touching on this
Speaker 4: a lot, but maybe kind of get into the this
Speaker 4: is aur wrap up question. So how do you see,
Speaker 4: like where are the difference what are the things that
Speaker 4: that create differences between like what we might say like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm actually like in a real world, I totally want
Speaker 4: this to happen versus what we enjoy on screen.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's a lot of things that I enjoy
Speaker 5: in media that I don't want, Like I also don't
Speaker 5: want kids sidekicks to exist in reality, like go to school.
Speaker 4: This is too dangerous. Yeah, but watching it when you're twelve,
Speaker 4: watching Riaki and I've talked about this that when you're twelve,
Speaker 4: like watching a twelve year old step into a mecca
Speaker 4: is awesome. Later you're like, no, no, kids shouldn't be
Speaker 4: piloting death robots. That's a bad idea.
Speaker 6: No, it is awesome. It's what I've always wanted to do. Yeah,
Speaker 6: But at least when we're talking about Gundam, like it
Speaker 6: shows you why we shouldn't do that, right, because every
Speaker 6: one of those kids, at least, like in the first
Speaker 6: half of Gundam's history, like, they end up severely traumatized
Speaker 6: by war. And I like, I don't know, Like I
Speaker 6: prefer my vengeance a I prefer when they are either
Speaker 6: a villain or as we said, an anti hero a foil, like,
Speaker 6: not the primary protagonist. And then I think I prefer
Speaker 6: vengeance to be less bloody. I guess the I don't
Speaker 6: know how to put this, but scenes where someone just
Speaker 6: like beats the person of their eyre to a bloody
Speaker 6: pulp like make me deeply uncomfortable in a way. And
Speaker 6: I would prefer just like a laser blast or just
Speaker 6: an explosion to take them out. So like, I guess
Speaker 6: the personal the personalness of vengeance, like when someone takes
Speaker 6: their vengeance and just like gets in the face of
Speaker 6: the person that they're upset with, and and and just
Speaker 6: like we see like too much of that. It makes
Speaker 6: me uncomfortable and I'm frankly like, I don't like this
Speaker 6: see that.
Speaker 4: Probably one of, if not my top three favorite superhero
Speaker 4: movies is Logan, and part of it's because I think
Speaker 4: one of the most upsetting scenes I've ever seen, and
Speaker 4: it's so chilling, is when these superpowered little kids get
Speaker 4: a chance to enact vengeance on the person who's done
Speaker 4: terrible things to them. And it's shot like a horror movie,
Speaker 4: this like group of kids coming around and exactly you're
Speaker 4: talking about brutally killing a person who I have no
Speaker 4: sympathy and no love for, and like, you know, any
Speaker 4: other circumstance, I'd be like, oh my god, yes you go, kids,
Speaker 4: But instead I'm like, oh my god, these kids are
Speaker 4: now trapped in the same cycle of brutality. It's a
Speaker 4: heartbreaking scene while also feeling like justified vengeance, and it's
Speaker 4: it's one of those heroin scenes and the fact that
Speaker 4: I'm so conflicted about it as part of I think
Speaker 4: it's so good.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that is good storytelling. I say it makes
Speaker 6: me uncomfortable. I don't want to see it, but when
Speaker 6: I do see it, like you you can and should
Speaker 6: acknowledge like that it makes you feel a certain way,
Speaker 6: and that is often the intention.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's about like committing to either going
Speaker 5: in that direction where you're like you're exposing like how
Speaker 5: this is not a real solution, how it's just repeating
Speaker 5: the cycle of violence and vengeance and you know how
Speaker 5: traumatic it is, et cetera, or you go completely goofy
Speaker 5: over the top. It's when you try to thread the
Speaker 5: needle in between that you end up with something that's
Speaker 5: just sort of incoherent, like Falcon in the Winter Soldier,
Speaker 5: like Arrow, where it's like you you haven't you haven't
Speaker 5: thought through what you're trying to say. And I think
Speaker 5: the ones that are over the top do also think
Speaker 5: through what they're trying to say. It's they're very thoughtful approaches,
Speaker 5: they're just not living in the shades of gray. I
Speaker 5: think you have to go all shades of gray are
Speaker 5: all black and white. But if you try to be like, oh,
Speaker 5: this is messy, but this guy can do no wrong,
Speaker 5: then it doesn't make sense and it doesn't work.
Speaker 4: There's a scene in the movie Desperado where after brutally
Speaker 4: killing all these people in hilariously awful, wonderful ways, you know,
Speaker 4: someone comes up to him and it's like, that's awesome
Speaker 4: that you did this, and our hero says, yes, but
Speaker 4: everyone I killed was someone's husband, someone's father, someone's son,
Speaker 4: and you're just like, okay, you filmers, you try to
Speaker 4: have it both ways. You know, you're trying to like
Speaker 4: put this in here, and it's either like incredibly brilliant
Speaker 4: or incredibly cynical filmmaking. I'm not quite sure which, but
Speaker 4: because it does expose that you know that, like, yes,
Speaker 4: it's true, And I think maybe that's kind of where
Speaker 4: my final comment on all this is, and I want
Speaker 4: to hear you from you all as well. It feels
Speaker 4: like one of the essential parts of vengeance is that
Speaker 4: we're able to see the person we're getting vengeance on
Speaker 4: not as a real person, but as a two D
Speaker 4: cutout of just the evil ex boyfriend, the evil CEO,
Speaker 4: the evil whatever. It is, like you said about kat Rugan,
Speaker 4: we don't know anything else about him, and I think
Speaker 4: kind of when I like, for me, I've always said
Speaker 4: that's kind of like the thing I find most troubling,
Speaker 4: and that that I think I love so much about
Speaker 4: the whole idea of the dark Side and Star Wars
Speaker 4: is for me, the essence of the dark side is
Speaker 4: when you're anger at someone allows you to not see
Speaker 4: any other part of them, to just see them as
Speaker 4: the two D cutout and and and kind I guess
Speaker 4: that that's part of where I see it all in
Speaker 4: real life, is that I I feel like we're in
Speaker 4: a world more and more where it's easier to see
Speaker 4: people as two D cutouts, in part because sometimes like
Speaker 4: and I'm not gonna get in that so it could
Speaker 4: be too complex, but yeah, so just that that to me,
Speaker 4: that's one of the essentials of all of this is
Speaker 4: like it can be helpful to have a a person
Speaker 4: that is a stand in of that stereotype that it's
Speaker 4: cathartic to fight against, or can it be so ridiculously
Speaker 4: over the top that it's fun to fight against, but
Speaker 4: that that it's that dehumanization that has to go into
Speaker 4: engines that when it becomes more real, becomes a lot
Speaker 4: harder to watch.
Speaker 5: Yes, I not to get to I know, we don't
Speaker 5: want to get too into what happened last year, but
Speaker 5: I do think all of the people who died because
Speaker 5: their claims were denied were three dimensional human beings too,
Speaker 5: and that was dehumanization on a massive scale, literally with
Speaker 5: AI denying claims. And I'm not saying that what happened
Speaker 5: was the solution, but I think dehumanizing anybody in like,
Speaker 5: it's just I just want to note the dehumanizing anybody ever,
Speaker 5: is not going to end anywhere good.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that, and I that's what I was trying
Speaker 4: to say, but also having a lot of trouble putting
Speaker 4: into words, because to me, it's that there are There
Speaker 4: was something I read that said that the killing of
Speaker 4: CEO can be seen more than I think is a
Speaker 4: symptom of a larger problem, and that a part of
Speaker 4: that is that and again this is a much more
Speaker 4: complicated issue, but the the way that the lives of
Speaker 4: the powerful have become more and more and more separated
Speaker 4: from the lives of everyone else, I think adds to
Speaker 4: a lot of this. And that, yeah, I think that
Speaker 4: the cycle of dehumanization that leads to that certainly does
Speaker 4: not start with someone thinking of an evil CEO. And
Speaker 4: I think that's that's a very important point to keep
Speaker 4: in mind with all of this, and that I think
Speaker 4: plays into all these discussions.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think I think rich people are dehumanizing us absolutely,
Speaker 6: Like that's a thing that they are so out of
Speaker 6: touch with reality. Like I was talking with my wife
Speaker 6: about the how much could a banana cost? Ten dollars?
Speaker 6: Michael Meme right from Arrested Development, And that's the thing,
Speaker 6: Like they are so out of touch with the reality
Speaker 6: of what an or married person deals with the price
Speaker 6: of a banana in this Memes case, but like anything
Speaker 6: right like that they don't understand like what the average
Speaker 6: or the majority of the people in life go through,
Speaker 6: and so like they make decisions, whether it's healthcare or
Speaker 6: politics or or anything, and it's like they don't touch
Speaker 6: reality at all.
Speaker 4: What I think we're seeing another example of that right
Speaker 4: now in the you know, massive move of you know,
Speaker 4: we've had our government telling us for months that TikTok
Speaker 4: is super dangerous because it could give our data to
Speaker 4: you know, the Chinese government, and so a lot of
Speaker 4: people in response is okay, cool, I'm gonna find it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that directly gives the information to the Chinese government or
Speaker 4: the meme of it. I'm just gonna start printing out
Speaker 4: my search history and sending it to the Chinese consulate
Speaker 4: or whatever. Yeah. I think that what undergirds a lot
Speaker 4: of these things is the and just to tie it
Speaker 4: even more, like some of the analysis that read about
Speaker 4: the movie Jennifer's Body, which I think is often seen
Speaker 4: as like one of the beginnings of this modern version
Speaker 4: of the coming of rage stories. Fantastic movie that got
Speaker 4: totally mismarketed and is really a great exploration of this
Speaker 4: kind of you know, revenge fantasy. And one thing that
Speaker 4: the reviewer said is that she thought the most important
Speaker 4: part of the reaction was men who didn't get it,
Speaker 4: Like who just were like, I don't get it. Why
Speaker 4: would someone be this angry? And that that's the point
Speaker 4: is that, like the movie is supposed to be about
Speaker 4: helping you see like this, this is how angry people are.
Speaker 4: This is how angry women are. This is how angry
Speaker 4: people are at racism, at sexism, and at what's happening
Speaker 4: in healthcare, what's happening in international policy stuff like that,
Speaker 4: and I, you know, vengeance isn't what I'm gonna choose
Speaker 4: as a method, but I I think for me, one
Speaker 4: of the essential questions I'm always gonna ask when I
Speaker 4: see an act of vengeance is was a person given
Speaker 4: a chance to get the message across that something was
Speaker 4: wrong in some other way before they chose vengeance? And
Speaker 4: if not, then I'm not gonna condone it. But I
Speaker 4: can understand it.
Speaker 6: Well, I've got kind of a broad shift, if I may.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 6: I took some notes and I did some research on
Speaker 6: the character of the Specter, who's a DC Comics character,
Speaker 6: and then Ghostwriter right, who's from Marvel, and I was
Speaker 6: most interested. They're both supernatural agents of vengeance. They inhabit
Speaker 6: like human bodies or to interact with the world. But
Speaker 6: the Specter is an agent of quote unquote God is
Speaker 6: my understanding, And I don't know how deep that goes,
Speaker 6: and like how connected it is to a specific god.
Speaker 6: They just say God, that's.
Speaker 9: The Christian God. He's okay, Well they don't.
Speaker 5: I don't know that they specify, but basically, yeah, he's
Speaker 5: the embodiment like his like tagline or whatever. Is the
Speaker 5: embodiment of God's vengeance specifically.
Speaker 6: And then Ghostwriter originally was given his powers by Satan,
Speaker 6: but I think it's been retcon to being Befisto, which
Speaker 6: is just marvel Satan, let's be honest. But that to me,
Speaker 6: like we've talked a lot about human vengeance, but this
Speaker 6: is like supernatural vengeance, and so I find it interesting
Speaker 6: because it seems to me like that gives it more
Speaker 6: license to be correct, Like how does that how does
Speaker 6: that sound to you in terms of vengeance.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not super familiar with Ghostwriter. I haven't read
Speaker 5: many Ghostwriter comics, but in what I've seen of the Specter,
Speaker 5: it's very much like the Specter knows what's, yeah, the
Speaker 5: right thing to do, because he is imbued with divine
Speaker 5: knowledge and like enacts like I know there was a
Speaker 5: run in the seventies that's like infamous for like the horrific,
Speaker 5: horrific consequences that he visited on Like, oh, this logger
Speaker 5: is cutting down a forest, I'll turn him into a
Speaker 5: tree and then he gets fed into a wood chipper
Speaker 5: like that kind of and like is conscious while that's happening.
Speaker 5: Like those are the kinds of acts of vengeance that
Speaker 5: he would enact, and I it was less certain of
Speaker 5: what he was doing when how Jordan was the specter
Speaker 5: for a bit and then there was a lot of like, oh,
Speaker 5: what's the right thing to do? But yeah, usually it's
Speaker 5: like I just know because I'm the specter and God
Speaker 5: told me, and now that guy is gonna melt or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think for me it's funny. My favorite comicot
Speaker 4: hero is still Daredevil, and a part of why I
Speaker 4: love him so much is that he has so much
Speaker 4: doubt and that for me, I'm a very religious person.
Speaker 4: I'm also a deeply agnostic person, and I kind of
Speaker 4: think you have to be agnostic to actually be a
Speaker 4: person of faith. I think if you have certainty, that's
Speaker 4: no longer faith, that's you're telling yourself a fairy tale. Wow,
Speaker 4: he's probably lost a whole bunch of listeners. But my
Speaker 4: point being that because I think that there's a line
Speaker 4: in a Billy Joel's song Shades of Gray, which is
Speaker 4: a wonderful, wonderful song, and there's a line in it
Speaker 4: that the only people I fear are those who never
Speaker 4: have doubts. And I think that if you believe that
Speaker 4: God has put you on this earth to right wrongs,
Speaker 4: kind of going to what you were saying Jessica about like,
Speaker 4: what's the authority that you adhere to you? Now you
Speaker 4: are literally you've given yourself the ultimate authority and nothing
Speaker 4: can question you. And that's not always bad. I mean
Speaker 4: John Brown freed slaves and led uprisings to murder slaveholders
Speaker 4: because he believed God told him to. And on the
Speaker 4: same token, people blow up abortion clinics and murder abortion
Speaker 4: doctors and see themselves as modern day John Brown's because
Speaker 4: they think God told them to. And that's true in
Speaker 4: almost every religion of some degree another. And yeah, I
Speaker 4: for me, I think characters like that are really interesting.
Speaker 4: And I don't know the specter very much, but I
Speaker 4: think that I would not want to see a character
Speaker 4: presented as a hero who is told that God is
Speaker 4: telling them what to do and we are supposed to
Speaker 4: agree with that. I'm a big believer that God should
Speaker 4: never appear on stage, you know, and that should always
Speaker 4: be portrayed as a problem, a self justification, and then
Speaker 4: maybe we'll be true in the case the spectru I'm
Speaker 4: not saying it isn't, but like to me, someone like
Speaker 4: Daredevil or Nightcrawler, for whom their faith is something they're
Speaker 4: constantly wrestling with and wondering should they be doing what
Speaker 4: they're doing. Is what I want to see because I think, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's it's well, probably going to do a whole other
Speaker 4: episode on it. But to me, one of the other
Speaker 4: fundamental questions is accountability. And I think if you're if
Speaker 4: you're someone who's gonna say I have this power, I'm
Speaker 4: going to try and do right, there has to be
Speaker 4: to some degree that you are accountable to others, whether
Speaker 4: that's the law, whether that's your community, whether that's you know,
Speaker 4: your law clerk and your secretary, whatever it is. You know,
Speaker 4: there has to be other people who you're going to
Speaker 4: listen to when they say I think you're wrong, And
Speaker 4: the closer you get to God telling you, the harder
Speaker 4: that is.
Speaker 5: But I think the difference between like a character like
Speaker 5: dared Devil or Nightcrawler, like Garden Variety Catholics like it's
Speaker 5: it is literally true in the case of the Specter
Speaker 5: that God told them.
Speaker 6: To do that, like that's yeah, this is why I
Speaker 6: like I mentioned this in the concept It's Supernatural.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that.
Speaker 6: It's similar to the TV show the fall of the
Speaker 6: House of Usher, and that the character in that is
Speaker 6: a some kind of spirit of vengeance. We don't know
Speaker 6: how or why, Like that's not explained in the same
Speaker 6: way that the Specter is. But I feel like characters
Speaker 6: like that give us some moral clarity and that we
Speaker 6: we trust them, right, Like, I understand what Matthew is
Speaker 6: saying that if there was a human character who says
Speaker 6: that they are acting on behalf of God, that is
Speaker 6: that is uncomfortable and that should be questioned, at least
Speaker 6: in the context of these fictions. Like, I think we
Speaker 6: just believe that this is happening because the supernatural thing
Speaker 6: is allowing for it, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the better word for it is maybe karma,
Speaker 5: Like it's you know, there's there is a proud tradition
Speaker 5: in comic books which was briefly stifled because the comics
Speaker 5: coulde but horror comics, which are just like, hey, here's
Speaker 5: a terrible person. They're doing terrible things. Now an ironic
Speaker 5: terrible thing is going to happen to them, and everybody
Speaker 5: goes away feeling great about it.
Speaker 9: I mean, maybe freaked out.
Speaker 5: But also like, yes, that's how it's supposed to work.
Speaker 5: And the specter is the agent through which Inspector stories
Speaker 5: that consequence is karmically visited on the person who deserves it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I found it interesting because that actually, like the revision
Speaker 6: of the Comics Code in nineteen seventy one is what
Speaker 6: is cited as when the specter turned to what you're describing,
Speaker 6: and ghostwriter was creating a character around the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so it was like the loosening of the comics Code,
Speaker 6: and they're like, well, I think we can have characters
Speaker 6: that go a little more deeper, I guess, into the
Speaker 6: violence of it all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I surely think, like, you know, kind of a
Speaker 4: part of the revenge fantasy is the shouten freud of
Speaker 4: it all, you know, and that we want to see that.
Speaker 4: But I think for me, I would have I think
Speaker 4: it's kind of the same way that, like, because my
Speaker 4: parents are lawyers, they have real trouble with law and order,
Speaker 4: you know. I I just would have real trouble watching
Speaker 4: that because I have so much the TV show. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 4: I would have so much trouble watching a TV show
Speaker 4: about a character who I'm being told I can believe
Speaker 4: they're vengeance because God is telling them to do that
Speaker 4: because I just that that idea is so horrifically dangerous,
Speaker 4: you know, uh, and and and and so rife to
Speaker 4: question because you know it's it's again, it's the to me,
Speaker 4: once you are at all certain of anything about God,
Speaker 4: then then we're into days with high body counts. But
Speaker 4: I can see the.
Speaker 5: I think the Specter TV show would be unwatchable anyway,
Speaker 5: so you're probably safe.
Speaker 4: Is there a Spector type character in the m CU,
Speaker 4: like I would love to see Daredevil have a conversation
Speaker 4: with a person like that, You know.
Speaker 6: Well, I think it's I mean, not in the MCU yet.
Speaker 6: But ghost Writer to me is the equivalent of the Specter,
Speaker 6: and it's less. It's weird because he's imbued by Mephisto,
Speaker 6: who is evil, and you know, in this context of
Speaker 6: the Specter, we think of God as good. But I'm
Speaker 6: I don't know, like Ghostwriter, I guess has more of
Speaker 6: a human element to him that makes him more unpredictable
Speaker 6: than the Specter.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm trying to think of like a good comparable
Speaker 5: character in the Marvel universe, and yeah, I can't think
Speaker 5: of anybody who. I mean, there have definitely been stories
Speaker 5: where Matt meets someone. You know what, The closest thing
Speaker 5: I can think of is the Guardian Devil storyline by
Speaker 5: Kevin Smith in nineteen ninety nine, where basically Matt is
Speaker 5: given custody of a baby and is like, this baby
Speaker 5: is the Antichrist thing. You need to kill it, and
Speaker 5: he's like, I guess I better kill this baby and
Speaker 5: everybody that acts very erratically for a long time, and
Speaker 5: long story short, it turns out that it is an
Speaker 5: elaborate hoax by Mysterio, who has been drugging the entire
Speaker 5: cast with extremely powerful, extremely specific drugs for days and
Speaker 5: days to make Matt think that he has been spoken
Speaker 5: to by God. But it's all a lie. And this
Speaker 5: is also the storyline where Karen Page dies, so like
Speaker 5: things end very badly, the baby survives, And I think.
Speaker 9: That's an interesting like difference between the.
Speaker 5: Sort of very epic, not that the Marvel universe is
Speaker 5: an epic, but like the very epic and often very
Speaker 5: clear cut good and bad world of the DC universe,
Speaker 5: and like Daredevil's world, where the closest comparison is actually
Speaker 5: just some weasel drugging everybody and lying and saying that
Speaker 5: God spoke to him.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, yeah, I mean there's a a pastor who
Speaker 4: I know who who's done a lot of stuff on
Speaker 4: MCU stuff and has talked about how like there's absolutely
Speaker 4: no such thing as a single like theology that understands
Speaker 4: the MCU because it is both like there's references to
Speaker 4: the monotheistic god of Islam and Judaism and Christianity, and
Speaker 4: then also like Loki and and all the Egyptian gods
Speaker 4: of Mark Spector wasn't moon moon night Moon night, you know,
Speaker 4: like all this you know, there's so yeah, it's very confusing.
Speaker 5: I mean, the best take on it is when the
Speaker 5: Fantastic Four went to heaven and they met God and
Speaker 5: he was Jack Kirby.
Speaker 9: It was great.
Speaker 4: I can get that.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 4: I was saying, if someone wanted to write a comic
Speaker 4: book about like vengeance, like the Book of Exodus is
Speaker 4: kind of a good version, you know, like the drowning
Speaker 4: of all the people in the sea. Uh, there's an
Speaker 4: awful lot of vengines in that story, and and yet
Speaker 4: also a lot of critique of it that that.
Speaker 5: Listen, he said, let my people go, Bara didn't let
Speaker 5: us go.
Speaker 4: You know, I this is gonna get Rayosoteric here. But
Speaker 4: this is one for me, one of the most powerful
Speaker 4: moments of understanding, like a change in my understanding of vengeance.
Speaker 4: And I think a lot of young kids who grow
Speaker 4: up in Jewish families may go through this. There's a
Speaker 4: moment in the Satyr, which is the celebration of Passover,
Speaker 4: the celebration of the Exodus story, where as you recount
Speaker 4: the ten plagues, you're supposed to dip your finger into
Speaker 4: a glass of wine and spill out a drop onto
Speaker 4: your plate for everyone. And I thought that was badass
Speaker 4: as hell. You know. It was like, yeah, we're putting
Speaker 4: blood up because red wine looks like blood. We're putting
Speaker 4: blood on our plate to be a big like you know,
Speaker 4: few Egyptians like our God got you. And what I
Speaker 4: later came to learn and and you know, my no
Speaker 4: one in my family had known this until we kind
Speaker 4: of looked more into it, because the Hagata we'd worked
Speaker 4: with was very much not making this lesson is that
Speaker 4: the point is to say that you are reducing the
Speaker 4: amount of wine and thus the amount of joy you have,
Speaker 4: because we have to remember that the celebration of our
Speaker 4: freedom came at the death of others, and that should
Speaker 4: reduce the amount of our celebration, which I think is
Speaker 4: a gorgeous, gorgeous lesson and it's a complete rejection of
Speaker 4: the idea of celebrating vengeance. And yeah, that's not how
Speaker 4: the ritual appears to a lot of people. And when
Speaker 4: I've talked to people about this, like that's a lot
Speaker 4: of people are like, yeah, of course I knew that.
Speaker 4: And I was like, oh no, I thought that was
Speaker 4: a big like you know, raw Rock, God, you sent
Speaker 4: the plagues, you sent the boils. That's awesome.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, that's that's my favorite part of the Stay
Speaker 5: or two And it is for exactly that reason, because
Speaker 5: of the meaning behind it. And we cannot have a
Speaker 5: full cup when it came at the cost of other
Speaker 5: people suffering.
Speaker 4: Right, all right, Well, we've now wandered very far from
Speaker 4: the topic, So any last thoughts from either of you
Speaker 4: on this topic. I think we completely wrapped up the
Speaker 4: topic of vengeance. Everything is solved. We can move on
Speaker 4: to the next thing.
Speaker 2: Next month is going to cost episode and the cycle
Speaker 2: of podcast vengeance will begin.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, Oh my god. Don't talk about vengeance
Speaker 4: and being wrong, Just just hang out on podcast Twitter,
Speaker 4: and you'll see all sorts of things. I'll say, I'd
Speaker 4: make this the last question for each of you. Favorite
Speaker 4: and least favorite example of vengeance as a character motivator.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, and Riki hates when I don't let him
Speaker 4: prepare for questions like this, so I apologize.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's less that I hate, it is that
Speaker 6: I don't know where to start.
Speaker 4: I'll give mine. I think my least favorite is Punisher.
Speaker 4: I've talked a lot about the MCU Punisher because I
Speaker 4: feel like they really try to frame him as heroic
Speaker 4: in ways that are I guess to me, because again,
Speaker 4: like where I have a problem with vengeance is when
Speaker 4: it does blind you to the things that I think
Speaker 4: should be taken into account. When it's you you're looking
Speaker 4: for vengeance, you know, like the person who killed your
Speaker 4: father because they fundamentally believe that your father had done
Speaker 4: wrong and they had been lied to, manipulated, and now
Speaker 4: you want to kill that person like that. That, to me
Speaker 4: is what really happened a lot in the Punisher story.
Speaker 4: My favorite is I think because I see the word
Speaker 4: the words vendetta and vengeance is pretty much you know
Speaker 4: in Vendetta is an attempt to get vengeance is V
Speaker 4: for Vendetta because the biggest thing that I feel about vengeance,
Speaker 4: and here's the whole other thing that we haven't got into,
Speaker 4: is that vengeance is about destroying, it's not about building.
Speaker 4: And the fundamental thing I think that that V for
Speaker 4: Vendetta holds true is that, like, if if you're acting
Speaker 4: out of vengeance against one system, if that sense of
Speaker 4: vengeance is carried into the attempt to build the new system,
Speaker 4: you know, whether it's a new relationship, a new family,
Speaker 4: and new country, then everything is still gonna be about,
Speaker 4: you know, getting getting justice against the people who wronged you.
Speaker 4: And and the character of V fundamentally understands he is
Speaker 4: motivated by vengeance and so therefore he shouldn't be part
Speaker 4: of He's going to destroy the things he hates, but
Speaker 4: someone else should protect the things that they should love.
Speaker 4: So that that's my personal favorite.
Speaker 5: Freaky you got one?
Speaker 6: Okay, I had to google best stories of vengeance just
Speaker 6: to see like what was out there and to kind
Speaker 6: of have my my brain triggered looking at this. Absolutely
Speaker 6: like one of my favorites is Gladiator Maximis I foind
Speaker 6: It was just like a beautiful story, like he gets
Speaker 6: his vengeance upon the emperor, but then you know himself dies,
Speaker 6: but has also along the way, like helped other people,
Speaker 6: inspired people in a way. I've not seen Gladiator too.
Speaker 6: I don't know what happens, whether it's even a follow
Speaker 6: up to that story or not, but I just I
Speaker 6: love that movie. I love that character, and it's a
Speaker 6: it's a satisfying act of vengeance that is not doesn't
Speaker 6: trigger me in the ways that I talked about of
Speaker 6: like you know, like being too personal and bloody and
Speaker 6: all that. I think it's it's bloody like, but but
Speaker 6: it's a it's a nice, clean fight. My least favorite
Speaker 6: looking at this list, John Wick, Like, what the heck?
Speaker 6: I know, I know, like people love dogs and like
Speaker 6: does the dog dies a thing? But my dude, it's
Speaker 6: a dog. And I know it's a gift from your wife,
Speaker 6: but teacher, really like.
Speaker 4: Over the top.
Speaker 6: I love the heck John Wick.
Speaker 4: My girlfriend literally got a dog a week ago, so
Speaker 4: I have to kind of but it's funny. I was
Speaker 4: gonna mention John Wick earlier because I've offered heard people
Speaker 4: bring it up as it Yes, there's a connection to
Speaker 4: his wife, but it's not whose wife gets killed, and
Speaker 4: that it's not that they kind of take romance off
Speaker 4: the table entirely, and yes it is connected to her,
Speaker 4: but that it's not yet again a pretty woman who's
Speaker 4: brought on screen just to be fridged and be a
Speaker 4: character motivator.
Speaker 5: What's the line from Brooklyn ninety nine where Rosa gets
Speaker 5: the puppy and she's like, I've only had this puppy
Speaker 5: for a day and a half and if anything ever
Speaker 5: happened to him, I'd kill everyone in this room and
Speaker 5: then myself.
Speaker 4: I think that's exactly the liar, very popular meme. Jessica.
Speaker 4: You you very very slyly deflected on Jermiki, So you
Speaker 4: can think about it for another minute or two. Do
Speaker 4: you have yours?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so my least I knew my least favorite right away.
Speaker 5: I thought about it when you sent the topic over.
Speaker 9: I was like, I know Barry Allen, Oh god.
Speaker 4: I can't imagine him going for oh yeah.
Speaker 5: No, yeah you can, yeah you can because they don't
Speaker 5: stop doing that stupid story. So yeah, Barry Allen, like
Speaker 5: was introduced in nineteen fifty six, died in nineteen eighty
Speaker 5: five maybe eighty six. I don't know what month came
Speaker 5: back in what two thousand and five. Up until that point,
Speaker 5: he had a perfectly like happy home life. He had
Speaker 5: a very wholesome backstory, had no great tragedies. His wife died,
Speaker 5: but then it turned out she actually time traveled and
Speaker 5: she was fine.
Speaker 9: Like he didn't have.
Speaker 5: That the yeah, it's always time travel. He didn't have
Speaker 5: that like motivating tragedy. So in two thousand and five,
Speaker 5: when they brought him back and everybody was like, why
Speaker 5: would you bring back Barry Allen, He's so boring, they
Speaker 5: were like, no, we're gonna make him interesting. We're going
Speaker 5: to kill his mom, And all of a sudden, his
Speaker 5: story became about how his mom was murdered when he
Speaker 5: was a child. This was a retcon that had never
Speaker 5: been true before. And now he's like a gritty, very
Speaker 5: fast cop and he has to figure out who killed her.
Speaker 5: And that's how he got the Flashpoint story in the
Speaker 5: comics where he goes back in time to try to
Speaker 5: save her and he breaks the universe.
Speaker 9: And it led to the New fifty two, which I've
Speaker 9: never forgiven DC for.
Speaker 5: And then we got a Flashpoint animated movie, and then
Speaker 5: we got Flashpoint in the TV show, and then we
Speaker 5: got Flashpoint in the live action movie, and like, the
Speaker 5: thing is, it just doesn't fit Barry Allen's Like you said,
Speaker 5: I can't picture Barry Allen doing that. That's the only
Speaker 5: story they ever tell with Barry Allen. But it doesn't
Speaker 5: work for him because that's not the kind of character
Speaker 5: he is. And I just it makes me so mad,
Speaker 5: and they won't stop telling it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's very true. And it's funny because I love,
Speaker 4: you know, Grant Gusterson's flash, you know, the CW Flash.
Speaker 4: I think it's so good and it's funny that I've
Speaker 4: just blanked out how big a part of his story
Speaker 4: that is. But you know that, and you know, I think,
Speaker 4: do you try to tell some of the stories with him?
Speaker 4: They let him Gaslight Iris over and over and over
Speaker 4: again and.
Speaker 9: Horrible refreshing break from vengeance. Yes, letting your one true love.
Speaker 4: So what's your favorite?
Speaker 5: Well, I was gonna say Aego Montoya, and then I
Speaker 5: copied Riki and I googled best stories of vengeance just
Speaker 5: to see what popped up. And I do want to
Speaker 5: say that one of the results I got was just
Speaker 5: Aaron Burr No further explanation, which is hilarious.
Speaker 6: It is on this list for some reason. I ignored that, But.
Speaker 9: Who is the one getting the vengeance? Anyway?
Speaker 5: But two popped up that I really really loved, and
Speaker 5: I was like, oh, yeah, I wasn't even thinking of
Speaker 5: those because they're not at all superhero stories. One is
Speaker 5: Murder on the Orient Express Oh okay, which I think
Speaker 5: is a really I'm not going to spoil it for anybody,
Speaker 5: but you should read it if you haven't. But it's
Speaker 5: a really interesting way of We've been talking about how
Speaker 5: vengeance is extra judicial and it's outside of the rule
Speaker 5: of law, and there is a way in which the
Speaker 5: murder in this story there is an attempt to replicate
Speaker 5: the legal proceedings that cannot be gotten the normal way,
Speaker 5: which I think is really interesting and I will say
Speaker 5: no more highly recommended.
Speaker 9: And then the other one.
Speaker 5: That showed up on here, and I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's the one First Wives Club.
Speaker 4: Oh interesting, okay, yeah, because that's about I remember the
Speaker 4: first time I saw that, I thought it was about like,
Speaker 4: you know, wives of presidents, but no, it's about a
Speaker 4: bunch of women. It's about women whose husbands have divorced
Speaker 4: them for younger, younger, younger second wives.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, yeah, it's it's well, this is the book
Speaker 5: that's popping up, but the movie is Diane Keaton and
Speaker 5: Bett Middler and Goldie Hawn and yes, all their husbands
Speaker 5: are leaving them for younger women and they decide to
Speaker 5: get revenge. Crucially, they are not murdering these men. They
Speaker 5: are just like stealing all their money and then they
Speaker 5: use it like their motivation is that their fourth best
Speaker 5: friend killed herself when this happened to her, and so
Speaker 5: they are using it to create like a I believe
Speaker 5: it's like a it's some nonprofit that's like in her
Speaker 5: name and is going to help women in similar situations.
Speaker 5: And it is very much about revenge, just like reclaiming
Speaker 5: one's agency and personhood.
Speaker 9: And it's also a comedy.
Speaker 5: Like I said, I like revenge, Calm is best and
Speaker 5: this one is very silly and again highly recommended.
Speaker 9: If you haven't seen it, you should.
Speaker 4: It is funny when you say that, because it also
Speaker 4: it reminds me of how many of like I love
Speaker 4: rom comms, and especially love like high school rom comms
Speaker 4: from like the eighties and nineties and an awful lot
Speaker 4: of them. Your main character gets bullied a lot, and
Speaker 4: that it's in the process of working out a revenge
Speaker 4: fantasy against the bully with the girl next door that
Speaker 4: they fall for each other. And that's just a very
Speaker 4: common but really fun, fun thing. So all right, well,
Speaker 4: it's just been great and to our listeners, thank you
Speaker 4: so much. We're hopefully not always going to be this long,
Speaker 4: but we're gonna have a lot to talk about, and
Speaker 4: I think the uh you know that that it's be
Speaker 4: fun to explore these What are your thoughts on vengeance,
Speaker 4: what are your thoughts on your favorite ways doesn't pay
Speaker 4: it out in stories, or how it applies to real life,
Speaker 4: or any of these things. Would love to hear from you.
Speaker 4: We'll also going to hear from you. What are other
Speaker 4: fundamental ethical questions of superheroes that you'd like us to explore.
Speaker 4: And of course this has been for everybody, but going forth,
Speaker 4: these will be members only episodes and you can become
Speaker 4: a member for only five dollars a month fifty five
Speaker 4: dollars a year. Write in the show notes you'll see
Speaker 4: the link, or if you just go to the Ethical
Speaker 4: Panda dot com that'll take you to the link. For
Speaker 4: that five dollars a month, you get ad free episodes.
Speaker 4: Every episode will be ad free and a member's only feed.
Speaker 4: Most of our episodes will have a bonus content from members,
Speaker 4: not this one, because this whole thing was bonus content.
Speaker 4: And also you get to know your support and you'll
Speaker 4: get the bonus episodes going forward. It is one membership
Speaker 4: for both this and the Star Wars Generations podcast. You
Speaker 4: get all that content, although you can choose not to
Speaker 4: if you're not a Star Wars fan. You can have
Speaker 4: just this one or just that one or both, totally
Speaker 4: up to you. And of course you get to help
Speaker 4: us keep the lights on, help us keep you know,
Speaker 4: good good microphones and other things like that, and just
Speaker 4: help us, you know, do all the things that go
Speaker 4: into helping us make this podcast for you and start
Speaker 4: these great conversations. So I'm half of myself. Thank you
Speaker 4: so much to our wonderful guests and wonderful co host.
Speaker 4: Thank you to you all for listening. We have spoken