the-boys-analysis

[the-boys-analysis]

Okay, so this is a weird criticism of The Boys, but Homelander's whole fascist takeover that currently is his main shtick is not something he came up with organically. It's a variant on Stormfront's plan, which she pushed on him as a romantic gesture (because these people are super messed up). Technically, the main antagonist is a man finding success through the contributions of a woman who does not receive credit for it. It seems to me to be an example of sexism in the writing of the show that hides behind "She's a hated villain, so who cares?", following in the sexist pattern of Supernatural's Ruby and Whore of Babylon plotlines.

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So, yeah... The Boys is taking the Buffy route of characterizing the guy being tricked into having sex with someone pretending to be the person who he has a sexual relationship with as not rape by deception but some manner of cheating. It's... not great.

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Ouch. But deserved.

(from Rule34, with reference to a Herogasm page)

[the-boys-analysis]

Performative Stormfront Haters

I've complained a few times about what I call "performative Stormfront haters", and I want to highlight them for a moment to explain what I mean and why they should be considered a social problem tied into other social media harassment problems that get talked about more frequently. In 2020, during the release of The Boys season two, a bunch of keyboard warriors decided it was their moral obligation to harass actress Aya Cash for her role in the series as Stormfront.

Stormfront is a superhero/-villain character, who is introduced as someone who appears to be a likable feminist but is revealed to be a mass-murdering racist, ultimately revealed as a literal Nazi from WWII as a metaphor for fascism enduring to the modern day. It's generally a more serious take on the general themes surrounding the Hydra reveal in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Cash portrays the character in a compelling "love to hate 'em" way, brings some nuance to the character where Stormfront is somewhat sympathetic at the same time she's hateful, and is largely responsible for how cathartic it feels to see the character get beaten up at the end of the season. Cash did her job as an actor well and brought life to season two's main villain. And then a bunch of dorks decided it was a good idea to send her hate for portraying a Nazi in a television show.

At the time, antifa was a big pop culture trend with both supporters and detractors really making themselves known. Some of the George Floyd protesters were visibly antifa, and the right-wing media ran with that to fearmonger. Choosing a side and making it known who you support was popular on social media, a bit like competing football teams. Some people who admired antifa decided to act as antifa by taking what they saw as direct action against platforming of Nazis by harassing Aya Cash for playing a Nazi. This is not what antifa typically does (because it's stupid), owing to the lack of direction and effective propagation of ideology. They were just kind of aping antifa tactics observed second-hand instead of following examples taught in antifa groups. There was a bit of a runaway golem problem, where everyone just jumped on the bandwagon, becoming online haters because it's easy, and ended up acting more like Nazis in harassing some innocent person whose sole crime was participating in the performance of a story they didn't like, as with the online white supremacist harassment of the actors of color who performed in Star Wars.

What their actions ape at is antifa identifying actual white supremacists--people who actually truly believe in white superiority and try to promote it--and get them fired from their jobs, evicted from their apartments, and kept out of the public eye. They're going after actual, real Nazis and fighting the good fight in keeping them from rising to power. What the performative Stormfront haters did was encounter a Nazi character on a television show, feel angry at Stormfront's reveal because that's how the drama was written, then look up who played her on IMDB and treat this random actor like she's a real Nazi that they managed to track down, and subject her to harassment to get her to back out of portraying Stormfront--a character in a season already shot and being released--which is not remotely helpful, actively makes the world worse, and points at extreme confusion over what was actually going on. They were probably a bunch of children (in spite of the show's mature rating), jumping on a bandwagon, thinking they were crusaders for justice fighting the good fight against Nazis, while really acting like a violent mob harassing someone who was actually acting in an antifascist capacity for portraying a Nazi villain in a narrative designed to show how the character was evil.

Aya Cash's response was to publicize being ethnically Jewish, something that she clearly wouldn't have done if she hadn't been called a Nazi by this mob of haters. Though Reform Jews would accept her as patrilineal Jewish because she was raised with the religion and most people would accept her at least being ethnically Jewish, she doesn't practice the religion as an adult and didn't claim the label until she felt she needed to do so defensively, to stave off the mob. It was ultimately this, as well as support from co-star Antony Starr (Homelander), to stop the haters' momentum. Calling a Jewish woman a Nazi and trying to get her to quit acting in the name of fighting Nazis does tend to make you look more like the Nazi, so it worked... but it also put Cash in an awkward position where she now casts herself as Jewish when she's uncomfortable with the label, saying in an interview, "I guess I'm Jewish now," with an ambivalent gesture.

This is strikingly similar to cases in which closeted actors and creatives are harassed by queer audiences for being straight and daring to portray queer characters, often causing them to come out before they're ready. The only thing that will stop the mob is declaring an identity they're cool with. In fact, only a few months before the harassment of Aya Cash reached its peak, another Jewish woman, Becky Abertalli, author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, posted a Medium article, "I know I'm late.", in which she came out as bisexual and described how painful it was reading thinkpieces about how she never should have portrayed queer characters because everyone could tell she was straight and inauthentically rendering the characters through a straight woman's distorted lens. Of course, Abertalli was always bi and authentically representing the characters as queer, even if no one recognized it.

Aya Cash, meanwhile? Kind of obviously ethnically Jewish, which points at the performative Stormfront haters just plain not understanding what was actually going on. I mean... look at her.

In modern America, pale Ashkenazi Jews are typically considered white. The only exceptions come from contrasts with white supremacists, who at most ever consider them "lesser white" and usually as some variant of Asian race "infiltrating" whiteness, with strong influence from Nazi ideology. In this case, Nazism is present as a pervasive theme evoked but not literally rendered with actual neo-Nazi involvement, so Aya Cash kind of floats at the boundary of white and non-white. She was essentially harassed for being (too) white, so she argued that she was not, in fact, white. And that was effective, so "I guess [she's] Jewish now." In theory, she's a white-passing Jewish woman under the perception that Jews are a separate race. It all just points at how stupid and arbitrary racialism is.

I'd argue that her harassment is somewhat of an inverse of the harassment of the Star Wars actors of color, Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega. In that case, Nazis induced insecure racists to harass them to try to get them to quit and keep Star Wars white-centric. In this case, wannabe antifa members harassed who they perceived as a white woman portraying a Nazi to keep television Nazi-free in their warped understanding. It points at a similar psychological phenomenon of mob justice surrounding racialism. In a way, it represents a midpoint between the harassment of Star Wars actors of color and closeted queer creatives.

That, and also anti-shippers, who don't have a firm grasp on fiction vs. reality. Antis, who are largely young teenagers who consider themselves progressive warriors for justice, harass people who write edgy fanfic under the belief that it points at dangerous identities behind the writing. They think--or profess to think--that anyone who writes non-con is the type of person who would rape someone and that it is their duty to harass them off the Internet and engage in antifa-like actions of getting them fired, etc. for what their activities in the development of fictional narratives are thought to indicate about them being a danger to society. The harassment of Aya Cash is similar to this phenomenon but with a more racialized bend.

To be quite clear, it wouldn't matter if Aya Cash were the Aryaniest Aryan to ever Aryan, as with Charlize Theron's portrayal of in-universe film Stormfront. Cash portrayed a fictional character, and it should have been understood as mere fiction. The narrative can be critiqued, and there are a few things in the portrayal of Stormfront that I find deeply flawed, but fiction should not be taken as a 1:1 indication of the creatives' viewpoints. Otherwise, every actor who portrays King Lear would be investigated as a psychopath gouging out people's eyes, right? This is not a recognized aspect to criminal investigation because it's silly. I believe literal children absorbed a distorted understanding of what antifa does and misapplied it to feel good at being bullies. Like, does any of this make any sense at all when you really dig into it?

Performative Stormfront hate has had a lasting impact on the The Boys fandom. People are compelled to make a big show about how much they hate Stormfront. People who express liking the character without peppering their descriptions with hate for what she actually does in the story are viewed with suspicion as potential Nazis. Most tellingly, there's an Emperor's New Clothes attitude where people are extremely hesitant to describe the character as hot when the show goes to great lengths to portray her as such. Of course, she's hot. They cast Aya Cash, who's known for her erotic role in You're the Worst, gave Stormfront an enhanced bust and emphasized bush, and showed her having sex in every position, including in midair with her superpowers. You find her hot because you watched a television show portraying her as hot, not because you're actually a Nazi. Learn some media literacy, my God.

This is fandumb to the extreme.

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I suspect that Rebecca Sonnenshine intended the Stormfront character to be more complex and sympathetic than she ended up being to the vast majority of the audience, and Kripke ended up leaning into "Fuck her; she's a Nazi," and cut out this suggestion that she never wanted her powers and is to some extent a victim of (Frederick) Vought herself. If you watch the interview of Sonnenshine talking about Stormfront, it's clear she loves this character; it's her baby.

Aya Cash communicates a lot with her subtle acting skills. Second to last gif, she looks pained while talking about Vought abusing power by giving people powers. Last gif, her angry (and pained) stare is clearly at something in her mind, not what she's literally looking at. We might first think that she's thinking about some antisemitic conspiracy theory where "they" refers to the Jews. I suspect we're ultimately supposed to understand her as feeling victimized by Vought and to feel sorry for her, which is why the scene was cut.

SUPERHEROES ARE NOT BORN, BUT MADE Exclusive: The shocking truth about Compound V revealed.

[the-boys-analysis]

Watching the season four premiere of The Boys...

It seems like Stormfront is still carrying the villains despite Aya Cash no longer being on the show... I rather think Eric Kripke pulled a Ruby with the character, a fridging of a great female villain with sexist undertones, just that he stumbled into a situation where no one wants to criticize him because the character is a Nazi and everyone performatively hates her instead of analyzing the work of fiction as a work of fiction. (The performative hatred of Stormfront is just bizarre. Harassing a Jewish actress for portraying a Nazi in a work of fiction about the Nazis being bad is pointless aggression.)

After killing off Ruby, Supernatural had a gap for charismatic villains, and you can tell they were scrambling to make Ruby 2.0 with the various derivations of the Lilith figure, mostly God's sister (I forget her name). Likewise, Stormfront was killed off, and now they're replacing her with Firecracker, who is exactly the same but less charismatic without Aya Cash and doesn't have the strength of the character being developed though time on the show like Stormfront would have been if she wasn't killed off.

I feel like the woman in "Red Flags" would appreciate the sex scene in 4x02. I swear the show is leading up to a series finale in which Homelander ejaculates straight into the camera. It will also be the first episode in 3D. 😉

I was translating the Nazi stuff for my father, trying to explain what they were talking about and how the spoofs were not much more outlandish than the things they were referencing. He cares a lot about the threat Nazis represent, but I don’t think he knows that much about them...

Me: (explains what "clovergender" means)

Him: "Weird."

Me: "Yes, it's weird. Nazis are weird."

Nazi supe Firecracker dropping a reference to "The Storm" was obviously a Q-Anon reference but is also thematically appropriate considering they're Stormchasers, followers of Stormfront.

I like that the show writers are making the antisemitism of the far-right American nationalists explicit. I took issue with them just depicting bad guys repeating Nazi dog whistle talking points instead of making it clear who they are. At a time when antisemitism is on the rise, we can't afford to be wishy-washy. Even Stormfront wasn't overtly antisemitic. I don't like Firecracker as Stormfront 2.0, but at least she represents the evil of the Nazis authentically instead of leaning into Ilsa sensationalisn.

Good development of Frenchie. I like that they finally made his bisexuality overt instead of hinted. I also like seeing some effect of him taking hard drugs besides that just being a background element to freak out Hughie.

Sage is a great new villain. I like that she isn't naturally a fascist but just assumes the role when she agrees to work for Homelander and does so excellently. I suppose she's also a bit of a Stormfront 2.0 in her plotting aspect but distinctive from both Stormfront and Firecracker. She is an anti-racist facilitating a fascist uprising based around supe vs. human bigotry she probably doesn't believe in. That makes for a wicked villain and compelling political commentary.

Whenever Homelander struggles to parent Ryan, I have to wonder how things would be different if Stormfront was still around to co-parent. I like to think she'd help Ryan be more covert when he sneaks out and train him to be a better manipulator. "You're lying... We shouldn't be able to tell!" (I'll make a fix-it fic when I'm done with CotV. 😉)

The depiction of transgender people is mixed. They're influenced by both the past trends of transphobia on the main show and the new trans-positivity on Gen V. The fact that Nazis demonize trans people as part of their antisemitism isn't shied away from, but they're still antagonistic to trans people being accepted in society.

I'd say this season effectively captures the tension of living in a far-right environment. It's very tight and well-paced. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest.

[the-boys-analysis]

The Boys Marketing

Similar to issues surrounding The Hunger Games as a profitable franchise, the Amazon series The Boys critiques the excesses of modern capitalism and then Amazon reproduces them in marketing The Boys merchandise. There are numerous toys, T-shirts, and costumes paying homage to the various characters as well as general series logos stamped on whatever they can sell. In some cases, the satirical nature of a framework glorifying these awful figures is retained, but some are more ambiguous. The use of the character Stormfront as a Nazi antagonist serves to clarify the satirical nature of some of these products, but there also appears to be an active effort to obscure her nature as a Nazi to make her more marketable.

When it comes to depictions of The Boys, the protagonists, the merchandise accurately captures the sentiment of rebellion against Vought as an evil capitalist organization. We can critique this at a meta level--Amazon selling "fight capitalism" merch to make money from a "fight capitalism" show subverts the point of a "fight capitalism" show--but it is, at least, consistent with the message of the show.

Things get rockier when it comes to depictions of bad guys who act as part of the evil capitalist organization.

The most overt satirical product they have, in my opinion, is the "Brave Maeve" critique of rainbow washing:

The use of the rainbow-washed Claddagh makes it clear to any queer people what's being invoked here, and it has a very sneering tone at the whole concept--true to the show's satirical nature.

The Homelander merchandise presentation is largely ambiguous in nature, marketing both to people who appreciate him as a villain and conservatives who like him as a character they can relate to: a conservative American patriot just trying to stumble his way through life.

This Homelander costume is completely neutral. Someone might buy it because they like villains and want to portray a horrible person. Or, maybe a MAGA type would buy it because they identify with the figure as a beleaguered hard-right American just trying to keep America great, like the fellow who wore this costume at the Million MAGA March (2020-11-14 demonstration by conspiracy theorists claiming Trump won the election and Biden stole it).

In this Homelander and Stormfront shirt, the use of Stormfront as an obviously evil Nazi antagonist clarifies the satirical nature of the image:

You'd be hard-pressed to find any actual American fascists who like the vibe of this shirt. It is overtly about the show's villains and reads like it should be worn by people who like villains and/or the critique of American nationalism as equivalent to Nazism. I think even actual Nazis would be turned off by how obviously evil the Nazi character looks. (TBH, they were already alienated by the casting of Jewish actress Aya Cash, in the tradition of Colonel Klink.)

On the other hand, this shirt just looks like edgy patriotic fashion favored by conservatives. Even the metallic text lacks the hammy villain tone of the "Homelander & Stormfront" shirt and just looks vaguely intimidating in-line with such fashion. It would be really easy for a hard-right Homelander fanboy to wear this shirt unironically, in full support of Homelander as a patriotic figure. It could be said that this shirt was perhaps designed with satirical intent, but this is not clear at all from its presentation. In context, it looks like Amazon wanted to market to some of its known consumer demographic: hard-right unironic Homelander fans.

Meanwhile, on the official Gen V merchandise page, the lead actors simultaneously act as satirical figures hawking merchandise like the wacky capitalist institution the show criticizes and are the lead actors hawking merchandise for the capitalist institution producing the show:

Self-aware irony only goes so far.

In the show, Dawn of the Seven (a spoof of Justice League with elements of The Avengers) is used to criticize superhero movies in our universe (e.g. they're tropey, can be sexist, have questionable themes, etc.). In Amazon's merchandise, it's used to unironically market the superhero figures as these cool characters.

Is this a critique of Homelander or marketing at all? I'd argue no. It is unironic pro-Homelander, pro-marketing, pro-consumerism, and pro-superhero-fandom theming to appeal to the lowest common denominator of fan, likely to be a conservative fan of Homelander.

The worst part of this is with the use of season two's Girls Get It Done, a critique of superhero movies (particularly Avengers: Endgame) pandering to women with an all-woman team-up that purports to be feminist but doesn't back it up with any actual feminist writing surrounding it or understanding what women want past a simplistic disingenuous argument that women are better than men. The three female superheroes of the Seven--Starlight, Queen Maeve, and Stormfront--are arbitrarily teamed up and paraded around as a faux-feminist marketing gimmick. This is a clear satirical element in the show. However, the Amazon merchandise uses it unironically as a woman-targeted gimmick for the show's female fans.

It is weird as hell that someone thought this piece of satire depicting a literal Nazi antagonist would make a good "girl power" piece marketed to women. Again, possible satirical intent is nerfed by unironic capitalistic greed.

Let's talk about Stormfront. She's a likable villain, and it's fairly reasonable to sell merchandise representing the figure as a villain. Her only T-shirts are the ones I've posted above. "Homelander & Stormfront" effectively depicts her as a villain in a critique of American fascism. However, "Girls Get It Done" is ambiguous in the manner of the Homelander shirt that seemingly panders to conservative unironic Homelander fans. Stormfront is just there, alongside two heroic figures, looking cool alongside them. You'd have to watch the show to know she's a villain.

And here's another thing: her Nazi signifiers are all obscured. Her arm bands are seen from a weird angle and somewhat blocked by Queen Maeve; her imperial eagle belt buckle is hidden in artificially generated shadow, and she's not printed in a high-enough resolution to see her swastika fabric pattern. All that's left is her skinhead-evocative Skrillex hair, which is far from overt. Skrillex isn't a Nazi, after all. Amazon essentially did the same sort of thing they did with the Billy Butcher merchandise in censoring the swear words to make them friendlier wear around in public and removed hate symbols from a character who is innately a political figure as a means of critiquing racial hatred in America. In the process, they made a Nazi more palatable without the corresponding political critique.

The one other way they marketed Stormfront merchandise was with a limited-edition collection of themed Nike sneakers, available only through sweepstakes. Several of the main heroes and villains in season two got their own sneaker color theme, including Stormfront (top right).

Here, Stormfront's Nazi crap is retained with an allusion to her belt buckle--the Nazi imperial eagle--printed on the side under the swoosh. Other characters get their own symbols in the same general area, so it's in theme with the others but also questionable given its authentic Nazi imagery in absent of a context of critiquing modern America. People are expected to just don Nazi imagery as fans of the show. The Homelander, A-Train, Black Noir, and Kimiko sneakers are decorated with blood imagery, at least signalling "edgy show", but Stormfront's are without even that limited context. (Please do not take this as endorsement of people harassing Aya Cash for playing a Nazi. It's okay to portray a Nazi as an actor on a television show, just not out of context in the real world like this.)

The grey portion at the toe resembles Stormfront's arm bands and may, like the arm bands, depict a desaturated American flag like that worn by American conservatives. In the context of the show, this is used to critique American conservatives as fascist and embracing Nazism. Removed from context, it would suffer the same problem as the Homelander shirt aping conservative fashion.

The decision to make Stormfront's sneakers dark with white laces is another interesting choice. Neo-Nazis often signal to each other by wearing black boots with contrasting white laces. It's unclear if this was intentional.

I'm honestly unsure which is worse, merchandise obscuring that she's a Nazi to make her more palatable or merchandise retaining her Nazi characterization in a context completely absent of framing her as a deplorable villain.

All these bad marketing decisions come together in a weird capitalist kerfuffle aping at being a satire of capitalism while being outrageous in itself. It unironically showcases why the kind of stuff the show parodies is bad.

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Thinking about this further, it may be the result of a conflict between accurate representation of how far-right women promote fascism in the modern world and Sonnenshine's desire for a plot depicting Stormfront as likable for a while and then dramatically revealing she is a fascist and the viewer fell for her act. Sonnenshine has described in an interview (NOTE: track down interview) wanting Stormfront to represent modern fascists who seem to say reasonable things and then later reveal a more dangerous worldview. Sonnenshine may have once been a fan of Lauren Southern, not grasping her wider politics, and then later felt betrayed when she saw Southern dog-whistle Nazi ideology (I'm guessing), but this is not a normal interpretation of Southern.

People don't tend to like her unless they're far-right themselves and reasonably okay rubbing shoulders with Nazi and Nazi-adjacent people. Southern particularly appeals to a right-wing libertarian subset that both abstractly supports the right of white supremacists to play a role in politics and winds up concretely supporting them as a reflection of such values, ending up in the crowd pandered to with alt-lite gesticulations of the good western world opposing the scary Muslim world. Maybe Sonnenshine was loosely in this crowd, believing Southern had a general point about women being threatened by scary non-white immigrants injecting misogynistic cultural values and didn't pick up on her literally being a fascist until she said something about a shadowy conspiracy of globalists secretly pulling the strings to lead the western world to ruin, and then Sonnenshine realized Southern was basically just a Nazi pushing antisemitic conspiracy theories... but that doesn't make for good TV.

It's not flattering to say you were taken in by Lauren Southern. Southern's whole platform is based on antifeminism and white supremacism, just abstracted into buzzwords and dog whistles. You can't say you fell for it without that revealing something about your own politics. I highly suspect Stormfront's rant to Adam Bourke (in likable feminist persona) represents Sonnenshine's own politics as a feminist, so it would be embarrassing as a feminist surrounded by other feminists to admit attraction to a far-right antifeminist demagogue, which would encourage Sonnenshine to edit Stormfront's likable side to a straight-up act with overt feminist politics to later be revealed as a lie rather than as two sides of the same Reichsadler-bearing coin.

It's also just more dramatic to have the character project the persona of a progressive activist and then suddenly drop the act in an extreme way, massacring non-white civilians, then slipping back into the act, and later dramatically revealing she's a literal Nazi from WWII, suddenly speaking with a German accent and making Final Solution allusions. That is more interesting than far-right politics dressed up in likable terms, at times revealing antisemitism while not changing that much from the normal patter. It's better TV to have such a dramatic shift.

It's also a bad representation of how far-right women actually function in the modern world. If you want your show to depict the world as it is, just through a bit of abstraction into a superhero metaphor, changing up how it actually works is detrimental to that end. A better depiction might be similar to the cases of Laci Green and Arielle Scarcella, who initially presented as progressive feminist influencers but had noticeable far-right tendencies (Islamophobia and transphobia, respectively) that when routinely criticized, sent them looking for support on the right. When they found the far-right community accepting (plying them with lovebombing), they flipped to advocating for the far-right with their Islamophobic and transphobic values front and center. In Scarcella's case, she remained an influencer and just flipped her content to being Tucker Carlson-esque. If Stormfront were based on one of these cases, she would look a lot different but would accurately reflect how a progressive feminist influencer would end up promoting the far-right.

Or maybe Sonnenshine could just own being susceptible to Lauren Southern's preaching, coming from a right-wing background or something, and make Stormfront more accurate to how far-right influencer women actually work.

Stormfront and Lauren Southern

I'm reevaluating some of my thoughts on the TV show version of Stormfront. Even though I think her main writer, Rebecca Sonnenshine, is a feminist with radical feminist beliefs and that she projects some of them into Stormfront's progressive persona at the beginning of season two when she's supposed to be likable, I'm not sure I would characterize that persona as specifically feminist. I think Stormfront is derivative of alt-right influencer Lauren Southern and that her rant about the "Girls Get It Done" sanitized feminist message being bad for suggesting she would think women are superior ("I think chicks and dicks are in it together,") is a reference to Southern's "Why I am not a feminist" video for the far-right Rebel Media.

In Southern's video, she plainly lays out her politics as against "feminism" or "third-wave feminism" (in quotes because her definitions of these concepts are inaccurate and more just buzzwords about the antagonistic left), and she uses MRA talking points about ways men suffer and doesn't give a nuanced view past demonizing feminists. It all fits into the pattern of far-right propaganda that works in tandem to radicalize its viewers. In Canada, it's scary enough to call it neo-fascist; in America, we just call it normal right-wing media. Though I think Stormfront is supposed to evoke this kind of figure, it's also distorted and abstracted into what appears to be a reasonable feminist (or, at least, the semblance of such) calling out a capitalist distortion of feminism in-line with Maeve standing opposed to rainbow-washing marketing.

It's difficult to determine the precise distinctions in Stormfront's portrayal.

[the-boys-analysis]

Stormfront and Lauren Southern

I'm reevaluating some of my thoughts on the TV show version of Stormfront. Even though I think her main writer, Rebecca Sonnenshine, is a feminist with radical feminist beliefs and that she projects some of them into Stormfront's progressive persona at the beginning of season two when she's supposed to be likable, I'm not sure I would characterize that persona as specifically feminist. I think Stormfront is derivative of alt-right influencer Lauren Southern and that her rant about the "Girls Get It Done" sanitized feminist message being bad for suggesting she would think women are superior ("I think chicks and dicks are in it together,") is a reference to Southern's "Why I am not a feminist" video for the far-right Rebel Media.

In Southern's video, she plainly lays out her politics as against "feminism" or "third-wave feminism" (in quotes because her definitions of these concepts are inaccurate and more just buzzwords about the antagonistic left), and she uses MRA talking points about ways men suffer and doesn't give a nuanced view past demonizing feminists. It all fits into the pattern of far-right propaganda that works in tandem to radicalize its viewers. In Canada, it's scary enough to call it neo-fascist; in America, we just call it normal right-wing media. Though I think Stormfront is supposed to evoke this kind of figure, it's also distorted and abstracted into what appears to be a reasonable feminist (or, at least, the semblance of such) calling out a capitalist distortion of feminism in-line with Maeve standing opposed to rainbow-washing marketing.

It's difficult to determine the precise distinctions in Stormfront's portrayal.

[the-boys-analysis]

The Boys #1 notes: pages 3-4

Page 3 introduces the main character, Hughie... No, sorry, "Wee" Hughie. Because he's Scottish? Like, I know the comics came first, but it's so intuitive that the everyman character for an American audience be an American that the shift to Scottish in the comics is jarring. He even ends up in America for most of the plot, so it's just a weird decision to make him Scottish... and good on the show for making him American.

Also, Hughie in the comics is about average height, so I'm not even sure what the "Wee" is about. It's not like he has dwarfism. It's even more inappropriate in the show because Jack Quaid towers above the other cast members, so it makes sense they dropped it there. Though, I think Frenchie calls him "Petite Hughie" at one point in a nod to the comics, apparently referencing his diminutive personality more than his actual height.

The more I think about it, "Wee" might just be bathroom humor. Like, "lololol, this guy's name has piss in it, what a loser" kind of humor. It is, sadly, not out of character for the comics, which makes it plausible in my mind.

If we're being generous, the "Hughie" part might be a nod to Huey P. Newton. Maybe? idk

So, what he does on the page is take his girlfriend Robin out for a date at the carnival. Robin demonstrates the presumed values of the reader, what the presumed white cishet male reader would see as a valuable girlfriend: a cute, busty, slightly nerdy-looking Velma type. Her skin tone is darker than Wee Hughie's, which was translated in the show into her being Hispanic, but I'm not sure she was intended in the comics to be anything other than a WASP type with a different skin tone.

The very first thing Wee Hughie does in the comic, our introduction to the character as the reader stand-in, is be homophobic. He tells Robin about going on UFO conspiracy websites and claims that aliens crashed at Roswell, that their bodies are kept in Area 51, and they're pink... because they're gay. Funny? I think we're supposed to laugh at him for being nerdy enough to go on these websites but find his squeamishness over gay people relatable.

He goes on to express fear of gay aliens abducting him and making him gay, which is just standard homophobia, seen today with "groomer" fearmongering. He then defensively claims that he's not homophobic. This... might be an intentional character flaw? But it is... played up for humorous relatability.

In the show, Hughie is an awkward straight ally who is totally fine with gay people, tries to be supportive, and stumbles a little. Thank you, Seth Rogen. (No, really. Seth Rogen has been an outspoken straight ally for years now. I credit him for all the progressive spins on comic homophobic content in the show.)

The page ends with Wee Hughie realizing Robin said that she loved him for the first time. They share a lovely romantic moment on page 4. I'm sure nothing on page 5 could possibly screw this up.

[the-boys-analysis]

The Boys #1 notes: cover to page 2

Alright, so The Boys was written by Garth Ennis, a man who hates genres and tries to end them with satirical fiction. The Boys is his attempt to end superhero comics. Alan Moore previously attempted that with Watchmen by portraying everything with deadly seriousness. Obviously, he failed and Watchmen was ultimately subsumed into the DC universe, but his effort shows genuine human empathy as comes from understanding the genre, recognizing how people actually behave, and presenting something people would develop a real emotional response to. Garth Ennis basically shits all over that and that's what The Boys is: Watchmen covered in shit. I don't usually get so graphic, but the sheer repugnance of The Boys demands a bit of rhetorical oomph.

Darick Robertson does the illustration. He also deserves some of the blame for making everything look like a fascist's satirical representation of degenerate art.

The first issue, released in October 2006, is given the appropriate title "This Is Going to Hurt".

Cover: Oooh, we're so edgy! Look at these tough guys and one girl ready to beat up the viewer in a bit of gangland violence. You'd have to be a reeeaaal tough guy to read it, right?!

Title page: A parody of Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia's depiction of Wonder Woman stepping on Batman's head, here distorted into a gross image of a boot (Butcher) stamping down on the face of a Captain America knockoff (Soldier Boy) and seriously mashing up his face in horrific gore. Like, this is completely unnecessary, just "Oooh, we're edgy!" to start off the edgelord book and let you know you're in for an edgy time.

Thematically, it nods to the communist idea of the working class rebelling against the oppressive capitalist class. Butcher's boot is the working class leather lace-up used as a symbol of the hard-working common man often seen in communist propaganda. However, it's also consistent with fascist art about a Volkish uprising against Jewish elites (national socialism borrowing various actual socialist concepts and grafting them to far-right antisemitism). A lot of stuff in The Boys feels fascist-friendly, if not centering them as the target demographic.

The title card tells us this arc is called "The Name of the Game: Part One".

Pages 1-2: We're introduced to Billy Butcher, an assholish looking black leather-clad man on a park bench with his bulldog named Terror. For some reason, female The Boys fans love this dog. Like, they love this dog. I guess he's kind of cute before Butcher reveals how he's trained him, but... I don't get it.

Butcher looks up at some superheroes flying overhead and pledges to get revenge on one of them (Homelander), calling him a "cunt". Now, the word "cunt" has different levels of obscenity in the U.S. vs. the U.K. In the U.K., it means something like "asshole" and is regularly used against men, while in the U.S., it's a misogynistic slur exclusively used against women with the connotation that they're only valuable for sex and shouldn't be considered real people. I think if a man were to call another man a "cunt" in the U.S., it might be taken as a rape threat because the concept of being used for penetration is bound up in it.

Butcher is a working class man from England, so he can use "cunt" in the freer way, but I really get the sense that Ennis (from the U.K. himself) specifically included a character from this demographic so that he could get away with plastering the pages with what American readers would read as a misogynistic slur. It's set in America and marketed to Americans. Ooh, edgy!

Now, what Butcher says is "I'm gonna fuckin' have you, you cunt." With the American connotation, that sounds like a rape threat. Our hero, everyone, starting things off with a rape threat.

Something I'm going to be saying a lot is "The show spins this progressively." The show is genius, finding the good parts in the dung heap. The "cunt" thing is spun in an interesting way commentating on American culture, challenging notions of obscenity, and fits into a pattern of musing on gender roles. Thank you, Rebecca Sonnenshine.

Next time... page 3!

[the-boys-analysis]

The Boys #1 notes: cover to page 2

Alright, so The Boys was written by Garth Ennis, a man who hates genres and tries to end them with satirical fiction. The Boys is his attempt to end superhero comics. Alan Moore previously attempted that with Watchmen by portraying everything with deadly seriousness. Obviously, he failed and Watchmen was ultimately subsumed into the DC universe, but his effort shows genuine human empathy as comes from understanding the genre, recognizing how people actually behave, and presenting something people would develop a real emotional response to. Garth Ennis basically shits all over that and that's what The Boys is: Watchmen covered in shit. I don't usually get so graphic, but the sheer repugnance of The Boys demands a bit of rhetorical oomph.

Darick Robertson does the illustration. He also deserves some of the blame for making everything look like a fascist's satirical representation of degenerate art.

The first issue, released in October 2006, is given the appropriate title "This Is Going to Hurt".

Cover: Oooh, we're so edgy! Look at these tough guys and one girl ready to beat up the viewer in a bit of gangland violence. You'd have to be a reeeaaal tough guy to read it, right?!

Title page: A parody of Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia's depiction of Wonder Woman stepping on Batman's head, here distorted into a gross image of a boot (Butcher) stamping down on the face of a Captain America knockoff (Soldier Boy) and seriously mashing up his face in horrific gore. Like, this is completely unnecessary, just "Oooh, we're edgy!" to start off the edgelord book and let you know you're in for an edgy time.

Thematically, it nods to the communist idea of the working class rebelling against the oppressive capitalist class. Butcher's boot is the working class leather lace-up used as a symbol of the hard-working common man often seen in communist propaganda. However, it's also consistent with fascist art about a Volkish uprising against Jewish elites (national socialism borrowing various actual socialist concepts and grafting them to far-right antisemitism). A lot of stuff in The Boys feels fascist-friendly, if not centering them as the target demographic.

The title card tells us this arc is called "The Name of the Game: Part One".

Pages 1-2: We're introduced to Billy Butcher, an assholish looking black leather-clad man on a park bench with his bulldog named Terror. For some reason, female The Boys fans love this dog. Like, they love this dog. I guess he's kind of cute before Butcher reveals how he's trained him, but... I don't get it.

Butcher looks up at some superheroes flying overhead and pledges to get revenge on one of them (Homelander), calling him a "cunt". Now, the word "cunt" has different levels of obscenity in the U.S. vs. the U.K. In the U.K., it means something like "asshole" and is regularly used against men, while in the U.S., it's a misogynistic slur exclusively used against women with the connotation that they're only valuable for sex and shouldn't be considered real people. I think if a man were to call another man a "cunt" in the U.S., it might be taken as a rape threat because the concept of being used for penetration is bound up in it.

Butcher is a working class man from England, so he can use "cunt" in the freer way, but I really get the sense that Ennis (from the U.K. himself) specifically included a character from this demographic so that he could get away with plastering the pages with what American readers would read as a misogynistic slur. It's set in America and marketed to Americans. Ooh, edgy!

Now, what Butcher says is "I'm gonna fuckin' have you, you cunt." With the American connotation, that sounds like a rape threat. Our hero, everyone, starting things off with a rape threat.

Something I'm going to be saying a lot is "The show spins this progressively." The show is genius, finding the good parts in the dung heap. The "cunt" thing is spun in an interesting way commentating on American culture, challenging notions of obscenity, and fits into a pattern of musing on gender roles. Thank you, Rebecca Sonnenshine.

Next time... page 3!

[the-boys-analysis]

I've been trying to write an essay about The Boys, the original graphic novel, and it's actually really difficult. It's just... so horrible, gross, and offensive (to all senses) that I'm struggling to even wrap my head around the shape of it and delineate its problems in an orderly style. It... honestly feels like something a Nazi would make the day after he decided he was antifa. That's the best way I can describe it, lolsob.

It's just gross and repugnant in a way characteristic of fascist art. You know, they represent the world as degenerate and worthy of scorn through a gross art style. The Boys wants you to hate the corrupt world with its capitalist exploitation and sexual perversion, and this comes out in a very similar way to fascist art. I guess you could compare it to the Gen X trippy urban gothic style that birthed Bevis and Butthead and The Simpsons... but it leaves that behind and charges straight down Fascist Alley to reinvent the wheel and make something that looks like the racist comics you find in trash corners of the Internet, just with an ostensibly antifascist theme.

So... here's what I'm thinking: To help me write my essay, I might read the comics and post my reactions to them with a clipped image. Like liveblogging but... slower. I'll tag it "the boys notes". You can block that if you find it obnoxious. Otherwise, it'll give me something to buff out my blog queue. Feel free to use the notes as conversation prompts to either engage in analytical discourse or gawk at my cringing.

[the-boys-analysis]

This is a sideblog of @goingrampant for storing analysis posts of The Boys, both comic and TV show. Keeping them on the main blog, I'm liable to lose them in the clutter. I may occasionally reblog someone else who makes similar analytical points.