Robinson seems to be part of what she calls “the
intensely devoted section of the Captain America fan base who consider Bucky,
not Peggy Carter, to be the true object of Steve Rogers’ affection.” I’m not
enough of a Marvel fanboy to know the full history of Cap and Bucky’s
relationship, but I suspect it’s fair to say that from its comic book origins
up through its cinematic iterations, it was never intended to be homosexual,
regardless of how much actors Chris Evans (Capt. America) and Sebastian Stan
(Bucky) have enjoyed teasing fans about that possibility during the movie’s publicity
tour. Director Joe Russo himself, shrewdly keeping the titillation simmering,
has remarked, “People can interpret the relationship however they want to interpret
it.”
But the movie itself leaves little room for
interpretation: the fictional friends are clearly straight, frustrating as this
may be for those fans itching for a little gay onscreen flirtation. Romantic
sparks fly between Cap and Peggy Carter’s niece, and there is a scene in which
Steve and Bucky get nostalgic about their days chasing girls in pre-war
Brooklyn. Vanity Fair’s Robinson
dismisses this as “a sweet, human bonding moment, but one that also bristles with heterosexual virility.”
[Emphasis added]
Robinson feels that a heterosexual romance is
predictable, boring and flat. She swoons that “there was more juice in Bucky
ogling Steve’s bulging bicep as Cap struggled to ground a helicopter.” It takes
an especially fevered and salacious imagination to look right past Capt.
America’s awe-inspiring, heroic effort in that tense action sequence and focus instead
on what she imagines to be Bucky’s lust for Steve’s muscles. That says
something about our culture’s profane and ignoble obsessions.
Robinson goes on to complain that “Marvel
seems to think it has to have its heroes in heterosexual love
affairs in order to maximize audience appeal.” In fact, Marvel doesn’t just
“seem to think” this – it is a demonstrable fact that an overwhelming
proportion of the world audience is heterosexual. As readers at the Twitchy website noted, it would have been a huge
mistake for Marvel Studios to flip the characters’ sexuality. “When
[writers] alter an existing character with decades of history to make the PC
crowd happy, then it’s complete garbage because it’s blatant pandering,” said
one reader.
More importantly, making the heroes’ sexual
orientation the central focus of their relationship diminishes the profound nature
of friendship, particularly between
men. Great fictional male heroes from the earliest beginnings of literature
have had close, nonsexual bonds with other men: Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Achilles
and Patroclus, Hamlet and Horatio, Holmes and Watson, Frodo and Sam, all the
way up to Batman and Robin, and now Captain America and Bucky. But today we seem
perversely insistent on sexualizing everything and then pushing the envelope of
traditional notions of sexuality. For Robinson and her ilk, heroism and
committed friendship in superhero flicks are less compelling than bringing a
perceived homosexual subtext to the forefront of the film.
“Would it really have hurt,” Robinson
yearned, “to keep their relationship more ambiguous?... If Disney isn’t
inclined to give audiences a gay superhero, couldn’t they have at least left us
the dream of Bucky and Cap?” It’s revealing that a critic at a pop culture outlet
of Vanity Fair’s stature would
express such frustration that a powerful friendship between two men isn’t
sexualized. It shows a shallow appreciation for that bond and a subversive
desire to undermine what the magazine’s critic dismissed as “heterosexual
virility.” She doesn’t seem to object to virility per se, only the heterosexual kind, because that is, in today’s
politically correct parlance, heteronormative, and anything “normative” must be
oppressive and outmoded.
In the end, Vanity Fair fatalistically accepts that Marvel never intended to
bring out “the homoerotic subtext of Cap and Bucky.” Again, that subtext exists
only in the minds of those desperate to find one. Perhaps if the Joanne
Robinsons in the audience could elevate their sights above an imagined sexual
subtext and focus on the nobler nature of the characters’ friendship, they
might have found Captain America: Civil
War as uplifting and inspiring as everyone else.
From Acculturated, 5/23/16
