‘Falcon & The Winter Soldier’ & The Myth of Nonviolence
Source: CBR
The MCU show Falcon and The Winter Soldier (2021) tries to cover a lot of ground in its mere six-episode runtime. Among many other things, the series is a reflection on what it would mean for a Black man to serve as an American superhero and icon, the white entitlement that inevitably follows in the wake of that change, as well as a not entirely fleshed out conversation about nationalism and anarchy. It covers all these themes and more while connecting to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe and delivering plenty of action.
The way the series ties these themes together is through a philosophical debate on violence and activism. At the core of this show, there is the central question of how to stop an injustice. When an entity is going to do something unspeakable, as the central governing body is poised to do in the show, how far should you go to stop them? Is it okay to use violence, even if civilians end up in the crosshairs? Should you resort to extreme methods to prevent tens of thousands of people from being killed and millions displaced?
This conversation is an interesting one for a mainstream franchise to have, but unfortunately, the show largely sidesteps it, so the viewer doesn’t have to think too deeply about these questions. We walk away paternalistically thinking that the series’ more radical actors, while motivated by the right reasons, are ultimately misguided. They went too far with their violent ways and should have fought for social change “the right way.”
That narrative is awfully convenient for a multi-billion dollar company such as Disney to make. We need to question if maybe there is a reason the “bad guys” are the ones who want to disrupt the social order, and the “good guys” are the ones who ultimately maintain it.
It’s tough to talk about the MCU because every triumph and mistake follows it — that’s the whole point of an extended universe. One frustrating creative decision that has been with us since Phase II is an active attempt to distance all criticism from real-world American institutions. While there is an Earth and a United States government in this fictional universe, it’s not our world. It’s close. It has most of the same culture, music, racism, and inequality, but much of the mistakes perpetrated by the US government in our timeline were not actually caused by it in this one. As we learn in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), these were caused in the MCU by secret HYDRA agents working within the US government, “secretly feeding crisis, reaping war” so that humanity would “sacrifice its freedom to gain its security.”
We see a similar situation play out in Falcon and The Winter Soldier. While the U.S.’s racism is called out in this series — an issue difficult to ignore following the George Floyd uprising — the actual US government and the military are mostly not criticized here. A fictional inter-governmental body known as The Global Repatriation Council calls the shots in this series. The GRC is the one responsible for the current “bad” plaguing the world. “You Americans have become brutes,” says one anarchist sympathizer to an American operative, insinuating that it’s the GRC that has really changed things. This deflection is why many critics often label MCU films and shows a type of propaganda. This level of distance safely allows the viewer to absorb the message of these films without feeling defensive over genuine criticism.
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier likewise commits a similar sidestep with its villain. While there are many antagonists on this show — the mischievous Baron Zemo (Daniel Brühl), the new Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the elusive Power Broker of Madripoor, a mysterious lobbyist called Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) — the central “bad guy” is an idealistic revolutionary named Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman). Karli is a young ideologue and super-soldier who wants to uproot the status quo. She leads a grassroots movement of ordinary citizens who are tired of how the world's governments manage the planet, and are not afraid to resort to violence to get what they want.
Right off the bat, this characterization rings some alarm bells. Our recent history has been one of young activists such as Greta Thunberg fighting for social justice. Intentionally or not, when you make your revolutionary, grassroots movement led by a charismatic young woman, it’s going to create a comparison with these real-world movements. The implicit framing we receive (i.e., the message this story is trying to impart to the viewer) is that the movements of our world have the potential to be this “radical” as well.
However, Karli isn’t battling to stop climate change or other more tangible, polarizing issues, but instead belongs to a group called the Flag Smashers, who want to live in a world without borders. The central conceit is that during “the Snap” (i.e., when an intergalactic space tyrant removed half of all sentient life from the galaxy), there were more resources to go around, which meant old paradigms were no longer enforced. Migrants that were once prevented from entering parts of the world due to xenophobia were now actively welcomed to “developed” countries with open arms.
After everyone who left came back, referred to in the show as “the Blip,” it created a strain on resources. There were suddenly billions of more people again, after five years of society readjusting to them being gone. We see a great reflection of this shift when superhero Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) tries to get a loan from a bank. He used to have government contracts, and under the rules before the Blip, he should qualify for a Small Business Administration (SBA) loan, but as the banker says: “…what, with everyone just showing up, well things tightened up.”
Karli is fighting on behalf of all the people who experienced greater equity during the Snap and are now being pushed out of their newfound homes by increasingly uncaring governments. From an ideological standpoint, it’s hard to argue against her perspective. We don’t see too much of the abuses the GRC has caused, but the one refugee camp we do visit is chronically underserved. One character mentions not getting supplies from the GRC for over six months. Much of Karli’s work in the show involves securing supplies for these refugees or “internationally-displaced persons.”
It would have been nice to see a show centered on a character like Karli, who is fighting against an arguably oppressive government. We instead get one centered on Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), aka Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Although these two characters work on the fringes of the law, they are still very much agents of state violence. They have contacts within the US government (see Joaquin Torres) and receive logistical support from them as well. They may be unhappy with the current world order, but they are still fighting against Karli on behalf of entities like the US government at the end of the day.
And so, how the show manages to accomplish the catwalk of giving Sam and Bucky the moral high ground is to portray Karli and, on the flip side, the New Captain America, aka John Walker, as too extreme sides of the same coin. Karli, who advocates for actions such as blowing up supply depots with guards inside them, represents activist radicalism. The new Captain America, who smashes a Flag Smasher agent with a shield in front of national television, represents American jingoism. Yet as the old Captain America Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson narratively prove, neither side is considered correct. It’s not the mantle of Captain America — an entity that is simultaneously a symbol for both America and vigilante justice — that is portrayed as wrong, but that some people go too far in how they try to obtain justice. As Sam lectures Karli halfway through this season: “…it’s not a better place if you’re killin’ people.”
As we shall soon cover, this stance is not only naive, but something Sam does not really believe in. He kills people all the time.
The thing about this argument Sam is making (i.e., violence vs. nonviolence) is that it’s a false dichotomy. Not only is the current political order quite violent — the whole reason America has a police force and a military is to enact both defensive and punitive violence — but as a member of that military, albeit as a private contractor, Sam is quite violent himself. The first episode has Sam taking down several terrorists near the border of Tunisia, literally blasting flying helicopters out of the sky and pushing someone out of a moving plane. In fact, according to some counts, he killed more people within this initial scene than Karli did the entire season. It’s funny Sam preaching against violence when he very clearly is a tool of state violence.
Another place this pops up is when former S.H.E.I.L.D. agent Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) takes out bounty hunters in Madripoor. She stylishly eliminates three of them in a wonderfully choreographed fight scene. These deaths are framed as cool and inconsequential. Action music plays in the background while Sharon kills them. Somehow the value of these men does not seem to matter a whole lot. Compare this scene to the murders Karli and John Walker commit, which are very clearly framed in a negative light. Remorseful music plays in the background, as characters “who are not supposed to die” are killed off.
We can see from these examples that the show never truthfully pushes for a world without violence. How could it? That would make for a dull action series.
In reality, our current system requires a lot of violence to operate. When someone breaks the law or, as what happens too frequently, inconveniences someone in power, violence is used to penalize, jail, and kill perceived offenders. When men like Sam preach nonviolence, this is a misnomer at best and misdirection at worse. What they really are advocating for is that only one side (the one Sam happens to support) be the one allowed to use violence and for everyone else to endure it.
We see this point exemplified in the climax. The GRC is on the verge of passing a law that will forcibly relocate millions of people. Given that most forced relocations have caused the death of countless people (see the Trail of Tears, the Partition of India, or the hundreds of other forced migrations throughout history), this would have amounted to a war crime — something Sam mentions in a touching speech at the end of the series (more on this later).
In the face of tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths, Karli attacked the GRCs headquarters. She performed a desperate action to capture GRC delegates to use them as bargaining chips to stop this violent law. We can argue that she was a bit too zealous in her implementation of that plan, but her logic was sound. If Karli did not intervene, that law would have passed. Before Karli’s “terrorist attack,” the text clarifies that this vote will go a certain way. “Do we really need to bother with a vote?” remarks one GRC representative, “There are troops in place. I can make a call and have the refugees move now.” We see this after the attack has been foiled, too, with one politician assuring Sam that the attack only delayed the relocation momentarily.
Yet, the show is also clear that Karli’s method is wrong. The alleged “good guys” would not have stopped her otherwise. The “right method,” the show suggests, is speaking truth to power in a nonviolent way — something we have already established doesn’t exist. Sam ends up giving a passionate monologue to leaders of the GRC that just so happens to be recorded on national television. This is the tactic that the show wants us to employ because it's the one that works within the narrative. The GRC changes its mind after the speech, and they decide to withdraw the deal.
I could write an entire article on why this is naive on multiple fronts. The idea that you can reason your enemies out of their hateful positions is a nice fantasy, but we have plenty of historical evidence proving this generally doesn’t happen without major political and sometimes violent pressure. The well-documented abuses Trump committed (some arguably treasonous) did not shame Republicans into impeaching him. The Supreme Court opinion Worcester v. Georgia, which ruled that Indian territories are completely separate from States, did not reason President Andrew Jackson out of committing to the Trail of Tears. The leaks committed by people such as Edward Snowden, which revealed a massive, unwarranted surveillance system of US citizens, did not push the US government to dismantle these programs. It is naive to assume that you can get abusive leaders to reform themselves.
Not only would Sam’s monologue not have had its intended effect, but even within the logic of the show, the only reason the world was watching his speech was because of Karli’s “terrorist attack.” Her violence was literally necessary to create that positive change — a fact that seems to go right over everyone’s heads. While Sam is ultimately sympathetic to Karli’s movement, urging GRC representatives not to label the Flag Smashers as “terrorists” and “thugs,” he is very paternalistic of her actions. He calls Karli a “misguided teenager,” never seriously considering for a moment that maybe he’s on the wrong side.
The speech Sam gives is worth watching in its entirety mainly because it's quite revealing to how those in power think. Sam says many good things in there about the weight of being Black in America and not otherizing other people, but he never validates the core philosophical tenets of what the Flag Smashers wanted, which was a world without borders. The closest he comes to this is asking the GRC to consider other voices when making their decisions, saying, “who’s in the room when you are making those decisions? Is it the people you’re gonna impact? Or is it just more people like you?” However, the Flag Smashers were never fighting for more inclusion amongst the GRC board. They were fighting for a world where the GRC no longer exists.
Sam ultimately pushes for a solution no one asked for — one that keeps the current power structure in place and does not challenge the GRC’s, and by extension, his right to use violence. Sam, a begrudging member of the status quo after the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016), is not interested in true reform. He warns the members of the GRC and the world that is watching, that “You’ve gotta step up. Because if you don’t, the next Karli will. And you don’t wanna see 2.0.” A very telling line that reveals more about the anxieties of the people who wrote and made this show than anything meaningful about political change.
Give in to this small concession, Sam cautions to those in power, or the next Karli will take everything from you.
There is a scene near the climax of this series where Karli is talking with the recently revealed Power Broker of Madripoor, who, before this moment, we were led to believe was a friend of Sams. A shootout follows where the Power Broker is pinned to the ground, and Karli points a gun at her. Sam, who had missed the reveal, rushes into the fray, not understanding the context, and immediately accuses Karli of perpetrating violence for violence's sake: “So, what’s next, huh?” he lectures. “You kill ten this time, then, what, a hundred?”
Disregarding the fact that Sam has already killed over ten people in this show, this moment perfectly encapsulates the naivety of the ideology he embodies. You have a man who does not understand the context of the situation, lecturing a person, who at this moment could arguably be perceived as defending herself, to “save” someone who is actively dangerous. He then distracts Karli so much that the Power Broker ends up killing her. He does more than annoy Karli with his words. His distraction contributes to her death.
Despite assertions to the contrary, Sam does not seem to understand how the world he is in works, and I think that describes a lot of people who espouse his position. It’s not that they actively try to spread propaganda that stops reform (though a minority of them might be). It’s just that they have an ideology that prevents them from understanding the harm they are preserving.
Yet, whether someone is naive or malicious, we have to treat these actors seriously, or we not only fall into the same paternalism Sam had for Karli, but can potentially get ourselves killed by it. Most people on the Left do not have the luxury to get distracted by a philosophical conundrum on whether or not violence is okay. They are actively experiencing violence themselves, and need people to defend against it or stop that violence from happening in the first place.
We need to understand where people like Sam are coming from to disarm them, which is why consuming content like Falcon and the Winter Soldier can be so edifying. It is essentially an open roadmap to all the anxieties of the modern liberal: people who want to change things without changing anything at all. These are people who ultimately desire to be on the side of the radical. Sam agrees with nearly everything Karli is saying. He disagrees with her methods because he has not stopped to seriously understand his own.
It would be so easy to scoff at this show and end with a snappy line about how “monologues don’t stop war crimes,” but we need more than detached judgment. We need to get the Sams of the world out of our way, so they stop getting us killed. He’s an easy convert. He’s practically begging to find a way out of his current predicament, and yet we have a lack of media right now showing us how to begin that process successfully.
Now more than ever, we need this content, or the Karli’s of the world will keep dying, and everything will remain the same.