maybe it's better not to be "a good person"

[swan_tower]

On the way home from Captain America: Civil War (which is quite good, and should have been titled Avengers: Civil War), we got to talking about the contrast between Arrow and Flash, and the problems I had with the latter. (I say “had” because I gave up on watching it partway into this season.)

It just occurred to me that I think part of my issue with that show is the same thing Slacktivist was talking about here, riffing off this post by Mychal Denzel Smith. Specifically, this bit, quoted from Smith:

When your self-conception is centered on the idea of your own goodness, it prevents you from hearing any critique of your ideology/behavior. Thinking of yourself as “good” allows you to justify harmful words and actions, since anything you do, in your mind, is “good.”

Flash feels like it has defined Barry Allen as A Good Person, and therefore it cannot address anything that might call his goodness into question — like, say, the extrajudicial prison he regularly throws criminals into, keeping them in solitary confinement for indefinite periods of time without benefit of trial or any other such legal process. He is A Good Person, therefore Basement Gitmo is good. By contrast, Arrow has not defined Oliver Queen as A Good Person; instead he’s been presented as a deeply flawed person trying to become good. Corollary: the show offers up frequent critiques of his ideology and behavior, and he changes in response to them. Not always, and not perfectly — one of the points season five has been making is that he still has a lot of problems. But that’s a story the show can tell, because it hasn’t taken its protagonist’s Goodness as a given.

I complained before that telling a story where ethics matter shouldn’t require you to be working in the grimdark mode — that Flash *could* have addressed the difficult question of how to handle superpowered criminals, while still being Arrow‘s perky younger brother. Now I wonder to what extent Smith’s quote points at the source of the problem: they could never tell stories where Barry grappled with ethics and questioned his own morality, because Barry Allen is A Good Person.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

This is a pretty good summary of my feelings about Arrow and Flash, and why I probably won't be going back to the latter next year. Though I would argue that the MCU movies suffer from this failure as well, and in fact that it's all over Civil War. How else to explain Steve's conviction that he gets to unilaterally decide how to use immense military force all over the world, if not by realizing that in his head, he's the designated "good person"? And the thing is, I think the film ultimately agrees with him - every time he chooses to use violence instead of talking or recognizing the rule of law and government, he turns out to have been right. Infinity War will probably make that even more explicit when he and the other renegades triumphantly save the day, which is one of the reasons I'm falling out of love with the MCU.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I've been pondering where Cap fits into all of this, but I think I have a different reading than you do.

For starters, we see Cap actually thinking about what is the right thing to do, not only in Civil War but in the earlier movies. Yes, he ultimately decides that he should trust his own judgment above anybody else's -- but it feels to me like a decision, and one that's the consequences of his story up until that point. It isn't just taken for granted.

I also don't think he's always shown to be right. If we step back and look at Winter Soldier for a moment: in that movie, Cap is strongly identified with SHIELD. He works for them, it's the organization Peggy helped to found, and he carries a frickin' shield. But then it turns out that it's absolutely riddled with Hydra agents -- rotten to its very core. I think the "I'm a good person and I'm incapable of questioning that" response would have been to say "okay, now that we've gotten rid of Hydra, SHIELD is okay and can go on doing its thing." But instead the movie does the opposite: it says, nope, this is too flawed to save. Steve trusted the system; Steve was wrong; Steve is dealing with the fallout of that in Civil War.

And when it comes to the most recent movie -- I make a distinction between whether a character recognizes his own failures to be a good person, and whether the story recognizes it. Steve admits a fairly major mistake at the end of the film, when he says he was really just protecting himself by not telling Tony about Bucky killing his parents. But we also get the moment where Bucky asks "Am I really worth it?" -- and although Steve's answer is yes, I'm unconvinced the film's answer is the same. I don't think the story says Bucky isn't worth it, either. It felt to me very much like the ultimate message is "there are no simple answers to these questions." But because they were aiming for that middle ground, I also think there's room for people to read it more to one side or the other. I've definitely seen people walking away from it with an opposite interpretation to yours, citing all the places where Steve is too blinkered by his own personal agenda to consider the bigger picture.

As for the MCU overall -- well, I haven't seen Batman vs. Superman, which I guess tries to address this, but on the whole, I think Marvel's been paying a lot more attention to the issue of collateral damage and ethical use of power than DC has.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

One thing I like about The Flash is that he is the perky younger brother. I had to give up watching Arrow (and I *love* the Green Arrow character in general) because it is so damn dark. So many shows these days are grimdarkdarkdark, and it's stopped being fun for me, even if the bad guy gets his comeuppance and the good side wins.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Arrow has been misplacing its sense of humor a fair bit lately -- especially last season, which really kind of lost its way. But it turns out I need more than just "I'm perky!" to make me like The Flash; there are just too many other things about it that rub me seriously the wrong way (the treatment of female characters, the plots solved with technobabble, the unthinkingly unethical response to the bad guys).

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

One thing I like about social psychology is that it so often fits what people are already thinking about.

You might have heard of Carol Dweck of Stanford’s work on “implicit theories.” Dweck says there are many contexts in which people can either think that matters are closed and decided (which she calls “entity” thinking), or where matters can be modified (which she calls “incremental” thinking). In her research, this comes up most often in the context of intelligence – people who think that intelligence is a matter of what you know and can do (entity thinking) are much less comfortable with taking tests than people who think that intelligence is a matter of how readily you can learn new things or figure things out (incremental thinking), because for them, their status as intelligent is on the line whenever they face a challenge like a test. Dweck thus says that it’s important to praise a child for working hard, rather than for being smart. Personally, I think it’s just as good to teach them the more “open” definition of intelligence.

This also comes up in the context of character. People who think character is a fixed trait (entity thinking) are much less likely to support investing in rehabilitating criminals, for example, than those who think that character is more fluid. Likewise, as you note, someone who’s invested in being “good” (entity thinking) is not going to be open to discussions of their behavior.

< /social psychology lecture >

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I knew about that in the context of kids and intelligence and testing, but not the terms she uses for it. It does seem very appropriate here.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

STARGitmo is far from the worst thing Barry's done with no consequences. Remember the end of last season, where solely for personal reasons and knowing the possible consequences, he ends up opening an effective black hole above the middle of Central City. We see 50 or so story buildings crumbling. Multiple vehicles getting sucked in from street level. Barring a DESTROY! level "Well, thank goodness no one was hurt", there's no way there were significant numbers of injuries/fatalities and billions of dollars in property damage.

I figured they'd have to hit a reset button (which was foreshadowed with his time travel ability). Nope. Instead, at the start of this season, he manages to close it (with the side effect of opening breaches to Earth-Evil). At one point it's mentioned he's been trying to repair things broken by the black hole for months, but super-speed doesn't let you rebuild 50 story buildings or recover things sucked into the singularity or restore whoever died. But word never gets out about what he and the SuperSTARs did, so he gets a key to the city instead of arrest for public endangerment and manslaughter. And then no more mention was made of it.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Oh geez. Seriously?