Trending: Captain America's Loose Canon

In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.

I've been a fan of Lindsay Ellis' Loose Canon ever since the Starscream episode.  I'm stoked to see the series finally start to come into its own, given just how original and inherently interesting its premise is (analyzing a character's changing portrayal over time).  And since I can't regularly look forward to Nostalgia Chick episodes anymore, I'm more than happy for any excuse to see Ellis in analytical action.  Check it out here:

The problem with the Starscream episode was purely one of its subject: Starscream simply isn't that interesting of a character.  The Hades episode solved this, but came off as being a bit overly broad for my taste.  The Wicked Witch episode solved both of these issues, but didn't really come to any kind of conclusion pertaining to the character's storied history.

With Captain America, however, the series finally found its analytic stride.  Cap's an incredibly interesting character with a lot of unique interpretations, portrayals and canon to parse through.  The analysis was specific enough to focus on a few iconic versions of the character while still broad enough to cover  50-odd years of publication history.  The episode furthermore rounds out its roughly 30 minutes of measured scrutiny with a pretty spot-on conclusion that explains the character's enduring popularity and social significance.  The fact that it hits the internet the same week that I planned on reviewing The First Avenger is just icing on the cake.

As with the best film criticism, Loose Canon brought up a good number of points that I'd never once considered about the character.  I never really considered Captain America: The First Avenger's revisionist stance on history: both how it featured a notably integrated army at a time of profound discrimination and how it minimized Hitler's involvement in World War II (although this last point is perfectly understandable, as Hydra is shown as a super-powered extreme of Hitler's fascist ideology).

While I always understood Rogers to be the physical embodiment of "the greatest generation," I hadn't realized until she said it how the MCU, and especially Cap', fail to romanticize that period of American history.  When recruited for the Avengers, Rogers dismisses his old uniform as "a little old fashioned."  When asked in The Winter Soldier if he missed the good old days, he has a surprisingly measured take on the issue: praising polio vaccinations and the internet just as much as he bemoans the fact that serving his country's "just not the same."

But the real kicker is that I somehow missed the connection between Cap's moral stance in The Winter Soldier when confronted with issues of government transparency and Edward Snowden.  When he finds out that Hydra's running the show, Cap' doesn't side with the government (you know, because he's Captain America).  He doesn't try to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. (and implicitly the moral infrastructure of the United States) like Fury wants him to.  He dumps all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s databases onto the internet and lets the rest of the country sort it out: forcing hard truths and moral transparency on the world simply because it's the right thing to do.

At the same time, however, there's plenty that I disagree with regarding her take-away on particular periods of Cap's canon.  While The Winter Soldier admittedly did over-simplify the causes of destabilized international politics, I would hardly call the mid-movie reveal that Hydra nurtured this socio-political instability over the last seventy years as "extremely lame."  It's a perfectly natural progression to not only Cap's personal narrative (representing the American ideals instead of the American government), but also Phase 2's post 9-11 metaphor.

In order to fit with the thematic and metaphoric narrative that Marvel wanted to tell, there was an admitted trade-off.  Yes, rather than addressing the complexities of "misfortune, bad people and short-sighted international policy made in America's own self-interest" devolving into the geo-political mess that is the 21st century, they tidy up the ends and blame Hydra.  But to simply call it a day when you reach that conclusion is to ignore what a scathing critique The Winter Solder actually is of jingoistic, Post-911 American politics, particularly every domestic and foreign policy thought up by the Bush administration (see: The Patriot Act).

When all is said and done, however, I can officially sign off on the fact that Loose Canon is easily one of the best web series running today.  Like Really that Good, it almost makes it worth the fact that we're not getting any new Nostalgia Chick episodes.  Expect to see more of this series cropping up in future Trending installments, especially if Death wins out for the next episode's topic.

So what is your favorite version of Captain America?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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