foundlingmother:

philosopherking1887:

iamanartichoke:

Friendly reminder that Loki never showed any general ill-will toward Asgard or intent to destroy Asgard and that usurping Odin at the end of TDW didn’t necessarily have to bode ill for Asgard’s fate, as we had no reason to believe he would rule poorly. That Ragnarok revealed his “evil plan” being community theatre shouldn’t be much of a surprise – by which, I mean I didn’t expect the community theatre part, but I didn’t expect to see Asgard in tyrannical ruins under Loki’s rule, either. Loki has always proven himself sensible, analytical, and highly intelligent. He would have absolutely nothing to gain by using Odin’s form to run Asgard into the ground. Despite what Thor says about the Nine Realms being in chaos, I’m pretty sure things were fine and were always going to be fine under Loki. 

#loki#loki as odin#the dark world#thor ragnarok#sorry but i just get tired of seeing posts about#how everyone was worried after Loki was revealed as Odin#at the end of tdw#like it meant asgard was doomed#why would anyone think that?#ragnarok didn’t do us some huge favor#of painting loki as a benevolent ruler#to everyone’s surprise#it did however#make him look very narcissistic with that play#which i’ve always been uncomfortable with#but i just pretend it doesn’t exist#and i manage okay

And the other thing is… that line about the Nine Realms being in chaos – which has encouraged everyone to trash Loki as a terrible king and paint his usurping Odin as another horrific crime for which he deserved any maltreatment Thor subsequently decided to inflict on him – is an example of just how half-assed Ragnarok’s “critique of imperialism” really is (as @foundlingmother and I have discussed at length). So conquest is bad, but non-interventionism is equally bad? Sudden withdrawal from protectorates that have been left in no condition to protect or govern themselves is certainly not great, but it’s a complicated issue exactly what kind of aid or training withdrawing conquerors should provide. (Is it “weaning” away from dependency, or just extending the period of dependency? Doesn’t “teaching” self-governance involve a kind of cultural imperialism, as the conqueror generally ends up teaching the ex-protectorate how to imitate its own system of government?) It’s understandable that a comic book action movie isn’t going to explore those kinds of issues in depth (and boy, did Civil War massively fail on that score – though Black Panther did a pretty good job wrestling with it), but… if you’re going to bring it up in the form of a ham-handed allegory, you can’t also have this glaring (at least apparent) inconsistency and not address it.

This appears to be another example of the film dropping the ball on its otherwise worthy anti-imperialism message when it comes to Loki – probably deliberately, considering the lack of sympathy and respect the film and its creator show for Loki in just about every other context. As I’ve also discussed at length, Ragnarok missed, or simply passed on, an obvious opportunity to address Loki’s place in Asgard’s imperialist history, as the child of a conquered people raised in ignorance of his heritage and with such contempt and hatred toward his own kind that when he discovered he was one of them he tried to wipe them out. I’m going to excerpt the most relevant part of that old post:

• Loki’s story could have been used to flesh out the narrative about colonialism. Recall Hela’s dismissive remark about bogus “peace treaties” commemorated on the redecorated walls of the throne room: that might have been an allusion to the one-sided “treaties” that Britain and the U.S. signed with American Indian nations and then trampled all over. Loki could have been one of those stolen indigenous children raised among the colonists and taught to scorn the people to whom he was born. But for some reason Waititi and the writers didn’t make the connection, or didn’t want to tie Loki in to that aspect of the story. … maybe it was just because Loki has been a villain and they didn’t want to draw a connection between a (part-time) villain – or anyway, a character they just don’t like – and the oppressed of colonialism (though making him queer is OK, I guess). For whatever reason, they wanted to keep Loki firmly coded as White (which makes him easier to ridicule!) and gloss over the part where he’s only white-passing (literally; he’s actually blue). 

And I’m not the only one; @endiness put it nicely:

• the movie features asgard’s ‘past’ history of imperialism and colonization as a major plot point… but then it excludes loki from the narrative when he easily has a place in it. like, how could he not when he’s the adopted (kidnapped) son of the leader of an enemy nation left in ruin after losing to asgard? and when odin literally admitted that he took loki for political purposes? but, again, nothing about any of this at all. (actually, even worse than loki and his heritage and the circumstances being entirely excluded from the story, it isn’t; it’s brought up but only in the context of humor explicitly at loki’s expense to make a mockery of the emotional complexity and depth of his character in the previous movies.)

So the upshot seems to be: hammer in your anti-imperialist message except when Loki might appear to be on the oppressed rather than oppressor’s end of the equation, when the issue threatens to give him more depth and complexity and make him remotely sympathetic. Condemn Hela and Odin (but only sometimes; Thor can still appeal to him for strength at the end) for being imperialists, but condemn Loki for failing to be imperialist enough.

I’d add that they deny Thor having a role in this at all. So, hammer in your anti-imperialist message except when Thor might appear to be on the oppressor’s end of the equation. Let me be clear: I don’t think Thor’s at Hela or Odin’s level whatsoever, but he’s the crown prince of an imperial power. He did benefit from and participate (unknowingly) in this imperialism. And that isn’t explored. It’s sort of like Thor and Loki exist in an entirely different Asgard than the one Hela did, rather than an Asgard that’s still defined by its history. Very frustrating how muddled the critique becomes when it could have been so, so strong and interesting. Better even, in some ways, than Black Panther’s, because Black Panther avoids insulting white viewers to the extent it would be appropriate to do so. The discussion focuses on how Wakanda, a country that avoided colonization, should respond to the plight of their fellow Africans and people of African descent. The wrongdoings of white people exist on the periphery, but they are not the focus. If Ragnarok’s critique weren’t so muddled, it would have been a critique of white imperialists. It would have been a condemnation of erasing history and the uncritical thinking that allows people who benefit to rationalize their relative good fortune. There’s such a strong critique somewhere in this movie that reminds me a lot of the critiques I’ve read by Native Americans and other indigenous peoples (no surprise given Taika Waititi’s Māori), but I guess other elements of the movie were prioritized. Like making Thor a flat, quippy badass, rather than a growthful, ultimately altruistic badass.

Yeah, I dunno… if they wanted to talk about how Odin’s imperialist attitudes are the reason Thor rushed into Jotunheim with guns blazing, that would have been great – but that would involve talking about the Frost Giants as victims of imperialism (or, you know, talking about them at all), which might threaten to make Loki more sympathetic. And it would also involve acknowledging actual bad things that Thor himself (as opposed to his relatives) had done, which is not the Ragnarok way.

If it’s just about the fact that Thor benefited from the spoils of empire, I think that was made reasonably clear, and I’m not sure how it would help to see him doing a whole lot of breast-beating about it. The Nietzsche quote I just posted might indicate that you and I have different attitudes about how to regard past injustices, and possibly about the default moral status of descendants of the conquerors vs. the conquered. Or to put it differently: the crimes of the past can never be undone; the best approach is not to try to make things the way you think they would have been if they had never been committed (since you have no idea what that would look like anyway), but to approach compensation in a forward-looking manner that avoids perpetrating further injustices.