Forgive me for turning this into a long response, @foxhoundmemos, and @philosopherking1887 for restating a lot of what you wrote in response. I simply believe this an important enough point to make outside of comments.
@foundingmother, perhaps it’s because the text and framing of Whedon’s Avengers has him as just that, what with the kneel scene being in Germany, and one possibly two people who saw WWII right there, the nasty rape by proxy subtext in the ‘mewling quim’ scene and ramblings about ‘free will’ and his glorious purpose to rule this planet.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of Loki but it’s more to the presence Hiddleston puts toward the character than either Takkia’s buffon or Whedon’s horndog rapist takes on the character.
As for the scene with The Other or Loki’s trial explanation. Neither one of them have enough presence in the cannon to override the faschist bent that Loki has taken on between Thor and the Avengers. In Thor, Loki went extremes when put under pressure in the middle of a psychotic breakdown something that is not present in the Avengers. It’s clear that this is a Loki whose worst traits have been amplified and hardened while Loki’s issues and reasons no longer matter.
First and foremost, @philosopherking1887 is correct, fascism is not another word for authoritarianism. Ethnonationalism is a key component of fascism. While Loki 100% spouts despotic bullshit, he never says anything that could be consider specifically fascist. I know a lot of people aren’t going to care about this point, but I think it’s important that words mean something, especially when talking about an ideology that’s on the rise again. People who call Loki fascist in Avengers do not understand the actual meaning, only that a vague comparison is drawn between him and Hitler, who was fascist.
Whedon’s sexism is an issue, and there are certainly elements in his movies that are grossly sexist and unnecessary, including the “mewling quim” line and the implication within the lines about Barton killing Nat. Very gross. Two things, however. One, there’s another line of Loki’s that, to me, sounds pretty rape-y: “Perhaps when we’re finished here I’ll pay her a little visit myself.” This implication is a lazy shorthand a lot of writers use to get across how evil a character is. How deranged. It’s gross and dumb. Two, I have to disagree that Loki at any point in the movie feels like a horndog rapist. A sadistic, sexist despot, I can see an argument for, but not horndog rapist.
My counterargument for the idea that Loki literally is a sadistic, sexist despot (or fascist, as fandom refers to it) in Avengers is that the movie frames most of it as a performance masking anger, desperation, fear, loneliness, etc. The scene in Germany stands out more than the scene with the Other, but it’s important to note the purpose of both. They’re both canon, after all, and so both must be factored into an analysis of Loki’s characterization. Loki in Germany is literally performing. That’s the entire point. He’s drawing the crowd’s attention to him so that Barton can do what Loki needs him to, and so that SHIELD will send in its team. The scene with the Other is there to make it clear that Loki’s not 100% in control. That there’s someone watching, ready to torment him if he fails. And it’s far from the only thing in the movie that suggests this. Loki looks horrible when he first appears (and even more so in Thor’s foreshadowing after credits scene), he trips all over himself, he avoids Thor’s questions about who showed him the power of the Tesseract, Thor briefly gets through to him on Stark Tower, he cries, etc. Subtext. And if you want text… Coulson states outright that Loki isn’t going to win because he lacks conviction. So, the movie doesn’t frame Loki as a sadistic, sexist despot. It frames him as an angry, conflicted, traumatized, and dangerous individual who says very intense (and, in the case of the sexism, unnecessary) shit in moments where he’s attempting to manipulate, intimidate, self-aggrandize, etc.
Loki’s issues from Thor aren’t absent from or unimportant in Avengers. The moment he shows up, they are invoked. Selvig refers to Loki as Thor’s brother, earning a dirty look. @philosopherking1887 mentioned the line, “I remember a shadow,” but that entire sequence with Thor’s intended to give us a sense of how deeply hurt and alone Loki feels as a direct result of what happened to him in Thor, and the way that’s fueling his anger and grab for power on Midgard. This attack is still very much connected to the mental breakdown that occurred in Thor, just instead of trying to prove himself and be the hero, as he was trying to in Thor, now he’s trying to hurt his family (as much as they’ve hurt him).
One, there’s another line of Loki’s that, to me, sounds pretty rape-y: “Perhaps when we’re finished here I’ll pay her a little visit myself.” This implication is a lazy shorthand a lot of writers use to get across how evil a character is. How deranged. It’s gross and dumb.
That is entirely correct. What you did not note, however, is that that line is from Thor 1, written by Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz, not from The Avengers, written by Joss Whedon. That bit of grossness cannot be laid at Whedon’s door.
Some of what’s cited as “sexism” in The Avengers is probably better classified as an outdated, i.e. Buffy-era, mode of feminism: the theme of Black Widow being underestimated because she’s a woman and using that underestimation, by both Loki and the Russian mobster at the beginning, to extract information. TVTropes.org calls this the “Wounded Gazelle Gambit”; it might be considered a variant of the honeytrap, except that the female spy uses the assumption of weakness, especially emotional weakness, rather than her sexuality. Maybe I’m less bothered by it than some people because I am still professionally underestimated because of my gender (and stature) and it’s still satisfying to see that subverted, even weaponized. But The Movement has decided that utopianism is the thing to do, so here we are.
I must be innocent or out-of-touch for not interpreting Loki’s threat to have Barton kill Natasha “slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear” as having anything to do with rape. Threatening someone with torture is, of course, horrible, but it doesn’t have to be either sexual or gender-specific. The word “intimate” doesn’t always have anything to do with sex, and it’s most powerful when it doesn’t. Killing someone “intimately,” to me, means killing them while looking into their eyes, having seen how they break down in response to severe pain with no end in sight. That’s an especially creepy thing to threaten her with given that Clint is her friend, and it should be creepy, since Loki is trying to unnerve her. But the only things that I read as gendered were (1) targeting her emotional vulnerability and (2) calling her a cunt.
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Yes, this is the correct size ratio of Loki to everyone else.
None of the things you mentioned can be considered as torture. Loki dropped Thor with the glass cage right after he saw that Mjolnir could crack the glass. The reason Thor stopped attempting to break the glass wasn’t because the glass was unbreakable, but because the cage would fall if he continued. So Loki knewThor could free himself before the cage hit the ground. Yes, Loki lied to Thor about Odin’s death and he almost killed him with that backhand and IMO these are very horrible and
the worst things he ever did to Thor. Still they are not torture. He broke Thor with his lies but those lies showed Thor that the consequences of his actions can be very grave. Also an argument can be made that if Loki really wanted Thor dead, he would incinerate him with the destroyer not backhand him. The only time Loki really stabbed Thor was in The Avengers. They were fighting, and it was a stab to the gut not the chest and it was with a really small blade that didn’t harm Thor that much. The stab in TDW was an illusion(again that was a stab to the gut), because when he lifted the illusion Thor’s armor was intact while in The Avengers, Thor’s armor remained torn after the stab.
No one said Thor shouldn’t have stopped Loki from betraying him. But Thor could simply make Loki unconscious with the obedience disk(I explained in this post that the device has two settings). That would be acceptable. But Thor chose to leave Loki in constant pain with the device on for an infinite amount of time. Yes, Thor and Loki are called gods and they are more durable. But just because they can tolerate more pain, it doesn’t make it ok to inflict pain on them. It’s still pain and the obedience disc is a torture device. And no Thor had no way of knowing that Loki could get out of it. In fact he knew Loki couldn’t free himself. Thor with all his power, was paralyzed by the obedience disc. Even his lightning couldn’t get him free from it. Only the control device could free Loki. And he was unable to move.
What is torture?
“The action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something, or for the pleasure
of the person inflicting the pain.”
Thor didn’t just stopped Loki’s betrayal. He inflicted severe pain on him for an infinite amount of time
as punishment for his betrayal and then had the audacity to gleefully preach Loki about growth and change and laugh at his pain.
What Thor did in TR was torture and that makes him so much ooc that I don’t consider TR Thor, the real Thor.
I think it would be appropriate to reiterate what I said in the last post linked in the above (the one arguing that the obedience disc is a torture device), so here it is again for people who don’t bother to follow links:
< I’ve been seeing a lot of people try to justify Thor* by pointing out that Loki has done worse things to him; most commonly they will cite the incident in The Avengers where Loki drops Thor out of the Helicarrier in the Hulk cage. (This is such a common move that I feel like it’s got to be in some Thor* stan/ Ragnarok defense playbook.) Here is why that comparison doesn’t accomplish what they want it to accomplish:
It was entirely reasonable for Loki to think he was not endangering Thor’s life. He knew Thor could get out of the cage because he had Mjolnir with him. As far as we can tell, in Ragnarok, Thor* had no way of knowing that the first people who would happen along were Korg & co. as opposed to, e.g., Topaz, who probably would have just killed Loki while he was incapacitated. Maybe he did have some way of knowing, but this was not made at all clear in the film. So even if he didn’t think he was endangering Loki’s life, he was being culpably negligent.
In The Avengers, Loki was acting as an adversary, and everyone was completely aware of that. He was trying to hamper his opponents by scattering them, and possibly to demoralize Thor by showing that he wasn’t going to get his brother back. In Ragnarok, Thor* presented what he did as some kind of “tough love” – punishing Loki “for his own good,” with the aim of getting Loki back on his side rather than (as Loki was doing in The Avengers) turning him decisively against him. If you can’t see why that’s kind of fucked up, well…
Loki is clearly aware that what he’s doing in The Avengers is wrong. He hesitates before he hits the button to drop the cage, and hesitates again (with tears in his eyes, FFS!) before he stabs Thor later. He’s conflicted, and it’s not unreasonable to think he regrets hurting Thor when he’s no longer under direct threat from Thanos (his attempts at self-justification in TDW have a defensive air that make me think the lady doth protest too much). In Ragnarok, Thor* just looks smug and self-righteous about the electrocution thing, even though he’s very aware that Loki is in severe pain. >
And I’m sure I’ve said it somewhere else, but again, it doesn’t really make sense to compare the electrocution in Ragnarok to the things Loki did to Thor in Thor 1 and The Avengers because in both of the latter cases, it’s made pretty clear that Loki isn’t in his right mind. In Thor 1, Loki has pretty clearly been profoundly disturbed by the revelation that he actually belongs to a race that he has been taught all his life to hate and fear (and that Thor has twice vowed to “finish”). He is convinced that the reason Odin always favored Thor is because Loki is really Jotun, not Asgardian, so he’s desperate to prove how very Asgardian and not Jotun he really is. I agree that it’s not clear whether Loki meant to kill Thor with the Destroyer; he must have known that killing Odin’s other son wouldn’t be a great way of earning his favor. (Maybe he had it backhand rather than incinerate him so he could pass it off as an accident… or maybe he lacked commitment there too.) At any rate, he is very obviously emotionally and psychologically unwell for… over half of the movie, tbh, but it becomes increasingly obvious in the last third.
In The Avengers, Loki shows up looking like shit; his eyes are wild and hollow and he’s saying some really weird stuff. When they communicate through the scepter, the Other threatens him and he looks terrified. No, Loki wasn’t completely under Thanos’s control and maybe he bears some responsibility for getting himself into that position… but again, he’s clearly been through some shit and is under severe duress. And, as noted above, he’s conflicted about hurting Thor.
Thor* has no such excuse or explanation in Ragnarok. On the contrary; he’s presented as being fully in control, cool-headed, rational, oh-so-cleverly out-thinking his clever brother. He even thought up this scheme in advance, because he predicted that Loki would betray him (for no good reason other than it was needed as set-up for the “trickster tricked” scenario where Loki gets his painful, humiliating comeuppance). Thor*’s action is more blameworthy than anything Loki has done to him because he does it while in full possession of his faculties and shows sadistic glee at making Loki suffer.
And no, Loki has not been stabbing Thor or “trying to kill him” since they were children. Taika Waititi pulled that out of his ass. It should be obvious from Thor 1 that Thor trusts Loki, that they’ve been comrades in arms for centuries, and that Loki’s betrayal and his demand that Thor fight him come as an incredible shock. If you want to accept the stabbing-since-childhood BS as canon, then you’d better stop citing anything Loki does in Thor 1, including telling Thor their father is dead and striking him with the Destroyer, because clearly you’re ignoring what that movie established as the longtime dynamic between them. You want to pretend previous canon doesn’t exist? Then at least do it consistently.
For background, this is in reference to (my bitching about) the post claiming that Taika Waititi has a better understanding of the gods of Norse mythology than Bad White Christian Joss Whedon, first (presumably) because he’s Maori and therefore closer to paganism (never mind that a significant proportion of the Maori population has been Christian since the 19th century), and then, according to a later commenter, because he’s Jewish (on his mother’s side) and therefore has a more down-to-earth conception of God.
This is not completely crazy, because while Judaism only recognizes one god, it has not always been strictly monotheistic in the sense in which Christianity and Islam are. According to ancient Jewish religion, the gods of other tribes/nations do exist, but we only worship one god, and there’s only one god worth worshiping, because he’s cooler than all the other gods (he created the world, so there) and can kick their asses any day. (There’s actually a story about that in First Samuel, when the Ark gets stolen and put in a Philistine temple and God comes out at night and breaks the idol of their god.) That’s why the Hebrew Bible says all that stuff about God being “a jealous god”; that wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense if God just didn’t want us wasting our time praying to gods that don’t exist. God has a personality, and it’s not always perfect; he’s jealous, he’s vengeful, he gets angry easily.
Since then, Judaism has become more properly monotheistic under the influence of Christianity in Europe and Islam under the medieval Caliphate (Maimonides, one of the most important Jewish theologians, lived in Caliphate-ruled Spain and wrote in Arabic. Sometimes empires can be cool). The God of Judaism has gotten closer to the omnipotent, omniscient, unfailingly benevolent God of philosophical monotheism, which runs you into the problem of evil… and that has definitely been a problem in Jewish history, especially recently. The main respect in which Judaism differs from Christianity (I don’t know about Islam) is that it doesn’t emphasize how sinful and unworthy human beings are compared to God. Sure, there’s some of that “what are we that You should take notice of us?” stuff in the psalms… but the fact remains that God has not only taken notice of us, but made an agreement with us on more or less equal terms; that’s what the covenant is. Paul claimed that the whole point of the covenant was to demonstrate that human beings are incapable of living up to God’s standards of goodness on their own, which is why they needed God to step in and save them (from Himself, apparently). Jews don’t buy that. Yes, it’s hard to do what God demands of us. Try anyway. When you mess up, apologize to God and to the people you’ve wronged, then try again.
I’m honestly not sure what any of that has to do with Taika Waititi’s and Joss Whedon’s portrayal of Thor and Loki, except that maybe someone raised Jewish is used to the idea of a god being an asshole and going overboard on punishing people (*cough*electrocution*cough*), which God definitely does in the Books of Moses. But rabbinic Judaism is as likely to try to justify that as Christianity is. And also I just don’t think it’s true that Whedon was trying to portray Thor as a perfect Christ figure and Loki as a completely evil Satan. European Christian culture has evolved; we have Milton’s Satan, we have Goethe’s Mephistopheles, we have flawed and human versions of Jesus. Whedon is well-read and educated; he refers to existentialist philosophy and the canon of great Western literature – including pre-Christian classical literature – in his work. If all people are seeing is a simplistic black and white Jesus vs. Satan, that’s their problem, not his.
I spent way too long writing this little essay, so I’m reblogging it in hopes that someone will actually see it.
For background, this is in reference to (my bitching about) the post claiming that Taika Waititi has a better understanding of the gods of Norse mythology than Bad White Christian Joss Whedon, first (presumably) because he’s Maori and therefore closer to paganism (never mind that a significant proportion of the Maori population has been Christian since the 19th century), and then, according to a later commenter, because he’s Jewish (on his mother’s side) and therefore has a more down-to-earth conception of God.
This is not completely crazy, because while Judaism only recognizes one god, it has not always been strictly monotheistic in the sense in which Christianity and Islam are. According to ancient Jewish religion, the gods of other tribes/nations do exist, but we only worship one god, and there’s only one god worth worshiping, because he’s cooler than all the other gods (he created the world, so there) and can kick their asses any day. (There’s actually a story about that in First Samuel, when the Ark gets stolen and put in a Philistine temple and God comes out at night and breaks the idol of their god.) That’s why the Hebrew Bible says all that stuff about God being “a jealous god”; that wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense if God just didn’t want us wasting our time praying to gods that don’t exist. God has a personality, and it’s not always perfect; he’s jealous, he’s vengeful, he gets angry easily.
Since then, Judaism has become more properly monotheistic under the influence of Christianity in Europe and Islam under the medieval Caliphate (Maimonides, one of the most important Jewish theologians, lived in Caliphate-ruled Spain and wrote in Arabic. Sometimes empires can be cool). The God of Judaism has gotten closer to the omnipotent, omniscient, unfailingly benevolent God of philosophical monotheism, which runs you into the problem of evil… and that has definitely been a problem in Jewish history, especially recently. The main respect in which Judaism differs from Christianity (I don’t know about Islam) is that it doesn’t emphasize how sinful and unworthy human beings are compared to God. Sure, there’s some of that “what are we that You should take notice of us?” stuff in the psalms… but the fact remains that God has not only taken notice of us, but made an agreement with us on more or less equal terms; that’s what the covenant is. Paul claimed that the whole point of the covenant was to demonstrate that human beings are incapable of living up to God’s standards of goodness on their own, which is why they needed God to step in and save them (from Himself, apparently). Jews don’t buy that. Yes, it’s hard to do what God demands of us. Try anyway. When you mess up, apologize to God and to the people you’ve wronged, then try again.
I’m honestly not sure what any of that has to do with Taika Waititi’s and Joss Whedon’s portrayal of Thor and Loki, except that maybe someone raised Jewish is used to the idea of a god being an asshole and going overboard on punishing people (*cough*electrocution*cough*), which God definitely does in the Books of Moses. But rabbinic Judaism is as likely to try to justify that as Christianity is. And also I just don’t think it’s true that Whedon was trying to portray Thor as a perfect Christ figure and Loki as a completely evil Satan. European Christian culture has evolved; we have Milton’s Satan, we have Goethe’s Mephistopheles, we have flawed and human versions of Jesus. Whedon is well-read and educated; he refers to existentialist philosophy and the canon of great Western literature – including pre-Christian classical literature – in his work. If all people are seeing is a simplistic black and white Jesus vs. Satan, that’s their problem, not his.
Imagine the Avengers getting hit with some sort of spell that makes them revert to their first language
and everyone expects to be unable to understand Natasha’s Russian or Thor’s Norse (Allspeak is great but it isn’t his first language according to the spell)
but then Steve starts spouting Gaelic, because he grew up speaking English in public but his immigrant mother taught him her own language first
Tony speaks either Spanish or Italian, because that’s what his first nannies spoke
and the spell considers ASL a language just as much as any spoken language, so Clint is just signing and making faces at people
and Bruce is just very confused (“Why do you expect me to be speaking a different language? I’m from Ohio.”)
The Vision flying around screaming “ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ONE ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ONE ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE”
Loki is the Philosopher King 