The New Deal in a kickass costume

By Bill Widener

He was carrying a rolled-up flag instead of the shield, the blue of his uniform a shade too disco. But there he was, in the flesh, waiting to cross the street – the Sentinel of Liberty, Captain America.

Like a good citizen, he waited for the “walk” sign, then came into the library. I saluted, and directed him to the public internet area. He turned out to be an ex-serviceman walking across the country, protesting the treatment of veterans by donning the garb of the Red, White and Blue Avenger. He’s not the only one to use a Cap costume to make a political point. From masks to half-Caps to the full regalia, Captain America is a favorite at Tea Party rallies. Strange, that, given Cap is the avatar of everything they despise.

A weak and bullied nobody, an artist from the big city, is chosen to participate in a government program that makes him not just the equal of his oppressors, but superior. Our hero then teams up with a multinational force to exterminate right-wing extremists. It’s every conservative’s nightmare. Captain America is the New Deal in a kickass costume.

Reading between the explosions, Captain America (Marvel/Paramount) is (almost) the Great Liberal Action Movie. As faithful as it is to the comics, it could be nothing else. Born in the turning point between Depression and World War, Captain America was the brainchild of two hungry young Jews looking for the big break, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg). When they handed Timely publisher Martin Goodman the cover of the first issue, he had good reason to worry. Forget the isolationist hinterlands; many national leaders were mighty impressed by the Volkswagen and trains running on time. New York was crawling with Silver Shirts and German-American Bundists, the city so rotten with Nazi sympathizers that the Feds had to parlay with the Mob to keep the waterfront safe. Even in a comics biz blazing with premature anti-Fascism, showing the new hero punching Hitler was asking for trouble. There was trouble – some bomb threats, trashed newsstands – but a lot more dimes. Captain America Comics brought Timely, as Marvel was then known, into the top level of comics publishers.

When the war ended, so did Cap’s comic. An attempt to bring him back in the McCarthy era as a “Commie Smasher!” was a misstep, a case of too little, too soon. When Timely retooled as Marvel in the Sixties, Captain America returned for good, becoming the conscience of the Marvel Universe.

Steve Rogers is the 4F loser, played by a digitized Chris Evans, whose dedication and nobility appeals to Dr. Erskine, a Jewish scientist on the run from the Nazis. Rogers is chosen as the first recipient of Erskine’s “Super-Soldier” serum. Portrayed with humor and sorrow by Stanley Tucci, Erskine knows that with great power comes great responsibility, and wants a superman who understands the burden of being merely a man.

Evans is great in the role, never losing his everyman humility even after he’s beefed up by vita-rays. His Cap is a true believer, even while being used as headline fodder by a corrupt politico, who, like many then and now, prefers the flashy spectacle of Americanism to the actual work of patriotism. Even as fun as that spectacle is – and the musical interlude is gorgeous, making one wish director Joe Johnston could make an actual musical – Rogers knows he was meant for greater things. Like killing Nazis. Lots and lots of Nazis.

That’s where the “almost” comes in. The Nazis are too quickly replaced as antagonists by Hydra, the cult within the cult of German superiority. This de-politicizes the film, shifting the burden of evil from the shoulders of Germany to a make-believe gang of faceless bad guys. Literally, in the case of Hydra’s leader, Johann Schmidt, better known as the Red Skull, played by the Max Von Sydow of the End Times, Hugo Weaving.

Empowered but deformed by a crude version of Erskine’s serum, Schmidt is “one of Hitler’s inner circle”, another thematic stumble; the Skull of the comics is the mirror image of Captain America, a guttersnipe raised from obscurity by the Fuehrer himself because of “the envy, the jealousy in your eyes! The sheer, blazing hatred!” The cinematic Skull is yet another intelligent, urbane chatterbox, who can’t wait to take that gauche swastika off his well-cut leather jacket.

There is an obvious reason why the filmmakers switched the action from Nazis to Hydra. Hydra is the premier terrorist organization in Marvel Comics, the original shared universe of pop culture, which is being rebuilt onscreen with each Marvel film. Captain America is subtitled The First Avenger, this movie acting as a promo for the next as the company heads toward the 2012 release of The Avengers. So this is one more brick in the edifice of plot Marvel is building, a story in need of goons to kick around. But a line from the Red Skull betrays a subtler intent. “I have seen the future,” gloats Weaving as he slaps the Captain around. “A world without flags.”

Globalism, in other words – borders erased, nations irrelevant, the world as one. The days of One Big Union long gone, the world is now One Big Market. Germans buy tickets, too. So do fascists. Last year, the Captain America comic stirred up Tea Party members by painting them as bigoted rubes easily led astray by a violent right-wing group led by the Fifties Cap, now retconned as a psychotic wingnut. Marvel made an apology, albeit one as convincing as a Teabagger’s disavowal of racism.

But it does beg the question: what America does the Captain now represent? In the movie, a long-lost Steve Rogers awakes in the 21st century, in a United States that exploits and imprisons its own citizens as it bombs and tortures those of other nations. What will the Sentinel of Liberty do, once he discovers America has become what he was created to fight?