The Boys: The Truth About Social Justice

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Yeah, this guy seems to miss the point a bit, but he sure acts positive. He gives a twisted definition of what virtue signaling is. He also tries really hard to put virtue signaling in a positive light. But only when it’s done for a leftist social issue.

“Like totally guys, just because a company is pandering and using the gay identity as a flashy gimmick in a candy commercial doesn’t mean the CEO doesn’t really care deeply about the message. :3” ok.

shows clips of highly partisan leftist actors propping up the military and espousing pride for them. Doesn’t comment on the left.

“The psychopathic superhero gets the crowd going with patriotic messages that don’t mean much, which is something we often see on the right.” Top Kek of course he needed a line like that in his video.

“Whatdoya say wisecrackers, can we even tell what’s real anymore? :D” yes... yes that’s the point of life. That was some lazy, agenda pushing cash grab of a video, but at least I got to see why I shouldn’t watch The Boys or anymore Wisecrack videos.

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/starlight_chaser 📅︎︎ Dec 09 2020 🗫︎ replies
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- (Michael) Hey Wisecrack, Michael here, and   today we’re talking about The Boys. The show is  sadistic and hilarious, and has plenty to say   about the superhero genre and modern-day America.  But as we watched season two, we kept coming back   to one question: Are any of these characters for  real? When Stormfront or Billy or Homelander talk   about things they ostensibly care about, are they  just faking it? And if so - why all the posturing?   Let’s find out in this Wisecrack Edition on The  Boys Season 2: and of course spoilers ahead  - (Michael) And now for a quick recap: The  Boys is the story of one Billy Butcher and   his crew of vigilante misfits who are trying  to take down the Vought Corporation - a very   evil company that employs and contracts out  the services of, often evil, superheroes. - (Homelander) What happens  if, oh I don't know, I do this.  (Screaming) - (Homelander)   And now you're just another  useless ******* blind guy. - (Michael) It’s important to note  that these superheroes aren't some   “happy accident” - RIP to Bob Ross - but  the result of Vought’s very secretive,   definitely illegal medical experiments on  children. The Boys try to expose Vought and   save Billy’s wife and her child from their  head-supe - Homelander. Season Two also   introduces the latest Vought hero Stormfront,  who turns out to be an actual century-old Nazi. - (Stormfront) Heinrich  Himmler... he was a lovely dancer. - (Michael) If it seems like The Boys is full  of people espousing disingenuous politics and   posturing for the cameras, it’s because the  show goes to great lengths to show us how almost   every character is constantly performing.   After all, it’s not enough to simply be a   hero in this world, you have to play a  hero too. Superheroes star in movies: - (Adam) Title card: Dawn of the Seven! - (Michael) Go on talk show circuits - - (Host) Stormfront, congrats on The   Seven. Are you excited to be here as I am? - (Stormfront) I don't know! I don't think so! - (Michael) And even give those lame  midnight religious infomercials. - (The Deep) But thanks to  the Church of the Collective,   I now know the type of man I want  to be. Hey dude - that's not cool. - (Michael) Heck, even when they’re not on the  screen, they worry about public approval ratings - (Homelander) So what, I'm down  a point? Point and a half? Two? - (Michael) And fastidiously try to  keep their “personal” selves in check.  - (Stormfront) Oh my god everyone  is so fucking stage managed. Life   isn’t actually a PR strategy!  You can say what you think!  - (Michael) And it’s not just our superheroes  who are constantly putting on a show. Whether   it’s Becca playing house with a sociopathic  superman, or Congresswoman Victoria Neuman   whipping her base into a frenzy, every character  seems to put on a mask at one time or another. So   here’s the question, Wisecrack: What do you think  happens when these deliberate performances collide   with hot-button, social issues?  Well, we’ve got  a term for you: virtue signaling. Now before you   smash that dislike button - hear me out. Virtue  signaling is a term that gets thrown around to   suggest that people are disingenuously engaging  with social issues not out of genuine concern but   to promote their own-self image.  While it’s  certainly a real phenomenon, it’s basically   become a catch-all term to call anyone who cares  about anything a fraud. One might say that even   my discussion of virtue signaling is in itself  some kind of signal of virtue about how wise I am   in an effort to make Wisecrack seem “tres woke”.  And then if you get mad at that and tweet about   it, your righteous indignation could itself be  some virtue signaling to your impassioned fans.   The point is, it’s very easy to call just about  anything virtue signaling -- and it’s also often,   but not always, a lazy and incoherent  argument. And it’s confusing because we   live in a world where we don’t trust anyone  to stand for anything for the right reasons.   And The Boys takes this confusion head on.  The Boys is centrally concerned *not* with   how ordinary people display their support  of social issues, but how corporations do.   In turn, it explores how ordinary people end  up consuming information about those ideas.   In Season One, for instance, Vought rebrands  their hero, Starlight, as a feminist icon. - She transforms! - Embraces her feminine strengths!  - Good bye yellow brick road! - And hello Starlight! - (Michael) Except well, their brand of “female  empowerment through sexuality” isn’t exactly   what the budding superhero had in mind. Vought  doesn’t care - they’re more concerned with the   image of an empowered woman that people can also  ogle than, you know, actually empowering anyone.  - Most importantly it tells a story. Of your  transformation. Of what you're going through.  - (Starlight) How exactly do you  know what I'm going through? Exactly? - (Michael) A.K.A. - virtue signaling - the  Starlight rebranding helps their bottom line   rather than any “feminist” cause. A  similar conflict happens in season 2:   Homelander maliciously outs Queen Maeve: - (Maria Menounos) Who in The Seven is gay? - (Homelander) Queen Maeve. - (Michael) Revealing her ex-girlfriend whom Maeve  is then forced to pretend is her current lover.   Vought reimagines Maeve’s forced-outing in their  film Dawn of the Seven as a “wholesome” coming   out story, complete with a cliched love interest  in the form of a counterculture, computer hacker. - (Queen Maeve) I’m afraid to...  to show the world who I am.  - (Hacker) Yeah, so who are  you, Meave?” - (Maeve) I’m gay. - (Michael) After establishing  Maeve as a queer icon,   Vought capitalizes on it to sell shit like this: - (Narrator) Brave Maeve Pride Bars. Because  you can’t be proud on an empty stomach.  - (Michael) It’s worth noting that,  while Maeve bars are sadly fictitious,   this whole “using someone’s identity for  profit” is a fairly common advertising   strategy. While your head of digital marketing may  genuinely care about, say, racism, their message   is still getting filtered through the lens of   “what’s going to make us money.”  As a result,   most companies only support social issues after  they become massively popular and therefore,   safe. Like how shampoo conglomerate L’Oreal  posted about “standing with the black community”   this summer, despite, oh right, apparently  ending their partnership with a model in 2017   because she spoke out against the white supremacy.  And filtering social issues through the lens of   profit isn’t just massively annoying, it can  actively harm people. Take Maeve’s sexuality.  - (Elena) You know Maeve is  bi, right?” - (Ashley) Yeah,   you know what? I just feel like lesbian is a  bit of an easier sell. A bit more cut and dry. - (Michael) Clearly, Vought’s preoccupation  with gay rights is just another sales tactic,   not an earnest means of “celebrating”  Maeve for who she actually   is. The company then tries to overhaul the  image of Maeve’s pretend partner, Elena,   so she can better conform to the stereotype  of “what a lesbian should look like.”  - (Elena) That looks like menswear. - (Seth) Peer Research shows that two   feminine women in a relationship  sends a problematic message. - (Michael) This is the danger of virtue  signaling as marketing strategy - it puts   a corporate-friendly face on social causes,  thus obscuring the actual reality. People are   then bombarded with images that reinforce the  big business version of reality. And this sort   of corporate “do-gooding” often provides a useful  and deliberate distraction from a given business’s   less savory practices - this is well documented in  Fran Hawthorne’s “Ethical Chic”. In Vought’s case,   all the feminism and gay pride distracts people  from the reality that the company is a private   military contractor with a less-than-stellar  human rights record. In this way, we might   better appreciate The Boys’ most glorious  jab at Marvel. For context -- In season 2,   Vought is going all in on female empowerment  with their new PR campaign, “girls get it done.” - (Reporter) Can you tell us a  little about "Girls get it done"?  ("Girls Get it Done" repeated by various speakers) - (Michael) The idea is that since there have  never been three women in the Seven before,   now’s the time to cash in on, not being sexist  anymore? But for all the congratulatory talk,   female empowerment is pretty much  the exact opposite of what Vought   is actually about. For starters, it’s  newest film, the Dawn of the Seven,   isn’t exactly concerned with portraying  realistic female characters.  - (Stormfront) You write women as either  unknowable Hitchcock bitches or Michael   Bay fuck dolls. I mean I get that a life time  of jerking off to Transformers didn't exactly   make you popular with the ladies,  but, a little effort would be nice. - (Michael) That’s a literal nazi saying  this.  And it’s not like the company has   embraced girl power off the screen either -  recall our coerced-into-spandex Starlight. - (Starlight) I'm fine with my old outfit. - (Madelyn) We're not.    - (Michael) All of which brings us to THAT Marvel  scene. To summarize, there is one very notable   moment in Avengers Endgame when Peter Parker  asks Captain Marvel how she plans to get past the   incoming onslaught of badmen. In response,  the Scarlet Witch and Okoye pop in and say: - (Scarlet Witch) Don’t worry - - (Okoya) She’s got help. - (Michael) As more female heroes swoop in to  assist our hero. When I saw it, tons of kids went   apeshit because Marvel was finally letting their  female heroes shine. But for more jaded adults,   this all felt a little forced, exactly the kind  of “corporate feminism” that we’ve become wary   of. And The Boys, seems to agree, mimicking  Marvel’s scene in the Dawn of the Seven.  - (Hacker) How are you gonna  get through all of them  - (Starlight) Don't worry - - (Stormfront) Girls get it done!  - (Michael) Much like Vought celebrates their  “girls get it done” after years of being a total   boys club, Marvel’s scene is a weird victory  lap for a company that waited a whole decade   before putting out its first standalone female  superhero film, Captain Marvel -- which also   happens to be a movie that many have called a  thinly-veiled recruitment tool for the Air Force. - (Brie Larson) You're so cool. - (Michael) And that’s not by accident:  the US Military has often exerted   editorial influence over movies like Top Gun  or Captain Marvel in exchange for access to   sick tanks and planes The result? A scrappy  but not too rough-around-the-edges hero who   can be turned both into a toy line and  an advertisement for the US military. - (Brie Larson) That spirit of her, that  sense of humor, mixed with total capability   in whatever challenge comes her way is  really what Air Force pilots are like. - (Michael) The kind of hero who would never,   ever do something like kick a  person while they’re down and yell:  - (Starlight) Eat my sh** you Nazi b****! - (Michael) See, in the brand-safe,  virtue-signaling realm of corporate social   justice, everything has to “play” well with  a large audience. And so all the corporations   who sponsor pride parades want to ignore  that the first “pride” was actually a   riot incited by police brutality. Or  how those who vaguely stand against   “hate” on Instagram never want to go into  the details about what that actually means.   But The Boys does - it looks like this. Three  women giving a bloody beatdown to a literal nazi. - (French) Girls do get it done! - (Michael) Also, congrats Marvel, you’ve been  roasted. Now, a common problem with the way the   word virtue-signaling gets thrown around is that  the term seems exclusively used against the left.   So a sensible question would be: is virtue  signaling confined to the liberal sphere?    And the answer to that is: absolutely not. We  just don’t usually think about it in those   terms. To see what I mean, let’s look at the  king of conservative virtue signaling himself,   Homelander. If virtue-signaling is the  invocation of issues or values out of   self-interest rather than genuine concern,  then this is Homelander’s patriotism to a tee.   The dude does not give a shit about America,  or American citizens. But he goes to great   lengths to SEEM like he has a raging hard-on  for the troops and the land of the free. - (Homelander) Oh! And you  guys, you, are the real heroes. - (Michael) Not only that, our sociopathic supe  is very careful to invoke all those cheesy,   patriotic platitudes when addressing crowds. - (Homelander) And introduce you to a little  thing called God's judgement! That's what I think!   Sounds like the American thing to do! - (Michael) This rhetoric, we might add,   is common to all politicians, but  especially those on the right.  - (Homelander) But if you’ve served  with our amazing soldiers like I have,   you’d know that freedom comes at a price. - (Michael) Of course, this is the same guy who  downed a whole airliner of American civilians,   before casually flying off and letting them sink  to their watery graves. To see how shallow all   this patriotic posturing really is, you need  only to look at what gets Homelander upset:   not the deaths of innocent Americans, but  rather those rare moments when he isn’t   showered with love and adoration. For  example, when people come after Homelander for   accidentally killing an innocent bystander, we  see the strongest man in America break down hard. (Homelander laughs maniacally and cries) - (Michael) Of course, Homelander isn’t alone  when it comes to virtue signaling via patriotism.    Vought is arguably just as bad.  On one hand the  company churns out pro-military ads like this one: - (Queen Maeve) We’re proud to fly alongside  them. And now we could use your support.  - (Homelander) That’s right, Maeve,  with our new campaign, Saving America. - (Michael) Sort of like that Captain Marvel ad,   right? On the other hand, as Stormfront  so rightly points out, it’s all a farce. - (Stormfront) Oh FYI, not a real base. - (Michael) See, like Homelander, Vought isn’t  interested in actual national security or   supporting the troops.  All they’re interested  in is those sweet, sweet military contracts.  - (Madelyn) And there's only one company  that has the product to fight back. - (Michael) And to that end, Vought does  everything from blackmail sitting senators   to imprisoning and experimenting on innocent  civilians with Compound V. Real good job keeping   America safe. There’s also a kind of Christian  virtue-signaling - you know, pastors who get   rich and famous for signaling to the world how  much they love jesus, even if they’re sleezebags. - (Hughie) He preaches all that   "pray the gay-away sh*t. - (Billy) Nah, he's the meat in the manwich. - (Michael) Like that. And finally there’s  what I’ll call authenticity-signaling,   which is all about broadcasting how “real”  you are, as best embodied by Stormfront. - (Stormfront) Be a bitch if you want! Be  whatever. Just drop the mask once in a while.   Feels good. - (Michael) Of course, her  persona is also carefully crafted,   meant to rile up her base for her own gross ends,  but because she defines herself in opposition to   her “squeaky-clean” heroes her own performance  of “realness” finds a receptive audience. - (Stormfront) As if Homelander and Maeve are   gonna eat in MREs and piss  in a ditch with the rest-   - (Michael) With all this virtue signaling coming  from both the left and right, from individuals to   corporations, you might be asking yourself one  simple question: how the fuck did we get here?   Virtue signaling, even if it wasn’t called that,  is quite old. They even complain about it in the   bible, when Jesus said you needed to shut the fuck  up on Facebook about buying a stranger Starbucks.   Well, I’m paraphrasing, but that’s basically what  he’s saying. But our current virtue-signaling   hellscape may be, at least partially, the  result of one industry: public relations, or PR.   Ever since Ivy Lee, the founder of modern PR,  first repaired the Rockefeller family’s robber   baron image through heavily slanted press releases  and a highly choreographed, sympathy tour through   Colorado, the world wised up to the fact that  a little positive publicity goes a long way.   Of course, people maligned Lee as a “hired  slanderer” and “poisoner of public opinion”,   and maybe they had a point. Because here’s the  messed up thing, Wisecrack. A hundred years ago,   Lee opened up the floodgates, and now the field  of positive spin can be used to rehabilitate   the image of just about anyone or anything. And  that’s where things get dark. To see what I mean,   let’s look at the messed up journey of the guy  you love to hate: The Deep, aka Aquaman, except he   does sexual assault.  After being booted from The  Seven for sexually assaulting Starlight, The Deep   spirals hard, eventually getting some time in the  clanker for commandeering a kids’ water park.  - (The Deep) You think  water’s supposed to be fun?    Try swimming in the Marianna  trench, you little f****** idiots! - (Michael) When he’s bailed out, though,   it’s by the Church of the Collective,  who in exchange for his bank account,   agree to do some serious PR work to get him  back into the Seven. To that end, the Church   makes the Deep appear in some seriously cheesy  infomercials and even focus tests a wife for him.  - (The Deep) But I thought I got to choose.  - (Woman) You do. And you’re choosing Cassandra.  - (Michael) Now the running joke of the season is  how truly pathetic The Deep is, and how willing he   is to go along with a PR blitz that presents such  a patently false image. But underneath the humor,   we have to realize how fundamentally screwed  up all this is.  Through the persuasive dark   arts of PR, The Deep – a repeat sexual  offender and all around asshole – nearly   regains his position in the most prestigious  paramilitary organization in the world.  - (Alastair) Did you catch Malala Yousafzai's   tweet? Called you a sweetheart! - (The Deep) Well she's a sweetheart. - (Michael) But if you think it’s terrifying that  PR can rehabilitate a piece of shit like The Deep,   then you’re going to love this next  one. The Boys shows how PR and all   its virtue signaling can even make nazism  look kosher. To understand what I mean,   let’s look at Homelander and his new boo,  Stormfront. By understanding the ins and   outs of PR, Stormfront is able to revitalize  Homelander’s flagging, all American brand.  - (Stormfront) You don’t need 50  million people to love you, you need   5 million people f**** pissed.  You have fans.  I have soldiers. - (Michael) In other words, Stormfront, in true  Don Draper fashion, knows how to sell a message   to the masses. Basically, Homelander takes all  that patriotic virtue signaling he’s known for   and appends it to a violently xenophobic message.  And the results are downright terrifying. - (Homelander) One nation under god,  remember? Right before these godless,   inhuman supervillains started pouring across  our borders and dragging us down into their mud! - (Michael) Of course, it goes  without saying that neither   Homelander nor Stormfront cares about this  supposed super terrorist threat. A threat,   we might add, that was literally  created by Homelander himself. - (Homelander) Did it ever occur to  you that, a sup-terrorist showing up,   EXACTLY when we needed him to was...  a pretty f**** incredible coincidence? - (Michael) Instead, all this spin serves  the purpose of a larger, darker message:   a race war led by Eva Braun over here. - (Stormfront) They want to wipe us from this  Earth, just because of the color of our skin.  - (Ryan) Really? - (Stormfront) It's called white genocide. - (Michael) See, Stormfront intuitively  understands that if she wants to sell   her vision of “white is right,” she  needs to dress it up with all that   classic American apple pie virtue  signaling. Or, in her own words: - (Stormfront) People love what  I have to say. They believe in   it. They just don’t like the word nazi.  - (Michael) It’s also interesting to consider  that Stormfront’s own brand of “realness” is just   another cynical way to brand herself. While Vought  might traditionally favor the more “buttoned-up”   approach of giving speeches with talking points,  she prefers crafting a more unpolished brand,   but a brand nonetheless: paying people to  make memes and packaging people’s bigotry. - (Stormfront) Oh this is just the first  batch. I'll have Logan punch up the fear.  - (Homelander) Logan? - (Stormfront) My meme queen! - (Michael) Now, the trouble with virtue-signaling  is that many sociologists and philosophers have   said that basically EVERYTHING we do is a  performance. Whether you’re going to church,   pursuing a career, or getting  a sweet new set of truck nuts,   everything we do is filtered through how  we think others will perceive our actions. - (Queen Maeve) But hey, as  long say you're trending right? - (Michael) If Starlight wants to  do good, and be recognized for it,   it doesn’t necessarily make her good deeds  worthless. The problem, The Boys wants to   remind us, is when people weaponize good  acts to distract from their evil acts.   And with a world full of marketers and PR  reps, it’s often hard to tell the difference.  - (Billy) So it's just business then eh? - (Stan) When, Mr. Butcher,   has it ever been about anything different? - (Michael) But what do you think,  Wisecrack? Is The Boys right? Can we   even begin to decipher what’s real  anymore? And does it even matter?   Smash that subscribe button like Homelander is...  ok we can’t show that. Don’t forget to ring that   bell. Huge thanks to all of our patrons for your  support, and always, thanks for watching, later. 
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Channel: Wisecrack
Views: 948,911
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: the boys, social justice, social justice warriors, the boys season 2, starlight, homelander, queen maeve, billy butcher, stormfront, aya cash, jack quaid, karl urban, hughie, frenchie, karen fukuhara, superheroes, marvel, captain marvel, marvel girl power, wisecrack, homelander kills crowd, homelander plane scene, philosophy, psychology, what went wrong, show me the meaning, deep or dumb, video essays, film analysis, the boys season 1 recap, black noir, the deep, a train
Id: TDKfqpnFoeQ
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 21min 7sec (1267 seconds)
Published: Mon Dec 07 2020
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