- (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.
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.