The Boys: TRAUMA

being nice [Music] what do you have against superheroes superheroes themselves are to me they're not actually worthy of anger or hatred it's the lock the genre has on the industry i would love to see crime comics uh more war comics obviously i'd like to see more romance comics more kitchen sink drama comics i'd like to see an a european approach taken so it's it's not the superheroes themselves it's the lock they have on this industry on this medium in in america and to an extent in britain as well that's what gets me done writing an essay for the boys was surprisingly difficult because it's so dense every idea every character arc and satirical critique on modern media build on each other so subtly that i don't really know where to start so why not begin with its unifying interest lost on a character level the boys is about overcoming guess what trauma where pain steals everyone's sense of self definition and on a deeper thematic level it's about how modern culture is so staged that every accepted truth including the very nature of superheroes is a lie it's important to understand that the original boy's comics was written by an irish dude called garth ennis i was totally obsessed with him as teenager by the way and he's famous for being totally miffed with the genre therefore the boys can be interpreted as a form of protest the opening pages opens with butcher calling a bunch of flying supes the c word then huey's girlfriend gets killed by villain being thoughtlessly thrown by a train this is a mean-spirited world that's very specifically configured to upset the conventions of superhero comics as a result i remember when the show was announced i was kind of like wait has hollywood reached a level of superhero saturation that such protest would still make sense yes but more surprisingly where the show succeeds isn't in reperforming the comics protest in a different medium but in reapplying its core angle i suppose if i was to sum up the approach that the book takes to superheroes it's and this is hardly a new concept it's an attempt to look at what they would be like in the real world now my particular line on that is that they would be a cross between politicians who have an actual effect on our world and pop culture celebrities who are of course well-known instantly recognizable their lives are actually followed almost like a soap opera in exactly the same way as famous actors and pop stars lives are followed in in the real world the show hones in and uses the celebrity slash politician interpretation to not just critique modern superhero films but to criticize the world we live in right now in contrast to the comics the show opens with a robbery boy's okay homeland and queen maeve intervene in a genuinely heroic manner before indulging in the press then we see who he loses girlfriend to atrium who for a moment actually seems genuinely regretful before rushing off i can't stop against them afterwards we're introduced to annie aka starlight we see how powerful and genuine she is but it's undercut by the camera where she's rendered tiny in the frame i am starlight i'm 110 pounds and i'm five foot six as a result what these opening eight minutes wants you to focus on aren't the superheroes but the media that filters and constructs them and this is the magic of the boys we've seen superheroes deconstructed politically and psychologically but how about culturally where any intention sincere or not will always be repurposed for self-marketing that speech by the way your audition it was modest it was humble really smart choice oh i meant it it's kind of like building a youtube channel the initial pov characters huey and starlight directly gives us a tour through these american media industrial systems from heartless mdas to being auctioned to sexual arrests your old uniform but i'm saving up for the new one [Music] hey starlight show us your tooth therefore despite how one's life is falling apart because of a superhero and one is rising to become one the only people of power aren't the super powered but the ones that play the media game um excuse me i'm sorry are you okay however the show avoids being entirely satirical by depicting the character's trauma with genuine sympathy the gotheness point and laugh before i make you cry approach is replaced with a sincere love everyone because you'd probably do the same and yes this is the bit where i talk about trauma is when an event is so painful and contradictory to your sense of safety and meaning that it creates a wound in your mind a wound that you're always drawn to scratching because the shadow of the pain from the locked memories gives the wound an itch the boys and the boys are all defined by their inability to come to terms with this ineffective feeling they're all lonely angry individuals looking to make the world bleed so their own blood can make sense huey kills translucent not out of hatred of him or superheroes but his hatred with himself you can't do this why not dad i have you don't have the fight you never have butcher has built his entire identity around his hatred of superheroes and treats people as tools for this hatred well i mean that's all i need you for right now because homelander took his wife in more ways than one frenchie got children killed therefore he stopped building his own life why work so hard if you don't have somebody to go home to and sleep next to at night well i go to sleep next to someone different every night yeah that's cause you are old lonely too and you're gonna die by yourself the only character that doesn't ascribe to this pattern is mother's milk the second in command and that's because he's the only one whose wound did heal he built another life another story to define himself and for that he becomes the voice of reason a clear and idealistic mirror that the others point towards not gonna let anything get in your way even if it's your own friends man you promised me things would be different matter of fact you swore it but this is worse man for the more huey is who butcher was and could be if his blind bigotry didn't consume him to the point that even when all the cards were right he still didn't act because he couldn't get his revenge she's not a bad person she's a soup huey just on the rest of them in contrast huey fell in love with annie in a world filled with lies they allow each other to appreciate honesty like french and kamiko their very company guides them into rediscovering the value of who they are and stop hating themselves for who they aren't you know anything's happening i think you're holding back for some weird not gonna show me up on a first date reason [Music] as a result they stopped scratching their wounds and let the skin grow back the boys as much as it's a foul-mouthed violent and often very angry show is shockingly never heartless because it loves celebrating the ordinary person as the real hero of everyday life friends family and the little actions we take to help are what deserves our attention not what's marketed to us because you're a superhero really i can't remember the last time i saved anyone can you save me when did i ever save you bowling out i was i was angry after robin i was headed for this cliff and then you and me went bowling bowling yeah bowling however by being so sentimental with its characters it leverages the tone to be especially clinically cruel with the construction of its lore everything and everyone are commodified in this world and in the show shall we including the superheroes to the extent that they are devoid of community and their self-worth is almost entirely determined by their market worth sorry sakes clean yourself up never let them see you like this you back on that compound v you promised me that you would stay clean which brings me to homelander the superman stand-in except everything about him is completely staged he was raised in a laboratory to become the best mascot for the company fault pets now just reading i try not to get too attached to my subjects that's true and this might sound kind of nuts but in the show he's actually kind of sanitized because he's not a baby eating psychopath who is so starlight and there's even more effed up stuff he's more like an overgrown little boy who didn't get a childhood so with his powers he treats everyone either as a toy if i ever really thought you'd fall in for someone else i don't think i could handle it is that so you and me or an adult that should always give him approval and attention he's effectively the most extreme narcissistic byproduct of this media environment because his childhood trauma prevents him from imagining the future outside of his marketed value therefore the approach with the genre is slightly adjusted it's not about looking how ridiculous superheroes are because in real life everyone's [ __ ] but it's more like look at how ridiculous our society has become where there's no way for anyone's integrity to survive the artifice of mass culture i can't wear that what the media is the villain to the extent that the superhero in quotation marks aspect of these characters is literally a front they're all pharmaceutical experiments a drug that homeland then shared with america's enemies sequel after sequel [Music] after sequel therefore despite the government and vaught being enemies they're forced to work together and the company gets that sweet sweet us military money despite being outed so it doesn't matter where heroes really come from frankly it doesn't even matter how the enemy got the compound v what matters is they've got it and there is only one company that has the product to fight back starlight is completely disenchanted now resembling queen maeve but maeve protects annie in order to save the part of her that died you know what be just be original my position is already taken and as butcher abandons the boys after they've been captured huey actually leaves they're not the same he goes to annie because he still believes in superheroes and that belief keeps each of them alive and they end up saving the boys and even a train in the end butcher finally gets his time with homelander who discovers there's more to this in the comics his wife died due to homelanders baby but in this universe they're both alive things are a little bit more complicated [Music] life after traumatic event can often be defined as a test of how willing you are to live with your new skin and if you can withhold yourself from reopening the old wounds this is not the way this is poison for your soul i know most of the characters begin to fail we begin with everyone losing their grip with the conclusions they had made before butcher wakes up in the middle of nowhere his revenge was wrong so he now struggles to care i'll neutralize her the compassion you show your team is truly touching hillary begins to lose his will to live because he banked his entire self-worth with the boys and annie but he lacks any control with either i'm gonna drown and and thank god i found my second wind because it's you homelander is incapable of understanding his son despite how much he wants to be part of his life buddy ryan this is a good thing annie is able to play the game of lies but loses touch with herself mother's milk wants to see his family again but can't friendship relies on kumiko to redeem himself i don't understand what you're saying because you won't teach me furthermore the show also opens up on a deliberate symmetry between butcher and homelander they're both abusive jerks to exploit people for their own narcissistic worldviews because they were taught to be strong in spite of themselves when he was a little boy five or six he was quite sweet that's why you're still here and he's dead enough you beat uh over both of us didn't you might be i'll push you a bit yeah he'd cuddle up to me but you know i needed him to be the strongest man in the world he didn't even want it it was for me you're afraid of anything no are you the strongest did you know [Music] go off and stop just for the no butcher's father is also revealed to be an abuser who even pushed billy's little brother to death a kid just like huey which is why butcher almost pushed him to near suicide no he's not gonna make it and you need that kid you let your canary die how you gonna know when you're gone too far like homeland he wants to believe he lives the narrative of progress by transmitting their abuse onto others but as a result they're heading backwards and are dragging everyone there too the guild is showing cover it up it's disgusting although unlike homelanders butcher lets huey change him and for that his story begins to be rewritten whereas life is defined by his friends not their uses or his homeland only sees its own as something that's emotionally useful to him it's hard ryan and gods should not have to feel that kind of pain but what about the media aspect of the story well the centerpiece of this season is the production of the seven movie which is written like an mcu film scored by hans zimmer and presented in a zack snyder style however this is all portrayed with mundane irritation joss rewrite really sings huh because it's not the centerpiece of the drama anymore instead it's now new media so when you see it on your uncle's facebook page then you know it's working if the media with a villain on a participatory level in season 1 then season 2 interrogates its effects on a societal level by exploring how ideas spread and divide people how echo chambers are formed through the circulation of information first a video leaks of homelander casually killing people overseas then stormfront his rival and a social media savvy real-life nazi uses her trolls to control the discourse through disinformation and extreme conservative memes to radicalize the public onto his side i genuinely can't believe the show had the balls to depict this without any fear of backlash it's pretty awesome we are in a war for the culture homeland's public opinion then recovers leading to a relationship between them therefore on a character level she represents his sexual maturity he went from competing with a baby to now becoming like a teenage boy but it's also still a relationship rooted in his narcissism because she pushes him to like himself in unlikable ways the other races are grinding us down and taking what is rightfully ours but we can fight back and you will be the man who will lead us so unlike everyone else he doesn't actually grow he just finds another means to decorate and hide his wound in contrast annie's inducted into the boys kamiko embraces her and butcher works to tolerate his own prejudice underneath all that swagger you're just a bigot and a bully i know another guy just like that he's got a flag for a cape they break into an asylum where vort is trying to stabilize compound v for adults leading to frenchy to finally confront lamplighter we'll do what you did drop it you murdered innocent children you watched them burned alive i didn't know [Music] kamiko watches in surprise and horror he's just like her five years ago they tried to use lamplighter as a spy frenchy was tasked to watch him but on the night his mate overdosed so he left to save his family but in doing so mallory's grandchildren unintentionally died therefore both men condemned themselves afterwards what makes you think i want to be lit off the hoga and it's through this experience kamiko learns to not give into vengeance before forming a more sincere relationship with frenchie where they don't use each other to make themselves feel better you never ask to be saved he cannot absolve my uh scenes no one can i know this now so i leave you similarly butcher and annie share a laugh over huey's childlike nature he's too good for either of us yeah i think what the show shows us is that if we try to use other people to vindicate ourselves we limit our options in dealing with wounds but to let other people change us to see ourselves through the eyes of someone else we won't obsessively stare at our wounds therefore we have a better chance of letting it heal [Music] i have no choice it won't help you all you've been doing is ending his torment as i quote from emily keatley and michael pickering i know predictable right at any particular junction in our lives experience is in part directed and shaped by our own agency and in part by conditions and pressures outside of individual control or command it is always manifest in a dialectical process moving between possibility and limit aspiration and constraint experience is never exclusively personal or public interiorized or outwardly facing self-directed or the blind product of social forces it crosses between these mutually informing categories and that movement is formed the synthesis of self-definition and definition by others that we call the self but then it's revealed vault isn't a company it's actually a fascist regime their goals aren't profits but woe domination the effects are seen when video game donkey wakes up and is so exposed by the constant push of fear-mongering xenophobia from the news in the interwebs that he's brainwashed into a racist killer people individually may be able to draw the right margins in the self but the media draws the power lines within society started pouring across our borders and dragging us down into their mud the media is still with the villain its methods of setting the agenda setting what to think is interwoven into the fabric of the routines in everyday life as a result its effect is characterized almost as a form of trauma in itself for society's imagination because it's harder to remember the past hard to make sense of what's going on right now therefore pretty much impossible to imagine the future while everything is sustained through a feeling of constant pain everything in the show is very cleverly thematically connected all out war is about to break out becca's on the run after homeland took her son butcher negotiates for her life but not the boy and you call me a ruthless bastard although the kid ryan is actually more like clark kent than homelander who's freaked out by the adoration and was actually raised by the company of love i don't really hate anyone therefore as much as homeland is trying to correct his own life by using rhine as a weird self-corrected crooked mirror it doesn't work you know you want me to be like you dad i'm not his very existence also further invalidates butch's prejudice who's now sworn to look after him to renounce his hatred to be a better person and i think where they're going with this is that he's got to make superman which is really ironic as a result butcher has effectively his entire life rewritten to the extent that his trauma has actually healed his very purpose and identity has moved from being a husband without a wife to a big brother to now a father he even goes against his own deal when the chips are down to save him who's gonna sell you out you didn't though and you didn't and you won't subsequently during the big rescue operation stormfront's nazi past is unearthed and released she even says people love what i have to say they just don't like the word nazi that's all which is a pretty powerful condemnation of the state of current things after a big fight happens homelander sacrifices his own son for the love of the crowd the life in his eyes now die he's effectively a husk and it's ironic how homeland and butchers start in the season so similarly but yet ends so differently everything goes back to normal everyone is stronger butcher gives ryan his love the boys are now officiated those whose grip struggle to hold and yet shared their weight finds their way through the fog this was our dream this was your dream i never got a chance to choose my own dream i was just like you and then i started giving pieces of myself away and i guess i gave away everything this is done i'll take you up on that that's the point marvin it's never done you just let go doesn't matter what we do nothing changes no justice for your father no revenge against a bot you get nothing i just thought when you saw how helpless he is now you'd let it go our weakness is the same as anyone's he wouldn't have this hold over you it's people you know irving yellow me once said you you died twice once when you stopped breathing and again when somebody utters your name for the last time are you gonna blow yourself up [Music] you save the little [ __ ] that [ __ ] murdered your wife i'd like to hear about your family keep them alive a bit longer okay i have no right to ask you to help me after what i said to you but don't you worry all right i won't find your son i promise if billy butcher can do the right thing then there's got to be some kind of higher power if you jump ship and you let the [ __ ] steer then you're part of the problem and someone taught me something about hanging in there i love the boys it's one of the best recent shows i've seen to the extent that for me it transcends its genre and into the stratosphere of high prestigious tv because it has something to say about how limited our world is and also lets itself find a solution to overcome a pain you can't make sense of you have to let the person that hurt inside you die so you can let someone else rise from it and that change doesn't come free it requires letting something new right who you are the boy shows us that it's best if it's written by a friend because it may be hard to trust yourself but trusting someone you love now that's pretty ideal [Music] oh he's like a brother to me yeah he was there for me when i was at rock bottom he's a toxic personality and no church members are to have any contact with him whatsoever yeah no now that you mentioned it he did seem pretty toxic [Music] your yeah pounds your lips move your eyes [Music] truth justice the american way i think someone's just trying to get me to admit i was raised here

Channel: Implicitly Pretentious

Views: 980,928

Keywords: the boys, amazon prime, homelander, hughie, starlight, karl urban, video essay, analysis, superheroes, garth ennis, butcher, the seven, billy butcher

Id: PlBnk70bpE0

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021