Today was supposed to be a calm, relaxed Sunday. Filled with ennui off putting, whistsome sighs cast off from under a leafy oak tree with my trusty hound lazily nestled by my side. That is, until, I checked my Google Reader feed and found this little gem: "'AVENGERS' DIRECTOR WHEDON GOES ON ANTI-CAPITALIST RANT." Needless to say, the execution of my pastourelle was derailed.
The blogger in question (John Nolte, a Brietbart editor) forces the same, tired, old misconstruction about critics of corporate capitalism being feeble-minded god-hating pinkos.The author bends Joss Whedon's words to expell his own poorly ruminated anti-anti-capitalist vitriol in suggesting that Whedon's comments are movements toward a Socialist revolution. It's important to note that the entireity of this mess is extrapolated from four orphan quotes for which no source is provided. ('MURIKAN MEDIA RULES, YEAH!)
This allows me the lattitude to address two issues. The first of which is the truthiness which could be present in the orpiginal representation of our current state of affairs today. The analogy which presents Serfs as American middle-classers works quite well. The Serfs' lot was terrible, not because they were, for all intents and purposes, owned, but because their nominal social process was interceded by an assortment of alien legalisms. Mandates which governed the serfs came from the aristocracy as well as the religious environment of the time. The implementation and governance of those mandates were outside of the power vector of the people.
The similitude of the situations comes into focus when we think of the "American" citizen as an uninformed blade of grass which is swept in whichever direction the wind elects. The "middle class" doesn't have a firm handle on our own process of governance, and therefore it is an alien structure. Most people believe that the President makes laws and can raise taxes and so on. There are some polls and surveys and such that corroborate that about a third of Americans are not quite capable of passing a basic citizenship test. While I personally find that statistics are just as authoritative as a personal claim, they seem to carry more weight when conducting a discussion. I digress: All of that is not to say that Americans are stupid or lazy, or otherwise defective, it is explicitly to say that we (Americans) are slowly being processed into Industrial Serfs.
So, with giving support to one aspect of the claim that MAY HAVE been present, we can look at the rest of the regurgitated cliches. Nolte references Whedon as, "the guy probably worth somewhere around a gajillion dollars and who likely made somewhere around a thousand times more money from "Avengers" than anyone on the crew." This position is seemingly hostile to the very notion of profit. I'm confused. Is the author disturbed by anti-anti-capitalism, or by success? The ironic whopper comes later in the fail-ridden text-vomit: "Good heavens, there are probably a hundred thousand people living in poverty around Los Angeles -- living on the streets, waiting tables, parking cars -- waiting and working and hoping for a taste of the success Joss Whedon's enjoyed. You know, the people Whedon is obviously referring to when he speaks of serfs." These people are, indeed, serfs-- persons that have been programmed to be preoccupied with a multitude of things rather than their own governance.
The meltdown of reduction is packed into the last heave: "It's time to pay gaffers and production assistants and wardrobe and make-up personnel the same amount of money as, well, Joss Whedon makes!" By this logic, anyone who isn't a supporter of status quo corporate capitalism is a supporter of egalitarian communism. What's worse is that the quoted 'source' material suggests that Whedon himself positions this outside of the Conservative / Liberal, Republican / Democrat binaries. Despite that, criticism against his criticism place him right back inside of a box that isn't even being referenced.
Applicable Sources:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/14/Whedon-Goes-On-Anti-Capitalist-Rant
http://www.thewrap.com/tv/column-post/joss-whedon-america-turning-tsarist-russia-47756
