How do you think Falcon and Winter Soldier handled the racial topics it sought to explore?

[PhoenixAKG]

So a big part of Falcon and the Winter Soldier was addressing the implications of a black Captain America following Steve giving his shield to Sam. I was wondering how people thought it did in exploring these themes.

Personally I was surprised as they went deeper than what I thought they would allow. The scene in episode 1 with the banker showing subtle systemic racism was something I didn't expect as most of the time in shows they usually go with open blatant racism. What really surprised me was what they did:

Spoiler

With Isaiah Bradley. I mean they didn't censor his backstory from the comics and fully spelled out the atrocities the US and did to him and others simply because they were black

,

So overall as a black person I don't think they did a bad job in exploring this issue.

 

[Deleted member 31923]

I thought it did pretty well at handling the issue surprisingly. Unfortunately, that was really the only interesting aspect of the show imo.

 

[Slayven]

A nigga saving the universe and not being able to get a loan is some real shit. Fuck the cartoonist crossburning racism(white people can ignore) you see in fiction, it is the low-key everyday stuff that cuts deep

 

[DrForester]

They went a lot deeper into it than I thought they would. They really didn't pull any punches with Isaiah.

 

[Fat4all]

i loved all the stuff with the older black super soldier

 

[krazen]

Nailed the microaggressions 100%, particularly in the face of loving your country.

That said, plot wise didn't sell me on Sam making the choice he made to take the mantle. But that could also be since they used that speech to also wrap up the Flag Smashers storyline that was lacking

 

[Jakisthe]

Should have dug into it more beyond just that one character you mention (and the occasional smattering of microaggessions). The idea of an African-American man being Captain America in general should have been more explored. It felt like it was more about encapsulating the *past* within that character and then having Sam serve as a fix - particularly with his corny Big End Speech which was instantly accepted - vs how modern society at large reacts to a "this famous title had been a white man it is now a black man" scenario. This seemed *especially* glaring of an omission given that the chosen government sponsored individual was a white guy, and the villains were displaced persons.

So yeah. A little more than expected in some regards, although it was still not very elegantly handled even there, and overall lacking in how much modern perspective it could show on society writ large.

 

[KOfLegend]

I think they did good. A little more on the surface level side compared to something like Watchmen, but it's Disney and I'm surprised they allowed them to go as deep as they did.

 

[Masterz1337]

I thought it was good and wish they had leaned more into it. But the whole show seemed rushed and each episode needed to be fleshed out with 10-20 minutes more so it's hard for me to fault the creative team when they had to have filming be interrupted by COVID

 

[mbpm]

It did a bit but I wanted more and I felt like I was feeling it's direction notably less with it as the series went on

 

[Deleted member 4461]

I think they definitely did a lot with respect to race...

But I don't see how it really tied into Sam being a black Captain America. Like, they basically say "hey people won't like this" or "this shield means so much," but what actually happens rarely ties back into that theme.

Isaiah is the closest the show got, but they didn't show any of what he was talking about with respect to Sam. It just turns out that Sam's right and people are mostly happy with him being Cap.

I'm sure we'll see more in the movie, but in the show I think they basically just did "hey, Sam has normal black people problems."

EDIT: I'm bad at wording forum posts, so if anyone is confused, I basically tried to say the same thing as:

Should have dug into it more beyond just that one character you mention (and the occasional smattering of microaggessions). The idea of an African-American man being Captain America in general should have been more explored. It felt like it was more about encapsulating the *past* within that character and then having Sam serve as a fix - particularly with his corny Big End Speech which was instantly accepted - vs how modern society at large reacts to a "this famous title had been a white man it is now a black man" scenario. This seemed *especially* glaring of an omission given that the chosen government sponsored individual was a white guy, and the villains were displaced persons.


So yeah. A little more than expected in some regards, although it was still not very elegantly handled even there, and overall lacking in how much modern perspective it could show on society writ large.

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But they may have been clearer.

 

[SasaBassa]

Should've been the bigger and more focused part of the show, as I thought it was what they handled best. Episode 5 is a standout and one of the best parts ever of the mcu for me

 

[HustleBun]

One of the few things it handled well.
At least my peers and loved ones who are Black were all some degree of pleasantly surprised with how that stuff was handled, so that made it more meaningful to me. It definitely added new layers to Sam's character for me. And can someone recommend me stuff with the actor who played Isaaih Bradley because I've never seen him in anything and he moved me to tears in one scene. He was really good.

Sharon, Walker and especially the Flag Smashers?
Not so much. Like, really half-baked and it felt like all of those storylines were altered and changed at the last minute, like a game being rushed to meet it's deadline. The Sam and Bucky stuff was lovely but the rest of the series weighed it down.

Even if the villains had less screen time but Bucky/Sam/Isaaih had more, it would have been a better series.

 

[Dodongo]

I thought they did pretty well. Their handling of the Isaiah Bradley storyline was great.

 

[Chainshada]

White non-American, every Isaiah scene was powerful, Carl Lumbly nailed it. Other than the bank scene the only other one that really stuck out to me was the cop scene.

Cops showing up and getting aggressive with Sam for a heated conversation even though they're there to arrest Bucky for breaking the law, going so far as to apologize to him for the arrest beforehand.

 

[Vincent Alexander]

The racial stuff was the best part of the show. Honestly, they were the only really good parts for me. I wish the rest of the show was as good.

Should've been the bigger and more focused part of the show, as I thought it was what they handled best. Episode 5 is a standout and one of the best parts ever of the mcu for me

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Agreed. Episode 5 was powerful.

 

[BWoog]

Amazed that the MCU went that deep with it to be honest.

 

[Fushichou187]

I thought it did really well given the space they were playing in (MCU).

I wish they had given their treatment of capitalism & imagined communities via the Flag Smashers the same energy, but that's a pipe dream I know.

 

[LProtagonist]

They went deeper than I thought that Disney was willing to go, I'll give them that. It was also the best part of the show.
I feel like if they just pushed a bit harder and kept the focus around it for more of the show it would have been a pretty damn big statement, instead of just a solid one.

 

[Soapbox Killer]

A nigga saving the universe and not being able to get a loan is some real shit. Fuck the cartoonist crossburning racism(white people can ignore) you see in fiction, it is the low-key everyday stuff that cuts deep

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Yes sir. I m watching it like, this dude fought Thanos, twice and they still gave him shit. I felt that. I remember I had came home from a deployment and the fleet went to Boston and our black asses couldn't even catch a cab till this death metal kid flagged one down and apologized for the city.

 

[Deleted member 64609]

Considering Rona-related editing problems and it being a Disney production it did more than I thought it would but the ending fizzled out.

 

[Cipherr]

Amazed that the MCU went that deep with it to be honest.

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Same. And it was done pretty well. Much more than I would expect from Disney that's for damn sure.

 

[Lump]

More than I expected from the MCU, and about as much as I think we can ever expect from the MCU.

It handled the Antifa Supersoldier storyline like poo, though.

 

[Parthenios]

Anything with Isaiah is the best Phase 4 content yet.

I think the bank scene is maybe the most clever. It's plausibly got nothing to do with race (the reasons given for the denial are completely valid), but that's one of the mechanisms for how racism has persisted, with plausible deniability. It's not bankers (or politicians, or police, or hiring managers, etc) running around with hoods up screaming epithets, it's having racist agendas and hiding it behind policies that are not racist on their face, and not applying the policies equally (maybe Bucky have got the loan).

 

[Pai Pai Master]

The racial politics were handled well, the class politics not so much

 

[SixtyFourBlades]

I know that this show's taping was kinda messed up by Covid but I loved this show and it really surprised me how far Marvel dug into the topic. I felt like they should have done even more with honestly. Karli and the Flagsmashers weren't really doing much for me. The stuff with Isaiah Bradley though? Top notch. I still get ticked when I think about the Emmys nominating Don Cheadle instead of Carl Lumby who had WAYYY more of an impact.

 

[Mekanos]

The racial politics were handled well, the class politics not so much

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Pretty much, though I think there's a big overlap there, which is a fundamental issue with how the show presents racial topics.

The idea that Isaiah would be thankful for a statue celebrating his career as a soldier didn't gel at all with his subplot.

 

[Pai Pai Master]

Pretty much, though I think there's a big overlap there, which is a fundamental issue with how the show presents racial topics.

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Agreed. But the more personal stuff with Sam and Isaiah was at least on pretty solid ground and was well presented.

 

[Catshade]

I wish they could just focus on Isaiah and US Agent (forget his name), and leave The Flagsmashers bit for season 2.

 

[skillzilla81]

The actor that played Bradley killed that shit. Way more than I expected going in to the show.

 

[EricTheGamerman]

I'm increasingly checked out of all the MCU stuff for a myriad of reasons, but I thought the general concept of what The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was trying to do was solid. Making the legacy of Captain America and super soldiers tainted with experiments and things gone wrong was a good move and having the characters confront that history and what it means to have a Black Captain America was one of the things in more recent MCU stuff that I was interested in and I felt had the potential to allow the MCU to grow...

But the overall execution ended up sloppy and the need to be a launch pad for the MCU's properties and ideas really weighed down on the themes and ideas they wanted to explore. It felt like the show would pull in interesting narratives threads, but so few of those conclusions felt earned because they didn't get enough time. The show, more than the others so far, was just forced to set up a bunch of narrative threads in the MCU, so despite being 6 episodes, it never felt like there was time for anything to breathe. Especially having Sam make a huge speech that just wrapped everything up after yet another unnecessarily long and bombastic finale and like felt like a bad trope of character talking to make world peace. I think there was a huge rush to get Sam Wilson as Captain America when that could have easily been something they did over a couple of seasons and really dug into the themes and ideas they wanted to explore. There's no real exploration of how people are reacting to John Walker post his international murder incident or Sam Wilson in the suit on a broader scale.

I dunno, I get there was a compelling idea there and some of the smaller moments it did genuinely well, but it just felt hamstrung by the greater MCU plot lines, trying to cover way too much in too little on screen time, and probably held back in some way by Disney and the fact that going really deep into the subject would require making audiences much more uncomfortable and force much more introspection.

 

[louie]

The scenes dealing with race were poorly dramatised, and usually just resulted in the characters staring intensely at one another while speaking in clunky expository dialogue. I would have liked it a lot more if they acted upon what they talked about. The show dedicated much more runtime to showing other things, and any issue that didn't lend well to a spy-espionage-action-thriller was merely just given lip service.

 

[Deleted member 13798]

Yeah, all that was good stuff, mainly.

It was the Flag Smashers shit that was the fuckup.

 

[Ravenwraith]

All the stuff with Isaiah was good aside from how the subplot ended

Everything outside of that was tone deaf and grating to watch

 

[Khanimus]

Isaiah is the closest the show got, but they didn't show any of what he was talking about with respect to Sam. It just turns out that Sam's right and people are mostly happy with him being Cap.

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We saw him at work for like one night. If they intend on following it through, it's barriers that are gonna get in his way in Cap 4. The arc of the show is Sam knowing these truths and stepping up to the plate anyway.

 

[King Kingo]

The racial stuff was the best part of the show. Honestly, they were the only really good parts for me. I wish the rest of the show was as good.

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This is basically my opinion. We could have had a top quality limited series if Karli wasn't such an awful villain, she literally ruined Falcon and the Winter Soldier for me.

A part of me wonders if Nightshade was originally planned to be used but because she was in Luke Cage, she couldn't be used. She would have made for a strong villain that could further explore racial inequalities.

 

[-Hyperion-]

The ending was terrible. That ridiculously trite speech at the end that has the world leaders doing this

As if those banal surface-level observations were going to change anything.

I genuinely expected Isaiah's reaction to Sam's museum surpise to be similar to when he told Sam no black man should even want to be Captain America because it was the only reaction that made sense for what his previous characterisation had established. Oh, you got me a little monument in your sanitised diorama next to the gift shop? I guess you fixed things now!

If I wanted to be really unkind I'd say the whole tone of the show felt like someone whitesplaining racism. "Did you know the police will target black people unjustifiably? truth bomb!"

 

[MadLaughter]

The show really dropped the ball by not doing a better job of depicting the fact that the people that Karli was fighting were basically ICE. Police raids, people in camps, forced deportations, etc. Karli's crusade makes a lot more sense when put into that context.

I thought the Isaiah stuff was handled really well, as well as Bucky's apology to Sam. Most of what they did with Walker for the show's themes well. The bank and arrest scenes were important if not a little clunky. Even if the finale was messy, I felt like ending the show with the cookout was perfect.

 

[Hollywood Duo]

I was surprised how hard they went with it. Hopefully it's not a one off with sam's story.

 

[Richiek]

One of the few things it handled well.
At least my peers and loved ones who are Black were all some degree of pleasantly surprised with how that stuff was handled, so that made it more meaningful to me. It definitely added new layers to Sam's character for me. And can someone recommend me stuff with the actor who played Isaaih Bradley because I've never seen him in anything and he moved me to tears in one scene. He was really good.

Sharon, Walker and especially the Flag Smashers?
Not so much. Like, really half-baked and it felt like all of those storylines were altered and changed at the last minute, like a game being rushed to meet it's deadline. The Sam and Bucky stuff was lovely but the rest of the series weighed it down.

Even if the villains had less screen time but Bucky/Sam/Isaaih had more, it would have been a better series.

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I agree. It seems that the showrunners were superfocused on race relations in America and showing the issues a black man wearing the stars and stripes would face and the show handled that well, but cared less about all the other aspects of the show like the Flag Smashers (though COVID may have forced them to cut out some plot and character related issues with them).

Also, as an Asian American, I'm still upset at how Madripoor was depicted, with zero Asian representation when in Shang-Chi,

Spoiler

We see a similarly opulent city in Macau full of Asians.

 

[Tavernade]

A lot of the time when they focused on it with Sam and Isaiah I thought it was really well done and powerful. It was weird when a lot of other aspects of the show seemed comparatively underbaked.

I did laugh at the fact that Walker was given a minority BFF and wife, it was like "we know what this would look like otherwise, just ignore it."

 

[LegendofLex]

Unfortunately for the show, it tried to cram way too much in between:

- Politics of Black Captain America + Sam's journey + Isaiah Bradley
- Sam's family
- Bucky's redemption arc
- Flag-Smashers/Karli
- GRC
- Batroc
- Walker & Hoskins
- Zemo + his crusade to eliminate the serum
- Power Broker/Sharon
- Madripoor
- Dora Milaje
- Fontaine

So it's no wonder it crumbled under its own weight.

Would've been better if they picked, like, five of these things instead of the whole list.

 

[Lemony1984]

I mean it was ok until the solution was Sam telling those senators to "Do better". That was the cringiest thing I've seen in years.

 

[JetmanJay]

Well, it gave us Isaiah Bradley, who I didn't even know existed as a character, and I absolutely want a show focused on him now. I think any show about him would have more of a hard focus on racial topics instead of world saving.

 

[krazen]

I did laugh at the fact that Walker was given a minority BFF and wife, it was like "we know what this would look like otherwise, just ignore it."

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LOL.

"How to keep your fascist leaning blood thirsty anti-refugee character scary but not racist"

 

[Violence Jack]

What stuck out to me most was the man who would become Cap and save the world was getting harassed by police not a few days earlier saved only by his association with the Avengers, but couldn't use that same notoriety to get his sister a loan.

And I also think it was very symbolic to have an unknown white man surrounded by minorities friends and family to be the one given the Cap title because he could throw a shield.

 

[Extra Sauce]

pretty good until the final episode. that speech... that John Walker banter... nah.

 

[Foltzie]

A nigga saving the universe and not being able to get a loan is some real shit. Fuck the cartoonist crossburning racism(white people can ignore) you see in fiction, it is the low-key everyday stuff that cuts deep

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"Did you play for Louisiana?"

That setup and scene was a cliff's notes version of being black as a farmer.

 

[Sesha]

For better or worse, it seemed like it was the thing the show was the most interested in tackling, followed by Bucky's trauma.

 

[ArgyleReptile]

As stated, they went a lot deeper with it than I expected for a Disney joint. Everything with Isaiah was great and probably my favorite part of the series. Hope Elijah is given his due down the line.

But yeah, I think they fumbled the actual transition in my opinion.

Also lame that they watered down Walker. They really should've went all in on him.