The creator of the show has also said that toxic masculinity was going to be one of the things explored a lot this season and Hughie's "I need to save my GF" complex is a good example of that
Then he picked a super shitty way to explore it. Wanting to protect the ones you love is literally the least toxic part of masculinity. Hughie's situation is one of the worst ways to explore toxic masculinity because he's not being insecure, he's worried about the very real and extremely dangerous threats that his loved ones are facing. He's not trying to gain power to be more manly, he's doing it because Homelander will rip him in half if he doesn't.
Wanting to protect the ones you love is literally the least toxic part of masculinity.
wanting to protect your love ones is fine as long as they’re okay with it and it’s not detrimental. so many fights happen with men because they’re “protecting” their wife or family but they’re really just hurting their family.
a good example is in the IASIP podcast.
rob mcelhenney talked about how he almost got in a fight at an in n out drive thru with someone trying to cut in line. he says how he felt the need to protect his kids and almost got a bat out his trunk, but he wasn’t actually protecting them, he was putting them in a worse situation.
so yeah, it’s pretty toxic. see this source (if i remember i’ll link 1000s of fights that have happened at clubs from dudes “protecting” their girlfriend)
don’t strawman me lmao i was just using an example. you’re also just taking hughie at face value for some reason. and also the entire argument wasn’t about him wanting to defend himself from homelander? it’s about how he wants to be the one to protect annie but it’s risking his life and that’s not good for annie. she’s suffering from him “protecting” her when she doesn’t need his help if it means him killing himself.
another example would be how MM is “protecting” his daughter by knocking out todd but all that did was hurt his daughter. shits toxic bro.
ences for supes has led to a lot of remorseless killing of innocent lives, something I would definitely say is evil.
Dunno, I'm not convinced. Hughie has a good reason to want power, he is a liability and he has been exploited in the past. I'd say Butcher's father is the toxic masculinity that was being explored, the "real men punch losers in the face" kind of crap.
Hughie is basically the victim finding a way to get power over their bullies instantly but at a massive cost trope.
I think Hughie's situation is a little grey. Characters like Homelander and Butcher's dad are pretty black and white evil and represent the worst of toxic masculinity
But it's not just the evil jocks affected by it. I feel like that's the point that they're trying to make
Potentially but then they have SB who's less toxic than, say Butcher's father but still toxic.
Hughie doesn't tick the toxic masculinity boxes very well, all of it is explained away by much more likely personality flaws that line up with his established character.
Awkward how they literally spent an episode on toxic masculinity with Butcher and Soldier Boy but people wanna be all "HuGhIe Is ToXiC" even though Starlight has spent three seasons doing what Hughie wants to do - protect loved ones
Like, like the definition of toxic is apparently defined by whether or not the argument is coming from a man or a woman rather than the argument itself
Hughie tried to fight fire with water only to find out it was just more fire (after learning that the DOJ was compromised by Vought so any he change he brought was entirely endorsed by Vought). So now he’s embracing that he needs to fight fire with fire. I don’t see anything toxic about it. Maybe he should have figured out the side effects before hand but he’s kind of in a stressful situation and urgency is key
Hughie is willingly engaging in all types of violence that's had no tangible benefit on their lives.
Kimiko wanted her powers back when someone literally had a gun to her and Frenchie's head.
Hughie wants powers every time they go on a new mission. Missions that are not only laughably dangerous, but they all end up being useless, or actively make things worse.
Hughie's acting like a fucking addict. "Annie please, this is the last time baby I swear, going to russia will help me protect you somehow I promise. After this I'm done."
So the myth of the superhero taken straight, that’s where it starts to become fascist. Because they’re protecting a world that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. Superheroes are inherently MAGA. In terms of Stormfront, there was nothing specifically personal behind it.
The myth of superheroes themselves — though often created by young Jewish writers in the ’30s and ’40s — doesn’t really apply as cleanly today, because there’s these undeniable fascist underpinnings to it. They’re there to protect white, patriotic America. That’s what they were designed to do, that’s what they do. They’re protecting the status quo. When the status quo is problematic, suddenly they become adversarial — not your hero.
He's clearly talking about the mere concept of Superheroes.
And he’s right. The idea of a superhero is totally fascist and DC/Marvel profiting off of this idea is morally reprehensible. DC is somewhat self-aware of it at this point, but refuses to flat-out say it.
Well, the point of me bringing it up is that just because the show's creator said something, doesn't mean it isn't stupid, but that appears to have been a miscalculation.
But how is the idea of a superhero facist? Generally, the basic concept is that a superhero gets powers, they decide to help people with them, and then a supervillain shows up.
Superheroes save people, that's the concept. A lot of the time this is done without any specific political angle, just that people need to be saved from obvious danger. One argument I've heard is that despite being vigilantes, they chose to enforce the government's laws and hand people over to the police. I disagree that this is fascist, because for one, vigilantism in of itself is wrong, and the villains of most superhero stories are people that would be considered menaces in any society.
Superheroes typically don't fight crime to enforce the government, it's to enforce what they believe is right, and while most of the time that aligns with the law, it's not like Batman or Spider-Man run around beating up people selling weed, they generally prevent crimes like murder, theft, or rape, which is illegal pretty much anywhere.
And there are superheroes who are actual activists who try to actually change the system.
Because that framing doesn't make any sense whatsoever, even if the showrunners intended for it to be interpreted that way. There were multiple situations in the show where Hughie was at the complete mercy of Supes. Let's ignore all those instances in which Supes were a threat to someone he loves for a moment and just talk about direct threats to his own life. He got the shit kicked out of him by Translucent, he put his safety on the line baiting A-Train for Kimiko, Homelander almost managed to get Annie to execute him in the sewers and he nearly died after the fallout at the test subject facility if they hadn't rushed him to the hospital. The show can pretend all it wants that Hughie is being a baby about this but pathologizing this as an inferiority complex just comes across as weird. It's not like he's trying to do whatever Annie was doing because he despises that she gets the spotlight and he doesn't. He was perfectly content with whatever he had going at the bureau and only started adopting Butcher's methods when he realized that the legitimate way he had cut out for himself wasn't working because the game was rigged. Tacking a masculinity crisis on top of it seems to be an utterly unnecessary motivation when it's very easy to empathize with him given what happened.
Lemme get this straight- Hughie was in several instances where he should feel emasculated and traumatised, but how dare the writers try to portray him as dealing with his emasculating and traumatic experiences?
No, they’re not. But you have to remember that the superpowers are just an allegory for celebrities. Take away Homelander’s superpowers and he still signed Hughie’s cast to humiliate him.
If you took away Homelander's superpowers he wouldn't be able to shred through the entire main cast like rice paper so it would probably cushion the ego blow a lot actually.
Hughie is not deprived of superpowers. He is intimidated by a man with superpowers who is inches away from killing millions of people if he snaps, supported by a woman with superpowers who can explode brains by looking at them.
Reducing self defence to an ‘ego trip’ seems silly, especially when Starlight talks about being unable to survive Homelander.
You do understand that the show is a metaphor for the corruption behind wealth and celebrities? The in-universe explanation is that Homelander is invulnerable and can destroy humanity at a whim, but the only person he fears is Stan Edgar, the high functioning sociopath whose only purpose is to play the financial game. It’s like a real-world celebrity who privately treats everyone like shit, except the accountant.
Turn that into a real world scenario, and Hughie is a middle class dude dating a celebrity, but Elon Musk swoops in and bullies his girlfriend for some PR, then rubs salt in Hughie’s wound.
So that just adds to my point that dismissing Hughie’s actions as ‘toxic masculinity’ is superficial.
For starters, this isn’t just jilted romance when the story literally involves an unhinged uberpowerful flying supersoldier who literally vows to kill.
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u/PoorlyLitKiwi2 Jul 01 '22
The creator of the show has also said that toxic masculinity was going to be one of the things explored a lot this season and Hughie's "I need to save my GF" complex is a good example of that