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CW: violence, graphic content. I'm starting with fantasy-- speculative television. Homelander from The Boys is a white, blond hair, blue eyed man whose uniform is the American flag. He is emblematic of the good old standard American ways and people. He is an internationally known figure. Television shows in their universe cater to him and he dominates social media. He has laser eyes, flies, super strength, and invulnerability. The Supe body seems to be more durable and have higher strength levels than humans, but Homelander remains exceptionally strong. Homelander is the biological offspring of Soldier Boy, the super strong American WWII war hero in their world. Below is Soldier Boy killing one of his former teammates who sold him to the Russian government so they could perform experiments on him, including age suspension. Ryan, Homelander's son, appears to have the same exact powers as his father. Here he is lasering Soldier Boy (his grandfather) who's trying to kill Homelander (his father). The generational abuse white male families go through across multiple genres of TV (The Boys, Succession, Shameless, Brooklyn 99) makes me think that it is a VERY real, personal problem that affects all of society because they have power-- personal influence. Their abuse is the mold of our society. From Gen V, another show set in the world of The Boys, we see Golden Boy (Luke Riordan) and his brother Sam Riordan have similar powers.
I see Omni-Man, Conquest, and Captain America as similarly powered people, and the inspiration for all of these characters is Superman. (A breakdown of their similarities in case you don't get it: 1) Omni-Man 2) Sam 3) Homelander 4) Captain America 5) Soldier Boy 6) Luke 7) Ryan 8) Superman) Super punching: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 Can fly: 1, 3, 6, 8 Plasma powers: 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 Durable: all of the above Violent: all of the above Famous and beloved in their world: all of the above (2 at the end of the show) Clearly mentally ill: 2, 3, 5 Traumatized: all of the above White and male: all of the above The idea shared between all these characters is that white men are stronger than others: strong as in they can punch really hard and rip people apart. They are capable of so much damage when not acting carefully. One moment of this is when Ryan throws and accidentally kills Koy (The Boys S4 Ep 4). He doesn't mean to at all, but he splatters him on the wall as if throwing pancake batter. When these "heroes" act, they are extremely destructive while often remaining unaffected by their enemies. It's a specific vision of power that is imbued into one's very essence. That is the most powerful type of person to be in these worlds. For me, media reveals the psychology of the human mind. I often watch dramas where characters have personal traumas and mental illness and we get to see how their lives are a product of that past. I think about myself in the same ways so I can empathize with these traumatized characters that are horrible people partly because of their trauma. They were all abused and that's not coincidence, that's pattern and possibly the cause of the abuse they inflict. Homelander was a Vought experiment, grown in a lab and purposefully, psychologically bred to be so desperate for love he'd stay trapped in a cage, surrounded by people who hated and feared and abused him, then he became a public marketable figure known across the whole world. He was bred to be a weapon, a celebrity, and was denied humanity... it's absolutely not a shock for him to be the Supe supremacist. The Soldier Boy we know was tortured by Russians for at least 30 years and suffered from the same lies about himself. He thought his team loved him, his girlfriend loved him, but they all hated him and sold him out and he's incapable of understanding why yet still in pain. He was extremely traumatized from the scientific experiments of the Russians which only made him stronger & more capable of damage. That's exactly what abuse does to you in real life-- makes your capacity to abuse others that much greater. Sam and Luke have different upbringings because their parents gave them Compound V for money, rather than being created & raised by Vought, but the society of The Boys' world puts these boys into the same positions. Luke ends up on a track similar to Homelander and Soldier Boy: publicly loved, set to join The Seven, and top-ranked at Godolkin University. Meanwhile, Sam is kept underground to be experimented on and suffers from schizophrenia, like Homelander with his multiple personality disorder and Soldier Boy with his PTSD. We find out that Luke was experimented on by Godolkin and repeatedly memory-wiped by Cate, his girlfriend who was also cheating on him with his best friend Andre. And after Homelander "fixes" the Woods escape, Sam gets a chance to live out the celebrity life his brother was supposed to have with Cate, even starring in a Vought romcom together. Now when I think about overly powerful male characters, my mind goes to Logan Roy, because I am succession-pilled and I think he is quite similar to these other white males. First, he's powerfully abusive. He knocks out Roman's tooth, strikes Iverson in the face, and yells at everyone around him. In their world, Logan is his own planet with his own orbit-- everything revolves around him. There are galas thrown in his honor, all his media only produces what he wants to watch, and he's made the world bend to his will literally picking American presidents. The Succession world is our world so nobody has fantasy superpowers but Logan Roy has matchless power: world-changing influence and that quality of being uniquely chosen. Early on they describe Logan as a kind of "magical" figure that keeps the company together by his business genius. Without him Waystar is nothing (as well as his children, but that's an essay for my other blog lol). He sees himself, and a lot of the world sees him, as a titan among men. It's the same domination that Homelander expresses in his birthday speech. "I'm stronger. I'm smarter. I'm better. I am better... You should be thanking Christ that I am who and what I am, because you need me. You need me to save you. I am the only one who possibly can. I'm the real hero." I highly recommend watching the speech because it is chilling.
I find myself easily believing white men are villains because of the media I've watched growing up. At some point, Americans realized colonization and slavery is a bad look and started condemning it. They realized they were the enemies and started portraying them in media as such. Villainization of Black and Indigenous people is prominent but I've learned to recognize and dismiss that bias as bogus. White people remain convincing villains because they must be monsters for an abusive society to single them out as fucked up. The prominence of them makes me think that we should be taking child abuse (and adult abuse) much more seriously than we do. Those intimate personal problems directly create destruction, whether manifested through magical powers or evidenced by its toll on the world.
The white supremacist personality is psychologically scarred. It's an abuser created from abuse and it kills us. Our society is emotionally unintelligent in favor of rationality and logic, claiming some sort of masculine advantage that makes them better fit to control everything, but the male creators of this society failed to see that it is logical and rational to be emotional. In my opinion, it's a dumb fucking mistake. We are creatures with emotions for a reason. Ignoring them when creating a human society is guaranteed to not care for humans properly, including yourself. Men are highly emotional beings (see my above videos) and haven't built a society capable of processing that emotion. They damage everything over and over again, obliterating when they don't have to be. So a supreme power like the West is disastrously destructive, it's a child that was never taught to love. Uneducated, angry, afraid, violent, psychologically damaged, physically abused, irresponsible, dishonest, insecure, selfish, hard, and judgmental. It's human, but it is not all we are. We are more and much better than white supremacy and we need to start living like it. I am left questioning if I or anyone could teach the white supremacist personality to not be themselves, or if that's a process they need to come about on their own. How do you deal with a power like Homelander? How did you argue in a room with Logan Roy when he was alive? The answer is you don't, you play yesman until you're mildly safe and try your best not to die. Try to kill him if you dare but the punishment is fierce if you get caught. That's all we seem to have so far... but I believe enough in science and love to think that we can save ourselves, and kill white power.
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