In the Eyes of the Beholder: Political Narratives of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), 2008-2019.

Osipov Sergey Viktorovich ORCID: 0000-0001-5657-8627 PhD in History Associate Professor; Department of History and Culture; Ulyanovsk State Technical University Office 317, Severny Venets str., Ulyanovsk, 432000, Russia mail2mee@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The most successful media franchise of the 21st century, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), being an unconditional commercial and technical achievement of the American film industry, at the same time caused such polar assessments as "the cornerstone of modern American life ... the cultural Leviathan.." (Karns, Goren) and "cultural genocide" (Inarritu). Martin Scorsese, in his famous interview ^[1], denied MCU films the right to be called motion pictures, suggesting instead the term "audiovisual entertainment". Despite the rather widespread [5-6, 8, 11, 18] critical attitude towards this kind of film production, we note that the most primitive media text is still a media text, which means that one cannot disagree with the thesis that "...Superhero films, shaped by the ideology of the time when they were shot, should be considered as meaningful cultural artifacts rather than being discarded as "just a movie" ^[19]. After all."...even the most primitive film is a multi-layered structure containing different levels of latent information that reveals itself only in interaction with the socio–political and psychological context ... no matter how biased – or, on the contrary, dispassionate - the author of the film may be, he captures many more aspects of time than he thinks and knows himself, starting from the state of the art, which he uses, and ending with the ideological myths that he reflects" ^{[7, p. 99]}. Let's add that the depth and variety of information read from a media text vary according to the characteristics of the reader of this media text (age, gender, education, nationality, etc.) ^[2-3]. In a sense, a media text is a mirror in which different people see different things, and even the same person can see strikingly different meanings and messages at different times in their lives. Nina Tsyrkun, a Russian film critic, sees in the film "Captain Marvel" "... a tonality of beauty and sweetness in the spirit of late medieval Italian poetry with its softness and lyricism, conveyed in the film by spectacular light metaphors. Carol Danvers' flights, especially in the final episode, in contrast to the acrobatic vaulting of her counterpart, Wonder Woman, acquire the balletic grace of the archetype of heavenly love, as a symbol of ideal feminine beauty in the spirit of traditional patriarchal views"^[10]. English researcher Tom Secker believes that Carol Danvers in the same film embodies "militant feminism as a means of increasing conscription into the Air Force and space as the next arena of military operations" ^[21-22]. Are these estimates mutually exclusive? Not at all, light metaphors and ballet grace may well end up influencing the number of new contractors in the US Air Force. Accordingly, the assessments cited at the beginning of the article "the cornerstone of modern American life ..." ^[25] and "cultural genocide" ^[13] do not exclude each other at all.

The fundamental difference between MCU and many other entertainment-oriented media franchises is that its creators try to connect the narrative of films with the reality of the first quarter of the 21st century, right up to the appearance of media personalities under their own names (Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Bill Maher, Joan Rivers, etc.), convincing the viewer of the close connection of the MCU world and the world in which the viewer exists. Accordingly, the messages contained in ITU media texts are amplified because "pop culture works, often inspired by real-world events, are consumed by people with incomplete political beliefs, and therefore are effective in creating powerful emotional responses that deeply penetrate the audience" ^[27]. Let's look at the main political narratives consciously or unconsciously broadcast by the ITU over the past decades.

Our research will focus on 23 films from the MCU Cinematic Universe, starting with Iron Man (2008) and ending with Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), which together comprise the so-called first three phases of the MCU or the Infinity Saga (The Infinity Saga). Although the MCU was later continued by the fourth and fifth phases, it is the first three that are distinguished by the overall completed story arc, higher ratings from critics and the public, and higher box office receipts per film on average than the films of the fourth and subsequent phases. Accordingly, the impact of the first three phases on the audience, society as a whole, the critical community, etc. was the most powerful, and the perception of narratives broadcast by this complex of films was the most profound or at least the most discussed.

The creation of the MCU dates back to 2005, when the Marvel Entertainment media company, which was engaged in publishing comic books, decided to independently produce film adaptations of its comics, instead of selling licenses for its characters to major movie companies such as Sony Pictures or Columbia Pictures (as previously practiced). The second fundamental decision was to create not just several films, but an interconnected series where characters and storylines would connect not only linearly (one film continues another), but with multilevel connections connecting various time layers, locations, and even quantum worlds. It was this characteristic that allowed the creators of the franchise (Kevin Feige, president of the Marvel Studios film company ^[20], is primarily considered to be such) to talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At the moment, the MCU includes 32 feature films, four more are in production, and despite some recent commercial/creative setbacks, there are no signs of the franchise fading away. Despite mixed reviews of MCU films from the point of view of cinematic art, the franchise is an absolute success from the point of view of the film industry and an indisputable proof of American exceptionalism in this field of popular culture. The MCU as a product of popular culture has no equal in both commercial success and media impact, significantly outstripping other Anglo-American film franchises traditionally associated with Western pop culture: Bond, Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc., while being the youngest of these franchises. If within the framework of the Harry Potter film franchise/The World of Magic (Harry Potter/Wizarding World) produced 11 films in 22 years, Star Wars – 13 films in 42 years, Bond – 25 films in 50 years, then 32 films were produced within the MCU in 17 years, 7 of which are among the top twenty highest-grossing films of all times.

MCU films are basically adaptations, that is, the transfer of printed text into the format of visual storytelling, with the significant difference that the printed text is comics, in which visual storytelling is initially a component of the media text on an equal basis, or even more important than the actual text. Thus, the task of film adaptation is greatly facilitated, since there is a ready-made and familiar visual image of the hero / heroes, and the comic itself is something like a storyboard. On the other hand, the format of the monthly periodical (which was Marvel comics) was initially characterized by a combination of the genre of fantasy adventure with elements of the current socio-political agenda. This conditional realism was and remains a characteristic feature of Marvel comics, unlike the products of their competitors DC, which place their characters in the fictional world of Gotham, etc. Accordingly, Captain America, who made his comic book debut in 1940, fought Hitler, the Hulk (1962) and Iron Man (1963) fought world communism, etc. These and other characters selected for MCU in 2005-2007 were created in a different time and carried with them specific narratives of that time, they had to be substantially recreated and embedded in the reality of the early 21st century, in a world without Hitler and the Cold War (but with Hitler and the Cold War as the historical past of this world).

The first two MCU films were released in May and June 2008, the last year of George W. Bush's controversial presidency. and the first year of the global economic crisis, which was another step towards ending the era of American dominance in world politics; the era that began after the end of the Cold War, the era of the so-called Pax Americana. It is not surprising that the thesis of rethinking the traumatic experience of American society in the 2000s in MCU films, especially the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has become a common place in English-language studies of MCU films. Terrence McSweeney in his work Avengers Assemble! Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2018), which largely summarizes the Anglo-American critical discourse on this topic, defines the experience of the 2000s as a triple crisis – the national security crisis, the imperial crisis, and the economic crisis ^{[19, p.15-16]}. However, the narratives of the MCU are far from being exhausted by this.

Empire in Decline

The first MCU film was Iron Man (2008), its main character billionaire inventor Tony Stark connects the films of the first three phases together: he is the central character of the three films, he plays a key role in the plots of the conditional "Avengers" quadrology, and the general plot arc of the "Infinity Saga" ends with the death of Stark. Stark, like none of the MCU characters, embodies American individualism, the spirit of entrepreneurship, as well as "the moral and technological superiority of the American nation, which gives it the right/duty to intervene everywhere without regard to local sovereignty, international law, etc." ^[19] Therefore, it is on the example of Stark that the MCU authors repeatedly demonstrate the collapse of American hegemony. The first two minutes of "Iron Man" demonstrate the "epic tranquility" inherent in fairy tales (Prop) adjusted for reality at the beginning of the 21st century: this is epic tranquility within the framework of Pax Americana; a column of American military equipment is moving against the backdrop of the Afghan mountains to the sounds of hard rock, this is Tony Stark returning after the presentation of his Jericho missile system." (in the Freedom Line episode); things are going so smoothly for him and America in general that the whiskey in Stark's glass doesn't spill, and the American soldier in the next seat has nothing better to do than take selfies with the billionaire celebrity. In the third minute, the epic calm is unceremoniously disrupted, the convoy is ambushed, American soldiers are killed, and Stark is wounded by a rocket exploding nearby. We don't see the attackers, we only see the Stark company logo on the rocket moments before the explosion. Thus, the authors tell us a hidden plot twist: Stark is attacked with his own weapon. In the plot plane of the film, this means that Stark paid for his own actions; in the broad plane of cultural and political interpretations, the idea of self-destructive actions by the United States lies on the surface; the danger comes not so much from the outside as from the inside. This danger, as will then be consistently demonstrated in several MCU films, is the military-industrial complex and its exorbitant ambitions. If in "Iron Man" Stark is attacked on a foreign land, then in "Iron Man 3" (Iron Man 3, 2013) his own house is attacked, the attack is preceded by a self-confident challenge that Stark throws at his alleged opponent and which some researchers compared to the pretentious but baseless rhetoric of George W. Bush. from the time of the Iraq War. In Iron Man 2 (2010), Stark is attacked at the moment of his triumph: he participates in the Monaco Grand Prix as a racer in a car of his own design in the presence of the secular public and the powerful (including Ilona Mask), when Russian scientist Anton Vanko subjects Stark to a humiliating beating with electric whips. In the plot structure of LC2, Vanko is both Stark's "dark twin" and the resurrected ghost of the Cold War, which reads clearly: "Vanko is a crude but working metaphor for modern Russia as a humiliated superpower challenging America's position" ^[12] or "This sudden appearance of a Russian antagonist in the film is the first in a series of interpretations of Russia as a growing threats to global peace and security" ^{[19, p.62]}). In principle, it does not matter much who exactly attacks Stark, and in his person America, it is important that this happens with a frightening cycle and that each attack is preceded by a self-confident speech by Stark, which excludes such an attack. LC2 begins with a remarkable scene of congressional hearings, where Stark, to the delight of the audience, declares: "I am your nuclear deterrent, and it works. We're safe. America is protected... I have successfully privatized the struggle for peace." Soon the whole world will see live that this is not the case, and Vanko's words, addressed personally to Stark, may well be extended to the United States with its claims to global dominance: "If you can bleed God, people will refuse to believe in him. And blood will be spilled into the water, and sharks will come. To tell the truth, I can just sit here and wait. While the world will devour you." Stark's media triumphs regularly turn out to be soap bubbles: at the beginning of LC2, he pretentiously declares an unprecedented period of world peace, but an attentive viewer will remember that this is only a six-month period between the action of LC and LC2, which means that Stark has nothing to be proud of yet.

America's faltering power is presented not only as a series of Tony Stark failures, it is also verbally articulated. Stark's business partner, Obediah Stein, calls for bringing the world back to the right path, restoring the balance of power, which implies that the balance is now broken. Who violated it – China, Islamic terrorists, Russia? – it is not explained, but the fact is definitely stated.

Humanitarian bombing and its consequences

As already noted, the events of the MCU (in its earthly dimension) take place in a world that more or less corresponds to our world with its political, social, cultural, etc. realities, with key events of the 20th century (world wars, the Cold War, etc.). The MCU storylines begin in the late 2000s. (according to the MCU's canonical timeline, Stark is attacked in Afghanistan on January 29, 2008.), However, the question of whether the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack occurred in the Marvel Universe remains debatable. Nevertheless, we are witnessing the consequences of either this event or a similar one in the LC: American troops are in Afghanistan, providing, among other things, a no-fly zone. The goals of the military presence, meanwhile, remain unclear; if we assume that American military power is directed against the imaginary rebels who attacked Stark, i.e. against the caricatured "Islamic group, whose members do nothing but yell and chaotically fire AK-47s" ^[19], then the verdict "disproportionate use of resources" suggests itself by myself. McSweeney, Alford, Secker and a number of other authors rightly point out that the glorification of American military power is an integral background of the plot of the LC, however, evaluating the effectiveness of the use of this military power would be an extremely controversial issue. Thus, within the framework of the media text, the LC reproduces criticism of the military efforts of the United States and its allies in Afghanistan and Iraq, when initiated by Bush Jr. The notorious "war on terrorism" consumed more and more resources, but did not lead to victory over the obviously weakest opponent. Curiously, McSweeney does not point to another aspect of the Afghan LC line.: all this terrorist activity by the "rebels" is carried out only as long as Stark's business partner Obediah Stein needs it, and then it is immediately stopped by one visit to Afghanistan by Stein and his PMCs. This suggests a conclusion: terrorism in Afghanistan exists only as long as it is beneficial to the American military-industrial complex.

The film repeatedly mentions that the products of the American military-industrial complex fall into the hands of terrorists, but in the end this can be attributed to the malicious intent of Stein's "black sheep"; at the same time, in an early version of the film's script, responsibility for the long-term arming of Afghan terrorists was directly attributed to the US government: "Tony asks where the weapons came from.... And in the original dialogue, Raza answers: "Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush"; thus, it is stated that the Afghan Mujahideen have been armed since the second half of the 1970s. under five different presidential administrations. From what was included in the film, we also note the moment of death of Ho Yinsen, an Afghan scientist who was also captured by the "rebels." Yinsen dies lying on a bag of American humanitarian food aid, she also fell into the wrong hands and did not help the people of Afghanistan.

Obediah Stein is the main villain in the plot structure of the LC, but Tony Stark himself is trying to solve the Afghan problem in a bad way. After escaping from prison and creating a flying combat suit, Tony returns to Afghanistan and engages in battle with one of the rebel units. Having inflicted a spectacular defeat on the militants, Stark returns to America and seems to forget about Afghanistan and its suffering people forever, his combat flight is nothing more than an emotional outburst caused by the plot on TV and his own wounded ego.

It is difficult to argue with the fact that Afghanistan itself in this case is stereotypically portrayed as "the American frontier of the new millennium, where American men prove their masculinity and their altruism, it is a land inhabited either by victims who need to be saved or by savages who need to be killed" ^[19]. However, even with the two above-mentioned tasks, the United States is not coping well, spectacular flights of combat aircraft do not prevent evil from happening on earth, and the superhero Stark pays a visit in the style of "tourist horror" - "carefully staged scenes of violence in exotic locations", the only meaning of which is a positive representation of the hero. Such supranational interventions in the affairs of foreign States are almost always presented as absolutely moral, necessary and effective. The parallels with the American foreign policy of the Bush Jr. era, when unauthorized UN military interventions did not benefit the people of Afghanistan or Iraq, but nevertheless were carried out and presented to the world community as moral, necessary and effective, are quite obvious. The LF, shot with the support of the US Department of Defense, does contain scenes in which the US Air Force looks "like rock stars," but the goals of the American presence in the region and its effectiveness remain questionable. If the HC repeatedly mentions the suffering of the Afghan civilian population, then the HC3 raises the topic of American combat veterans who cannot find themselves in peaceful life and are forced to agree to participate in the experimental medical program "Extremis". A full-scale military and political intervention in Afghanistan becomes the backdrop of the first MCU film, but also in the second film, The Incredible Hulk (2008), General Ross does not hesitate to send a military transport plane with a special forces team to Brazil, and the pursuit of Bruce Banner by the American military unfolds in densely populated areas of Rio; thus it This is no longer a separate episode, but a sequential line.

At first, we see "absolutely moral, necessary and effective" interventions in the affairs of other countries in the traditional performance of the American military, but as the MCU's end-to-end plot develops, S.H.I.E.L.D., initially presented as a government agency with broad powers, begins to do exactly the same thing. The activities of S.H.I.E.L.D. are also supranational and extralegal in nature, and so pronounced that this has had consequences already in the real world. In The Avengers (2012), S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Colson calls a corrupt Russian general and threatens him with an F-22 fighter jet missile attack on a Moscow residential area; it may have been a bluff and a clever move by Colson, but in the same film, in a key scene of an alien attack on a New York military aircraft. S.H.I.E.L.D. flies out to strike New York with a nuclear-tipped missile. Questions about how consistent with reality and common sense a government agency (not the Ministry of Defense) has its own aircraft and nuclear munitions, the legality of a nuclear strike on American territory by this agency, and the absence of the federal government as such in this situation were raised already during the production of the film and led to a conflict between Marvel and the US Department of Defense., which previously actively provided equipment and locations for filming, fairly considering MCU films (primarily LC) as an advertisement for American military power ^[12]. On the Avengers, this cooperation was temporarily interrupted precisely because of a dispute over the authorization of a nuclear strike, which is being carried out by the decision of the leadership of S.H.I.E.L.D. (the so-called World Security Council) on the territory of the United States without any control from the federal government and without even mentioning the US President. It is noteworthy that the MCU creators immediately began to correct the narrative that was too far apart from reality: the problematic "Avengers" was released in 2012, a year later the President of the United States appeared in the MCU for the first time in HD3, and a year later in the movie "The First Avenger: Another War" (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 2014) S.H.I.E.L.D. was compromised and temporarily removed from the MCU storyline.

Before disappearing from MCU for a while, S.H.I.E.L.D. forms the Avengers superhero team, whose interference in the sovereign affairs of the fictional Eastern European country of Sokovia becomes an important plot point of MCU. The Sokovian storyline runs through the films "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (Avengers: Age of Ultron, 2015) and "Captain America: Civil War" (Captain America: Civil War, 2016), with McSweeney calling "Age of Ultron" "the most complete embodiment of Marvel's political ideology and the Stark doctrine," meaning that Stark behaves like a classic hero of the "American Myth" by Lawrence and Jewett ^[16]: he protects society, but is not a part of it, and is not responsible for his actions. Actually, society does not ask Stark for protection, Stark's actions are dictated by his own ideas about security, and these actions almost lead to a global catastrophe. Sokovia, where part of the film's action develops, is shown as "a poor Eastern European country in need of liberation, and its salvation by heroic American forces is no different from the salvation of many other countries by Hollywood in recent decades" ^{[19, p.189]}, however, "Age of Ultron" is distinguished by a clear critical narrative regarding the salvation of Eastern European peoples by American heroes. Sokovia is presented in the film as a country that has already experienced a war, possibly a civil one, in which American weapons manufactured by Stark's company were used, and the likely official narrative about this was that the United States/S.H.I.E.L.D./The Avengers/Stark did their duty and saved Sokovia. However, as the story progresses, we realize that the citizens of Sokovia themselves disagree with this assessment. So, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, who lost their parents during the armed conflict, blame Stark for this; they seek revenge and therefore volunteer to participate in Baron Strucker's experiments. In the climactic scenes of the movie "The Avengers" return to Sokovia and try to save its inhabitants again, this time from the enraged AI, but the residents are not happy with the American guests, they shout "Avengers, go home!", we see anti-American graffiti on the walls, the crowd boos the flying robots sent by Stark. It is noteworthy that Stark's robot unit is called the "Steel Legion", which in a geographical and historical context evokes associations with the fascist "Iron Guard" and the national legionary state in Romania in the late 1930s.

Saving society without the participation of society becomes an obsession of both MCU heroes and villains, Alexander Pierce in "The First Avenger: Another War" plans to launch a satellite surveillance system for the population that will destroy socially dangerous elements, Tony Stark in "Age of Ultron" wants to assign about the same function to AI Ultron, which eventually He claims that "humanity cannot be trusted" and is trying to stage a motivational genocide in Sokovia. If Pierce and Ultron are villains in the MCU coordinate system, then Stark is a hero, but their way of thinking is frighteningly close: society must obey some higher power (a government agency, AI, a superhero in a flying suit), which believes that it "knows best" and arrogates to itself the right to make decisions. The MCU authors are critical of this concept and eventually raise the issue, paraphrasing the famous question from Alan Moore's "Guardians": who will save from the rescuers? Already in HD3, the endless rescue of helpless civilians by superheroes becomes a reason for satire: US Air Force Colonel James Rhodes, dressed in a flying combat suit, breaks into a sewing workshop somewhere in the Middle East and discovers not the terrorist leader Mandarin, as expected, but a couple dozen frightened women at sewing machines. Confused, Rhodes automatically says the on-duty "You're free!.. If you weren't free before." The issue of borders and the price of intervention becomes central to the film "The First Avenger: Standoff": another Avengers-villains fight costs the lives of 26 civilians, and the patience of the world community is bursting, the Avengers are called to account and control is imposed by the United Nations, the so-called Sokovia Agreements. The attitude towards this document splits the Avengers team, as the American society split in relation to the "Patriotic Act" at the time. The "The more superheroes, the more disasters" uttered during the controversy also finds its counterpart in real life: the confrontational (anti-terrorist by design) direction of American foreign policy after September 11 contributed more to international instability than the actual activities of terrorists. Stark's foreign policy credo, stated back in the LC, "Peace is when you have a club longer than your opponent," implies peace through strength, an expression Stark attributes to his father (who worked in the military–industrial complex in the 1940s and 1980s), but in fact these are the words of Theodore Roosevelt, thus Stark's desire to impose peace on the world based on their own idea of order is more than a century–old tradition.

Thus, the "moral and humanitarian supranational interventions" declared in the first MCU films as an integral part of American foreign policy, shared by S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers, are then subjected to reflection and condemnation. Plans to establish digital supranational control over S.H.I.E.L.D. failed, and the "Avengers" had to accept the Sokovia Accords, which were accepted by Tony Stark, the most American among the superhero team. However, the inventor of the course of "absolutely moral, necessary and effective" interventions, the US government, remained unpunished and in no way limited. Moreover, during the development of the first three phases of MCU, the viewer is increasingly convinced that the government is trustworthy.

Trust issues

The representation of the American government in the MCU Universe is curious and ambiguous, and it changes throughout the first three phases of the MCU. In the second film of the Hulk franchise, it is the government that is the main villain, of course, with certain reservations: not the entire government, but the Ministry of Defense, and not even the entire Ministry, but a separate General Ross. However, if we consider that this same General Ross will later become Secretary of Defense and then President of the United States, then the negative image of the US government can be considered quite complete. In LC2, the government is incompetent at best, making deals with Hammer Industries, or even corrupt; moreover, not only the Ministry of Defense, but also the relevant Senate committee becomes the object of criticism. During the alien attack on New York ("The Avengers"), the federal government does not show itself in any way, local police officers senselessly fire pistols at armored flying monsters and exchange confused remarks: "Does the army know what's going on here?" "Do we know?!". In HC3, President Ellis is indecisive and manipulative, and the vice president is involved in an attempted coup. In "The Other War," Secretary Pierce tries to put humanity in a digital concentration camp, and the topic of cooperation between the American authorities and Nazi war criminals is also raised. In "Standoff," the aforementioned Minister Ross pursues the "Avengers", seeking their arrest and placement in a secret extraterritorial prison (parallels with the European prisons of the CIA, Guantanamo, etc.). Even in the relatively lightweight "Spider-Man" (Spider-Man: Homecoming, 2017), there are a number of scenes ridiculing the government: at Peter Parker's school, motivational videos with Steve Rogers are shown on an outdated CRT TV, despite the fact that Captain America himself is currently in government status. the criminal. The teacher understands the absurdity of the situation, but there is nothing he can do. During a school trip to the Lincoln Monument, an accident occurs, and everything that the guards who represent authority say in a critical situation turns out to be a lie.

N. Karns in his work Government as the Bad Guy? ^[25] conducted a thorough (to the second) calculation of the screen time of MCU films, revealing the correlation of episodes with images of a credible/effective US government and an incompetent/dangerous government. In his work, each film receives a percentage rating of good/bad government, and the overall balance gradually develops in a positive direction. The first phase of the MCU, according to Karns' calculations, gives an equal ratio of three to three (three films with a predominantly positive image of the government and the same number with a predominantly negative one), the second is two to two, but in the third we see a predominantly positive embodiment of the government: five to three. Karns eventually states: "In general, MCU films create a positive image of the government ...", but this interpretation of the data obtained seems somewhat superficial. Firstly, such an estimated dynamic is to some extent due to changes in the political life of the United States itself; the films of the first phase were released in 2008-2012, when the government was still largely associated with the administration of George W. Bush, hence the pronounced critical intonations of the three films about housing and communal services. As Bush and the related plots of American politics became the past, the perception of the government became more positive, but there are nuances here too. According to Karns, "The Incredible Hulk", "The First Avenger: Standoff" and "Ant-Man and The Wasp" (Ant-Man and The Wasp, 2018) are films with a dominant (more than 80%) negative government assessment, they are balanced by films with a dominant positive assessment ("The First Avenger", "Black panther" (Black Panther, 2018), "Captain Marvel"). However, let's note that two of the three films that unequivocally endorse the activities of the authorities take place in the past: during World War II ("The First Avenger") and in 1995 ("Captain Marvel"), while the events of "The Incredible Hulk", "Standoff", "Ant-Man and the Wasps" take place in the present, i.e. in the 21st century, and evoke an association with the current authorities. Of course, a positive image of the government is found during the years of the equally undoubtedly righteous and victorious war against Nazism, or in the first years after another victory – in the Cold War – and the establishment of Pax Americana. Modern authorities are waging dubious and by no means victorious wars, violating civil rights, hiding information from society, mired in corruption, etc. This forces the MCU heroes to regularly come into conflict with the authorities, and if Tony Stark initially looks like the whim of a narcissistic billionaire, then later Steve Rogers or Natasha Romanof become a principled citizen (hence the comparison of Romanof's act in the finale of the "Confrontation" with Snowden, Manning and other American whistleblowers during the Obama presidency).

In general, the vector of criticism of government activities is changing significantly during the development of the MCU storyline. If in LC, LC2, LC3, and later "Ant–Man" the lion's share of criticism went to the military industrial Complex with its immorality, hypocrisy, provoking military conflicts, etc., then the focus shifts to violating the civil rights of American citizens themselves: in "The Incredible Hulk", the military in pursuit of Bruce Banner invades the university campus, In "Thor" (2011), S.H.I.E.L.D. agents unceremoniously seize research equipment and personal notes from Professor Jane Foster; this narrative reaches its apotheosis in "The Other War", where the government, represented by S.H.I.E.L.D., develops the "Insight" project, in fact, a digital concentration camp, where, based on huge amounts of personal information, information authorities will purge the population. The production and distribution of "The Other War" (2014) took place against the backdrop of the Bradley/Chelsea Manning trial and the escape of Edward Snowden, so "The Other War" became, in a sense, a political statement on a topical topic, since the film's characters, like Manning and Snowden, denied the state the right to interfere in digital privacy. If desired, in the image of the main villain Alexander Pierce, one can see hints of Barack Obama: Pierce mentions that he refused the Nobel Peace Prize, but Obama, as you know, accepted it, which did not prevent him from continuing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, starting a war in Libya, and persecuting Snowden and Manning.

At the same time, criticism of the authorities in the MCU Universe is quite limited: the crimes of the military-industrial complex are attributed not to the system, but to individual bad people; as it turned out, the Insight project was not the state, but the Hydra totalitarian organization that had penetrated S.H.I.E.L.D. Another thing is that Hydra's theses about humanity ready to bring freedom in exchange for security, stated in "The First Avenger" by a character in a Nazi uniform, and then repeated by Loki in "The Avengers" also in Germany (not coincidentally), are repeated in "The Other War" in approximately the same terms by Alexander Pierce and Nick Fury (S.H.I.E.L.D.), full-blooded Americans in government service. Nazi scientist Dr. Zola, who found refuge in the United States, says about this: "The New Hydra will make humanity voluntarily give up freedom," i.e. media manipulation, rewriting history, infiltration into government structures will eventually give a much more productive result than the military might of the Third Reich. The positive characters of the MCU, Nick Fury and Tony Stark, in different circumstances utter the same phrases that now is not the time for discussions, that the situation requires quick decisions, and therefore democratic procedures / freedom can in principle be neglected for the sake of security.: this is the logic of the Bush Jr. administration. after September 11, 2001

Among other negative representations of the government, we see corruption/incompetence in working with the military–industrial complex (Hammer Industrires produces expensive and low-quality products, which does not prevent it from remaining the main supplier of the Ministry of Defense (LC2), nepotism (President Ellis covers the oil company responsible for the oil spill in Florida - a parallel with the BP oil spill in the Mexican in 2010) (HR3), public disinformation (the authorities conceal the scale of the Mandarin's terrorist attacks and the number of victims) (HR3), clumsy state patriotic propaganda (Colonel Rhodes' flying suit is repainted in the colors of the national flag and renamed the "Iron Patriot" (HR3), etc.

All of the above applies to the representation of the US government within the MCU Cinematic Universe, however, the central governments of other worlds are represented with a sufficient degree of skepticism/sarcasm: the seemingly unshakeable Asgard is dying due to internal strife and a false ideological foundation, its population is turning into refugees (see below); the entire Kree empire is built on conquest and genocide ("Captain Marvel"); ruler of Sakaar ("Thor: Ragnarok" (2017)) distracts the population from social problems with endless spectacles and cynically masks the slavery existing in his world ("don't use the R–word, better say "working population" - parallels with the N-word again, they are obvious). The enlightened monarchy of Wakanda ("Black Panther") stands out against this background, but this part of the MCU Cinematic Universe stands so apart that it needs a separate commentary outside of this section.

The overall plot dynamics of the MCU does lead to the conclusion of a "generally positive image of the government," but there are quite a few reservations about this "positive" image.

An unreliable past

The relationship of the characters/society with their past is a curious narrative within the MCU Universe; the first lesson that the characters learn is that nothing goes unnoticed, everything has its consequences. The uncontrolled sale of weapons around the world leads to Tony Stark being attacked with his own weapons and almost killed; Stark Sr.'s unfair treatment of Soviet physicist Vanko makes his son seek revenge and challenge Stark Jr., the first destruction of Sokovia turns Maximof's brother and sister into avengers, the second destruction launches a complex revenge plan Helmut Zemo. Tony Stark's arrogant treatment of aspiring businessman Killian turns the latter into a megalomaniac, and the transfer of municipal contracts for the reconstruction of New York to Stark's structures leads to the ruin of Adrian Tooms' small business and turns him into an arms dealer. Let's note that all of these episodes are the direct or delayed result of Stark's actions, and Stark, as we pointed out above, embodies American exceptionalism, combining money, industrial power, entrepreneurship and self-confidence in his own superiority. The obvious narrative is that the United States, in its hegemonic phase, behaves like an elephant in a china shop, not solving problems, but creating them with every step it takes.

The story arc of the first three phases of the MCU is largely related to the theme of Tony Stark's moral rebirth; having survived the traumatic experience of Afghanistan in 2008 and then New York in 2012, he tries to change, but cannot, and eventually commits an act of double self-sacrifice: his death helps defeat Thanos, but also frees the world from possible risks of "improvement/rescue" according to Stark's recipes (a la Ultron). Stark ceases to be Stark only after he dies, but even this does not solve all the problems; the legacy that Stark was so worried about on the advice of the late Yinsen still turns out to be ambiguous. The latest film of the third phase of the MCU, Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), takes place after Stark's death, but the past continues to strike: the collective villain of the film is former Stark Industries employees, whose lives were somehow broken by the "billionaire playboy genius."-philanthropist," and, as in the case of Adrian Tooms, Stark did not even notice such minor aspects of his large-scale activities.

The second lesson is the unreliability of the past, in other words, the past can be changed. This thesis applies both to the narratives of the fictional MCU Universe and to the very real creators of this Universe, the producers, screenwriters and directors of Marvel Stuidos. The events of the three films of the MCU Universe unfold in Asgard, the world of Scandinavian mythology, which has been significantly transformed within the MCU and transformed into a "harmonious multiracial society", which many Western researchers interpret as an idealized image of the American Empire (Asgard occupies a dominant position among the nine worlds). The image of the "lighthouse of hope" that appears in relation to Asgard is borrowed from the inaugural speeches of Nixon and Reagan (they, of course, interpreted the United States in this way). Asgard, like the United States, is at the end of its power, in the movie "Thor: Ragnarok" Asgard will be destroyed, one of the reasons for this catastrophe will be the false foundation of the empire, incorrect knowledge about the past of Asgard.

Actually, all three films about Asgard consistently form this narrative, in "Thor" it turns out that the current dominant position of Asgard is the result of destructive wars with other worlds, so the world of Jotunheim was brought to desolation and deprived of its power (Ice Box). When the agents of Jotunheim try to steal the casket, the son of the ruler of Asgard, Thor, calls for war and the destruction of Jotunheim. McSweeney draws a parallel with George W. Bush here. and his idea of a preemptive strike against Iraq under the pretext of having "weapons of mass destruction." The transfer of the construction is one/The top on J. Bush Sr./ J. Bush Jr. it looks somewhat straightforward, but we cannot pay attention to the manipulative speeches of Odin's other son, Loki, who, quite in the spirit of post-September 11 rhetoric, calls on Asgardians to unite in the face of the threat of war with an insidious enemy. It is noteworthy that Loki gains power through deception in the film; the 2000 elections, which were won by George W. Bush, were also considered rigged by many at the time, and the parallels are obvious.

Thus, we see that both potential leaders of Asgard, who were supposed to lead the country into a new era, do not shine with leadership qualities, Thor and Loki together make up the Bush administration with all its belligerence and manipulative patriotism. "Thor: The Kingdom of Darkness" (Thor: The Dark World, 2013) refers to another war of the past, the defeat of the dark elves of Svartalfheim. Asgard won then, but the leader of the dark elves, Malekith, wants to restore the planet for his people. Malekith is the antagonist in this plot structure, but his villainy essentially lies only in the fact that he is Different; in the world of the dark elves, Malekith should be perceived as a patriot, a popular leader who wants justice for his people. However, since the heroes in the MCU Universe are Asgardians, Malekith and the dark elves are evil. In a remarkable dialogue between Thor and his father, Odin, the latter quite frankly admits that the only difference between him and Malekith is that he lost and Odin won. That is, the notorious "lighthouse of hope" is nothing more than a propaganda stamp of the Asgardians, and their harmonious society is based on the destruction of other worlds. This narrative is brought to its logical conclusion in Thor: Ragnarok, when Thor and Loki suddenly discover that they have a sister, Hela, whose role has been erased from Asgardian history. Hela herself, having captured Odin's palace, smashes the false frescoes depicting the peaceful idyll of Asgard with bucolic celebrations; paintings of bloody battles are found under them, and under the palace there is a giant cemetery of soldiers who died during Odin's conquests. "Hela tears apart the underlying narratives of Asgardian exceptionalism and literally brings to light earlier Asgardian propaganda, murals depicting Odin and Hela as conquerors and murderers" ^[25]: "Does no one remember me? No one teaches history anymore? Look at these lies! One was proud of what he got, but ashamed of how he got it. We were unstoppable. I was his weapon in the conquests that built the empire of Asgard."

Interestingly, it is the negative character who expresses the idea of restoring historical justice and fixing the past in all its contradictions, while the positive characters feel quite comfortable in the ideological narrative of Asgard. In general, the idea that power is changing the past to its advantage is stated clearly and repeatedly in Thor: Ragnarok: at the very beginning of the film, Thor returns to Asgard after one of his heroic adventures and sees a court performance in which recent MCU plots are rewritten in favor of Loki, who seized power in the absence of Odin and Thor.. Thor is outraged, but it soon turns out that Loki did about the same thing as Odin did at the time.

As a result, the past literally – in the person of Hela – destroys Asgard, the empire is dying, defeated not by external enemies, but by internal strife and a false ideological foundation.

Tony Stark is also accused of rewriting the past in HC2: after being attacked by Ivan Vanko, Stark is forced to recall the long history of his father's relationship with Vanko Sr., and this story in Stark's version does not look logical. In turn, Ivan Vanko, accused of stealing portable reactor technology, sees the past quite differently: "You yourself come from a family of thieves and murderers, and now, like all the perpetrators, you are trying to rewrite your own history." Stark has nothing to object to, because he has a rather complicated relationship with both his past and his father.

The search for her own past forms the basis of the plot of the film "Captain Marvel", where the heroine goes through a painful overcoming of embedded false memories and discovers her earthly past, as well as the true essence of the Kree Empire, guilty of genocide of the Skrull race.

One of the most spectacular scenes illustrating the thesis of history changed to please the authorities is contained in the film "The Other War": Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanof discover the old Hydra base, where the digitized mind of the Nazi scientist Dr. Zola lives on the local network. In the tradition of the genre, before his death, he reveals to them the scale of his atrocities, namely: the entire post–war humanity was guided by the Hydra towards a single goal: to create such a level of unpredictable chaos that humanity would be ready to give up freedom in exchange for security and stability. To illustrate her words, Zola demonstrates a video clip of key events of recent decades (the Caribbean crisis, the leader of the Libyan revolution Muammar Gaddafi, the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, etc.), suggesting that these different people and events are seen as a single evil will. "When history didn't cooperate, it was changed," says Zola.

As already mentioned, in the MCU, billionaire philanthropist Tony Stark stands as the personification of American exceptionalism of the 21st century; from a certain point on, he is opposed by Steve Rogers, Captain America, a soldier of World War II who returned from the freeze in 2012. Rogers embodies the so-called "greatest generation", the generation of the winners of Nazism, the bearers of a kind of "golden standard of patriotism". Stark, unlike Rogers, did not have to fight, he received the victory over Nazism and communism (in sum, these victories created American exceptionalism) by inheritance, his perception of American values is not initially devoid of cynicism; Rogers hardly perceives the metamorphoses of American democracy that took place during his sleep. It is no coincidence that Stark and Rogers will find themselves on opposite sides of the fence in the "Confrontation", Stark will support the idea of controlling the Avengers, Rogers will resist this control. This conflict can be interpreted as a clash between America in the 1940s and America in the 21st century. In the first one, freedom, individualism, and one's own choice meant much more than in the 21st century. Stark, in fact, approves of the union of the state and big capital, which "know better" – the same idea that led Pierce to create "Insight", and Stark himself to the catastrophic epic with Ultron. Stark wins in the end, but that doesn't mean he's right. As we have already said, the traumatic experiences of 2008 and 2012 encourage Stark to rethink himself, but rethinking leads to the impossibility of change and death. In the same way, Rogers cannot change himself and adapt to the new America, which he misunderstands and which he does not trust (after the events of the "Other War" and "Confrontation"). Rogers also makes a kind of escape from reality: using a quantum time machine, he returns to the 1940s and lives his life there, in the best America, in the "gold standard" America.

However, it's impossible not to notice that the "gold standard" America depicted in the MCU is a retouched, altered version of itself. In other words, the creators of the MCU followed the recipe of their own character Dr. Zola – if the story does not cooperate, it is changed. In this case, if the USA of the 1940s does not look perfect enough, you need to make them so. Steve Rogers' formation as Captain America's super soldier takes place in the film of the same name ("The First Avenger" in the Russian box office), almost all of its action takes place during the Second World War, in 1942-1945. This period in the general context of the MCU is like a "gold standard", a time of the highest exploits in the name of the highest ideals; meanwhile, a more or less attentive viewer should have questions, and the questions are different. The American audience will be primarily surprised by the racial harmony prevailing in the 1940s at the front and in the rear: "the film prefers to ignore these aspects of American history, instead showing pictures of the "good old days" that never really existed except in films, books and in our collective imagination." ^{[19, p.106]}. The military units of the US Army in World War II were segregated and black soldiers, with rare exceptions (the 92nd Infantry Division in 1944-1945 in Italy), did not fight on the European front; "The First Avenger" paints a different picture, moreover, when Steve Rogers gathers an elite assault team to destroy the Hydra, it Among others, African-American Gabe Jones and Japanese-American Morita are included, as if quotas for national minorities apply during the selection process. The Russian audience will be unpleasantly surprised by the lack of references to the Eastern Front and the role of the USSR in defeating Nazism; the only reference to the fact that the Eastern Front exists at all occurs in the scene of the draft medical commission, where one of the conscripts reads a newspaper with the editorial "The Nazis recaptured Zhytomyr." The German counteroffensive in the Zhytomyr region took place in November 1943, but the mention of this episode of the war is probably intended to remind not of the actions of the Red Army, but of the victims among the Jewish population of Soviet Ukraine. This is how McSweeney reads this scene (who in turn accuses the "First Avenger" of covering up the Holocaust), he sees in the expanded newspaper an indication of a certain "Zhytomyr pogrom", although the main repressions against Zhytomyr Jews occurred at the beginning of the war, and it is incorrect to call the systematic extermination of the Jewish population by the Nazi regime a pogrom. Ignoring the Eastern Front is all the more strange because, according to the plot logic, one of the heroes of the film, Bucky Barnes, falls from a bridge and is later discovered in Soviet captivity (as it turns out in "The Other War"). The racial revisionism and miracles of heroism of Rogers' multinational team, as we have already pointed out, are aimed at creating an image of a Great country and a "classic superhero" who will face the postmodern world and postmodern superheroes in 2012.

Terrorism and the issue of observation points

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are traditionally considered a symbol of the beginning of the decline of Pax Americana, and therefore some researchers interpret the first MCU films as a reflection on this event, and the reliving of the attack on New York (the Chitauri alien invasion in The Avengers in 2012) as overcoming psychological trauma: "Mythopoeic narratives The MCU legitimizes the consolidation of fantasies about American exceptionalism in the post–September 11 era."^[19] It is both a fixation of trauma and a therapeutic session - the national trauma experienced is rewritten, re-framed, and replayed.

In this regard, terrorism and terrorists regularly appear in the MCU plot schemes, starting from the very first film, but the narratives associated with them are ambiguous.

We have already noted that in the MCU narrative, the irresponsible US foreign policy not only did not lead to the elimination of the terrorist threat in Afghanistan, but on the contrary, strengthened and armed local radical elements, and both the government and private companies were engaged in this for their own purposes. Moreover, terrorism arises in LC3, generated exclusively by the American military-industrial complex for its own purposes. A series of terrorist attacks in American cities, accompanied by video messages to the American people familiar from the time of Osama bin Laden, turns out to be the work not of an Arab fanatic Mandarin, but of a cynical production by arms manufacturer Aldrich Killian; he systematically drives society and the authorities into a state of paranoia in order to carry out a coup d'etat and bring his puppet to the White House. The role of the Mandarin is played by a cheap British actor recording his messages from a studio in Killian's mansion. Tony Stark, who has discovered the shocking truth, mutters: "The terrorist threat of artisanal production, manipulation of Western iconography...". If we recall that the attack on Tony Stark in HC was organized by his business partner Stein (the Afghan insurgents were only the perpetrators), then identifying the American roots of another terrorist phenomenon should have led Stark (and the viewer) to seditious/conspiracy thoughts about whether Islamic terrorism exists in principle without American leadership?

We have already mentioned that unleashed by the Bush Jr. administration. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the "Patriotic Act", strengthening the powers of law enforcement agencies, state interference in the private lives of citizens, etc. – all this has a mirror image in the MCU, and is also partly justified by the fight against terrorism: Pierce's project Insight and Stark's project Ultron threatened to turn into national security concerns. a global uncontrolled system of surveillance, extrajudicial killings, and even genocide. In Ant-Man, it becomes clear that the fight against terrorism is a well–established business, and with some effort, terrorism itself can be positioned on the market as a "fight for the cause of peace." This is exactly what the Cross Industries company does at the World Cup. In its commercial, the combat shrink suit is presented as a "multi–purpose peacekeeping suit", and its deadly capabilities are described as "removing obstacles to peace" so that "the forces of freedom can act openly in their interests again." The forces of freedom eventually turn out to be the terrorist Hydra, to which Cross sells his dangerous product. Killian in the LC3 proclaims: "I have privatized the war on terrorism"; indeed, with one hand he has created a pseudo-terrorist Mandarin, and with the other hand he is arming the state to fight him.

At the same time, Steve Rogers, who refused to sign the Sokovia Accords, is declared a terrorist in the Standoff; his associates, who were American heroes yesterday, go to prison. In Captain Marvel, the plot turns everything upside down, and the Kree Empire's anti-terrorist operation against the Skrull villains turns out to be the terrorist extermination of the Skrull nation by the authoritarian Kree regime. Ronan the Accuser, a negative character, tries to explain the fine line between a "terrorist" and a "patriot" in Guardians of the Galaxy (McSweeney calls him a genocidal fanatic, but the same McSweeney notes that often in the MCU non-obvious truths are put into the mouths of negative characters): "They call me a terrorist, radical, zealot (!), Because I honor the old customs of my people, the Kree, and punish those who do not. Because I will not forgive... the death of my father, and his father, and his father in front of him. The millennial war between us will not be forgotten." "They" are the Nova Empire, a thriving civilization that, following Odin's example, would probably like to forget the foundation of its prosperity, but Ronan, like Hela, is a proponent of preserving historical truth, and therefore he is a traditionalist/conservative to his own people, and a fanatic/terrorist to others, depending on the point of observation of the process.

A special case of terrorism, state terrorism, is presented in Black Panther: Eric Stevens/Killmonger, a native of Wakanda, Africa, after military service under a contract, becomes an operative of the US Joint Special Operations Command, then works for the CIA: "... his unit worked with the CIA to destabilize foreign governments. They always try to strike at the moment of the transition of power, for example, in an election year or at the time of the death of the king, in order to gain control over the government, the military, and resources." After leaving government service, Killmonger uses his specific skills for criminal purposes, and then the lessons of the CIA help him overthrow his own cousin, King T'Challa of Wakanda. Having come to power, Killmonger is going to launch racial terror around the world, taking revenge on whites for centuries of oppression of Africans: "Arm the oppressed all over the world so they can rise up and kill those in power. And their children. And everyone who is on their side." We can say that life in the United States poisoned Killmonger, he saw how foreign policy tasks were solved in this state, and successfully adopted the experience of state terrorism of white people. If he had succeeded in this holy war, he would have been a terrorist/extremist for the whole world, but a hero/fighter for justice for a significant part of Africans. Again, it all depends on the location of the observer.

Classes and races

We have already mentioned the racial revisionism revealed in the movie "Captain America" to enhance the greatness of the already "greatest generation"; strikingly, the harmony of race relations disappears in the following decades, and in the prologue of "Black Panther" in an Oakland high-rise, Eric Stevens/Killmonger's father is outraged by the plight of black brothers and calls for armed resistance; the case takes place in 1992 (apparently in parallel with the race riots in Los Angeles (the Rodney King case)). In 1992, the king of Wakanda, T'Chaka, would not allow an armed uprising to begin (he would kill his radical brother), in 2016, a Killmonger attempt would be stopped by T'Chaka's son T'Challa or Black Panther, the main character of the film of the same name. As we have already mentioned, the film "Black Panther", or rather the entire Wakanda storyline, stands alone in the MCU Universe because it violates the fundamental principle of the MCU – the basic correspondence of the storylines of human history (i.e., slavery existed in the USA of the 19th century, Lend-lease was proclaimed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, the Berlin Wall fell Black Panther depicts a completely fantastic civilization of Wakanda, impossible in the real world; it is an African country that has escaped colonialism, is in self-isolation, independently developed high technologies, convinced the rest of the world of its deep backwardness and at the same time preserved its tribal structure and monarchical system. Trying to define this phenomenon, T. Secker writes: "Black Panther" is "an extra–colonial fantasy about a people who secretly progressed next to world powers, but without experiencing their influence or influencing them themselves" ^[26]. The MCU narrative explains Wakanda's success with deposits of the unique metal vibranium, however, metal is just a raw material, in conditions of self-isolation, a technological breakthrough equal to the combined efforts of the rest of humanity is pure fantasy, accordingly, it does not seem entirely logical to consider other narratives related to Wakanda along with others. Another fictional MCU country, Sokovia, has an obvious prototype in the form of the republics of the former Yugoslavia, this is reflected in its political history and culture (Cyrillic alphabet, architecture of Soviet monumentalism, etc.). Wakanda does not have such a prototype, it is an impossible country with an impossible society, which, however, does not prevent the same. Secker draws parallels between Killmonger and Malcolm X, T'Challa and Martin Luther King ^[26].

As much as everything is confusing and ambiguous with the representations of the African/African-American population in ITU, everything is so simple with other cultures and peoples outside of North America. But this simplicity is mostly down to careless and outdated racial/ethnic stereotypes. Already in HD, the viewer may be surprised by an Afghan scientist named Ho Yinsen, but the answer is simple – the plot of Tony Stark's capture was borrowed from a 1960s comic book, in the original it was captured by the Vietnamese Communists, respectively, Stark's companion in misfortune was a Vietnamese scientist with a perfectly acceptable name Ho Yin Seng. After the ethnic transformation, the character's name was left because it was considered an insignificant detail. In the same film, the Afghan insurgents are shown as a crowd of aggressive bearded people who only know how to shout and shoot in all directions. In "The Avengers," India is presented as a country of slums and poverty, and Russia as a country of corrupt generals and bandits (against a backdrop of stacked icons and AK-47s). In the same "Avengers" cartoon scene in Stuttgart, the German elite readily falls to their knees in front of a stranger (Loki) who proclaims himself a dictator. In the World Cup, America needs to be saved from a nuclear missile launched by some Kursk separatists (in the MCU, residents of the Kursk region are obviously perceived as a national minority).

While interracial/interethnic conflicts are still marked in the MCU, class/social contradictions are much less represented in the narratives of the MCU. This is not surprising if we recall that one of the main characters of the first three phases of the MCU is a charming/narcissistic billionaire playboy philanthropist who is not only richer than all the other actors, but also better than everyone else, i.e. his social status and the gap between him and everyone else is completely justified; this is an Ainrandian hero in full bloom. strength. Issues of social injustice in American society only arise articulately in the 16th film of the Spider-Man Homecoming franchise. To be fair, the main character of the twelfth Ant-Man film is outsider Scott Lang, an unemployed engineer who was convicted of theft in the past and is now trying to re–integrate into society in a multinational company of the same outsiders; however, the overall comedic message of the film smooths out the social problems stated in the plot. In a state of emergency:Social injustice is interpreted as the root of many problems, including crime: in the prologue of the film, Adrian Toomes' construction company loses its contract to clear Manhattan after the Chitauri attack in 2012, because Stark and the government created a special structure for this. Tooms and his men lose their jobs, years later we see them already in the role of arms dealers / alien artifacts, Tooms becomes the main antagonist of the film. Just as Ronan the Accuser explains the ambiguity of the label "terrorist," Adrian Toomes explains to young Peter Parker the injustice of the social order. When Parker, with youthful naivety, declares that it is not good to sell weapons to criminals, Tooms says things that are quite obvious to him: "How do you think your buddy Stark paid for his tower? These people, Peter, are rich and powerful, they do whatever they want. People like us, like you and me, they don't think about people like us, we build roads for them and fight their wars. We get the leftovers from their table." Toombs eventually, of course, is defeated, and Stark invites Parker to join the Avengers team, who refuses, and receives a condescending response: "Well, this is so proletarian, in the spirit of Springsteen, I appreciate it." Stark is mocking a schoolboy who is missing out on a clear benefit, the creators of the MCU are mocking Stark, for whom millionaire rock singer Bruce Springsteen is still associated with the proletariat. Stark probably regards his relationship with Parker as mentoring, but in fact it is an exploitative manipulation of a teenager from a poor family: according to the plot of "Civil War", Parker is taken to Berlin without his knowledge and dragged into a confrontation with Captain America, again without much explanation. This cavalier treatment of Stark by people lower down the social/ career ladder will be at the center of the plot of Emergency: WATERS, where the collective villain of the film are former Stark Industries employees who were fired/humiliated by Stark at various times and now seek revenge.

Conclusion

The MCU media text corpus, of course, is not limited to the narratives considered, but the above is enough to conclude that they are diverse and relevant. We see that the MCU storylines really appeal to the historical and political reality of the XX-XXI centuries, of course, in its American aspect. The decline of the unipolar world and the crisis of American exceptionalism, international terrorism, issues of trust in government and the limits of personal freedom, the distortion of history in favor of the current political agenda, social contradictions, the devaluation of basic values – all this is reflected in the plots of the MCU, as well as eternal questions about the consequences of their actions, the conformity of the goal means, etc. It is noteworthy that, like any more or less high-quality media text, the MCU allows the viewer to see a variety of answers to the questions asked and choose the appropriate level of perception for a particular viewer at a particular moment of his communication with the media text. The Russian audience will be disappointed by the lack of references to the Eastern Front in the video.:PM, the American critic will also be disappointed, but this time about the insufficiently dramatic reminder of the Holocaust, and the viewer from a third country, where neither the Eastern Front nor the Holocaust are fundamental concepts in historical memory, will not expect these narratives and regret their absence.

At the beginning of the article, we gave an example of the different perception of the same film "Captain Marvel" by Russian film critic Nina Tsyrkun and English researcher Tom Secker. The former is fascinated by the visual beauty of the heroine's flights, the latter sees in these flights an advertisement for Trump's space weapons program; the former perceives the media text by itself, the latter considers it in the context of the current military- the political situation and in connection with previous MCU films. The narrative in this case is certainly in the eyes of the beholder, and very often these eyes see exactly what they want to see.

The article is published in the version approved by the reviewers (after receiving a positive review recommending the manuscript for publication) with corrections made by the author (after receiving the editor’s comments, if any).
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