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Why is Captain America still relevant?

Captain America returns to the silver screen Friday, and in honor of this comic book icon, let us take a look back at the character’s history.

It was 1941. World War II was raging in Europe and the Pacific. Men and women were dying to protect their homelands from invading armies. Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito were guiding their nations toward new world empires. And the United States was enjoying its status as a neutral nation, content with being the Arsenal of Democracy. Some Americans, however, saw that entry into the war was inevitable, and it was important that we be on the right side.

Joe Simon and the legendary Jack Kirby were two such men. These comic book visionaries saw an opportunity to voice their politics and make a few dollars on the way. Captain America, a living symbol of the United States itself, was introduced in Captain America Comics #1, in March 1941 — a rare situation where the publishers had such faith in a character that they debuted him in his own book. The attacks on Pearl Harbor were still 9 months away, yet the debut issue saw Cap socking Adolf Hitler in an illustration still satisfying today. Simon and Kirby, both of Jewish families, used the comic to voice their concerns against the Third Reich. Even if America was officially neutral, Simon and Kirby knew Hitler was a real-life supervillain, and Captain America could stop him.

Captain America is a stunning character. Despite his genesis as wartime propaganda, the character has survived and flourished to this day. How is it that a character so defined by a long-passed era in history is still so relevant in the age of the smart phone?

Captain America does not necessarily evolve like Batman but is not as much of a static symbol as Superman. While both heroes represent the American ideal, Steve Rogers has a much more unique character compared to the Man of Steel, whose character is more defined by brute strength than cunning and tactical mastery.

Steve Rogers was a regular man. He had been a scrawny, naive boy who just wanted to fight for his country, and fight for what he believed was right. Steve was willing to do anything, even undergo a dangerous and untested experiment, to make himself strong enough to fight the Nazis. He represents the person we wish we could be and know we can become.

The Super Soldier serum gave Rogers near-perfect capabilities. Captain America is not impervious to bullets or faster than the speed of light, but is as fast and strong as any human can conceivably become. He is a character who is only as capable as any of us can be.

Cap remained popular throughout World War II, but became an anachronism when the patriotic fervor of wartime died down. As a result, the hero faded away from publications.

Nearly 20 years later, the hero was revived to head up a super-team, the Avengers. In Avengers #4, the old hero was found, frozen in suspended animation. When revived, Cap became a new, more intriguing character. No longer was he simply a symbol of America in a time of war. He was now the living anachronism, a man out of time, a man haunted by the death of his sidekick, with memories of the worst time in human history, trying to adjust to the world of the 1960s.

Cap was the perfect man to lead the Avengers. A team full of hot-headed individuals like Thor, Iron Man, and Ant-Man needed a uniting symbol to rally the troops. Cap was a hero to the heroes, and a warrior of honor to be respected and revered.

Captain America became the traditional leader of the Avengers through most incarnations of the team. His tactical abilities make him an invaluable member of the group, even if his strength and speed can’t compete with his teammates like Thor and Quicksilver. Cap’s abilities are so valued that, even in a rare crossover comic featuring the stars of Marvel’s Avengers and DC’s Justice League, JLA/Avengers, Rogers was asked by Superman to lead the joint effort to bring down the supervillain Krona with no objections made by any of the other heroes.

Captain America’s status as a symbol has allowed him to tackle some of the United States’ most difficult and controversial topics over the decades. The first African-American superhero in mainstream comics, the Falcon, was introduced in Captain America #117 in 1969. The Watergate scandal was handled by Cap, with the hero becoming so disillusioned with his government that he abandoned his longtime moniker in favor of “The Nomad,” to denote his status as a man without a country. Rogers eventually re-assumed the identity of Captain America, deciding he should act as the symbol of the American ideal, not the American government.

In the 1980s, Cap was placed into an impressively progressive story arc. Rogers found his best friend from childhood, Arnie Roth, still alive after all these years. Arnie is, without ever explicitly stating it, obviously gay. This revelation doesn’t phase Cap in the least. Captain America accepted his friend for who he was without ever questioning Arnie or himself. Rogers continued to be emblematic of Americans at our best.

It was only a matter of time before one of America’s icons made a successful venture onto the big screen. Seventy years after his debut, Captain America: The First Avenger did a magnificent job of telling the essential origin story for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first superhero. Cap was shown in his element, punching Hitler, fighting Nazis wielding super-weapons, and inspiring his troops to follow his example. He saved the world from nuclear-level catastrophe and sacrificed himself in the process. His actions would reverberate across the Marvel world and inspire generations of heroes.

In the deleted scenes to Marvel’s masterpiece work, The Avengers, Chris Evans’ Rogers character is shown adapting to a world no longer his own. Unlike in the comics, in which Cap was revived after only 20 years, the cinematic Rogers was revived after nearly 70 years and was introduced to a world far beyond his comprehension. It’s a shame these scenes did not make the final cut, as Evans’ acting ability is on full display when he portrays Captain America as a lost soul trying to find his way in a new world. The subtlety in his expressions brings the inner turmoil to light remarkably well.

The success of The Avengers was unparalleled for a movie based on a comic book property, but it is the success of the Captain America standalone movie that is truly astounding. Pulling in $370 million worldwide and receiving a 79 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Captain America proved that Cap is a hero for all ages. But how?

In a world full of cynics and overwhelming use of irony, Captain America seems quaint and ridiculous — an odd relic from a more black-and-white time in which good and evil could be easily defined. Perhaps we yearn for that level of simplicity and can relate to Cap’s struggle to understand a world of deeper conflict. Maybe Captain America speaks to the more innocent times all of us experienced in our lives. He acts as a reminder of our idealism and the world we wish to see. Or maybe we can all relate to the scrawny kid who just wanted to do good. Captain America has always been a man who speaks to what we want to be and is the appropriate surrogate for when times get tough. We may not be able to stop Hitler, but Cap can travel to Germany and sock him on the jaw for us.

When Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes to theaters Friday, we will see the return of Cap, Black Widow, and Nick Fury, along with the introduction of the Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The movie promises to examine government overreach and the military-industrial complex. Cap will again fill the role of the common man working to fix the mistakes of our world. Winter Soldier looks to be a movie that will challenge our view of the world and ourselves — and will look really cool when doing it.

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Butler, Fruitvale Station snubs show prejudice

In the past 20 years, 120 films have received Academy Awards nominations for Best Picture. Of those nominees, only 17 featured nonwhite leads, and those characters were primarily athletes, entertainers, and criminals.

Is this evidence that a movie starring a white man is inherently better?

Do this year’s nominations mean there was only one good movie made by a black director in 2013?

Can the Academy only nominate one movie with a black star each year?

The answer to the first two questions is obviously, “No,” but digging deeper into that third question may uncover a real problem.

2013 was a good year for movies about the black experience, but it has not translated into Oscars recognition. 12 Years a Slave is likely to win the award for Best Picture tonight, but it is the only nominee in the category featuring any nonwhite lead. Many movie buffs were left shocked at the lack of nominations for two strong films with black lead actors: Lee Daniels’ The Butler and Fruitvale Station were completely shut out by the Academy.

Many argue that the oversight was simply due to the films’ midyear releases. Others, myself included, worry it may be something more. It would appear the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is suffering from the same problem as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which generated anger by awarding a Grammy to Macklemore over a collection of black artists. In response to the lack of recognition by both academies, some fans of the artists on the short end have cried “racism.”

I disagree. What’s at play here is not a matter of racism. To be racist is to knowingly bear resentment against a person for their ethnicity or the color of their skin. The Academy’s lack of recognition for The Butler and Fruitvale Station is not a malicious action to deny the artistic value of these works, but rather a subconscious prejudice against movies that are harder for these voters to relate to.

To be prejudiced is not to be racist. To have prejudice is not blatant or malicious. Every one of us has some kind of prejudice. The Academy has a prejudice, too. It suffers from a lack of understanding different cultures — a problem that is unavoidable in such an homogenous body: the members of the Academy are 94 percent white. (12 Years a Slave managed to overcome this prejudice, in part, because of its strong white supporting cast.)

Perhaps this is why Fruitvale Station received no love from the Academy. The old, rich, white folks who make up the voting body simply cannot relate to the everyday challenges in the life of Oscar Grant. The film, starring Michael B. Jordan as Grant, was hard for me, a white male, to get into at first. Grant, a 22-year-old man who was believed to have been a victim of police brutality, is shown unknowingly living his last day on Earth. Writer and director Ryan Coogler artfully tells Grant’s story in a raw and real way, showing the everyday life of a good, if flawed, man.

Fruitvale Station is just not the type of movie that I would typically enjoy. It felt almost too real, at times too mundane, and Grant was a man with whom it was difficult to sympathize at first. However, it wasn’t long before I found myself questioning the prejudice that plagued my view of the movie. As a regular movie viewer, I’ve become conditioned to expect certain things in my movies even as I profess to oppose that mentality. It took some time before I was able to look past the fact that the sets were dirty and the people weren’t all beautiful — that the world the characters lived in was my own, and that this story was not going to have a happy ending.

Our prejudice influences our immersion into movies. It’s only natural that we try to latch onto the character who is most like us when watching a film. We like to see ourselves as Captain Phillips or Dr. Ryan Stone as we wonder how we would handle the difficult circumstances these characters face. We find it easier to live vicariously through Jordan Belfort as he behaves extravagantly because it’s what any one of us would love to do if there were no consequences.

It is harder, though, to become engrossed in a film that is about a real life, not like our own: a tragedy, out of our hands, depicting someone who might not look like us. Perhaps it’s more difficult to watch when we realize the unthinkable story of Fruitvale Station took place as recently as 2009. Maybe watching that film made members of the Academy uncomfortable, unwilling to nominate it for a major award.

The Butler, however, had all the benchmarks of the type of movie the Academy would regularly reward. With beautiful cinematography, an all-star cast of actors both black and white, social commentary on the 1960s and 70s, and a true story about mistakes made by white people set right again by more white people. So why did Lee Daniels get snubbed?

My prejudice was no factor in thoroughly enjoying The Butler from beginning to end. Based very loosely on a true story, much like American Hustle, The Butler tells the story of Cecil Gaines, a White House domestic servant, as he leads his life and family through the tumultuous 20th century and the early years of the 21st.

Unfortunately for history fans, the most intriguing angle of The Butler was a complete Hollywood concoction. In order to show the changing social conditions in the United States from the 1950s to the current millennium, the movie also follows the story of Cecil’s son, Louis, as he joins the Civil Rights movement, the Black Panthers, and later, the Democratic Party as a nominee for Congress. Unfortunately, Louis Gaines was never a real person.

Eugene Allen, the man upon whom Cecil was based, was an actual White House butler for over 34 years. But unlike Cecil, Allen only had one son, who fought in and survived Vietnam. The character of Cecil is the father of two children, with the younger boy leaving to fight in Vietnam during the course of the movie. Still, these sorts of liberties are taken in many movies and can’t possibly be held up as an excuse for snubbing the film when American Hustle followed the same formula.

Obviously, not every movie can be nominated for Best Picture. Still, it seems like a slight against these two magnificent movies that neither was nominated when realistic stories about white men, like Nebraska and Captain Phillips, received their recognition from the Academy.

I am not arguing that either Lee Daniels’ The Butler or Fruitvale Station deserves to be awarded Best Picture. Neither was on the same level as 12 Years a Slave. Both movies, however, certainly deserve to be recognized ahead of some of the other Best Picture nominees.

While I don’t believe the Academy made malicious, racist decisions, I have to conclude that the slights given to these two movies were based on a subconscious prejudice that influences all of us. The diverse perspectives that can be brought together when a group of about 6,000 people vote on the best films of the year should counterbalance those prejudices. But that outcome is impossible when the Academy is 94 percent white, 77 percent male, and very old.