A Geek History of Time - Episode 149 - The Punisher, Masculinity, and Sweatshirt Ideas with Special Guest Dr. Gabriel Cruz Part II

Episode Date: March 12, 2022

And while we have a through line that states, Authorial intent means dick, right? I don't want to have to have the same haircut, you have dad. Sorry, I'm pretty hairy, mother fucking tub. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha You know, it's like, JK, probably she's something. Ah! Oh! Oh! So it was this before or after the poster and you vomiting all over the couch? For those of you that can't see, Ed's eyes just crossed. It is fucked up. But it's not wrong. Oh. This is a week of real time.

Where we connect, nerverly, to the real world. I'm his epic, real history, and sometimes English teacher here in Northern California. And I am nearly there. Nearly there having moved into our new home. We are getting close to actually having an office, actually up and running this weekend. We're gonna be putting in the flooring. And once that's done, I'll be able to move my desk in

and it will actually have a place to do my hobby shit, which I have not had since before my son was born. So right now I am ridiculously excited about that. And then shortly after that, at the same time I get my desk out of storage, I'll be getting my barbecue grill out of storage, which is a very big deal because similarly, I have not been able to do any grilling since before my son was born. So yeah, I'm excited about these developments in my life.

Who are you and what do you have going on? Well, I'm Damien Harmonia, I'm a Latin teacher and a drama teacher up here in northern California. I'm actually very excited for your grill coming out because then I can eat barbecue again. As I said, has been said, I hate barbecue. I don't mind eating the fruit of other people's labors. It's true. We I like cooking indoors. I don't see why I should go stand over fire. So because fire good. Yeah, no, you can do that. I'll be inside. You know what I'll do. You can do that good. I'll be inside, you know what I'll do. And our guests can see this. I will be in there with a can of paint,

several cans of paint, taking care of the plaid pattern that you're sealing absolutely is begging to have. So just tell me what clan colors you want. Just snow. And I will gladly clan colors. That's exactly what I thought. Snow bear. Snow bear.

Snow bear, all right, cool. Clan snow bear. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait, that's what? I'm just trying to think of the colors for that. Isn't that all just white? Ha, damn it.

Hung up by my own Merrick Petards. Yeah. All right. And now we heard another voice and the co-dependent in me, they're covering codependent, always has this fear. So when I shut the thing down so it records everything, I send the link to the person to make sure that they come back and then because it takes longer than five seconds, I think, oh God, did we scare them off? And we didn't.

So the code of empathy, me, doesn't have to go back to therapy tomorrow. I can still go for coffee instead. But with us, just like last week is Dr. Gabriel Cruz from North Carolina. Sir, how are you tonight? I'm doing good. I'm excited to be back. Last time was a lot of fun. And yeah, so I'm a communication studies professor, I teach at the university level at

the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the communication studies department. PhD is in media and communication. I study superhereners through the lens of critical race scholarship as well as gender and class. And I also study white national organizations, which is why just now I was laughing because, David, when you said clan, my going went to K, right? And then, if you're in North Carolina, too.

And it's right. Well, you know, I am, without telling too much away, I live relatively close to one of the few clan meeting spots that's still active. And then when Ed said snow bear, I thought clan white coloring. Oh no. No, battle tech. Sorry, sorry, battle tech. Battle tech. They were an allergy, they were an analogy for the Soviet Union. I'm so sorry. No, no, no, no, that's great. That's a more than two things. That's okay. I love that this happened because I can just imagine like,

oh, you poor man, like it took you a whole episode to like for us to show our true colors for a second there. And then you're like, no, they couldn't have like this. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, no. Yeah. Yeah. What if I got myself to know.

No. No. No. Yes. No, a tart makes it. It's a tart better. So. So, yeah yeah, so that's that's what I do. And I, yeah, I read comics and watch Netflix and write about it and go to conferences and that kind of thing currently working on a paper on the Punisher with some friends of mine. So yeah, and I guess that's what

we're here to talk about, right, as the Punisher? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I have 13 other pages on Obama's presidency and the rise of hate groups, but I'm just going to hand wavy on past that. When Obama became president, a whole lot more hate groups started up. And you had an increase of awareness, not because Obama was president, but because the iPhone was getting really good at recording videos.

So you had an increased awareness and you can't hide from it to kind of, I'm sure there's a better word than that. Youbiquity? Yeah, there became like a ubiquity of like, hey, police brutality is a real thing here folks. And it became more and more undeniable. And that happened at the same time as LESO,

the law enforcement's support office got going. It was the 1033 initiative under the Reagan administration, which started this huge uptick in police militarization. The Department of Defense legally was required to make it available their excess military equipment for all police departments. And under the first Bush presidency it was expanded, shock of shock, so long as the equipment was used by drug enforcement departments. Because you remember George H. W. Bush was able to buy crack.

Under Clinton, it was expanded again because, of course, a good liberal is going to militarize things more. And it was expanded to include counterterrorism. And the military could transfer, quote, property, including small arms and ammunition, suitable for use by agencies and law enforcement activities, including counter drug and counter terrorism activities. Okay, hold on. I want to just in the process of talking about militarization of the police,

because this is as a second amendment guy, this is one of my pet peeves. Sure. When was the first time that you can remember, as a private citizen, I'm going to ask both of you. When was the first time you can remember as a private citizen just going about your daily life, seeing a police officer with a military grade weapon, either on their person or like, either on their person or like, because the thing that I most clearly remember, was it was sometime around about 2000, seeing a CHP motorcycle go by

with an AR-15, a police cut down AR-15 carbine on the back of the bike's saddle. Like as a, no, this is this is motorcycle cop and here is his military grade rifle. And that's our state trooper. Yeah. And that's and that's a state trooper. Just like going down the road and giving people speeding tickets and he's got a fucking M4. Well, okay, no, sorry, as a gun that I got to be specific, it's not actually an M4. Well, okay, no, sorry, as a gun nut, I got to be specific. It's not actually an M4, but it's a law enforcement equivalent of a goddamn M4. So when, when do you remember seeing anything like that or noticing that?

Gabriel, you want to? So I'm trying to think Most of the law enforcement I've grown up around I haven't observed that but I will say I know that from the early something I was seeing like depictions of police in the news where they were carrying You know those kind of long rifles Was probably the early 2000s mind you I was barely politically cognizant at the time Okay, I was barely politically cognizant at the time. But I remember not being startled by it, which is a weird response. Because again, in my day to day, most of the cops I know or have been around, you know, carried, you know, side arms, shotguns, that kind of thing. But I remember, I think I was pretty disensitized early on in my youth with the idea of cops carrying those kind of rifles. Yeah.

I'm trying to think I I remember seeing a documentary on Palestine and seeing Israeli cops. And it was it was explained to me that they were cops, not the army, but Israeli cops carrying that and wearing camouflage. And I was like, that's, that's a weird blend. Yeah. And I remember that was, let's see, it was a documentary that I saw. I had to have been a little after 2000. And, and then I don't remember the first time I saw cops. I don't remember when I first saw one of our police officers carrying a assault rifle or they're they're an equivalent. But I do remember thinking when did we start doing that? Mm-hmm. So just kind of assuming that that I missed something.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, so yeah, I think Gabriel, what you said about being desensitized to it, I think is is part of the narrative that we're that we're getting at here talking about the character of the Punisher within the zitgeist because that is a reflection of I think a rising level of I don't necessarily want to to say rising level of violence, but the extreme end of the violence that we've gotten used to seeing on the news in our own society, I think the upper edge of the intensity of that has turned into a thing.

I'm trying to remember what year it was, but there was the very famous bank robbery in LA. Oh, that's right. Where the perpetrators were wearing military, they'd gotten ahold of military grade body armor and they had AK-47s. And ultimately, the police actually had to come and near weapons from a gun store down the street

in order to take these guys down because they stood in the middle of the street with automatic weapons, just gunning police officers down. And that was used as the rationalization for upgunning law enforcement. Well, we don't know where we're gonna go into this. We gotta carry it. We gotta be carried.

We're real rifle that'll be able to punch through a vest like that. Never mind the fact that by the way, speaking as a gun nut, who knows something about this, a 223 isn't generally going to do that unless you're using military grade ammunition. But that's beside the point. That was the North Hollywood shootout, right? Yes. Okay. That was 97, which actually goes a long way and explaining why between 1997 and 2014 over $5.1 billion in military hardware was transferred from the DOD to local American law enforcement agencies. And I would be more concerned about that kind of money being spent if we weren't already taking

excellent care of our children and our education system. So I think that's why we're all okay with it as a society is that we're like, well, okay, this is the price of all of this wonderful healthcare that we've got. And yeah, we've succeeded in turning all the public schools into secular cathedrals. So now, now we need the other thing. So that's good. Yeah. So also $449 million was transferred in 2013 alone. About a third of it was just new. Now, most of it, fairly, is warm gear ammunition emergency supplies, but it also really good way to take the local budgetary pressure off of law enforcement. Some would argue that that's a good thing. I would say it's not because now you're taking local budgetary control away via budgetary

pressure. And there's about 8,000 local law enforcement agencies that participate in the revitalization program. That also includes more than 20 different school districts. School districts, for example, these forces. Oh, yeah. And you will be paying your lunch debt. Yeah, yeah. Shockingly, 10 school police departments in Texas also participated. Um, they, they were stunned. They acquired 25 automatic pistols, 64 M 16 assault rifles, 18 M 14 battle rifles, and 15 vehicles and tactical vests. Texas, you say, I'm a Texas shocked. Oh, I know, I know. Uh, 117 different colleges and universities participate up to and including UC Davis out here.

So you've got a lot of this now. My favorite part of that is for security reasons, the 1033 programs record information is not subject to public review at all. Because most and also most of the records up to about three quarters of them on who got what in what condition are messy and wholly inaccurate anyway. So then you get to the post 9-11 world about all this and there's a gentleman named Stanley Balco, who's a columnist for the Washington Post and he studied this in depth, and he said, quote, there hasn't been a lot of scrutiny about whether the places that are receiving this equipment are actually terror threats, he said. So you see them going to places like Fond de la Courses,

Conson and Little Cities in Idaho, which has me worried right away, Ohio, and in towns and the suburbs. So of course it turns out that officers now use the equipment for every day policing, which desensitizes us to the upper end of the threshold of violence like you were saying. This reminds me a lot of the fast and furious operation

by the Bush and the Obama administrations. Like that's, I, yeah, if you give me a toy, I'm going to play with it. Well, you know, and we're just a track of like however many toys that we get out. Yeah, because the military is going to give us more. It's yeah, yeah, like because because I mean, we're never going to stop funding the army, right? Yeah, like because because I mean we're never going to stop funding the army right? So So what what what I I feel needs to be interjected into this conversation is the fact that you talk about these things being said to you know Little Towns no I own fun do lock

You know in the middle of the country where like are we really sure there's a terror threat here? No, no there isn't a terror threat here, but what there is is a sheriff up for reelection Or a police chief who wants to try to make the boys in the local police union happy Or the captain of the county SWAT team looking real hard at you, Yolo County said out of the 11. Yeah Who who is like well, wait a minute? You mean to tell me that like I can just submit a form Mm-hmm, and you'll send me a tank

Well, okay, it's not a tank. It's a bomb-resistant vehicle, but but like it's it's big and goes room and room and has a gun turret on top. Yeah, okay, it's kind of a tech. Give me! Like, I mean, you know, yeah, like even, even, how do you not, like when you create a program like that, how do you not see that there's going to be that's how do you how do you how do you fail to realize that like every every insufficient personality who's been drawn into law enforcement because they want to push people around is going to look at this as like candy store time because they get to walk around with gun metal genitalia, bigger than the ones they'd normally be able to budget for. Like so much of this ties into everything we've said on the show before about toxic masculinity, hello Frank Miller, and like, you know, all of that.

I'll leave you all down. Shit, it's all about. Yeah, yeah. And like, you know, all of that. I'll leave you all down. Shit, it's all about. Yeah, just. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, what? You know, it's interesting.

No, that money got allocated for boots. Because they feel could never drop feet. There's no feet. Feet are the hands of the legs, and they are very hard to draw. It's true. To draw them is no small feet. Don't okay, I focus it in that and I don't like it. Welcome to my life on this podcast. I think, you know, the thing of it is, is like does a small town in rural America need the kind of like armored vehicle

that can withstand an IED? No, but it looks sweet as hell in the local Christmas parade, all right? And I feel like we can't undervalue that. Yeah. True. Santa needs an armored vehicle. Yeah. We know those house self-revolutionaries, dude. Well, anytime those elves try self revolutionaries. Dude, well, anytime those elves try to unionize that's the truth. Yeah, I feel like I feel like if the folks at Blair mountain at the ball of Blair mountain in like the 1940s had access to a, if the coal miners had access to like a technical with some kind of weapon attached to the back of it, we would be living in a very different world.

We totally would. I kind of want to write that counter history now. Yeah. Yeah. I found like, oh man. How is it that all of the like dystopian future guys I'm looking at you, Frank Miller, or, or no, who might, I mixed them up again, didn't I? Alan Moore.

Thank you. I don't know how I mixed these three guys up.? Didn't I? Alan Moore. Thank you. I don't know how I mixed these three guys up. It's Alan Moore, Frank Miller and Mark Miller. Okay, I can understand mixing up Mark and Frank Miller, but I missed the more like I don't know not even coming from the same, same, same heart of the political ballpark. I'm not saying it's okay. Not even the same league. I don't think they're playing the same sport.

It looks like a fucking wizard. I know. It's're playing the same sport. It looks like a fucking wizard. I know. There's no good reason. This, you know what, this is the author version of Sconstmuffin. Yes, this is okay. Gabriel, short version of this, Sconstmuffin is I went to a coffee shop and asked for a Sconstmuffin because I'd had one the day before. I had not had a Sconstmuffin because such things do not exist. I was sure that such a thing existed.

I held up the line. I was that asshole and arguing with people about their inventory. And I was very reasonable in my arguments because I was like, look, if you ran out, that's okay. Just tell me. But I know what I ate yesterday. And they finally like, what are you describing? Because they kept asking scone. And I start getting mad. I'm like, was there fucking run on scones? And so I explained, I'm like, it's got the crystallized sugar on top. And she's like, what?

I said, yeah, sconce muffin. She said, sir, sconce is where you put a torch in a wall. And then all my D and D memories came back. And I was like, oh, right. What was I asking? She's like, I don't know. I said, the crystallized sugar. And she's like, that's all our muffins. That's what we do.

So, but in my head, as clear as, as my, my red hair is turning gray, um, a sconce muffin existed. And it's the same thing with Alan Moore, um, Mark Miller and Frank Miller, uh, I mix all three up. The best way I try to remember it is that Alan Moore looks like if Gandalf started doing acid to just wean himself off of the meth. That's. Oh, I love it. He's the sixth is Tari and he just has he can't stop tripping that's where he get all these stories from

That makes sense. He just asked Radagast for the S mushrooms. Yeah, just sat down I like it. He doesn't have a color. He's just the deranged I kind of want the tie-dye wizard though, be honest, you know, maybe maybe But it's weird. I don't mix up Roger Moore with any of them. So you think I might, but no. Rand Paul was even on the right side on this one. He said, quote, the US government has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts and helped municipal governments build what are essentially small armies and

He wasn't saying it like it was a good thing I I find this this next bit that I found very interesting North Carolina officials. Oh, no I state that 3,303 out of the 4,227 pieces of equipment obtained through their program are tactical items, including automatic weapons and military vehicles, which is even more alarming when I tell you that North Carolina was suspended from this program by the federal government for failing to

account for the equipment that they received, a program for which three-quarters of the paperwork is wrong. A program for which the GAO, the government accountability office, said in 2005, said, there's no sufficient oversight program for this. Even with all of that, North Carolina got put on the no-no list. I just wanted to point out real quick that my institution, which I went to and did my undergrad in Massachusetts, is a part of the UNC state system. And when, at least when I was an undergrad and I think for many years afterwards, they didn't have phones in the department for anyone other than the office administrator, like none of the faculty had phones in their offices because they were budget cuts. So yeah.

It sounds like a blessing in disguise, to be honest, but like, I'm like, what in the same time? Like, good heavens. Yeah. If the,

if the, if the choice is between, I don't know, having a phone in my office and having a state issued like 38, mm-hmm. It is a bit I don't know, having a phone in my office and having a state issued like 38. It is a bit of a toss up, but I would err on the side of a phone. Yeah. I think there's going to be more general utility for having a telephone. I don't know. We had a secretary of state worried about grizzly bears for y'all. So Secretary of that. Yeah, Secretary of State, I never thought I'd say that about Betsy Devoss, but

no, no, no, no, no, no, don't put that woman any, no, not anymore near diplomacy, no, please. Because her brother is Eric Pryor. Eric Pryor, is that a problem? Because don't, don't sugar code it. Gabriel tell us because because Eric first wants to pretend like the road is his D&B campaign and he's a shitty character. Yeah. No, absolutely. He's like, I got to the ninth level of fighter. I'm starting my own

keep or hold or whatever the hell it's called. I'm going to take a few levels and artificial and try to make my own air force. No, you can't do that. That's not a thing. And so we were, it says the rules. The God in the M. I say it's not. For fuck's sake. Yeah. Oh, I'm glad that we can laugh about this.

Well, okay, the only I hope we have cells next to each other. That's all. Yeah. We can. The only other option is to start crying and never stop. So, you know, just play your drinking. So,

and that brings us to Ferguson, which was a wonderful time for Americans to come together and stand up and do the right thing. Unfortunately, that's not what happened and the military. I'm sorry, the police, your guest, the shit out of people. I've got three pages just on Ferguson and how the police escalated at that step. I'm not going to get into this. I don't think we need to. Does anybody include the fact that Ferguson Police Department was founded as a slave catching

organization? And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that they still used a dog dog bite mark tactics on children. Yeah, it's yeah. Yeah. And and that they literally had a dog piss on the the memorial of where Michael Brown was killed. Yeah, that too. Like it's it's way. It's oh yeah, oh the police the police did all the things you could do to turn a peaceful protest into people wanting to burn shit down Everything mm-hmm. They they drove their police cruisers over the memorial. Oh, yeah. I knew about that. The, the, the, the, the canine cop brought his dog over to pee on it. Prior to that. You know, here's the thing, does this just goes to prove that like reality is unrealistic? Yeah, we say because because because like if if I worked to write a star worst story in which like the empire did shit like that to try to

provoke the new republic of the rebels or whatever, like like Disney would look at me and go, no, that's that's too obvious. It's into this. Nobody that's not realistic. I wouldn't do that. Yeah no, that's that's too. I'm going to switch into this. No, but nobody that's not realistic. But yeah, yeah, for fuck's sake, okay. Yeah, sorry. I just I had heard that detail. And it would be like if novice, you know, pilots and Empire took trips out of their way

to Dagobah just to piss on Yoda's hut. Like, yeah. Yeah. Like really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah yeah it's it's it's not good Claire McCaskill then Senator shockingly no longer partly because she said that quote militarization of the police escalated the protesters response choose Senator from yeah was sorry. So yeah, and I've got more stuff into yeah, into that. But what's interesting is that it really brought to the fore a movement that had already started in 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement. And then in December, there were two police officers in December

of 2014. So this is after Ferguson, this is after Tamir Rice, this is after a lot of black people kept getting killed by police in very short order. And again, we have video of it. We have social media for it. It got the word out. The amount of undeniable police brutality and the amount of provable that it's not a UFO seems to be commensurate with each other because you have smartphones. But the Black Lives Matter, like I said, they existed since 2013.

Labor Day of 2014, they got people moving in Missouri specifically to register to vote to change what was happening at the polls. They are going to the ballot box. These are people who are protesting saying that their lives matter and they are engaging in the democratic process. And then right wing media spheres responded to all of this activism by saying that they were inciting violence while pretending to protest. that they were inciting violence while pretending to protest. I mean, it's, it's, it's Michigan senators in 1941 saying the fact that the Japanese haven't done anything in America is proof that they're going to, you know, it's that kind of shit. Yeah.

I use, they call us enemy. Yes. If you guys familiar in my propaganda class, and I taught it one time to a student, I assumed in there who was determined to be a part of law enforcement. And she wanted to work for the federal government. And she read this and she's like, and it ends with, you know, the comparison between the Japanese internment and the repayment on the Mexican border at the time. And she goes, how do I work for the government when I know this is the kind of thing that could be asked to do? I said, I don't know kid, you gotta work that out. My job is not to provide answers only to really

provide really uncomfortable questions. And this is one you have to do with. So yeah, this is why you can't work in Oklahoma. So all lives matter got started as a reaction to this. And then in 2014, December 2014, two police officers in New York were murdered while sitting in their cruiser, which then led to the Blue Lives Matter group, which was seeking to make it a hate crime to kill police officers.

Louisiana actually passed a law to this effect, which kind of goes against the reasoning behind the normal protections that are highlighted by hate crime legislation. That is by by API LGBTQ is not the same as going to an academy to learn how to believe be a police officer for money. Well, you know, I'm going to push back a little bit here. Oh, sure. Because, you know, I mean, it's not like there's any other kind of protection under the law for agents of the law who face this. It's not like anybody shooting a cop faces additional penalties for having shot a cop

under normal circumstances or if that's considered an aggravating factor in a homicide that might lead to the death penalty. Wait, no, I got that backwards. Sorry, Karen. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, it's bullshit. Sorry. It's awful. It's absolute fucking garbage. Yeah. But that gets us to the mid 20 teens when a certain TV show comes out on Netflix. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if I if I may interject just one more thing, please do. circa 2014 are oh boy Chris Kyle. Yeah. With American sniper, which may or may not have been based on actual events. Right. And he talks about this thing of, you know, then spray paint the punishers logo on all their stuff.

And I think there's a quote from Amory says, you know, the Punisher less people know we're here to fuck with you. I think that's his actual language he uses, right? We want to fuck with you. Right. And so, and look, I'm all for I remember reading about, you know, the military using the tactics of like blasting Metallica and other heavy metal songs in order to agitate insurgents. And I have very mixed feelings about the occupation and our involvement overseas. But that seems like a reasonably benign tactic. Painting the skull on US military equipment so that everyone knows that's what you're about, especially when you're trying to like when you rely on the help of the locals, maybe not the best move. Maybe not a great plan. Maybe not. Fritz, are you the baddies?

Of these. Like they've already, the CIA has already instilled distrust by lying about vaccinations in an attempt to catch like been logged in other insurgents. What if we just didn't do things that overtly, whatever, anyway. Yeah, maybe, maybe if we didn't use language describing our presence there as being part of a crusade. Maybe. Wait, so I'm so excited.

So having crusades and a death's head skull on your shit is, is, is I'm going to not winning hearts in minds. I think he meant to say croissants. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I want to fully croissants, which is also just going to point out a pastry intended to be according to, but apocryphalian we've intended to be offensive to the Muslim besiegers of Vienna, because it's the shape of a crescent. And you eat it.

Contamate. Can't we have anything? No, no, we can't. No, we can't. Like I tell my students, everything you love is terrible and is making a worse person. Yes, these are facts.

Yeah. Wow, that's, that's, you know, it's a very, very important thing Like I tell my students everything you love is terrible and is making a worse person. Yes, these are facts Yeah, wow that's that's you know, it's funny that you mentioned the Chris Kyle thing number one It's the very next paragraph so I'm so glad that I tagged out for you for that, but also Sean Hannity went on his show wearing a skull pin Because of course he did as a as a former ultra boy and dealing with all the stigmas of being a former ultra boy. I feel like Sean Kennedy is really just making our lives much harder than he needs to be

because he is one. Yes. Yes. Oh wow. Yeah. Jerry Conway actually was so bothered by Chris Kyle's love of the Punisher. He said, quote, I don't think he understood the fundamental truth that the Punisher is not a man to admire or emulate. Like Jerry, it's pretty straightforward. Point goes back to the thing about, you know, Archie Goodwin's quote about he is the solution that is worse than the problem that created him.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. He's in, yeah. Yeah. All right. Josh Baranthal, right? TV series. Talk to a Comic Con in 2015, if I recall, saying I'm going to do a good job with it, right? Yeah.

John Baranthal. Yep. Take it away. This is your. Yeah. So yeah. And then what's interesting about that original release was the original

kamikon appearance was timed to unfortunately be like immediately after the Las Vegas shooting. And so they they bumped it back because they were like, oh, this end of good luck, we can't be doing this, right? So of course they go that route, they bumped it back, I think, to like the next kamikon and you know, there are a few months apart, that kind of thing. And so they do this, this thing. And there's, you can actually find online in their pictures. They're not a detailed list, but the pictures of like what comics he was pulling from when he was reading this character, or when he was trying to figure out how to be Frank Castle.

And this is obviously an updated version of the character. Oh, just as a side note, going back to the Jerry Conway thing because he did, he was so bothered by the use of police, by the police using the Punisher logo, right? That he did these skulls for justice campaign, which is where he commissioned, for those that don't know, he commissioned Articicolor and really anyone, but especially Artisticolor to create like Black Lives Matter logos that involve the Punisher School and I actually have one.

Oh, cool. It's great. I can't wear it to my kids' daycare for obvious reasons. Not the BLM, it's the skull mostly. They're like, well, that's just man, who is he? And especially when you have to wear a mask, it's not. Yeah, it's not a great look.

It's not, but anyway, so, but it was a fundraiser, right? To help support like the L.A. chapter of Black Lives Matter and Smiley's side. Yeah, I remember he raised money for BLM specifically. Yeah. But yeah, so fast forward to Bernthal doing the Punisher, which I think is a great, is my favorite adaptation of the Punisher.

I'd liked Thomas Jane's version until I read the comics. And you know, not in Thomas Jane, because I like him a lot, but that wasn't Frank Castle, that was like Fred Rook. And so Thomas Jane had come from writing all of those technical manuals for airplanes. So I mean, it was right. No, because he couldn't get enough of it. It was like his addiction. It's writing. There's a joke here and I don't understand it. I'm going to make it.

The second one was Jane's addiction. And the first one is Jane's aircraft identification guides, which I'm surprised Damian knows about because I only know about him because I was raised by a naval aviator and my dad had him all over the fucking house. So they're like, that's for airplanes. Like how, how niche do you have to fucking be like? I feel about my Maccatch and the Jane the James addiction one but the other one I'm fine Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't don't feel yeah, yeah, the other one I

Feel like that was targeted at me like how do you? Yeah, that's what you call an art is what you call an artisanal pun It's only it's only a swap pun if it's from the Western Valley region of France. Otherwise, it's simply a sparkling pun. Sparkling play on words. Yes, there you go. Yeah. I'll clean that up in post production. So I sound really small. Okay. Good. Yeah. up in post-production, so I sound really slow. Okay, good, yeah. But yeah, so anyway, what's, you know, so the character debuts in the second season of Daredevil, right?

And so it's what's interesting about this version of castle is that I like to describe castle as being a bad man who does bad things to bad people and he knows it about himself. What I find really compelling about the character is, and you always have to be careful about anyone who says that the publisher is one of the favorite characters. Like it's like it's like they say they like Rorschach right? Yeah. Yeah. That's a good comparison. That's like recently. Yeah. It's like okay. That's part A. There needs to be a very good part B to that question. Right. So why do you like this character? And one reason I like him is because gospel, I feel like at his best understands that he is a deeply flawed person and that he

what he does may or may not have any actual impact in the world, but at least in the here and now, it does something. Because that's a very flawed perspective and really it gives him a sense of absolution in terms of what the long-term implications of his actions are. And so that I think makes for a compelling story. So he's a really hyper-violent version of the Starfish story. Starfish story?

The kid wanting along the beach, all the Starfish or what. So yeah, I can kill this criminal. Yeah, you know, so he's. Yeah, it's like the dark mirror of the story. Oh, I'm really uncomfortable about this. There's a there's a comic of There's a there's a comic of uh, it's Cosmic Ghostwriter, um, which is amazing. Um, and it's, it's, so Frank Castle becomes the Ghostwriter and he works for Galactus. As, yeah, as you do, uh, he works for Galactus, uh, Galactus gives him the power of Cosmic that the Silver Surfer has, right? And then at some point, like, uh like Castle just kind of screws off and does his own thing and goes back in time and he accidentally rewrites the Marvel universe.

Now, this is after he's tried to raise Thanos to be a good guy instead of a bad guy and that didn't work out. So he just scraps the whole plan. Anyway, this is all getting convoluted. But there's there's two great moments in this. The first is that he lives through the marvel history of the comics up until he gets to his present day. And so he has this conversation. He finds castle like a couple days before his family is murdered as his canonical origin story. His family is the victim of a mob hit and he survives. So he finds him a few days before and has like the sit down conversation with him. I say sit down. They beat each other half to death until eventually they were even so, you know, evenly matched that like, okay, let's cool it

here. Because future Frank is trying to tell past Frank, you're not good at this and you need to be. And I'm going to try to help things from getting too bad, not just not saying what's about to happen, but you know, in line. So if I'm going to rewrite history, you need to be a good dad and a good husband because you're not and it ain't in you at this point. And so I really appreciate that kind of reflexivity. The other great moment in that comic is when it actually gets to the point where Castle's family's about to be executed.

And spoilers, it happens, the continuity has to be maintained, but Castle, future Castle's about to stop it. And who ought to the watcher, who people may know from the the you know series what if who ought to shows up and pulls a gun on him You just pose like a Smith and Wesson revolve around somewhere and says no Frank you've been screwing with timeline too much I cannot let you do this

I can't let you do this. It's so awesome. I love the idea of Huatu, resorting to a 38 special. Right. Right. Right. Okay. He's standing there larger than life in Central Park

and just has a gun draw. I'm like, no. Not this time. That's like, that's more ridiculous than frog. Like, yeah, it is, you know, it is. It's, it's, it's great. It's really, and especially because at that point, like he's done things like intervened with the Fantastic Four, he turned out to be like one of the members on the ship and

the reason they got powers, like he's at all these pill-for-moments throughout Marvel history and he watches like no, no, no, no, no, no, not this time. So anyway, but that's why that's one of the reasons I find castle kind of interesting and that sort of dovetails that conversation he has with himself is mirrored in some regard. And season one of the Punisher where he says to micro. And I'm paraphrase somebody says, you know, there were days when I was more comfortable, waste deep in like mud and shit than I was being with my own family. And that's something I have to learn how to deal with, right? And one of the things that's so interesting about that show is that it's been highly regarded and highly praised for its depiction of PTSD. And large part because they had veteran consultants and people who were experienced with

a medical professional who were informing how that character was written. And that's also interesting because when you see that character depicted, the violence almost seems like a compulsion. Like, there's an interesting moment where you can see him get agitated at things, where it's not a choice. He's not a cool, level-headed, methodical killer. I mean, he is those things, but in that moment, he is clearly operating from a place of stress. And that is, I think, a really

valuable representation of how the idea of the action hero is deeply flawed. Because you think about the action hero as we like, I love adjacent, say, the movie, right? I don't imagine that any of his characters were like good parents or a good husband or right. Like that, right? Or a functional human being. Yeah, clearly. Yeah. Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry ain't exactly picking his kid up from daycare. No, no, no, no.

I mean, shit, Clint Eastwood in El Camino was, was El Camino, El Torino, Grand Torino. Grand Torino. Grand Torino. I got there eventually. But Clint Eastwood, I don't know, Cars. Clint Eastwood, in that, like literally had a shitty relationship with his family.

Yeah. You know, like that was a part of his character. And, you know, yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's, there was a thing from the precursor to Boston League of the practice. And one of the main characters at the time, he said, all of us in this firm, and he starts listing all the problems

that they all have in their relationships. And he says, we are not balanced people. That's why we're really good lawyers. That always stuck with me of like, you can't have both. Like Matt Murdock perpetually didn't have both. Yeah. No. Yeah. And I can't think of a single superhero. Now that I think about it, I can't think of a single superhero who who has a complete life at home. Most of them really struggle

with it. I will say that Cage does pretty decent from time to time. His marriage with Jessica Jones. Yeah. But he comes to that later in life. Like he does. He's after that's after that's like me dating in my 40s. Like it's you know, it's it's like, oh, I've met a complete person and I am a complete person. Standing on our own, let's walk together. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, second marriage. Yeah, there you go. My current. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't painted things plaid yet, Ed. You're still married.

But yeah, he comes to it after he's already a hero. So I think that's a different nuance. I'm still struggling to find a single hero who has got a decent relationship. It ain't fun, or man. who has got a decent relationship. It ain't spot on a man, whoever else it is, it ain't him. Maybe it's girl girl, maybe. Yeah, maybe. She's got healthy friendships and healthy romantic

relationships, I think that they're... Yeah, I think she probably comes closest. Yeah. But everybody in DC is a shit show like there's no yeah There ain't nobody over there. Although Bruce Wayne's parents stayed together. I mean so that's oh god Like the case could be made that if they'd if they'd separated just a few seconds sooner, maybe you want to put a good race with an orient. That was one of my favorite things was your parents can help you with your Batman outfit. I'm like, no, they shouldn't.

Yeah. So it but but what's going back to this version of of Castle. Yeah. He so this version is obviously updated. The original was a Vietnam bet. The original is actually I believe a Vietnam bet who lied so that he could reenlist. He had done two tours of duty. I think had been discharged and then his original name I think was Francis Castiglione. And then he re-enlists under name Frank Castle to do a third tour in Vietnam because that and I should tell you everything about the character. And then in this setting, he's in Afghanistan primarily operating in his late 30s, early 40s,

I want to say, and has been in the military since the age of 18. So he's got at least a couple of decades under his belt, not telling you know how many different places he's served and stuff like that. And team, she's been a part of. And this version of Castle, this, this version of Castle, I think is interesting because he is very much grounded in, in reality. But also also there's a lot of camp to him.

So I read this interesting article. So I referenced earlier that so my friends and I, Dr. Lindsey Kramer and Dr. Andrew Nafrio who are friends with my friend grad school, we have been working on this paper for two years now. And we've got, we just get an idea for how weird academia is. This paper won a award at our national conference at the like top paper in its division, and then we got rejected by the next journal we applied to because of course, academia is weird, and somebody even say arbitrary. Anyway, so we submitted it

recently to another journal and they gave us a revised and resummit, which means okay, make some changes, we send it. So one of the things they recommended is that we read this chapter that had just come out, I think, as we were writing this paper, so we weren't aware of it. And it was on how what if we consider Frank Castle through the lens of being queer coded in a way that is allows for relatability for queer and trans people. And I was like, okay, that's fascinating. Let's see what this is about. So I read it and it makes an interesting case. And that is that if we, and they go into some theories and stuff that I'm not talking with my worth because while I do study gender a little bit, that's one of my weak areas. So I can't get too much into that. But what one of the interesting, one of the

more compelling points, whether they made a couple one is that castle in the comics and in the show, to some extent, is often a hero for the margin last. He goes after the human traffickers, he goes after drug dealers, the organized crime and who these people typically prey on the vulnerable already in society. So like sex workers, orphans, immigrants, people like that often people of color, people from the LGBTQ community are often victims. And so he is not, he's not on a crusade to save these people, but these are the people he ends up helping by virtue of what he does. So incidental to his punishing of those who victimize them. It is. And they also brought up some interesting moments in the comics where he is able to emotionally

relate and empathize with the victims in a way that is comforting for them. And they even touch on this a little bit in season two of the show when he's rescuing this young girl, Amy, from this conspiracy that is, you know, victimizing her and getting a bunch of people killed, that kind of thing, right? And he acts as a paternal figure for her. But the other thing they said is that, uh, Castle is, or two other points they made, is that one castle betrayed the institution that shaped his masculinity. Right, he turns against the government. The government is the largest social structure, most influential social structure, and his life when it came to shaping his idea of what it meant to be a mat. And so he turns against this institution in a very dramatic way. He does a lot of damage to the federal government, to the CIA,

and to the military as represented in the show. So in that case, he could be seen as a symbol for those who grew up queer, those who grew up trans and are thinking they are betraying the gender structures that they came from. Right? So that's another aspect they go into. And the last point is that what if you consider, so if we understand that campiness is a common way of coding LGBTQ characters, right? In the sense of the over the top, the dramatic, that kind of thing. If you look at Castle and the way he behaves in every aspect of his life, from the way he eats food in a diner and his over-exaggerated

mannerisms, and the way in which he commits violence as being an over-the-top symbolism of like a hyper-representation of rural and violence. Fabulous I'd an extravagant, yeah, exactly fabulous violence. Then he represents a kind of, I need to put that on a T shirt. Fabulous, fabulous. Okay. It's going to be on the underside of the hood. No, no, no. Yeah, because like it's what it's a, uh, uh,

I mean, I have a little genitalia. Thank you. I wanted to be the one to say it because then we got all three of us saying it in the same episode, but I, I bifte it. All right, so I met all genitalia on the fun of the But then you lift it up and it says fabulous violence. Yes, that's so comfortable with all this. I only want 5% of the net. That's fine. I can't get you 10 year, but I can get you paid. All right. Listen, listen, my man.

Oh, but the, you know, part of the thing is like if you consider the part of the function of drag, whether to drag kings or drag queens is to sort of poke fun and lamp, whom the idea of gender in a hyper exaggerated way, right? Then Castle kind of fits that bill the way he talks, the way he walks, the way he interacts with people, um, the violence he engages in. It's so over the top. It's not the good house stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's not just that it's over the top. It's also a, he does it with essentially a sense of naturalness that people struggle with their gender identity aspire to, right? Because Council never thinks twice about anything that he does, right? It is everything is the way that it is that kind of stuff. I ask you. Just real quick, do you think that as broken as he is? Because that's pretty obvious there, right? He's pretty broken individual. He's also incredibly self-actualized by what you just said. He is. He is at peak performance. Yeah. And the worst kind of way. Yeah. It's

the ugliest way imaginable. It is. It is. As those hierarchy needs in a nightmare. You're right. in a nightmare. You're right. You know, all like most of that pyramid is gratified in his van. And I know how that sound. Like that's, you know, yeah. And so, so yeah. And so that's kind of the argument they were making. And I think it's a compelling case to make that, you know, okay, well, what if we consider Castle as like this over the top kind of, what if he's doing mail drag, right? That, that sort of archetype. Okay. I can, I can see that there's it. There's a, there's a compellingness behind it. Um, I want that t-shirt. Frank Castle was in mail drag. Yeah. Frank Castle, the original drag king. And so the the way that I worked in and I wrote out two phrases, gun metal genitalia and and fatal phallus.

The name of my new pro rock band. That was the joke I was going to make. And three, two, one, go. It's it's my Ingevai Mountainstein cover band. Oh, fans. Yeah. So, so I don't know if that's going to make a pass to editors. I am it's only because I'm working with close friends that I feel like they got past my co-authors. Like, like, like, like, like, damn it, Gabe. Okay, it's funny though. You know what I bring to the table? And I'm the second author, damn it. So that's it. So yeah, but our larger point in this paper is to look at three things in particular. One, the sort of this idea of abject masculinity and you guys remove high club, right?

So there's a terminal work called that deals with abject masculinity in terms of fight club. Right? So there's a terminal work called that deals with abject masculinity in terms of fight club, which is basically the idea that as abject masculinity is the idea that masculinity is simultaneously upheld, particular forms of masculinity are simultaneously upheld in our society, and also devalued at the same time.

So the soldier is the soldier is valorized, but he's also required to be disposable in the overall machine. That's what I always say about when they called teachers heroes last year. As soon as they started saying we're heroes, I was like, oh shit, we're disposable now. We're fucked. Yeah, yeah.

Now in the case of Fight Club, they go into the idea of the Tyler know, the Tyler Durdon, narrator, dynamic. But there's an interesting moment where, if you remember, with the lie soap, where he's burning the back of his hand. Yeah. Right. So he is displaying abjectness in terms of he's damaging

his own body. He's also exhibiting toxic masculinity, which is defined by dominance in the sense that he is dominating himself, right, because that is the cornerstone of that of toxic masculinity, but also embodying a sort of otherness, because as the author argues, the wound looks a lot like of a jyto. It does. And so his point, and there's other things he references with like Tyler Durden's outfit, the robe, the flip-flop, the fuzzy slippers, the way that he dresses, that kind of thing. The abjectness empowers this toxic masculine identity while also giving it license to engage

as an other and at the same time towards the purpose of being disposable. And castle occupies a lot of that. He is the, he is, oh God, is that Metallica song? Back to the front. He will die when I say back to the front. Oh, yeah. Disposable heroes. Yeah, yeah. Right. So it's that thing of like, oh, yeah, you're a hero, but you are made to be broken. And if you survive, we can use you again, right? So the war for never ends. Mm-hmm. And every answer, yeah, he just takes it somewhere else. Combine that with the idea of what's referred to as resentment, resentment, excuse me, which is not resentment, although it sounds similar, but it's the idea of the emotional

validation that comes from acting in a sense, acting towards my words of family, it is impotent rage, given action, from wounds that are real or perceived. Okay, okay, go back to the January 6th incident, the insurrection, right? All these guys, a lot dudes, but women included are storming the Capitol because of a wound that they perceive they have endured. And so recentement empowers this particular version of masculinity, which women can be a part of, it's not exclusive to men, and gives them a sort of emotional validation that they were wronged and they need to do something and enter the kind of action. And this also details with fascism a little bit because one of the

core tenants is that fascists think with their blood as the saying goes, right? And so they are people of action. And so yeah, Castle absolutely validates that perspective because let's not forget that the both season one and season two of the Punisher are about conspiracy theories, right? Right? Yeah. There's also conspiracy theories. You know, there's also you mentioned the fascism. And there's also it feels like there's this aspect of, with fascism, it's certainly true. The other that we are going to use is our main avatar for what we don't like, is at once superior to us

and inferior to us. And I'm just thinking of all the ways that castle approaches everybody in those in those conspiracies. And it takes on a decidedly fasci, I mean, it's it's it's fasci in a lot of ways, but a decidedly fasci bend along those lines of he's facing, I'm thinking of the the scene in the gym, the beat down scene in the gym just, he, he is, he is better than them. And at the same time, they are overwhelmingly more powerful than he is.

Oh, yeah. So his victory validates both his superiority and the fact that he is unfairly put it in inferior position. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I'd use it and seen the gym. My first mind went to when he was fighting. Oh, God, the guy in season two John

Pilgrim and he just turns his head into a meat yo-yo with the chain. Is that the one where he's just beating the shit out of all the Russians? No, no, I had the scenes confused in my head. Oh, okay. But it's when they're in the like the junkyard and like wraps a chain around his neck and just uses them like a yo-yo with his fist. I remember watching it with my wife because that's the only way I could get her to watch a Marvel anything is if there's actual violence like a realistic violence involved. She likes actual murdery things. I like fake violence, but she wants there to be

like blood splatter. And she was like, Hey, bro, this is too much. She's like looking through her hands as she's watching this. But yeah, so, so yeah. And the third thing is that so we talk about recentement, this emotional validation of perceived wrongs and the empowerment to do something about it, this impotent rage that's then given like, you know, action and motive and stuff like that. And then we talk about, you know, abject masculinity and the idea of being disposable. But the third point we talk about is the idea of what's called the Negro Muse. And this gets to Curtis Hoyle, who is in the show

as his best friend. And the Negro Muse is not an idea that we came up with. This is actually from some other scholars who we learned about it from, they were presenting at the National Communication Association conference some years, a couple years ago. And this is, and their argument is that this is an evolution of the magical Negro. So the trope that for those who are not familiar, you have the Uncle Tom, right? The Uncle Tom exists in the media in the story to basically uphold the white protagonist, right? Magic Kunigro takes this a step forward where the black male character has

magical powers of some sort. Think like... Bagger vans. Yeah. Bagger vans, Bruce Almighty. Yeah, right. Yeah, I was going to say a sharshank redemption. Yeah, or, um, the green mile, right? Yeah. Literally magical, literally met. Yeah, right. And I love that movie. It is a magic Negro trope. Um, and then you take that

and put it into a real world context and you have what they refer to as the Negro Mews. And that is a black male character who is artistic and emotionally intelligent and possesses a lot of positive, prosocial, healthy aspects that is there effectively to rehabilitate the white individual. Another example of this might be like the green book. Right, so Don Shirley, right, so for the stuff familiar, Dr. Don Shirley who is a accomplished musician, right, African-American gentleman doing the tour of the South, and the movie is about the white guy who's racist. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, it's driving Miss Daisy for the new generation. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's driving Miss Daisy for the new generation. Pretty much. Yeah. And so, you know, that a major arc and that story is, um, dawn surely using his sort of, his character, his very being to rehabilitate intentionally and

unintentionally. This very, you know, crude knuckle-dragging character who's a racist, a New Yorker, right? So, yeah, so then we apply that to this with the Punisher because Curtis Hoyle is a corpsman, right? He's a medic, he's not just a medic, he's also a therapist. In the season one, he pretty effectively rehabilitates Frank, right? Like in the season one ends with Frank Castle going to therapy.

Right. In fact, beginning of season two, he's living a decent life. He is. He's construction worker, right? No, no, that's at the beginning of season one. Oh, it is. Okay. In the season two, he's got a pocket full of money that the government has paid him off.

He's got a blank slate and he is just driving through the country doing what he wants to do, right? Not killing nobody. He has a romantic connection with a woman at a bar, that kind of thing, right? Yeah, now I remember. Yeah. Fast forward through season two, he gets the taste for blood again, right? And then you have him and and then Curtis gets involved again this time in an even more drastic way. And there's a great moment at the end of season two where Curtis is talking to the senator who's who Frank has kidnapped. And right. And you know, up until this point, like Curtis has been there to try to deter Frank from following through with his vengeance. And then when you can't deter me, it's there to help him.

He has literally stitched him back together. He's helped to serve as like his sort of emotional grounding. But Curtis is broken by this point. In this conversation with this kidnap senator, the senator says, is this who you are? Is this who you want to be? And Curtis says, I started off just trying to do the right thing. And now I just want to go home. He is broken effectively by the end of the show.

And he does two things that reflect this. The first is that he takes a life, right? He's a medic. He's never taken a life until he helped Frank Castle in season two. And he shot someone and then tried to save his life and was unable to do so. And that is deeply traumatizing for him. The second thing is that he lies to the detective

Mahoney, who's investigating the death of, I was going to say Jigsaw, but Russo. jigsaw, but Russo, right? Right? Russo reaches out to oil, oil, like a season ago, what have like tried to save his life or something along those lines, what got him to some sort of help. Instead, he calls Frank and Frank comes in, unceremoniously executes Russo, you know, for all the travel things he's done to Frank and being responsible for Frank's family's demise. And then when the cop shows up, he lies for him, which is again, not entirely out of character, but he does it so easily, like it's kind of heartbreaking. He is, he has slipped. Yeah, he is in many ways, our moral compass for the show. And he has spun off because of his proximity to Frank.

And by the end of it, Frank's abject masculinity allows him to become the apex predator that is the punisher at the last scene of the show, right? When he's there with guns blazing and all that kind of stuff, and that's only possible because of the emotional support of the Negro Muse character that is Curtis Hoyle, who has been effectively destroyed in the process. So in this case, this particular homo white masculinity was able to maintain its positionality as this,

you know, again, I use the term Aprex predator because that's how I think of him. At the expense of, you know, a black man's humanity. So this fucked up. Right. Wow. I mean, you know, the comic nerd in me is listening to this and thinking, oh, you know, he kind of did that to microchip as well in the comics. To the point where microchip, I think, betrays him in the comics at some point. And I think Frank ends up having to kill him.

And so you get that, that again, Frank's vengeance doesn't just consume him. It consumes everyone. Yeah. And yeah, but that last part, through a black body, being destroyed on several levels, it just hits me because this show came out one year and a week after the election. Like almost to the day, one year later, you know, and by this point, one year later, you know, and by this point, we'd had Charlottesville, we'd had so many more times of institutionalized violence against specifically against black bodies, destruction of black people, black persons, and violations of their personness. And having it just completely discounted and just swept up, and it's that last part, is that it's being discounted and swept up by so many

as it is with Frank. He does not really show much in the way of regret at what he's done to this one person who's shown him kindness. Well, regret is one step removed from remorse. And the punisher as a construct cannot have remorse. That's a defining characteristic. Not in any meaningful way. Not in a way that has material consequence. No. Yeah.

And in fact, the little bit of remorse we see him have in season two is when he doesn't kill people. Right. And Amy discourages him from like killing the child pornography. Right. And castles like I knew I should have done them in. And that's the audience you're going. Yeah, no, you should have. Yeah, we're just like, yeah, we're 100%. Yeah. We're so back you on that. Some of these kills, what necessary? That one should

happen twice. Like, yeah. Now what's wild about this is, is, okay, so you have all of that and first off, you know, that that's awesome. I They're stupid for having rejected y'all, but I do like that you got to add gender to it because we could talk about the Frank Castle Drag King. But what do we say, the fabulous violence? Yeah, the whistle violence. You know, as the under part of the flap around. But what's interesting to me is that you come back to the real world at the same time in 2017 specifically, the Cattle'sburg Police Department in Kentucky. They installed huge

decals of the Punisher's skull and the Blue Lives Matter on the hood of their cars. scholars and the blue lives matter on the hood of their cars. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about that in the paper as well, that reference. And in fact, in the comics, they address that with the Punisher, I think it's a 2019 issue. Rip it up. Yeah. Right. Comes across. And again, going back to the Captain America thing, which we talked about last issue.

Right. No, he encounters that decal and he rips it up and they're like, what are you talking about? He goes, look, you want a role model. You look at Steve Rogers, right? I ain't you guy. Right. Yeah. Right. No, he encounters that decal and he rips up and they're like, what are you talking about? He goes, look, you want a role model. You look at Steve Rogers, right? I ain't you guy. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But my favorite part to that is afterwards. He says, you know, you know, you know, what because I have the picture here. If I find out you were trying to do what I do, I'll come for you next. Yes. And then the other cop who is half his face is hidden by the shadow. The other half is barely visible. And he's in the background says careful what you say

here for a castle starting to sound a lot a lot like a threat. A threat. Like the second that he doesn't do what what the boys in blue want. They they try to institute their power and he just walks away And says it was or no, he doesn't walk away He says it was and you see both of their hands as though they're arching for their guns Can you imagine the gall the sheer Like nothing but the audacity that is one of of those things when you read that, you think, have you taken leave of your senses? What is wrong with you?

Oh my God. Yeah. Did you just threaten the punisher? Like, like of all people. Yeah. Yeah. The guy that we wish we were as bad ass ads. Mm-hmm.

And now, yeah. There's also a police department in Salve New York That had that logo on their vehicles My favorite part of this was when they were criticized for it They're official written to the press response was quote the Punisher symbol on the patrol vehicles of the Salve police department While similar to the symbol featured in Marvel comics is our way of showing our citizens that we will stand between good and evil Now Ed you are the one more likely to know the history of medieval Europe and feudal times in Asia Death's death's head skull ever been a good guy trait the person who stands for good against evil because I'm having a hard time remembering anything Well, okay, since you mentioned to Asia, I will point out that it shows up fairly often

in in samurai motifs, but that's not as a good or evil dichotomy because right ism and shinto don't fucking do that. It's it's it's right. No, no, no, I have, I have the skull here on on top of my sashimono because that that represents that like I'm prepared to die Um, that's a little different than I'm gonna punish people to death. Yeah, and and In in germinate. This is interesting the the the totenkov The death's head was a motif in German and Germanic and that whole region of Europe. In their heraldry, it was a thing. But no, it never had guardian connotations.

At best, it was, if somebody had a reputation clearly devout, you might believe that they had it. There is a reminder to themselves of their own mortality. So not, not. I'm still missing. No, no, no, no. If I remembered my, my old testament correctly, during the Passover in Egypt, the Jews were instructed to paint a skull on the, on the mantle, right, of the overhead of the door so that when the angel came by, he was like, oh shit, that's metal, I guess I'm on. Right, that is.

Nice, nice, that's what I'm moving on. I'm moving on, yeah, I like it. I didn't see that coming, that's awesome. Yes, I love it. Look what I've done to you both. Yeah. You know who did start using it immediately when they started as an organization in 2008? Oh, yes, it's kind of people.

There we go. Yeah, yeah. Presenters. It was also seen in Charlottesville. Of course it was. I'll let you guess what side. You know, one of the, I love a lot of things about my job, but one of the things I hate is that I have to be aware of stupid racists,

like it's not enough to their racists, like the Nazis were abominable people, but they were serious and they had fought in the trenches of World War One, right? But the racists we have now are just their lap dogs playing at being wolves, and it's just infuriating how dumb they are. It's like if copper thought he was a wolf, not a hound dog. Yes, that's a good idea. And if they had none of his empathy, yes. Yeah, yeah. You know, where the Rubberheads Road here,

I think is that six to 10% of the oath keepers, according to their own database that was hacked and leaked to the Atlantic, our police officers or military personnel. Um, uh, is the figure is that low? Yeah, well, another significant percentage are people who were retired. Oh, they were, they were founded in 2008, uh, and they claimed at the time when Obama was elected that they had quote, and improbable 30,000 members who were

said to be mostly current and former military law enforcement and emergency first responders in 2016. Um, constitutional sheriffs, peace officers of America, or two other groups that have over 500 current and former sheriffs in their groups, uh, which is, which is just kind of interesting to me to see how much punisher iconography ends up with them with all of that. I was able to find online a, I think it was a, some vendor that was selling ammunition that, that, if I had been the, the jackets of the bullets had like punisher skull with

the Trump hair on it. Jesus. Yeah, I can, yeah, I can, I can believe that. But the other thing that I found that I could only find it appeared to be apocryphal and I'm hoping it's not real. But you know, these, these like accomplishment metals that sometimes at law enforcement use, right? Challenge coin, second. The challenge coin, that's what it is. Yeah, yeah. That the Walt Disney World security had a challenge coin that was a combination of the iconic Mickey Mouse head with the Blue Lives Matter, a Punisher Skull, as like an amalgamation.

Oh my God. I only found one or two reports of that. I can't confirm that it was real. I hope it sincerely wasn't, but I also can't observe reality and say that it was a thing. It's Florida. So there's a chance. Yeah.

Sorry. Yeah. So you've got all these cops involved in all these groups and you've got them using Punisher iconography. And it kind of comes to the thing that we have, we have a couple of recurrent themes in our podcast. One is that pro wrestling tells us everything we need to know about society. It is the poor man's opera, absolutely.

Absolutely. The vulgar art. So if there's an office next to you eventually I'll get my PhD in studying wrestling and it'll be great. I know, I know of scholarship that you might be interested in. Studies wrestling specifically. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But another one we have is a theory on tent doesn't mean shit. Because you will stumble over backward into an allegory about World War I without meaning to. And then the third one, well besides 9-11 ruined

all things Star Trek, the other one is that satire only works for one generation. After that, it becomes the goal. And I think the Punisher is absolutely a victim of that as a comic, especially given what Conway, Connolly, Jerry Connolly, a Conway, it was Conway. Yeah, told him terrible author names, but Jerry Conway has been very consistent through the years. Nobody else really has when it comes to the Punisher in what his aim was. So the punisher seems to follow the same trajectory as Satire does.

He was at landish and ridiculous, as in worthy of ridicule, because he was so grotesquely far from what's realistic, but now he's normalized for the police and for others. And again, like you said, they had to stall the release, the surprise release of the Punisher because we had someone else who decided to shoot up a whole bunch of people that he thought had it coming. Yep. Yeah. And they've also decided to change the Punisher's logo recently in the last couple months,

right? Now it looks more like a demon skull, which I don't know if that's better. I mean, you guys are Catholics. You tell me, I mean, I love a good spooky on the side of I won't say good in this case, but of not evil. Yeah, there you go. I'm, I'm, I'm going to say maybe it might make it a little bit easier to make it clear that he's not actually a good guy.

I maybe. I wish. Maybe. I hope. But I think now that since the cruelty is the point has become a governing president. Yeah. I found a former law enforcement officer who'd worked a bunch of law enforcement jobs. And he said, quote, Frank Castle does to bad guys and girls what we sometimes wish we could legally do. Castle doesn't see shades of gray, which, unfortunately, the American justice system is littered with, in which tends to slow down and sometimes even hinder victims of crime from getting the justice they deserve.

I don't think it's a good thing when the people whose job it is to uphold the, let me check my notes, the law start to see a man who specifically goes out of his way to as the hero. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I remember seeing some research about how people who watch lawn order and CSI and

like Cranper Studio shows who are heavy viewers of that content tend to have less, they tend to have more, excuse me, more anti-civil liberty perspectives. Yes, right. The commonanda. Yeah, it is effectively. And so, yeah, I'm not surprised. It's, I like that point about, you know,

satire doesn't survive past the first generation because sometimes it doesn't even survive in that generation itself. I think about like, star-subtruppers, right? Ooh, yeah. I'm gonna talk about that one. Right, or Roboc like, uh, star said troopers, right? I'm talking about that one. Right. Or Robocop, which was absolutely supposed to be, yeah, was way over the time.

Well, anything, okay, Verhoeven, any Paul Verhoeven ever does like, except he, he, he, well, yeah, are we sure though? Um, but, but, but Verhoeven, Verhoeven does these things where he's like, I'm going to make this huge statement. And it's going to be this, this incredibly over the top satire. And like, I don't know, 60% of the, of the audience go, oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, no, I see what he's saying here. That's really, oh, yeah, that's awesome. And then 40% of the pot, of the, of the viewing population of his stuff is like, that's fucking awesome. And then 40% of the part of the viewing population of his stuff is like, that's fucking awesome.

It's rock so hard. You know, you're like, are you all stupid? Never mind. Yes, you are. Okay, fine. You know, we're gonna say Gabriel that 40% either has never seen an SS uniform or has a mock up of one. Yes. There is no middle ground there. I mean, it's like being a champion cliff diver. You are either the champion or you are a spot. Like there is no need to be convinced. Yeah. You know, keeping mind also that Hoven comes at it from a decidedly Dutch perspective. Yes.

Which means it literally doesn't quite translate into what's going on because he grew up not as part of the super power that had the bomb, but as someone who lived in a place that was next to the place that the bomb would be dropped over. Yeah, like lateral damage. Yeah, yeah, place that would literally be collateral damage. Yeah. So I found this quote from Jerry Conway.

He says, quote, to me, it's disturbing whenever I see authority figures embracing the Punisher iconography because the Punisher represents a failure of the justice system. The vigilante anti-hero is fundamentally a critique of the justice system and example of social failure. So when cops put the Punisher's skulls on their cars or members of the military where Punisher's skull

past patches, they're basically siding with an enemy of the system. He said that it was quote, it was a kin to quote, putting a Confederate flag on a government building. Just like the South Carolina State House, like that. It is a. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mississippi changed their flag. Did they? Mississippi one of them did.

One of them died. They never flagged. You know, we're just not going to do this. I mean, I think it might have been Alabama. Might have been Alabama. I think it was. I think it about it.

I think it was. Yeah. But I mean, you know, and with all respect to Jay Conway and what he's done in the stories he's told, like, it's, um, what's the, and you would know the term for this, the principle of firearms, it doesn't matter where you aim the bullet. It's where it lands. Yeah. I don't remember the short version of it, but yeah. Yeah. It's, it's where, where you were trying to put the bullet, doesn't matter. You're responsible for whatever it winds up. Yeah. Right.

Which is the corollary to the one I do remember, the short form of which is the 308 principle, which is if you have the means to take action to stop something from happening, you have a responsibility to do it. And so they stand in balance with each other. But yeah, yeah, it doesn't matter, like we've said any number of times on this show, it doesn't matter like we've said any number

of times on this show, it doesn't matter when you set out to try to, to try to tell. Like, you know, I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to tell an English fairy story. That's great. You've also done a really great job of teaching an anti-industrial allegory. So congratulations, Professor Tolkien. Yeah. You know, like like he has some quote about like praising men who are dynamiting factories. Like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like he was, he was no shit, a lullite. Like, no, no, he was, he was an agrarian pastoralist. Like, I just, yeah. I love the juxtaposition of a man who believes that there are no good leaders and that leaders should not be a thing, but also dramatically fought against the second Vatican

council. Like yeah. Oh yeah. No, internal consistency is not, you know, there's no prerequisite for anybody to be interested. It's not that compelling character material. Yeah, no, it's true. Yeah. You know, uh, Conway to his credit, like you said, uh, really what you're saying is that he has a great power. Don't, don't do it. Okay. No, that's fine. It's not this clearly makes you happy. No, it just, uh, it just, you know, he actually,

I don't know if you know this, he has a lot of wigs that he wears for, and what he does is he will powder them. And so with great power comes great, and he styles himself to look like a monkey. So it comes great, great recess ponds ability. They mean it is two o'clock in the fucking morning. I am. Okay, but on the serious note, like, I mean, that is what we're saying is with great power comes great responsibility. He to spread his when he saw the Detroit police wearing the Punisher

skull during the George Floyd protests, he publicly called on Marvel and Disney to stop this from ever happening again. He's like, yo, you have trademarks, you sued preschools, do shit. And again, the Punisher volume 12 number 13 came out in July of 2019. And Rosenberg had written this exchange. Marvel said, that's our response. They like retconned it. And they're like, that's our official response now.

Which, I mean, did they respond? Yes. Did they. It's like the teachers who did did who called in sick during my strike, they technically didn't come to work. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. But I mean, you're saying you sleep. Fuck him. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Like you said, Mickey Mouse has no problem, you know, rolling a preschool. So why is a police department? It's satter-sanked, you know? Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Yeah. Cool. Well, anything else, Punisher, that you want to? I desperately wanted a season three of the Punisher, where he goes to Harlem and confronts Lecage, who is the new crime boss. Thank you. Because like fucking hated Luke Cage after that because not the character, but the series, like the last 15 we did an episode on this. Remember it? The last 15 minutes of that episode ruined that final episode, ruined the whole series for me because that is not what Luke Cage is about.

And I did not like that one bit. But if Punisher had gone there to confront him, I would have loved to have seen that fight because it wouldn't have been something that Punisher could have won. But by getting his ass kicked by Luke Cage, maybe he could have done the reverse and bun been the white news. The very final. The wise like my preferred ending would have been it would have ended with like cage having to kill castle and then cage like dealing with the aftermath and having a redemption of like, you know what, I'm not, I'm not made for this. This is not I could do it.

And clearly the cost is too high. So that would have been now. Yeah. That would have been good money. I actually thought the same way about iron fist season two about the last 10 minutes of it when there's like, Oh, season two, all right, it's much better than the first one. And then you have the finger powers. Yeah. What the hell are we doing here? Guys? Did we just see the cancellation coming and we were like,

we're just going to we can't flip them the birds. So we'll give them finger guns. Right? Yeah. We were like we're just gonna we can't flip them the birds so we'll give them finger guns, right? Yeah Went from iron fisting to iron finger banging. Oh, no So yeah, I The dragon takes on a whole new meaning Can't wait to hear about that Dragon genital now Stand out stand out decided to stir it. Dragon. No. No, just stand down. No, walk away. So, okay, I mean, I'm having a blast, but it's also two in the morning where you're at. And it seems like we've covered

all things Punisher in a major way. I'm sure I can find a way to shoehorn in police violence against black Americans some other time. Maybe when I take a look at the NFL being the modern day plantation system or something like that. The NCAA is my favorite former slavery. That's, yeah, okay. That's also, that's, yeah, can't,

can't argue against it. No, that's not, that's not the only part of, that's not a big deal. Yeah, because the modern again, I even said, oh, when collegiate plantations decide they don't want to profit, you know, we should maybe not come to work. Maybe, yeah. So, maybe cool. Well, let's see, we're running a long ish. So I say let's not talk about what we're reading. Yeah, but turn it over to Gabe to to plug all the things that he wants to and online. And so you can find me online at GA Cruz, PhD on Twitter

and Instagram. In fact, I'm actually part of a group of comic and pop culture scholars called the Cruçading in Color, Collective and we like live tweet shows like, you know, on the CW and movies and things like that, particularly superher narratives that have, you know, characters of color as the center. I also do a podcast called Office R Usher Doctor C where I talk with my friend Barry, who's a media production professor, as well as, you know, folks that we have on

the show, just to sort of chat about ideas and things like that. And I'm on TikTok at doctor. underscore C. And at some point, I'm going to need a manager for all the weird things that I have going on Okay, but I have to start making money on those weird things So yeah, that's me awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us Really really honored and please that I could make you swear at me. So good. Top. Oh, thank you. Yeah, very, thank you very much for being here.

Yeah, so for a geek history of time, again, Dr. Gabriel Cruz, thank you very much. I'm Damien Harmony and I'm Ed Blaylock and until next time, keep rolling 20s. Ed Blaylock and until next time, keep rolling 20s.