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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE WHOLE TIME? THE BOYS HAS BEEN MAKING FUN OF TRUMPERS THE WHOLE
TIME?!  
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Alex Abad-Santos
June 25, 2024
Vox
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_ Why fans keep missing the point of The Boys. _

Homelander (Antony Starr) in The Boys, season four. , © Amazon
Content Services LLC

 

Alex Abad-Santos [[link removed]] is a
senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from
Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014.
Prior to that, he worked at the Atlantic.

-----

Television shows getting terrible reviews isn’t anything new. But
there’s something fascinating happening with the fourth season
of _The Boys_
[[link removed]]. It’s not
just that people have suddenly turned on Amazon’s hit superhero
satire, it’s who those people are and why they’ve changed their
tune that’s so interesting.

Since premiering to critical praise
[[link removed]] on June 13,
alleged fans have been review-bombing the show’s latest season on
sites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. The most vocal and eye-catching
of these takedowns pronounce that the show has gone “woke
[[link removed]]”
or is so obviously “anti-Donald Trump
[[link removed]].”

They’re not wrong, but they’re excruciatingly late to this
observation.

Since the show’s inception in 2019,_ The Boys_ has been a
superhero allegory about Trump, dangerous authoritarianism, political
fanaticism, Nazis, and America’s sway toward fascism. Its
showrunner, Eric Kripke, has said as much interview
[[link removed]] after interview
[[link removed]]: This is a
show explicitly about the allure of Trump and a critique of corporate
America. The only thing that’s seemingly different in this fourth
season is that it skates so close to what’s happening in the US now:
Homelander (Antony Starr), a Superman-like sociopath who functions as
the Trump stand-in, is facing a criminal trial and is fanning the
flames of a January 6-like insurrection.

These angry public admissions from conservatives that they've spent
the previous seasons cheering on this horrible character — only to
now realize they're the butt of the joke — have become bigger than
the show itself. It’s a testament to our culture’s
ever-diminishing media literacy
[[link removed]].

This isn’t the first time in pop culture that a superhero satire has
served as a warning about fascism and its biggest fans have whiffed on
the point. That it keeps happening is a testament to how difficult it
may be for all of us to not be lost in the allure of powerful people.

What’s happening on this season of _The Boys_

At the heart of _The Boys_ is a brash deconstruction of the
superhero fantasy, taking apart the traditional comic book superhero
arc where super-powered beings save the day and defend those who
can’t defend themselves.

In _The Boys_, however, every character, every line, every shot, and
every scene paints a larger portrait of how extremely screwed we would
all be if superheroes existed in real life. _The Boys_’scynical
counter to the fantasy is a worldview that humans — even super ones
— are morally flawed beings and that power always compromises
morality. No matter how good we could be or think we could be, our
selfishness, biases, envy, and everything in between will always get
the better of us.

People aren’t meant to be superheroes.

These human failings take the form of heroes like the terminally
narcissistic Homelander or any of his coworkers, known as The Seven (a
parallel to DC Comics’s Justice League or Marvel’s Avengers).
Homelander and his pals rape and kill and lie but their powers and,
more importantly, their celebrity status keep them from facing any
semblance of justice. The Seven are all propped up by Vought
International, an ultra-powerful pharma-entertainment-military defense
corporation originated by a Nazi who invented a serum that gave normal
people superpowers.

Vought has its tentacles wrapped around every sphere of human life,
whether its politics or sports or television and movies or law
enforcement. There is no escaping Vought and the heroes it uses to
make the world bend to its will.

[Just like former President Donald Trump, Homelander faces a criminal
trial in the fourth season of The Boys.]

Just like former President Donald Trump, Homelander faces a criminal
trial in the fourth season of _The Boys_.

 © Amazon Content Services LLC

This season builds on the idea that Homelander has built a following
so large and loyal that Vought can’t control him. He’s always been
invincible and able to shoot laser beams from his eyes, but it’s his
acolytes that have made going against him impossible. The monster
Vought created has become the master, and he’s now pulling the
strings and attempting to manipulate the world around him.

In the season opener, Homelander is facing trial for the killing of a
protester, a fan of former Seven member Starlight (Erin Moriarty).
Starlight, who has the ability to manipulate electricity and energy,
was the rare “good” hero and didn’t last long in Homelander’s
tribe. She’s now part of an anti-Vought, anti-Homelander political
movement, which is the short version of why Homelander killed her
supporter. That, and Homelander is also a pathetically fragile
sociopath. Yet, everyone including Homelander knows that he won’t be
found guilty. Even if he was, it wouldn’t matter because he’s too
politically significant to face any real consequences. It’s only a
matter of time before Homelander plans a coup, a January 6-like
insurrection and takeover of the United States.

A celebrity turned powerful political figure and authoritarian who is
facing trial and stirring up a fascist insurrection should sound very
familiar to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to American
politics over the last eight years. Kripke, the showrunner, said as
much in 2022
[[link removed]],
asserting that Homelander has “always been a Trump analogue” and
that the parallel should have been crystal clear in the show’s third
season in 2022. Kripke’s fourth season is even more urgent and
obvious.

Yet, despite _The Boys_’s purposefully unsubtle treatment of the
dangerous creep of authoritarianism over the past three seasons and
the showrunner plainly stating that the villain of his show is Trump,
some of _The Boys_’s viewers are just now crying foul and
expressing shock over the show’s politics.

_The Boys_’s audience score is the lowest in the show’s existence

On Rotten Tomatoes, the show’s audience score
[[link removed]] is at 50
percent, despite boasting a 95 percent critical score. That’s the
lowest score The Boys has ever had. The divide between critics and
viewers, with viewers submitting a lower score, doesn’t usually
happen. Outlets like Screenrant
[[link removed]], Forbes
[[link removed]],
and NME
[[link removed]] pointed
out that the divide seems to be driven by viewers claiming the show
has gone “woke.” They also explain that the show is
being review-bombed
[[link removed]],
a practice in which users — whether or not they’ve seen the shows
— flood aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB with bad reviews
to drive the audience/word of mouth score down. Television series and
movies that are seen as progressive (e.g., shows that center
characters of color, LGBTQ characters, and women) are
sometimes review-bombed
[[link removed]] by
those who don’t agree with that progress.

The blowback to this season mirrors the backlash that happened at the
end of 2022’s season three — the season in which Kripke said the
satire was extremely clear and the line between Homelander and Trump
extremely thin. Certain Homelander-loving fans had a meltdown
[[link removed]] upon
realizing that their hero was actually a villain.

That it took four seasons of the show for right-wing and
conservative-leaning viewers to realize the characters they were
championing were liberal spoofs of them is a dynamic that’s ripe for
jokes about how media literacy is fighting for its life. How long
would you let someone make fun of you for? What if it took roughly
four years for you to figure it out? Wouldn’t you keep something
like that private?

[A character named Stormfront (Aya Cash) who likes men with Aryan
features and drumming up online chaos turned out to be ... a NAZI!]

A character named Stormfront (Aya Cash) who likes men with Aryan
features and drumming up online chaos turned out to be ... a NAZI!

 © Amazon Content Services LLC

Even if fans forgive _The Boys_’s superheroes for committing
reprehensible acts like the aforementioned rape, killing, and
violence, there were still moments that should have made the intent
quite clear. In season two, an honest-to-God Nazi namedStormfront
[[link removed]](which is
literally the name of a Neo-Nazi internet forum
[[link removed]])
emerged on the scene and became Homelander’s ally and love interest.
Her name and characterization (violence, really into social media,
complimenting Homelander for Aryan features) couldn’t have been more
obvious. But certain fans didn’t pick up on it, some even tied
themselves in knots trying to exonerate Homelander’s fixation with
her. Take for example this Reddit thread about whether Homelander was
a Nazi
[[link removed]] because
of his relationship with Stormfront, including the distinction that
Homelander wasn’t a Nazi but a racist who has sex with Nazis.

The fact that so many erroneous interpretations of _The Boys_ exist
— despite its creator explicitly talking about how mistaken they
are
[[link removed]] —
indicates there may be something at work with how viewers filter the
media they consume. Perhaps media bubbles have reached a point where
all of us expect the things we watch to reinforce our ideals. We’ve
gotten so good at watching things that fit with our political
leanings, and being served things that fit with our politics, that we
can’t even identify when something is built to challenge those
beliefs. What if it’s hard for conservative and alt-right viewers to
comprehend that _The Boys _wasn’t made _for _them because
they’re so used to everything in their sphere being _for_ them?

The show has skewered some liberal ideologies as well. _The
Boys_ includes multiple moments where Vought International’s PR
team strategically focus-groups race and sexuality when it comes to
their celebrity heroes. Each person of color or LGBTQ person joining
The Seven is seen by corporate HQ as a token, a tool to push their
agenda more effectively. It’s a blistering critique of the
shallowness of corporate diversity, equality, and inclusion and how
effective appearances are at winning liberals over.

And in season two, the show introduces Victoria Neuman (Claudia
Doumit). Enigmatic and for the people, Neuman seems to be a stand-in
for one Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
[[link removed]].
Slowly viewers came to understand that she has her own nefarious
motives and at least one mind-blowing super-powered secret. That you
can’t trust even the most progressive lawmakers because all
lawmakers sell a little part of themselves to the highest bidders sure
feels like a leftist critique.

Kripke has no qualms about the bluntness of his series.

“I’m certainly not going to pull any punches or apologize for what
we’re doing,” Kripke told the Hollywood Reporter
[[link removed]].
“Some people who watch it think Homelander is the hero. What do you
say to that? The show’s many things. Subtle isn’t one of them. So
if that’s the message you’re getting from it, I just throw up my
hands.”

_The Boys_ isn’t the first superhero critique where people didn’t
see the critique

_The Boys_ isn’t the first superhero satire that seems to have gone
over the heads of much of its devoted audience. Writer Alan Moore and
artist Dave Gibbons’s _Watchmen_ was both a critique of the genre
and a warning about how superhero comics glamorize authoritarianism
and fascism while doing double duty in infantilizing their audience.

Still, so many fans, some very prominent, gush over _Watchmen_ and
how it portrayed gritty, damaged men, all but ignoring Moore’s
warnings. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz
[[link removed]] famously
named Rorschach, an extremist vigilante who sees violence and torture
(e.g., breaking people’s fingers
[[link removed]])
as part of his job, one of his favorite superheroes. Similarly,
director Zack Snyder’s 2009 adaptation reveled in the gloom and
doom
[[link removed]] of
its bloodied heroes.

According to Moore, those were exactly the wrong things to take out of
his work.

“The creation of Rorschach — I was thinking, well, everybody will
understand that this is satirical. I’m making this guy a mumbling
psychopath who clearly smells, who lives on cold baked beans, who has
no friends because of his abhorrent personality. I hadn’t realized
that so many people in the audience would find such a figure
admirable,” Moore told GQ in 2022
[[link removed]], voicing his
frustrations. He added, about _Watchmen _andhis other graphic
novel_ V for Vendetta _:

_They were trying to show that any attempt to realize these figures in
any kind of realistic context will always be grotesque and
nightmarish. But that doesn’t seem to be the message that people
took from this. They seemed to think, uh, yeah, dark, depressing
superheroes are, like, cool._

I think I understand fascism … But if this stuff can be so
fundamentally misunderstood, it does make you wonder what the point of
doing it was.

While _Watchmen_ and _The Boys_ touch upon the same themes,
they’re drastically different in style. The latter leans into raunch
and slapstick to highlight the hilariously bleak absurdity of just how
close its creator thinks we are to a fascist dictator — while the
former relies on plain old bleak absurdity.

[Homelander (left) is supposed to be a Trump analogue. Victoria Neuman
(right) seems to be a stand-in for AOC. What if the message of the
show is that you can't trust anyone with power?]

Homelander (left) is supposed to be a Trump analogue. Victoria Neuman
(right) seems to be a stand-in for AOC. What if the message of the
show is that you can't trust anyone with power?

 © Amazon Content Services LLC

Still, both want to raise a mirror to their audiences, using
superheroes to warn us about the perils of believing in the goodness
of the most powerful people, from professional athletes to politicians
to pop stars. Political affiliation doesn’t matter, power is power
and shouldn’t be adulated. At the end of the day, no one is going to
save us, especially not corporate-backed, focus-grouped capitalist
heroes. That viewers keep tripping on this point only proves how
alluring this fantasy is.

_____

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Swati Sharma

Vox Editor-in-Chief

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