London: what to say but be safe, Londoners? And that sounds direly inadequate.

***

Back when I started reading Ex Machina, I remember harmonyangel mentioning that comics' use of 9/11 for its backstory was a problem to her, as it felt inappropriate to use such a real tragedy in an AU way for a comics character background. My first impulse, which I didn't follow, was to reply: but what about Captain America? Steve Rogers is your favourite comic book character! As the German release date for the Captain America movie approaches I'm reminded of this again, and the awareness that hit me then of how subjectively "real" and "too close" is for us, and how much depends on your sociocultural background. I "encountered" Steve Rogers in other people's comics first (and at theatrical_muse), and a good thing, too, because he wasn't anything like what I had expected from his superhero handle, and I never would have found that out otherwise because I definitely would not have read a comics book called "Captain America" which I would have expected to be basically some Tea Party manifesto in fictional form. (And would have been very wrong about this.) Having found the comics version of Steve endearing, I'm looking forward to the movie version as well, save for one thing. Which is the thing still troubling me now and then in the comics, too, on an irrational, visceral level that can't be soothed away. It's best explained by what hit me when starting to read The Twelve, which is a comic book by J. Michael Straczynski (he of Babylon 5 fame, which is why I picked it up), in which he takes various Marvel characters which like Captain America were invented in the 40s but unlike Captain America vanished into obscurity and brings them the present. There are several interesting concepts there, but early on, you have this panel in which various Marvel superheroes, including Cap (and Namor, and the twelve obscure ones) enter Berlin, and, well, there it was: the sense of "but you can't do that!" Because I'd seen photos of bombed out Berlin, I knew/know people who had lived there at the end of WWII. I had heard stories from emigrés who'd lost part of their families in the camps and what it felt like for them the first time they went back to Germany after the war. I had stories from people who remained in Germany and what it felt like to be bombed, the sound of the sirens, the smell of burned flesh, what it felt like when the Russians arrived, etc. That was real, and to see various comic book characters strolling through those familiar ruins, posing heroically, just felt and feels wrong.

On the other hand, I had no problem with the use of 9/11 in Ex Machina whatsoever. (Or, for that matter, any number of historical settings which were just as real as WWII.)

So: region of origin dependance on what causes squicks and what that's-just-fine reactions, I suppose. But that's my personal reason for wishing that instead of a genuine origin movie we would get a Steve Rogers in the present film with a few flashbacks, which would limit my time of fighting that but-that-was-real-you-can't-do-that squick in me.