The Question
Objectivism doesn't work.
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2005
- Messages
- 40,486
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I really kind of hated The Hand.
From a purely structural narrative standpoint, they were fine. They served as threatening antagonists, they served a very functional role in the story, and they was some fun plot stuff with them.
But in the end, we were still treated to images of dudes dressed as kabuki stage hands running along rooftops with bows and arrows.
It was goofy, lame, and kind of childish in a really dumb way. It completely killed immersion and tone foe me. I feel like they needed to go way more subtle with The Hand than they did.
Frank's approach to fighting crime isn't any more effective than Matt's. So, he kills a bunch of people. You know what people are really good at? Making more people. It's one of our defining characteristics as a species. And nothing about Frank's approach does anything to address why people choose to become criminals in the first place, so after the dust has settled from one of his shootouts, those factors are still out in the world, already influencing people who haven't made that choice yet. Simply put, when Frank takes out a nest of gangsters, within a year there will be new gangsters taking their place.
In fact, Frank's approach is significantly less effective for several reasons:
1: The power vacuums he creates are inherently more chaotic than the ones Matt creates.
2: Frank significantly escalates the violence, meaning that the criminals that he doesn't kill right away are going to greatly increase their violence in response, not just to him but to anyone they see as a potential threat, which will inevitably include civilians who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
3: Frank's approach negates the possibility of confidential informants and turncoats assisting in in-depth investigations, meaning that he only ever scratches the surface of large scale criminal enterprises that he can't kill all at once.
4: Frank's approach does nothing to address white collar crime, which does significantly more damage and destroys many more lives than drug running or individual murders ever will, and something that Daredevil has and does investigate.
5: Frank's activities do not and will never serve as a deterrent for future crime, because the people he targets already live under constant threat of execution, both from their rivals and from the more ambitious members of their own organizations, and that hasn't stopped them from living their lives the way they do yet.
6: As we've already seen in the show, Frank's attacks do and will inspire violent reprisals from the survivors of his attacks and the friends and family of his victims, and innocents can and will be caught in the crossfire of those blood feuds.
7: When he's celebrated as a hero by members of the public, this normalizes the idea of violence and murder being an acceptable solution to your problems, so long as the people you hurt or kill "deserve it." Thing is, most gangsters who murder people believe that the deaths they caused were just or necessary as well. Their ethical framework is different from Frank's in many respects, but A) they're also pretty similar in many respects, and B) all it takes is for multiple people who have a different ethical framework from Frank to internalize the general Punisher ethos without thinking too hard about it to see rates of violence and murder actually increase as a result of the Punisher. When people who don't have the same strict ethical code and mental fortitude that Frank has internalize this notion, the chances of them hurting or killing people who they've more or less arbitrarily deemed to "deserve it" and thinking they're totally in the right for doing so "just like Frank" increases dramatically.
Frank Castle, especially the MCU version of Frank Castle, is a great and compelling character and I love him to bits. But his story is the story of a person who lost everything because of violence, and now violence is all that he has left. It's not the story of sound social policy.
From a purely structural narrative standpoint, they were fine. They served as threatening antagonists, they served a very functional role in the story, and they was some fun plot stuff with them.
But in the end, we were still treated to images of dudes dressed as kabuki stage hands running along rooftops with bows and arrows.
It was goofy, lame, and kind of childish in a really dumb way. It completely killed immersion and tone foe me. I feel like they needed to go way more subtle with The Hand than they did.
Frank's approach to fighting crime isn't any more effective than Matt's. So, he kills a bunch of people. You know what people are really good at? Making more people. It's one of our defining characteristics as a species. And nothing about Frank's approach does anything to address why people choose to become criminals in the first place, so after the dust has settled from one of his shootouts, those factors are still out in the world, already influencing people who haven't made that choice yet. Simply put, when Frank takes out a nest of gangsters, within a year there will be new gangsters taking their place.
In fact, Frank's approach is significantly less effective for several reasons:
1: The power vacuums he creates are inherently more chaotic than the ones Matt creates.
2: Frank significantly escalates the violence, meaning that the criminals that he doesn't kill right away are going to greatly increase their violence in response, not just to him but to anyone they see as a potential threat, which will inevitably include civilians who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
3: Frank's approach negates the possibility of confidential informants and turncoats assisting in in-depth investigations, meaning that he only ever scratches the surface of large scale criminal enterprises that he can't kill all at once.
4: Frank's approach does nothing to address white collar crime, which does significantly more damage and destroys many more lives than drug running or individual murders ever will, and something that Daredevil has and does investigate.
5: Frank's activities do not and will never serve as a deterrent for future crime, because the people he targets already live under constant threat of execution, both from their rivals and from the more ambitious members of their own organizations, and that hasn't stopped them from living their lives the way they do yet.
6: As we've already seen in the show, Frank's attacks do and will inspire violent reprisals from the survivors of his attacks and the friends and family of his victims, and innocents can and will be caught in the crossfire of those blood feuds.
7: When he's celebrated as a hero by members of the public, this normalizes the idea of violence and murder being an acceptable solution to your problems, so long as the people you hurt or kill "deserve it." Thing is, most gangsters who murder people believe that the deaths they caused were just or necessary as well. Their ethical framework is different from Frank's in many respects, but A) they're also pretty similar in many respects, and B) all it takes is for multiple people who have a different ethical framework from Frank to internalize the general Punisher ethos without thinking too hard about it to see rates of violence and murder actually increase as a result of the Punisher. When people who don't have the same strict ethical code and mental fortitude that Frank has internalize this notion, the chances of them hurting or killing people who they've more or less arbitrarily deemed to "deserve it" and thinking they're totally in the right for doing so "just like Frank" increases dramatically.
Frank Castle, especially the MCU version of Frank Castle, is a great and compelling character and I love him to bits. But his story is the story of a person who lost everything because of violence, and now violence is all that he has left. It's not the story of sound social policy.
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