Hating Marvel Movies Is Not a Personality
The Emptiness of Cultural Elitism
🍕 I’m JA Westenberg. I write essays about technology, philosophy, productivity, and what it means to be human. If you like ideas that take their time, you’re in the right place.
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Something that seems to make some people extremely uncomfortable:
A lot of folks like comic book movies.
And I am one of those people.
We like to clap and dress up, and we cry when heroes fall. We like to have a good night out at the movies, and we like that night to involve various caped demigods, mutants, and wizards. We find it inspiring, uplifting, and ridiculously and unapologetically exciting.
In short, we love watching the Avengers.
But there is a certain incredibly angry kind of person on the internet who sees our joy and feels nothing but impotent rage. They crash out, and they call us dumb, and they kick and scream about how comic book movies are trash and culture is dead, and we’re all garbage people for consuming garbage content.
They post long Twitter threads and ranting YouTube videos looking down on the “basic bitches” who enjoy mainstream pop culture.
If you ask me, they don’t seem like happy people.
And, well - I don’t think the movies are actually the problem.
I don’t think any of the juggernaut superhero franchises are the problem.
I don’t think my happiness, or the happiness of anyone who enjoys watching Iron Man or Captain America or Shang-Chi or the other paragons of the pantheon, is the problem either.
No: If your reaction to popular things is to lose your proverbial shit and rend your proverbial garment, the problem is very clearly and very simply with you.
If my joy makes you hopping, steaming mad, you should look inside the cave instead of looking at everyone else and pointing the finger of doom out of your own emotional dysregulation and your own inability to articulate and deal with your Big Feelings.
My Hot Take Is That Joy Is Not a Crime.
People are allowed to like things.
People are allowed to have fun.
We’re allowed to be moved by movies about heroic figures wearing red capes.
We’re allowed to love big dumb space operas.
To treat joy as if it’s the sole product of a weak mind, and to treat fun like some form of moral failure is a moral failure in itself.
Robert Louis Stevenson said, "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves."
Fandom, the act of enjoying something and becoming part of a tribe of people who enjoy that thing, is not a disease. And your personal taste does not equate to an IQ test that determines whether or not somebody is enlightened or a member of the Sheep Class™️.
My joy doesn’t actually need your approval.
It doesn’t need anybody’s approval.
If I’m inspired by something, I have every right to be, and nobody has any mandate or God-given right to make me feel ashamed by it; and if I’m happy and no one got hurt and you’re still angry, that anger is your fault and your responsibility. It’s certainly not mine.
Taste is incredibly personal and weird. It’s shaped by your life, by your memory, and by your tribe. But it’s not a weapon, and it’s not a crown; it’s not proof of a good soul or an elevated IQ. And it’s certainly not a reason to spit on people because they like different things than you.
It’s only the snob who says, “I like better thing, therefore I’m smarter than you, and you’re a plastic person and your fun is fake.”
And the snob is very rarely happy.
Liking serious films doesn’t make you noble, and liking old books doesn’t make you deep. Hating Marvel will not make you either a prophet or the savior of modern culture.
In fact, publicly and loudly hating any popular thing won’t actually make you free; sometimes it just makes you incredibly isolated. You might take some solace in feeling awfully superior in your isolation, but it won’t make you any less lonely.
A far better stance is to like what you like and let others like what they like.
You don’t have to turn your taste into an exclusive club, and you don’t have to beat the happy people around you to death with that club.
If you’re angry at a movie, it’s worth asking, am I actually angry or am I tired, lonely, and bored?
More often than not, rage is simply a mask for grief and fear and envy. It’s easier to feel anger than it is to admit that you miss your own sense of wonder and you don’t know how to get it back, or you desperately want to fit in with the mainstream and you don’t know how, and it makes you feel angry and left out.
There’s a hidden wound here; why do they get to enjoy this thing? Why don’t I feel anything? Why is my world not made for me? Why is my taste not popular?
It’s a form of projection.
You’re projecting your emptiness onto our excitement, your bitterness onto our popcorn, and your contempt onto our night out. If the joy of others feels like an insult to you, the wound is yours entirely, and the wound is yours to heal.
Something Being Popular Is Not the Same Thing as It Being Bad.
Just because something has mass appeal doesn’t make it empty or soulless.
Just because something is small and limited and exclusive doesn’t make it pure.
Sometimes a popular thing is bad, sure, but sometimes a popular thing can just be popular.
It can be fun, and mean little, and that’s okay too.
It can bring people together, bridge gaps, and give folks something to have in common.
Comic book movies can be corporate, formulaic, loud, and stupid, sure. But they can also be fun and moving and, in a way, beautiful and meaningful to some folks.
Two things can be true. Studios can want money, and viewers can actually feel real joy. A brand machine can be huge, and human moments can still be human.
It’s an incredibly lazy criticism to dismiss something because it’s popular, it’s a franchise, it’s for children, or it’s not real cinema. A much better criticism is to ask, what worked and what didn’t work? What did the movie do and what it failed to do? Why do people care?
You can hate the machine all you want, but hating the person smiling in a seat because their taste doesn’t match yours is petty and small-minded.
It’s a caveman-level scarcity brain mindset to think that my joy can only exist by stealing from yours. If you truly believe that the success of a mainstream movie crowds out your movie, that the flourishing of a fandom lowers the culture, and that the broader tastes of the Marvel fandom ruin the world, you’re welcome to keep on keeping on; but none of it is actually based on reality.
A great many joys can exist at the same time. A great many stories can exist at the same time. There can be infinite rooms and infinite fires burning, and you’re allowed to pick and choose. You can watch an art film if you want. You can read a hard book, and you can ignore the superhero movies. You can make your own thing. You can touch grass. You can leave people alone if they’re experiencing joy.
You don’t need to mock the fans and police what they love and rage post and perform disgust.
You don’t need to audit and censor everyone else’s taste.
The far healthier move is to guard your own attention and feed your own mind. If you want to build your own culture, do so. If you want to find your own people, do so. But if you can only focus on and expend your energy on stuff you hate, you’re going to have an incredibly miserable life.
If you truly hate something, if it awakens nothing but loathing, the best thing to do is to walk away, not to stand there pointing at it.
You Can Let People Have Dumb, Sacred Things.
Humans need myths and heroes; we need stories and tribes and costumes. We need to be able to feel something big and momentous that brings us closer to each other and gives us a shared sense of something bigger than ourselves.
Comic book movies might not be your thing, but they are a modern campfire.
They are a ritual of friendship that is much needed in what can be, for many people, an incredibly dark and unpredictable and anxiety-ridden time.
Marvel movies might not be for you; they might never be, and that’s fine. We can each have our own passions and our own tastes, but you have to go and find yours. If your sacred thing is hating everyone else’s sacred thing, there’s only one way that ends.
For everyone else, these heroes come to life.
These stories help.
These scenes heal.
These villains give us a way to channel and name our fears, and the endings give us hope.
You don’t need to join in, but you certainly have no right to sneer at us.
Being cold and mean and joyless and always above and apart from everyone else is not actually a sign of intelligence at all. You’re far more likely to find critical thinkers among the curious and the precise, the generous, and those willing to experience childlike delight. Calling everyone else dumb and complaining that culture is in decline and that you alone see and hold the truth actually makes you an incredibly lazy, boring, and self-indulgent critic.
A good critic asks, “Why does this matter? What need does this meet? What hunger does this fill, and what does the crowd feel?”
The intelligent understand joy; they don’t mock it.
They can see craft and commerce and emotion in more places than an arthouse flick.
They can hold more than one thing at a time.
Anyone can dislike a movie, but only a fool hates happiness. Millions of people enjoying a comic book movie is neither a crisis nor a plague, and it’s certainly not proof that the world has come to an end.
You can dislike it if you want. You can dislike the whole franchise. You can hate the entire genre. You can loathe the cape movie. But hating people for finding joy in it and building your own identity on contempt confuses bitterness with taste.
Am I harming you by counting down the days to the next Avengers movie?
Am I forcing you to participate by tweeting about it?
Am I stealing from you because I want to see it on opening night, or am I just happy?
Remember: if someone else’s happiness makes you angry, the problem is you.