Steve Rogers in MCU pt. 1: A Millennial?

[stellahibernis]

That is probably somewhat a head-scratcher for a title, but I’ll get to that after a brief intro.

 

For a while now I’ve been meaning to write a series on MCU-Steve, but kept stumbling on the way I first considered doing it. The problem was the format I envisioned; it would have handled approximately one movie in one post, which would have made them long enough that I usually wouldn’t have been able to do them at one sitting. As a result, whenever I had inspiration to write something longer, I went for fics instead, and hence no meta series. Until now! I decided to focus on themes instead, which will allow me to make shorter posts that I can just write and post whenever I have time for blogging. I’ll discuss canon while also commenting on the fanon and how those meet and sometimes don’t (to my great distress in some cases). I’ll try to do more than just complain about my pet peeves regarding how Steve is characterized by parts of fandom (which I admittedly have many).

 

Steve is often (lovingly, jokingly, sometimes as a rather too literal description) called a grandpa, thinking of which lead to me consider what generation he’d actually relate to, displaced as he is, and I realized he’d probably feel fairly connected with the generation that’s the same biological age as he is after waking from the ice. Born in 1918, Valkyrie in spring 1945, and waking up in spring 2012  would make him same age as those born mid-eighties (close enough to my age, as it happens), so solidly a Millennial albeit of the older half.

 

Obviously there’s the shared life experience that Steve has with those of his birth generation, and that probably helps him connect with the people that are closer to his chronological age, but there’s also the seventy years he hasn’t lived that puts them in a completely different mindset. He shares their past but not the current, because he’s taken a different path getting here. The boomers and Gen X have such a different experience compared to Steve that it’s unlikely to be a close match, and so we come to the Millennials. I don’t think I’m just projecting (although there might be some of that, too) when I say that considering the way history has progressed during our lifetime, it has landed us into a mindset that would probably feel familiar to Steve.

 

When I think of Steve after his seventy year nap, there is a very definite sense of being unmoored. The reasons for it are of course obvious, his whole life is nothing like he dreamed of or predicted. There was the major upheaval of war followed by the time jump, and he’s left having to adjust to a world that keeps betraying him, where finding solid surfaces he can rely on and people he can trust is difficult.

 

With Millennials the sense of being unmoored is very common as well. We are living now in a world that’s unlike the one we thought we’d grow into, and there’s so much more uncertainty now than there was in our childhood. The key thing for us is that we remember our childhood before the major fear of terror, before the privacy concerns of our digital life, before the uncertainty of what will happen to our way of life with climate change ramping up etc. For many of us the life we expected to live was much more secure than the reality turned out to be; with making a family, buying a house, or having a secure career are unreachable to more and more of us. It very much feels like the life we were reaching for turned out to be a mirage as conditions changed as we grew up, and we’re left grappling for solid surfaces.

 

It’s funny how appropriate it is that Steve as he is displaced in time in MCU also reflects so many of the worries and insecurities of the Millennials. Maybe that’s why he resonates so well with us, probably more than even those who made the movies originally expected. He was in many ways considered the least cool of the Avengers, but now looking back his is a story that affects countless of us. Maybe it’s because he is lost as well, or maybe it’s his determination to still move forward even when faced with uncertainty that has allowed us to grow attached to him.

 

***

 

It says part one in the title, and I’ll try to write one of these approximately every week, centering on different themes. Please feel free to make suggestions! Some that I know I’ll tackle are his recklessness, the determination to do the right thing, the effects of the serum, and how he interacts with people, including him being a leader. A while ago I made a post titled I have opinions about Steve Rogers, which isn’t exactly a part of this series, but is obviously related.

Comments

[perspi]

I love this idea! Meta on Steve using themes!! :D

I think, too, that I have to agree with you that Steve is very much a Millenial-resonant. I myself am the tail end of Gen X -- I have seen and experienced the disillusionment of growing up in a world that doesn't actually match the American Dream they're selling, but I'm also part of the last generation that could still (mostly) afford college (I was in college from 1995-99, during which we transitioned from having to show up in-person to register for classes to being able to register entirely online. It was kind of a shock to realize that my graduation year is right at the beginning of those 'sharp tuition increases' graphs).

I really wish the movies had given us more of Steve's dealing with his unmooring -- his determination to move forward in spite of that is wonderful, but I think we'd do so much better to see how he's dealing with it.

[I'm also struck by this comparison as you talk about Millenials remembering what life was like 'before the fear of terror' -- I had this conversation with my general-education students last week, as we were talking about birthdates and timelines, and they are Gen Z -- they DON'T KNOW what life was like before 9/11, and one kid asked, what was it like?

I was a bit floored, like, how do I answer that? There was a lot that was better, but is it me misremembering because I was young, or was it really better? hm]

[stellahibernis]

The point of canon to portray more of the sense of Steve being lost would have been in the Avengers, and for starters they should have included the deleted scenes at the beginning. They're pretty good at quietly illustrating how he's feeling very much an outsider in his own city.

It is really weird, the Millennial experience, because for many of us the rapid transition happened right as we were coming to adulthood or were a few years in. The generational gap isn't quite as sharp here in Finland compared to US for a lot of reasons, but there's a reason, for example, why people around my age and younger tend to postpone making family compared to our parents. It's just so much harder to reach a financial stability to make it sensible to have children.

The thing that mostly trips me regarding Gen Z is the very different expectations of privacy, and everything related to that, they have, and that the amount of surveillance doesn't necessarily even register as something skeevy.

[mmouse15]

I love this meta. I look forward to more on themes. It's a great idea.

[stellahibernis]

Thank you <3

[mrs_d]

Yes! I wrote about this on Tumblr, but I can't find the link right now. Steve Rogers is such a millennial. I love what you say about him feeling "unmoored". It blows my mind to think that he has no foundation for Big Things that older folks would reference — even 9/11!

[stellahibernis]

It makes it very interesting, because since he woke up in 2012, he arrived in the world that was already very cynical in ways about privacy and surveillance. For those of us living through it it's been a slow slide, and hence deceptively easy to get used to, but for someone coming from outside it must be very strange, and also gives him clarity that's perhaps harder to reach when one has been told it's all for safety, whether the threats are credible or not.

[mrs_d]

YESSSS I never thought of the security/surveillance aspect of it, but it's so true. Remember back in 2012-2013 when Snowden leaked things and we all got really freaked out ? Now, a lot of people don't even know who that is, and there's jokes about the NSA/FBI agents who are reading everything you write online. (Hey, Doug!) Poor Steve, talk about a steep learning curve....