The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a Disney+ original series for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, tackled some very important and tough to talk about themes throughout their show. These themes related to some of the themes we talked about during our time in this class and since the series just finished this past Friday, I thought it was the most relevant and recent media to discuss. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, although a Marvel show which tends to be more action packed and light hearted, tackled some pretty heavy themes in our world such as racism in the United States and refugees around the world along with their displacement. In this class, we discussed themes like racism and the sense of the other, along with what it feels like to travel to a new place or be pushed out of your home. The show also touched upon the first thing we discussed in the class which was “the danger of a single story”.
Also, since this is a very recent series that everyone might not have gotten to yet, I just wanted to include a fair spoiler warning so I could talk freely about certain scenes for the assignment without ruining it for anyone!
The theme of racism is brought forth throughout the series by a character named Isaiah Bradley. An early product of the United States’ Super Soldier program during World War II and now old man, Isaiah is met by Sam Wilson, the Falcon, to discuss his past throughout the series. Isaiah explains to Sam that although he had been the only survivor of the Super Soldier experimentation program, where black men were experimented on with deadly unstable injections of this serum, along with having the same heart and courage as Captain America, he was jailed and tortured for disobeying orders even though Captain America did the same thing. It is not necessary to go in to his full story, but the main themes he tells Sam is that he believes the world has not changed. He tells Sam that “America would never accept a black Captain America and no self respecting black man would ever want to be.” Although Sam goes against this and makes his own path, the idea of racism still stands. Alongside this, the theme of “the danger of a single story” is also shown by Isaiah’s story. His legacy and what he did for his country was written out of history and no one knew that all of these years another Captain America existed, simply because he was black.
The theme of refugees and displacement was also tackled by the show through the series’ “enemies” called the Flag Smashers. They were a group of people who lived in the world for five years while half of life disappeared and then were displaced and ripped of their citizenship when the rest of the world reappeared. Although the circumstances in the show are fictional and unrealistic, the theme they were going for is very prominent in our world. Many people are displaced and kicked out of their homes due to war and disagreement around the world. The show expresses that these people should not be disregarded and instead cared for even if it is difficult to arrange. They shouldn’t be reduced to titles like “terrorists”, “refugees”, or “thugs” because they are people too that should be cared about just the same.