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it's been a couple of days and I've read a lot of comments, many people have messaged me and I haven't had the time to reply to everyone, so I'm doing it now in this thread. fair warning, cause it's very long and very extensive!
as far as I am concerned, the arm scene is very problematic for a series of reasons. these reasons have less to do with ayo and the dora milaje and more to do with the executive decisions of the screenwriters, but we will get into it in detail as we go on.
at the most basic level, the scene is problematic because it is a massive breach of bucky's consent. the wakandans gave him an arm that could be disengaged from an external party, and he didn't know about it. this is problematic on a series of levels.
first of all, bucky is a trauma survivor who has quite literally lived through seventy years of torture and brainwashing,seventy years in which he had no control over his own body and mind,seventy years in which hydra used him as a machine and stripped his humanity away from him.
they showed us that bucky is better now. and he is, indeed (I'll keep my criticisms as to whether this was done properly for another time), but like he wasn't once broken and he is now fixed, he might have worked through his trauma but his past will always be a part of him.
as such, bodily autonomy and in general the ability to be in control of one's own body is something that is incredibly important for everyone, but for bucky especially. and the lack of it, consequently, will be extremely triggering for him.
let's also not forget that bodily autonomy is a conversation that is extremely relevant and important for disabled people at any point. ayo took away bucky's mobility aid without his consent, and it's the equivalent of taking away someone's wheelchair, crutch, prosthetic.
now, of course, bucky's arm is also -potentially- a very effective weapon. but it's also, in my opinion, his mobility aid first and foremost. however, some people have pointed out that the wakandans had no reason to trust him, and that they were right in defending themselves.
let me expand on that. bucky has said, more than once, that his time in wakanda is the only time he's known peace since 1943. the wakandans accepted him, named him the white wolf, hid him from the world, helped him to get rid of hydra's trigger words and reclaim his own mind.
even just in the first scene of this episode, there is a level of reciprocal trust between bucky and ayo that cannot go unnoticed. bucky trusts her to stop him, should it be necessary. he trusts her enough to be vulnerable in front of her, to bare himself truly and completely.
he trusts her so much that he is willing to give her power over his mind: if things went badly, with the trigger words ayo would effectively be in control of bucky's actions. he knows this. and he trusts her enough to give her that power. he gives his *consent*
the beauty and the sheer, visceral depth of that entire scene is entirely invalidated the moment ayo breaks that trust by deactivating bucky's arm without his consent. without him knowing.
'but he betrayed them by freeing zemo.' sure, and his actions will have serious consequences. but when the only narrative device to ensure that a disabled man is held responsible is to take his disability and use it against him as a weapon, that is very problematic in itself.
they could have dealt with it in so many ways. bucky is so worried to hurt anyone ('i am not the winter soldier' 'i don't do that anymore') that if the wakandans had told him that the arm could be disabled in case of necessity and out of precaution, he would have agreed to it.
the point here is not that the arm could be disengaged, but rather that bucky didn't know. bucky didn't know something about a prosthetic that is attached to his body, and that helps him do things that he would otherwise find difficult with only one arm. the key here is consent.
'but if everything has to be politically correct, then we can't show anything anymore!' and 'what if they wanted to show a problematic scene to make a point about ableism and bucky's disability?'
these are both very fair questions, let's try to unpack them.
these are both very fair questions, let's try to unpack them.
as far as I am concerned, the solution with anything that can be defined problematic is not to stop making movies about problematic stuff but to give the audience a framework to understand it.
problematic behaviour for the sake of it, for the sake of mere enjoyment, is not something I can easily justify. I can show characters being homophobic on screen if that's something that's part of the narrative, for instance,
but at some point it is my duty to address the homophobia, be it in relation to the protagonist's journey or the historical context or what not. the key is that the audience cannot leave the room thinking that homophobia is okay in any circumstance.
as such, of course we can have a scene that deals with ableism if said scene has a specific function within the narrative. so far, however, beyond showing us a shocked bucky, we haven't been given any tool to unpack the scene and to explore its triggering potential.
I will give the show the benefit of the doubt and I will wait to see if the scene will be addressed later on, but so far it appears very problematic to me and I have the awful suspicion that it this scene was only functional as a shock element within a cool fight scene.
finally, if the ableism was intentional to make a point about disability, there is a conversation to be had about constantly reinforcing painful connections. I am queer, so I will give you a queer-related example,but it's an equation that can be applied to any marginalised group.
we can make movies about all the microtraumas that queer people go through because they are realities of being queer today. and that is important. but if all there is to being queer is trauma, and struggles, and pain, and tragedy, sooner or later that's all I will be able to see.
it gets to a point where I start believing that there is something about being queer -that there is something about *me*- that fundamentally prevents me from being happy, from not ending in tragedy. and that's why positive representation is so important.
maybe they were making a point with bucky, but if we only talk about disability when we take a man's mobility aid away from him as punishment, and if we only talk about disability as a narrative device, then yes, it is a problem. and a serious one at that.
and to me, this is symptomatic of another dynamic that I've noticed in the show so far. bucky's trauma is played around with, it is mentioned, it is challenged. bucky calls himself crazy, he calls hydra his people.
and it might very well be that he is going through those things, that he is still struggling to consider himself a victim. that he blames himself. and that's fair. but nothing in the show has tried to challenge that view or show us that while bucky might think it, it isn't true.
so there is a very subtle narrative that is subverting bucky's position as a victim first and foremost. and I truly don't believe it to be intentional, but I think it is there as a consequence of having handled these delicate themes in a way that isn't entirely appropriate.
and while I love to see bucky's emotional depth as a character being explored in a way that is truthful to his mental state (and thank you, sebastian, for that), I would like to see the narrative structure around him sustain it positively, and not in such a careless way.
I loved seeing bucky reclaiming himself and his own mind, but when it's not supported by a show that functions around it in a way that is narratively strong, that's all that scene is: a wonderful moment, whose meaning and significance is then overlooked by the narrative.
