accountability
Apr. 23rd, 2017 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI was watching Agents of SHIELD season three last night and it got up to the episode where Bobbi and Hunter left
and it's supposed to be this big emotional moment
and
I just
How am I supposed to be sad that their actions had consequences at last?
I was just left shocked that they basically walked away from it.
I mean since SHIELD fell as an official organisation they've been just a bunch of private citizens illegally detaining other private citizens.
Getting a nod from the president in the recent eps just highlights they haven't had any such thing before.
This isn't the Flash with the pipeline prison, because this isn't one twenty something year old being led astray by an actual supervillain.
This is a whole well funded organisation with no legal standing and no oversight.
They went through the whole thing with Hydra and never once looked in the mirror to wonder if they'd learned evil from working for evil. And it has somehow never come up.
And it's worse because they're acting globally but only even vaguely concerned what the US President thinks.
So now there's political consequences? After seasons of deciding they're above all that somehow?
Not feeling bad about that.
And yes, this is exactly the superhero problem. A superhero is someone who decides only their own moral judgement is relevant to who to punch.
And yeah, this is exactly the CACW problem, who gets oversight and how.
But the answers in these stories keep on being undemocratic, and acting like there's no good precedent to work with, and it's just... creepy.
There has to be some middle ground of accountability. Same reasons we need courts as well as police, and police to wear their unique identifiers where we can see them. Stories that don't want to deal with that have ducked into might makes right territory.
And that's not where I want to be.
and it's supposed to be this big emotional moment
and
I just
How am I supposed to be sad that their actions had consequences at last?
I was just left shocked that they basically walked away from it.
I mean since SHIELD fell as an official organisation they've been just a bunch of private citizens illegally detaining other private citizens.
Getting a nod from the president in the recent eps just highlights they haven't had any such thing before.
This isn't the Flash with the pipeline prison, because this isn't one twenty something year old being led astray by an actual supervillain.
This is a whole well funded organisation with no legal standing and no oversight.
They went through the whole thing with Hydra and never once looked in the mirror to wonder if they'd learned evil from working for evil. And it has somehow never come up.
And it's worse because they're acting globally but only even vaguely concerned what the US President thinks.
So now there's political consequences? After seasons of deciding they're above all that somehow?
Not feeling bad about that.
And yes, this is exactly the superhero problem. A superhero is someone who decides only their own moral judgement is relevant to who to punch.
And yeah, this is exactly the CACW problem, who gets oversight and how.
But the answers in these stories keep on being undemocratic, and acting like there's no good precedent to work with, and it's just... creepy.
There has to be some middle ground of accountability. Same reasons we need courts as well as police, and police to wear their unique identifiers where we can see them. Stories that don't want to deal with that have ducked into might makes right territory.
And that's not where I want to be.