The Boys' jab at Avengers Endgame's fake feminism was intentional according to show boss Kripke
The season 2 of The Boys, an Amazon Prime Video super hit, had many politically fueled subplots but one that caught everyone’s attention was the not-so-subtle jab at Avenger’s Endgame.
Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen either of the movies/shows - you’ve been warned!
The drama that ensued has created the debate whether fake feminism is doing more harm than good or any good at all. For those unfamiliar - fake feminism is when a person/corporation/studio capitalizes on feminism purely for profit and doing so without gender equality, creating stereotypically cliched situations that are often offensive or sexist themselves.
The perfect example being the scene during the climatic battle in Avengers Endgame, where Captain Marvel joins the fight and all of a sudden is surrounded be her female superheroes and they have this massive moment posing for the camera in the middle of a battle. As many fans have pointed out, nobody thinks it’s strange that a fist fight super hero battle is suddenly divided by gender? Did none of the guy superheroes want to join in in this critical moment or did they all decide to let the women fight this one out by themselves? It just doesn’t make sense to have this seen in the middle of a battle when already, Captain Marvel, a female superhero, had already established herself as a badass and a serious powerful ally - not to mention all the other female superheroes in that scene were already well rounded characters - it was just a very obvious scene that the boys in marketing and management had pitched to the writers and directors to include to tick the box.
It just came off a little… off. And that is exactly how the producers of the The Boys felt. In an interview to The Hollywood Reporter, Kripke said: "… our executive producer, Rebecca Sonneshine, who came in after the weekend Endgame opened… was just furious. I saw it, too, and I was like, ‘That was the dumbest, most contrived—’ And she’s like, ‘Don’t get me started.’ She found it condescending and I agreed. So that just created for us a target, a satirical target. When there’s something really ridiculous in either superhero or celebrity or Hollywood culture, we’ll immediately go after it. It’s an easy shot.”
So, a now infamous, storyline was created in The Boys, where the out of touch marketing guys in Vought (a super hero corporation) makes a movie/tv show (within the show) with a very familiar scene where the female superheroes save the day and pose for the camera with the title “Girls Get It Done”. The female superheroes then go on to complain about how insensitive the scene was but this falls on the deaf ears of male execs and middle management.
Naturally, most became fans of The Boys because of their willingness to call out Hollywood hypocrisy so likening the evil Vought corporation to certain hollywood studios that have been outted for being sexist, covering up sexual assaults by their producers and not paying their female staff and stars anywhere near what their male colleagues make - well, it went down well with the fanbase.
So far, no one from Marvel have commented officially but naturally, there’s been some backlash from the Marvel fans. Some fans noting that the scene in Endgame, though clearly an over the top addition still doesn’t do any harm. Debatable of course, so I’ll leave it to you, how do you feel about it? Do you think fake feminism is fine as long as it re-balances the gender void and gender inequality or do you believe equality is not something people or corporations should be able to use to profit off of when they feel like it?
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