No surprise: conservatives are embracing media villains like Tony Soprano & Judge Dredd. “One’s model for justice should not be a fascist invented in part to illustrate the distinction between elite impunity and the brutality that ordinary people face.”
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As someone who was reading Judge Dredd in 2000AD in the 80s, seeing this level of analysis of the comic strip in the freaking Atlantic is a whiplash and no mistake.
Of course, as a 13 year old I thought Dredd was cool and didn't pick up on the blatant "he's a fascist, dummy" messaging, which isn't necessarily a failure because when I did figure it out it was a much more powerful realisation. So I guess this is another data point for Musk et al never making it past that mindset.
He really did flatline at 13 years old. A very stunted human being who should not have this kind of power.
Also as a 2000AD reader since the 1980s, I'm sure Dredd would find Gaetz's corruption and flouting of laws utterly reprehensible. There is a moral strictness in Dredd that is simple and not venal. He has put his life at risk countless times to save a citizen, then turn around and lock them up in the cubes for years for a minor infraction. And Dredd's adherence to The Law as a fixed totem has softened as he has slowly aged, such as allowing the mutants of the Cursed Earth to become cits in Megacity One. He still sure does shoot a lot of people though.
The series Dreadnoughts explores the descent from a near-future into the fascist state that Dredd patrols as a street judge.
Matt, have you seen Tom Ewing's insanely thorough exegesis of 2000AD, one year at a time? He did 1977 earlier this year - this is the post on the first year of Dredd.
https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2024/09/all-crimes-are-paid-judge-dredd
Oh my that looks good. Bookmarked, thanks!
No surprise at all. The level to which entertainment is an outsized and unchecked influence on real actual people's lives is a real problem.
See also: people who don't get that Fight Club was a satire, and that The Wolf of Wall Street was a villain.
It can work the other way too. I always thought Mad Men was a damning indictment of the evils of the advertising industry and how it birthed to the worst excesses neoliberal consumerism, but it turned out Matthew Weiner just thought it was all really cool. (I'm paraphrasing horribly, but Don is the baddy, right?)
I was a college freshman in 1996 and all the film nerds in my dorm thought the guys in "Swingers" were sooooo cool. Years later, the realization: Ohhh, they're all a bunch of dipshits.
There's been a running thread of 'your fave is problematic' that Fiq Da Signifire(sic) has been doing with his YouTube content, most spectacularly recently being this video.
Also never pass up an out-of-date-before-the-paint-dries reference from earlier today, milkshake luigi
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