https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=pLV9Xn-B09Q

One of the important aspects of interpreting symbolism in culture is the capacity to discern patterns not only within stories but also across them. The capacity to notice these patterns will help us see when certain directions, certain deep movements and changes are taking form in culture. It will give us the capacity to, let’s say, read the signs of the times. Sometimes an understanding of symbolism can be used for purposes of propaganda and to push certain social agendas. This trope is the replacing of the masculine hero by a feminine one. We see this pattern not only in the fact of certain replacements, but it often appears as a pattern within the stories themselves. So it’s not just that there are more lead feminine characters in stories, which could have been an opportunity for good storytelling, but it is the very act of supplanting and replacing which is often shown as a story trope. And this trope becomes boldly apparent, especially when we see this pattern appear across several movies. The pattern can take a variety of forms. It can appear as a strange play on the masculine virtue of wanting to save others. Though now the male character sacrifices himself in order to make way for a feminine character which replaces him. We see this, for example, in the movie Logan. Wolverine sacrifices himself to make way for his female clone. There is also Kay in Blade Runner 2049 giving up his place as the son to make room for the daughter. But there are many other such scenes in several movies. Sometimes the masculine character will be humiliated and made to look useless. But there are several occasions where the masculine character will willingly get out of the way to make place for a feminine replacement. In the final scene of the movie Mad Max Fury Road, after tossing the dead body of the tyrannical father, Max presents the female lead to the people who clamor for her. And Max then gets off this escalating elevator in order to let all the feminine characters ascend to replace the toppled authority. In these movements one sees the raw power play that is happening in the cultural narrative. It is not about parity, about equality and all those virtues. Rather, the current social move appears as revolutionary. It is about inverting the traditional hierarchy, putting it upside down. At first glance there are those who might cheer to see such a replacement. It is about time that women make room for themselves. But things are not always what they seem. By simply filling masculine social tropes with female characters who embody those very tropes, it might not so much be an elevation of the feminine that we are seeing, but rather a blind attachment to masculine qualities as the ones that truly matter. As if being on top, as if being physically strong, a warrior and a leader, is somehow more virtuous than beauty, than the caring and intimate connections of our private realm. There have been very powerful female characters who embody the feminine in profound ways. For example, Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings has been a perfect type. She disarms men by her depth of vision, by her insight, by her beauty, her grace. And even in her terrible moment she shows us the terror of the feminine. Such a character is far more engaging and encompassing than simply making the female character a feisty badass who, it turns out, is a better fighter than all her male counterparts. Characters like Galadriel, but also the wonderful and rich female heroines we find in Miyazaki films, taken to account by the female characters, are the most powerful and powerful of all. Once we see the pattern of replacement, we can then begin to understand the storytelling choices made in recent movies as soaking in an ideological zeitgeist we could say. So for example, it would not be a good idea to have a female character as a replacement. But having him appear only as a mirage cut that hope short and crystallized the ascension of Rey, who had already been shown to not need a man, to be a hero, to be a hero, to be a hero, to be a hero, to be a hero, to be a hero, to be a hero, to be a hero, to be a hero, to be a hero, to be a hero, to be a hero, and is constantly shown upstaging the already established masculine character. Now there are two things to understand. One is that we have to be careful, we have to be careful not to reduce our vision to polemics as many have done. We cannot reduce the movies to this trope. We must not be blinded by politics, we always need to be open to the world. We must not be blinded by politics, we always need to be open to the world. But the other thing is that we must not be blinded by politics. We must not be blinded by politics, we always need to stay clear-headed enough to see the symbolic patterns appear, where they appear. That is why I only occasionally mention all of this when analyzing many of these movies before, such as Logan or Gravity. Having said that, the second thing to understand is that we also need to see the pattern. And I can surmise that many of you have watched my past movie interpretations without noticing how this pattern reappeared in many of the movies that I chose. You see, if such a scene as this one in Wonder Woman had appeared on its own, and as some freak event, it might have been exactly that. It might have been an exception. But the recurring pattern is not only significant, but it is often quite deliberate. And it is being cheered by certain factions of the political sphere. For example, in an article critiquing the latest Marvel Universe movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp, in which this very pattern of supplanting and replacing his playing itself out, for example, notice the composition of the posters, this journalist praises not only the fact of the strength and smarts of the leading female, which would be understandable and maybe even laudable, but she also rejoices in how the male character is shown as hapless, with his successes due only to accident. The author of the article complains that the MCU is not going far enough, but is moving in the right direction. And she looks forward to seeing how the MCU will deal with the introduction of Captain Marvel, who has already been a focal point of propaganda in recent Marvel comics. And so too, those of us who look for symbolic patterns, we should all pay attention as this trope, this sign of the times, shows every sign of being on an accelerating ascent. Thank you.