https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=hpNs2Y1FlA0
So a large part of the story arc of volume 2 of Guardians of the Galaxy is to show the pathologies of the center Let’s say the pathologies of identity Now we know that this is what the movie is about because it’s encapsulated in the catalyst of the story The catalyst of the story is that the Guardians are hired to protect the source of energy some batteries belonging to the sovereign race They protect them from an interdimensional monster a monster of chaos a dragon basically in terms of symbolism But when the Guardians encounter the Queen of this sovereign race something goes wrong The sovereign race is presented as this pure race there. They’re golden. They’re designed and so they’re they’re intentional and Intentionality is important in understanding the center But here this intentionality is is shown to us in the extreme so think Eugenics they’re presented as without air without accident and the Queen criticizes the origins of the Guardians speaks of Quinn’s unorthodox and unknown genealogy a Hybrid and so particular particularly reckless she said so notice the relationship between hybridity the unknown and chaos So rocket has himself stolen the batteries and mate and then he makes us understand That his theft is a kind of vengeance against the sovereign’s pretension and pride so the Queen fails to understand that It is precisely because This group of guardians are unorthodox and peripheral which makes them capable of defending the sovereign from that monster But it’s also what makes them capable of stealing the very thing that they were protecting So the question of identity becomes the central question of the movie from the beginning and it plays itself out as the story unfolds So one side of the pathology of the center could be called the feminine side Being unpolitically correct, but using traditional categories we could call it the passive side of Identity in which which is the desire to remain pure right to preserve absolute order Remain untouched in an almost hygienic manner one of the the the traditional images of this is of course the image of virginity So when the Queen is forced to go and of course the Queen is a virgin that’s made explicit in the in the story So when the Queen is forced to go to another planet we see her walking on a carpet unrolled before her as she Refuses to touch anything for You know and we can find this type of excess in our in our daily Relationships we have the the the trope that we find around us of the of the mother who’s a clean freak And and we can understand this excess in terms of hygiene Very well, we know that the excess of hygiene in the modern world the the excessive use of disinfectants for example seems to be the at least one of the causes of modern allergies and so excess of purity Actually causes in a reaction an excess of our defense system which reacts disproportionately to to to things that are actually not harmful or even beneficial which come from the outside And there’s a story in the Bible about this a story about the excess of purity Moses has married a foreign woman in fact She’s a Kushite woman who has been described in tradition as being Ethiopian woman, so she’s a woman with a dark complexion and Moses’s sister Miriam complains about this and Because of this criticism she’s punishment and and her punishment is is an appropriately It is a skin disease her skin becomes white as snow and So she is defiled by an excess of whiteness her excess of purity becomes a Punishment and she has to be kept out of the camp for seven days So the the other enemy the other important enemy in Guardians of the Galaxy is Ego Ego is in many ways the flip side of the pathology of the center the at the active or Masculine excess of the center and that can be described as the excess of imperialism So if the Supremes want to protect their energy They want to protect their lineage protect their identity at any cost from let’s say leaking out Ego which is of course a perfect name in what he represents in this movie Wants rather to spread his light throughout the entire galaxy so that the galaxy becomes himself He wants his identity to be all containing no difference at all This is of course the tower of babel motif He joins himself with all possible life forms not with the purpose of creating new things Because he kills the offsprings in which he does not see himself Right he will only tolerate that which is a manifestation of his own identity So he doesn’t understand what he doesn’t understand is that for that for there to be another version of him That is the very notion of other means that there must be difference and It is that basic blindness of pride Which makes it impossible for him to even conceive that quill would be attached to his humanity Would be attached to the manner in which he is different from his father and so ego could not foresee his own demise Now these two pathologies of the center are obviously in many ways opposites But in the end they’re just passive and active size of the same Pathology which can come from the excess of the center the excess of the right hand Let’s say the excess of order the excess of identity and both of these Tendencies and their excesses are totalitarian in the very explicit sense That is they want to believe that something can exist on its own can be completely self-sufficient Which is impossible of course except for the infinite or the divine itself Now The question is is there something? Anti-western is there something anti-order or is there some social justice propaganda in this movie? Maybe a little I I there there seem it seems to be let’s say strongly tilted to one side, but The chaos of the margin is also showed we see that in the mutiny of the ravagers against yondu That’s a good example of the chaos that happens in in the margin Also, we see it in the resentment and the bitterness of nebula who’s also a half biological half robot creature But it’s also lurking in the background of this movie Because we know especially if we’ve seen the first movie we know that behind all this lurking behind All of this story are the that is basically the head of the forces of chaos I would say which is Thanos which is which is a version of death And so despite the strong left-leaning tendency some balance is still fine in the overall story