https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=rArLPP4rsi4
One of the most used tropes in popular American movies is what we could call the worship of the individual. Time and time again movies will present a central character finding themselves in a crowd or a group of people and being applauded. Sometimes the situation appears completely artificial to the story, but nonetheless plays out this pattern of worship. It is celebrity culture, random viral videos, reality television or American Idol. All these a series of manifestations which reveal our cultural ideal that the collective must bow down and recognize the individual’s aspirations. One of the most famous versions of this strange pattern is in the movie Private Ryan where a group of soldiers are willing to fight and die not to save their loved ones, not to save the king or to save a city, but rather to save a random private that they don’t even know. Of course in its extreme we are faced with what we call snowflake culture. With all the outright outrage at any offense, at any threat to the deep knowledge that I am special, that I can be anything I decide to be, that I am or at least should be a star. In the movie Avengers Infinity War, through the idiosyncrasies of the superhero story we find this pattern pulled and stretched to the point of collapse. This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. In Avengers we are faced with two clear sides. Thanos who’s looking to randomly kill half of the universe in order to save it and to avoid the ecological disaster and on the other side we have the Avengers who rebel against their own authorities for whom all lives are sacred and who are willing to go to the utmost extremes to defend a single person. Even to the price of half the universe. Thanos understands the worldview of the Avengers and the other protagonists in the movie. He knows there is a glitch in the structure of their program. So what he does is he plays their own system against itself. He knows that it is the fact that people are unwilling to sacrifice what they love for the greater good which causes the problem of a lack of resources and the ecological disaster. And it is also what prevents them from stopping Thanos. The first fascinating situation is that Thanos is completely rational. He exemplifies the very story in which we are drowning at the moment. This global warming ecology apocalypse over population. This whole narrative in which the media and the schools drench us and drench especially our children. Thanos gives examples his own world where failure to reduce the population has led to collapse and then Gamora’s home where by killing half the population a dying world has become a paradise of sorts. We need to understand that although Thanos is the bad guy in this movie his narrative is nonetheless consistent with the pervading social narrative that we have at the moment. Thanos believes that we must call the population and that we must be willing to sacrifice our own for this lofty goal. In confronting his ideological enemies Thanos is constantly placing the characters the other characters in the movies in a situation to force them to make a choice. A choice between watching someone they love die or else stopping him from destroying half the universe. He does it over and over with Loki and Thor with Gamora and her sister with Quill and Gamora even Gamora and himself and then finally we see it with Scarlet Witch and Vision. You see Thanos is in a win-win situation because he wants the other characters to be willing to sacrifice someone they love even if it is to stop him it doesn’t matter. He rejoices to see people sacrifice that which they love because that is in fact what he is willing and planning and dedicated to do. What did it cost? Everything. This is why he delights why he waits why he watches in order to see others act in that manner. I like you. By doing so the other characters have already accepted his basic premise which is that we must sacrifice those we love for the greater good. Thanos will win no matter what they choose. He knows that it is their incapacity to do that. It is their worship of the individual which is causing the cosmological the metaphysical problem that they’re in in the first place. If you want to see it the ultimate example where they show the absurdity of the human position of the heroes of the movie in this worship of the individual can be found in the story of Vision. Vision is an artificial intelligence and the Avengers they realize that if they destroy the Infinity Stone which Vision has in his forehead they will stop Thanos and save half the universe. But then the Avengers decide that they will try to remove the stone and save Vision if they can. You know fair enough that’s fine. But then what happens is we are led into a situation where hundreds of people are sacrificing their lives willing to all be mauled by this demonic army which comes from Thanos. The very city of Wakanda is going to be consumed by the evil of the evil. Is going to be consumed. We can imagine by watching the movie that the Wakandians are dying all around and they’re putting their own families their own children at risk and all of this to save one person. This robot that they barely know. Here we are willing to sacrifice the many for the one. It is the ultimate example of this worship of the individual. Although this is the supreme example each stone is given to Thanos in a manner which is to save a single individual. When Loki gives Thanos the stone to save Thor. Gamora she gives Thanos the location of the next stone to save her sister. And then Doctor Strange gives up the stone to save Tony Stark. Yet in those moments when the characters finally give in and take their responsibility to kill what they care about. In the case of Quill and Gamora for example or of Scarlet Witch and Vision. When they destroy their loved ones for the greater good it turns against them. Because by doing so they are unwittingly making Thanos right in his assumptions about how the universe works. Now what we are seeing here is the return of human sacrifice. Nothing less. The return of human sacrifice on our cultural horizon. In the movie all of the softer forms of human sacrifice and all these refusals to kill their loved ones lead finally to an actual ritual human sacrifice which is accomplished by Thanos. Where he kills his own adoptive daughter in order to receive the power he needs to save life from its own excess as he perceives it. But today we have to see those patterns playing out as well. This return of human sacrifice is playing itself out as well. In the notion that to have children is to harm the world. We see it in the return of an idea like antinatalism. This notion that aborting children has become a good in society. A pattern which will ultimately lead and is already leading to the growth of euthanasia. And the desire to call human existence in one way or the other. The story is already there around us. In the ecological narrative in general. But by showing us Thanos as an evil monster who inspires pathos nonetheless. And by showing us the constant weakness of the heroes in being willing to trade half the universe for the ones they care about. Such stories you could say secretly sow the seeds of a world view which is taking form around us. The stakes of this movie have been played out before in other movies. For example in the high profile horror movie The Cabin in the Woods starring Thor’s hero Chris Hemsworth and written and directed by the ex Avengers director Josh Whedon. We see a similar pattern. There are a group of young teenagers that fall into the clutches of a secret organization which engages in a recurring human sacrifice which is offered to stop the world from being destroyed by these monsters of the deep. And in this movie Cabin in the Woods the final choice of the sacrifice comes to this cliche self-indulgent character. This pot smoking guy who ultimately refuses to go through with the sacrifice. Maybe that’s the way it should be. If you gotta kill all my friends to survive. Maybe it’s time for a change. And therefore dooming the entire world to total destruction. And we should not be surprised to see this trope appear. Even if at first it is in fact the heroes who refuse to sacrifice someone. The stories nonetheless reach us at the very deep places in our psyche where we, like I said, nonetheless come to see that this is how the world works. Even if we resist it. This is how the world works nonetheless. Human sacrifice is an inevitable trope in the human psyche. And Christianity had taken on that trope through the image of the ultimate and final sacrifice of the God man. Which led to the notion that we must self-sacrifice. That we must come to put to death our own selves and our own passions. Our own egotistical desires. But in the modern worship of the individual we have seen the total inversion. The total parody of the Christian story. And the sacrifices of the others to preserve our uniqueness and our desires. But as that modern individualism falls apart and is falling apart through its own incoherence. We will be forced to bear the return of human sacrifice in its other forms. This has already started in modern history in events like the Holocaust and the dropping of atomic bombs on the civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whether it is the push towards massive quantities of abortion. Whether it’s biological weapons, sterilization or any other attempt to cull the human population of the future. We see this narrative of human sacrifice appear stronger and stronger. And we see it in the collapse of the ascetic and the self-denying narrative of our Christian past. And so we need to pay attention as we see this arise on our horizon. Not to see it as one or the other. As either the worship of the individual or this worship of the collective. But hopefully be able to retain as much as we can this notion of self-denial, of self-sacrifice. Which is bound in the sacrifice of the God-man. So I hope you enjoyed this video and this interpretation of Avengers Infinity War. I thought it would be an interesting thing to do as we are on the verge of the next movie coming out. And I have quite a few things coming very soon. In May I will be in Seattle as some of you know. I will be giving a conference there. I will put the link in the description. I will also be in Louisiana in May and be giving some talk there as well. So two opportunities if you want to come out and meet me. I would love to meet the people who watch my videos. This is very anonymous online with all these avatars and YouTube comments. And so I really appreciate shaking your hand and getting to meet you in person. So I hope you can come to some of those events. I also have my carving workshops in June. And so all those links will be put in the description and I will see you soon.