Latest and All Critic Collection: Marvel's "WandaVision" Critic
This article is an introduction to Marvel's "Vision".
I have seen a very simple and crude way of distinguishing literary and artistic works. If there are obvious good and bad people in this work, that is, dualism, it is a popular work; if not, it is a serious work.
In the works of comics for a long time, most of the story routines are always two opposites. The screenwriter will create a hero who is lovable and a villain for the heroes to show their talents. In many cases, the two complement each other, such as Batman and The Joker.
Comics have always been regarded as simple and popular reading, and Tom King's "Vision" definitely opened up the boundaries of the possibilities of comics.
Tom King is a former CIA agent, the author of the comic "Vision" serialized from 2015 to 2016, and is now a writer for DC Comics.
The Vision is a complete tragedy, but there is no direct villain in the story.
Here's a spoiler for the comic:
Synopsis for "Vision"
At the beginning of the comic's story, Vision has divorced Wanda (Wanda's loss of a son caused the M-Day event), and he used the brain waves given by Wanda to create a wife for himself, Virginia ; and then created a pair of twins, Vivian and Wayne, with their shared brain waves, and formed their own synthetic family based on this vision.
One day, when Vision was not at home, the Scythe Death came to attack and injured his daughter Vivian. His wife Virginia fought back but killed the Scythe Death and buried it at home. This scene happened to be the parents of the children's classmates. filmed.
Afraid of causing more trouble, the wife didn't tell Vision that she accidentally killed the Scythe Reaper, and the next thing was like a snowball uncontrollable.
The daughter was hospitalized, the son was suspended from school, the child's classmate was shot and killed, and the Vision family was suspected. Wife commits all crimes to protect Vision and commits suicide.
The other side of superheroes
The tragedy of this story is shocking because it happens to an Avenger who has saved the world 37 times, yet is unable to protect his family.
This is a story of reviewing superheroes. It no longer focuses on heroes going on the field to kill the enemy, but working on the identity of "superheroes".
Even if you are a superhero with the ability to destroy the world, you still have to clock in at work, you have to earn money to support your family, and when you come down from the battlefield, you still face the oil, salt, sauce and vinegar in your family.
There is a scene in the comics where Vision is fighting an enemy when his wife calls to remind him of trivial matters at home.
The job of a superhero is not only to be a 996 worker, but also to be on call.
At that time, Fulian no longer paid wages, and the Vision family now lives entirely on their savings. When Vision went to provide strategic advice to the president, he was still considering whether to euphemistically propose to include himself in the establishment, so that he could get paid.
The superhero's wife, who also has superpowers, is stuck at home as a housewife.
And the family of superheroes has become the object of curiosity to the neighbors around them. Their every move is photographed by mobile phones and posted on the Internet (inexplicably thinking of the coat brother who became popular from the Spring Festival Gala), it is this that their privacy will be Being leaked, the enemy family came to hunt him down.
The Vision's story isn't about how the Superheroes save the world, but how their lives fit into the worlds he has saved and is saving.
The border between machine and man
The inevitability of the tragedy of "Vision" is that he is not recognized as a real person in the eyes of the world.
The struggle between the world and the mutants in Marvel Comics originated from the racial conflict in reality. No matter how discriminated against mutants, they are still regarded as a member of human beings, while Vision has always been treated as a machine.
Even if he has the same human form, intelligence, emotions, and became a superhero and joined the Avengers, when people see him with a pink metal body, they will still call him a robot, but Vision has always insisted on seeing himself as a composite people.
After Vision's son Wayne died, Vision's daughter Vivian began to pray that there really was a God in the world, and secondly that they also had a soul, so that God could appease Wayne's dead soul.
Robots, synthetic humans, and artificial humans don't have souls, so do humans really have them?
If so, how can this be proved? And what is soul?
Is it love, faith, or thinking?
The Vision Family has it all.
If not, how do you differentiate between humans and such (and highly AI) machines as Vision?
The author is trying to explore the boundary between machine and human, and is actually exploring the definition of human.
What is a human being? In the end how can be defined as a complete person.
Maybe the answer is the most obvious one, that is, if you look like a person in the eyes of the public, then you are a person.
Vision's younger brother is a synthetic human like Vision, but he has always been accepted by human society because he has the same skin appearance as a human (the inside is still metal).
This goes back to the original intention of the screenwriter to create mutants, which is about the meaning of skin color. People always distinguish between enemy and foe by the obvious physical characteristics of appearance.
People will always be more accustomed and comfortable with the same "matching" and rules as themselves, such as being close to their own countrymen and their own race.
It's like when you go abroad, you first make friends with your fellow countrymen; even though you may get along with the locals and become good friends, it's your fellow countrymen who make you feel safe and at ease at first (in most cases, you are not. It is not).
Uncanny Valley Theory
If the illusion is replaced by other superheroes, the meaning may only stay at the level of the superheroes' private life and self-struggle, and explore how to balance the boundaries between family and the world. The tragedy and shock of this story also will be weakened.
Because the neighbor's fear and distaste for Vision is not only a fear of his abilities, but also his robotic appearance.
The Uncanny Valley Theory is a hypothesis about how humans feel about robots and non-human objects, proposed by Japanese scholar Masahiro Mori in 1970.
Mori's hypothesis states:
Since robots are similar to humans in appearance and actions, humans will also have positive emotions towards robots; and when robots and humans are similar to a certain level, humans will suddenly react to them extremely negatively and negatively. aversion;
Even if there is only a little difference between the robot and the human being, it will be very conspicuous and dazzling, so the whole robot has a very stiff and terrifying feeling, like facing the walking dead;
When the similarity between robots and humans continues to rise, equivalent to the similarity between ordinary people, the human emotional response to them will return to the positive again, resulting in human-human empathy.
In layman's terms, when you face a machine that doesn't look like a human at all, as long as it looks cute, you will still have positive emotions about it. But when this machine is made to look like a human, but you can tell that it is not human, you will feel terrified.
For Vision, it may be more acceptable to assume that he keeps everything he has and is made into an R2D2 form, rather than showing a human-like appearance.
philosophical speculation
Tom King's work has won the Eisner Award, the highest award in the comics industry.
Its beauty lies not only in the exploration of superheroes facing the family and the world, as well as the exploration of the boundary between man and machine, but also the speculative meaning displayed in the dialogue.
1.
When the Vision family just moved to a new town, a couple came to visit.
After they left, Vision said:
It is more appropriate to say "very good" because the irony of "very good" gives the word meaning;
And "kindness" is not ironic, so "seemingly kind" actually implies unkindness and even cruelty;
The insistence on "truth without meaning" is a central goal of human nature.
Virginia: They insist that humanity is meaningless, but you insist that we aim for that.
Vision: I didn't insist, I just suggested. Pursuing a given set of goals by logical means is the insight of a tyrant. Pursuing an unattainable goal in an unreasonable way is the way of freedom, and this is my vision for the future.
Vision, Master of True Speculation.
2.
Virginia asks Vision to repeat what he said, Vision says you can't replay it, is there something wrong with your hard drive?
Vision, a real straight man of steel.
3.
Vision's children play baseball.
Vivian: Fairness is nothing more than a simple balance calculated by numbers, the lowest public; while superiority is a complex set of agreements established on universal standards, the highest justice, the understanding of superiority And acceptance brings us closer to our humanity.
Wayne: Trust is the ability to choose to believe without any evidence. It is the embodiment of belief, the highest level of cognition. The understanding and acceptance of belief brings us closer and closer to human nature.
4.
The caricature's reference to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, in which the world's ill will toward the Jews justifies the neighbor's hostility to the Vision family.
"Did the Jews have no eyes?
Don't the Jews have no senses, no senses, no emotions, no flesh?
He does not eat the same food, the same weapon can hurt him, the same medicine can heal him;
Winter will be equally cold and summer will be equally hot, like a Christian?
If you stab us with your sword, won't we bleed too?
If you tickled us, wouldn't we laugh too?
If you murder us with poison, won't we also die?
So if you bullied us, wouldn't we take revenge?
If we are like you anywhere else, we are also like each other in this. "
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