The Theme of Heroism
Hi, folks!
Illwynd and Incredifishface here, and today we’re digging into an aspect of Thor: Ragnarok that we think has gone unacknowledged. This meta is going to be critical of the movie, in both senses: it’s not all hearts and flowers, heck no, and we’re also attempting to actually investigate the narrative and how it functions in a couple of respects. If that isn’t your cup of tea, we completely respect that and expect that you’re backbuttoning or scrolling onward now. Go in peace. The rest of you, we’re glad to have you!
So what’s the topic? What are we going on about? Slut-shaming, and more generally the sexual politics of Thor: Ragnarok and how it is not at all as progressive as it has been claimed to be.
There's no question that critical and fandom reception of Thor: Ragnarok has been overwhelmingly positive. Casual audiences loved it for its humor, reviewers hailed it as a refreshing take on the Thor franchise, and fandom has rejoiced in the new material. As one point of particular interest for fandom, as long as we’ve been waiting for actual queer representation in the MCU, fandom was understandably eager for even the vaguest subtext in that direction—Tessa Thompson’s headcanon and a scene left on the cutting room floor that would have indicated Valkyrie may be bisexual, or Jeff Goldblum’s capricious, colorful Grandmaster having fun with tentacles or winking and making eyes at a leather-clad Loki. In fandom circles, many have also happily embraced how Loki is presented as a “space floozy” who is willing to use that implied sexuality to gain status and perks in his unexpected new home on the trash planet Sakaar.
A small minority of fans reacted to that last bit with discomfort or even outrage, saying that Loki would never do such a thing, that he would not degrade himself by using his sexuality for gain, and many people—quite rightly!—pointed out that those statements are pretty damn sex-negative and slut-shaming.
Both sides of this argument, however, are missing something big here, something that makes a huge difference in the meaning of all of this and how it can be reasonably understood: the way the narrative as a whole functions depends upon audiences interpreting Loki’s cooperation with the Grandmaster as demeaning, at the same time as it applies well-worn old tropes of queer-coded villainous sexuality to those interactions, making the two aspects inseparable. In short, the narrative slut-shames Loki for his interactions with the Grandmaster, and it relies upon the audience’s agreement with that conclusion.
Part 1: The Theme of Heroism
The narrative backbone of Ragnarok is the theme of heroism. This film attempts to explicitly deal with issues of what a hero is and what they do. Whether it does so well or makes an absolute mess of it—whether the heroism the film posits is admirable in any way—is an issue for other posts. But just taking it on its own terms, the film gives us a classic scenario and distributes the characters in a classical manner, and gives them classical roles: it gives us heroes (Thor, Banner/Hulk), villains/antagonists (Hela, Grandmaster, Topaz), and an assortment of morally grey characters in between, foils who we might call anti-heroes (Valkyrie, Loki), whose alliances may shift for self-serving purposes, survival, opportunity, whatever.
With this cast of characters and with the emphasis and repetition (in the dialogue itself and in the narrative) of the idea of heroism, the purpose of the heroes (aside from to win the day and defeat the villain) is to demonstrate heroic values, and the villains are there to stand in direct opposition to the hero’s aims and goals. Villains (well-rounded ones, at least) may have values that on some level run parallel to the hero’s, but their goals put them in conflict. But the anti-heroes… it’s a little more complicated. The anti-hero may in fact have the same goals as the hero, but they will have personal values that do not live up to the heroic ideal presented by the narrative, and as they move through the story they either move toward the good or fall further away from it with their failures. Thus they will serve as a foil to the hero, providing a contrast and illuminating his heroic traits more clearly.
So how does this work in the narrative of Thor: Ragnarok?
The Hero
Heroic narratives are shaped by the narrative foils that a hero confronts. We are thus mainly concerned with the events on Sakaar, as it is the point in the story where Thor’s heroic narrative is defined and his nature is revealed before it can be put to a final test against the big bad. And during this part of the story, our main hero, Thor, is in a position in which his freedom of movement and choice have been taken by the Grandmaster. He is captured, caged, controlled. He’s in a right pickle, and the way we know we’re dealing with a hero is that he will bleed and risk his life and oppose his slaver with everything he’s got, and he will try to escape at every chance.
Always remember we are dealing with fiction, with its own internal rules and long, long history, and its archetypes and tropes. In modern western culture, heroes are a certain type of men; heroes preserve their morals, their mind, their independence, if it costs them their lives. They stand for what’s right, they sacrifice for the common good, they have their pride and their honor, and they don’t budge, if it kills them. And the ultimate measure of the classic hero is how willing he is to die or suffer for his cause, isn’t it?
And Ragnarok went and picked an old, well-loved trope to demonstrate these qualities in Thor: gladiators.
Gladiators are interesting in film because they are used to illustrate a situation in which the hero is disempowered, forced to break some of his self- and social-imposed rules of what it means to be a man and a hero. But it causes him huge pain and humiliation, and we know that there will be hell to pay at the end of the story, when the hero recovers his freedom of movement and can take revenge on whoever or whatever forced him to renounce some of those values.
When a good, decent man is forced to violence and murder for other people’s entertainment, and he has to do it, or he will be killed, or his family will be killed, and he wants to live another day and have his vengeance, he does it, but oh, how dirty, how debasing, how humiliating, for him, putting for once the preservation of his life first and his principles second. Killing because war or ideals or whatever is one thing, but killing for pleasure? For other people’s pleasure?? That’s the WORST.
And why is it so terribly horrible and shameful? Well, essentially, the hero’s body is being used for other people’s pleasure, against his will. There is an inherent physicality to it, such that even when the hero is the one causing harm, he is being violated by his slaver. His slaver is enjoying this; he isn’t. (That power relationship wasn’t missed on the Romans 2000 years ago by the way, and being a gladiator put you indeed in the same social category as prostitutes AND ACTORS, which is to say, the lowest of the low—yes, you could be very famous and admired and praised and celebrated and certainly lusted after, but from a social standpoint, you were right down at the bottom.)
But at least in fiction, in the movies mainly, the hero is still risking his neck out there in the arena, he is putting his life in extreme danger, and using violence violence violence to survive, so yes, it is terrible, but when all is said and done, he will be able to redeem himself. Because at least he suffered a lot, he made others suffer a lot too, and he did not enjoy this. It was humiliating, it was a loss of control. He did not consent to it.
Something a hero does not do, will NEVER do? Play nice with his master, flirt and bat his eyelashes, and he will definitely, definitely not get into bed with them, ever: not to save his life, or his family’s lives, not for anything. If you’re the hero, and you’re a prisoner and screwed, you talk rudely to the master, you keep your head high, you make it clear how unhappy you are, you spit in their faces, and if they taze you for that, well, that’s better than anyone getting the impression you are going soft on them.
That’s Thor in this film. That’s the Classic Hero. He’d rather die, nay, he’d rather KILL, rather than… well, rather than get into bed with them. That is something only those without physical power and without courage (equals morals and ethics) will do. Like women. Like space floozies.
The Anti-Hero
Which brings us to the anti-hero, and in Ragnarok this goes in two different directions, to very different effects. Two different characters who have “gotten into bed” with the villain who runs this trash planet of prisoners with jobs, but they have done so in very different ways.
We have Valkyrie, who is not (at the start) presented as a hero, because she fails to embody heroic ideals—when she wound up on Sakaar, she became a successful slaver. She became part of this immoral system, even if she does not believe in it or agree with it. Made cynical and self-serving by pain and disillusionment, she chose to make a place for herself there by being violent and badass enough that no one can touch her. She doesn’t sell herself, but sells her labor and expertise as she delivers fighters (and god knows what else) to the Grandmaster. Valky is a fucking slaver. She is depicted as an independent, an entrepreneur in this scenario; she may be stuck there, but she is in charge of her own destiny and is not complying with others’ wishes except when she chooses to do so. She doesn’t sell out, she doesn’t kowtow, she retains her dignity even when she is falling over drunk. And because of all of this, she is in the position to help Thor and thus to realign herself with heroic values; she takes a stand against the evil system she had collaborated with and profited from, and returns to the righteous fight she had long ago abandoned. In this way, in the end, without ever being asked to pay a price or acknowledge her past transgressions in any way, she is utterly redeemed.
OK, so now how about that other anti-hero?
In the other case, we have Loki, who also cooperated with the Grandmaster. However, Loki is not shown slumming and drinking in dodgy places, being tough and badass like Valky. He is not shown in a cell waiting to go out into the arena. He is shown laughing and drinking at a party, and then we see him singled out from the rest of the court, sitting in the royal booth at the games in the couch. And yet, he is not in a position of power. He is meek, doesn’t talk back, doesn’t protest, doesn’t confront the Grandmaster at any point. He is shown instead trying to appease him and ingratiate himself with him.
What the audience must derive from this is that evidently Loki lacks the physical strength or perhaps the courage to defeat his opponents, and so he must resort to tricks, to conniving and deception. Like women whispering in the mighty ruler’s ear, using their charm to get their way, thrive, or just survive, because they have no other weapon they can call on, so does this type of anti-hero.
Loki managed to climb right to the top in this planet’s hierarchy in a couple of weeks. He is extremely good at being a space floozy. But that’s nothing to celebrate or applaud him for. The better he does it, the more successful he is at it, the higher he gets in the slaver’s organization, the more disgusting he becomes to us, because the tools and schemes he’s had to resort to for this success place him further and further away from what makes heroes what they are.
And let’s be clear. We the audience aren’t disgusted because there is anything inherently shameful about using this sort of tactic to survive; in a different story, framed differently, we would probably perceive it very differently. We are disgusted because the narrative presents it as unheroic. As shameful. As running counter to the principles and values that are being used to define a hero. Loki in this case is the lesson that handily illustrates the anti-qualities the hero must avoid: he collaborates with his captor, gets cozy with him (and would surely sacrifice principles and morals, if he had any), not just to thrive, but to avoid gettinghurt.
The Hulk has thrived on this planet (the Hulk—the Grandmaster’s prized Champion—has climbed high and enjoys about as much privilege as anyone on Sakaar, but because his participation is purely violent, in the arena, he avoids any tinge of shame; rather, he is for the most part glorified in the narrative). Thor thrives as well in his brief time there. Loki, though? Loki has got as far up as he can go, but the way he accomplished this is shameful and undignified and the other characters (and the narrative) tell us we should be disgusted. Because where the hero is courageous and self-sacrificing, this sort of anti-hero is a coward, unmanly, afraid of physical pain and death, willing to bend over to avoid them rather than confront them. Where the hero is forced into whatever degradations the villain visits upon him, the anti-hero cooperates and consents, for the sake of sparing himself such pain or discomfort.
So when we find Loki on Sakaar, he is indeed comfy and safe and away from the bloodshed, looking healthy and well, having fun at court, sitting next to the Grandmaster in the royal booth (only 6 meters apart because no homo???), wearing his colors. What does this tell us? Well, clearly, he has sold out. They didn’t strip his freedom away from him with physical violence. He is thriving in his slavery because he has renounced his prideand dignity in exchange for favor from the one who holds his leash.
That was the easy, painless option, here for everyone to see. This is the alternative Thor could have taken but didn’t. Because that’s what heroes do.
But what does this have to do with sex? Ah, well.