Second Take: ‘The Winter Soldier’ tackles American democracy and security
In his column “Second Take,” Sebastian Strawser reviews films in hindsight for the lessons they can provide us today.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
This review contains spoilers.
Upon its release in 2014, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” was met with universal adoration. Fans and critics consistently applauded its action sequences, character development and political thriller style — even today it endures as a favorite Marvel film. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, the film stands tall as valuable commentary on exactly what American democracy and security mean in the mass surveillance era.
In “The Winter Soldier,” Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) becomes frustrated with the lies of S.H.I.E.L.D Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson). Rogers, whose World War II heroism was at the center of “Captain America: The First Avenger,” struggles to square his era’s clear lines of good and evil with modern society’s blurring of those lines. Learning that S.H.I.E.L.D has been taken over by Hydra, the technological arm of the Nazis he thought he helped to destroy, Rogers is forced to realize he will have to defy his nation in order to save its most cherished values.
After learning of Project Insight, a squadron of S.H.I.E.L.D helicarriers (aircraft carriers) that uses mass surveillance to gun down suspected threats, Rogers condemns it as “holding a gun to everyone on Earth and calling it protection,” describing how the initiative propagates fear and control rather than freedom. Unravelling an assassination attempt on Fury sends Rogers and Romanoff on a journey to expose Hydra and bring Insight down.
“The price of freedom is high,” Rogers tells S.H.I.E.L.D agents in a speech encouraging them to defy Hydra. “It always has been, and it’s a price I’m willing to pay. And if I’m the only one, then so be it. But I’m willing to bet I’m not.” Here, Rogers puts on a masterclass in how to turn democratic ideals into practice.
So much of my love for “The Winter Soldier” stems from its powerful critique of real-world context. Project Insight — which a Hydra agent says sweeps up “your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, emails, phone calls [and] your damn SAT scores” — mirrors the warrantless mass surveillance of US citizens exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Insight’s heavily armed helicarriers reflect the weaponry of the drone wars that, time and time again, have enabled the slaughter of innocents in the Middle East. The Russo brothers, having stressed the “political thematics” of their later Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) projects, speak truth to power in their Obama-era Marvel debut.
This is a fictional movie with real-world significance. “The Winter Soldier” stresses that our democratic freedoms aren’t guaranteed. Project Insight uses fear to justify putting security and control before all else. Today, we have a president who played into the nation’s fears of Muslims and immigrants by saying they celebrated the Sept. 11 attacks and ate pets in Ohio, respectively — laying the dehumanizing foundation for a Nazi-adjacent policy agenda. We also have Republican-controlled states banning transgender people’s healthcare to capitalize on fears of transgender people being child groomers.
With Project Insight being described as a “purification process” by one of its chief architects, the real-world parallels are clear. In the film, Insight holds guns to everyone to enforce its security regime. In real life, President Trump and his party police and dehumanize every group that doesn’t fit their perfect “look” for the nation — at a campaign rally, the president once said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” In all of these instances, fear is the means by which those in power “purify” society of every group whose rights and existence they deem a threat.
Roger’s journey to bring Project Insight down is a lesson to us all: American democracy is an act of doing. There are those among us who seek to undo it and all it represents. “The Winter Soldier” reminds us that we can only maintain democracy by doing what is right — even when those in power are hellbent on forcing us to yield instead.
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