Dr. Strange and the Universe of Political Madness
Fair warning to our diligent comment moderator: film bros may overwhelm this rumination faster than a positive review of “The Last Jedi.”
Libertarians have a reputation for disputatiousness, but they pale in comparison to eremitic cinetellectuals. Have you ever admitted to a pimply cinéaste who has the screenplay for “Blue Velvet” memorized that you enjoy Marvel movies? The blowback is worse than dressing as Vernon Dursley during a Harry Potter cosplay — just snarling vituperation.
I’m constructing no mere cliché. The best cinema critics — that is, those who review films not for the sole purpose of ensuring they pass the Bechdel test or as stoolies for the Academy’s Aperture 2025 standards — dismiss Marvel movies as CGI-gorging capeshit.
But thanks to a childhood spent watching the Iron Man-Fantastic Four-Spider-Man-X-Men cartoon block Saturday mornings on my local Fox affiliate, and a steady comic-book diet kept for a song at my local flea market, I adore the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in all its flashy one-note, cameo-crutch storylines. So sue me, Scorsese!
[Hordes of neckbearded Quintin Tarantino stans descend on the comment section, calling me a dilettante twerp who should ditch Disney fluff-tainment for Zack Snyder’s darker, grittier “Man of Steel,” then depart before I make my political point.]
“Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,” the latest entry into the franchise, is, besides making superfans like me gush over nostalgia-stroking appearances (don’t click that link unless you want the spoiler of the summer!), eliciting some strong commentary.
The usual hatcheteers went to work, slashing the trans-universe romp. But some more broad-minded reviewers think they caught a hint at a larger social message embedded within Marvel’s umpteenth hero’s quest.
In between Benedict Cumberbatch’s exomatosis and Sam Raimi’s horror motifs was a lesson on moral relativism gone awry. “The movie may do temporary damage to your central nervous system, yet it’s not unenlightening,” writes Anthony Lane. Strange, in tangling with — spoiler alert! — goody-turned-baddy Wanda Maximoff, “clarifies the purpose of a multiverse.” What Lane means is that it gives the screenwriting team free rein to tickle fans’ fancy before — *Ahem.* S-word again! — bathetically killing off the Reality Avengers of Earth-838. The implication is pure Willie Wonka: anything and everything imaginable!
Kyle Smith of National Review exhumes the substratum commentary more: “‘Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness’ may turn out to be one of the defining movies of the Twenties.” High praise, that! Marvel produces the “Back to the Future” of the 2020s! Skateboarding teens will soon be humming Bach’s Toccata and Fugue instead of Huey Lewis’s “clear, crisp” baritone.
Except Smith comes not to praise, because he found the Lovecraftian VFX cornucopia “more numbing than stimulating.” What intrigues him is the premise of the Strange sequel: that a seemingly infinite number of alternative realities exist, which, if you’re lucky enough to be imbued with the powerset that produces a hyperloop between multifarious worlds, you can mosey into whatever conjuncture you like. “Time travels in divers paces with divers persons,” said Rosalind, but what she really meant was that it travels through just one superheroine, America Chavez, a sui-generis reality traverser who becomes Strange’s tutee.
Maximoff, who adopted the demoniac persona Scarlet Witch and has been leafing through the dark-magic manual Darkhold, wants to steal America’s powers so she can reunite with her twin boys — whom she conceived via lymphatic parturition in the miniseries “WandaVision” — in another universe. So starts the multiversal chase, with Maximoff burning down realities to reach America and her imagined homelife. (Someone way smarter than me can parse this premise for an American founding allegory — maybe Dr. Strange can “dreamwalk” Tocqueville’s corpse.)
In the reality-bending plot is where Smith detects the most salience with our modern political condition. Fashionable phrases like “my truth”, “alternative facts”, and even the use of “truth” without the definite article, have a kaleidoscopic tinge to them. The radical subjectivism dovetails nicely with Strange’s exploration of varying realities where fulfillment waits to be found. Smith describes the offer in Oprah-affirming fashion: “You get a universe! And you get a universe! And you get a universe!”
At first blush, Smith’s tying of lebenswelt-hopping to today’s flimsy notion of verisimilitude appears sound. Men pummeling (literally) women in all-female sports, stolen elections, ephebophilic cabal conspiracies, “fiery but mostly peaceful protests”, race being both essential and a “social construct” — all contain a measure of fantastical delusion. But Smith fumbles when suggesting your average QAnon acolyte is attempting to “slip away into an alternate universe.”
Calling leftists, and even swivel-eyed rightists, nihilists is a fun pastime thanks to John Goodman. But what Victor Davis Hanson calls “abortive woke nihilism” isn’t all that nihil, nor is it mere escapism. The militant left isn’t trying to leap through hammer-and-sickle-shaped gateways to new realities where the calculation problem doesn’t exist and your nether-parts are as interchangeable as JUUL pods. Rather, the wokeshivitiz want to reform this reality, this here and now, with evangelistic furor. Sure, they may be trying to square their unachievable desires with our stubborn reality. But the leftist activist complex isn’t seeking out new frontiers. They want to immanentize their commie eschaton in this world alone.
Anything else would be colonialism, which is a big progressive no-no.
Malcolm Kyeyune points out that while the religious right has always marched to its own revelatory orders, the left’s imperative is no different. “Both sides consider their cause not merely philosophically and ethically just, but also holy, on a very basic metaphysical level.” The old Kirkian wisdom that all political matters are spiritual in nature means our electoral wars are clashes over the good in society. But, Kyeyune writes, “no one in America thinks the other side believes in anything at all.” Hence the caricature of fragile leftists hiding on their Tumblr blog or wishcasting a non-refundable ticket to an all-taupe realm governed by Ibram Kendi.
Back to Strange: Maximoff spends the majority of the movie being witchy Emerson, declaring “No law can be sacred to me!” as she bends, twists, malforms, and ultimately corrupts various worlds to get what she wants. That’s not the left’s intention, despite its marble iconoclasm, despite the fired out police precincts, despite the menacing picketing outside lawmakers’ homes. Activism — real, tangible, feet-on-asphalt activism — isn’t escapism. The left agitates for a new sacredness, a new dispensation, to subsume what already exists.
Smith is right in observing that our partisan divide feels less like a civil squabble and more like the “crazed and hectic shattering of perceived truth into an infinite number of shards.” And while a national divorce, or even epistemological split, sounds like an agreeable solution to our stark polarization, it’s not a mainstream idea. Team red and team blue are still trying to plant their flag in the opposing territory. We fight over one Congress, one White House, one Supreme Court.
America’s last political commonality is a desire to conquer and control through the ballot box. That may seem overly combative and not conducive to domestic tranquility. But at least we’re vying over the same plane of existence.
For now, that is. Until Silicon Valley misanthropes crack the code to uploading consciousness into the Matri…sorry, Metaverse. Then maybe our liberal friends will opt for letting Supreme Leader ZuckerLord decide their feeding schedules. Or maybe they’ll catch Elon Musk’s first convoy to Mars.
Only then will we be in Dr. Strange’s reality-tearing infinitude. Vivre et laisser vivre at last! Maybe I can find a universe where everyone enjoys the MCU and none of its movies, from Ant-Man to Shang-Chi to Howard the Duck, ever receives less than a 100% Rotten Tomato score.
Or, better, one where putting your country first doesn’t immediately get you branded a racist, xenophobic hater. Oh, to dream new realities indeed!
