Recently in a Rolling Stone interview, The Boys creator and showrunner, Erick Kripke, confirmed that the Superman-esque villain Homelander is in fact a Trump analogue. From the piece …
“The more awful public figures act, the more fans they seem to be getting,” he explained. “That’s a phenomenon that we wanted to explore, that Homelander is realizing that he can actually show them who he really is and they’ll love him for it.”
I’m so confused that people are confused about this. These are probably the same people didn’t realize murdering gangster Tony Soprano was a bad guy. Some people can’t grasp the concept that the main character of a television show or film can actually also be the villain. Or maybe, they just do not get satire.
The Boys is satire. The satire here might be too broad for some, but it is rarely/never outright parody. If a light touch is what leads a generation of men to think Tyler Durden is a hero, then I’ll gladly accept an approach with heavier hands.
Let’s take a look at some satirical critiques a.k.a. Starship Troopers. Fight Club. The Punisher
Starship Troopers is pretty understandable; While it sought to satirize the tone of the original story, they toned down or completely glossed over so many of the political and social aspects of the story that in the end you’re mostly just left with a pretty generic Science Fiction story, making it pretty easy to miss the satire outside of the random little keyword ads (particularly if you’re not familiar with the original story.)
Fight Club is far too subjective of a film, people can easily read into what they wanna read from the movie and honestly it’s hard to say anyone is just straight up wrong (although not impossible). I mean “Interpretations of Fight Club” literally has its own Wikipedia page for hell’s sake.
I don’t think most people really miss the point of The Punisher exactly, since it’s never really been anything more than comic book anti-hero vigilante revenge porn. I mean, I guess the whole cop/Punisher fetish is missing it since like, they’re the exact people he exists in opposition to, but let’s be real they’re a minority.
The Boys on the other hand isn’t subtle, or subjective. It’s a sledgehammer that hits you over the head with its satire as often and as explicitly as possible and leaves no wiggle room for what the message they’re trying to make is. Missing the point of The Boys is like thinking Barney is a show about dinosaurs. No matter how obvious and clear a satire is there will always be people who take it at face value.
Since the Kripke reveal I’ve seen a number of people hating the show online because they hate superhero deconstruction. They love superheroes and superhero tropes, and they feel personally attacked by a work that says “Hey, maybe superheroes are kind of fascistic as a concept?” and maybe the issue is that for some people, being a rapist, murderer, psychopath, child killer, etc., with huge mental problems and gigantic insecurities with the power to be untouchable is exactly what makes him their hero. Because they’re aren’t “necessarily” dumb, they’re just monsters who fantasize about being him.