hbenthow #dunning-kruger #racist scifiwright.com

"Thor: Ragnarok" is chock-full of anti-Western subversive messaging. Its main message is that Western civilization needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt from scratch.

After Odin dies and Hela takes over Asgard, Hela brings up Odin's history of conquering other worlds, and paints him as someone who obtained the riches of Asgard unjustly, then tried to cover it up and hide from his past (she breaks down artwork portraying Odin in a positive, peaceful light to show plastered-over artwork of him in his conqueror days). She describes Odin's viewpoint of Asgard's riches and status by saying that he was "proud to have it, ashamed of how he got it." While she is a villainess (who approves of Odin's old conqueror ways, disapproves of his later change of heart, and attempts to bring back Asgard's glory days of imperial power in order to "make Asgard great again", so to speak) it's obvious that the filmmakers agree with her viewpoint that Odin is a hypocrite for choosing to remain proud of his kingdom's status, rather than making amends by giving all of Asgard's riches and power back to the cultures he took them from and impoverishing Asgard in the process.

This is all a thinly-veiled allegory for the notion of Western countries only being as rich and powerful as they are due to having stolen from and enslaved other peoples, and their later abandonment of colonialism and slavery as being a half-measure that doesn't make up for the damage and only brings about unearned self-satisfaction. Odin is representative of modern-day patriotic Americans, Brits, etc, who no longer perpetuate slavery or colonialism, but are still proud and protective over the status of their countries rather than being so ashamed of their countries' pasts as to want to bankrupt them to make amends.

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