I’m not a die-hard Marvel fan but even I was excited to see James Gunn’s last step in an epic anthology — Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. I’m happy to say that all of the hype surrounding this movie is absolutely well-deserved and that anyone still holding out on the film should find a safe way to watch it as soon as possible. However, something hasn’t been sitting right with me since watching it, and upon hearing the words of disability rights advocate Imani Barbarin on TikTok, it finally hit home for me, “If it didn’t have the aesthetics of a Marvel film, most of you all would agree with the villain.”
Imani is no stranger to illuminating dark truths about the Marvel Cinematic Universe and she absolutely hit the nail on the head here. What supposedly makes the High Evolutionary such a horrific and terrible person is just how obsessed he is with eugenics, a set of disgusting and disproven racial theories embraced by Nazis during the Holocaust that most people would condemn. However, eugenicist ideas have strong roots in United States history that I as well as other marginalized people still have to deal with every day. As it stands, the majority of people I meet every day have more in common with the High Evolutionary than so-called heroes.
I am an immunocompromised person whom COVID-19 would almost surely kill if I managed to catch it. I still remember just how much it stung when soon-to-be former CDC director Rochelle Walensky said it was “really encouraging” that only people like me with preexisting conditions were dying of this illness. It has only hurt even more watching the entire world around me, including friends and my literal family, decide that not wearing a piece of cloth on their faces is more important than trying to keep people like me alive. Even going to see Guardians Vol. 3 in the theaters for me was a massive risk I had to mitigate by finding an essentially empty showing at a theater because while I said this movie is good, it’s not dying-for-it levels of good.
It may be an uncomfortable truth to hear, but not wearing masks supports eugenicist ideals. This survival of the fittest-style behavior also affects the most marginalized people of society — the poor, the disabled, the mentally ill, and specific communities of color — all of whom have been the kinds of people eugenicists want to eliminate from society. You may have felt sad or angry over seeing Floor, Teefs, and Lylla stuck in cages, but when the real living human beings in Black and Latino prison populations were left behind bars at the beginning of the pandemic while more white prisoners were set free, where was your outrage then?
I can’t even go to a doctor safely these days because even medical professionals who should live by the creed “do no harm” no longer care for my safety but I don’t see people outside the disabled community causing a single fuss. I’ve had people threaten to assault me for wearing a mask while I go grocery shopping. Surely that level of cruelty and indifference isn’t something the High Evolutionary also showed on screen to make you hate him as a villain though, right?
One of the things commented on specifically in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is just how much the animal civilization created by the High Evolutionary is quite similar to Earth – which is part of why it is an imperfect society. That’s right, drugs being dealt and homeless populations existing, explicitly shown on screen, are part of why this entire civilization needs to die so the villain can start anew. I would like to live in a world where something like this isn’t considered a positive thing but that’s impossible when one in three Canadians support prescribing assisted suicide to homeless people simply for the fact they are poor and homeless. That’s over 12 million people that would allow acts as vile as the High Evolutionary himself in just one country alone.
It doesn’t stop here, either. In over half of the United States, it is legal to forcibly sterilize disabled people. The Nazi Party drew inspiration for its “Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” laws from U.S. policies that prevailed during the heyday of eugenics in the early decades of the 20th century. This is all the more disgusting when you remember the insensitive tattoos people got in “honor of Rocket Raccoon” based on the film. The High Evolutionary seemed pretty keen on controlling the genetics of his population to only ensure the next best steps in evolution too, and I cannot see him having a problem with supporting these laws as they stand – laws might I remind you that aren’t exactly being protested against by anyone outside of people who are disabled like me.
I get it, no one wants to be called a villain. It can hurt deeply to have to look inward and have to ask the question, “Are we the baddies?” Who wants to admit how much they have in common with the man they enjoyed seeing getting beaten to a pulp by the Guardians of the Galaxy? So I’ll take this moment to encourage you to have empathy and think about how much you have in common with the marginalized community I am a part of. Some numbers have shown as high as one in three people will have symptoms of Long Covid. Take that in: One in three people catching this severe and extremely contagious disease could become disabled.
The disabled community is one that any person can join at any moment whether by accident, illness, or simply age. We are all temporarily abled. Perhaps reader, you should consider treating that community well before you inevitably become one of us. Because unfortunately, we don’t have a kick-ass Raccoon, an alien empath, or any other heroes with superpowers who will come to save us. We only have each other. We must be the guardians of our own galaxy.
