anyway i love that thor ragnarok parades around as this cute fun happy go lucky inoffensive film even though at its core it’s just a big resounding FUCK YOU against imperialism and colonialism. thor stands by and watches his ancestral home be completely destroyed because he figures out that asgard was built on the backs of invaded and enslaved people. the second his father’s crimes are exposed he does the right fucking thing and lets it all burn instead of excusing his own ignorance. that scene of the tapestry coming down is so goddamned fucking iconic i could cry oh man
“Other symbols are transparent to the point of invisibility at their core but slathered with so much laughter as frosting that they might escape cursory notice. When The Grandmaster (played brilliantly by Jeff Goldblum) engages in exploitation and human trafficking with a big smile and a manic affect, he reacts angrily, though hilariously, to his actions being referred to as “slavery.” Much the same way that capitalistic exploitation of labor is fine so long as we never make those doing it feel bad. At the end, in the first stinger, the same character (a defeated slaver–wink wink nudge nudge–doyougetit?) declares what is essentially a civil war (where he got his ass kicked) to be a tie.
Perhaps the most obvious and also subtle metaphor is Hela herself, who not only marks the MCU’s first woman villain, but arguably one of, if not the best. Naturally she too has symbolism both glaring and inescapable and somewhat muted. She walks onto the screen and declares herself returned and in control and can’t really understand why no one is happy to see her. In one scene with Thor she indicts Odin as: “Proud to have it, ashamed of how he got it" and literally reveals how a sanitized history has covered up the real one. (No, like LITERALLY it covers it up.) She asks where Thor thinks all the gold came from. And in doing so she reveals that the nine realms were conquered and Asgard is a colonialist and imperialist power. Their prosperity has come at the expense of those they vanquished. She says that she will kill everyone who doesn’t share her vision of Asgard’s return to glory and power.
The only thing that could have made this more overt would be if she were wearing a red MAGA cap during her monologue.
But the family dynamic of the Asgardian royals is far more subdued as subtext for colonialism and white supremacy. Each presents a facet both of the complexity of colonialist nations (particularly the US) but also of the periods in history. And it brings out the real metaphor of the film–the tension between the distant past, the recent past, and the present. Hela represents a violent, tyrannizing distant past that has made the colonialist power great, and now seeks to destroy any who would challenge her vision. And when most of Asgard rejects her, she draws on that past (literalizing the rise of long dead armies who will execute her vision). Thor is a young, well-intentioned and good hearted person who has benefitted directly from that violent past without knowing it and now comes face to face with it–and is shocked at its power (a moment literalized by the smashing of his hammer). Odin participated in the crimes, changed his mind, covered up the past, declared everything all better, and held Hela in check. Of course there is also Loki: a character who doesn’t care as long as he gets his.”
YES to all but the last sentence of that.
Loki is part of the colonialist/imperialist Asgardian history as well – he is the last thing Odin stole in his quest for dominance over Jotunheim.
My dad is Native American, and my dad loves to talk about how Loki reminds him of the tradition of colonizers taking indigenous children from their families and sending them to boarding schools or putting them in white foster families.
Think about it – first, we have no evidence that Loki was unwanted except for what Odin, the colonizer, tells us: that Loki was Laufey’s child, abandoned in the temple. But…if he was a newborn abandoned in a temple, how does Odin know who his father was? Given what we know about Odin’s history now, doesn’t it make more sense that Laufey placed his very much wanted newborn son in the temple in the hopes that it or the gods or the Casket of Ancient Winters would keep him safe while he and every warrior in the entire country apparently went to battle that night? That Odin, the colonizer, went to that temple to take the casket and the newborn prince so that Laufey, with no heir and no source of power, could never rebuild what was damaged that night? That Laufey grieved the loss of his son but had no power to take him back, compared to the strength of Asgard?
That’s what happened to indigenous children perfectly legally in the U.S. all the way up to the 1970s. Canada’s last boarding school wasn’t closed until the 1990s.
At the Carlisle school, a boarding school that Native American children were shipped to in Pennsylvania, they acted according to the motto “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” and that is exactly the approach Odin took with Loki. Loki is not told about his heritage. He is not taught anything about Jotun language, art, food, gender roles, family or political structure, or culture of any kind. He – along with Thor and every other Asgardian child – is taught only that Frost Giants are the monsters and that Asgardians – imperialist colonizers – are the peacekeepers. Asgardian culture is the only culture and is good; Jotun culture is savage and not worth talking about, let alone learning.
Loki’s internalized issues surrounding this carry him through the plot of the first Thor film, in which he attempts to prove that he is a true Asgardian – which he’s been brainwashed for fifteen hundred years, a truly unfathomable lifetime, to believe is the best thing you can be – and not a Jotun monster by setting up a scenario in which he is literally killing the Indian (Laufey) to save the man (Odin). That Odin does not value this action doesn’t diminish his responsibility for the centuries of work he did to turn Loki into a young man with no emotional framework for being able to accept himself for who and what he is and his subsequent spiral into this plan.
Loki is so emotionally damaged that when he thinks his Asgardian colonizer-father can only see him as a savage, he attempts suicide. This type of damage, too, was not uncommon for indigenous youth who were stripped of their culture and felt as though they were ultimately not capable of being either white or indigenous.
Loki later struggles with being manipulated by Thanos and the Mind Stone, and while this is presented as having started as some mad thirst for power on Loki’s part, it’s worth examining closer. It’s entirely plausible that what ruling Midgard meant to Loki was not infinite power (especially given the apparent benevolence he shows in Ragnarok when he is actually ruling – the Asgardians are neither overly surprised that Odin was actually Loki nor thanking Thor for relieving them of Loki’s rule, and they look as prosperous and happy as the ever have when Thor arrives), but rather a way to prove to Odin that Loki was like him: not a savage, but a colonizer in his own right.
The Dark World contains its own take on colonizers – Frigga is the center of that film even after her death, and nobody talks about how she embodies kind-hearted white feminist colonizer bullshit. She is sweet and strong-willed and a good mother and…and she kept Loki’s heritage from him as well. She teaches him her magic but never tells him that she isn’t the source of his. She doesn’t speak up when her Jotun (indigenous) son is sentenced to prison for actions contributed to by her Aesir (white) husband, who is both judge and jury. She visits him in secret, because she loves him but doesn’t love him quite enough to publicly act against her (white) husband. She’s the lady down the street whose foster children of color all loved her growing up but are now certain she would have voted for Trump, because she loved them as individuals but not enough to overcome her racism. And she did love Loki. That’s the hard part, and we can see Loki struggle with the emotions around that over the course of the film.
Loki’s actions at the end of that film come back to killing the Indian and saving the man – he fakes his death, and it looks like he’s setting himself free from the responsibilities of trying to navigate who and what he is, but he doesn’t actually choose freedom. He’s still so sure that being a Jotun is unacceptable that he has been walking through worlds as an Aesir – as Frigga’s son, if not quite Odin’s – and there’s nowhere for him to go emotionally or physically but back to Asgard. We’re initially led to believe he has killed Odin and is on the throne because he craves power, but the truth is that Odin is living out his days wistfully in New York and not even trying to return to Asgard, because…well, that part is a mystery. Does he think Loki will be a good king? It seems that way, given that Odin had not hesitated to prevent Thor from being the king when he wasn’t ready, but we can only speculate.
Loki rules Asgard for four years, which isn’t long compared Odin’s reign, which stretched across millenia, or even his own life, as he’s nearly Thor’s age (approx. 1500), but the people seem happy, healthy, and as well-off as ever when Thor returns. The only things about Loki’s rule that are relevant to this are that the Asgardians (aside from Thor) haven’t been engaging in inter-realm stuff at all as far as we can tell, because Loki is not the colonizer he tried to be under the Mind Stone’s influence, and…the play.
That play that was seemingly just in there for laughs. Watch it again, and you’ll notice that it’s not just Loki being, as Tony pointed out that he can be, a full-tilt diva. The play dramatizes his false sacrifice, yes, but it also contains a fictional retelling of his relationship with Odin. Any good therapist would have a field day with this line:
“Loki, my boy… ‘Twas many moons ago I found you on a frost-bitten battlefield. On that day, I did not yet see in you Asgard’s savior. No. You were merely a little blue baby icicle that melted this old fool’s heart.”
Loki tries to paint himself in a positive and tragic light, sure, but he does the same for Odin. He wants so badly to be able to believe that Odin raised him because he loved him that he rewrites what Odin himself gave as the reason for taking him.
“I thought we could unite our kingdoms one day. Bring about an alliance, bring about permanent peace… through you.”
Loki was intended to sit on Jotunheim’s throne as Thor’s counterpart, an Asgardian figurehead under Odin’s guidance, with no understanding of his own culture or the people he ruled. This is what was done to the sons of indigenous chiefs across the world through the boarding schools of the 18- and 19-00s. This is peak colonialism.
At the end of his life, Loki is able to start to move past his issues. He comes to save the Asgardians, because he knows that they are not Odin, though they benefited from his actions. Set free from the expectation that he return to Thor’s side just because they were raised as brothers, he returns to him anyway because he loves him and because he has learned to separate who both of them actually are as people from what Odin wanted them to be. In a moment of obvious symbolism if you think of him as a victim of Odin’s colonization of the realms, he carries out the resurrection of Surtur and helps his brother of choice destroy Asgard and the legacy of colonization that it was built on.
As he dies, he articulates all of the complicated things that he is – “Loki, Prince of Asgard, Odinson, the Rightful King of Jotunheim, God of Mischief” – but before that, before he calls for the Hulk, he starts with “Well, for one thing, I’m not Asgardian,” and in that moment, for the very first time in his entire life, Loki says that like he’s proud of it.
Loki is not the one part of the story of Odin, Hela, and Thor that isn’t about colonization and its evils – he is the direct victim of it. He is the colonized.
how I sleep at night knowing my daughter is in a prison of my own design because I turned her into a murderer, my son is abandoned on a notorious garbage realm, and my other son is having an identity crisis because they are from a race I taught them from a young age to hate:
me when i’m in a food coma after eating one 2 many chicken fajitas from chili’s
Anthony Hopkins after eating too many chicken fajitas after Tom brings him to Chili’s
he looks like he was photoshopped into a bowl of boiling soup
Going off how Odin’s simultaneously a god of knowledge and a god of ‘fury/madness/whatever you want to call it’…
Would that make him affiliated with anxiety? Anxiety, but also the creative rush, when you’re so immersed in the creative process you lose track of time.
Yes, absolutely.
He’s also the good of madness, and he seems to have a soft spot particularly for the non-neurotypical.
it actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Having anxiety is a pretty solid motive to give up an eye and hang yourself from a tree to gain universal knowledge – and having universal knowledge probably causes even bigger anxiety.
YEP BINGO.
This precisely.
Dr. Jackson Crawford, a scholar of Norse literature who wrote my favorite translation of the eddas, has done several youtube videos on old norse mythology and language, and he calls Odin “A profoundly anxious god.”
And he’s right. The knowledge of what is to come always hangs heavy on the Allfather, and it shapes many of his actions. And the more he learns to prevent it, the more it weighs on him.
Also, your tag is fucking great and needs to be preserved here
#Odin becoming blood brothers with one careless clown: This is my emotional support trickster
Such nicknames… Old One Eye and Old Bastard… are happily accepted. Hell. Half of his names in the norse stories mean similar things; “Harbard,” for instance, translates to ‘hoar-beard’.
Bölverkr translates to ‘bale-worker’, meaning ‘worker of evil’, which is a reference to his habit of causing bad luck and tragedy to those who piss him off.
Glapsviðr means ‘swift tricker’, for his cleverness and ability to outwit most enemies. One of my favorites,
Hrosshársgrani, translates literally to ‘Horse Hair Mustache” and I think we can all agree that that is a fantastic nickname.
Odin has thousands of names, most of which even his devotees do not know. He seems to take pride in this.
As to depictions of him in media…while not always accurate, well. Let me put it this way. One of his thousands of names is
Faðr galdr, or father of (magical) songs. He is the god of inspiration and creativity, particularly in storytellers.
Why do you think, dear nonnie, that images of Odin have crept their way into so much of pop culture? All the great popular stories…Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, the thousand fantasy and sci-fi stories they inspired…there he is. As Gandalf, and the thousand wizards inspired by him. As Obi-Wan, and Yoda. Look at any entry in the TV tropes ‘wizard classic’ category, and that’s him.
Why is this image of a wise old wizard figure so enduring? Why has the image of the Allfather in the form of a wandering wizard, changed in no significant way, been so enduring, despite efforts to stamp out the Norse pantheon?
Why, for that matter, were Christian monks driven to take down the stories of him, recording the Eddas and sagas through no small investment of time and energy, despite the fact that it represented a tradition that they found distasteful?
Guess.
He approves of his name and image being out there. He approves very much. He’s been quite carefully making sure that he is portrayed in such, for something better than eight hundred years.
Odin’s very wise, and very farsighted. He knows, better than most gods, that nothing lasts forever. He knew the Norse would not. He took steps to ensure that his name and the tales of him and the other gods survived. He’s taking steps now, and seems to be actively recruiting on a rather large scale for new devotees; this started, incidentally, some thirty years back, just as the rise of neo-nazis claiming his name began and even a little before; the Allfather, I think, saw that coming, and began actively recruiting non-shitty assholes to combat this. Many followers of Odin have noticed this; we are actively pushed to push back against such abuse of his name, and pushed towards causes such as environmental conservation.
The images of him in pop culture only aid this. They give him an opening, so to speak, through which to slip.
He used Gandalf to first contact me. He’s used other familiar faces for others.
So, TLDR; Odin approves of seeing himself in pop culture. Very much.
It’s completely staggering to me that I seem to be seeing posts similar to this one so often lately and never did before despite following plenty of Odin devotees and other heathen-leaning folk for years on this platform. It’s wild and I can tell you he’s definitely recruiting and he’ll use any face or name you’ll accept to reach you.
He knew, I think. He knew full well that this sort of social and political turmoil was coming, and he saw that some people who know nothing of him would try to use his name.
He took steps to counteract this. He’s still taking them. He seems, so far as I can tell, to be gearing up for something.
And knowing what I do of him….and I would never be so bold here as to claim to know everything about him. That’s not even possible for a mortal, I think. That’s not even possible, I think, for most other gods.
But what I do know of him tells me that what he wants for mortals closely coincides with what I do. A global information network? Free sharing of information? Healing and health for all, and science and exploration beyond our world and within our own? Knowledge and learning available to all, regardless of birthplace or status? Learning simply for the love of it, available to all who love to learn? Freedom to create, for artists, without fearing where their next meal will come from?
That is what he wishes for us. He saw, I think, that aspects of society would push back against such things…and took steps and is taking them to counteract them.
9 year old me, reading Forgotten Realms books; “God Elminster is so cool fuck damn he goes everywhere and has like a million names and is a BAMF wizard and a ton of enemies and can shapeshift and once turned himself into a woman and is a wily bastard and has a rad hat goddamn he’s my favorite.”
30 year old me, narrowing my eyes at Odin; “You…absolute MOTHERFUCKER.”
*Soft sound of divine snickering*
And somewhere in the 20th century in a pub in Oxford, a one eyed gent sees John enter and greet Clive and the rest of the Inklings.He’s been lurking just outside the college some days. Others, the shadow of a broad brimmed hat falls over a desk filled with Old English translations in a study filled with pipe smoke.
An old hand alters the slope of elf-speech, just so, and mirth is found when the girl named for the Roman goddess of the hunt is frustrated by her professor, all lost in his mythologies. Yet, she is inspired to spin tales of her own, tales of stubborn hot-tempered wizards with Moving Castles, parallel worlds, magical woodlands. She who was named for the huntress later becomes friends with the young man who gives Morpheus, Prince of Stories, Lord Shaper, his rebirth. Gives us Wednesday and Shadow and Mr. World and Low-key Liesmith. She befriends magicians, writes of them, though her old teacher frustrates her so.
Somewhere else that’s not the pub, across the sea, he asks a rhetorical question, knowing Gary will think on it and realise that things can be more than just words on a page, even as his friends blow on their dice, for luck. There, is after all, magic in the breath.
For now though, which is to say before, the gent sips his pint, watching the Inklings disappear into the snug. Many realms have been forgotten, but the trick with Memory is that it works in All Directions. It always comes back, despite the gent’s fears, new every time.
Eveything’s connected, after all.
“One more for the road, my dear?” he says, favouring the barmaid with a roguish grin. “And one for yourself, eh?”
He leans forward, giving her the full force of his charm. He has time, after all.
Like the goddess’ namesake’s young friend will later write:
“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.” Neil Gaiman, Dream Country (The Sandman, #3)
Ignore the wink the old gent sends in our direction across the years. That did not happen. He did not smile, and bend the weave of lives to his own ends, yours and mine and others. Did not give us the grin of an Old, Grey Wolf who is sly and wily and twice as slick.
odin is like “when thor was born the sun shone bright upon his beautiful face. i found loki on the sidewalk outside a taco bell”
Oðinn spake:
Bright the sun shone | at the time of Þor’s birth, And bathed his count’nance fair. Loki, wolf-father, | the trickster, the liar, I found on the cold pavement While returning in glory | from a grand hunt For a 3 AM quesadilla.
