In theaters across the United States, Disney’s Captain Marvel opened with a recruiting spot created specifically for the film. Diverse and authentic women—active duty and retired with careers that span heroic and aspirational—are portrayed as sharing a common starting point: The United States Air Force. Join the Air Force and you, too, can be a part of this elite group of change-makers. You, too, can make an impact.
It is an inspiring message, and not unexpected. The Air Force has been touting their relationship with the film for months through exclusive content partnership, interviews, and social media tie-ins. But Captain Marvel does something surprising. The film doesn’t simply portray the Air Force in a positive light, it begins to paint a picture of an aspirational path to be undertaken only by those with a unique set of traits—individuals who matter because of who they are, not what they are.
In other words, the film is a boon to the Air Force not because it is a heroic story of an airman who saves the world, but because it demonstrates the self-actualization and reimagined patriotism the future force is hungry for. By turning recruiting messages on their head, it is a move that may ultimately impact military interest across all branches.
PART I: This Movie Isn’t for You
Captain Marvel is the first film entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe that centers on a female lead, and this is important. Not only that, she is the Marvel equivalent of Superman, a hero with extraterrestrial powers that make her nigh invincible—this, too, is important. Because Carol Danvers is canonically a juggernaut, it forces the narrative to focus not on an external enemy, but rather some internal struggle and masculine journey of self-identity, a storyline typically reserved for male heroes along the lines of Thor, Spider-Man, and Captain America.
Contrasted with the hero’s journey, the narrative model typically ascribed to female protagonists more closely follows the heroine’s journey described by Maureen Murdock. At the time and continuing today, Murdock’s model was an answer to the idea that women don’t need a hero’s journey because they are supporting characters to the hero. She argues that the heroine’s journey is equally as valid narratively and frames it around a rejection and reclaiming of the feminine. The external battles all contribute to the journey of self-discovery as it relates to female identity.
We see this journey come to life in the stories of heroine’s like Jessica Jones, Wonder Woman, and even Fury Road’s Furiosa. Every external foe is tied intrinsically to the character’s womanness where a male protagonists battles wouldn’t be tied to his maleness. Their ability to face and defeat patriarchal threats is key to their ability to find themselves in the end. We are shown characters who must rise above some traumatic incident, usually based on gendered violence or behavior. The trajectory from victim to survivor can be compelling, but far too often, it is lazy writing when the author intends to show his (usually his) audience that the character is a strong female.
What separates Captain Marvel is not the absence of gendered behavior, but the incidentalness of it. It just is. Jane Boden, one of the directors and cowriters, says in an interview of the “Smile, honey” scene:
“I was just on a panel with Brie and somebody asked about that scene and part of why it’s written in there is that women experience that all the time,” she said. Boden expressed that most, if not all women at one point, are told that they should smile or told how to act and that it was important to showcase that in the film, adding, “[Men] don’t even realize it. They don’t even realize that, ‘is that something women get told all the time?’ It seems like a surprise to them. . . . . just having the female experience be part of what we’re exploring on screen and have that become part of the conversation I feel like was important.”
This sentiment is pervasive throughout the film—it is not the story of how Carol Danvers overcame sexism to become a hero, but the incidents of sexism are part of the journey that got her and her peers to this point where they were the heroes. It is the acknowledgement of this truth that helps make this film resonate with women across generations, because we have been told to smile all our lives. The incidents simultaneously matter and don’t matter—they shape us, but do not define us. Because of this, her journey can more closely resembles that of the hero while still acknowledging that the default notion of a male hero is incompatible with reality.
Captain Marvel is the first movie in a long time that feels like it was written for women by authors who understand the experiences of women, and that is important in its argument for military service; however, Captain Marvel doesn’t stop at demonstrating that women can be heroes and therefore can be part of the military. What Captain Marvel is ultimately going to sell young women on is patriotism and the self-actualization that comes with service.
Wait, Patriotism, really? Really.
PART II: This Is Not Your Grandfather’s Patriotism
Patriotism and American exceptionalism tend to come hand in hand. American exceptionalism is the idea that there is something special about Americans that makes them uniquely capable of spreading democracy and freedom around the globe. It’s a powerful, patriotic sentiment that can be inspiring to those seeking to serve their country. But patriotism also is closely tied to nationalism, and nationalism is exclusionary, jingoistic, and racist.
In 2008, Captain America clapped back against the old ideas of patriotism in sequences that were almost clownish to audiences of today. Where Iron Man was a cynical critique of the military industrial machine and privatized war, in the world of Steve Rogers, everything was red, white, and blue and accompanied by fireworks and a big band. The movie release was timed against a unique moment of renewed patriotism led by the election of President Barack Obama and moved the needle toward a more inclusive and diverse military force. Audiences—diverse audiences—were more open to the idea of military service because they were more open to the idea of what the military could accomplish as an institution.
In response, militaries sought to show that they weren’t just fighting enemy combatants, they were fighting to win the hearts and minds of people and create a more secure nation through humanitarian relief and military intervention that would have a global impact. During this period, military branches released advertisements like Toward the Sounds of Chaos and A Global Force for Good to demonstrate the full spectrum of threats they would face to better our global community.
In this cultural moment, what set Captain America, the character, apart was that his allegiance was not to America: the nation, but to America: the idea. Captain America demonstrated American exceptionalism, but it framed it in a way that could make sense to youth of the time: you can be proud to be an American because Americans as a people are good and want the world to be better. America stands for change and hope.
In this way, Captain America is both a wry critique of old patriotism and a glimpse of how millennials were starting to see their role as Americans.
But we’re not recruiting millennials anymore. We’re recruiting the subsequent generation, one so new that there isn’t a name for them yet. They are our current high school and college students, and there is one thing about them we know to be true: They’re like millennials, but worse.
Sometimes labeled Gen Z by sociologists and advertisers (don’t say you didn’t contribute anything, Gen X), today’s high school and college students have less trust in institutions, including either the U.S. military and the U.S. government, they are more diverse, and they’re not so keen on identifying themselves as patriotic. This makes for a challenge for military recruiting across the branches, and we know that they are all struggling with it.
But here also is where Captain Marvel has a solution: it is going to redefine what it means to be patriotic. Like Steve Rogers, Carol Danvers is not concerned with blind allegiance to a nation or an institution. Instead, her commitment is to the values she and her fellow servicemen and women share, and often the values that attracted them to service. The film recognizes the distrust in institutions, but instead of showing institutions at large as unworthy of commitment, it focuses on the people that make up those institutions and the higher calling that connects them, the same higher calling that led them to serve their nation.
Further, the central conflict of the film is in defense of human rights, an idea and goal that is much more closely aligned with what Generation Z sees as what should be the priority of our nation. In a survey conducted by Harvard Institute of Politics of 18- to 29-year-olds in March 2019, one quarter of all respondents identified promoting human rights as the most important goals of U.S. foreign policy.
Carol Danvers is committed to this idea of human exceptionalism for the cause of human rights. She, and Nick Fury, believe in the good of humanity and our ability to see solutions with out-of-the-box thinking and stubborn tenacity. Simultaneously hopeful and establishing a sense of responsibility, it’s a message that can connect with the disaffected, depressed and lonely youth of Gen Z.
And through this message, the film taps into the idea that the definition of what it means to be an American is as varied as the people you ask for it, but we are all connected by key truths about the good within the human spirit. If you can equate those truths with Americans, with the institutions, and with the women in the Air Force, then you can earn back trust among Gen Z and, maybe, recruit them to fight for those things.
Part III: Application, or How Exactly Will Captain Marvel Recruit Women
Once the film has established that the purpose Carol Danvers is fighting for is big and worthy (and the same purpose of the U.S. Air Force), the film starts to lay in the traits of the types of warriors who can succeed. Captain Marvel demonstrates that women, specifically women, have unique skills that make them capable of saving humanity.
But the film moves beyond the trope of hearts and minds and establishes Carol Danvers as stubborn, tenacious, and committed to do the right thing. No superhero film (or arguably any film) has talked to women that way before, and it is mind-blowing.
Young women can see themselves in Carol Danvers, and therefore see themselves in the military. As BBC America president Sarah Barnett wrote in a statement:
“If you can’t see her, you can’t be her. It’s time to expand what gets seen, and we hope this report will contribute to sparking change in the stories we see on screen. With greater representation of female heroes in the sci-fi and superhero genre, we can help superpower the next generation of women.”
It is also for this reason that the acknowledgement of sexism described in PART I is important—it is a reality, and it is harmful to pretend it isn’t when very real women can raise their hand and speak from their experiences. But the movie is also very clever in how they portray the systemic and institutional sexism—the culprits are peers, bad apples, not institutional leaders, and that is what is going to help reframe the history of systemic sexism in the military as an opportunity for the future force.
In interviews, Brie Larson has described the film as being about intersectional feminism, representative of the different experiences women bring to the table. She points to the relationship between Carol Danvers and Maria Lambeau as emblematic:
“There’s just no question that we would have to show what it means to be all different kinds of women, that we don’t just have one type. It became a great opportunity, even with things like the love story. [We wanted] to make that big love— that lost love, that love that’s found again—be with [Carol’s] best friend.”
This approach to intersectionality goes beyond gender, and that is what allows Captain Marvel to make the claim that the institution will be changed by the people in it. Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury represents the institution, but he represents it from a unique standing. He has experienced institutional racism, and he can recognize institutional ‘isms’—he is a trustworthy authority figure because he brings that experience to the table and thus seems likely to believe not only that Carol Danvers has experienced these things, but that they both do and do not define who she is. Beyond the relationship between Danvers and Rambeau, Captain Marvel demonstrates intersectionality through the alignment of a white woman and a black man who share a common goal, although their paths may differ.
After establishing this relationship, the movie starts to make the promise that there are people within the institution who will change it, and that you can find those like-minded individuals and allies. But the weight and responsibility of the promise is granted the reality of hardships. So even if the military has not yet made the institutional changes to set women up for success, Marvel sets up that it will, because women want to serve, and if the military won’t change itself, the women in it will.
In this way, Captain Marvel both defines patriotism and the responsibility to better U.S. institutions and ideas and recognizes the self-actualization and involvement of women in that process. It posits that the institutions will trust you, young woman, so you can eventually trust them. In the end, that message is much stronger and welcoming to the next generation of warfighters than the vague promise of changing the world as an aviator.
Or, to adapt a quote from Samuel L. Jackson:
Being an aviator doesn’t necessarily define you. When you do make the discovery of who you are and what is going on, you realize you had a life before, and you’re pretty badass already. So that whole thing about, “You are what we made you.” It’s like, “That’s some bulls—. I was a badass way before we got there.”
The lesson service branches must learn from Captain Marvel is not that there is an unbridgeable disconnect between modern youth and military service, nor that they must lean-in to the soft-power missions. The women of Generation Z and members of the military may share a fierce selflessness and commitment to bettering our nation, and it is in this space that military branches can speak to women as the bad asses they already are.