Finding Catharsis through Avengers: Endgame
Over the past 12 months, I’ve rewatched “Avengers: Endgame” about 5011* times, sometimes starting at the beginning and other times, simply returning to the parts that especially resonated with me.
Why in 2020 - during a whole Pangea - would I watch this movie, knowing full well that it brought me to tears the very first time I watched it in a movie theater? Because it allowed me to process, if only for three hours, the sadness and anger that I felt over being let down by a feckless Federal government and my fellow compatriots. I was and am privileged to have stayed gainfully employed during this pandemic. In the beginning, when the bad news was a barrage and I wasn’t quite used to the mundanity of being at home all the time, I would turn on Endgame. It was essential for me to remember a time when things were slightly better in real life and, also, to fantasize about humanity ultimately being saved by superhuman adults and a teen from Queens.
I was reminded of how much of a downer this movie is, but in a year that saw the deaths of half a million Americans, “Avengers: Endgame” also proved to be oddly comforting because it gave me an opportunity for catharsis while the world felt upside down. This is where I have to disclose I have had a relatively easy quarantine/2020. I haven’t lost any close family members or my employment, just a year of all the big and little moments and time with people I love who make life worth living.
“Catharsis noun /kəˈθɑːr.sɪs/: the process of releasing strong emotions through a particular activity or experience, such as writing or theater, in a way that helps you to understand those emotions”
When I couldn’t comprehend the rapid spread of COVID-19 and the beginning of its devastating effects on communities of color, I could process my sadness by watching the Avengers who were left behind and how they coped in the aftermath of The Snap. In a year where I couldn’t see and commune with my people and long before visual media would start incorporating COVID-19 into show plots, seeing Cap lead a survivor’s group and talk to them explicitly about grief hit differently. Seeing Ant-Man return from the Quantum Realm to San Francisco - the city where I reside in real life -and be confronted with a memorial to those lost in The Snap, put in perspective for me just how many people might die in real life, and forced me to consider how many of my loved ones could be killed by a disease that we knew too little about.
This isn’t the first time that Endgame has unexpectedly touched me in a deeper way than one might expect a comic book movie to. In the Fall of 2019, I experienced a bout of depression that shook me. I revisited Endgame back then, too, and found myself moved, once again, by Thor’s struggles after his many losses and challenges. Seeing a character struggle on-screen with depression and live through it (without causing harm to others, HAWKEYE) was heartening to me during a time when my brain and feelings weren’t able to cope.
After spending an entire year indoors, maybe I’m overanalyzing this movie in a multibillion-dollar franchise. Maybe these are just the musings of a fangirl trying to create meaning about something as mundane as watching a favorite movie over and over again. But I know it’s much more than that. Stories matter. They make it possible for us to understand our culture and a mirror to reflect and relate to that culture. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has provided me with stories that over the years have helped me take a break from reality and at other times process my feelings about the real world. I’m a grateful fan.
Can “Avengers: Endgame” provide a template on what a national reckoning with our failure to meaningfully contain COVID-19 might look like? Maybe.
But at the very least, in Endgame, it’s given me a cinematic portrayal of rage, grief, and hope on a global, if not cosmic scale, and that counted for something in a year that cost us far too many lives.
Special thanks to my brother-in-writing, Bradford J. Howard for reading this and giving me feedback before I pitched it. It didn’t get picked up, but I still wanted to share.
*If you know, you know