Sex, blood and supers – Weekend
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The youth spin-off of The Boys, Generation V, is coming out on Amazon Prime Video. The series about teenage superheroes itself looks like a daring teenager against the backdrop of yet another new puritanism that has gripped the TV series industry.
“Every man and every woman is a star,” Aleister Crowley used to say, but no one listened to him. In the universe of The Boys, created by Irish comic book classic Garth Ennis, the stars are exclusively the “supers” of the Seven, whose promotion is being promoted by the giant corporation Vought. In fact, men and women with superpowers are dangerous assholes, from whose “exploits” the civilian population suffers. But the Vought corporation is diligently cleaning up evidence that any of the Seven are perverts or sadists—and everyone wants to be super. This can be done by injecting the child with the “V gene” serum: it will ensure the development of a superpower, but it is not known which one. Of course, this is a metaphor for parental ambition, in honor of which children from a young age are forced to play the piano or go to the sports section. But in the comic book universe, the stakes are higher and the situation is taken to the point of absurdity.
In Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), superpower awakens at the fateful moment of puberty. The streams of her own blood are a deadly weapon, which she does not yet know how to control, and its first victims are her parents, who inadvertently walked into the bathroom. Marie, who has become an orphan, is shoved into a boarding school for troubled teenagers, and her younger sister is sent to a foster family. Along with her strength, she also gains an enduring sense of guilt – now it is important for her to find her sister and prove that she is not a murderer.
A start to superhero careers with the prospect of getting into the Seven is given by a special educational institution for children with the “V” gene, Godolkin University, and Marie manages to enroll there. It’s hard to stand out here – there are all up-and-coming supers all around. But for many, superpower is not a gift, but a curse: Marie’s roommate can shrink in size if she makes herself vomit (a metaphor for anorexia and eating disorders). The school elite are also well-matched here: Golden Boy (Patrick Schwarzenegger), who can ignite (his underwear burns to the delight of his fans), his girlfriend, telepath Kate (Maddie Phillips), who can move objects with a magnetic field Andre (Chance Perdomo) and Jordan Lee, who can change gender from male to female and back (London Thor and Derek Lu). One day, Zolotoy, as a result of a nervous breakdown, kills the dean and commits suicide, and his gang decides to investigate this outrageous story. Marie also finds herself drawn into dangerous games with Godolkin’s leadership, which, as she is about to find out, is secretly keeping substandard super kids in something like a special security prison.
As in “The Boys,” in “Generation V” metaphor sits on metaphor and drives metaphor. But that’s not why we love them! While the serial segment of pop culture is becoming overwhelmed by a new puritanism – unlike the TV series of the 2000s, you won’t get sex and blood on camera from the current ones – “The Boys” is one of the last shows that holds the line and is not shy about anything. The scene of the death of Marie’s parents was filmed so harshly that fans of slasher films would rejoice, and the scene of sex between a tiny girl and a big guy turned out to be funny precisely because it was invented by shameless authors who did not beat themselves on the wrist (the same scene in the series “I Am a Virgo” looks romantic!). The traditional superhero genre (all CW shows) and the anti-hero genre that denies and parodies it (Watchmen, Doom Patrol, The Umbrella Academy, Peacemaker) may finally become related: the antagonism now looms elsewhere. New series become timid, shy and bashful without any censorship from the outside. And The Boys, and now its spin-off, are still greyhounds and disheveled. Once upon a time, Grant Morrison (author of the modern version of Doom Patrol), as significant a figure of the “British Invasion” in comics as Garth Ennis, put forward an amusing theory of cycle changes in pop culture: a wave of peaceful and relaxed hippie subculture with a certain periodicity gives way to a wave of daring punk (according to Morrison, this is due to solar activity!), after which everything repeats itself all over again. Apparently, “The Boys” and “Generation V” are those representatives of the punk subculture who are still trembling before the “new solar cycle” – the onset of another period of humility and self-censorship.
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