They are the ultimate embodiment of patriarchal xenophobic fascism.
“They’re so far from our daily lives and concerns.
“Space Marines don’t necessarily say things like ‘dismissed’,” Hollis-Leick observed.
Much of the above reasoning is grounded in ostensibly neutral, best-practicey questions of craft and characterisation.
In the course of what is technically a product review - see, reviews are allowed to be political!
At its nastiest, this mentality both facilitates and camouflages bigotry.
Take the backlash against the concept of female Space Marines.
It’s dangerous, Sontag says, to reduce fascism to “brutishness and terror”.
This was possibly true of Warhammer 40,000 as it was conceived in 1980s Britain.
This, for me, is the point of its satire.
Space Marines are the ultimate incels.
It’s too heartfelt.
In service to the Master of Mankind we transmute anguish into serenity.
We find purpose in the mutual example of our battle-brothers, and in the reassuringly permanent suspicion of subversion.
We are proofed and plated against the wiles of the exotic and the effete.
I’m not immune to this hellish daydream.
It’s a carnival mirrorshow for all the tacky little aggressions and humiliations of my own upbringing.
But Space Marines today are not built for this purpose.
I’m not sure it’s possible: there is too much world-building to dismantle.
it’s possible for you to’t improve a monster like this.
I think you have to double down on the hideousness instead.
You have to lean into the unlikeability of the Space Marine.
Above all, perhaps, you have to remind yourself that the Space Marine is aclown.
In the first editions of Warhammer 40,000, the Marinesappear more ridiculous than formidable.
They are squalid gargoyles of flesh and circuitry.
They are strung-out fashy gang-bangers in leather belts and onion armour.
They are incompetent coppers,sneering schutzstaffel.
They are enjoyable grotesques.
This reflects the ostentatiously scraped-together feel of early Warhammer 40,000 at large.
The setting has obvious topicality, but the fiction is too incoherent to be sustained political commentary.
It reaches tentacles in all directions.
It is a libidinal kit-bashing of everything the authors find intriguing or intriguingly revolting about their time.
And at the core of all that ravenous world-building there is the Space Marine.
But most of them look like press-ganged junkies in face paint and pretentious mohawks, leering at the shadows.
Their costumes and equipment are unconvincing, snatched from a backstage wardrobe in passing.
There are chainswords and Lawmaker-style modular pistols, but there are also gaudy penants and ribboned Tudor sleeves.
By contrast, Warhammer 40,000 today evokes stasis.
It has compacted and reduced many of these disparate materials into something monolithic and ancient and respectable.
Compare that artwork with Gallagher’s later cover for the spin-off boardgameLost Patrol.
The interchangeable faces and sedate colour composition.
Whatever energy was here is long gone.
It is tricky to pick a path through the entanglements of fascism with other cultural institutions.
The rot goes deep.
Donald Trump is a clown.
He’s easy to laugh at.
Their basic debating gambit is to lambast their opponents for taking things too seriously.
I’d like to know where they’re going.
