Jingoism redux

The Boston Globe's Braniac blog has a posting that explores whether Black Sabbath's classic "Iron Man" was inspired by the Marvel superhero of that name.

What strikes me most about the upcoming Iron Man movie is that it recycles a Vietnam-era story of capitalism, individualism, and military might (in the face of an ill-fated war) and sets it in the present-day Afghanistan.

Braniac describes Iron Man's origin:

Marvel Comics introduced Tony Stark in the March 1963 issue of Tales of Suspense. Stark is a brilliant, wealthy inventor of high-tech weaponry who, while doing some field testing with US military advisers in South Vietnam, gets critically wounded by a booby-trap and is forced into the service of Wong-Chu, a "red guerrilla tyrant." Making do with low-tech materials, and with the help of a captured Vietnamese physicist, Stark inters himself in a gadget-laden suit of iron armor whose electrified chestplate keeps his shrapnel-damaged heart beating.

Barely able to operate his new legs, Stark nevertheless confronts his nemesis: "Have you never seen an iron man before?" he taunts. Wong-Chu (a stand-in for Ho Chi Minh, not to mention the Viet Minh insurgency in South Vietnam generally) stammers, "You -- you are not human! You are machine!" Pow! The "metallic hulk who once was Anthony Stark,” as the comic's scriptwriter, Larry Lieber, has Stark put it in the origin story's final panel, knocks Asian communism for a loop.

The new film looks to be a pretty little confection of propaganda. Not to say I won't watch it, but I will be a little disgusted with myself. Note the Black Sabbath guitar riffs towards the end of the trailer.