Let's hear it for The Boys

Like all foundational myths, 'the 4th of July' requires some qualification.

The semi-quincentenary of the founding of the United States of America is marked today - a bittersweet occasion, especially under its current President - but the date is somewhat arbitrary. I hate to be pedantic (me?) but, while true that delegates of twelve of the Thirteen Colonies signed off the Declaration of Independence on 4th July 1776, the New York delegation abstained until receiving authorisation from their state capital, Albany, which came on 2nd August 1776. The Declaration proclaimed the Thirteen Colonies "free and independent States", no longer colonies of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and, thus, no longer part of the British Empire. 

But this was only the beginning of a painfully protracted struggle to break free, not the end. Years of bloody battles and skirmishes followed, with the definitive peace treaty only signed, in Paris, on 3rd September 1783. Even then, this was not to be the end of hostilities, with war breaking out again in1812. Indeed, British troops set fire to the White House in 1814 in retaliation for the US attack on York (now Toronto), an event memorably alluded to by King Charles III on his recent State visit to Washington DC. Peace was only finally achieved with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent on Christmas Eve 1814.

Relations between the two nations, while ostensibly cordial, have been strained ever since, perhaps best characterised as edgy rather than affectionate. During the so-called "British Century" (the 19th) this hardly mattered; Britain had other fish to fry, in Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand, and the US had declared its suzerainty of the Americas in the Monroe Doctrine of 1824. Only after World War I was Britain to begin to lose ground to the US, and even then it arguably managed to sustain an illusion of power and prestige until after World War II, with the loss of India in 1947 and the ignominy of the Suez Crisis in 1956. Since then, it has become a middle-ranking power while the US has become a superpower, strutting the world stage as once Britain did.

But, mention of superpower puts me in mind of the US TV series, The Boys*; a highly political, satirical take on the superhero genre of comics, though more Image than Marvel or DC, charting modern America's descent into decadence and madness. Watching this sprawling, orgiastic, sanguinary 5-series show it rapidly becomes obvious that it presents an allegory on the American Dream, where democracy and capitalism have finally descended into a nightmarish dystopia. A corrupt corporation, Vought, has created a cohort of superheroes ('Supes') with the supposed intention of saving humankind from crime and disasters. Unsurprisingly, it goes badly wrong when the leading anti-superhero character, Homelander, goes rogue, becoming a crazed megalomaniac with delusions of divinity and unstoppable, lethal powers; not so much a thinly-veiled as full-frontally grotesque caricature of Donald Trump.
 
The series has, sadly, ended but American life is now clearly imitating art.

*Available to stream on Amazon Prime Videos

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