June 7, 2024:
I will simply add that in the early 1950s Joss Whedon would have been blacklisted for that choice of tools.
Loaded image, from a prosecutable lineage. Locked and loaded. Hammer in her left hand, sickle in her right. Escaping and liberating others from the evil of slave labor. With whom exactly are we thus so eloquently dicking around? Viewers? Standards and Practices?
As a gag there's deniability. We take it away by pointing to a period when that very iconography, in a mass-entertainment product, would have ended a career.
What then are we doing here, now? Sharpening the politics, without raising our voice?
Naaaah.