【Uschi Karnat】

On July 4,Uschi Karnat 1776, the United States of America was born with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Kind of. America was actually born two days earlier, when the Second Continental Congress voted on July 2nd to legally approve a resolution of independence, but there was some fussing around to do with the wording and no one was happy enough to get a majority vote on the text until later in the week. That’s how the Declaration of Independence got signed on the 4th, and that’s how it became known as America’s birthday.

Exactly one hundred and forty-two years later, in a parallel dimension known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sarah Rogers gave birth to a boy in Brooklyn, New York and named her son Steven Grant Rogers. The boy’s father was Joseph Rogers, a soldier who would have gotten a kick out of his son being born on Independence Day had he survived to meet baby Steve, but sometimes the best jokes are the ones that go untold.

This joke, however, only got better when Steve grew up to become Captain America, a supersoldier, war hero, and Avenger. Cap’s patriotic costume and service to his country gave him the nickname “The Star-Spangled Man” but it was his presumed death and resurrection nearly 70 years later that transformed him into a modern American icon.

The fact that the future Captain America was born on the Fourth of July is funny in the context in the MCU and in the real world for entirely different reasons. In-universe, it’s easy to imagine Cap’s Avenger contemporaries roasting him — Tony Stark and Natasha Romanov would get the biggest kick out of it, guaranteed — but in the real world, Captain America’s birthday is the product of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko writing a dad joke into a character’s fictional biography. “When should Steve’s birthday be?” one must have asked the other at some point. “The Fourth of July lol” was the likely answer. It’s a groaner, but the joke is still there.

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But even recognizing it as an unbearably hokey part of real-life comic book history, there’s a certain lack of irony in Captain America’s birthday. In a movie universe rife with self-referential jokes, Steve is immune to the sarcasm. He is always upstanding, always striving harder, and entirely dedicated to freedom — the sincere cutesiness behind giving Steve America’s birthday is the same sincerity he embodies as the glowing, idealistic center of the Marvel pantheon. Cap is the best of America, and to some extent he simplyiswhat America should be. Of course they share a birthday.

There’s a point in Avengers: Endgame, Steve’s final appearance in the MCU, where Ant-Man refers to Cap’s derriere as “America’s Ass.” It’s another, better joke about what Steve represents to the characters of the MCU, but if you really think about it — where is the lie? Clad in the skin-tight, red, white, and blue getup that sold war bonds and saved the planet, Steve’s iconic butt is the closest any one butt can get to being a comunally prided, nationally recognized American booty. Steve’s butt has purpose. That ass has ideals. His rump is the rump of the heartlands, two purple (well, blue) mountain majesties above the fruited plain.

Steve’s ass is your ass, is the point here. His ass is my ass. From California to the New York highlands.

It’s fitting then that Steve’s story in the MCU ended with him giving that ass a break in favor of experiencing one of the three most inalienable American rights — ones first written in the Declaration of Independence. Captain America fought for life, his own and those of countless others. He stood for liberty, refusing to bow when corrupt parties tried to bend his will to theirs. And he closed Endgameby finally pursuing his own happiness. Somewhere in a timeline of his own creation, Steve Rogers celebrates every Fourth of July by blowing out candles on a birthday cake, watching fireworks herald the country he loves, and taking his super retired ass wherever it wants to go. As always, Steve embodies the American dream.

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