I’m a fan of cartoons and if they are on Netflix Instant I’ll sure as hell watch them especially as I do work around the house. Currently I’ve started rewatching Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes with my sister and I love that every character more or less has their own role to play, each episode tells a fun story and that it is a pretty politically mixed show – just look at the prisons.
If you look at the politics of prisons in the very first non-origin episode we see the three main public prisons of the universe – The Cube, The Big House and The Vault as well as the secret prison – the Raft each with their own ideal and reason.
The Cube stands as the prison for the gamma created and powered villains and is secretly this lab for reverse engineering the gamma villains (as well as the Hulk to create more) as part of the military industrial complex.
The Big House run by my favorite character Hank Pym is the reform prison where Pym shrinks down villains to keep them at a lower cost and to make them less dangerous. Also he totally has tiny Ultrons guarding the prison but it is nice to see Pym attempting to reform the criminals even though they are motivated by greed and generally aren’t the types of criminals who would respond though Pym is undeterred.
The Vault is the generic prison housing the bad guys who the public can know about, who aren’t major threats. It’s the standard government run prison with no ulterior methods to it.
And then you have the Raft which is the super secret Gitmo prison holding Alan Moore Graviton and because it was a secret it causes massive amounts of damage when you hold the most dangerous villain drugged inside New York City.
What is ultimately pointed out though is that privately run prisons and prisons that don’t attempt to reform in the correct ways fail.
Well, that’s not completely right but it is interesting seeing this variety of ideals in a show directed at children.