I’ve seen a variety of posts kicking around on tumblr, re. Bucky Barnes and his family background. Most people seem to think Irish Catholic, because of Steve, but I’m inclined to disagree with this.
I’ve been reading up on the history, because I like doing stuff like that for the lulz. Steve was Irish Catholic. This we know as canonical fact.
eta: The Irish element is is prompted by canon, possibly on his mother’s side. There has been massive speculation about his denomination all over the place. It was kept generic through the run of the comics, because the writers didn’t want to offend their target audiences. I still think he’s Irish Catholic somewhere in the mix, even if his dogtags say otherwise.
This we know as canonical fact. Take a moment and take a look at how the Irish Catholic were treated in that time period.
In 1928, the Ku Klux Klan played a massive part in keeping an Irish Catholic politician from the Presidency, based on his background and religion. You read it right. The KKK were anti-Irish-Catholic, which says everything about how marginalised the Irish Catholics of New York would have been in the pre-war period. It started changing in the 1930s, but it was a slow process.
You also just need to look at Steve to see he’s pretty much in the poorest working class demographic. The area he lives in (as shown in Cap 2) would pretty much be classed as low-rent housing these days: shabby, small, cheap apartments, clustered together, probably with whole families crammed into several rooms. Back in the day, the marginalised communities tended to stick together. Us against the world, kind of thing. It still happens to this day in many marginalised communities.
Look at Bucky by comparison in the post-funeral scene: he’s well-dressed, neat, clearly from a better-off family and social class to afford to dress like that. He’s educated enough to be promoted to sergeant before he even gets on the battlefield. He’s charming and welcomed socially by pretty young women. This is not a man who is part of a downtrodden, marginalised population. It’s part of the reason he doesn’t completely *get* Steve’s constant anger - he’s seen Steve being kicked about, but he doesn’t know what it is to be treated like that. He can’t understand what it’s like to be treated like that.
If anything, I would say that Bucky is probably Anglican, but not particularly a practising one. He’s the kind of boy who would be hauled along to Church every Sunday morning, back of his neck scrubbed, suit pressed, and sitting in a neat row with his family. And the second he got out, the tie would be off, his fingers through his hair, and he’d meet Steve after Mass.
I could also see him getting incredibly pissy about the fact people look down on Steve because of his religion, to the point that he would use what he learned in Church to smack down people. “You think I shouldn’t hang out with Catholics, huh? You think it’s against my religion? Jesus would think you’re an idiot, pal.”
By restricting Bucky’s identity to being the same as Steve, I feel fandom has missed a trick, especially given the difference in their stations. Steve is pretty much everything Bucky isn’t and vice versa. It’s so important that this person who is clearly better off in every single way - fiscally, familially, socially, politically - is Steve’s anchor. Steve says it himself: Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.
They told me to put my heart in everything I do. So that’s what I did, and I poured and I poured and I poured. Now they ask me why I am so empty and confused.Drawing and illustrationFelicia Chiao on instagram.
