The Strangest Exile of Frank Castle

Welcome in, Folks. May twelve, twenty twenty six. The Punisher One Last Kill will air tonight and I'm looking forward to it. I thought we should do a show. Maybe we could call it the Red Beacon Media Special Production, but we should do a show about the strangest exile of Frank Castle. I've spoke about him in the past, but what has happened to his character over the last two decades or so really deserves a talking to, right, a talking about, because it is bananas to have seen a guy, a fictitious character in the midst of so many wild and crazy characters and anti heroes and so on and so forth. To see what this character means, what he is, what he has become over the years, it really deserves the time. And now is the time, because you know, in about ten weeks we're gonna watch The Punisher, played by Frank Burnt or by John Burnhal go from a Rated R character to a rated PG thirteen character showing up in Spider Man's new movie, which to me might be might be the biggest change in like digestibility for the average person when it comes to The Punisher. I'm not in the game for long term success for the Punisher or anything like that. In fact, to start this whole thing, I probably should mention that I never really cared for him, having grown up reading comics and watching X Men and Spider Man animated series and you know, collecting Marvel cards and video games and board games. He was about the last on the list, right, Frank Castle, Vietnam veteran, normal guy with a cool shirt who used guns, was about the last thing I cared about in the Marvel universe, you know what I mean. I wanted adamantium laced bones and healing factors and razor claws and laser eyes and you know, the kind of things that were uncanny. Not a guy who was, you know, strategically sound and militarily trained with an arsenal of firearms. Just didn't really move the needle for me growing up, And in fact, it was never really a thing at all, probably not in until well not until he showed up with his own series on Netflix. And I can't even remember the catalyst for watching that series. I did watch the initial series of Daredevil. I remember Daredevil dropping on Netflix, and I remember watching the initial episode in the background story of his father being a boxer and I was really into it first couple episodes, but it came out around the time that, you know, my wife was either pregnant or about to have our second son. It was somewhere around there time, wasn't you know, It wasn't like, oh yeah, let's just sit down and watch movies and TV all the time. And I remember the kind of fading out of the Daredevil series and soon after the Punisher series dropped, and there was something about it, you know, I think a lot of it had to do with, frankly, with the exile. Frankly with the attack on the armor LIGHTE semi automatic rifle, right, you know it as the AR fifteen in call probably call everything that looks like it in but really the black rifle, the scary black semi automatic rifle, the things that were happening to the semi automatic black rifle in that time, which we're really bleeding into the Second Amendment and a governmental desire to disarm the public, which exists to some degree. I don't care what you say, it is something that exists in the government at many levels. I believe personally that it has as much to do with disarming you for control as it does for disarming you for the sake of criminality and chaos in the streets, because what's better for a class of criminal than a class of working a working class people who are completely disarmed. Right, So these things were under fire. Lawlessness was was maybe not necessarily taking grip, but because of social media and everybody having a smartphone with a camera, it seemed as though lawlessness was taking grip across the country. We were far from twenty twenty and the riots that would come, but all of this along with just facing up to the fact that everything that you have worked for up until that point, being a father of two at this point in my life could be taken away in a halo gunfire at you know, seemingly at random, or you know, in the blink of an eye, which is fundamentally the story of Frank Castle. Right. He weathers the Vietnamese jungles and seems to do more than a better than a good job. Right, returns home to have his family gunned down, which creates this you know, de depression and then transformation into the vigilante known as the Punisher. But what he really represented to me when that series started, that Netflix series started starring John Bernthale was the punisher, had become a societal metric, right, Frank Castle had become a societal metric to me, and I could look at his character and see all the things that were going on in our society. They were very clear to me. It was censorship, it was Second Amendment, it was criminality, it was innocence. All of these things were in conversation, and somehow this one character had gotten roped into all of it. His symbol was worn by men fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. His symbol was worn by our most successful sniper of all time. And there was a certain amount of people who hated that his symbol was showing up on the weapons and uniforms of police officers. And this was something that despite you know, what a cop has to deal with and has to do every day, the idea that he can't throw a patch or etch something onto his firearm to motivate him a little bit in what is what is truly the hardest job I think that exists. It's hard for me to figure out a job that really stands taller than police policing Americans in particular in this modern age. I got, what's what's the more challenging undertaking this day and age. Right, But this symbol was showing up in military, in police, and there was a growing like hatred towards those elements in our society. Meanwhile, active shooter, real true active shooter incidences were taking place, not made up ones where they have a you know, a downtown Chicago gang war breakof and called a mass shooting, but real, real detrimental Sandy hook. You know, nightmares where young kids are being gunned down by lunatic shooters and they were carrying you know, AR fifteen's black rifles, semi automatic rifles with you know, large magazines which were the weapon of choice for the punisher. Somehow all of this got thrown in to a blender, you know, returning war veteran anti government, white nationalist, white supremacist, anti government, you know, right wing terrorist mentality that kind of fits Frank Castle in some sense and not really in others. Right, Frank really does just seem to be a guy who was put on the earth to murder criminals, and he gets to decide who is a criminal and who isn't, and the judges and the police and so on and so forth be damned. But all of these characteristics were put into a blender, and in that moment in society, in that span of I don't know, two decades or something like that. Now it's been I mean, Frank is hardly removed from his exile, and we'll talk about that, but all of that was put into a blender, and this made up, fictionalized character was largely demonized. I mean, you can look at it. He was so punished, the punisher, was so for being the punisher that he went through a comic book arc where they took his guns away because we were so petrified of guns, Like the mere mention of a character who used guns would generate gun violence in a country that was already racked with gun violence, predominantly in places where guns were illegal to begin with. Right or gun you know, you know the deal, the Chicago's, the Baltimore's, right, the Phillies, the New York cities. So it was really incredible to sit back and be, you know, creating content for the Prepper Broadcasting Network and talking about the defense of the Second Amendment and the importance therein and watch this character from Afar who I never really cared about growing up, and now all of a sudden I'm starting to watch and go like, why do they hate this made up character so much? And over the years, I watched legitimate criminals like Walter White from The Breaking, Breaking Bad, Tommy Shelby from The Pepeaky Blinders, Dexter, Right, the characters from the Boys become idolized and massive successes on the television screen, people that you know, young men even would model themselves after to some degree. And I couldn't help but think watching all of those shows kind of come up and take off and get popular and get, you know, rise to the next level of notoriety, and think to myself, like, these guys are all criminals, and Frank Castle would probably kill them all. He would, he would at least try, and the only one he might struggle with is Dexter because of what his mo is. But there wasn't a thought, there wasn't a question, there was never a concern whatsoever. Right, these these shows were gobbled up. And the way that Tommy Shelby talks, talk like Tommy Shelby and get people's attention, and all these kind of videos teaching young men how to be like absolute monsters. I watched incredibly popular video games like Fortnite, which my kids and I would be playing at this time. You know what I mean together Call of Duty, you know, a literal game about about military, like the most military militaristic first person shooter there is do collaborations over the years with every character you could possibly imagine. You could play as Kim Kardashian, and Fortnite you can play as Nicki Minajen Call of Duty. Neither of these ips have yet to touch the exiled Frank Castle, both of which lean as heavily on using firearms in the video game as possible. Fortnite that an ip that I mean John Wick? Who is John Wick? Not Frank Castle? Who is John Wick? If not Frank Castle in some iteration? In some sense? Right, I mean very close? Right, of course there's distinctions, but like how much different are we talking here? And still to this day? I mean, it's a running joke in our household. I talk to my kids and I say, like, you know, did they put did they put the punisher in Fortnite? Yet? No? Okay, they put the punisher in Call of Duty? Yet no? They put Megan d. Stallion in one of those games. But so what you know, looking at that and watching that has always made me look at Frank Castle in the way that society perceives him as a as a real societal metric, right, like, like, what do we think of this guy? And why do we think of this guy? And it's just I mean, it has been fun and it has been chaos, you know what I mean. One of the things I think people hate most about Frank Castle is that he is a warrior for innocence. He's in no questions asked warrior for innocence, and in an age where criminality has reached such height of power and such influence all over the world, I think it's important to understand that that that, Like, it's good to have concern, it's good to post feel good posts online. It's good to be the arbiter and the one who can decide who are the innocent and who need protecting. What's real scary, I think to our society is some military veteran with guns who decides that he will protect the innocent, and he will protect the innocent by eliminating the evil, and it'll be sort of a pretty straightforward you know, I find them and I kill them, which is the basis of all punisher books, right, comic books. I find them and I kill them because they're evil, which I mean you could argue is the defense of innocence. Now, of course we're going to talk about the quote unquote Castle doctrine because it's important, Right, it's important. But there's no doubt that this mentality is built out of a concern for innocence. Right, he lost the most innocent things in his world, being his children. You can't deny that. In the second season of the Daredevil series, Frank changed Daredevil up on a rooftop for a variety of reasons. But what ensues on that rooftop is a conversation that I think everyone needs to hear. It is such an important conversation in times like these. It has a little to do with this doctrine of protecting the innocent and really truly protecting them. And of course the great juxtaposition with Daredevil and punishes the idea that like one of them wants the system to work and the other one has given up on the system. This, to me is one of the best things that Marvel has ever made, and I want you to listen to it. Slash wash it watch. It depends on where you're. At Frank, that's your real name. You get off threatening innocent. People only in danger because you squeal because you had a. Collum and you've thrown back the hammer that was for you. Part of the show. What does that mean? You really have to spell it out for you read? Huh, I'm disappointed. Listen carefully. Okay you're listening. Yeah, how about now you're listening? Feel it. We're not that guy, right. I want to explain that to the orphans and the windows of the menu kill. That you think I'm just some crazy asshole going around unloading on whoever I want. Yeah, that's exactly what I think. You think you're anything else. I think that the people I kill need killing. That's what you left the man hanging from the folks. It got off easy, in my opinion. You shut up a hospital. Yeah, nobody got hurt or. Didn't deserve it. What about you, Frank? What happens to day someone decides you deserve it. I'll tell you what it better not miss. You run around the city like it's your damn shooting gallery. Yeah, what do you do? What do you do? You act like it's a playground. You beat up the bullies with your fist, you throw them in jail, everybody calls you a hero, right, and then a month, a week, a day later they're back on. The streets in the godda. So you just put him in the moor? You god damn right? I do you have a doubt yourself? Frank? Second? Really? Really? You never think for one second. Shit, I just killed a human being, pretty generous, a human being who did a lot of stupid shit, maybe even evil, but had one small piece of goodness in him, maybe just a scrap, Frank, but something. And then you come along in that one tiny flicker of light get snuffed out forever. I think you're wrong, which part? All of it? I think there's no good field that I put down this one. I think no. I just look around, man, the city. It stinks, sure, it. Stinks and smells like ship, and I can't get the stink out of my nose. I think that this world it needs men that I'm willing to make the hard calls. You know, only I do the one thing that you can't. You hit him and they get back up. I hit him and they stay down. It's permanent. I make sure that they don't make it out on the Street again. I take pride in that. Let me ask you this, what about hope, Santa Claus? You want to talk about Santa Claus. I live in the real world, so I've seen it. Have you see redemption? Frank? And it's possible. The people you murder deserve another chance to. Kill again, rape again, Frank, to try again, Frank, to try. And if you don't get that, there's something broken in you you can't fix and you really are a nut job. It is a uh, it is a masterpiece. And I think it calls into question a lot of things. And artis society, and if it doesn't call anything into question, then at least makes people think, right, and it at least makes people think. It makes people discuss, And to me, that's critical, right, that's a critical part of where we're at right now as a society. Where we're at right now is a society is there's a yearning for stability, there's a yearning for an end to the chaos. We've never seen. The average person has never seen criminality, has never seen lawlessness, has never seen violence in the way that we see it today. Never before have you been able to access social media and see every city, every state, every terrible situation, every quote unquote team takeover, every worst name ever for what's happening. We've never been exposed to it so much before, and we're all wondering the same thing. Is this gonna get worse, it's gonna get better? Or the police doing their job? Do we need to send the National Guard? And what do we need to do? We need a society that can function. And you're seeing sort of this Castle doctrine, if you hope you like the name, this Frank Castle Doctrine sort of bubbling up. It's bubbling up. And the real trouble with it, of course, is that it stands against one of the great miracles of human history, which is innocent until proven guilty. Right. The idea that we as as a people believe that you are innocent until proven guilty is a miracle. Okay, it's an absolute miracle. You can't look at history and go, oh, yeah, that's a natural progression. We'll get there, you know what I mean? Three hundred years before that, we were burning people at the stake, you know what I mean. It was It's not like we were on our way to being like, no, hold on, let's gather together a group of this person's peers and figure this thing out. But like so many things with what's happened to Frank Castle, it's a two sided issue. Right. It's not the lawlessness that we see. It's not just violence. It's not just people being violent or criminals doing crime, but it's structural corruption at the DA level, at the judge level that has been brought to our attention thanks to social media, right, and we're all looking at that mess and going, okay, well, it's one thing to have crime and criminals, right, It's one thing to have police combating the crime and criminals. But it's a whole other It's a whole nother fight entirely when you start to see, oh, we're letting people out ten, fifteen, twenty thirty times. And what I think why I think Frank Castle is such an important character in a moment like this is not because I want to see vigilantism Rain. I've warned about vigilantism for ten years because I saw this stuff happening. Right, People who are doing terrible things are not answering for it at all the way from the you know, from the outhouse to the state house, if you will. But what's so important about a guy like Frank Castle is he brings a conversation to the forefront that we need to be having, Like we need to be having this conversation. We need to be having the conversation about innocent until prove and guilty, about things like the death penalty, about things like you know, how many times do you let a guy out? And about vigilantism, and about a desire, an overwhelming desire that exists in everyone to be like man, I could solve this problem, do you know what I mean? There's a lot of people out there, and no one's going to very few. Very few is even the wrong way to say it, but almost no one will act on this mentality as long as things don't get too terribly worse. But very few people will ever act on the idea that, yeah, I could do this better than the court systems doing it right. I could take the Castle doctrine and run with it. Almost no one is going to subscribe to that. But what's really important is that it exists and that you talk about it. And the best place to talk about is in the fantasy land of comic book, TV and movies, where you can say, wow, look how this plays out. This is crazy, right, I can see the sort of the good and the bad of this situation. And to have somebody rub up against Frank Castle like Daredevil is. It's so important, man, you know, because you get to see both sides of the argument, and a lot of times, you know, in that show, Daredevil's argument really is found wanting truly. But that's the thing, you know what I mean. The thing is, it's not it's not whether or not, because every situation is different, So it's not even about like is the Punisher right? Is the Daredevil right? It's just that when that conversation ends, when you're not allowed to have it because they're the punisher is a persona non grata because he has been exiled. His methods are unacceptable when you're unable to have the conversation because that in the void, in the vacuum of that conversation is where chaos sparks. Right, It's where Luigi Mangionne pops his head up and goes, oh, I think I can have an effect here, you know what I mean? It is the strangest. The exile of Frank Castle is very much the strangest, and it is hard you know, it's hardly over. I think it's seted in the right direction, and I'm glad. The question I keep asking myself is why now? Why now the resurgence Is it because the woke the woke Tirade is over? As the Woke Tirade come to when I remember the the Punisher was stripped of his guns and became a ninja, you know what I mean, Like it was the saddest of sad they I think they even at one point. I didn't read it because I would not read it, but they I think at one point they even gave him some superpowers, which defeats the whole purpose of this guy. But it's so you know, we're gonna watch one more clip from Daredevil Born Against season one, which was another epic look at the whole just the whole mentality, the whole mentality between and the whole the whole battle between the Daredevils, but not just the Daredevil, but the Daredevil and our society's way of handling bad guys and the Punishers. And again you'll be treated to just, you know, something epic, but also you'll be treated to the importance of the conversation and the importance of a character like Frank Castle, who's decided to take matters into his own hands. In this scene, Matt Murdoch, the Daredevil, finds Frank Castle. He finds a shellcasing with the Punisher logo edged into it, and he wants to talk to Frank Castle about it. But there's also something else he wants to talk to Frank Castle about, and Frank is keen to it immediately. He's immediately keen to what the Daredevil's actually there for. In the beginning of this season, he suffers an incredible loss, basically, his best friend is murdered by a criminal by a supervillain as criminal. And how he's handling that, how he's dealing with that tremendous loss and then another loss to follow up actually pushes him down this dark hallway to talk to the only man you could talk to about these things, and that is Frank Castle. So let's uh, let's watch. Nice place you got here. Appreciate that. Oh here's the thought. You know, you couldn't years all this. It could be a service. Yeah, be a service. Huh are you are you a service man? Did you serve? He prays around the city in a Halloween costume, beating the snot out of bad guys. Hey, thank you for your service. You mean you could help people, you could save lives. I see I did that. I was down range, right, look at what have gott Oh? I apologize. I didn't realize you're a victim in all this. I used that pushy, asked for my entire life. You don't put it in my mouth. You understand that. So you tell me what's going on? Buddy? We do down here day after day, just hiding, hid from you, walked it down kill you God? Damn right? Right? How's that working? You want to go out there on the street. How about it? But I do not have time for your candy ass hero ship? Is that clear? Loud and clear? Yeah, sorry to waste your time. Yeah, but tell you what I think, right, tell me tell me what you think. I don't think you came here from my help. See, I think you want my permission. You won't get your hands on somebody. Huh. Well I heard him, maybe a little bit scared a little scared about what that means. It's an interesting take. I like it, but you know, sorry, buddy, way off on that one. So full of shit counts you're so full of shit. You're guilty. Excuse me. I guilt that shame. That's my own right, and I can see it on you. I can smell it on you. It's all over you. I'm gonna come back another day, Frank, maybe catch you at a better time. You commend me with that horseshit about saving lives? How about that friend of yours? You save his life? You lost? Then you're read. It's not about him. To say his name, it's not about him. It's not about him. For Christ's sake, say his name. Say his name, you coward, say his name. It's not about him. You hate yourself. He's eating you up because. You ain't done a goddamn thing about it. Goddamn it, God damn here. Sorry, I apologize. You saw it for first artist. Thing you did right. It's not about him, though, Okay, it's all about it. The dog stayed uney. Here his voice, you do, don't you? Every time I start moving, I still here, my little boy. I see him here his voice, he says, get him, duddy, I see one of them. Get him. That's why I do what I do. That's why I see you. That's why you because you know you didn't do a goddamn thing, and it's gonna keep eating you. It's gonna keep eating and eating and eating. There's no getting away with it. That you understand. H I had him down for Chris. I think what I had to do. The system take care of the rest of. You, and your gonna damn you and your goddamn system, Curst. So what now. Everyday Bullseye goes to the chow hall, it's his slot. You know, he gets to. Breathe the same air that you breathe. You feel good about that life. How about old Foggy? He got life? How about old Foggy? Did he get life? Foggy was their devil's best friend if you don't know. And that first of all, that's I mean, the fact that that exists, that that scene was made between those two is just it's a gift. And it's a reminder that like all this stuff that happens, you read about murder, you read about these things happening, and you see people who you know, people have been ripped away from them by monsters. It's a proximity thing, man, It's it really is like loss and the feeling of loss and the desire for vengeance and the desire for justice. You can feel it when you see something unjust happening, but you also realize it like it is distance from the uh from the situation. You know, it's it is really the culprit. It is really what's made makes people go well, like, you know, I hope, you know, I hope it gets better for them, you know what I mean. If it were your kid, it would be a very different scenario. If it were your best friend, if it were right, if that kind of a thing were to happen to you directly, that's a different story. So what else in there? There's a lot in there, man, there's a lot in there. You see the breakdown of these two super heroic characters over the people they love and the people they lost, and you see the very clear like belief in our justice system and the clear hatred for our justice system and the Punisher and this is that discussion of the castle doctrine that I think is so important. And you watch a scene like that, and what's so amazing about these characters is that I don't know about you, but in many ways you feel like it's hard not to feel like the Punisher has the answer, right, it's hard not to feel that way, especially, like I said, as close to the murder as you are just in watching the show, right in seeing those two for several seasons, paling around Foggy Nelson, Matt Murdoch, and then all of a sudden he's ripped away in cold blooded murder. And that is what makes Frank Castle so important, what makes his mentality so important, what makes his vigilantism and his murder rampage on the criminals so important, is because keeping the light of justice alive, you're right to a fair trial, Like these things have to exist, man, and they are fragile, and they are so fragile. And the more we don't even need more corruption, We just need more access to the corruption. We need more understanding. Years ago, you would never know that a guy who murdered someone, and it probably would never happen, and that's part of the reason, but you would You never would have known in nineteen ninety two that a guy was let in and out of jail fifteen twenty times. It would have been covered up. You never would have heard about it. You know, it would have been terrible enough what happened, and throw the guy in jail. Again, and that would be the end of the story. But it doesn't take a whole lot of murderers with rap sheets as long as you know the constitution of the United States for people to start getting antsy, for people to start questioning what it means to be judged in front of a jury of your peers and to be sentenced by a judge, and to say, like, is justice going to be served or not? Or is this guy going to be out on the street in three years and kill someone again? And how many people do you get to kill before you get killed before we take you off the game board altogether? So the last question I ask is why is the Punisher get a show? Now? Why is he wind up in Spider Man? Of all? Now? He was created for Spider Man. I mean, I don't know if you know that, but he is a villain from Spider Man. That's where his first appearance was. That's where he came to be. But why now, again, back to the Punisher as a societal metric, what what does it mean for the strangest exile of Frank Castle that he is returning now tonight in a full length feature. I think it's forty nine minutes long and then in ten weeks he'll be in probably one of the most popular Marvel movies of the year. What does that mean? Is this the Is this sort of the Hollywood issued thank you and goodbye to John Burnhal for taking this character and making him even more epic, right? Or does it say something about society once again? Right? No longer are the right wing conservative army veterans and the like the ones with the guns. We know that, like we've seen the trans shooters, We've seen the Luigi Maan Giones. We've just seen the Cole Allens, the Socialist Gun Club of America. Right. What does it all mean? Or am I digging deep for something that doesn't require such thought. I've been known to do it, but I wanted to do the show today because there are things inside of us all that sometimes need to get out. And it is Punisher Day in my head. I have a Punisher hoodie on right now. I can't wait till nine o'clock to watch John Burnhal do his thing tonight. I'm super excited, man, Like I've been thinking of it since I heard about it, since they announced it May twelfth, and I'm just happy to be here and I wanted to do this as the show today. I just want I don't know so many things, the societal metric, the great equalizer because he shows, you know, the power of firearms which is not allowed, you know, Frank the warrior for the innocent in a time where the most corrupt judges in das exist of our time, the Epstein age, right, I mean the corruption and the evil the people that a guy like Frank Castle would show up and take out are running rampant, right. And then of course the most important I mean the really to me, the reason the Punisher is so intriguing is the Castle doctrine and the question and the perpetual debate that exists in every society, which is at least every Western society, which is innocent until proof and guilty. Is this the way we should operate? Right, Innocent until proven guilty by a cord of your peers. It's a wild concept. It's it's a miracle. It's a miraculous concept. And you could, I mean, really, the the innocent until proven guilty has not really been the problem in our country. It's not that people haven't been proven guilty, it's they've been a sentence for a week at a time, and let off and let off for insanity and back in and back out and back in and back out, and multiple juries are said, no guilty. So it's not even necessarily the people who are losing touch, but the DA's and the judges that let them out, Larry's of Philadelphia, the Jay Joneses of Virginia. These these guys, these guys have lost grip. And yeah, God only knows what they'll create in all of this, but I don't want to get too far afield. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this. I hope you've got something out of it and enjoyed it. It's just one of those side topics, back burner topics that's been on my mind for probably almost ten years. Do a real long breakdown of this character and his journey over the last ten twenty years and how it relates to our society, you know. So I hope you enjoyed it. It's our first ever sort of Red Beacon media production. I don't know where it'll end up. The audio will end up on PBN for sure, the video not sure. But I think we did good today, folks. Thank you for your support, and I'll talk to you guys soon.