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* If you've ever wanted to see a vomiting Mr. Mxyzptlk get burned and face-stomped to death by an evil Superman, Tim O'Neil has the scans for you. Normally I steer clear of dogpiling on stuff like this, because the material is so self-evidently, almost self-parodically bad, and because I think that since most intelligent readers have already made an informed decision as to whether or not such comics are worth their time and money, the people who stick around to complain about it have similarly made their own decision, for whatever reasons, and living with it is their problem and not mine. Still, this sequence stuck out to me because it seems almost like it was intended not just to exemplify the bizarrely visceral hatred some fanboys of my acquaintance have for Silver Age DC material that doesn't jibe with current storytelling values, but to embody it. (Via Dirk Deppey.)
* Speaking of comics blogosphere warhorses I try not to ride, in an interview about the end of his series Y: The Last Man, Brian K. Vaughan inadvertently articulates why I find the periodic outbreaks of (pseudo)feminist outrage over some dopey superhero image or other hard to take seriously as either criticism or activism:
It felt like comics had never really talked about gender in a sophisticated way. Whenever they talked gender it was always like, ‘Should Catwoman’s boobs be smaller?’ ‘should she be called the Invisible Woman instead of the Invisible Girl?’
* It wasn't until my very Christian in-laws brought it up in the context of a discussion of those "hey look out for this supposed peril of modern-day living that's probably easily debunked with 15 seconds of googling" email forwards we all get from time to time by way of offering an exception to the rule, but apparently Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials fantasy series and its first volume's imminent film adaptation, The Golden Compass, are taking flack from the usual suspects for their atheistic author's atheistic message. I haven't read the books and didn't know much about them so this all came as a surprise to me. Here's the Snopes article on the emails, confirming Pullman and his books' anti-religious bent; here's Andrew Sullivan rounding up some pro and con links, including claims that the studio watered all that down anyway and the de rigeur posturing by the shameful, shameless Catholic League; and here's a SciFi Wire article on producer Deborah Forte's attempts to dodge the subject.
* So I guess Stephen King recently said some, oh, let's say "provocative" things about torture, celebrity, Jenna Bush, and Britney Spears in an interview. Carnacki is sympathetic to the Bard of Bangor's cri de coeur, MSNBC.com's Courtney Hazlett considerably less so. I'll say that I'm largely on board with the points King's trying to make, but that his attempts at pop-culture and political commentary are almost always off-putting and that metonymizing unhealthy trends in either sphere through young women who while emblematic of those trends really bear no responsibility for their perpetuation strikes me as cheap and quietly misogynist.
* I'm having fun discussing the roles of the leading men in film noir in the comment thread below my quickie take on Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Brick vs. Josh Hartnett in The Black Dahlia, and you might enjoy doing it too.
I read the His Dark Materials books before I'd heard about the anti-Christian (anti-religion, really) stuff, and I don't remember the first two being blatant about it. The third book, though? Wowie. I couldn't care less whose god somebody wants to insult, but even I was like, "This is a little overboard, isn't it?"
From what I understand, the idea is that God is senile/insane and they have to kill Him? I think that's a pretty swell idea for a fantasy story, even if I feel like it's been done a lot, but my guess is you're right about it feeling ham-fisted. I pretty much agree with Tolkien about allegory, and don't much care for one-to-one correspondences. That's true for CS Lewis's Christian allegorical fantasy, and I don't see why it wouldn't be true for Pullman's anti-theist allegorical fantasy.
The Superman thing reminds me of the old "killer dungeon master" attitude that afflicts some rolegamers. The GM and the writer can both always kill their characters. So they should get it out of their system somewhere it doesn't affect other people, like players and customers. There's this annoying fanboyish belief that somehow the characters have any existence outside their stories so that the killer story actually matters. But it doesn't. Grant Morrison summed this up perfectly at the end of his run on Animal Man: the characters are what we make them, and though the published stories (and what we imagine about them) remain as they are, they have influence only insofar as we grant it to them.
Which is to say, what a pathetic bunch of schlubs. If they don't like a bit of legacy they can never mention it again, and (to swipe from Usual Suspects), "Just like that, poof! It's gone." It has vanished utterly from the character's universe, and cannot rise to stalk in unbidden. (And it's not like anything a writer can do actually does ever permanently kill the past. The next Grant Morrison, or John Byrne, or someone is always coming along, for good or ill.) Pfeah.
Kinda nice how Hazlett sidesteps the main thrust of King's argument and goes after a side issue, don't you think?
I'm not sure I'd accuse King of misogyny, though. Yeah, he's going after Lohan and Spears when he should be focusing it all on the media -- but this seems to be him skipping to the last stage of the weird celebrity dance, where overexposure leads to contempt. If he's being misogynist, it's because he's unaware that he's buying into (at least partially) a system that is inherently misogynist.
I'm not sure if that's any kind of defense, but I think the difference is noteworthy. Did I make sense?
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Comments (6)
I read the His Dark Materials books before I'd heard about the anti-Christian (anti-religion, really) stuff, and I don't remember the first two being blatant about it. The third book, though? Wowie. I couldn't care less whose god somebody wants to insult, but even I was like, "This is a little overboard, isn't it?"
Posted by Jim Treacher | November 29, 2007 11:39 AM
From what I understand, the idea is that God is senile/insane and they have to kill Him? I think that's a pretty swell idea for a fantasy story, even if I feel like it's been done a lot, but my guess is you're right about it feeling ham-fisted. I pretty much agree with Tolkien about allegory, and don't much care for one-to-one correspondences. That's true for CS Lewis's Christian allegorical fantasy, and I don't see why it wouldn't be true for Pullman's anti-theist allegorical fantasy.
Posted by Sean | November 29, 2007 1:25 PM
The Superman thing reminds me of the old "killer dungeon master" attitude that afflicts some rolegamers. The GM and the writer can both always kill their characters. So they should get it out of their system somewhere it doesn't affect other people, like players and customers. There's this annoying fanboyish belief that somehow the characters have any existence outside their stories so that the killer story actually matters. But it doesn't. Grant Morrison summed this up perfectly at the end of his run on Animal Man: the characters are what we make them, and though the published stories (and what we imagine about them) remain as they are, they have influence only insofar as we grant it to them.
Which is to say, what a pathetic bunch of schlubs. If they don't like a bit of legacy they can never mention it again, and (to swipe from Usual Suspects), "Just like that, poof! It's gone." It has vanished utterly from the character's universe, and cannot rise to stalk in unbidden. (And it's not like anything a writer can do actually does ever permanently kill the past. The next Grant Morrison, or John Byrne, or someone is always coming along, for good or ill.) Pfeah.
Posted by Bruce Baugh | November 29, 2007 10:53 PM
Kinda nice how Hazlett sidesteps the main thrust of King's argument and goes after a side issue, don't you think?
I'm not sure I'd accuse King of misogyny, though. Yeah, he's going after Lohan and Spears when he should be focusing it all on the media -- but this seems to be him skipping to the last stage of the weird celebrity dance, where overexposure leads to contempt. If he's being misogynist, it's because he's unaware that he's buying into (at least partially) a system that is inherently misogynist.
I'm not sure if that's any kind of defense, but I think the difference is noteworthy. Did I make sense?
Posted by Ken Lowery | November 29, 2007 11:58 PM
Yeah, not only do they kill God, but it's almost by accident.
Posted by Jim Treacher | December 2, 2007 5:00 PM
Well, He's kind of been asking for it.
Posted by Sean | December 2, 2007 5:04 PM