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| Finally I went to a Swing Dance club meeting tonight! Reconfirmed two things: people like my gray Old Navy dress, and I cannot dance. I mean, it was my first lesson and all, but natural grace and rhythm, I am missing them. The instructors were super nice and informative though (considering they're just students doing this on their free time), and very willing to help. Sadly I think there's no lesson next week due to spring break. Sigh. I shall never get less awful at this rate! Unlike pretty much the rest of you folk, I have neither seen nor read Watchmen yet. However, I did watch the opening credits out of curiosity, and this, in addition to reading articles on it, caused me to consider the general history of the superhero genre. As any article on the book will mention, when it was published, Watchmen "reflected contemporary anxieties" and deconstructed the basic idea/l of the superhero. As kind of summarized in the opening credits, superheroes burst out on the cultural scene in the 40s, and at first they were AWESOME. They continued to be much beloved in the 50s and became pretty much established in their classic trappings and so forth. (I'm kind of just making this all up, so feel free to correct me, but this is how it seems to me.) By the 60s, they were beginning to cross over from classic to camp and kind of cliche, but still coasting on earlier goodwill. I don't really know how the superhero developed in the 70s, if at all--that seems to me to have been a time when the medium started to expand into other genres more, beginning to try out new avenues and tentatively explore new markets. So by the 80s, the genre was ready for a reassessment, and well, Alan Moore delivered. He skewered the "glorious heroism" of the superhero, and as some other article stated, between Moore's influence and Frank Miller's, for the next full period of the 90s, "everything was dark and gritty." Everyone had all sorts of deep internal conflict, everyone was an alcoholic, and either possessed of a full array of sexual issues or going through a divorce (or both?). This made me think that the whole "dark tortured conflicted imperfect reality of the superhero" was becoming a trope in itself, and thus we were about due for the scales to swing back, and for us to have a renaissance of the superhero. And then of course, I thought, what else has this recent rush of superhero movies in the 2000s been? Superheroes have come back to the mainstream and seem to have gotten a lot more pop culture approval and appeal again. And these movies have definitely been about reinstating the superhero as admirable... with a troublesome twist. The Spiderman films have been straight forward about this, with the first few presenting an overall lovable, positive Spidey. The third one did go darker, but that's the thing... post-Moore, post-90s grit, darkness is both embraced and excused in the superhero. 2000-era movies take a character and happily illustrate all and any potentially dark and troubling traits of his character, but then wave their collective hands at it, and not even so much excuse it as go "so what?" and proceed to glorify the superhero anyway, negative traits and all. Thus we have the more violent Batman, and Iron Man, whom audiences once more think is AWESOME, even though he's an imperialist fuck. (Deciding that WMD are "bad" once they kill precious Americans as opposed to the disposable "others" does not exemplify any sort of actual reform in my view.) Moore has previously complained that the fact that some readers embraced Rorschach for precisely all the traits that Moore gave him as negative ones troubles him, and yet a wast number of online reviews I've read of Watchmen designate him the favorite character. In a post-Sin City culture, one almost wonders how Moore could expect anything else. I am not a fan of this. Makes me wonder whether the Watchmen movie somewhat subverts its own point by being made and produced at this particular cultural point.* After all, it's totally running on the steam of the general superhero kick Hollywood is on right now, and if it does well it'll just feed it all the more, and yet it should be going against it. Wonder what could (will?) serve to explode this current iteration of the superhero mythos, then. I'd love to hear the opinions of those of you who actually read comics on this. I, um, don't really know what I'm talking about whatsoever. *Heck, even the movie version of V for Vendetta kept V dark, but smoothed away the parts of the book where readers were meant to seriously and lastingly consider him morally questionable in favor of creating him as just another Dark Brooding Damaged but who-cares-he's-AWESOME "hero." | ||||||||||
Spill your mind: Pour me a double     |
House of Pomegranates - Swingdancing and superheroes
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March 10th, 2009
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| God, why did you have to hit so many spots I feel I need to cover? I am almost off to work, but I want to at least sort of make a stab at this before I go. It will probably be full of fallacies but I'm just steam-of-thought-ing here. We'll touch on Watchmen first. I've been a comic fan for 20 years, and of many different kinds of comics. I really liked both Watchmen and V for Vendetta as a movie and comic. Watchmen I read first then watched, and V I watched first and then read, so I have had both types of experiences with his work. To see the changes made from what I've read and to see what the original was after I saw the movie first. My verdict? The guy is good but holy crap does he need to be edited, or to just pull back. (I am gonna have to re-read Watchmen to elaborate further, but dude, as for V, think about the Dolls, Vaudeville and acid trips...) I was actually thinking about this A LOT last night. Like Rorsch, let's cover Rorsch while he's sort of fresh. You know full well how when you have a character that is at all violent, but at the same time layered will attract different sorts of fans. You're going to get the "oh cool!" fans, the "He effected me deeply" fans, the ones who are a bit of both and all points in between. Any character effects everyone different, Rorsch is no different. I need to digress here; I honestly hate the move to gritty every comic franchise up. I'm sorry Batman wasn't all ways completely dark and the joker wasn't always a killing machine. People act like the new movie was finally showing what Batman really was. UGHHHHH NO WRONG. It showed an aspect of the Batman comics for the first time, not the sheer essence. I think for me, it lacked total humanity, which is why I preferred V and Watchmen so far. For me the new Batman was flat and soulless. I don't care about Bruce Wayne in it, and with out that? YAWN, next. Not saying it was bad by any means, I just couldn't get emotionally involved because the film wasn't for me, and that's fine. HOWEVER, some comics did start out that way, and Watchmen was one of them. Moore compares Rorsch to Bats: "Moore stated that Rorschach was created as a way of exploring how an archetypical Batman-type character—a driven, vengeance-fueled vigilante—would be like in the real world. He concluded that the short answer was "a nutcase." In the real world. Rorsch is a bum. He sneaks around, smells funny and has no life outside of crime fighting. He's irrevocably damaged and he can't walk away from the life he's ended up in (I'm REALLY trying to not spoil the story for you) it's all or nothing for him. He's like the opposite of V (V is liberal indeed where Rorsch is conservative) in what his beliefs are, but he's also crazy, powerful and tries to do right as he sees it. I know exactly why V gets to me, but I think it's too early in the morning to get into why Rorsch got me this time round (I liked him in the Comic, he was just...more in the movie. And don't be fooled I liked Dan much more) So my main point is regardless of how a character is written, when it is written and what it's intentions are people are going to make of it what they will. "Moore has previously complained that the fact that some readers embraced Rorschach for precisely all the traits that Moore gave him as negative ones troubles him, and yet a wast number of online reviews I've read of Watchmen designate him the favorite character." Because Moore gets story not people. He fancies that he understands people, but he doesn't really. Moore complains about everything because he honestly does not get it. He likes to create these strong masked-heroes of questionable stability who have identity issues, but who want to do the right thing and he's SURPRISED when people like them? Most people can identify withe being sort of messed up. Who wouldn't love to be strong and go out and do stuff like Superman does? Most people don't feel even remotely as pure and fluffy as Superman. V and Rorsch however? Oh yea, we're a pretty mixed up species. | ||||||||
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I don't know ANYONE who embraced Rorsch because he's a sex hating conservative with women problems. Those are what I find his negative traits to be. What negative traits was Moore talking about? I know I embraced him (and god I hate that word here) because I get that anger, I get being fucked up and yea, wouldn't it be awesome if I could do the thing he does (not that I agree with him, or would do it the same) There is so much more going on in a readers relationship with characters then "oh he's cool" and "I want to be him when I grow up." For all Moore writes complicated stories, I guess he forgets people are complicated too. Okay, I'll leave ya alone for now. Sorry I wrote so much. Work time! | ||||||||
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| I'll reply in full later, but just wanted to know that your comment made me quite happy. :-) Just the sort of reply from people who READ comics I wanted to get! | ||||||||
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| That's cool take your time. This eveing I'll probably write one other comment to this post not related to Watchmen, but on comics in general. Glad it was the sort of thing you were looking for. :) | ||||||||
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| Amen! For me, Rorschach stands out as a character because I think it's good that a visibly mentally ill character can be a hero. A lot of people connect to his pain and anger, but because we're not always good at articulating that, we may end up simply saying that he's 'awesome' (which I have done, and I'm not taking that back - Jackie Earle Haley's performance as the movie-version of Rorschach was powerful enough to be awe-inspiring). | ||||||||
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| "but because we're not always good at articulating that, we may end up simply saying that he's 'awesome'" Well put. I have a ton various thoughts in my head on the subject of Rorsch and even more amorphous feelings that are even harder to explain, so you're right sometimes we just say "awesome." "Jackie Earle Haley's performance as the movie-version of Rorschach was powerful enough to be awe-inspiring)." While some of my feelings come from the character alone, I can squarely lay the rest of them on Jackie. Boy hit a homer. I don't think I'd feel this intently if he hadn't played the part. (I really loved the casting in this film in general) | ||||||||
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| My favourite character is Adrian Veidt (in the comics and in the movie...although for slightly more shallow reasons in the movie. ;) Matthew Goode looks like Bowie and Jeremy Irons' impossible lovechild!). Now, I will admit I do like Rorschach as well but not because he is "awesome", but because in the end, there is something noble about him in the vein of a tragic hero; his motto is to live and die by his ideals--"Never compromise in the face of Armageddon. That was always the difference between you and me, Dan." (Also, in the movie, Jackie Earle Haley is fucking amazing.) I'm not condoning his uber-conservative, bigoted view of the world (as Dr. Manhattan says, "Without condoning or condemning, I understand"), but I like the exploration that "good" cannot simply be defined by the deeds one does. What is "good?" Is it the liberal who works toward world peace but also believes the ends justify the means? Or is the protector of innocents who may or may not be an actual psychopath? Who, or what defines an innocent? Etc. etc. Rorschach, admittedly, delivers some of the most badass lines in the movie, or what people would see as "badass." (I think it belongs to Adrian, but my idea of a hero also belongs to him.) The psychopathic tendencies of Rorschach are not smoothed away, although I wish they had played up his bigoted side. (Understandably, I could see there was no time for this; the movie was WAY TOO LONG as it was.) Rorschach is "awesome" because he is crazy enough to do what we have always wanted to be able to do; mete out our own brand of justice without care of the overall consequences. Rorschach has no conscience. This is awesome because it reads as courage on film, not insanity. I would like to see heroes in the vein of Ozymandias, but alas, characters like him inevitably come across as as villains. Why? Because we as a culture (Americans) glorify the individual, the martyr, The One Who Stands Alone (e.g. Rorschach, The Dark Knight, The Lone Ranger--without Tonto, etc.). We condemn the idea that "the ends justify the means" and vilify the greater good indirectly (e.g. Ben from LOST--I think he's serving the greater good anyhow, Adrian Veidt, etc.). Why? Because to serve the greater good often means you cannot have compassion for the individual. Just some thoughts. I was actually going to post on this topic today. :) | ||||||
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| Just to say about Alan Moore as well: he is insane. Like...certifiably. I hardly take his word on anything (despite my enormous creative crush); he believes his characters exist in an alternate universe that only he has access to. He's also notoriously full of himself (see his comments on LOST GIRLS--a work of pornography--beautiful, complex, and amazing and what he tries to accomplish is admirable, but he sometimes forgets that the characters that only he has access to are now in the hands of the general public. In short, he too, is a nutcase. Hence why I adore him). | ||||||
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House of Pomegranates - Swingdancing and superheroes
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