Just a quick hit from me, paragraphs four and five in particular are right on the money when it comes to the upcoming Watchmen film.
Most of the time, I don't feel the fannish/masochistic need to expose myself to what I have no doubt will be a terrible adaptation of a comic that I love. I haven't seen a single "Alan Moore film" in the cinema since League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But then again, I can't decide where I fall when it comes to Watchmen. I may very well be tempted after all.
And incidentally, that masochistic urge is still driving me towards the upcoming Star Trek film, despite my better judgment.
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Don't go to sleep, you may wake up a hero
I've been thinking a lot about Batman recently (no doubt inspired by some truly astonishingly long sessions on my flatmate's copy of Lego Batman for the XBox), and have honestly been meaning for quite some time to turn a lot of my half-baked thoughts on the character and his history into a full-fledged post here on the blog, but I've been having some difficulty. The issue at hand is essentially my inability to reconcile my desire to do a full-on, fully-researched, post-grad level essay on the political/social underpinnings of the character and his fictional universe, a lot of which have re-entered public discourse since the debut of The Dark Knight and its at times sledgehammer-subtle allusions to the Bush doctrine; and my desire to simply rabbit on about some of the sillier comics/videogames that I like and post some pretty pictures (except that I never really like adding pictures in blogger, it really is too much of a pain).
Above: the source of so much recent consternation for me.
Still, I imagine I'm not going to be able to write about anything else until I've at least got this one out of my system, so here goes a pretty half-assed post about a 70-year old superhero (I mean that the comics have been around for that long, not that Bruce Wayne is a septuagenarian, obviously) written almost solely so that I can then go on to write about other things.
Firstly, to sate the former of the two desires outlined above in quite possibly the laziest way possible, here's a pretty neat sixty-second summary of why Batman is at heart a character straight out of Conservative fable (courtesy of Reginald D. Hunter):
I've honestly tried to elaborate on Hunter's point, but every time I do, I read my words back and realise just how incredibly pretentious they sound, so I end up scrapping the whole thing. Needless to say that I think that I'm going to need to have a good, long look at superhero fiction as a whole, and wonder whether there can be any way around the political paradigms so deeply embedded into the narrative that makes up the backbone of the genre.
Then I might make a start on analysing that whole "women in refrigerators" thing, too.
One thing I would like to point out though is a specific Batman comic book I read recently. "Urban Legend" was written by Bill Willingham and was published in a 2003 issue of the Batman comic Legends of the Dark Knight (I could spend entire posts looking at Willingham's own politics, but that's not the point of this post), although I read it as part of the "and Other Tales" of the Batman Begins: The Movie and Other Tales of the Dark Knight collection. The story begins with a beaten and brusied Batman, shown to be suffering from amnesia, all ailments apparently resulting from a recent fight against some unknown criminals against whom Batman clearly came out the worse off. Still, despite his lack of knowledge about his whereabouts, his secret identity, or even his specific mission, and with some really remarkable physical injuries slowing him down, Batman takes one look at himself and realises the superhero he must be, and sets off to find and mete out justice to the villains whom he works out must be responsible for his current condition. The whole thing reads like a bit of a darkly comic farce, to be honest, with Batman phoning the Gotham City police from a payphone, calling a cab because he cannot locate his Batmobile and getting brained by a prostitute that he actually manages to save from a vindictive pimp. Still, when Batman finally reaches the headquarters of the gang of criminals he has spent the last twenty-or-so pages searching for, the twist is revealed as the real Batman shows up and dispatches the criminals, exposing the Batman that we've been following as merely a confused amnesiac who woke up in a Batman suit (for reasons that are explained within the comic but are mundane and incidental, really) and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
The whole thing has echoes of everything from Memento to Dark City, but a more specific mirror can be found in Alan Moore and Rick Veitch's 1999 Greyshirt short "Amnesia" from the pages of Tomorrow Stories #1. Whereas "Urban Legend", despite its occasional comic turns, seems ultimately an optimistic piece about the innate goodness that could be awakened in us all ("what if, tomorrow, you woke up believing yourself to be a superhero? Maybe you too would act upon all that that role bestows," the comic seems to be saying), "Amnesia" looks at this same concept from the other side of the looking glass, imagining instead an amnesiac who wakes to find himself surrounded by just the right clues to make him believe that he is in fact a certain notable serial killer. In his quest to flee the police, whom he believes are after him, he kills another couple of people, before it is of course all revealed to him that, before those murders, he was in fact a completely innocent man, and actually received his amnesia-causing injury in an altercation with the real serial killer (if memory serves me correctly, that is. It's been a while since I've read this one).
The two tales may, on the surface, appear to be telling the same story, but it's hard to ignore the ultimately far more optimistic note of the former (although that was published later and may, perhaps, have actually been inspired by the Moore tale). An idea central to the Batman mythos is that fact that he really is just a man (a concept from which Batman Begins extracts a lot of mileage, emphasising the difference between a mortal man and a faceless figurehead, the darker side of which is explored in that film's sequel), but one whose 'powers' come from the fact that he has spent years building himself into a very different kind of 'superman': the unspoken implication being the supposedly inspirational message that anyone of us could do the same if only we had the will to do so; if only we could also spend years training our minds and bodies the way that Bruce Wayne did. Of course, this is once again where the spectre of the underpinning right-wing politics of superhero narratives begin to show, as such an assertion renders totally invisble the phenomenal privelege that Bruce Wayne enjoys. Despite what certain people would have you believe, we literally cannot all afford to become superheroes.
Edited to add: there are of course exceptions to prove every rule. For a great example, I'd highly recommend immersing yourself in Alan Moore's V for Vendetta as well as almost any comic featuring transparent V knock-off Anarky. Also, while we're on the subject of Mr Moore, don't forget to go out and read Watchmen right now, before the film comes out and potentially ruins any chance that you might be tempted to read it. Hurry, the film's release is only days away!
Above: the source of so much recent consternation for me.Still, I imagine I'm not going to be able to write about anything else until I've at least got this one out of my system, so here goes a pretty half-assed post about a 70-year old superhero (I mean that the comics have been around for that long, not that Bruce Wayne is a septuagenarian, obviously) written almost solely so that I can then go on to write about other things.
Firstly, to sate the former of the two desires outlined above in quite possibly the laziest way possible, here's a pretty neat sixty-second summary of why Batman is at heart a character straight out of Conservative fable (courtesy of Reginald D. Hunter):
I've honestly tried to elaborate on Hunter's point, but every time I do, I read my words back and realise just how incredibly pretentious they sound, so I end up scrapping the whole thing. Needless to say that I think that I'm going to need to have a good, long look at superhero fiction as a whole, and wonder whether there can be any way around the political paradigms so deeply embedded into the narrative that makes up the backbone of the genre.
Then I might make a start on analysing that whole "women in refrigerators" thing, too.
One thing I would like to point out though is a specific Batman comic book I read recently. "Urban Legend" was written by Bill Willingham and was published in a 2003 issue of the Batman comic Legends of the Dark Knight (I could spend entire posts looking at Willingham's own politics, but that's not the point of this post), although I read it as part of the "and Other Tales" of the Batman Begins: The Movie and Other Tales of the Dark Knight collection. The story begins with a beaten and brusied Batman, shown to be suffering from amnesia, all ailments apparently resulting from a recent fight against some unknown criminals against whom Batman clearly came out the worse off. Still, despite his lack of knowledge about his whereabouts, his secret identity, or even his specific mission, and with some really remarkable physical injuries slowing him down, Batman takes one look at himself and realises the superhero he must be, and sets off to find and mete out justice to the villains whom he works out must be responsible for his current condition. The whole thing reads like a bit of a darkly comic farce, to be honest, with Batman phoning the Gotham City police from a payphone, calling a cab because he cannot locate his Batmobile and getting brained by a prostitute that he actually manages to save from a vindictive pimp. Still, when Batman finally reaches the headquarters of the gang of criminals he has spent the last twenty-or-so pages searching for, the twist is revealed as the real Batman shows up and dispatches the criminals, exposing the Batman that we've been following as merely a confused amnesiac who woke up in a Batman suit (for reasons that are explained within the comic but are mundane and incidental, really) and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Above: Urban Legend
The whole thing has echoes of everything from Memento to Dark City, but a more specific mirror can be found in Alan Moore and Rick Veitch's 1999 Greyshirt short "Amnesia" from the pages of Tomorrow Stories #1. Whereas "Urban Legend", despite its occasional comic turns, seems ultimately an optimistic piece about the innate goodness that could be awakened in us all ("what if, tomorrow, you woke up believing yourself to be a superhero? Maybe you too would act upon all that that role bestows," the comic seems to be saying), "Amnesia" looks at this same concept from the other side of the looking glass, imagining instead an amnesiac who wakes to find himself surrounded by just the right clues to make him believe that he is in fact a certain notable serial killer. In his quest to flee the police, whom he believes are after him, he kills another couple of people, before it is of course all revealed to him that, before those murders, he was in fact a completely innocent man, and actually received his amnesia-causing injury in an altercation with the real serial killer (if memory serves me correctly, that is. It's been a while since I've read this one).
The two tales may, on the surface, appear to be telling the same story, but it's hard to ignore the ultimately far more optimistic note of the former (although that was published later and may, perhaps, have actually been inspired by the Moore tale). An idea central to the Batman mythos is that fact that he really is just a man (a concept from which Batman Begins extracts a lot of mileage, emphasising the difference between a mortal man and a faceless figurehead, the darker side of which is explored in that film's sequel), but one whose 'powers' come from the fact that he has spent years building himself into a very different kind of 'superman': the unspoken implication being the supposedly inspirational message that anyone of us could do the same if only we had the will to do so; if only we could also spend years training our minds and bodies the way that Bruce Wayne did. Of course, this is once again where the spectre of the underpinning right-wing politics of superhero narratives begin to show, as such an assertion renders totally invisble the phenomenal privelege that Bruce Wayne enjoys. Despite what certain people would have you believe, we literally cannot all afford to become superheroes.
Edited to add: there are of course exceptions to prove every rule. For a great example, I'd highly recommend immersing yourself in Alan Moore's V for Vendetta as well as almost any comic featuring transparent V knock-off Anarky. Also, while we're on the subject of Mr Moore, don't forget to go out and read Watchmen right now, before the film comes out and potentially ruins any chance that you might be tempted to read it. Hurry, the film's release is only days away!
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Blah blah Buffy blah blah
One amusing aspect of not only my personality but the personalities of humans worldwide is that I can give a damn about the big and the small. Just because I think and talk about the huge, obvious evils of the world such as rampant sexism and racism doesn't mean that I can't occasionally get caught up in a three hour conversation about everything that is wrong with the new Star Trek film. I can be petty sometimes. I'm a human being. Vice versa, just because I talk about the ups and downs of DnD 3.5 doesn't mean I don't care about the larger issues.
All of this really is just a preamble to the fact that I'm now going to start ranting about fandom, so beware, you're opinion about my values may just be about to plummet (as if it was particularly high to start with). That's kind of why I've put that big disclaimer up there.
You know what I hate? These kind of Thomas-Hobbes-as-applied-to-geekdom way of thinking that says that if you are a fan of something, you're not allowed to criticise it. "If all you do is say 'I hate this' and 'I hate that' then you're not a true fan" cry some idiots, completely unaware that showing an inclination towards something does not mean I get to automatically switch off my critical faculties and disregard anything that it might do that is patently wrong or stupid. Yes, some people may bitch to high heaven all the time and may never seem to have a positive thing to say about their chosen fandom. I agree, that's fucking irritating. But that's different from, say, being a fan of a director/writer/actor/artist/TV-show producer and blindly saying that you really really love everything that they've ever done when as a matter of fact, that likelihood is that not only will they occassionally fuck up (remember, they're human too) or else do something that doesn't appeal to your particular taste or what you otherwise really like about that person's work, but that you as a fan are more likely to be aware of said missteps and will typically have the appropriate knowledge and vocabulary to explain what it is that you particularly dislike about these aspects of your pastime and/or passion gone wrong. Although - again, as a disclaimer - this does not mean I'm aware that some people truly are idiots who do nothing but complain about the most moronic things for the most stupid reasons.
That said, I just want to get it off my chest that whilst I'm generally a massive, feck-off huge fan of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise, here's a list of a few things I just can't stand.
- Spike. Honest to god, I could dedicate an entire blog about the many and various ways that I do not like Spike. To be honest, I actually really liked him during season two of the show. In the sense of full disclosure, I'd actually rank him amongst one of my favourite things from that season. But god damn, why the hell did they have to go and bring him back in just the most appalling way(s)? Almost any and all appearances by Spike have that reek of insincerity and money-men dictated decisions; "hey, this character's popular, why don't you put him in the show some more?" rather than including him for reasons that, say, make any kind of story-sense. The biggest culprit here is obviously his inclusion in Angel season five, where he not only shamelessly brought back from the dead following what was supposed to be a heroic sacrifice, but his sacrifice was essentially nullified by the amusing geek-history footnote that the WB had started promoting Angel season five before UPN aired Spike's supposedly big, important sacrifice, making it all seem rather muted and pointless in the eyes of the viewers who watched it, as we all knew he was coming back. Oh yeah, the episode "Chosen" should probably make this list of BtVS things I could spend all day criticising too.
- The fallacy that states that if you like BtVS and/or Angel, you must also like Firefly. The other thing that I could easily dedicate an entire blog towards is my many and varied criticisms of the show Firefly, which, for the uninitiated, was a thankfully short-lived science-ficition television series (which later scored a spin-off film) produced by a lot of the same people behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I do have some good things to say about the series, but a lot of that is buried under the fact that I think much of it is hackneyed misfits-in-space/Western stuff that was getting old and done-before long before Joss Whedon took his hand to it. Many place the blame for Firefly's demise on the shenanigans that were going on behind the scenes: the networks' continual fucking around with the show. This no doubt contributed greatly, but I also think that, in no uncertain terms, it simply was not a particularly good show.
Ok, well, it looks like this list is going to end at two for now as I'm kind of running out of bilious steam and I don't like it when I don't finish a post in one sitting so I'm really not going to come back to this post and add to it, so that's really it for now. Once again, I just want to reiterate that I freakin' love BtVS. As shows go it may have a rather considerable series of ups and downs, but most of these I simply take as idiosyncracies or interesting faults that are natural symptoms of what the show did really well at least 50% of the time. I'm not for a moment going to say that it's the best work of art to ever come out of the Northern Hemisphere. That would be stupid. But the nature of fandom is that I still really like it, warts and all ("Where the Wild Things Are" and all), and that I'm willing to engage with other fans about the various bits that I like and dislike.
In the interest of fairness, here are some things that are popularly disliked about BtVS/Angel that I actually really like:
- Connor.
- "The Girl in Question".
- Riley Finn (although only in season five. I mean jeez, I'm not crazy. Seriously though, having him become a depressive, sympathic perpetual outsider (the same mould used for all of Buffy's major paramours) was a really good turn).
Just so that I can at least pretend I've done something more than talk about trivia I happen to be particularly passionate about, here's a link to the latest weekly round-up at feministing. Go, think about public attitudes to breast-cancer survivors and women over 50 in the modelling industry, go! Then come back and maybe we can chat about Buffy some more. After all, how astonishingly unfun would fandom be if these minor disagreements didn't open to door to discoure amongst peers, eh?
Sunday, 25 January 2009
I've got to sit down and do another proper post soon...
...But in the mean-time, please enjoy The Breeders' cover of "Wicked Little Town."
Monday, 12 January 2009
I'm totally stealing this from Siskoid, but...
The Psychocrystals...
...they glitter with death!
GLITTER with DEATH!!
(more ridiculousness, plus a hat tip)
Saturday, 10 January 2009
Friday, 9 January 2009
Falwell would be proud
Correction: the funniest two minutes of your week may just be the CDAC's top ten instances of Christian-bashing in America. Apparently, the fact that Barack Obama isn't a Christian (note: he is one!) actually qualifies as a veritable attack on Christianity itself! Fantastic stuff.
#1 is my favourite though. Oh those poor American Christians, so oppressed by the gays...
Haskins!
Yay! The latest infomania is out! It's been far too long since I've been exposed to some new Sarah Haskins hilarity.
You know what, I haven't even seen her latest video yet, and still I'm linking to it, so convinced am I that'll it'll be the funniest two minutes of my week (and possibly yours, too!).
Sunday, 4 January 2009
On close-mindedness
Wow, I haven't updated this thing in ages. This is probably due to that massive downturn in the amount of insomnia I've been suffering lately; seeing as how insomnia is the number one cause of content being generated on this blog. Well, here I am in the middle of the night, after having - possibly unwisely - watched some of those films that I got in the January/closing down sales back-to-back and late into the early hours (including the weird combination of watching Aliens vs Predator: Requiem followed by the 2007 version of Hairspray) and it seems like it's time for another post, perhaps another atheist vignette.
One of the most ludicrous arguments against atheism that I've ever heard, and that I also keep hearing, from numerous sources and in numerous ways, is that atheists are all incredibly close-minded, that we're just so completely closed off from any ideas other than those immediately apparent to our limited senses that we just can't see the bigger picture, we just can't open our minds to the grand, supernatural reality of things, that if we just all stopped being so incredibly myopic and intellectually shallow we'd see the awesome reality that is the existence of god(s).
This, of course, is the most bullshit piece of reasoning I've ever heard.
I think the particular iteration of this argument that got me riled up enough to actually come out and write this post is the one that I heard expressed by this guy (little note to that guy: the fact that you happen to disagree with atheism does not technically in any way make atheism "self-refuting.") Still, this post is going to deal with a more general version of this argument than the one that guy presents. This isn't just a response to that one particular little vid, but that vid sure did make me angry.
At first it's easy to see the appeal of this whole "atheists are close-minded" argument. After all, atheists do not typically appear to be open to the idea of the existence of god(s) any more than they are to the idea of the existence of werewolves or wood nymphs. This must surely mean that they're just close-minded, right? They're just all Scullys, all totally closed off to the idea of anything existing beyond what they can see, hear, smell, taste and touch, right? All they need is some nice, religious Mulder to show them the way, right? Wrong. Atheists are probably some of the most open-minded people you'll ever meet, as they are typically the kind of people who embrace scientific reasoning, which highly values an openness and acceptance of all sorts of information. The truth is, if tomorrow, someone found absolute, indefatiguable proof that evolution is wrong, then all of those godless, anti-creationist scientists would have to say "well, what do you know, looks like we were wrong" and accept this new information. This is the way scientific reasoning works: by being fluid and succeptable to change. After all, when was the last time you went to your doctor only to be told that you were having an attack of bad humours? Doctors and scientists are not so stubborn as to believe in such outdated theories. Scientific theories are always only as good as they need to be until new evidence comes to light.
Take religious thinking on the other hand. Religious thinking is stubborn, totally resistant to change, revision or acceptance of new information that might actually broaden one's horizons somewhat. If someone believes that the first man was constructed out of the dust of the Earth itself, then no amount of reasoning will change that person's mind. To paraphrase a classic Jonathan Swift quotation, you cannot reason someone out of a position that they did not get into by way of reason.
Religious thinking is the ultimate in close-mindedness. It is "my religion is right and yours is wrong." People may be accepting of people of other religions, but they're really not being very good religious people if they give other religions equal weight in their heart of hearts. Being religious requires being biased. Atheism, on the other hand, views all religions with an open mind. The atheist says, "ok Hindus, Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc" (sorry to brush off so many religions with a mere "etc" there, I feel like Rev. Lovejoy when he did that whole "or miscellaneous" thing) "come to me and tell me what your religion has over every other one, that makes yours more sound and reasonable over all of the others" and of course, all the religious mind can offer in response to that is a pathetic "well, it's obvious, isn't it? Mine is just right and the others are just wrong!" In the eyes of the impartial atheist, all religions are of equal validity.
Open-minded does not mean automatically being willing to accept without question the existence of angels, demons, fairies or whatnot. Open-mindedness is when one does not stubbornly stick with outdated modes of thinking that have been shown to be lacking when compared to actual evidence and knowledge of the world and the way that it works time and time again. When the world has been shown to not fly through space by riding on the back of a giant turtle, it might be time to give up on that belief, rather than being close-minded and refusing to let any alternative idea into your head.
This is, as these things so often do, turning into a rant. Still, I'm just so sick of being called "close-minded" because I do not accept the existence of things that are literally impossible. It's far more close-minded to believe that your impossible set of beliefs has some sort of special status that elevates it above other people's impossible beliefs, as you're just showing a clear bias and unwillingness to accept information that really is just as valid and acceptable as what you're already going on. To paraphrase someone else, all people are atheists of a sort, in that they vehemently deny the existence of thousands of gods, atheists just take it one step further.
I am an open-minded atheist. I accept all possibilities, but naturally, I gravitate towards those that actually seem grounded in the reality that I know and that we all share. I would gladly accept any religion, if I believed that any religion were founded on greater validity than "well, isn't it obvious this one is the right one?" Not if you're being open-minded about it, no.
Heh, maybe I'll write about something less heavy next post, I promise. Maybe Sinfest again. Or hey, maybe Penny Arcade.
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