My reader recently voiced a complaint that I hadn't updated this little journal in a while. I don't think that's a fair statement, but who am I to argue? I must respond.
I was running one night, this was when I was still living in DeKalb, and an SUV pulled up beside me. From it, an occupant ordered that I "eat his asshole." Similar things have occurred to me, and the result is always the same: I lose faith in humanity and the offender drives off. Cowardice does that, yes, but maybe it's a matter boorishness. Maybe it isn't about fear.
It's not so much that these people are afraid of me: I like to smile. People just like sniping from an unassailable position. They like it. It makes them feel safe. This explains my recent flamewar on YouTube. I made a considered comment, and got reprimanded. I offered an explanation, which was ridiculed. I then proceeded to tear into this guy on terms of his illiteracy. He responded with liberal application of variations of "fuck."
Looking around, I see a lot of people who deserve to be put in work camps, as they are obviously too inept to be allowed in regular society. Not that I'm saying we should do that, mind you. I just like the thought. When I realize this plan will never come to fruition, though, I get to the next thought. Which is, "this world is terribly, terribly boned. Hard."
I know it's not a new observation, but this place is unfair and ignorant. I think the extent to which our society has become an idiocracy is newer, but it's been around for some time. We're embracing views pretty blindly, simply because someone might have told us something one time, and that equals truth. You know, Truth!
It was an adherent to Truth I was listening to when I was driving to DeKalb one day, and I paid him mind because he was reviewing Watchmen. My excitement for the movie was palpable (I enjoyed it a lot, by the way), but I wasn't expecting to enjoy the review. I'm not a big K-LOVE fan. The reviewer described the movie as "pornographic" and claimed it looked like The Dark Knight. While the first assertion did not, at least, surprise me, the second was clearly incorrect. I came across another Christian review for Watchmen earlier tonight. One reader comment claims "without storyline, it is like a castle without a story." I have no damn clue what in the hell that even means. These people are idiots, the very kind of people who make us targets for the dreaded "liberal media" and terrorists. And, assuming the increasingly cacophonous voice of these people, I might learn Arabic.
All this comes to me at a time when I am not particularly pleased with God. I still believe the Gospel, and that I need Christ. Actively need him, that is. I just have been unsure if I want Him around. I've been thinking about some things, like His killing of Egyptian children, revoking His promise from Moses, and allowing AIG CEOs to continue breathing (Look! I'm topical!). Of course, a lot of this is my jockeying around frustration I have in my life, but I can't sell a single piece of writing while He allows Dan Brown to publish, and Hannah Montana to release a movie. To clarify, I just think both produce crap, no opinion on personal outlooks withstanding.
I look at where I am now, and of course I'm angry. And then I think about how we are to know that the evil in the world is our fault, but everything from God is good. Well, I have a little problem with this one, as I don't think it should be so easy to have it both ways. If I took this concern to a pastor, I would be told, "God can do X, but you can't do X because if God does it He's right and if you do it you're sinning." "X" can be things like being jealous, revoking vows or killing. I understand the theology, but it's still maddening.
It bothers me because I don't even get the chance to argue. The statement I want to debate rides away in an SUV with "DON'T BLASPHEME!" printed on the side. I just can't approach "eat my asshole" or "God's always right" safely. One might get me run over, the other could accompany threats of eternal damnation. Again, I know I'm saved, but I've been questioning how much I want to be associated with all of this, this Christianity.
But tonight, I got my answer. I remember why I need to identify with Jesus. I read a Christian review for Coraline, a book and movie I adore. Read it here. Go ahead, I'll wait. I hope you're sufficiently raging, because I'm going to continue, now. I look at something like that, and remember: my problem with God is not nearly as important as other people's. Some people look at bits of writing like that, and cannot understand how someone so ignorant, confused and downright mean could possibly be right about the big mystery. Michael Karounos's problem with God is having turned Him from a tower of refuge into one from which you can pick on people. To be fair, this guy has it right. But the idiots, they don't understand Christianity, Christ, either of those entities' place in our world or said world. If I walk away from Jesus, saying, "I've gotten all I need from You, but You and your Father, well You're just too difficult," I'll let these fundamentalist fools poison the minds of people who might need to see Jesus instead of JAY-sus. That's JAY-sus as in, "JAY-sus heal this poor woman... and while I have your attention, good job on that whole AIDS thing. Faggots had it comin'."
If I stop running the race just because something that doesn't sit well with me comes along, I lose, anyone I could help loses, and that's unacceptable--especially since these are both criteria, really, in which I win. Sure, God has a plan for me I won't always like. And He doesn't think He needs to let me in on it, let alone ask for input. Even so, I think that's reconcilable in terms of, you know, avoiding eternity in Hell. His is the kind of forgiveness that teaches me to not kill stupid people for principle's sake alone. I still need Him, and even though He might not need me, these jerks do. That's three links, by the way.
So, I'm going to go back to God, say I'm sorry for my tantrum, and continue to pursue the de-idifi...unstupi... I don't want people staying dumb. Watch out, YouTube commenters, car-yellers and hardliners. I'm back, and I'm armed. With knowledge.
Showing posts with label watchmen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label watchmen. Show all posts
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Let's Look at This One More Time...
Postmodernist revisionism has us by the nuts. Or, in English, we all have hard-ons for perverting what we traditionally think to be innocent. Maybe "perverting" isn't the right word. A better word might be, rationalizing. Nowadays, people want an escapism that isn't escape at all. They want to see their world, exciting. We love/hate our world, plus; our world plus superheroes, our world plus video game characters, the list goes on and on. With the release of the long-awaited Watchmen and the less long-awaited second episode of There Will Be Brawl, I've been thinking about how we rethink our heroes.
For those of you not in the know (both of you), Watchmen is, ultimately, a collection of stories about superheroes and their irrevocably messed up lives. The book is pretty old now, and was always a fiercely postmodern work, but the movie takes a couple steps forward in this area, so I'll focus on it. Watchmen denies a lot of what we assume about superheroes. You can attribute various proxies to its characters; I like to describe the sundry costumed adventurers as "______ if he/she didn't give a damn about anything." The Comedian is, in my mind, who Captain America would have been under Nixon. Dr. Manhattan is even more powerful than Superman, but has no real attachment to his home, unlike the Man of Steel focusing so much on his adopted status. I know this is a cursory way of explaining the characters, but it serves to get my friends into the book.
And when they do, they see what I mean. These characters would have nothing to do with the tried and true, primary-colored champions of American Exceptionalism we know and love. Comedian would probably consider Captain America (at least Steve Rodgers) as something of a faggot, not wanted to mow down dissenters and protesters. Manhattan would summarily dismiss the Man of Tomorrow's desire to save life. To Ostermann, it would simply be superfluous effort. In the movie, Nite Owl is much more brutal, and Silk Spectre II is a killer. While these may be extreme examples, but they shed some light on how we are beginning to look at superhero--for lack of a better term, as "comic book" would include A History of Violence and Road to Perdition--escapism. Considering the trend, superheroes are getting more realistic. Spider-Man existed in a more believable world, and now Batman and Iron Man look at real world problems, being solved and exacerbated by the presence of masks. These new superheroes are darker, meaner and more relevant. This is no longer Tim Burton's Batman. That was a world from which the viewers could safely distance themselves. It was a bleak, sprawling and, most importantly, idealized landscape. Now, if you watch a superhero movie, you will most likely recognize the world as your own. Gotham looks an awful lot like Chicago. The Middle East looks like the Middle East. It can be terrifying to think of the insanity of society or war encroaching in our lives, which is why the heroes win. And they should. We need Batman and Iron Man to triumph over evil because, for decades, that is what they do: they save us.
This is where Watchmen questions our desire to be safe. It presents a world that looks and sounds similar to our own, but is subtly different. If Bill Finger and Tim Burton crafted a dystopian 40's/80's American city, Moore and Snyder showcase a recent past/near future in which you wouldn't want to live. Watchmen postulates if superheroes would be so great after all, and offers mixed evidence. I still feel it, both as a book and a film, has mismatched priorities in some of its storytelling, but it is, at best, skeptical of cowled do-gooders. Which is why it's a classic: we want to know what would happen if our heroes failed, not so much in their exploits, but in their persons.
There Will Be Brawl thinks about this same thing, and decides that the characters are correct, Mario is still Mario, Princess Peach is Princess Peach, but the world around them is suspect. Mushrooms are drugs. The Koopa Coins littering the Mushroom Kingdom are avarice given shape. Even when it seems the characters are the ones who have changed, its a matter of interpretation. Boiled down, Kirby is a monster, a cannibal. The Mario Bros. are brutal mushroom heads (not literally, like Toad). Peach is not a cocktease, as you'd think from the games, but rather a slut in a little crown. Unlike Watchmen, There Will Be Brawl shows us a world we only know from its approximation in our own. Watching it, one could wonder if something was lost in translation, and this was a more accurate way of looking at the Nintendo universe. What is scary is, the series candidly represents what the Nintendo world would be like if it was our world. Watch the first episode here.
These are the games many children of my generation grew up playing, and now we can see them more as we see ourselves.
In the end, this is what all the pomo, all the revisionism is. It is a means of rending imaginary worlds into our own. Superheroes like Batman and Iron, Man along with Rorschach and V, ask hard questions about our world while making what was once a safe way of asking, movies and comics, dicey territory. The Nintendo denizens throw in our faces what we loved as children, only to find it has become mired in the filth in which we live. This is not something we should find disappointing or disenchanting. It is something to consider. We no longer read old Batman comics for a reason: they're outdated. Superman Returns was largely panned because it was found to be preachy. People want heroes with whom they can identify in worlds they can recognize. This newfound importance in the postmodern "hero" is a shepherd. We do not have to root for A because he is good and B is evil. We can ask questions about our own lives, what our heroes really say about us, and grow as people. Our new superheroes demand of you, would you implement a Big Brother network to catch a madman, beating cops in the process? Would you use the tools of war to do good? Would you, well, I'm not going to ask you what Watchmen asks. Go see/read it yourself. It may be a hard question, but our new heroes lead us not by telling us where to go, but forcing us to find the answer within ourselves.
For those of you not in the know (both of you), Watchmen is, ultimately, a collection of stories about superheroes and their irrevocably messed up lives. The book is pretty old now, and was always a fiercely postmodern work, but the movie takes a couple steps forward in this area, so I'll focus on it. Watchmen denies a lot of what we assume about superheroes. You can attribute various proxies to its characters; I like to describe the sundry costumed adventurers as "______ if he/she didn't give a damn about anything." The Comedian is, in my mind, who Captain America would have been under Nixon. Dr. Manhattan is even more powerful than Superman, but has no real attachment to his home, unlike the Man of Steel focusing so much on his adopted status. I know this is a cursory way of explaining the characters, but it serves to get my friends into the book.
And when they do, they see what I mean. These characters would have nothing to do with the tried and true, primary-colored champions of American Exceptionalism we know and love. Comedian would probably consider Captain America (at least Steve Rodgers) as something of a faggot, not wanted to mow down dissenters and protesters. Manhattan would summarily dismiss the Man of Tomorrow's desire to save life. To Ostermann, it would simply be superfluous effort. In the movie, Nite Owl is much more brutal, and Silk Spectre II is a killer. While these may be extreme examples, but they shed some light on how we are beginning to look at superhero--for lack of a better term, as "comic book" would include A History of Violence and Road to Perdition--escapism. Considering the trend, superheroes are getting more realistic. Spider-Man existed in a more believable world, and now Batman and Iron Man look at real world problems, being solved and exacerbated by the presence of masks. These new superheroes are darker, meaner and more relevant. This is no longer Tim Burton's Batman. That was a world from which the viewers could safely distance themselves. It was a bleak, sprawling and, most importantly, idealized landscape. Now, if you watch a superhero movie, you will most likely recognize the world as your own. Gotham looks an awful lot like Chicago. The Middle East looks like the Middle East. It can be terrifying to think of the insanity of society or war encroaching in our lives, which is why the heroes win. And they should. We need Batman and Iron Man to triumph over evil because, for decades, that is what they do: they save us.
This is where Watchmen questions our desire to be safe. It presents a world that looks and sounds similar to our own, but is subtly different. If Bill Finger and Tim Burton crafted a dystopian 40's/80's American city, Moore and Snyder showcase a recent past/near future in which you wouldn't want to live. Watchmen postulates if superheroes would be so great after all, and offers mixed evidence. I still feel it, both as a book and a film, has mismatched priorities in some of its storytelling, but it is, at best, skeptical of cowled do-gooders. Which is why it's a classic: we want to know what would happen if our heroes failed, not so much in their exploits, but in their persons.
There Will Be Brawl thinks about this same thing, and decides that the characters are correct, Mario is still Mario, Princess Peach is Princess Peach, but the world around them is suspect. Mushrooms are drugs. The Koopa Coins littering the Mushroom Kingdom are avarice given shape. Even when it seems the characters are the ones who have changed, its a matter of interpretation. Boiled down, Kirby is a monster, a cannibal. The Mario Bros. are brutal mushroom heads (not literally, like Toad). Peach is not a cocktease, as you'd think from the games, but rather a slut in a little crown. Unlike Watchmen, There Will Be Brawl shows us a world we only know from its approximation in our own. Watching it, one could wonder if something was lost in translation, and this was a more accurate way of looking at the Nintendo universe. What is scary is, the series candidly represents what the Nintendo world would be like if it was our world. Watch the first episode here.
These are the games many children of my generation grew up playing, and now we can see them more as we see ourselves.
In the end, this is what all the pomo, all the revisionism is. It is a means of rending imaginary worlds into our own. Superheroes like Batman and Iron, Man along with Rorschach and V, ask hard questions about our world while making what was once a safe way of asking, movies and comics, dicey territory. The Nintendo denizens throw in our faces what we loved as children, only to find it has become mired in the filth in which we live. This is not something we should find disappointing or disenchanting. It is something to consider. We no longer read old Batman comics for a reason: they're outdated. Superman Returns was largely panned because it was found to be preachy. People want heroes with whom they can identify in worlds they can recognize. This newfound importance in the postmodern "hero" is a shepherd. We do not have to root for A because he is good and B is evil. We can ask questions about our own lives, what our heroes really say about us, and grow as people. Our new superheroes demand of you, would you implement a Big Brother network to catch a madman, beating cops in the process? Would you use the tools of war to do good? Would you, well, I'm not going to ask you what Watchmen asks. Go see/read it yourself. It may be a hard question, but our new heroes lead us not by telling us where to go, but forcing us to find the answer within ourselves.
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