Link of the Week: John Chu’s “Stand Back! I’m Going To Quote Junot Díaz (Thinking about language)”
John Chu’s recent post over at The Booksmugglers is a must read. He talks about the difficulty of including foreign language in works of fiction and has some truly interesting things to say on the subject. An excerpt: Whereas listeners might reasonably experience that orchestration both ways, readers either understand a foreign language or they don’t. However, like how the orchestration of the Carousel Waltz must be compelling in either instrumentation, a story that makes use of dialect or foreign language must be compelling either way. Non-fluent readers must never feel as though something is missing but fluent readers must never feel as though anything is extraneous. Go on. Read the whole thing.
Mass Market Paperback Bingo #2: Pick a Book; I’ll Read and Review It
I had a bit of an disaster today: I got stuck in a thunderstorm, which resulted in my backpack, my notebooks, and my copy of Ink and Steel by Elizabeth Bear getting soaked through. Since the Bear book is the one I’m supposed to be reading for MMPB Bingo, I’ve decided to temporarily jump ahead to the next shelf on the same bookcase (front row of books) so I can at least start reading something else while Ink and Steel dries out. If you’ve not seen this before, here’s how it works: You find a book in one of the images below that you’d like me to read (if you load the images on their own, they should be large enough to read everything without squinting). You leave a comment below telling me why you’d like me to read and review it. There are no guidelines for this part. You can say something silly. You can be dead serious. You can appeal to my corrupt side. Doesn’t matter. I’ll pick whichever comment sounds most appealing to me. I pick a winner, and then I read and review the book. It’s pretty straight forward, no? So have at it. Here are the images:
On Grit, Gore, and the Fantasy of Everyday Life in SF
I’m not going to re-hash old arguments about grimdark or gory fiction or whatever. Originally, I had meant to respond to the question “can fiction be too gritty?” I’m not convinced that fiction has limits in any standardized sense. Some of us may not like gore or grit (or that grr feeling we get when an author kills a favorite character), but others do; the idea that fiction as a whole cannot have material for each of us on the basis of some arbitrary standard about what is “too much” seems preposterous to me. You like gory fiction? Great, here’s a whole bunch of stuff just for you (says Fiction)! I think the more interesting question is “why does grit bother some of us?” There are a lot of ways to approach that question. Take Game of Thrones as an obvious example. (Spoilers ahead) As a show, Game of Thrones is often violent and “unsafe” in the sense that its characters are always on the chopping block. People die painful, horrifying deaths when we least expect them to. The recent death of Oberyn at the hands of the Mountain is a great example. Most of us who had not read the books had a few expectations: either he would defeat the Mountain, he would die by getting quickly cut down, or he would survive long enough to be killed at some other time. Up to Season 4, I think most of us loyal viewers knew that Oberyn was too good to be true (or too awesome to live). What we got was one of the most gruesome death scenes in the show’s history. Personally, I had two reactions to Oberyn’s death: one of absolute shock that a favorite character died (putting another favorite character, Tyrion, at risk) and one of horror at the imagery I was shown. Oberyn’s death was graphic. It was gory, it was “real,” and it was the kind of gritty realism we’ve come to expect from the show. And it shocked us (well, it shocked me). If you’re curious, the scene can be found here (I can’t watch it again… Warning: it is extremely graphic). Perhaps what bothers us about these instances is a kind of subconscious longing for a fantasy — not necessarily for a world that literally does not exist (i.e., a fictional fantasy), but rather for a fantasy of action wherein some small piece of the good vs. evil dichotomy is maintained. Game of Thrones consistently shatters that dichotomy. Villains survive while our heroes fall. Villains become our heroes. Heroes become our villains. Everything is gray and messy. Gritty fantasy represents a kind of hyperreal that counteracts our everyday fantasies — fantasies we maintain for ourselves by selecting what we see, hear, and read (and in a totally meta way, reading/viewing Game of Thrones is a deliberate action on our part). Fantasies about right and wrong, good and evil, life and death. They make up life on this planet. Those fantasies are, I think, partly why some hold onto the idea that Superman is a kind of adult boy scout. Man of Steel (2013) broke that — to a certain degree. It took what many have come to love about the character and shifted it ever so slightly to the side (in my estimation) so that what we saw was a Superman living in a world not unlike our own. A Superman who had grown up with the fantasies of everyday life tossed aside by the gritty truth of what it means to be an alien super being in a world that can barely handle its technological powers. Man of Steel never needs to talk about weapons of mass destruction, but the commentary is always there. Superman is a weapon of mass destruction. But he’s worse than that: he’s a weapon that nobody can seem to control, much like his Kryptonian counterparts. There’s a brilliant scene in Man of Steel where Superman willingly gives himself over to the authorities after the Earth is threatened with destruction by Zod; the military shackles him, but it’s all a show on Superman’s part, as he eventually breaks the bonds to make a point: Let’s put our cards on the table, General. You’re scared of me because you can’t control me. You don’t. And you never will. But that doesn’t mean I’m your enemy. In the context of the United States’ attempts to control who has WMDs, Superman is the ultimate threat — a veritable bomb waiting to go off in mankind’s backyard that nobody can control. And that bomb does go off in Man of Steel. Superman’s very presence serves as a flashing beacon that says “super beings can come destroy shit here.” And they do. Superman included. They destroy a lot of shit. It’s only a natural response on humanity’s part to try to determine where Superman lives at the end of the movie. That Superman tries to wave that away by saying “hey, no worries, I’m an American, dude” shouldn’t inspire any of us. After all, America is hardly the bastion of restraint. The attempt to make Superman a grittier figure is, for me, a good thing, in part because Superman is supposed to exist in our world. It makes little sense for him to have developed a sense of morality and justice that doesn’t represent a reality that is accessible. But I understand why people disliked Man of Steel and Snyder’s/Nolan’s gritty reinterpretation. The film performs the same attack on the fantasy of everyday life as Game of Thrones. Worse, Man of Steel shatters the double-fantasy of the comics by discarding the Superman many have come to love in favor for a gritty alternative. The idea that a fantasy pervades our everyday lives or that it can be supplanted by another fantasy property suggests, I think, the intersection between the desire for narrative depth and the relationship between grit and complexity. As television properties become increasingly more narrative-based and series like Game of Thrones or movies with the same agenda as
Video Found: An Interview w/ Arthur Conan Doyle on Sherlock Holmes and Spiritualism
The following video is supposedly the only video interview with Arthur Conan Doyle. I don’t know if that’s true, but it fascinating as a piece of cinematic and literary history. Enjoy!
Movie Review Rant: Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
I’ve only recently decided to watch the new iterations of the (in)famous web-crawler. Originally, I had no intention of ever doing so, in part because of a misplaced loyalty to the Raimi renditions (2002, 2004, and 2007). The real kicker, for me, was the fact that these films came hot off the heels of a preceding adaptation, and they were not a continuation of the original story, but a reboot. Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. But then I broke down and watched Amazing Spider-Man (2012; I’ll talk about this movie another time) and liked it well enough that I wanted to see how the character would progress. And so here I am — reviewing Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)(ASM2 from now on). (There will be some spoilers in this review. I have, however, refrained from spoiling major plot elements that you wouldn’t have learned about from the trailers. I will discuss some of these elements in the footnotes, though, as they need to be discussed in the context of my rant.) ASM2 is about a lot of things. Peter Parker’s relationship with Gwen Stacy and his conflict with her now-dead father’s last request (stay away from her). The truth behind Peter’s parents’ deaths — what they were doing when they disappeared, etc. Harry Osborn’s desperation to live. Spider-Man. Angst. Honestly, the more I think about this movie, the less coherent its plot seems. There are so many things going on here that it is actually hard to determine what actually matters for the overarching narrative. Is this about Peter Parker and his parents? The film wants us to think so…for a while. Is it about Peter and Gwen? Ditto. Is it about Harry and his daddy issues? Apparently. Max Dillon (a.k.a. Electro)? Yup. There are at least two new origin stories in this film, most of which draw attention away from the more interesting personal elements — Peter’s parents and Gwen. In fact, if this had been a film about one villain, one parental issue, and one romance, with each tied together into a cohesive whole, this might have been on par with Captain American: the Winter Soldier (2014). Alas, it was not to be. If it’s not clear, I’m going to tear this film a new one. But to make you feel better, I’ll start with some things that I liked about the film. First, though I know there are some problematic gender-related issues with regards to Peter and Gwen’s relationship, I can’t help but admire the dedication to the complexity of their relationship. There’s a sense here that their relationship is real, based on a mutual interest in what one another is feeling or desires (in life or a relationship). This contrast with the Spider-Man elements is needed to humanize the character and remind us that, yes, Peter Parker really is just a young dude. One of the things I loved about ASM2 was its brief focus on Gwen’s career and the decisions she makes (a reminder that Gwen is actually a young professional on her way to bigger things than just “graduating high school” — this film, in a way, is as much about her as it is Spider-Man, or at least feels that way). This is not a movie where the woman is asked to give everything up for the guy; instead, Gwen and Peter both understand that Gwen’s opportunities abroad are one-of-a-kind, and that it would be unfair for him to ask her to stay simply for a high school romance. In the end, it’s Peter who offers a solution that involves neither of them giving anything up at all: he’ll move with her. I don’t know how often we see compromise of this sort in film; regardless, it was an element that gave the film a bit of life. There’s a lot more I could say about Gwen, too. For a film that essentially sidelines the female characters for the male hero (it’s Spider-Man, after all), it does at least give Gwen something to do other than play the damsel in distress. True, she’s rather limited in that she’s got the brains to out-think Spider-Man’s superpowered opponents but not the physical prowess. But she does help Spider-Man by giving him information for his tech and by participating as an active agent in the climactic fight scene. In fact, probably the strongest bit of characterization in the entire movie takes place in that fight scene. This scene condenses the overarching narrative that defines Peter and Gwen’s relationship into two important thematic components. First, Peter’s attempts to stop Gwen from participating — to control her — when he webs her to a car so she won’t follow him on his way to face Electro. Second, Gwen’s assertion of her own agency, and Peter’s relinquishment to the reality that his powers do not give him the right to control her decisions. This is shown when Gwen frees herself and reappears on the scene (I won’t ruin this whole scene; just know that her involvement is important), accusing Peter of being “a caveman,” to which Peter responds: “You can’t be here right now. I’m not messing around.” Gwen’s response puts Peter’s perhaps unintentional patriarchal paternalism in its place: “OK, guess what. Nobody makes my decisions for me. OK? Nobody. This is my choice. K? My choice. This is mine.” The contrast is almost beautiful. If there’s something to be said about the character development here, it’s that Peter is actually pushed into becoming more feminist by the conclusion — a man who listens to his significant other, who takes her choices seriously and respects them. This is, unfortunately, undercut by the concluding moments of the film.[1] Visually, the film is quite beautiful. I particularly liked the look of Electro and the incorporation of sounds (like a giant, walking tesla coil) into his lightning-style powers.[2] His final fight with Spider-Man perfectly captures the flexibility and dexterity of Spider-Man and the raw, emotional fury of Electro. This is obviously
Top 10 Posts for May 2014
Here they are: Movie Review: Riddick (2013) (or, I’m Going to Mega Rant Now) Link of the Week: “Bigotry, Cognitive Dissonance, and Submission Guidelines” by Charles A Tan Top 10 Overused Fantasy Cliches The Hugos in “Turmoil” and the Glee Crowd Criticism Does Not Equal Bullying (or, What Bullying Means to Me) Top 10 Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies Since 2010 (Thus Far) 5 Annoying Author Habits on Twitter Top 10 Science Fiction and Fantasy Anime Movies Movie Review Rant : Catching Fire (2013) Top 10 Cats in Science Fiction and Fantasy I’ve switched to using what little data I can get for unique views to give a more accurate picture of things.