Sin City
—Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections
It took Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Once Upon a Time in Mexico) Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill) and comic book legend, Frank Miller, to faithfully bring Sin City to life. [It was Frank Miller’s vision of Batman in his The Dark Knight Returns that ushered in the first series of Batman movies and his Batman: Year One on which the upcoming Batman Begins leans.] The movie didn’t stop at simply preserving the look of the comic book. Not contenting itself to be a translation from the graphic novel to the silver screen, it transliterated it (if you’ll allow me to use “transliterate� this way). The movie had the feel of simply using the comic book as the story boards and filming it as is (thus earning it’s full title: Frank Miller’s Sin City). There’s a double edged sword of dealing with material beloved by geeks (my term of affectionate for rabid fandom, of which I am a member). On the one hand, if a director stays too faithful to the material, then you go “what’s the point of seeing it if you didn’t do anything with it?� On the other hand, if the director goes with their own vision, reinterpreting or re-imagining the source material, they run the risk of the geek saying “they ruined it.� The key is capturing the spirit of the work without reproducing it, but since reproduction on this scale, in so unique a fashion, hasn’t been done, this movie is landmark. 
For those not familiar with the film noir influenced comic books, this movie is a series of interconnected vignettes all taking place in Basin City, a sewer of a town that collects the dregs of humanity. A morally bankrupt town where men are men and women are dames, broads, or prostitutes. The movie does an admirable job covering a lot of ground, combining the tales found in the graphic novels Sin City, The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard, any one of which–Marv’s story especially–would have filled out an entire movie by themselves. Another snag the movie hits by being so slavishly faithful is that carefully crafted dialogue that a reader would easily suspend disbelief for occasionally sounds clunky or stilted to the ear when heard.
Robert Rodriguez, assuming he hasn’t made a lot of enemies over quitting the Directors Guild over wanting to make Frank Miller his co-director, should earn an Oscar nomination for the visual direction of the movie. It’s a black and white world–and a very wet one at that–with occasional bursts of color, usually blood or a yellow bastard. The individual sets, framed like a comic book panel, contributed to the unusual look of the movie
Being quite familiar with the source material, I don’t know the last time that I saw a movie so perfectly cast. Marv (played perfectly, every bit the lumbering personality, by Mickey Rourke, in the John Travolta in Pulp Fiction role of career resuscitation), Hardigan (Bruce Willis), and Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba, late of the television show Dark Angel and starring in the upcoming Fantastic Four movie, continues to increase her genre profile) were just as I imagined they would be. Even bit parts were filled out with such luminaries playing Kevin (Elijah Wood in a creepy performance), Jack Rafferty (Benicio Del Toro), Bob (Michael Madsen), and Manute (Michael Duncan Clark). Comic book geeks beware: Frank Miller, himself, plays the priest that has the unfortunate confrontation with Marv.
“Hell is waking up every G-damned day and not know why you’re here.� –Marv
“There’s wrong, there’s wrong, and there’s this.� –Hardigan
When churches are afraid to talk about sin, leave it to the movies. We all live in Sin City. Everyone has “that cold thing�, as both Marv and Dwight call it, inside them. That calls to them. There’s no judgment in Sin City because all the character know they are sinners so there’s no point in playing the sin game with one another.
Despite the existential worldview that the movies supposes to aim for, Christ can be found. Marv, the hapless goon, and Hardigan, broken-down, retired cop, were the models of Christ in, and the heart of, the movie. This will strike many as absurd, as the movie does not have anything positive to say about clergy. Even in an era of anti-heroes, even in Sin City, there is room for crazy notions such as caring for people, treating poor people the same as rich, and laying down one’s life for one’s friends. This even applies to the Ayn Rand inspired “hero� Dwight, because even he has a “Sir Lancelot/save the damsel in distress� quality to him.
Like Christ, they believed all people were equal. Sinners felt comfortable around them. Like Christ, they were ugly. For those who cling to the image of Christ with long, flowing locks and smooth (Caucasian) features, they might want to check out Isaiah 53:2-3. Like Christ, they liked to gather up people around them. Jesus lived with people, partied with them, ate with them, drank with them, and walked with them. He surrounded himself with women of base repute.
They were losers.
When the cause was just, they had no fear of action. Christ overturned tables and faced down demons. They saved (or avenged) the innocent. The villains, cowards that they are, prey on the weak, the vulnerable, and those people that no one cares about or will miss. Often, as one character points out, they beat up on women to make themselves feel like men. They were framed for crimes they didn’t commit, because “sometimes the truth doesn’t matter as it ought.� And they paid the price for those crimes.
Marv, Hardigan, and Dwight are hard-boiled heroes. Men in search of redemption, all face points where they have to “prove to your friends that you’re worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying,� thus being wounded for other’s transgressions.
This movie is not for the faint of heart, nor is the stylized film-making easily consumed. The twisted tales of rage and revenge provide brutal scenes of violence. The actual nudity is brief, the movie, with its endless parade of fishnet clad prostitutes, is sexually charged. Had Tarantino not been a part of things, the movie still has the sensibilities of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. An exercise in style that threatens to supplant substance, the movie is visually stunning and demands viewing. If nothing else, it reminds us that our spiritual journeys are relational, not propositional (a matter of following or reciting a formula). The characters live out their beliefs, showing that even in Sin City, love, in the form of self-sacrifice, can be found.—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections
62 Comments:
My only real gripe about the movie was the rather bland, when not obtrusive, soundtrack.
Maurice: You wrote the review I was unable to write after viewing this film. I was just so emotionally and viscerally stunned that I honestly had no idea how to respond. However, I think you've done far more with it than I would ever could have done, had I recovered in time to write something. I really think this is the most insightful, gracious, and succinct piece I've ever seen you write.
thank you.
i went with a buddy of mine, the best part of seeing movies is sharing them with someone who has a similar love for them. we had a chance to talk through a lot of things on the way home. he describes his walk as "being on the outs with God", but he was intrigued by the idea of Marv as a Christ figure. he wants to continue the conversation now that i've finished the review.
your compliment and his response is why i keep doing this.
You rock, dude! God has given you the eyes to see what others cannot see and the ability to find Christ in the midst of this story. Kudos to you!
I agree with everything you've said about this movie. I was literally speechless after seeing it (which has only ever happened to me twice after seeing a movie). I was in such awe of the boldness and the obscure but undeniable beauty of it that all I could say was: "That was AMAZING". I was a Robert Rodriguez fan before but now it's cemented.
I only have this to ask: Do you think that the some of the women in Sin City were rather Christ-like as well? Miho was most definitely an Angel of Death but Gail and Nancy? They both had the qualities that you proposed in Hardigan, Marv, and Dwight.
you know deborah, you've given me something to think about there. color me sexist.
I have to admit I'm struggling after reading this. Now, I agree whole heartedly that in the best movies, even if made by non-believers (and they single handedly make the best movies), you can find elements of Christ and redemption. If all of us are created by God, then that means that buried within the heart of every human being is a yearning for something more, something bigger. Filmmakers are no exception. "American Beauty," "Requiem for a Dream," and "House of Sand and Fog" are all movies that pierced straight to the soul of what it means to be human and experience a deep need for God. I am with you wholeheartedly on that note, and I applaud you for searching out those parallels in films. But your review seems to go too far.
I agree that Hardigan is the strongest Christ figure, but Marv? He tortures everyone in his path, and then kills them when he is finished. He guns down a priest in a confessional. He buries a hatchet into a man's crotch. He dismembers Kevin, ties tourniquets around his wounds, and feeds him to a wolf before chopping his head off. I realized that Merv was not so much a champion of justice as a demented sadist who had simply found a new justification for maiming, Before he tortured and killed the cardinal, he said (or close to it), "It’s not the killing I enjoy. It’s everything that leads up to the killing.�
Comparing Marv to a Christ figure is beyond stretching. Whatever hints of redemption and truth exist in Sin City (and I agree that Hardigan's sacrifice is one of them) they are completely buried underneath the blistering content.
I agree we need to be relevant in today's culture. We need to be able to communicate the clear truth's of the gospel through the language that our peers understand. But this is reaching so far that I had to comment.
Please know I'm not trying to be harsh or mean. Take this as what it is, an opposite view point, and not an invitation to a flame war. Look forward to your thoughts.
Evan Derrick
derrickec@yahoo.com
FLAME ON!
i'm kidding. believe me, i understand your reservations, and your thoughtful comments point straight to the heart of what we do here.
i thought long and hard about doing the marv/christ comparison and went with it because it was an unusual comparison and because i wanted to point out things that we don't normally think of about christ. NOT because i think marv perfectly models christ (you are correct in that hardigan is a more palatable christ figure).
whenever someone points to a character as a christ figure, we aren't saying that the character models christ (even close to) perfectly. most times, the only comparison is a character that sacrifices themselves for another.
finding christ in strange places is what i like to do. that, and start conversations. i have a feeling my marv comparison will do just that.
Great review, Maurice! After viewing the film, I, too, was confused about my reaction--especially in regard to its relationship to the novels. On the one hand, it was fun to revisit the familiar settings. When Marv got out of the car, you could tell he was heading for the docks. Old Town and the tar pits seemed like places I used to visit as a kid. The identical representations of the locations was, on one hand, stunning (in much the same way as the LOTR movies), but on the other hand, it seemed like a disappointing carbon-copy. It was so true to the graphic novels, I couldn't create an original opinion of the film as a seperate entity. I'm not sure it's a criticism, but it seems to require a new way of critiquing it. You seemed to comfortably use that new way.
All that just to say, "good job."
Also, there seemed to be some really strong commentary on the hypocrisy of Christianity (especially by those in power). Not only were the villains the "devout" (I use that term loosely) Christians, but anytime a character wore a cross, he or she was either pure evil or a turncoat. That, along with the anti-hero Christ figures, seems to display the disparity between genuineness to the point of self-sacrifice and superficial Christianity.
Sorry about the tangent. Next time I promise I'll just stick with "great review."
P.S. Ha ha! You only THOUGHT I was getting ready to shut up! I was just wondering what the viewing experience was like for someone who DIDN'T read the graphic novels first. Perhaps that would give a better representation of how the film stood on its own.
i think the direct panel to screen "transliteration" was neat. ONCE. we (geeks) had the experience of viewing the comics as moving panels, which had a trippy, familiarity to it, and such was its own experience. i didn't re-read the books prior to viewing them, wanting to see how well the movie stood on its own, but my friend did. he sat stunned, when he wasn't having a "geek-gasm", by the experience. i wouldn't want them to do this again, should they do a sequel. i'd prefer them to capture the spirit of the work, but make it more of a stand alone/stand alongside film.
frank miller, in his depiction of women, treads the line between fetishist and female empowerment. the women tend to be strippers and prostitutes in need of protecting on one hand, and on the other hand, they are the law and enforcers of the law. he does betray a problem with authority in general, however. thus the true "evils" in the movie are politicians, police, and religion. anything that could be seen as in control of the individual (i'm surprised he didn't find a way to squeeze in big business).
but i like your interpretation of seeing it as the hypocrisy seen in the church.
You guys should just hear how you sound to others outside your little group..... Totally out-of-it, I'd say!
The psychotic characters in this type of a movie, "Jesus", figures?? GIVE ME A BREAK!!! Marv, Hardigan, I don't care who you refer to - IF it's anything, anywhere, by the utterly wrongheaded Frank Miller, including of course his VILE rendering of the poor old Batman, IT IS REVOLTING!!!! No way of getting around it!!
Yes, Maurice, Jesus may have thrown over tables in the temple when some greedy capitalist moneylenders got to him, and I'm sure I read a verse in one of the Gospels about him "blasting" - or withering - a fig-tree when it didn't perform as required - his only negative miracle, as I recall!!
HE DID NOT, HOWEVER, GO ABOUT SLICING PEOPLE UP, CASTRATING THEM, SHOOTING THEM OR FEEDING THEM TO ANIMALS!!! As in this horrible movie. And he certainly did not purport to enjoy any such activity, or the depiction of it.
By the way, addressing maurice broaddus' last comment on this site, the fact that a (male) author "betrays a problem with authority in general", does NOT mean, necessarily, that he has some sort of a grip on the political situation, or that he has any BETTER solution to offer, than the ones of the oppressive/and/or/corrupt authorities who he PURPORTS to criticise! It JUST proves that he had a problem with authority whilst growing up (if he ever did the latter!) most LIKELY, with his own father!! Now HITLER had a "problem with authority"! It didn't make his "solution" any the better!! Just more authoritarian!
Are all you people - and I NOTE that most on this site by far are male - REALLY so ridiculously blind and blinkered to the obvious that you MUST try to read a "Christian message" into ANY dreck, no matter how depraved and socially de-evolved??
Of course, I AM a Brit, possessed of some common sense, and a socialist.
See my article at the end of Kevin's blog, please, as the software here doesn't seem to want to allow me to use my "paste" utility to repeat it.
well, liz, you may want to add me to the list of people (men) you are ashamed that are brits (yay for dual citizenship).
i get the impression that you don't like material first, then dislike any thing or anyone that likes that material.
i don't like to live my life in some sort of schizophrenic, dualistic hell: this stuff is holy vs. this stuff that is "worldly". i live with an "all things can be redeemed" mentality.
i'm not saying that there is a christian message here. but i do agree with this general thesis: all people are created in God's (note use of big "g") image. all people have what's been called a "God sized hole" within them that causes them to wrestle with certain ideas and questions. and as they seek to answer these questions or respond to these ideas, it comes out in their art. i try to pick up on that thread.
this is different that embracing the kind of "imperial christianity" that you seem to be reacting to (when right wingers use christianity to bolster their positions).
Oh dear! OK, Maurice, I'm going to concede; a bit. I DO know what you're talking about, here. Because I too have a spiritual side, and that is one of the reasons why I cannot be an unreconstructed (ie purist) Marxist; which is why I sometimes feel like I don't fit in anywhere, really... But I know that's really because I haven't started my own little circus yet!! In the realm of ideas.
I know about the "God-shaped hole", the thing is, I'm more and more coming to define mine as a "Gaia-shaped" hole, or similar!
Patriarchy has had it with me! (But I do use the big "G" for God - and the other names, because I believe it to be grammatically correct, as I was taught at school; I have noticed that some marxists etc (let's treat them to a small m for a change!) don't, and I actually find that irritating and affected, and I'm not giving up my good grammar for them - apart from when I'm talking "street", of course.... I have a terribly strong sense of tradition, which is another interesting part of my make-up... And that's ANOTHER reason I don't like modern comics; for what ain't broke (and society may have always been, but at times, some of its culture, such as chivalric romances, such as comic books, rose to SUCH a peak of idealism, that my heart fair burst in admiration!!) SHOULDN'T BE TAMPERED WITH....
Yes, but I DO dislike, nay detest, the material we are discussing, and feel perfectly within my rights to. And I'd hold in suspicion anyone who professed an affection for works such as "Mein Kampf", as well! I'm sorry, but I see all this kind of thing as no more and no less than (psychotically) patriarchal, chauvinistic, imperialist, homophobic, misogynist propaganda... Of the NASTIEST sort: not merely naive sexism, which all old - and new - fiction has its share of! And TELL me if that list doesn't apply to most "graphic novels" you know; including of course Miller's previous "opus", "The Dark Knight Returns" (what an evil pile of rubbish THAT was!)
Yes, we may all be made in the image of the Deity, however one chooses to define he/she/it, but this is NOT really very helpful, in practical terms, when confronting the problems of modern culture and society, Mr Broaddus!! (See, now you're Mr!)
I mean, going back to my stock examples, Hitler could very well be made in the image of God (or the De'il, as Rabbie Burns would no doubt have said!). But that's not going to be very much help when he and his minions start ordering people into concentration camps. Beware! Beware of what modern society and those who pull the strings behind the scenes are leading us into.
I'm just as wary of wishy-washy liberals, because they tend to go along with anybody, as I am of "imperial Christians", Christian Reconstructionists, Pat Robertson or any of the rest of these - nutters!
To quote again from David Walsh - he seems to be the only one able to express what I mean, about the whole situation in popular culture of this type:
"To be 'entertained' even by imitations of torture, or to seek to entertain by such imitations, suggests a disturbing degree of indifference to the pain of others. It is already the result of a general process of brutalization in the culture and it helps further inure the population to suffering...
"Revenge as a central motif: the loose use of words like 'kill' and the approving references to sadism and torture - where could we be but in post-September 11 America, where bloody-mindedness has apparently become the stuff of polite dinner parties in Washington, New York and elsewhere?
"Disorientation, panic and a sense of being overwhelmed by events grip a good many people,not only in fundamentalist circles, but in the pseudo-artistic world as well. American society and culture, in grave crisis, are vomiting up everything retrograde, diseased and long-since discredited."
My sentiments exactly!!!
To be found in the article "Sin City: a culture at the end of its rope, continued", which is currently linked from the homepage of the site www.wsws.org. I really would recommend that everybody on this site, plus anybody who visits these pages about the movie, calls up that article. Please do.
Now to wind up on this page - I have a much better example of "Christian-oriented" art, which, as I say on another page, is what I really believe you guys should be sticking to, if you believe in your belief system.... Anyway, I'm something of a folkolorist, a mythologist and a voracious reader of children's books to this day... My interest in fantasy and sci-fi goes right across the board you see... Well, anyway, when it comes to teaching me about religion, which I ALSO have studied... Well, C. S. Lewis was my man there, certainly in the Christian camp!! He was a fairly conservative so-and-so in his politics; but ALSO a classicist, a medievalist and a deeply humane man... Like many of the best of his generation.
Now, my Christian friends: compare that man's "Chronicles of Narnia" opus, with all the absolute drivel and shite put forward in DC Comics in about the last 15 years - and SEE whose work comes out the better!! Which has more of lasting meaning for humanity within it. For adults, as well as children. Despie any "dated" elements, such as sexism, which it surely does contain, I'd far rather have Narnia and its charming animals and child heroes; not only because they are cute but because they issue forth from a top-notch mind and one who had that fundamental "connection", Jungian you may call it, with the spirit of all the eras put together, the very essence of humanity and the cosmos itself. (Marxists don't believe in THAT sort of idea - but I do!!! For I too have had mystical experiences and looked it in the face!! And for those who have.... their lives can never be restricted to mere materialism! But that is all very personal.....)
Far rather would I have the works of the cultured medievalist and philosophical thinker Mr Lewis, in many ways even subtler than his pal Mr Tolkien, than I would any rot published in modern comics, even be it by Neil Gaiman - who shares my obsession with mythology - but gets it all wrong, in my opinion! He gets the messages all wrong; and he doesn't seem to REALISE that fairy-tale, if not mythology, is probably the most positive form of literature on the planet.... not some repository of negative gloom!!! Still, I digress somewhat....
And I recommend that publishers commission works like those of Mr Lewis, for both adults and children, into "graphic novels", illustrated by all the best illustrators, such as Brian Froud; and I call on them to give visual form to more classics like that, and feed people with some real works of culture, both old and new - IF new can be found - instead of total GARBAGE like: "The Dark Knight Returns", "Sin City" (all volumes!), "Barb Wire", "The Killing Joke", "Arkham Asylum", "Joker: Devil's Advocate", (that poor old queer clown, how he DOES get picked on these days!!!! For OBVIOUS reasons, I might add, Abu-Ghraib supporters!!), "Judgement on Gotham", and so on and so forth..... ROT the lot of it!!!
Need I say more? Have I said it all, Maurice??
Ahem...
What I'm about to say will cause an uproar. But anyone who is truly in the Spirit will understand what I'm about to say...
If Jesus were here, He would have seen this movie with the rest of the crowd (probably on opening night). Then He would have broke down the whole darn thing in a way to tie together what was seen in the film with the life that He has to offer the world. Then the whole darn theatre probably would have given their lives to Him.
But Jesus is not here (physically). Instead, He has sent us the Holy Spirit to lead us to live as He would live, to walk as He would walk, to minister as He would minister. And that's what Maurice, Kevin, Ed and Matthew have done with their reviews. They have done the WWJD concept to a different level much deeper than wearing a knitted bracelet on their wrists. They, collectively, have broken this film down piece by piece to tie together what we see in this movie (as well as other movies) with the life that Jesus offers us.
That is what we do at Hollywood Jesus...and that's why we've reviewd this film. If you're looking for sin-hunting reviews, go elsewhere. We will continue to review this and other films like this to declare the rightful glory of Christ in this world. You don't have to agree with us or support us...you don't even have to understand. Jesus does. It's WWJ(would have)D!!
i disagree with chris.
i don't think jesus would have seen a movie about the people of sin city. i think he would have lived AMONG the people of sin city.
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true dat! :o)
No, Chris Utley, I'm not (personally) looking for "sin-seeking" reviews, I'm looking for SENSE-seeking reviews!! Which, I fancy, are not the sort of things we are going to find here, if Christians like yourself persist in attempting to find "Jesus-messages" in the worst of dreck!! Why look for them there?? (I mean, you gotta be a bit desperate, for places to look, before you start going there!!) "Cast not your pearls before swine". And look not in the swine pen for pearls of wisdom, I'd say! For in a swine pen is to be found only swine poop.
Maurice Broaddus, you have yet to answer most (any?) of my points. But I'd agree with you that Jesus, rather than watching a movie (or play?) entitled "Sin City", would probably have gone to live in that city of sin himself - HAD he lived near a really big one, such as Babylon, say, in it's heyday. Jerusalem was relatively provincial, no?
But he certainly would have dealt with the sinners he found in this Babylon, in different fashion to the delightful Marv, Hardigan, etc, etc, I think. And had he met a Marv - well, he'd have put the whammy on him!! I don't think Jesus met that many mindlessly violent people in his life (apart from in the last few days of it!) but I think he could have dealt with them quite simply. Being a great healer, he would have firstly recognised that all such people are in some way wounded, and secondly, created a quick and miraculous cure for them! He would have had no trouble doing this, for, like any good comic book hero, he had supernatural powers; only his were on the pacifist rather than the pugilistic side.
(Comic book superheroes are in fact pagan heroes; who exhibit basically pagan characteristics and virtues - with a few little Christian exceptions thrown in, such as the medieval ideal of chivalry.... Anyway: I'm going to take my idea of superheroes = pagan heroes over to Kevin's blog, where it should get some decent attention. But you might do well to think on it over here.... As for Miller's "heroes", they're not any kind of hero, because they're basically not heroes at all - they're zeroes!!)
ah, liz. my heart doth truly beat once more with your delightful return.
i thought that i'd leave room for others to chime in plus i wanted time to seriously consider what you are saying (rather than give an off the cuff response). i find conversations are usually more productive that way (especially since things have a way of getting misconstrued on the internet).
what we have here are two different processes at work. the first is your objection to the material. fair enough. if i understand you correctly, you have a general disregard for modern day comics (though i wonder if you'd consider giving alan moore's promethea a shot. it sounds like it may be up your alley).
like many traditions and institutions, comic books have had to adapt to the culture that it is trying to relate to as well as be relevant to it. and they have shifted as cultural tastes have shifted. (for example, comics tended to get "dark" during the late 80s early 90s as the idea of a hero was deconstructed).
you are more than welcome to dislike them. if you carefully read some of the reviewers on the site, they tap dance around whether they actually like the material in an effort to not condemn but find bridges to it. (ok, me you have dead to rights and have plenty to take issue with: i liked "sin city", "constantine", "kill bill 1&2" and the bulk of frank miller's and alan moore's work).
but that brings us to the second process at work: finding God in the material (dreck or not). obviously, i look for God in "dreck" because i don't concede that they're dreck. but there's another reason that i do it. think of it as a spiritual discipline.
i treat the media i critique (tv, movies, comics) like i would do people. i accept them where they are and how they are (spiritually as well as for what they are) and then try to make a bridge to draw them closer to Christ.
i, too, am a folklorist. i love story. in loving story, i've come to appreciate how so many stories seem to echo the story of Christ. like people and their God-sized hole. i try to pick up on that thread and use it as a conversation starter.
[and just for you, liz, my next four reviews are comic book reviews]
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and liz, make no mistake: i truly love our conversations. it's cool to dialogue with someone so passionate about their beliefs.
"...if Christians like yourself persist in attempting to find "Jesus-messages" in the worst of dreck!! Why look for them there??"
I am very thankful that God/Jesus didn't walk in this type of mindset when looking at my life...which would definitely qualify as "the worst of dreck". I'd be forever condemned.
Furthermore, let us not forget that the work and ministry that He did was amongst "the worst of dreck", right? One of the Pharisees' indictments against Him is the fact that He hung out with tax collectors, prostitutes and other dreck-filled folks. Their lives were changed through His love-infused, life inspiring words and actions. The only "whammy" He ever put on anyone was when He turned over the tables in the temple...the "My temple should be a house of prayer" passage.
So, in conclusion, you're actually making accusations against me and the rest of us at Hollywood Jesus for being Christlike. To that I respond, I'm guilty as charged!
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Chris!! Ergh! Is all I have to comment on most of your comment - you seem to have misconstrued/tried to turn everything back towards your point of view/your narrow set of obsessions again... 'Scuse me!
If you reckon you're Christlike, that's OK by me. Jesus of Nazareth was a good fellow after all. Good social role model. All (nearly all) socialists think so: even the Marxists seem to...
But if you reckon Frank Miller is Christlike, you've got another think coming. How about Adolflike?
When I said: "put the whammy", what I meant was hypnotism - I believe that is the definition of this piece of English/American slang? I didn't mean that Jesus should or would have used violence on anyone; I know the Gospels; I know that he almost never went in for that sort of thing!
Nah. I'm saying that he would have kinda "hypnotized" the guy, to stop him in his tracks, you know? I think that could be argued as one of Jesus' talents... Anyway he would have just said something, and the guy would have stood amazed... That's what the stories say! Though not really a religious believer, I always tend to believe a good story!
Maurice - I have to be passionate, got no choice, some people have to be!
I'll check out those reviews. I've committed myself to the site now; I have to. I've even promised to write some stuff for it, if allowed... Is there an - editorial process - for "contributors", rather than bloggers?
And you're a Douglas Adams fan too? This bodes well! Me too: I think the man was very clever, though I think basically pessmistic - and I do think pessimism, social pessimism anyway, to be basically misguided. (I mean, sure, as regards the universe - it's all gotta end one day; but we're only gonna get another one!)
Oh, Alan Moore... The day I like ANYTHING, one single story, by Alan Moore, that will be the day... (Actually I DID think once that one rather trivial comic book Batman story by him was OK; but only just that; and I thought it was gloomy, over-pessimistic, humourless (I actually constructed an alternative ending to the story with a bit of subversive humour to it!)... Ya see, you can't be a Brit, if you don't have humour! And Alan Moore doesn't; and in my view that disqualifies him - whether his ancestors were in Northampton for many more generations than mine; the name is obviously Irish... Anyway, I'm only second generation Brit; you wouldn't know that because I didn't tell you! But Brit-born I am, and well steeped in our culture(s) over here. I am proud of my island nation, as far as nations are relevant, and they are, in a way. I also despair of it and for it often. THEN I thank my stars I'm not born an American!
That's the trouble with Alan Moore! Anyway, I JUST don't think he's THAT good a writer, not, say, compared to every good contemporary children's book writer I know: Joanne Rowling, Philip Pullman, Diana Wynne Jones, Eoin Colfer, about a million others... I get far more out of THEM than him! Their characters are more realistic, for a start! They have motives!
As for something like Moore's "Killing Joke", I could pull that into a thousand pieces - I did in the early 90s, only I only poked about a hundred holes in it then... And I fully intend to complete my hatchet job concerning this "graphic novella" on your new "Batman" page, which you and Kevin have promised to start, on this site, I believe?? Seems like a good enough home for it! Don't worry, it'll be you guys, your page, your first say on everything; all I ask for as idea originator is rebuttal space!
I may read "Promethea" - have you reviewed it on here? I may read it just because it has a female name as the title. Though that doesn't mean anything.
Oh yeah! And I'd say "disregard for modern-day DC comics", in particular: because they're the right-wing morons on this particular block! Marvel, now, they're not angels, no-one over there is, right now, but they HAVE on occasion, and more than just occasionally, over the past few years, produced some things that were a bit more frank and politically daring! As well as just generally liberal: well, X-Men is known for that!
But, I only found out quite recently, I'm stuck down here in the peninsula of Cornwall, rural depths of Britain many miles and one deep river and tons of sea away from any cities, don't forget... Well I only found out recently that Marvel, within the past couple of years, had released a "historically accurate" let us say - not
"dark" and pessimistic, just politically frank - version of its title character (supposed to be!), Captain America! I didn't even know they were still publishing him! Well, that's what it said on this conservative site, anyway, that I was directed to something else, what is it called now? The National Review? Anyway, I'll find the article! It got quite a sharp conservative reproof, did this temerity on the part of Marvel - mentioning the Tuskegee experiment, and suggesting that Arab terrorists might feel justified in their own terms, wow!
Well DC would never have dared anything like that! They're not interested in real controversy; just violent rubbish. And they harbour fascist writers. And similar people HIDING under the camouflage of a vague and insincere leftiness; as so many in modern media/arts do, such as Alan Moore. And I hate them. And so should you unless you want to be something I don't want to say! Later! That one for later!
"The idea of a hero was deconstructed". During the late 80s and early 90s. But by whom - and why - and on whose say so??
This is what really exercises MY mind, and rouses my suspicions. By whom and why? People, such as yourself, lots of people, are just too ready to make glib kind of excuses for these type of "developments"; and "explanations" which are anything but.... "Cultural tastes" my bum! (No, don't let's go there!)
Anyone who knows anything about advertising, knows that those, these days, can be CREATED: and at the very least, GROSSLY manipulated! So - who creates the "hunger" out there, any that there may be, usually among males I'd say, for trash like "Sin City" and its zeroes?
Dennis O'Neil, before his final demise from the field of comics, used this "comic books have had to adapt to the culture" rubbish argument, and I was not in the slightest impressed! Paul Bunyan my eye! I said to myself! He said that people had forgotten the mythical heroes of the Old American West, because they hadn't "adapted", or some sort of cultural-pseudo-Darwinist nonsense!!
Well, funnily enough, I saw a film on TV - live-action - made in the late 90s, about Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, John Henry and what was that other one, that killed a "bar", Davy Crockett, only the other month!! I'm not sure if it was a made-for-TV movie, or a cinematic one, but it was very well produced, decently acted, and provided a modicum of entertainment! So! So much for O'Neil's "theories"! Obviously enough people were still interested in these old-time-tall-tale-cum-historical heroes for Hollywood to invest quite a penny in a movie!
Anyway, I'd like to discuss in a very dark mood of my own, what I'd like to do to people like Miller, Moore, O'Neil et al, who think it all right to take MY heroes away from me and turn them into God knows what, heroes which I suppose I can only say I needed more than Christ himself - for I suppose I am an old pagan - or a neo-one - after all!! When all is said and done! And I won't have the archetypes insulted; for I know what I serve, all right! And it is not THEIR ideals! Those of Miller, Moore et al. (Do they even have ideals?)
"Deconstruct" my idols of story and I'll deconstruct you.
(Moore is a prat anyway, for even trying: for if any "deconstructing" of comic book superheroes was to be done, it had ALREADY been done, most effectively, in the 1960s, by the Fox "Batman" TV series, in a most painless - and FUNNY - manner!!)
But we don't want fun any more; we are supposed to want fascism. I see.
Anyway, I must post this: for I'm off to vote in the national general election and get a burger at my local McDonalds drive-in. Yes we even have them in these wilds of Britain now! You cultural imperialists you!
(But I want the chance to have American culture to choose from that I LIKE - like old comic books and certain movies. Especially old ones. But some newer; Lucas and Spielberg and all that lot too.)
I've had another thought. On "tap-dancing reviews". Yes, I suppose you could describe several of the movie reviews on here as that - though I do seem to have found that most HJ reviewers review movies that they like, like you and "Hitchhiker's Guide", for example!
But Kevin was a bit guilty of "tap-dancing" in HIS review of "Sin City".
Well... I was just thinking... I know this is a Christian site, but why all the tap dancing? I know David danced before the Lord, but!!
I mean, what is the purpose of reviewers NOT saying if they dislike a movie - every "real-world" reviewer comes down like a ton of bricks on stuff he/she doesn't like!
So, this is truly a Christian art of reviewing, is it? Mm. A non-dogmatic Christian one at that!
But why are you doing it? Like this? I have my suspicions...
"Building bridges" is a nice way to put it - you even seem to have disarmed me a little bit, with your accepting attitudes... Hence I have decided to stay, in all my wild erraticness...
But what if the people you are trying to build bridges to, are not mere naughty souls like me, but all these violence-lovers out there, these people who love violence and domination for their own sake, and could hardly wait to go out and abuse some minority, or join the army so that they could do the same in some foreign land?
What if it is THEM you really want to recruit? "Let's hook them in with violent movies", kind of thing!
I'll be frank and say it's much more likely that they'll corrupt you than you'll convert them, to any kind of Christianity that doesn't involve imperialism and other Bushite ideas.
PS. You DO realise, Maurice, that I think that Frank Miller and Alan Moore are the Antichrist, don't you?? They make a pretty fair composite of such between them! I don't think that's an inappropriate term on a Christian site...
(I hope I haven't scared Kevin Miller off too much, in my e-mail saying as much!)
I've thought about it and thought about it - over YEARS - and I don't think that's a too harsh description of them, from any decent ideological viewpoint. After all, both of them are totally against anything I want to achieve or see achieved, from a political standpoint; and from a religious viewpoint... Well, there is little that is "kosher", or indeed Christian, about either of them! With regard to something Chris Utley said... yeah, I DO think that people who have a passionate Christian viewpoint should criticise people who are BAD, powerful people, influential people in the culture... If some bunch of vicars had denounced "Mein Kampf" when it first came out, Hitler might not have got off the ground, seeing how many Christians there were in Germany!
But of course, it never WORKS like that, does it? Your fellow worshippers prefer to criticise Harry Potter! (And not Frank Miller.) Why? Because Rowling is a left-liberal (so far as I can see) and Miller is a damn well neo-fascist? (Only he camouflages it quite well! But it's obvious to people with eyes to see!)
i suspect that promethea may, MAY, be up your alley. it has a lot of the elements that you enjoy: women, archetypes, and wiccans (or at least wiccan sensibilities).
the deconstruction of the super-hero in the late 80s early 90s, yes, started with miller's "the dark knight returns" and moore's "watchmen". love them or hate them, they were two of the seminal works of the recent decades.
however, this trend continued as, in my opinion, the entire image comic line was devoted to the idea of the dark, edgy (and thus supposedly more realistic) hero.
i'm not going to hate dc. i collect writers, and many of the writers go back and forth between marvel and dc.
but, for you, i will be doing a review of batman: year one, the miller comic book that the newest batman movie will be drawing on. we can probably continue this discussion there then. though i do have three comic book reviews up now (one marvel and two dc).
but the reality is that culture evolves. to speak to it, creators have to be able to touch it, if nothing else, learn its language enough for the stories to fit in the cultural context. but, i get your point that artists also have the power to shape culture, to lead it rather that chase after it. and, as far as i'm concerned, artists are obligated to do so.
you're close. i don't review movies i like, i review movies that i expect (or want) to like. sometimes it works out well (sin city, constantine, hitchhiker's guide) sometimes it doesn't (blade:trinity, elektra).
politics isn't the reason why harry potter, as opposed to frank miller, is denounced. rarely does the politics enter into the work, per se.
it has to do with the nature of the product.
harry potter's use of "sorcery" is what gets it denounced. and you are correct that tolkien seems to get a pass on this in his work. but this will be a theme i will be looking at over the next couple of months in some of my tv reviews. stick with me, you'll either enjoy the ride or have something to vent about.
Maurice, what has happened to your capitals key? The Shift key? Has it fallen off?
Hmm hmm hmm... How can I tie this up... OK, firstly, I didn't really think I could make you hate DC - not if you like so many of their comics already!
And I'm not saying that I think Marvel is perfect; I know all the conglomerates are in each other's pockets these days; I know that writers swap over like yo-yos (something which I don't like, because as it says in the very LAST volume of Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide - it makes the whole universe alike, you know? Modern travel/capitalism DOES - he made a very salient point!)
However, I am always trying to identify the primary source of an evil, and hit it like a rat running out of its hole! If I can't find the right holes I won't kill any rats.
I know for example, that Frank Miller started at Marvel, and wrote something about Peter Parker! (Probably something stupid!)
The fact REMAINS, however, that Marvel, with their X-Men comics and movies both, and their more recent Captain America re-examinations, have consistently demonstrated a far stronger commitment to liberalism, humanity and progressive values - unlike the bootless nihilism of Mr Frank Miller.
Yes. Here's a link to one of the disapproving conservative reviews of Marvel's efforts in this sphere:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-medved040403.asp
Yup. "Captain America - The New Deal" sounds to ME like the only valid way to "re-appraise" superheroes that is going. MAC seems to think so too. Good on you, Max!
Mm. Moore's "Promethea". Yes, I'm going to have to get it now, aren't I... You've nagged me into it! I bet I still find it largely a waste of money though. I shall be wasting my money on others of his more recent comics, just to review them, though, I know that.
Alan Moore wouldn't know what an archetype was if it smacked him in the face. Anyway, you have to KNOW them with your heart, with your instinct, not just read a theory in a book. If you're not at the knee of a great tribal storyteller, what you have to do is READ mythology, world fairy tales, and authors like CS Lewis, from an early age... And then read tons of psychology... And analysis. Like I have! You have to FEEL your way in. It takes years. It takes real psychical PAYMENT.
Alan Moore is a putz. I shall say that even if I DO happen to like one iota of Promethea. I might a little, because I HAVE noticed that Moore, post his greatest successes, and his courting by Hollywood - they always LOVE that, don't they, these authors... Well he seems to have loosened up, would be my instinct, since the "Watchmen" days, and has gone more commercial, with things like "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"... This is basically a good move on his part, seeing as I don't see why anyone WOULD want to read anything like "Killing Joke", without collapsing in disgust - and disbelief.
But my reaction to "League", was that it was SUCH a big cliche, the concept, that if someone other than A. Moore, an unknown, had proposed it - they wouldn't have got it accepted! This is what I always think... I don't want people like A. Moore to dominate our culture. I want to throw it open to YOUNG people; to unknowns who are outside these few cliques, these male old-boy societies... To TRUE creativity! To women! To minorities! How many black comics writers/artists do you know/know of? Speak now if you do know ANY!!
Anyway, I think there's so many authors, that go around now, exploiting the New Age and Wicca and all things like that... I'm not a Wiccan as SUCH, anyway, not YET, though I may well become one... I have tried Christianity. It has failed for me... though I still have my Bible! (Anyway, a witch-cum-psychoanalyst of the 1930s, Dion Fortune, showed me in her books how I could be into magic and still like Jesus at the same time!)
But basically, I think it's the Church... most churches. They just CAN'T move on; to embrace most modern social issues and developments; race wasn't too difficult for them, but the stature of women, the acceptance of divorce (the Jews do it - but Orthodox Jews discriminate(d) severely against women, which is one reason Jesus spoke out about the practice in the first place! NOW, that is no longer legal to do - but a religion such as Christianity hasn't grasped that fact...)
Yes: even stuff like contraception (for the Catholics), the abolition of the death penalty (for the Baptists!), and above all, the acceptance of HOMOSEXUALITY, have proved too big pills for most churches to swallow... They haven't even worked out what to do about divorce, for Pete's sake, when most Christians, even, in America now do so! They can't move on...
Anyway, I need something that will put me in touch with/allow me to celebrate my power as a WOMAN.
I don't really see a "Wiccan" GN by a man doing that, though... Now if it had been by a Wiccan... and a woman... I would run off to buy it like a shot!
Otherwise, I think of it just as a sort of post-Buffy, post-Charmed jumping on the bandwagon!
As was "Arkham Asylum", that was a rather "INSANE", and pointless, way of jumping on the "New Age" bandwagon, so far as I can see... Some prats like Grant Morrison think that just because they fling about a few words (like "sigil"!) and drop names like "Jung" around, that this will make them into a great shaman, or psychological or holistic expert! It will not!! I showed that GN to a REAL New Age therapist, by the way... and she said it was one of the most revolting things she'd ever come across!!
(What do you think of "Charmed", by the way? Want to review it? I haven't watched it consistently enough to do so. I shall have to wait till I have the money to buy the whole set.)
"but the reality is that culture evolves" - Yes, but what does this MEAN, Maurice? Why are you so sure that it's evolving in any desirable manner? You seem to think like some of these Hollywood liberals, eg. Oliver Stone, (who should know BETTER, because he personally is aware about conspiracies), that "culture" just somehow metamorphoses and appears out of nothing; and that artists "reflect" that culture and don't affect it; that was what got Michael Meved, who actually is/was quite a talented critic, hot under the collar, in his far better early 90s work (better than what he finds himself having to ally with nowadays!) "Hollywood vs. America"!
"rarely does the politics enter into the work, per se"... In F. Miller and J. K. Rowling? You've gotta be kidding, laddie! It's a bit under the surface in both cases, but still there. In Rowling's Potter novels - actually, do you know what I think? I think that in many ways, she is shaping up to be the greatest satirist since Jonathan Swift! Anyway, the Potter books are basically about an orphan ingenu, who gets accepted into a society, the "wizarding" one, which at first he thinks is wonderful and much better than the one he was born into, of normal people or "muggles"... But at least by about the third book ("Azkaban"), he is beginning to find out the negative things about his adoptive society, and the lies and dark deeds of its politicians and elders - and I'm not talking JUST Voldemort! This theme is continued and develops slowly and inexorably throughout the series, and right through Book 5 and doesn't look like it's stopping... (But she's very subtle!) Rowling uses the metaphor of a parallel society of wizards to criticise much that is wrong with our own. I want to review the Potter books for this site, as it looks like no-one has dared to, so far!
Miller's "Dark Knight Returns" showcases a fascist attitude on the part of a superhero, the Batman, and basically it negates EVERYTHING that the idealistic creators of superheroes ever wanted to achieve. To dedicate it to Siegel and Shuster is a mockery and a travesty; one of many. It moves the Batman "the Dark Knight", indeed, as he is called, or "Dark Knight Detective" (the proper epithet!), with the emphasis on KNIGHT, right away from that ideal of chivalry, and all its Christian possibilities of forgiveness... Yes, Christians did INVENT chivalry, I won't forget that, (I think I was a knight once, actually, but that's a theme for another day) and indeed the first knight, the founder of all knightly (Western) orders, was a Christian in the Roman army and he was black, did you know that? I saw it on TV! Can't remember the name but will find. Probably later made a saint.
In fact, I think that forgiveness was the only thing that (old) paganism lacked, though the neos have largely caught up on that sort of thing! (Mind you, look at what Willow did, in a fury!! In Buffy!)
Well, anyway, that's what DKR does. But it's not pagan. (It has NO such sensibility - unless it be the one of "emperor-worship"!) It's not anything. Just right-wing. And it advocates "survivalism" (an 80s obsession; personally I thought that was the only reason the book sold - that and because it played on America's fears of the still-unresolved nuclear situation) and a nihilistic abandonment of civilization (Gotham) at the end of the story, as an answer to humanity's problems. (How can it be - when population levels mean we can NEVER now "return to the wild", not unless a comet wipes nine-tenths of us out?!)
Anyway, what MOVIES does Miller's "ideal" remind you of? There have been a few more, that have nothing to do with superheroes, but advocate precisely the same thing! Use your brain! I shall however be saving my secrets for my killer review.
Yes, do a review of "Batman: Year One." I vaguely remember reading it - I still have one of the single parts somewhere - it must be that! From what I can remember, it was not nearly as vile as DKR.
This review belongs on the Batman page, though... I think there's going to be one.
But yeah, seeing as the movie's going to come out - you gonna review that too, Batman Begins?? And you think that that will "lean on" Batman Year One... do it!!
But I can't see how, as both Rh'as Al Ghul and The Scarecrow are in it - both "decent" villains if you'll excuse my saying so, though NOTHING can approach the delight of Jim Carrey as the Riddler! (Anyone who didn't like "Batman Forever" should die immediately of humour deficiency!)
But neither of them were blimming IN "Batman: Year One", WERE they?
So wotta you on about??
Anyway, I'm finally worn out. I have to stop. Any "regular" on here who is tired of me, feel free to say so. This seems to have become the "Liz vs. Maurice" blog! I just got worried that maybe, it would put off other visitors who want to comment on THIS particular movie, the one at the top of the page (!!), "Sin City", right off... Well sorry folks, but we need a comic book part of the site, is the real problem. We've got a Narnia one and all that.
Anyway, I hope that since the movie is no longer really new, not in the US anyway, most people who felt strongly have said their piece. But if you haven't, come on with it! Make Maurice argue with you; he's good at it. But try a bit of "sin-seeking" for a change, why not, instead of something like: "I didn't really like this movie, but I tried to see Christ in it in the following way..."
Ho! Hum!
Be controversial, Christians!
But I've finally tired myself out. Anyway, I have to be patient and keep at least a bit of my powder dry (but I never will run out!) for my own Batman reviews.
I'm going! I'm played out for now! Reclaim your blog, folks!!
Where's your response to some of my last suggestions, Maurice? Eg, ARE you going to review "Charmed"? For instance?
Oh YES, and Maurice: I asked you at least ONE very pertinent question: HOW MANY BLACK comics writers/artists/creators do you know of?? Any? Any at all??
(Other than those writing what is basically "ghetto" fiction, to appeal to a specifically black, possibly underground market - well, I don't know, I'm not part of that scene over there, am I? What might it be? "Rastafarians R Us", I suppose, as a postulated, and so far as I am aware, non-existent title! But you know what I mean... "Ghetto" ethnic fiction... Like "Love and Rockets" but even less well known... (And I thought "Love and Rockets" was pathetic, if it's meant to put the cause of the Hispanic community, or whatever... I was totally unimpressed by a few issues of it, as I so often am!)
Well, do you know of any "ethnic" comic strip/comic book (SPECIFICALLY comic BOOK) creators, yourself??
And are there any who gain mainstream attention? Because I haven't heard of them over where I am.
liz, i'll address your last comment first. i know of a couple of black comic book writers. christopher j. priest (who used to write under the name james owsley) was the first black creator. the first. in the 1980s.
i have enjoyed his work, and he has written some of my favorite recent titles. black panther. the crew. captain america and falcon. his books have a strange habit of being abruptly cancelled.
reginald hudlin, of the movie "house party", is now writing comic books. he's now doing "black panther" and i hear that he'll be taking over another book soon.
hopefully this will encourage wesley snipes, who last had the option on black panther, to pursue that movie project.
dc did an imprint called milestone that featured black creators writing black characters. it went under, though the cartoon "static shock" came from that experiment.
and i heard that another independent label just launched; black creators who used to be part of the milestone experiment.
the comics site is up. i'll be posting my review of "batman year one" shortly.
i probably won't be reviewing "charmed". i never watched it in anyway that even approached consistently (basically, i was aware that there was a show on the air called "charmed" and i may have caught an episode or two of it).
unless someone wants to buy me the dvds. (-:
what i was saying is that politics doesn't enter into why harry potter is denounced. it has more to do with a knee jerk reaction to all things "witchcraft".
i'll leave room for others to post on your comments, but i did want to address a couple of points.
alan moore's COMIC "league of extra-ordinary gentlemen" is different from the MOVIE "lxg". i found the comic quite literate and had an intelligence and wit that the movie lacked.
and i believe that artists have to be responsible. yes, they reflect culture, and be slavish to it. but they also have the power to shape and drive culture, which they often don't own up to. cultural tastes and mores constantly change, evolves or devolves depending on how you see it.
Quickly: LAST bit first! Yes, I know about the different versions of the COMIC and MOVIE "lxg", if you want to dignify it with an acronym! (I have even read stuff in papers/teletext telling me some of the differences! For SOME reason, reviewers - men - are really interested in Alan Moore, whereas I'm not!):-(
But I know lots about it. I've seen the movie and have it on DVD (special offer petrol station purchase!); and I have LOOKED at the comic book in a shop, not read it or even scanned it all through, because it is too long; and not bought it, because I simply concluded: "This is MUCH too expensive for a comic - and it is probably not worth the dosh!"
Nothing in my opinion can be that "literate" unless it passes my high standards of bullshit avoidance - and I'm afraid that making out that Nemo was a (Hindu) Indian, when there is absolutely NO evidence of this in the original; I have combed it through and it actually suggests one or two things to the contrary, though it says that the Captain has SYMPATHY for India as an oppressed nation... Actually, he's MUCH more likely to be a kind of Communist - and a Christian! (Catholic, possibly. Verne says he looks "Hispanic". He leads his men in an underwater service underneath a cross... See what I mean?)
I pick up on all these details! I have an unerring instinct towards finding them out! IF YOU ARE A LITERARY SINNER, I SHALL FIND YOU OUT!!
I liked Sean Connery as Alan Quartermain. I rather liked the (MOVIE) innovation of having ONE American member of the team, and that member being Tom Sawyer! I could handle that!
But as for the basic thing - I think a 12-year-old could have written it, like I say!
I'd be FAR more interested in what a talented and precocious 12-year-old had to SAY, in comics!
I don't know why they don't open up the medium with writing competitions!!
(I believe they do, in Japanese manga!!)
Glad you think that artists have to be responsible, and that they shape and drive culture, which I ALWAYS knew!
(I believed in the power of literary magic from a very young age, you see! Stories are spells!)
No, they don't own up to it much, do these "postmodern", contemporary, useless bunch. Don't want the responsibility, very likely.
HP - yes, but WHY, oh why, now, do the "Christian critics" almost inevitably seem to HOME IN ON the "leftish" offenders-by-magic, and LEAVE ALONE the ones who profess to be Christian by ideology (eg, the Reverend G P Taylor, author of "Shadowmancer", Tolkien, etc), and they also leave alone most anyone who is a right-wing git! Well I can't think of anyone in "magical" fantasy, per se - but there IS Frank Miller in comics, and of course, his hanger-on, Alan Moore, he writes lots of occult stuff as you point out - have any Christians jumped on HIS back?
Also view my comments on the fatal attraction of "top brand names" on another blog!!
Thanks for telling me about the black scripters! More power to their elbow! (As long as they don't think too "white"!! Yes, I read your "sermon" on your bio page, by the way!)
Pity about Charmed! I was waiting for a delightful appraisal; thought maybe you'd like it because you liked Buffy... It always seemed to be on at the wrong time of day, for me, in Britain, though... I'm sure it was a good series. Still showing here! It had more stuff about the "good" powers intervening in human affairs, eg. there were angels, in the stories, real ones, and also "white lighters". I thought that a good idea - not just having the "bad supernatural" everywhere.
Still - maybe that WAS a bit too "girl power" for you!!
(I hated the name "Piper", though! It was what Disney called one of the three little pigs!!)
I'd love to get the lot on DVD.
How many DVDs do you buy a year? You say you only read, what, 12 books! (Or was it 24?) (That would be a laugh, for me!)
Imagine, Maurice, having an addiction which is intellectual and which is totally BOTTOMLESS in its extent....
Mm. By the way, where's the comics "site", then? On here? (That was quick!)
This isn't very easy to navigate...
I found your Batman Year One at the top of your other pages...
And if it is going to be any good, what you will have to do is compare Batman Year One to Batman Begins (which I KNOW is not out yet - but it can't be long!) and say what you think the similarities are... If any! Other than sheer boringness!!
i spend roughly $1200 a year on dvds and an equal amount on comic books. i only spend a hundred bucks or so a year on books because i get many free plus i have the library when in doubt. i read about 24 books a year, not including items i read for whatever project i am researching at the time.
if you go to the main page of the hollywood jesus site
www.hollywoodjesus.com
the comic page should be right along the top.
$1200 a year on DVDs and the same on comic books? That's not bad! I'd LIKE to spend the same amount per year on DVDs, and I'd NEVER spend the same amount on comic books, even were I rich... unless they got really really good....
I outspend you on books easily! Even if you take the DVD figure and apply it to books!
I shall end up selling my soul or mortgaging my house because of it...
So what do you think of me picking up Alan Moore on his little boo-boo, then? Or lie? (So he could look "trendy"! He's full of'em! Believe me! I've got a list of his errors that I shall post on the internet!)
And what do you think of my idea of having writing competitions in comics? Open to the public, of course!
And WHAT do you think of my idea of having competitions for CHILD authors in said comics, (not all the time and not in everything, but just in one or two) and involving minor-age readers more in that way?
(Because for one thing, I think children have fresher ideas, because their minds are less corrupted!)
Well, they HAVE to think of something to get back more child readers, IF they want to increase sales, and build foundations for a new readership!
I'm just full of ideas!
(DC et al are not!!)
They do do sort of little experiments from time to time, small "imprints" as they call them - for example the one that published "Road to Perdition", but they NEVER have enough of a strategy behind them, NOR enough financing, I'll be bound... so that's why they don't last long!
I know it all before I'm told!!
I have just nothing but contempt for modern entertainment companies!!
Oh well, I'm off to find the comics page!
As I said - how I loathe authors who are always trying to be trendy and who are full of lies! I shall find them all out! Name them and shame them!
More about that in a sec. Or maybe on another blog!
Now, Maurice, darling. I really am catching on to you chaps here, you know!! At first I was horrified - but now I am amused, interested, and won! (As I hope, are you!)
This is a good progression! Better than some, anyway!
I've just been re-reading the posts on this blog, and I wanted to add to at least one. You know that first of the knights I mentioned, Maurice, and that I thought he was black, and made a saint... Well, I was trawling my brain for his name, and it came to me why I didn't remember it first time, because I obviously thought it too much of a coincidence - still, maybe that's why my subconscious brought it up in the first place!
It was St. Maurice! Or Mauritius, as some accounts have it!
There's a thing for you!!
Well, anyway, that's who he was - a third century Christian martyr, a Moor - by tradition - and the patron saint of soldiers. And various other things. Memorial day 22 September. Martyred in a massacre c.287 at what is now modern Switzerland.
I looked him up on Google, and the first reference was from the Catholics, naturally - www.catholic-forum.com/saints.saintm32.htm
But there wasn't anything about him being the founder of the Western orders of chivalry! Yet I'm SURE I heard he was, on a TV documentary, and our TV documentaries, from BBC, ITV or Channel 4, are NORMALLY pretty reliable, in Britain... We don't just have any old rubbish on our TV!
I always thought we were best for factual programmes.
But I didn't record it, nor do I have a record of title or anything - it was just something I was watching one evening last year or something. And I'm sure that's what they said!
So I checked him out on Wikipedia - and you should see the little icon there is of him! Very bling! If you were a Catholic, or Orthodox, I'd say have a repro of that on the wall behind your desk!
But of course they had to bloomin' spoil the story, on that site, by saying, "oh, he might not have existed, it's Christian mythology", "Some church father made it up" and all that... And you know, generally spoiling the story by picking at this or that historical detail, like whether Roman Emperors massacred soldiers at that period... Well since they were absolute rulers, I would have thought that they massacred whoever they liked, whenever!!
I'm never very impressed by THESE kind of theories, because, for one thing, I learnt in Religious Education at school, from a not very religious teacher, that they had archaeological evidence of Abraham, and documentary evidence of Christ, enough to prove that the latter historically existed, anyway!
(I generally tended to believe my teachers!)
And yet now all over the web I find various kinds of people, including orthodox Jews, trying to make out that Jesus of Nazareth was some kind of literary creation or something!
What a crock!
Anyway. I only went on Wikipedia to find further evidence of this "first knight" theory - I'm SURE I haven't got the wrong saint - but was frustrated in my scholarly endeavours, by all the information I didn't seek - you know how it is!
There was NOTHING on there which said who STARTED the idea of chivalry in the West, at all... And it's really very important to me, for non-comic-book-related reasons I hinted at in a post above!
So again I am intellectually frustrated and wondering if I was dreaming, but then it was the Beeb so I can't have been!
(There are always some authorities we hold sacred!)
And because I looked up "knight", there was, interestingly, a link to their article on Batman - which I read, with the usual revulsion that I have for anything to do with Miller - and I disagreed with their theories about the older comics as well, but that's because I know they've read them all wrong!
But it seems to me that people can bend almost anything their way... Well they DO these days, only strangely enough, in an age of supposed media awareness - nobody seems to say that people do! If you see what I mean!! They just "accept" whatever goes on the screen. Oh, unless it's something about real-life UFOs, when the CIA-controlled media deliberately make a joke of it.
You only even rarely see a programme that breaks down advertising. There's actually a bit like that on the HollywoodJesus site...
Anyway, I wish I hadn't gone onto that Wikipedia Batman article, in many ways, because they actually told me things about certain recent DC and tie-in shenanigans that I don't think I wanted to know!!
(Talk about clunky continuity! They've to date written so much crap, it all now cancels each other out! Well they try to pretend it doesn't, but it does!)
I remember my English teacher at secondary school, going through people's essays and stories with a pen, marking them, and when he didn't like stuff, or it was wrong according to the syllabus, he very frequently ran a red line right through each line of text, going: "Zzzt - Zzzt - Zzzt!" in a piercing manner, as he moved his felt tip!
It was quite funny, especially since he was a bit camp!
Well I wish I was in his position, now! In a schoolroom wouldn't be bad! Maybe I should have listened to my parents and trained as a teacher, an English teacher - trouble was, I would have had to study English, and I never did, on a higher level, because my curriculum had to find room for other stuff!
Still. I would just love to go: "Zzt - Zzt - Zzt!" with everything I thought was rubbish, even if it was written by schoolboys!
(You can't let them get away with everything, even if you're sympathetic to them, otherwise they won't pass the exams!)
But it would be yet BETTER to do that, as a studio or a publishing exec! Please Gaia, for my next incarnation!!
(Anyway, I suppose I would have had to come across the duff Batman ideas sooner or later! For the sake of this site, if no other!)
Blimey, though, what a load of RUBBISH entertainments studios make these days!!
What bad writing, phonily posing as something "complex".
Doesn't apply to most of the good shows. Buffy, Six Feet, Housewives, so on and so forth.
The cop shows and 24 I am more reluctant to comment about, because I think that they are WELL-executed, quite clever, but also quite right-wing, and becoming more so now. Eg 24. wsws.org and some of the Americans who write letters to them agree with me.
But APART from that, there's some real junk rubbish - and a lot of THAT has to do with various morons' interpretations of comic strips!!
Unfortunately.
Mmm. And whoever it is out there - whichever group of artists, featured on the Wikipedia site, who seem to delight in picturing the Joker as a) The Devil b) Hannibal Lecter, I put it to you, you are wasting your time, and more importantly, wasting the public's time.
I also have this feeling, that there are bunches of comic strip artists out there, who unlike Frank Miller, can actually draw quite well... But they have what I call the PORNOGRAPHIC imagination. Committed Christians might very well agree with this definition, because it defines people who have really very little respect for the human body, and very little respect for sex as an expression of humanity and - soul, if you like! They are misanthropic creatures, who rather like picturing imagined human-like characters in very glossy detail, but have NO idea of sex as an expression of sensuality, or of human relationship... Their concept of sensuality is, not to mince words, "as cold as a witch's tit" - sorry, fellow magic-lovers!! Spicy Cauldron, if you are lurking around!
Their idea of humanity is colder.
Their ideas are not to be fostered.
And it is these kind of people who draw, not only "Sin City" type drawings, which hark rather to the actual porn genre known as what is it, "babes and bullets", I think? "Girls with guns"? You know, usual nonsense!
But also: "The Joker as Hannibal Lecter and Harley Quinn as his willing pawn"... type pictures. Much glossy artistry is employed therein; zero understanding.
Well of course it is zero understanding! Dini did not create the latter character to be such... This is, again, a subject for another blog!! Batman movies and spin-offs! And that shall be done, in the fullness of time, powers willing!
But, you who I have criticised above: I dislike you all, whoever you are - you know who you are!!
You will suffer!! All in the fullness of time!
Anyway. This Wikipedia article had this "theory" saying that the Joker had been rendered "harmless" in the stories, older or newer, where he doesn't do any killing - which is again, bosh! The Joker is NEVER "harmless" - not from the establishment's point of view! HE is not harmless. I am not harmless. YOU are not harmless!! We are all much too intelligent to be harmless.
ANYWAY, GUYS - do I have to ask the OBVIOUS?? I might as well ask it of you guys, seeing as I can't ask it of the jerk(s) who wrote the article, nor can I ask it of the American authorities!!
(Oh what CONTEMPT I have for the pack of them!!)
IF, as in this great "theory" I read in their article (written by some morons working for DC I am quite certain), a criminal, be he ever so "eccentric", is to be regarded as "HARMLESS" as LONG as he does not kill anybody, well, i'faith, WHY, then, are there ALL these people who DON'T kill anybody, haven't murdered in the commission of their crimes - but US penitentiaries are FULL of them! Petty thieves on 3-strikes-and-your out, like it was a baseball game! Drug addicts! And the like!!
If fictional criminals - you might like my argument here Kevin, I'll invite you to read it - are to be viewed as HARMLESS, in stories when they don't kill, well why don't we extend the same definition to FACTUAL ones?
And why don't the US authorities put them all on community service instead of filling up the jails and creating a prison-industrial complex on their backs???
I'll show you HARMLESS!
There's nothing as sharp as a well-honed MIND!
(But really I know they meant: "Oh, he's harmless in such-and-such a story... that's not enough for us, we want him to be a monster, and that way we can create a good scapegoat, for our own evil, and that's the only thing that will satisfy us!")
I put it to you, that modern pop fiction writers have very little REAL idea of who and what a monster TRULY is - or if indeed there be such a thing!
But they like to say they know when they don't.
And this is where all the rubbish in modern fiction stems from! Misidentification of categories.
Actually, he is probably MOST palatable to those on top in stories where he DOES do killing or sadistic maiming or similar, he is least threatening to the authorities, of OUR world, never mind Gotham's - because that is what THEY do, our lords and masters, and what they constantly like to promote, hence all these latterday Rambo films (as my sainted mother called all such things!) and their successors, the Burtons and so on.
So a TRULY post-post-modern Joker... Well I'm actually coming around to the idea that he might best be NON-violent! Completely so in fact!
But then, on the OTHER hand, I've got a nasty little anarchist streak, and I sort of balk at a COMPLETE pacifism... (So do the Marxists because they're serious! About turning the world upside down!)
As I thoroughly want to get back at all those who hurt me and who hurt my class...
So really the Joker should go back to his real roots (in the slant that They don't want to put on it, my dears!) and kill ONLY, or mainly, extremely RICH people (except for Joanne Rowling), and judges. As was the actual CASE, which I know, and you won't find on Wikipedia nor any official comics site for a start!
(Kevin, Maurice - told you he was an anarchist!!)
THAT would be justice. THAT would be truth in comics. THAT would be "roots". And that would be relevant.
LIKE NOTHING ELSE!!!!!
(Says me, Ms Angry!)
Turn on the super-rich and turn on the government, that's what I say!
You'll have to do it before they turn on you!
All modern versions - including that DISGUSTING-sounding new cartoon, of 2004, that has not been seen here yet - with the Joker in dreadlocks, i'faith!!
Bare feet, long toenails and green dreadlocks, the review on Wiki said! Maurice - you know anything about this?? You must have seen it!
(Sounds to ME like they're trying to make him BLACK (well actually he could be, under all that bleached skin, look at MJ! Is that a nasty thought?), yes, black, Rastafarian (!), and poor/low-caste, hence the idea of bare feet. (That would be their subliminal suggestion.) And of course, in this NEW, NEWER cartoon, they try and demonise him and make him as VIOLENT and as mindlessly EVIL as possible. That being their idee fixe!
They can make anything out of anything these days!
Which is what the OVERCLASS ALWAYS DOES TO THE UNDERCLASS!! The picture it always paints - take a dekko at posh British cartoonists' renditions of Irish people during the 1840s famine; as kind of Negroid apemen to be feared and reviled. Cartoonists have been responsible for some terrible libels in their time.
But now it has once more reached new proportions of injustice.
Mark my words, Christians!! Little in modern popular culture is very Christian any more!!
It deserves a whole other blog, anyway, the whole topic of the most recent Batman useless experiments!
And I HATE Wikipedia, sometimes! (I only use it 'cos it's free!) The "authorities" - whoever writes on there, sees to what goes on there, purport to be writing the TRUTH about a certain subject, but actually, a lot of it is just what a current PREJUDICE is, in an area of society, about a subject! Yes I HAVE found this to be the case before, and not just to do with comics, concerning accounts of certain paranormal phenomena on there. I am basically a supporter of Rupert Sheldrake the alternative biologist, and I know one or two of his mates - by Internet I hasten to add - and other stuff in that regard, like for example that French medical man who claimed to have found a proof for homeopathy - and, what is more importantly, a working theory of how it all works in terms of physics! Well he DID - I really believe in his work - he's dead now, well he didn't say he'd found the fountain of youth!
But bloody James Randi and some other gits got on the (BBC) TV programme that was supposed to be showcasing his work, and they supposedly "discredited" him, and it is THAT account, that has made its way onto Wikipedia and certain other sites!!
The guy from the Sheldrake site told me that he had tried to modify the account on the Wiki site, but it never stayed up there long, because the Randi supporters and the rest of the blighters kept on replacing it with their stuff - and there were more of them than of his kind! Basically!!
Well SO much for encyclopedias which are written by "consensus", not by the weight of scholarship or argument!!
Much of what is written on supposedly "authoritative" sites on the Internet is bull! I now reckon!
SPAM the lot of them I say! Only not this site!
Anyway, that was a bit off the point of pop culture, but I have to say what I feel and illustrate the reasons!
I hate large swathes and swatches of everything, which wasn't really the point of me reopening my blog entries on this particular one - but all I have to do is Internet surf to be annoyed!!
Oh yeah. And on the actual TOPIC of this blog, many feet of web column above, "Sin City" - that's actually what I wanted to put a quick extra post on, as well as the stuff about St. Maurice, which was my reason for coming back on this one.
Well anyway, I've looked through all the stills given from the movie "Sin City" on this site. There are a lot of them; they must have taken a while to put on! Very comprehensive - if all your movie archives are like this, this makes HollywoodJesus a good sight better than Yahoo movies!
But anyway, I've looked at these very detailed images, not liked the pictures very much... And then I came to the last few at the end, taken from Miller's comic strip itself.
Well. Here I can only reiterate a variation on my usual message: Frank Miller, whatever else he is, is NOT a draughtsman; and he has an extremely ugly visual imagination, which delights in picturing ugly and animalistic/Neanderthal images of human beings.
In fact, you can't even call them that, because it's an insult to dogs and cats and others of Gaia's creatures, and to Neanderthals!!
Whereas MY comics, if ever I had a company.. Ah now, they would ALL be beautiful!!
Even my villains would be beautiful. (But not in the way you might think - not - necessarily - Hollywood-star beautiful! There are more subtle ways of seeing and showing beauty than that!)
And most importantly, near everyone would look and act intelligent.
(Not gormless, and again like animals, as in certain graphic novelizations I've seen - to me it is AMAZING how many comic book artists there are who actually make their renditions of humans look like morons - even when they illustrate very intelligent and humorous fiction, such as the comic novels of Terry Pratchett - sometimes!)
Anyway, it amazes me not infrequently, to see the depths to which supposedly professional strip cartoonists will stoop, these days. And what nonsense and ugliness they portray!
Anyone who buys Frank Miller instead of my imagination, you don't know what you're missing!
(And I don't want any "Christian" arguments about how you can find God in ugly gormlessness! Tell that to the victims at Abu Ghraib!)
Soul means intelligence! Intelligence is Beauty! Beauty is Truth!
I must have run out of steam by now...
No, I haven't, not quite!
I've got one further comment: only a little one!
Well, I re-read your review at the top and one thing struck me: that you said the outlook of the movie/comic "Sin City" was "existential".
Hmm. I don't really see how it can be: because existentialism is a pretty literate and intellectual doctrine, great for middle-class navel-gazers actually... And yet there's nothing and nobody like this in the movie... Well at least not in the comics, not that I've seen!
As David Walsh my Marxist mate says, "Anti-intellectualism predominates in the Rodriguez-Miller-Tarantino mileu.. but insofar as the filmmakers construct an argument for their work, it has a schizophrenic character."
And so on!
Anti-intellectual schizophrenics? Doesn't sound much like existentialism to me... Satre, Camus, Kierkegaard and so on (love the latter!)... They were all a bunch of intellectuals, dearie!
Sorry Maurice but I have to pull you up on this one?
Anti-intellectual Hollywood "existentialists"? Pull the other one...
AND, also, I STILL can't see how anyone can say that a movie has Christian themes in it, when one of the main heroes cuts someone's limbs off - no matter how "evil", I don't care who we're talking about - and feeds the rest of 'em to a DOG!
This isn't Christianity! This is porno-sadism!!
Don't care if you're supposed to be reading Christian messages into movies! Find another movie to find God in!
Not enough people seem to want to come on here and discuss such essential matters... Hm. I must some time go out and trawl for further customers!! Born-agains maybe! Maybe they would think it was evil! Or then again, as Walsh said, maybe not, because "puritanism and porno-sadism are deeply linked in America"! And he's an American, he should know...
Anyway, the movie was released on April 1, so as the Joker might say (if he were British!) "You've been had, me old cock!"
April Fool!
But actually if you DO want an existentialist comic book story... Well, a Batman story, not in comic book form, in prose actually...
Well I've found one! I think I told Kevin, not you... I found it in a volume of Batman stories in 1992. It was by a (horror) writer called Steve Rasnic Tem, it wasn't horror, not really... It was more like a sort of very bleak kind of "grunge" mood, but with a VERY literary bent... It was called "Vulture: A Tale of the Penguin", and it was novella-length, published in a volume of Batman prose stories.
I thought it was a bit pompous at first - but it WAS one of the things that grew on me, a bit - a few things do! And now I think that compared to all the rubbish that's been in later years published in the name of comics and the name of Batman, THIS literate story was unjustly neglected and not fussed about at all!
Oh, and unlike some kind of abysmally stupid prose story about the Joker which I found out about on that Wiki site - euch - it does NOT make out that the Penguin is a serial killer... though he could have become one, but...
Well you'll have to read the story, won't you? The volume is still available second-hand through Amazon.
It's definitely existentialist! It's about the human condition, you see, and is very sympathetic to humanity... There's a social message too, but it's rather veiled, as if such writers were SCARED to say plainly what they meant, about American society!!
Actually, I think that if the Penguin had the same experiences that Tem gives him, he wouldn't go mad, he'd become a socialist. (Well he might turn to religion as well.)
What WOULD comic book "fanboys" do if their stock characters, who they have allowed to be abused so much, suddenly turned on them and started professing socialism??
I'd like to see that!
They can have religion if they want. Or existentialism.
But I want socialism and feminism and gay rights.
(Don't worry though! You won't find them in that story!)