There's a time and a place for everything, including Hunter S. Thompson (I have to admit, I always think the S in the middle there is one of those Homer Jay/J. Simpson things, along the lines of Harry S Truman, whose S stood for nothing, but I'm wrong - the S. in Hunter S. Thompson stands for Stockton). I'm reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas right now, and while I like it, I think I would have loved in high school. Now, I'm just sort of like, "Dude, enough with the ether and the mescaline and the knifeplay," although I do recognize that those things are sort of the point of the whole thing, and that it's kind of interesting in a corrupt-American-Dream sort of way.
But I get the sense that it's not for me. Written in 1971, back when American troops were busily losing the Vietnam War, and before the War On Drugs had been launched, the dizzy, lurching story of the Mint 400 features Raoul Duke, a Thompson stand-in, and his debauched attorney, as they try to survive a weekend fueled what Thompson describes as a "mobile police narcotics lab," in Las Vegas no less. It's mostly about how many drugs they can stuff in their maws, and how loopy they subsequently feel.
If I had read this ten years ago, back when drugs held a certain glamour, I would have been in awe of their dirty weekend. I had girlfriends who cried when Thompson died in 2005, since they had read his books in high school and seen their own drug consumption justified. If Thompson could gobble sheets of acid and still get played by Johnny Depp in the movie, then they, logic went, were pursuing art by doing stepped-on blow during weekend barbecues.
The same thing comes up with Requiem for a Dream, which I did actually see when I was sixteen. The climax features an amputation, an ECT session, and a double-ended dildo, and is all about how drugs are fun until they're really, really not. It was the alpha and omega of drug movies - a particularly stylish PSA about heroin and how crappy it'll make your life. The book, which is actually more upsetting, left me in a navy-blue funk for a week. The whole experience makes heroin seem awesome, until you're inevitably on the ward without an arm.
And on a much less drug-terror note, I finally saw Edward Scissorhands this summer, way, way too late. I loved it, because it's good, but if I had seen it when I was a kid, it could have taught me a ton about, you know, acceptance and difference and blah blah blah. Plus, Johnny Depp as Edward is just great, all tortured silence and ratty hair. I could have had a childhood kindred spirit in Edward Scissorhands's horribly messy 'do, instead of the Wakefield twins and their ridiculous heart-shaped faces and perfect blonde hair.
It's hard catching up on pop-culture references. Internet memes have a shelf life of weeks - once you've missed the boat on those, you're basically out of the running, joke-wise. Movies and TV shoes are a little more durable, but smoke-monster jokes are dunzo and "I am Jack's raging sense of inanity" are a dying breed. Not that it's impossible to cast your mind back to full stuff you loved a decade ago; more that, if you miss the moment, it's sort of hard to join in at a later date. You lose that head-space: things that were amazing to your younger self (the drug lore, the fight clubs, the dirty lays) morph into things that make us go "ew."
I remember the first time I saw The Matrix. I literally rewound the tape - this was back in the olden days, when movies didn't have chapters - and watched it again, straight through, barely breathing. It was so awesome, so epic, so punchy and green and blue and Keanu! It was awesome in a way that, twenty years from now, is going to be dated. Teenagers, looking for the thrills that thrilled their parents, are going to download that movie and watch it, wondering what all the fuss is about. Making it, not bad, but very much of its time - like Hunter S. Thompson, it'll be a kind of pop culture Mary Celeste, drifting along, influential and exciting but ultimately meant for a certain person in a certain moment.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Back!....To The Future!
Back to the Future, oh how I love thee. Michael J. Fox, you are among my top three favourite Michaels. Christopher Lloyd, you are by far my very favourite Christopher (and my second favourite Lloyd). Lea Thompson, when I was a child, I thought your Enchantment Under the Sea dress was just the little bosom flaps, and thought it was odd that someone would attend a school dance basically topless. Guy who played Biff Tannen, you've been in plenty of other projects, yet you are linked inextricably in my mind to this meat-head sociopath. Crispin Glover, you are a glorious weirdo. Delorean, you are just the coolest vehicle ever put into production. Siiiiigh.
Back to the Future was one of those childhood movies that, rewatching it in my 20s, really isn't a kids' movie at all. I had the pleasure of attending a screening this week, and it was odd to watch it with a room full of people - whole jokes got subsumed in laughter, things that I've never thought were hilarious turned out to be rollickingly funny to others, and there were surprisingly few kids in the audience. The movie has turned into a nostalgia piece for those of us born in the 1980s, and a classic on all levels, but do kids born in the 1990s and 2000s know about the genius of Marty McFly and "Dad! George! Hey, you on the bike!"? Do the children dream?
Sorry. Having moved every few years growing up, I never had the experience of running into my grade four teacher at the grocery store or having "our" library branch. Lacking physical touchstones meant my siblings and I relied on media for connection: The Lion King soundtrack, Tracy Chapman albums, Blossom, the Berenstain Bears, endless stacks of Archie comics. If I'm feeling upset and/or homesick, I can put on Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and veg out. In the same way that my mom's salmon cakes and my baby blanket are totally connected to me both today and in 1992, throwing on The Point is nearly fool-proof way to get me out of a mood.
And Back to the Future stands the test of time. Sure, it's all about time and place - Hill Valley, 1955/1985 - but it's also timelessly about falling in love, being true to yourself, and finding your way home. Sure, it might start being upsetting if you think about carefully. But Fox and Lloyd are so funny: they're both so good in the role that it's mind boggling that Eric Stoltz almost got the part. Part of Fox's charm is that he's basically playing himself (an affable charmer), and Glover's charm lies in the fact that he's acting. Hard. Lloyd is just hanging out, burbling "One-point-twenty-one jigawatts!" and being all loony mad scientist. The story is simple but fantastic - a young man accidentally goes back in time, interrupts his parents' first meeting, and needs to engage the help of a mad scientist to reunite his parents and get back to his own time - but the film has skateboard vs. car action sequences, frilly petticoats, Libyans, guitar solos, Huey Lewis, the most garish 4x4 truck I've ever seen, and "I am your density...I mean, destiny."
SOLD, right?
I'll grant that the sequels aren't wonderful: 2, while featuring a hoverboard and the famous self-lacing Nikes, is pretty damned dark, what with the father-murdering and the dystopian alternate 1985. 3 is crazy, just straight up insane: Wild West! With Doc Brown falling in l-o-v-e and a replacement to the original time-traveling Delorean that is candy-coated lunacy (spoiler alert: it's a train!). Unlike the other major '80s trilogies, Star Wars and Indiana Jones, BttF sort of goes off the rails in the last couple movies, but they're interesting to witness. And the original is so good. (Better than Star Wars. Yeah, I said it. I meant it.) And it's a blessing that Universal Studios dismantled the ride that was based on the movie, since it made a full 60% of my family lie-on-the-floor nauseous. But the movie is magic. Science fiction, comedy, romance, action, and a poop joke or two? What's not to love?
If and when I have kids, I hope they're into Marty McFly's timeline-bending escapades. It's my duty as a parent to expose them to the magic of the movie, and hope that I've spawned children who aren't total dolts. If they start wandering around shouting "Great Scott!" in their high-pitched tiny-person voices, I'll know I've done my duty.
Back to the Future was one of those childhood movies that, rewatching it in my 20s, really isn't a kids' movie at all. I had the pleasure of attending a screening this week, and it was odd to watch it with a room full of people - whole jokes got subsumed in laughter, things that I've never thought were hilarious turned out to be rollickingly funny to others, and there were surprisingly few kids in the audience. The movie has turned into a nostalgia piece for those of us born in the 1980s, and a classic on all levels, but do kids born in the 1990s and 2000s know about the genius of Marty McFly and "Dad! George! Hey, you on the bike!"? Do the children dream?
Sorry. Having moved every few years growing up, I never had the experience of running into my grade four teacher at the grocery store or having "our" library branch. Lacking physical touchstones meant my siblings and I relied on media for connection: The Lion King soundtrack, Tracy Chapman albums, Blossom, the Berenstain Bears, endless stacks of Archie comics. If I'm feeling upset and/or homesick, I can put on Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and veg out. In the same way that my mom's salmon cakes and my baby blanket are totally connected to me both today and in 1992, throwing on The Point is nearly fool-proof way to get me out of a mood.
And Back to the Future stands the test of time. Sure, it's all about time and place - Hill Valley, 1955/1985 - but it's also timelessly about falling in love, being true to yourself, and finding your way home. Sure, it might start being upsetting if you think about carefully. But Fox and Lloyd are so funny: they're both so good in the role that it's mind boggling that Eric Stoltz almost got the part. Part of Fox's charm is that he's basically playing himself (an affable charmer), and Glover's charm lies in the fact that he's acting. Hard. Lloyd is just hanging out, burbling "One-point-twenty-one jigawatts!" and being all loony mad scientist. The story is simple but fantastic - a young man accidentally goes back in time, interrupts his parents' first meeting, and needs to engage the help of a mad scientist to reunite his parents and get back to his own time - but the film has skateboard vs. car action sequences, frilly petticoats, Libyans, guitar solos, Huey Lewis, the most garish 4x4 truck I've ever seen, and "I am your density...I mean, destiny."
SOLD, right?
I'll grant that the sequels aren't wonderful: 2, while featuring a hoverboard and the famous self-lacing Nikes, is pretty damned dark, what with the father-murdering and the dystopian alternate 1985. 3 is crazy, just straight up insane: Wild West! With Doc Brown falling in l-o-v-e and a replacement to the original time-traveling Delorean that is candy-coated lunacy (spoiler alert: it's a train!). Unlike the other major '80s trilogies, Star Wars and Indiana Jones, BttF sort of goes off the rails in the last couple movies, but they're interesting to witness. And the original is so good. (Better than Star Wars. Yeah, I said it. I meant it.) And it's a blessing that Universal Studios dismantled the ride that was based on the movie, since it made a full 60% of my family lie-on-the-floor nauseous. But the movie is magic. Science fiction, comedy, romance, action, and a poop joke or two? What's not to love?
If and when I have kids, I hope they're into Marty McFly's timeline-bending escapades. It's my duty as a parent to expose them to the magic of the movie, and hope that I've spawned children who aren't total dolts. If they start wandering around shouting "Great Scott!" in their high-pitched tiny-person voices, I'll know I've done my duty.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Tour de Fancy
The wedding's back on. I recently wrote a post about a certain miss Jenny Lewis and her slide from girl-crush goddess into mediocre demi-back-up-singer, but after her show last night, I'm back on board. It reaffirms my belief that some performers are better live, while others need the support of a recording studio to bring their A-game. And it underlines my theory that Toronto hipsters woke up one day nine or ten months ago with a memo from the Fashion Fairy (a chain-smoking, vodka-tonic-swilling little sprite who had been up all night hitting on models and expounding about digital cameras) and all dutifully went out to buy plaid. Seriously, the Canadian tux was in full effect last night.
Anyway, Jenny Lewis and her partner in life and onstage, Johnny Rice, were great. The show had Band of Horses headlining, which we skipped because the crowd was insufferable, and the openers were the Besnard Lakes, which we loathed. The Lakes looked like Sloan and sounded like an even more boring Flaming Lips, and their stage show was irritating. At one point, they turned on super-bright LED light displays, and my sister and I simultaneously made the same face a cat will make if you spray it with water.
But the Jenny and Johnny portion, and yes, I'm biased, was great. Most of their setlist was from their recent collaborative album, but they capped their set with a song from Lewis's 2008 album Acid Tongue, "The Next Messiah," a nine-minute-long Southern rock jam that builds to a confetti-cannon finish. Rice was charmingly deferential to his special lady, who knows how to work a room and has a smile that could melt ice caps. And the bass player, for an added treat, was hilarious, all windmill and blond David Lynch haircut. It was fun, which is how live music is supposed to be.
Jenny and Johnny are one example of musicians that just need the energy of a room to get them to the next level. A few weeks ago, I went to a Murder By Death show and the same experience held there: the band was rollicking and sweaty, musically tight and having fun. Listening to their album at home, it's clear that the band was wearing their Sunday best to the studio; that sense of loose, jammy playtime isn't present. When I saw the Beastie Boys a few years ago, the guys were fun and funny, but the show had been obviously been produced. There were costume changes and synchronized AV displays, and the show had been scheduled down the the nanosecond.
If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that maybe the difference is between being a touring band and a recording band. Jenny and Johnny, Murder by Death, Ted Leo, Basia Bulat - the number of days they spend on the road far outstrips the time they spend in the studio. While a group like the Beasties can afford to spend more than a year enveloped in the recording process, to be offset by a year of touring, smaller bands need to grow their grassroots support by getting out there and playing the tiny clubs and jam spaces. Murder By Death recorded their 2003 album Who Will Survive, And What Will Be Left of Them? in a scant eleven days, and their touring schedule for 2010's Good Morning, Magpie had the band hitting 26 venues in 29 days. They get so good at playing live shows because that's what they do as a band. They don't need the glitzy production of an arena show because their music doesn't fall apart if they play fast and loose with it. They've built in a live sound to their shows, and have much more flexibility than a band who relies on banks of technical equipment to reproduce the vibe of their albums out in the world.
Hearing a band give a performance reaffirms my belief in live music. Oh, sure, not everyone can be wicked awesome with an audience, but my favourites seem to be folks who can move a room, who are comfortable enough with their musicality to play with their songs, not just play them, and who throw off twitchy, musical charisma. You can keep your Gwen Stefanis and your Muses - gigantic shows that are all Autotune, forty-foot video screens and fireworks over Webley Stadium. I like the world's biggest sound in the city's tiniest rooms.
Anyway, Jenny Lewis and her partner in life and onstage, Johnny Rice, were great. The show had Band of Horses headlining, which we skipped because the crowd was insufferable, and the openers were the Besnard Lakes, which we loathed. The Lakes looked like Sloan and sounded like an even more boring Flaming Lips, and their stage show was irritating. At one point, they turned on super-bright LED light displays, and my sister and I simultaneously made the same face a cat will make if you spray it with water.
But the Jenny and Johnny portion, and yes, I'm biased, was great. Most of their setlist was from their recent collaborative album, but they capped their set with a song from Lewis's 2008 album Acid Tongue, "The Next Messiah," a nine-minute-long Southern rock jam that builds to a confetti-cannon finish. Rice was charmingly deferential to his special lady, who knows how to work a room and has a smile that could melt ice caps. And the bass player, for an added treat, was hilarious, all windmill and blond David Lynch haircut. It was fun, which is how live music is supposed to be.
Jenny and Johnny are one example of musicians that just need the energy of a room to get them to the next level. A few weeks ago, I went to a Murder By Death show and the same experience held there: the band was rollicking and sweaty, musically tight and having fun. Listening to their album at home, it's clear that the band was wearing their Sunday best to the studio; that sense of loose, jammy playtime isn't present. When I saw the Beastie Boys a few years ago, the guys were fun and funny, but the show had been obviously been produced. There were costume changes and synchronized AV displays, and the show had been scheduled down the the nanosecond.
If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that maybe the difference is between being a touring band and a recording band. Jenny and Johnny, Murder by Death, Ted Leo, Basia Bulat - the number of days they spend on the road far outstrips the time they spend in the studio. While a group like the Beasties can afford to spend more than a year enveloped in the recording process, to be offset by a year of touring, smaller bands need to grow their grassroots support by getting out there and playing the tiny clubs and jam spaces. Murder By Death recorded their 2003 album Who Will Survive, And What Will Be Left of Them? in a scant eleven days, and their touring schedule for 2010's Good Morning, Magpie had the band hitting 26 venues in 29 days. They get so good at playing live shows because that's what they do as a band. They don't need the glitzy production of an arena show because their music doesn't fall apart if they play fast and loose with it. They've built in a live sound to their shows, and have much more flexibility than a band who relies on banks of technical equipment to reproduce the vibe of their albums out in the world.
Hearing a band give a performance reaffirms my belief in live music. Oh, sure, not everyone can be wicked awesome with an audience, but my favourites seem to be folks who can move a room, who are comfortable enough with their musicality to play with their songs, not just play them, and who throw off twitchy, musical charisma. You can keep your Gwen Stefanis and your Muses - gigantic shows that are all Autotune, forty-foot video screens and fireworks over Webley Stadium. I like the world's biggest sound in the city's tiniest rooms.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Falling
Nothing makes me feel more Canadian than sitting on a coffeeshop patio, overlooking Toronto's downtown vista, sipping on a hot apple cider. The autumn months are so gloriously necessary in a region that goes from boiling hot to freezing cold: they're like a palate cleanser, easing us into the cooler season.
As I rediscovered this summer, to my great dismay, I'm not really a summer person. Oh, sure, I enjoy the long days and the direct sunlight, but Southern Ontario is such a moody girl when it comes to temperature. Last summer featured a number of days in a row where just up and dying was probably the best option: humid, shadeless days that hit temperatures like 45 Celsius without even blinking. Since I rarely sweat, my cooling mechanism is deficient. It's a tricky line to walk when the slightest midday exertion creates an internal furnace that's been cranked to its highest setting. When I was reading The Windup Girl, the recent future-set novel by Paolo Bacigalupi about the food apocalypse, the Thai kingdom and weird sex - it was a barnstormer, let me tell you - I identified with the titular character, whose pores had been created too small for tropical Thailand and she would overheat. When I read that, I was like, "Aha! It does happen!" and then remember that, no, not really, it doesn't. Fiction is tricky that way.
In any case, while there are elements of the summer I enjoy, the heat is definitely not one of them. So switching to fall mode, where the days are cooler and the colours on the trees come out, is a nice breath of fresh air. I know it's a prelude to winter, which we're contractually obligated to hate, but the light is amazing and the pressure is off to have as! much! fun! as! possible! Summer is all about the 75-day sprint between Victoria Day and Labour Day: barbecues, bike rides, splashing in the water, drinking all night, free concerts in the park, run as fast as you can. I love it, but I also love the slower pace of the transition seasons. Spring is all about emergence, but in a way, so is fall. After the hustle-bustle of summer, autumn is a great time to take stock and settle into routines: the kids go back to school, people stop taking Fridays as sick days to drive four hours to the cottage, tights are reintroduced under dresses, and the underlying structure of our daily lives comes back into focus. It's nice.
I mean, sure, there are downsides to every season. The transition months in spring and fall are loaded with allergies, and there's that whole Daylight Saving thing that ruins everyone for a while. My favourite fruits disappear from the grocer and the patio is hit-or-miss. But in terms of terrible moments, fall's sort of great. Unless it rains the whole time. Then it's more of a bummer.
While I'm not really excited about winter weather, I'm jazzed to see how this one goes, brain-wise. I'm one of those folks who hibernates, getting fatter and more reluctant to leave the cocoon of the house, but I'm tired of that routine. I'd like to keep this veneer of normalcy up, in the hopes that it solidifies into real healthiness. Summer, while busy, recharges our batteries; winter drains them. Spring and fall are a happy compromise, asking for and giving little except the sun on your face and the knowledge that things are nice for a while. That's all I really want.
As I rediscovered this summer, to my great dismay, I'm not really a summer person. Oh, sure, I enjoy the long days and the direct sunlight, but Southern Ontario is such a moody girl when it comes to temperature. Last summer featured a number of days in a row where just up and dying was probably the best option: humid, shadeless days that hit temperatures like 45 Celsius without even blinking. Since I rarely sweat, my cooling mechanism is deficient. It's a tricky line to walk when the slightest midday exertion creates an internal furnace that's been cranked to its highest setting. When I was reading The Windup Girl, the recent future-set novel by Paolo Bacigalupi about the food apocalypse, the Thai kingdom and weird sex - it was a barnstormer, let me tell you - I identified with the titular character, whose pores had been created too small for tropical Thailand and she would overheat. When I read that, I was like, "Aha! It does happen!" and then remember that, no, not really, it doesn't. Fiction is tricky that way.
In any case, while there are elements of the summer I enjoy, the heat is definitely not one of them. So switching to fall mode, where the days are cooler and the colours on the trees come out, is a nice breath of fresh air. I know it's a prelude to winter, which we're contractually obligated to hate, but the light is amazing and the pressure is off to have as! much! fun! as! possible! Summer is all about the 75-day sprint between Victoria Day and Labour Day: barbecues, bike rides, splashing in the water, drinking all night, free concerts in the park, run as fast as you can. I love it, but I also love the slower pace of the transition seasons. Spring is all about emergence, but in a way, so is fall. After the hustle-bustle of summer, autumn is a great time to take stock and settle into routines: the kids go back to school, people stop taking Fridays as sick days to drive four hours to the cottage, tights are reintroduced under dresses, and the underlying structure of our daily lives comes back into focus. It's nice.
I mean, sure, there are downsides to every season. The transition months in spring and fall are loaded with allergies, and there's that whole Daylight Saving thing that ruins everyone for a while. My favourite fruits disappear from the grocer and the patio is hit-or-miss. But in terms of terrible moments, fall's sort of great. Unless it rains the whole time. Then it's more of a bummer.
While I'm not really excited about winter weather, I'm jazzed to see how this one goes, brain-wise. I'm one of those folks who hibernates, getting fatter and more reluctant to leave the cocoon of the house, but I'm tired of that routine. I'd like to keep this veneer of normalcy up, in the hopes that it solidifies into real healthiness. Summer, while busy, recharges our batteries; winter drains them. Spring and fall are a happy compromise, asking for and giving little except the sun on your face and the knowledge that things are nice for a while. That's all I really want.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Men In Fights
The Atlantic has cemented my view of them as stodgy old people who are simultaneously trying to get those damn kids off their damn lawn and figure out what's "cool" and "hip" to appeal to a fresh readership so they can up their subscription rates. In "The State of the Graphic Novel," an interview with Robert Kirkman, the creator of the wildly popular zombie comic The Walking Dead, the magazine quizzes Kirkman about what, exactly, comic books are, and why grown-ups should read them.
It's...well, it's sort of a disaster. The interview is a fine example of someone showing up who just hasn't done their homework. Jared Keller, the rube, asks about the distinction between the graphic novel and the comic book, tries to separate the up-market wheat from the superheroing chaff, and seems to suggest that the saccharine daily "For Better Or Worse" might be superior to "Calvin and Hobbes" because the former has characters that age through the course of the strip.
It's especially frustrating because Keller seems to want to differentiate the superheros from the presumably more "serious" graphic novels, mostly on the notion that superhero comics are lighter fare. As some responses have pointed out, there's plenty of darkness in the panels of the superheros comics, and to dismiss them is unfair - especially since they're clearly drawing an audience.
For a number of years, comics have been becoming more sophisticated, and Keller fails to distinguish between the superhero comics that someone might remember from their youth - the biff-bang-pow, right-or-wrong, masked-crusader titles - and the subsequent explosion of more complex, nuanced work. Titles like Maus, like Love and Rockets, like Watchmen, address the ambiguity of daily life, but filtered through the special unreality that comics afford their creators. Watchmen, for example, clearly springs from the superhero genre, and pays homage to it, but it's infused with self-doubt, paranoia, sexual tension, and other human foibles. As a result, it's better and worldlier than its source material. Superhero comics have evolved, taken cues from the critical and commercial success of the indie titles, and injected their heroes with analyst-worthy flaws. Batman? Spiderman? The heroes of the 2010 lines have almost nothing to do, psychologically, with the caped crusaders created decades ago.
The interview could half-heartedly be defended on the grounds that Keller is "an outsider" and the world of comics can seem strange, gory, monolithic and dense. I'm sure my mom would look at the foot or so of bookshelf that I have devoted to comics and roll her eyes, because it does seem like a genre firmly planted in childhood. As a result, readers often get branded as childish. But flipping through the pages often brings reluctant readers face-to-face with stories they can recognize. Blossoming love, coming out, and self-discovery are often coupled with alienation, paranoia, and fear. In other words, the human-being type stuff often trumps the men-in-tights aspect or the zombie-hunting story arc.
I don't read a lot of the superhero titles, because I'm not really interested in the soapiness of the storylines. A lot of the longest-running characters have been through all manner of characterization, and I sort of prefer my protagonists to have one authoritative vision. Titles like Hellboy, which is undeniably fun and superbly done, offer fights, snappy one-liners, and off-kilter universes without having to go back to 1943 in order to get the whole story straight. But the legacies of the superhero titles has informed so much that it's impossible to discount them: the rise of the underground, critically lauded RAW Comix in the late 1970s, widely considered to be the second coming in the world of sequential art, is a direct result of the banned horror comics that were created as an antidote to the square-jawed heroes of the WWII generation. Superman begat EC Comics begat Maus, which netted Speigelman a Pulitzer and started the whole "are comics literature or what?" debate.
Fans of the format (including me) have been rightly offended by the laziness in Keller's article. Furthermore, folks with a passing interest in any of the manifestations (ranging from decades-long universes requiring the occasional reboot a la Marvel; to shorter series like the excellent Y: The Last Man; to book-length narratives like Fun Home; and encompassing all types of genres including memoir, horror, lo-fi romance, coming-out and queer narratives, noir, and general fiction) have been done a disservice. Comics don't exist to be turned into movies, to be read solely by children, or to be given lip-service by an out-of-touch and ill-informed social media expert. The masked men and women deserved better.
It's...well, it's sort of a disaster. The interview is a fine example of someone showing up who just hasn't done their homework. Jared Keller, the rube, asks about the distinction between the graphic novel and the comic book, tries to separate the up-market wheat from the superheroing chaff, and seems to suggest that the saccharine daily "For Better Or Worse" might be superior to "Calvin and Hobbes" because the former has characters that age through the course of the strip.
It's especially frustrating because Keller seems to want to differentiate the superheros from the presumably more "serious" graphic novels, mostly on the notion that superhero comics are lighter fare. As some responses have pointed out, there's plenty of darkness in the panels of the superheros comics, and to dismiss them is unfair - especially since they're clearly drawing an audience.
For a number of years, comics have been becoming more sophisticated, and Keller fails to distinguish between the superhero comics that someone might remember from their youth - the biff-bang-pow, right-or-wrong, masked-crusader titles - and the subsequent explosion of more complex, nuanced work. Titles like Maus, like Love and Rockets, like Watchmen, address the ambiguity of daily life, but filtered through the special unreality that comics afford their creators. Watchmen, for example, clearly springs from the superhero genre, and pays homage to it, but it's infused with self-doubt, paranoia, sexual tension, and other human foibles. As a result, it's better and worldlier than its source material. Superhero comics have evolved, taken cues from the critical and commercial success of the indie titles, and injected their heroes with analyst-worthy flaws. Batman? Spiderman? The heroes of the 2010 lines have almost nothing to do, psychologically, with the caped crusaders created decades ago.
The interview could half-heartedly be defended on the grounds that Keller is "an outsider" and the world of comics can seem strange, gory, monolithic and dense. I'm sure my mom would look at the foot or so of bookshelf that I have devoted to comics and roll her eyes, because it does seem like a genre firmly planted in childhood. As a result, readers often get branded as childish. But flipping through the pages often brings reluctant readers face-to-face with stories they can recognize. Blossoming love, coming out, and self-discovery are often coupled with alienation, paranoia, and fear. In other words, the human-being type stuff often trumps the men-in-tights aspect or the zombie-hunting story arc.
I don't read a lot of the superhero titles, because I'm not really interested in the soapiness of the storylines. A lot of the longest-running characters have been through all manner of characterization, and I sort of prefer my protagonists to have one authoritative vision. Titles like Hellboy, which is undeniably fun and superbly done, offer fights, snappy one-liners, and off-kilter universes without having to go back to 1943 in order to get the whole story straight. But the legacies of the superhero titles has informed so much that it's impossible to discount them: the rise of the underground, critically lauded RAW Comix in the late 1970s, widely considered to be the second coming in the world of sequential art, is a direct result of the banned horror comics that were created as an antidote to the square-jawed heroes of the WWII generation. Superman begat EC Comics begat Maus, which netted Speigelman a Pulitzer and started the whole "are comics literature or what?" debate.
Fans of the format (including me) have been rightly offended by the laziness in Keller's article. Furthermore, folks with a passing interest in any of the manifestations (ranging from decades-long universes requiring the occasional reboot a la Marvel; to shorter series like the excellent Y: The Last Man; to book-length narratives like Fun Home; and encompassing all types of genres including memoir, horror, lo-fi romance, coming-out and queer narratives, noir, and general fiction) have been done a disservice. Comics don't exist to be turned into movies, to be read solely by children, or to be given lip-service by an out-of-touch and ill-informed social media expert. The masked men and women deserved better.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The Devolution of J. Lewis
There's nothing worse than a crush that's gone south. I mean, okay: yes. There are plenty of things worse than suddenly becoming irritated by someone you formerly thought was cool. Silly haircuts. The interminable Toronto mayoral race. Fall allergies masquerading as colds, or maybe vice versa, so you end up standing in the middle of the drugstore, besnotted and sick, with a box of Allertin in one hand and a pack of SinuFix in the other, praying to god that you don't accidentally end up dosing yourself with some toxic combination of pseudoephedrine and green tea when all you want to do is curl up under the Family Planning display and take a quick restorative nap.
But I've been finding lately that a certain brand of irritation is creeping into my soul. In addition to being very fond of crushing on dudes, I am the master of the girl crush - I love finding fancy ladies to admire. Some of my girl crushes, however, are morphing into something else. Something sinister. Something...lame.
To wit: Jenny Lewis. Her dossier reads like a hipster dream. She was a child actress in the 1980s, starring in gems like The Wizard, which prominently featured the much-derided Nintendo power glove, and Troop Beverly Hills, which seems to be in the youth-romp genre, much like Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead and other flicks featuring roving gangs of smart-mouthed children. She graduated with honours to the actress/musician program at the University of Hollywood, fronting her band Rilo Kiley. They were the darlings of the indie-pop scene for a while, and she's collaborated Ben "The Postal Service" Gibbard and Conor "Bright Eyes" Oberst. Her solo work, especially Rabbit Fur Coat, the 2007 album she did with the Watson Twins, has been widely critically approved, and she's indisputably a total fox.
But then her last solo album was sort of...blah. And now her newest project isn't great. It's a collaboration with her boyfriend of a few years, a mister Johnathan Rice. (If you're into movie stars, he played Roy Orbison in Walk the Line) Along the line somewhere, my total crush on Jenny Lewis sort of withered. They say love hath no fury like a woman scorned, but that's not totally true. There's nothing quite so terrible as someone you once admired emerging as pedestrian.
It's not that I've had the scales fall from my eyes or anything. When I listen to her first solo album, it's a good album. It's musical, it's fun, it's good listening. She covers a Traveling Wilburys tune; if you don't love that, you're dead inside. But this new thing, this Jenny and Johnny stuff? It's one thing to have a sound. It's sort of your calling card as an artist, actually. Lewis's lyrics are thoughtful and her music, while not especially complex, was interesting. This collaborative work is more like mid-tempo 1970s fuzzy stoner beach music. It sounds like the interstitial music for a one-season sitcom about, like, a straightlaced insurance salesman who's forced to join a groovy hippie commune and learn some life lessons in the process, man. Hummable, forgettable, tunes.
I hate that. I'm all for artistic changes, but unless you're Devo, shouldn't you be getting, I don't know, better? This happens all the time: creative folks blow their artistic load in their first few albums, books, gallery shows, clothing lines, movies, or TV shows, and you're left with a devoted fan base who don't have anything worthy of their devotion. I'll let my feminist leanings come out and say that it's especially tough for ladies to get their work out there in the first place: how many female directors have won Oscars? How many broads hang their work in big-name museums? How many female writers get included on course curricula? So to witness a big, shiny beginning and then a slow descent into mediocrity is especially maddening. We know you can do better...why produce something halfhearted?
Anyway, I like Jenny Lewis and I like music, so I bought her and her bf's album, and I'll be going to their show, but I'm just kind of blue. My girl crush is fading, and even though she's still hot and talented and interesting, this album is blah and uninspiring. I miss the old Lewis, the asskicker who sang about crappy threesomes and who would strut around stage and pound on the piano. Now we get this sedated, fuzzy version of rocking out, and I gotta say, I prefer my girl crushes to have some cojones. Not in a freaky, Thai-sex-tourist sort of way, but come on. What would you prefer: this aching, bitter-sweet secret teller, or this glorified backup singer? That's what I thought.
But I've been finding lately that a certain brand of irritation is creeping into my soul. In addition to being very fond of crushing on dudes, I am the master of the girl crush - I love finding fancy ladies to admire. Some of my girl crushes, however, are morphing into something else. Something sinister. Something...lame.
To wit: Jenny Lewis. Her dossier reads like a hipster dream. She was a child actress in the 1980s, starring in gems like The Wizard, which prominently featured the much-derided Nintendo power glove, and Troop Beverly Hills, which seems to be in the youth-romp genre, much like Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead and other flicks featuring roving gangs of smart-mouthed children. She graduated with honours to the actress/musician program at the University of Hollywood, fronting her band Rilo Kiley. They were the darlings of the indie-pop scene for a while, and she's collaborated Ben "The Postal Service" Gibbard and Conor "Bright Eyes" Oberst. Her solo work, especially Rabbit Fur Coat, the 2007 album she did with the Watson Twins, has been widely critically approved, and she's indisputably a total fox.
But then her last solo album was sort of...blah. And now her newest project isn't great. It's a collaboration with her boyfriend of a few years, a mister Johnathan Rice. (If you're into movie stars, he played Roy Orbison in Walk the Line) Along the line somewhere, my total crush on Jenny Lewis sort of withered. They say love hath no fury like a woman scorned, but that's not totally true. There's nothing quite so terrible as someone you once admired emerging as pedestrian.
It's not that I've had the scales fall from my eyes or anything. When I listen to her first solo album, it's a good album. It's musical, it's fun, it's good listening. She covers a Traveling Wilburys tune; if you don't love that, you're dead inside. But this new thing, this Jenny and Johnny stuff? It's one thing to have a sound. It's sort of your calling card as an artist, actually. Lewis's lyrics are thoughtful and her music, while not especially complex, was interesting. This collaborative work is more like mid-tempo 1970s fuzzy stoner beach music. It sounds like the interstitial music for a one-season sitcom about, like, a straightlaced insurance salesman who's forced to join a groovy hippie commune and learn some life lessons in the process, man. Hummable, forgettable, tunes.
I hate that. I'm all for artistic changes, but unless you're Devo, shouldn't you be getting, I don't know, better? This happens all the time: creative folks blow their artistic load in their first few albums, books, gallery shows, clothing lines, movies, or TV shows, and you're left with a devoted fan base who don't have anything worthy of their devotion. I'll let my feminist leanings come out and say that it's especially tough for ladies to get their work out there in the first place: how many female directors have won Oscars? How many broads hang their work in big-name museums? How many female writers get included on course curricula? So to witness a big, shiny beginning and then a slow descent into mediocrity is especially maddening. We know you can do better...why produce something halfhearted?
Anyway, I like Jenny Lewis and I like music, so I bought her and her bf's album, and I'll be going to their show, but I'm just kind of blue. My girl crush is fading, and even though she's still hot and talented and interesting, this album is blah and uninspiring. I miss the old Lewis, the asskicker who sang about crappy threesomes and who would strut around stage and pound on the piano. Now we get this sedated, fuzzy version of rocking out, and I gotta say, I prefer my girl crushes to have some cojones. Not in a freaky, Thai-sex-tourist sort of way, but come on. What would you prefer: this aching, bitter-sweet secret teller, or this glorified backup singer? That's what I thought.
Friday, October 8, 2010
It Gets Better
Dan Savage, you are my hero. Not only are you the purveyor of fine, no-nonsense sex and relationship advice, with your new It Gets Better project, you've stepped into the role of social leader and engenderer of change. Sir, I salute you.
For those of you not blessed with a free NOW magazine, Dan Savage has highlighted the recent rash of teen suicides brought on by bullying. The teens in question were either gay or being perceived as gay and subsequently harassed, leaving them feeling like they had no choice except ending their own lives to escape the pressures and torments. Which is sad, because, as Savage says, it gets better.
Never having been a queer teen, I can't speak to the horrors of high school for a nascent homo. I can only imagine that coming out when you're what, twelve? Thirteen? Sixteen? Later? Younger? It can't be easy. We straight kids get to slip under the radar, but the gay kids have to stand up and say, "You know what? Not only am I interested in sex and relationships at what seems like a preposterously young age (although, like, come on: kids think about sex), but I'm going to do them in ways that huge chunks of the population actively decry." That can't be easy. Staying closeted seems to come with a whole other set of problems, including the lying and self-loathing, and it's often a precursor to fleeing town the day after graduation.
Being a teenager isn't easy, no matter whose junk you want to touch. It's a time when kids separate from their parents, and becoming unstuck from your family takes a huge amount of psychic work. Some kids are good at, bidding their parents adieu in a painless way that involves, I don't know, turtleneck sweaters and hugging. Many, many of us are not quite so lovely. I was angry and ill-mannered at eighteen, all eating disorder and rage. Many of my friends can attest to the same huge, unfocused anger: drug use was heavy, sexual misconduct was everywhere, there was self-mutilation, and kids who left home and who got kicked out. It wasn't idyllic small town. Being eighteen is like getting a post-doc in fury for some people, and I was summa cum laude.
Most of us got our acts together, either by growing out of it and finding alternate, healthier ways of dealing with ourselves and our families, or by getting the help we needed (hello, CAMH, my old friend). Some of us were left to flounder, slowing sinking into darker waters as our drug choices became addictions and our relationships became strange. And for teens who are hiding huge parts of who they are, or made to feel ashamed or afraid of who they are, I can only imagine that the waters are that much darker.
Which is why Savage's project is so important. He's asked gay adults to create YouTube videos and post them on his channel, talking about how they had a rough go of it in their teen years, and how much better it got once they left the close-minded fear of high school or the side-long glances of their unwelcoming hometown. They talk about how they, too, once wanted to end their lives, because of the homophobia of their peers or the so-called adults around them. And how glad they are that they didn't, because suicide would have robbed them of their lovers, their husbands and wives, their children, their travels, the family members who grew to accept them, their chosen families and the friends who rely on them and love them. And it would have robbed them of the chance to escape their unhappy teenage years and become the people they were trying to be all along.
Savage can be irreverent about a lot of things - Google "santorum" (or, for you weak of stomach, don't) - but he's been candid in the past about how coming out was hard for him, and his family. His husband went through the same horrible process, and their touching video highlights how glad they are that that part of their lives is over. In the early 80s, there weren't the same resources that are available now, but gay and lesbian teens and young adults still face higher suicide rates than the rest of their peers. Knowing there's a whole community of Dan Savages out there, rooting for you to make it through your ridiculous, awful, high school years, might make a difference. Seeing that it gets better, even if it's not good now, might save a life.
For those of you not blessed with a free NOW magazine, Dan Savage has highlighted the recent rash of teen suicides brought on by bullying. The teens in question were either gay or being perceived as gay and subsequently harassed, leaving them feeling like they had no choice except ending their own lives to escape the pressures and torments. Which is sad, because, as Savage says, it gets better.
Never having been a queer teen, I can't speak to the horrors of high school for a nascent homo. I can only imagine that coming out when you're what, twelve? Thirteen? Sixteen? Later? Younger? It can't be easy. We straight kids get to slip under the radar, but the gay kids have to stand up and say, "You know what? Not only am I interested in sex and relationships at what seems like a preposterously young age (although, like, come on: kids think about sex), but I'm going to do them in ways that huge chunks of the population actively decry." That can't be easy. Staying closeted seems to come with a whole other set of problems, including the lying and self-loathing, and it's often a precursor to fleeing town the day after graduation.
Being a teenager isn't easy, no matter whose junk you want to touch. It's a time when kids separate from their parents, and becoming unstuck from your family takes a huge amount of psychic work. Some kids are good at, bidding their parents adieu in a painless way that involves, I don't know, turtleneck sweaters and hugging. Many, many of us are not quite so lovely. I was angry and ill-mannered at eighteen, all eating disorder and rage. Many of my friends can attest to the same huge, unfocused anger: drug use was heavy, sexual misconduct was everywhere, there was self-mutilation, and kids who left home and who got kicked out. It wasn't idyllic small town. Being eighteen is like getting a post-doc in fury for some people, and I was summa cum laude.
Most of us got our acts together, either by growing out of it and finding alternate, healthier ways of dealing with ourselves and our families, or by getting the help we needed (hello, CAMH, my old friend). Some of us were left to flounder, slowing sinking into darker waters as our drug choices became addictions and our relationships became strange. And for teens who are hiding huge parts of who they are, or made to feel ashamed or afraid of who they are, I can only imagine that the waters are that much darker.
Which is why Savage's project is so important. He's asked gay adults to create YouTube videos and post them on his channel, talking about how they had a rough go of it in their teen years, and how much better it got once they left the close-minded fear of high school or the side-long glances of their unwelcoming hometown. They talk about how they, too, once wanted to end their lives, because of the homophobia of their peers or the so-called adults around them. And how glad they are that they didn't, because suicide would have robbed them of their lovers, their husbands and wives, their children, their travels, the family members who grew to accept them, their chosen families and the friends who rely on them and love them. And it would have robbed them of the chance to escape their unhappy teenage years and become the people they were trying to be all along.
Savage can be irreverent about a lot of things - Google "santorum" (or, for you weak of stomach, don't) - but he's been candid in the past about how coming out was hard for him, and his family. His husband went through the same horrible process, and their touching video highlights how glad they are that that part of their lives is over. In the early 80s, there weren't the same resources that are available now, but gay and lesbian teens and young adults still face higher suicide rates than the rest of their peers. Knowing there's a whole community of Dan Savages out there, rooting for you to make it through your ridiculous, awful, high school years, might make a difference. Seeing that it gets better, even if it's not good now, might save a life.
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