Victor D. Infante's Blog, page 186
December 10, 2010
Why heroes matter
As I read through these blog posts I've written about heroes and pop culture, and try to sketch out that weird place they exist in the collective consciousness and in the context of contemporary life, I find myself wondering why I'm bothering. Is it purely an intellectual exercise, a sort of rubble clearing just to get this garbage out of my head? Certainly, it's been clear to me that, on some level, it matters to me, that I have some level of emotional investment in the concept. And while I'm fairly certain I've always had a handle on the why of that, sometimes things come across my screen that put it into relief, in this case, two articles that couldn't be more different from one another: Worcester Magazine's look at "Hometown Heroes," and SF Weekly's profile of "Killer Groupie Samantha Spiegel." The first is a charming, almost folksy story about ordinary people who work to make their home a better place to live, the second is about a young woman with a possibly pathological attraction to serial killers, to whom she writes letters.
And there, in that weird polarity, in the small acts of decency and the horrifying, seductive allure of actual evil, is the space where most of us live. We pass each other on the streets, sit across offices from one another, and never know who among us volunteers at a local food pantry, or coaches midnight basketball leagues, or, well, has a murderer for a pen pal. We're all this ridiculous amalgamation of light and darkness, violent and altruistic impulses pulsing underneath our skin. And each time we look out at the world, we make a thousand small decisions as to how we'll face the omnipresent shadows. And sometimes we cower, and that's understandable. And sometimes we surrender, and that, too, may be understandable. And once in a while ... once in a while someone stops and offers out a hand to help someone else stumble through the dark. And other times, someone goes further, actually putting their lives on the line to save others. It happens every day, and yet it still seems the rarest, most incredible thing in the world.
Make no mistake, I'm not someone someone who underestimates the darkness. If anything, it's been a constant presence in my life. My father was murdered when I was two years old -- an event I've written about repeatedly -- and that awareness of violence and loss has shaped my entire life. But even that has hardly been the only example. I read that SF Weekly article, and remember that I know someone who lost someone to the Night Stalker, one of those people to whom that girl writes letters, and I shake a little bit. Every time I see some reference to 9-11, I can't help but think I knew people who lost people there, and something inside my chest sinks. I read accounts about crime in the city in the newspaper, and remember that I saw someone get shot on Chandler Street last year -- an event so bizarre and incongruous that I blocked it out of my head until the next day, convinced myself I hadn't seen what I saw, until I read the newspaper the next day and could no longer sustain the denial. The policeman I spoke to said that's actually not that uncommon a reaction, but even now, I still shudder with embarrassment and shame that I could so thoroughly deny that something like that was happening. I think I expected better of myself. Turns out, I was simply human. It's funny, if not surprising, that I've avoided writing about that incident until now.
Sometimes we run from the shadows, and maybe that's a sane response. All my life, I've taken solace in fictional heroes to help me shape the man I wanted to be, beginning very early, learning how to read on Spider-Man comics. And I know that I, myself, am not a hero. I'm a relatively mild writer and pacifist, who writes about culture and politics, who composes poems and short stories. And sometimes those writings might make a difference in someone's life. I wouldn't know. I hope so, but that's not why I write them. I write them because I have to. There's nothing heroic in that. And sometimes I'm capable of kindness and empathy, and sometimes I'm snippy and haughty, and Lord knows I've hurt people in all the ways that normal people hurt each other every day of the week.
But I want to be better. Always, always, always. I want to be better than I am.
And there, in that weird polarity, in the small acts of decency and the horrifying, seductive allure of actual evil, is the space where most of us live. We pass each other on the streets, sit across offices from one another, and never know who among us volunteers at a local food pantry, or coaches midnight basketball leagues, or, well, has a murderer for a pen pal. We're all this ridiculous amalgamation of light and darkness, violent and altruistic impulses pulsing underneath our skin. And each time we look out at the world, we make a thousand small decisions as to how we'll face the omnipresent shadows. And sometimes we cower, and that's understandable. And sometimes we surrender, and that, too, may be understandable. And once in a while ... once in a while someone stops and offers out a hand to help someone else stumble through the dark. And other times, someone goes further, actually putting their lives on the line to save others. It happens every day, and yet it still seems the rarest, most incredible thing in the world.
Make no mistake, I'm not someone someone who underestimates the darkness. If anything, it's been a constant presence in my life. My father was murdered when I was two years old -- an event I've written about repeatedly -- and that awareness of violence and loss has shaped my entire life. But even that has hardly been the only example. I read that SF Weekly article, and remember that I know someone who lost someone to the Night Stalker, one of those people to whom that girl writes letters, and I shake a little bit. Every time I see some reference to 9-11, I can't help but think I knew people who lost people there, and something inside my chest sinks. I read accounts about crime in the city in the newspaper, and remember that I saw someone get shot on Chandler Street last year -- an event so bizarre and incongruous that I blocked it out of my head until the next day, convinced myself I hadn't seen what I saw, until I read the newspaper the next day and could no longer sustain the denial. The policeman I spoke to said that's actually not that uncommon a reaction, but even now, I still shudder with embarrassment and shame that I could so thoroughly deny that something like that was happening. I think I expected better of myself. Turns out, I was simply human. It's funny, if not surprising, that I've avoided writing about that incident until now.
Sometimes we run from the shadows, and maybe that's a sane response. All my life, I've taken solace in fictional heroes to help me shape the man I wanted to be, beginning very early, learning how to read on Spider-Man comics. And I know that I, myself, am not a hero. I'm a relatively mild writer and pacifist, who writes about culture and politics, who composes poems and short stories. And sometimes those writings might make a difference in someone's life. I wouldn't know. I hope so, but that's not why I write them. I write them because I have to. There's nothing heroic in that. And sometimes I'm capable of kindness and empathy, and sometimes I'm snippy and haughty, and Lord knows I've hurt people in all the ways that normal people hurt each other every day of the week.
But I want to be better. Always, always, always. I want to be better than I am.
Odds and Ends ...
I'm having a perfectly fine time squandering my vacation, mostly catching up on some writing, quite a bit of it on this blog. I am, after all, a creature of my obsessions.
But there have been a few other odds and ends of late, too. My my column's out this week,and I talk to local music and poetry types Shane Hall, Rich Ad Leufstedt, Walter Crockett, Tony Brown and Robert Gibbs about the Grammy nominations. There's also a "Weekend Starts Now" newsletter, with recommendations for Broken Neck Lullaby, Lemon Lime Tennis Shoes, Stuart Ferguson and the Fashionistas, The Worcester Polytechnic Institute Big Band, Rachel McKibbens and the Stephanie Lauder art exhibit.
My colleague Craig Semon has a nice story out today about the Worcester Poets' Asylum, which features quotes by Lea Deschenes, Bill Macmillan, Bob Gill, Tony Brown and Brandi MacDonald. There's also a video (which I hadn't notice earlier. They must have posted it later.) with clips of Colton Huelle, Dave Mac, Megan Thoma, Danny Balel and McKendy Fils-Aime reading:
All in all, a nice little rundown of the artist-entertainer life here in the mid-sized city.
But there have been a few other odds and ends of late, too. My my column's out this week,and I talk to local music and poetry types Shane Hall, Rich Ad Leufstedt, Walter Crockett, Tony Brown and Robert Gibbs about the Grammy nominations. There's also a "Weekend Starts Now" newsletter, with recommendations for Broken Neck Lullaby, Lemon Lime Tennis Shoes, Stuart Ferguson and the Fashionistas, The Worcester Polytechnic Institute Big Band, Rachel McKibbens and the Stephanie Lauder art exhibit.
My colleague Craig Semon has a nice story out today about the Worcester Poets' Asylum, which features quotes by Lea Deschenes, Bill Macmillan, Bob Gill, Tony Brown and Brandi MacDonald. There's also a video (which I hadn't notice earlier. They must have posted it later.) with clips of Colton Huelle, Dave Mac, Megan Thoma, Danny Balel and McKendy Fils-Aime reading:
All in all, a nice little rundown of the artist-entertainer life here in the mid-sized city.
Station Identification
Every now and then, I do a periodic update on my Web presence, which social networking sites I'm favoring and Internet-based odds and ends. Looks like it's that time again ...
VictorInfante.com remains the primary portal between my real life and various people seeking information about that. It also serves to confuse people looking for information on notorious international arms dealer Victor "The Jackal" Infante, who is not, to my knowledge, a relative. Same holds true for that unfortunate homicide victim in Los Angeles a few months ago. I'm not him, nor do I believe I'm related. VictorInfante.com has information about my poetry and other writing, along with a link to my blog on Livejournal. Which you're currently reading. (Although you may well be reading it on Google Reader, my GoodReads.com author's profile or, of course, Facebook.)
I still have presences on a number of social networking sites, and have even found things to do with most of them. My Facebook account is probably the most active, as I use that both to keep in touch with real-life friends and to promote my writing. My MySpace account gets slightly less love, as I mostly use it to listen to bands for work. Which is an awesome job description, I admit. (I actually think ReverbNation is better for consuming music, but MySpace still seems the most efficient tool for a journalist covering music. Go figure.) I keep a LinkedIn account for strictly professional use, and I have to say, it's proven useful on occasion. I have a Twitter account, but only use it sporadically. There is also a Twitter account for my fictional character, Whitney Bierce, whose first story, Baby Detonate For Me, is making the rounds in search of a publisher. Her second story is under way, forcing me to wonder if maybe it's unwise to invest one's self so much in an as-yet unpublished fictional character. But it's fun, so there you are.
Of course, a number of my own projects have Web presences all of their own. The November 3rd Club is the online literary journal of political writing which I used to edit, and which is currently archived online at the place linked to. There are still extant Livejournal, Facebook and MySpace presences for it, which I'll put to use when I'm done building the next thing. The Weekend Starts Now, the e-mail newsletter of arts & entertainment events that I edit for the Telegram & Gazette, doesn't have any fancy Web presences yet, but I'd love it if you subscribed to it. It's free!
Lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my esteemed publisher, Write Bloody Publishing, who has any number of Web presences all over the place, particularly on Facebook and MySpace, which are good places to follow if you want to keep track of the press' doings. And why wouldn't you? Write Bloody does nifty things. If you're interested in buying my book, City of Insomnia, the best place to do it is straight from them. But if you have some gift certificate or an aversion to PayPal or something, you can buy it directly from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Powell's. And supposedly sometime soon, Borders, thanks to WB's new distributor.
OK. That's enough. Now you know where to find me or, conversely, avoid me with impunity.
December 9, 2010
The Tories, The Mouse, and Their Agendas
Last month, while discussing the cuts in the British arts budgets, The Guardian noted that "David Cameron was asked about the government's plans for investment in the future of British film. He responded by discussing Warner Bros' recent investment in Leavesden studios and suggesting that Britain could, and should, be making more movies like the Harry Potter franchise, and, by extension, fewer movies like, say, the recently released Made in Dagenham or Mike Leigh's Another Year, both of which were funded by the now disbanded UK Film Council."
And, if you don't squint at that assessment too closely, you can see his point. Harry Potter is a hugely successful franchise, based on books with a mostly young and somewhat rabid audience, which has benefited from having some excellent filmmakers on board, young lead actors who, by great luck, have grown more talented with time, and some of the finest supporting actors the British Isles have produced. It would seem, if I were a (let's assume) well-intended politician looking at arts funding, that I'd want to do more of that. On the surface, it's a completely understandable impulse. It's also nonsense.
The fact of the matter is, you can't engineer a Harry Potter. It just doesn't work. At a party, many years ago, a friend and I were discussing the secret of Harry Potter's success, and she (not being a fan) replied dismissively, "because it's pastiche." To which I could only reply, "Yes, but a good many things are. And they're not Harry Potter."
The fact is, the stories of the boy wizard succeed not because they're unique (they're not), or because they're well-written (Rowling has her moments, but on the whole, no), but because the characters and the story strike a chord with their audience. It's a cultural phenomenon, and one that can't really be predicted. And indeed, wasn't predicted. The book had been turned down by several publishers before finding a home, and was printed in a small run. When it succeeded enough to get distributed in America, it was forced the indignity of a name change, because no one believed that anyone would read a book that had the word "Philosopher's" in the title. Harry Potter caught a few breaks along the way, but really, no one expected it to become what it did.
And why did Potter succeed when so many other books failed? Lots of reasons, but I'd put it all down to dumb luck. It hit all the notes that let it resonate a bit with the world outside: There's a sense of gathering darkness, the idea of a young boy that's already been scarred by evil and the inevitable conclusion that, eventually, he'll have to face it; That the young boy has powers that are greater than those around him, but not so great as most of those in his new world; That he's fantastic at some elements of magic (flying, for instance) but not so great at others, and has to study; That he has a touch of darkness in him, even from the get-go, when it turns out that he can talk to snakes (which always just seems creepy); That he's had a hard life, but that has granted him enough humility to not let all this "chosen One" nonsense go to his head (but which he takes serious enough to do what's necessary of him, anyway); That he is, effectively, King Arthur, come around again to save England in its hour of greatest need. Kids looked at Harry Potter, and saw a bit of themselves. Certainly, they saw more of themselves than they did in whatever else was being sold to them. It took the world by storm.
But it was also dumb luck. For anyone who thinks they can duplicate a Harry Potter by design, I offer you the Chronicles of Narnia books. Desperate for its own answer to Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings movies, Disney studios launched into a grand plan to make movies of all seven Chronicles of Narnia books, a prospect which was greeted well by fantasy fans, who have always had a bit of a soft spot of C.S. Lewis, and by a good many Christians, who were interested in the original series' Christian underpinnings.
But there were problems. While everyone loves The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, less people have really read the other books, and those who have know that after Lion, they all get a bit weaker and more problematic. Indeed, even the Pevensie children don't appear in all the books, and Susan Pevensie doesn't get to be in the last book, because she's more interested in lipstick and boys (meaning she, effectively, doesn't get to go to Heaven). Parts are still brilliant, but alas, it's still problematic form a cinematic point of view, all around. Still, there was a fervor for the first film, with Christian viewers even going so far as to mount a campaign against the film's primary marketplace rival, The Golden Compass, the first of three proposed movies made from fantasy writer and noted atheist Phillip Pullman's excellent His Dark Materials books.
And the film did well, even beating Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at the box office. (Personally, I found it pretty but a bit boring, and even dozed off during it, and much preferred The Golden Compass, despite its flaws.) But the second film in the franchise, Prince Caspian, severely underperformed, and Disney, seeing the writing on the wall, bailed out of the franchise, which was taken over by Warner Brothers. The third installment, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is out this week, and early reviews have not been kind.
Clearly, the lesson for Mr. Cameron is that nothing is a sure thing, and that indeed, an attempt to make "more movies like Harry Potter" isn't as sound a gambit as it seems. Hollywood is filled with fine movies that have looked like they had every reason to succeed, and failed: Watchmen, for one, which was a flawed film in many ways, but which was still trumpeted by a huge amount of fanfare. Percy Walker and the Olympians looked like it could be another Harry Potter, except it evidently wasn't. The excellent Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Serenity, based on the TV show Firefly, which has a fan base that will not let it die. The list goes on and on. Any one of them, on paper, could have been blockbusters. They weren't. On paper, all of the Narnia movies should be as successful as The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, but the decline seems evident.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that the Narnia books don't have a clear hero for the audience to identify with, save for Aslan, who's a Lion. (And Jesus.) There's the Pevensie children, certainly, but they're not in all the books, and frankly, they're not particularly memorable. (Except Susan, who can't get into Heaven because she's discovered boys.) It's not like Frodo or Harry Potter, who are immediate through lines, even with myriad supporting characters.
Now, commercial success doesn't necessarily equate to importance, and indeed, it's probably telling when a story persists despite big ratings or box office --the irrepressible Firefly probably topping the list of properties which persist despite all odds, if only because a handful of people believe in them. But it's not a thing that can be depended on, and indeed, I think the cynicism which rushed Narnia into theaters blinded Disney to the pitfalls of what they were attempting. You can't set out to create a Harry Potter. But somewhere, someone will be telling a story, and it will spark imaginations in a way others around it aren't, that speaks to the moment in a way that others don't, and whoever's paying close enough attention when that hits just might get lucky.
And, if you don't squint at that assessment too closely, you can see his point. Harry Potter is a hugely successful franchise, based on books with a mostly young and somewhat rabid audience, which has benefited from having some excellent filmmakers on board, young lead actors who, by great luck, have grown more talented with time, and some of the finest supporting actors the British Isles have produced. It would seem, if I were a (let's assume) well-intended politician looking at arts funding, that I'd want to do more of that. On the surface, it's a completely understandable impulse. It's also nonsense.
The fact of the matter is, you can't engineer a Harry Potter. It just doesn't work. At a party, many years ago, a friend and I were discussing the secret of Harry Potter's success, and she (not being a fan) replied dismissively, "because it's pastiche." To which I could only reply, "Yes, but a good many things are. And they're not Harry Potter."
The fact is, the stories of the boy wizard succeed not because they're unique (they're not), or because they're well-written (Rowling has her moments, but on the whole, no), but because the characters and the story strike a chord with their audience. It's a cultural phenomenon, and one that can't really be predicted. And indeed, wasn't predicted. The book had been turned down by several publishers before finding a home, and was printed in a small run. When it succeeded enough to get distributed in America, it was forced the indignity of a name change, because no one believed that anyone would read a book that had the word "Philosopher's" in the title. Harry Potter caught a few breaks along the way, but really, no one expected it to become what it did.
And why did Potter succeed when so many other books failed? Lots of reasons, but I'd put it all down to dumb luck. It hit all the notes that let it resonate a bit with the world outside: There's a sense of gathering darkness, the idea of a young boy that's already been scarred by evil and the inevitable conclusion that, eventually, he'll have to face it; That the young boy has powers that are greater than those around him, but not so great as most of those in his new world; That he's fantastic at some elements of magic (flying, for instance) but not so great at others, and has to study; That he has a touch of darkness in him, even from the get-go, when it turns out that he can talk to snakes (which always just seems creepy); That he's had a hard life, but that has granted him enough humility to not let all this "chosen One" nonsense go to his head (but which he takes serious enough to do what's necessary of him, anyway); That he is, effectively, King Arthur, come around again to save England in its hour of greatest need. Kids looked at Harry Potter, and saw a bit of themselves. Certainly, they saw more of themselves than they did in whatever else was being sold to them. It took the world by storm.
But it was also dumb luck. For anyone who thinks they can duplicate a Harry Potter by design, I offer you the Chronicles of Narnia books. Desperate for its own answer to Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings movies, Disney studios launched into a grand plan to make movies of all seven Chronicles of Narnia books, a prospect which was greeted well by fantasy fans, who have always had a bit of a soft spot of C.S. Lewis, and by a good many Christians, who were interested in the original series' Christian underpinnings.
But there were problems. While everyone loves The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, less people have really read the other books, and those who have know that after Lion, they all get a bit weaker and more problematic. Indeed, even the Pevensie children don't appear in all the books, and Susan Pevensie doesn't get to be in the last book, because she's more interested in lipstick and boys (meaning she, effectively, doesn't get to go to Heaven). Parts are still brilliant, but alas, it's still problematic form a cinematic point of view, all around. Still, there was a fervor for the first film, with Christian viewers even going so far as to mount a campaign against the film's primary marketplace rival, The Golden Compass, the first of three proposed movies made from fantasy writer and noted atheist Phillip Pullman's excellent His Dark Materials books.
And the film did well, even beating Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at the box office. (Personally, I found it pretty but a bit boring, and even dozed off during it, and much preferred The Golden Compass, despite its flaws.) But the second film in the franchise, Prince Caspian, severely underperformed, and Disney, seeing the writing on the wall, bailed out of the franchise, which was taken over by Warner Brothers. The third installment, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is out this week, and early reviews have not been kind.
Clearly, the lesson for Mr. Cameron is that nothing is a sure thing, and that indeed, an attempt to make "more movies like Harry Potter" isn't as sound a gambit as it seems. Hollywood is filled with fine movies that have looked like they had every reason to succeed, and failed: Watchmen, for one, which was a flawed film in many ways, but which was still trumpeted by a huge amount of fanfare. Percy Walker and the Olympians looked like it could be another Harry Potter, except it evidently wasn't. The excellent Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Serenity, based on the TV show Firefly, which has a fan base that will not let it die. The list goes on and on. Any one of them, on paper, could have been blockbusters. They weren't. On paper, all of the Narnia movies should be as successful as The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, but the decline seems evident.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that the Narnia books don't have a clear hero for the audience to identify with, save for Aslan, who's a Lion. (And Jesus.) There's the Pevensie children, certainly, but they're not in all the books, and frankly, they're not particularly memorable. (Except Susan, who can't get into Heaven because she's discovered boys.) It's not like Frodo or Harry Potter, who are immediate through lines, even with myriad supporting characters.
Now, commercial success doesn't necessarily equate to importance, and indeed, it's probably telling when a story persists despite big ratings or box office --the irrepressible Firefly probably topping the list of properties which persist despite all odds, if only because a handful of people believe in them. But it's not a thing that can be depended on, and indeed, I think the cynicism which rushed Narnia into theaters blinded Disney to the pitfalls of what they were attempting. You can't set out to create a Harry Potter. But somewhere, someone will be telling a story, and it will spark imaginations in a way others around it aren't, that speaks to the moment in a way that others don't, and whoever's paying close enough attention when that hits just might get lucky.
December 8, 2010
Makings of a Monster
I think, when I was discussing heroes in popular culture as terrorists, I may have touched one or two nerves, although, thankfully this blog has polite and respectful readers. Lord knows if I were writing this series for a mainstream newspaper, I'd probably be getting clobbered by now. Capt. America a terrorist!?!? Harry Potter!?!?!? And yet, in the context of their own stories, both of those beloved characters are labeled terrorists by authorities. So is Olivia Dunham, when she's in the alternate-Earth, and Buffy Summers, in the course of the canonical Season Eight comics overseen by Joss Whedon. And on V, mercenary Kyle Hobbes tells his anti-visitor insurgent allies that "we're terrorists now," after blowing up a spaceship. While I agree that none of those characters act in the interests of spreading terror as a political tactic (except maybe on V), and none of them target civilians, mostly the definition of who is and isn't a terrorist depends on who's writing the definitions. Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization, certainly, but are Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan? Are Somali pirates? Is Julian Assange? Perhaps, perhaps not, and without getting too deeply into the politics or the veracity of those labels, the labels do get bandied about a lot, so much so that the label becomes devalued.
Certainly, it behooves those in authority to paint those in opposition to their goals as terrorists, which is surely about the most chill-inducing label one can bear in this particular climate. In fictions, we have the luxury of having insight into the characters. We know what drives them. We know Erica Evans has taken a militant anti-Visitor stance because she's inadvertently learned that the aliens were up to no good, or that Buffy Summers and her army of Slayers are all that stands between mankind and the vampire menace (with its newly developed PR campaign, complete with Harmony Kendall as spokesperson!) or that Capt. America is fricking Capt. America. This is a luxury of fiction, one which allows ourselves to examine qualities in characters we know as heroic in a different context, to look at both them and the culture they reflect from a different angle.
And it's telling that a willingness to stand up to authority, to rebel, is a quality that we value in heroes. It hasn't always been. It's really not so long ago, after all, that Batman was made a deputy of the Gotham Police Department. (Ah, the '50s. Such a magical age for comics.) It's an idea that goes in and out of vogue, depending on how anti-authoritarian the culture is at the moment. The X-Files was such an oddity, in its day, because anti-government paranoia was rarely handled like that in mainstream media, and was more the province of fringe media. These days, the comics have had Lex Luthor be president for a while, and while I've not watched enough 24 to be certain, it's my understanding that it, also, has had some villainous government officials, including a corrupt president. (Please correct me if I'm mistaken. Like I said, it's not my strong suit.) As a culture, no matter how peaceable or law-abiding we may be as individuals, we collectively wish for heroes who can rise up and oppose despotic oppression. You know. If it should arise. IJS. And don't go foisting this one off on the Tea Party. The left has its anti-fascist hero fantasies, too. Frankly, it's an impulse that really cuts across the American culture, even if we can't always agree on what constitutes a despot. Which is totally a different blog.
No, we like our fantastic heroes willing and able to rebel, especially when we ourselves feel powerless to do so. And we want them, like Jack Bauer, to occasionally do the dirty things in the dark that many of us would never, ever condone in real life. We like a bit of monster in our heroes.
Me? I've always been iffy on the anti-hero, even as a concept. I think Han Solo is a hero, not an anti-hero, because it doesn't matter where he begins, it only matters where he ends, and in the end, he freely and willingly puts his life on the lien to battle the Empire. Batman is a straight-up hero, willing to sacrifice himself for innocents, no matter how scary and possibly psychologically damaged he is.
But no, I often find real anti-heroes problematic. I like Wolverine just fine, in a team context, but never care for him much on his own, as it often becomes an excuse to write lots and lots of cinematic violence. And don't even get me started on the Punisher. I was OK when he was a foil to Daredevil or Spider-Man, but on his own? Not so interested. Indeed, I'm only really interested in anti-heroes when I'm particular interested in some aspect of the production, some writer or actor. Certainly, that's what drew me to Dexter.
I love Dexter, and think it's extremely well done, but it's sometimes frustrating to watch people talking about it on the Internet, because they seem to often miss the point that Dexter Morgan is a serial killer. No ifs or buts about it. The show never forgets that, but because the actor and writers find way to wring some empathy out of the character, people seem to lose track of the idea that most of his character is an elaborately constructed lie. I think, because he targets other killers, there's a temptation to try to cast him into the hero's role, when in reality, he's not terribly different from his prey. He knows this. At the end of the day, the fact that there are worse monsters than him out there doesn't actually excuse him from being one himself.
A fiction allows us to try on a wardrobe of shadows without actually buying the suit. It's a place where we can play out our darkest fantasies safely, without actually doing something horrible like, say, committing murder. And that's fine, but a protagonist isn't necessarily a hero. A hero, in fiction is a construct of the best qualities we need to face the darkness. We can snatch Dexter Morgan from a series of scenes, and conclude that he's a hero because he doesn't do that out of any nobility. He does that because he needs to kill. He's a well-channeled sociopath, and even that, inevitably, will fall down on his head. He's not Han Solo, with the capacity to change. He's not Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes, retorting "I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research" to a police officer's insult, because, to once again quote Inspector Lestrade, "Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and some day, if we're very very lucky, he might even be a good one." At the point where we meet Holmes in the story, he's not a hero. He doesn't express much actual concern for the murders he investigates, he's simply intrigued by the mystery. He's merely a skipping stone away from being a useful monster. But he has the potential to change, and part of the drama of the show is that he very well might. Eventually. In that regard, it only matters whee he ends up. That door seems closed to Dexter Morgan, no matter how many times it appears it might open. Dexter, ultimately, seems doomed to be a tragedy.
Certainly, it behooves those in authority to paint those in opposition to their goals as terrorists, which is surely about the most chill-inducing label one can bear in this particular climate. In fictions, we have the luxury of having insight into the characters. We know what drives them. We know Erica Evans has taken a militant anti-Visitor stance because she's inadvertently learned that the aliens were up to no good, or that Buffy Summers and her army of Slayers are all that stands between mankind and the vampire menace (with its newly developed PR campaign, complete with Harmony Kendall as spokesperson!) or that Capt. America is fricking Capt. America. This is a luxury of fiction, one which allows ourselves to examine qualities in characters we know as heroic in a different context, to look at both them and the culture they reflect from a different angle.
And it's telling that a willingness to stand up to authority, to rebel, is a quality that we value in heroes. It hasn't always been. It's really not so long ago, after all, that Batman was made a deputy of the Gotham Police Department. (Ah, the '50s. Such a magical age for comics.) It's an idea that goes in and out of vogue, depending on how anti-authoritarian the culture is at the moment. The X-Files was such an oddity, in its day, because anti-government paranoia was rarely handled like that in mainstream media, and was more the province of fringe media. These days, the comics have had Lex Luthor be president for a while, and while I've not watched enough 24 to be certain, it's my understanding that it, also, has had some villainous government officials, including a corrupt president. (Please correct me if I'm mistaken. Like I said, it's not my strong suit.) As a culture, no matter how peaceable or law-abiding we may be as individuals, we collectively wish for heroes who can rise up and oppose despotic oppression. You know. If it should arise. IJS. And don't go foisting this one off on the Tea Party. The left has its anti-fascist hero fantasies, too. Frankly, it's an impulse that really cuts across the American culture, even if we can't always agree on what constitutes a despot. Which is totally a different blog.
No, we like our fantastic heroes willing and able to rebel, especially when we ourselves feel powerless to do so. And we want them, like Jack Bauer, to occasionally do the dirty things in the dark that many of us would never, ever condone in real life. We like a bit of monster in our heroes.
Me? I've always been iffy on the anti-hero, even as a concept. I think Han Solo is a hero, not an anti-hero, because it doesn't matter where he begins, it only matters where he ends, and in the end, he freely and willingly puts his life on the lien to battle the Empire. Batman is a straight-up hero, willing to sacrifice himself for innocents, no matter how scary and possibly psychologically damaged he is.
But no, I often find real anti-heroes problematic. I like Wolverine just fine, in a team context, but never care for him much on his own, as it often becomes an excuse to write lots and lots of cinematic violence. And don't even get me started on the Punisher. I was OK when he was a foil to Daredevil or Spider-Man, but on his own? Not so interested. Indeed, I'm only really interested in anti-heroes when I'm particular interested in some aspect of the production, some writer or actor. Certainly, that's what drew me to Dexter.
I love Dexter, and think it's extremely well done, but it's sometimes frustrating to watch people talking about it on the Internet, because they seem to often miss the point that Dexter Morgan is a serial killer. No ifs or buts about it. The show never forgets that, but because the actor and writers find way to wring some empathy out of the character, people seem to lose track of the idea that most of his character is an elaborately constructed lie. I think, because he targets other killers, there's a temptation to try to cast him into the hero's role, when in reality, he's not terribly different from his prey. He knows this. At the end of the day, the fact that there are worse monsters than him out there doesn't actually excuse him from being one himself.
A fiction allows us to try on a wardrobe of shadows without actually buying the suit. It's a place where we can play out our darkest fantasies safely, without actually doing something horrible like, say, committing murder. And that's fine, but a protagonist isn't necessarily a hero. A hero, in fiction is a construct of the best qualities we need to face the darkness. We can snatch Dexter Morgan from a series of scenes, and conclude that he's a hero because he doesn't do that out of any nobility. He does that because he needs to kill. He's a well-channeled sociopath, and even that, inevitably, will fall down on his head. He's not Han Solo, with the capacity to change. He's not Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes, retorting "I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research" to a police officer's insult, because, to once again quote Inspector Lestrade, "Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and some day, if we're very very lucky, he might even be a good one." At the point where we meet Holmes in the story, he's not a hero. He doesn't express much actual concern for the murders he investigates, he's simply intrigued by the mystery. He's merely a skipping stone away from being a useful monster. But he has the potential to change, and part of the drama of the show is that he very well might. Eventually. In that regard, it only matters whee he ends up. That door seems closed to Dexter Morgan, no matter how many times it appears it might open. Dexter, ultimately, seems doomed to be a tragedy.
The Hero as Terrorist ...
It was inevitable that the real-world issue of terrorism would manifest itself in popular culture, beyond the clichés of Arab Terrorist #2 (Although, sadly, there's still lots of that, too). 24, one of the most popular recent TV shows in memory, dealt with it viscerally, its hero, Jack Bauer, often engaging in anti-terror tactics which, in the real world, many of us would find repugnant; Frank Miller, who wrote some of the most memorable and gritty Batman stories of the modern era, proposed a "Batman fights Al-Qaeda" comic which, thankfully, seems to have fallen by the wayside and been resurrected as his own project on some indie publisher. (No one objected to Batman fighting terrorists -- and indeed, he's doing a bit of that now in Batman Inc., but many feared the reactionary streak that Miller's exhibited from time to time.) And there have been myriad others examples of the War on Terror being translated into a pop-culture context, many as explicit as Bauer, others more implicit, such as the Homeland Security angle on Fringe. Terror, and anti-terror tactics, have become a reality to the American mind, and popular culture has reflected that.
But then, there was a curious phenomenon that happened along the way: sometimes, with varying degrees of success, the heroes became terrorists. In their way, anyway. At least in any cases worth discussing, they weren't willy-nilly harming innocents, but they were up in arms fighting guerrilla wars against some sort of authority.
Perhaps the most striking, and occasionally contrived, version of this was Marvel Comics' Civil War comic book event, where a dubious government action divided superheroes into antagonistic factions -- some siding with the government, some opposing. The comics took strains to try and equally weight the argument, but let's face facts: the anti-government forces got all the cool heroes: Wolverine, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Spider-Man (eventually) and Capt. frigging America. Capt. America's traditional function in a comic book is to denote who the good guys are. The pro-authority side got Iron Man (famously a recovering alcoholic billionaire) and Henry "Ant Man" Pym (famously a disgraced superhero who was kicked off the Avengers for beating his wife. Sure, they got Reed Richards, too, but his own wife and brother-in-law went over to Cap's side, and his best friend, The Thing, told both sides to go hang and went off to France for the best single issue in the whole damn story. The point of the whole thing seemed to be "the man always wins, but hey. All the cool kids distrust authority. Which? Message I can get behind, actually.
Eventually, the whole thing wound down and only Black Goliath died (but now his nephew has taken over the role, and he's just "Goliath." See earlier blog post.) Oh, and Capt. America got shot. But he's better now. And eventually, even though authority won, everyone was more or less on the outside, because the Green friggin' Goblin effectively took over the government. (It gets weird. There should be charts.) Point being, pretty much every superhero in the Marvel Universe was effectively labeled a terrorist, until Capt. America came back from the dead and pulled everybody together to kick ass.
I'm not sure why writers Mike Millar, who wrote Civil War, and Brian Michael Bendis who wrote the last part of that, called Dark Reign, saw fit to cast Marvel's heroes in the light of being terrorists. Maybe they were trying to understand what would drive someone to that extreme. Maybe it was simply the idea that, in this day and age, being labeled a terrorist seems the most insurmountable thing imaginable. But the Avengers and the other Marvel heroes weren't the only ones struggling with life on the terrorist side of pubic opinion. As pointed out ably by Annalee Newitz, Harry Potter and friends become "terrorists for justice" in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (and is certainly labeled "Undesirable No. 1" by the Voldemort-controlled Ministry), and on Fringe, Olivia Dunham and her team are viewed as terrorists in a war that might only exist in one person's head when they invade an alternate universe to retrieve a kidnapped Peter Bishop.
It's an interesting bit of semiotics, used with varying degrees of success: on the one hand, if a hero -- whom the audience is assured has noble intentions through dramatic irony -- has to use terrorist tactics to achieve his goals, is he still a hero? And if she's not really a terrorist, but is labeled as such, does that stigma brand her? Their thorny questions, that when handled well, make one see shades of complexity in the world, or at least see that few actually see themselves as villains. Of course, Harry Potter's not going around blowing up train stations.
This is perhaps handled most poorly in the TV show V, which I'll admit to still being fond of. Writes Charlie Anders:
"While watching last night's V episode, something sort of clicked into place for me, about why the new series just isn't quite working: our heroes are creating a resistance group, rather than a public-relations campaign. Seriously, twice during last night's episode, someone asked a really simple question: 'Name one bad thing the Visitors have done since they got here.' And both times, Erica looked like she'd just been asked the capital of Lithuania. This shouldn't be a hard question to answer."
Indeed, and in pondering that question, it suddenly seems clear that the heroes of "V" need a Julian Assange more than they need terror-weapons, politician denouncements of his being a terrorist and awkward sex scandals aside. But in examining this question, Anders hits on the heart of the matter:
"You run a resistance against a successful invasion — which this isn't... yet, anyway," says Anders. "You run a resistance against a government that's turned despotic. You do not run a resistance movement against people who claim to come in peace but are actually up to something nefarious but nebulous. It's the wrong set of tactics. Blowing shit up and killing people is not going to win the PR war."
This is the realization that Capt. America comes to at the end of the Civil War, and eventually, when he's proved right about a lot, he gets rewarded by being America's new top cop. After, of course, the Green Goblin is ousted. And Harry Potter is fighting a suddenly despotic regime that is persecuting people and spreading murder and oppression. And Olivia Dunham might be labeled a terrorist in the alternate universe, but really, she has no interest in waging war against an alternate Earth, and indeed, makes it clear that she believes both Earth's can be saved (a sentiment echoed separately by Peter Bishop.
And perhaps, the realization and actualization of limits to that line of thinking may be what separates a hero from a monster. And make no mistake -- going all the way back to ancient Greece -- that line can be thinner than one might think.
But then, there was a curious phenomenon that happened along the way: sometimes, with varying degrees of success, the heroes became terrorists. In their way, anyway. At least in any cases worth discussing, they weren't willy-nilly harming innocents, but they were up in arms fighting guerrilla wars against some sort of authority.
Perhaps the most striking, and occasionally contrived, version of this was Marvel Comics' Civil War comic book event, where a dubious government action divided superheroes into antagonistic factions -- some siding with the government, some opposing. The comics took strains to try and equally weight the argument, but let's face facts: the anti-government forces got all the cool heroes: Wolverine, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Spider-Man (eventually) and Capt. frigging America. Capt. America's traditional function in a comic book is to denote who the good guys are. The pro-authority side got Iron Man (famously a recovering alcoholic billionaire) and Henry "Ant Man" Pym (famously a disgraced superhero who was kicked off the Avengers for beating his wife. Sure, they got Reed Richards, too, but his own wife and brother-in-law went over to Cap's side, and his best friend, The Thing, told both sides to go hang and went off to France for the best single issue in the whole damn story. The point of the whole thing seemed to be "the man always wins, but hey. All the cool kids distrust authority. Which? Message I can get behind, actually.
Eventually, the whole thing wound down and only Black Goliath died (but now his nephew has taken over the role, and he's just "Goliath." See earlier blog post.) Oh, and Capt. America got shot. But he's better now. And eventually, even though authority won, everyone was more or less on the outside, because the Green friggin' Goblin effectively took over the government. (It gets weird. There should be charts.) Point being, pretty much every superhero in the Marvel Universe was effectively labeled a terrorist, until Capt. America came back from the dead and pulled everybody together to kick ass.
I'm not sure why writers Mike Millar, who wrote Civil War, and Brian Michael Bendis who wrote the last part of that, called Dark Reign, saw fit to cast Marvel's heroes in the light of being terrorists. Maybe they were trying to understand what would drive someone to that extreme. Maybe it was simply the idea that, in this day and age, being labeled a terrorist seems the most insurmountable thing imaginable. But the Avengers and the other Marvel heroes weren't the only ones struggling with life on the terrorist side of pubic opinion. As pointed out ably by Annalee Newitz, Harry Potter and friends become "terrorists for justice" in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (and is certainly labeled "Undesirable No. 1" by the Voldemort-controlled Ministry), and on Fringe, Olivia Dunham and her team are viewed as terrorists in a war that might only exist in one person's head when they invade an alternate universe to retrieve a kidnapped Peter Bishop.
It's an interesting bit of semiotics, used with varying degrees of success: on the one hand, if a hero -- whom the audience is assured has noble intentions through dramatic irony -- has to use terrorist tactics to achieve his goals, is he still a hero? And if she's not really a terrorist, but is labeled as such, does that stigma brand her? Their thorny questions, that when handled well, make one see shades of complexity in the world, or at least see that few actually see themselves as villains. Of course, Harry Potter's not going around blowing up train stations.
This is perhaps handled most poorly in the TV show V, which I'll admit to still being fond of. Writes Charlie Anders:
"While watching last night's V episode, something sort of clicked into place for me, about why the new series just isn't quite working: our heroes are creating a resistance group, rather than a public-relations campaign. Seriously, twice during last night's episode, someone asked a really simple question: 'Name one bad thing the Visitors have done since they got here.' And both times, Erica looked like she'd just been asked the capital of Lithuania. This shouldn't be a hard question to answer."
Indeed, and in pondering that question, it suddenly seems clear that the heroes of "V" need a Julian Assange more than they need terror-weapons, politician denouncements of his being a terrorist and awkward sex scandals aside. But in examining this question, Anders hits on the heart of the matter:
"You run a resistance against a successful invasion — which this isn't... yet, anyway," says Anders. "You run a resistance against a government that's turned despotic. You do not run a resistance movement against people who claim to come in peace but are actually up to something nefarious but nebulous. It's the wrong set of tactics. Blowing shit up and killing people is not going to win the PR war."
This is the realization that Capt. America comes to at the end of the Civil War, and eventually, when he's proved right about a lot, he gets rewarded by being America's new top cop. After, of course, the Green Goblin is ousted. And Harry Potter is fighting a suddenly despotic regime that is persecuting people and spreading murder and oppression. And Olivia Dunham might be labeled a terrorist in the alternate universe, but really, she has no interest in waging war against an alternate Earth, and indeed, makes it clear that she believes both Earth's can be saved (a sentiment echoed separately by Peter Bishop.
And perhaps, the realization and actualization of limits to that line of thinking may be what separates a hero from a monster. And make no mistake -- going all the way back to ancient Greece -- that line can be thinner than one might think.
December 6, 2010
Ephemera, or Where the Author Lets His Geek Flag Fly ...
In the brief moment when I was pondering how to break into writing for television, I wrote two Buffy the Vampire Slayer spec scripts (which I seem to not have copies of, if anyone happens to have one) and one for Smallville (which I actually still have.) Although it lead me absolutely nowhere in the TV writing business, one supposes this is, in its way, a semilegitamate way to play with other people's toys, as one has to write these things if one wants to work in television.
Less legitimately, I have written four Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fictions, not one of which involves a forbidden love between Xander and Spike. I wrote them for all the usual reasons one writes anything: I was still less-than-confident with fiction, and figuring out how it all worked, and this seemed a good way to find my own voice while, again, playing with other people's toys. And I had stories in my head, which is really where any sort of writing starts. They were in my head, and wanted to get out. So there you are. To a large degree, I had internalized these characters to the point where I wanted to tell my own stories involving them. Still do, from time to time, if I'm completely honest.
Of course, even further down the legitimacy chain, I have, for most of my life, ben involved in more table top and online role playing games than I can recall. Dungeons & Dragons, yes, put also games set in Marvel, DC, Buffy and Lovecraft universe, as well as more I'm imply not recalling, I'm sure. (I recall an Indiana Jones role playing game many decades ago, which I hated almost instantly.)
Clicking back even further, I used to make up stories with my action figures when I was a kid, teaming up heroes in villains from different stories into ever-more-convoluted adventures, usually involving Godzilla, has I had the giant toy, and usually with Boba Fett being the leader of the bad guys. (What power Boba had on the power of youth's minds is beyond me now. He really doesn't do much in the Star Wars films. But somehow, he's awesome beyond words.)
All of these are so far from the canon of their respective parent stories that they almost don't merit mentioning, except to say that it seems, when a story settles in our bones, particularly when we're young, it seems the most natural thing on Earth to want to tell our own versions of that story. It's what we did in caves back when we were huddling against the elements and darkness, and it's that same instinct that kept fairy tales alive before Grimm and the rest got ahold of them. That we now have media to tell these stories for us doesn't much make a difference. If anything, it probably feeds the impulse, whether it be as innocent as kids dressing up as Iron Man and Batman for Halloween, or adults writing odd bits about Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy doing unspeakable things to one another. The impulse is to live inside our stories, to become part of them. To keep them alive.
Certainly, the invisible hand of capitalism does its part, although often for cynical reasons. Media corporations, after all, are invested in keeping their brands alive. A comic book becomes a film, and then a video game and novelization, and hell, maybe a Broadway musical. All authorized, all above board. But a kid plays with his (authorized!) Spider-Man action figure and tells his own story, about Spidey battling Boba Fett (who is awesome) which has nothing to do with canon and, indeed, probably doesn't even make much sense, and you know what? That's part of the polarity that keeps the story alive, in its own way as important as what the corporations shill. Because, ultimately, that's the space where we begin to see where these things really matter.
Less legitimately, I have written four Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fictions, not one of which involves a forbidden love between Xander and Spike. I wrote them for all the usual reasons one writes anything: I was still less-than-confident with fiction, and figuring out how it all worked, and this seemed a good way to find my own voice while, again, playing with other people's toys. And I had stories in my head, which is really where any sort of writing starts. They were in my head, and wanted to get out. So there you are. To a large degree, I had internalized these characters to the point where I wanted to tell my own stories involving them. Still do, from time to time, if I'm completely honest.
Of course, even further down the legitimacy chain, I have, for most of my life, ben involved in more table top and online role playing games than I can recall. Dungeons & Dragons, yes, put also games set in Marvel, DC, Buffy and Lovecraft universe, as well as more I'm imply not recalling, I'm sure. (I recall an Indiana Jones role playing game many decades ago, which I hated almost instantly.)
Clicking back even further, I used to make up stories with my action figures when I was a kid, teaming up heroes in villains from different stories into ever-more-convoluted adventures, usually involving Godzilla, has I had the giant toy, and usually with Boba Fett being the leader of the bad guys. (What power Boba had on the power of youth's minds is beyond me now. He really doesn't do much in the Star Wars films. But somehow, he's awesome beyond words.)
All of these are so far from the canon of their respective parent stories that they almost don't merit mentioning, except to say that it seems, when a story settles in our bones, particularly when we're young, it seems the most natural thing on Earth to want to tell our own versions of that story. It's what we did in caves back when we were huddling against the elements and darkness, and it's that same instinct that kept fairy tales alive before Grimm and the rest got ahold of them. That we now have media to tell these stories for us doesn't much make a difference. If anything, it probably feeds the impulse, whether it be as innocent as kids dressing up as Iron Man and Batman for Halloween, or adults writing odd bits about Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy doing unspeakable things to one another. The impulse is to live inside our stories, to become part of them. To keep them alive.
Certainly, the invisible hand of capitalism does its part, although often for cynical reasons. Media corporations, after all, are invested in keeping their brands alive. A comic book becomes a film, and then a video game and novelization, and hell, maybe a Broadway musical. All authorized, all above board. But a kid plays with his (authorized!) Spider-Man action figure and tells his own story, about Spidey battling Boba Fett (who is awesome) which has nothing to do with canon and, indeed, probably doesn't even make much sense, and you know what? That's part of the polarity that keeps the story alive, in its own way as important as what the corporations shill. Because, ultimately, that's the space where we begin to see where these things really matter.
December 5, 2010
More thoughts on smart heroes
"Even bomb-makers could be heroes in 1962" -- Warren Ellis, Planterary
Sometimes the Cold War seems very far away, doesn't it? I mean, it basically ended as I was leaving high school, and that was 20 years ago. But that's not really so long ago, really, and it's worth looking, as we go down this odd literary/pop culture journey, to look at what constituted a hero in the time when a lot of the building blocks of our cultural landscape were being built. Especially the Marvel Revolution in the '60s but also the concurrent DC Silver Age.
Peter Parker was a student with a keen interest in science, which is what put him in the lab to be bitten by a radioactive spider; Reed Richards was a scientist who -- along with his friends -- stole his own experimental rocket for an experiment; Bruce Banner was a scientist building bombs before he rescued a teenager who was trespassing from certain death, exposing himself to radiation in the process; Henry Pym was a scientist working against Soviet spies; Tony Stark was a weapon's developer; Hal Jordan was a test pilot; Barry Allen was a police scientist; James Bond was a spy; John Steed and Emma Peel were spies; Number Six was a spy; The Doctor was an alien adventurer, yes, but first and foremost he was a scientist.
The Cold War overtones really write themselves, don't they? You don't need anything more than a thumbnail sketch to understand the world that produced these heroes. Oh, there were exceptions. The X-Men were the product of either youthful alienation or the Civil Rights movement, depending on who you asked and the angle you looked at them from. Superman was still Superman, and Batman was quickly becoming a cartoon in the hands of Adam West. But by and large, the new heroes were Cold Warriors, and they reflected a bit of what people felt were needed to win that particular war. And science was a big part of that. (Remember, even the Apollo astronauts were scientists.) The new heroes were born in the shadow of the arms race and the space race.
It's different, now. Our world is far more complex, or at the very least, more overtly complex. (After all, out of that laundry list of "new heroes introduced in the Cold War" presented above, all of them are white, and only one is female. How out of whack is that?) Today, we have the war on terror, yes, but also an economic crisis and global warming and a diverse, multicultural population and gay rights and the Internet, and frankly, I can kind of see how people get exhausted just thinking about it.
So the heroes that reflect that world are ones that, ostensibly, can navigate that type of world, who can navigate conflicting, concurrent realities; who can seek out information, who understand how things work. And perhaps that's why scientists and detectives have come back into the fore. Because frankly, even if the ostensible hero of the piece isn't the greatest brain in all creation (I'm looking at you, Harry Potter!) then he or she at the very least has someone always by their sides who is. Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg; Harry Potter and Hermione Granger; Olivia Dunham (no slouch on her own, actually) and Walter Bishop; Jack Harkness (who at least knows his way around technology) and Toshiko Sato; Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brian. Without the brains of the operation, the hero is absolutely completely fucked. (And yes, I know, Tosh dies at the end of Torchwood Season 2. And they are indeed kind of fucked without her.) It's no longer a "smart ally who comes in when necessary," such as Superman and Professor Emil Hamilton or James Bond and Q. No, they pretty much have to be held up as an equal. Buffy might be the Chosen One and all, but her success is largely a team effort; Harry Potter might be the one who's destined to defeat Voldemort, but there is no way he's getting there on his own. Even the heroes who are wickedly smart all on their own, such as Veronica Mars, has Mac to do the heavy computer lifting; Rick Castle and Kate Beckett are both sharp cookies, but let's face it, medical examiner Lanie turns up most of the important bits; and if Katara and Toph aren't exactly portrayed are geniuses in Avatar: The Last Airbender, they're waaay smarter than Aang, and their main purpose on the show is to teach him water-bending and earth-bending, disciplines at which which they're both respectively shown to excel.
On the one hand, it seems a bit odd that the heroes are no longer scientist-adventurers as they were at the height of the Cold War, but i think that's more the emergence of a nuanced world view than anything else. (someone, inevitably, is going to rant against portrayals of smart people in media today, here, but at least in the above examples, I'm not seeing it.) Audiences seem more comfortable with the concept of a team, now, as opposed to a lone operator, a value in diverse individuals having complimentary skills. Batman works with a team in the comics, most notably uber-hacker Oracle, and Hell, in recent issues, he's got a whole Batman corporation going on; John Watson, in the recent BBC version, at least, is both a competent doctor and a hell of a shot, both of which being skills Holmes needs to be successful. The Doctor's the odd one out of this trope, mostly, but his companions do tend to be sharp, observant and, most of all, grounding. He doesn't need their skills so much as he needs people to hold him down to reality.
But all of it begs the question, is Hermione Granger any less of a hero than Harry Potter?
Sometimes the Cold War seems very far away, doesn't it? I mean, it basically ended as I was leaving high school, and that was 20 years ago. But that's not really so long ago, really, and it's worth looking, as we go down this odd literary/pop culture journey, to look at what constituted a hero in the time when a lot of the building blocks of our cultural landscape were being built. Especially the Marvel Revolution in the '60s but also the concurrent DC Silver Age.
Peter Parker was a student with a keen interest in science, which is what put him in the lab to be bitten by a radioactive spider; Reed Richards was a scientist who -- along with his friends -- stole his own experimental rocket for an experiment; Bruce Banner was a scientist building bombs before he rescued a teenager who was trespassing from certain death, exposing himself to radiation in the process; Henry Pym was a scientist working against Soviet spies; Tony Stark was a weapon's developer; Hal Jordan was a test pilot; Barry Allen was a police scientist; James Bond was a spy; John Steed and Emma Peel were spies; Number Six was a spy; The Doctor was an alien adventurer, yes, but first and foremost he was a scientist.
The Cold War overtones really write themselves, don't they? You don't need anything more than a thumbnail sketch to understand the world that produced these heroes. Oh, there were exceptions. The X-Men were the product of either youthful alienation or the Civil Rights movement, depending on who you asked and the angle you looked at them from. Superman was still Superman, and Batman was quickly becoming a cartoon in the hands of Adam West. But by and large, the new heroes were Cold Warriors, and they reflected a bit of what people felt were needed to win that particular war. And science was a big part of that. (Remember, even the Apollo astronauts were scientists.) The new heroes were born in the shadow of the arms race and the space race.
It's different, now. Our world is far more complex, or at the very least, more overtly complex. (After all, out of that laundry list of "new heroes introduced in the Cold War" presented above, all of them are white, and only one is female. How out of whack is that?) Today, we have the war on terror, yes, but also an economic crisis and global warming and a diverse, multicultural population and gay rights and the Internet, and frankly, I can kind of see how people get exhausted just thinking about it.
So the heroes that reflect that world are ones that, ostensibly, can navigate that type of world, who can navigate conflicting, concurrent realities; who can seek out information, who understand how things work. And perhaps that's why scientists and detectives have come back into the fore. Because frankly, even if the ostensible hero of the piece isn't the greatest brain in all creation (I'm looking at you, Harry Potter!) then he or she at the very least has someone always by their sides who is. Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg; Harry Potter and Hermione Granger; Olivia Dunham (no slouch on her own, actually) and Walter Bishop; Jack Harkness (who at least knows his way around technology) and Toshiko Sato; Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brian. Without the brains of the operation, the hero is absolutely completely fucked. (And yes, I know, Tosh dies at the end of Torchwood Season 2. And they are indeed kind of fucked without her.) It's no longer a "smart ally who comes in when necessary," such as Superman and Professor Emil Hamilton or James Bond and Q. No, they pretty much have to be held up as an equal. Buffy might be the Chosen One and all, but her success is largely a team effort; Harry Potter might be the one who's destined to defeat Voldemort, but there is no way he's getting there on his own. Even the heroes who are wickedly smart all on their own, such as Veronica Mars, has Mac to do the heavy computer lifting; Rick Castle and Kate Beckett are both sharp cookies, but let's face it, medical examiner Lanie turns up most of the important bits; and if Katara and Toph aren't exactly portrayed are geniuses in Avatar: The Last Airbender, they're waaay smarter than Aang, and their main purpose on the show is to teach him water-bending and earth-bending, disciplines at which which they're both respectively shown to excel.
On the one hand, it seems a bit odd that the heroes are no longer scientist-adventurers as they were at the height of the Cold War, but i think that's more the emergence of a nuanced world view than anything else. (someone, inevitably, is going to rant against portrayals of smart people in media today, here, but at least in the above examples, I'm not seeing it.) Audiences seem more comfortable with the concept of a team, now, as opposed to a lone operator, a value in diverse individuals having complimentary skills. Batman works with a team in the comics, most notably uber-hacker Oracle, and Hell, in recent issues, he's got a whole Batman corporation going on; John Watson, in the recent BBC version, at least, is both a competent doctor and a hell of a shot, both of which being skills Holmes needs to be successful. The Doctor's the odd one out of this trope, mostly, but his companions do tend to be sharp, observant and, most of all, grounding. He doesn't need their skills so much as he needs people to hold him down to reality.
But all of it begs the question, is Hermione Granger any less of a hero than Harry Potter?
Madman in a Box
Previously, in Infante's Inferno: When this all started, I was addressing Charlie Anders' concerns about the proposed new Buffy movie and her lament of the lack of heroes in today's popular culture, and I don't disagree with her, but I thought it perhaps useful to begin picking apart some of the components of how a story, particular the story of a hero (as opposed to a mere protagonist. Shhh. We'll get there.) travels through a culture, particularly in today's media-rich environment, including, among other odds and ends, glances at Hamlet, whose story has traveled for centuries more or less consistently; and Sherlock Holmes, whose story gets retold and rewritten often, sometimes with reckless abandon.
If there is anything which has kept these characters intact, it's been a reverence for the original writing of William Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and while there are popular versions of the characters' stories that don't entirely line up with the controlling narrative of these stories, one never feels that anything is lost when a divergent version appears. The original texts, after all, are right there on most of our bookcases or Kindles.
Most contemporary heroes, even the compelling ones, don't have this sort of luxury. Their stories are more fluid, being reset and updated with some degree of regularity: Batman and Superman have been around for 70-some years, after all, their continuities restarting with regularity -- often by way of a universe altering crisis -- in order to keep them young and fresh, while Spider-Man and other Marvel Comics characters simply rely on an ever-contracting time line, where despite being introduced in the '60s, their debut in the comics is consistently somewhere "around 15 years ago." Even Star Trek, ostensibly the story of Capt. James T. Kirk, abandoned the original cast for the adventures of other crews over time, occasionally revisiting the originals in movies, until finally giving up and rebooting the whole franchise with a new cast. It's hard to keep a story going that long, without having to make a few explanations. We want new Spider-Man stories, but we don't want him to be web-slinging in his 60s. We would find that odd. (And what that says about us, and ageism, is probably another blog post all together, save to say, heroes tend to resonate best when young people can see themselves in them.)
And then, there's The Doctor, from the British TV show Doctor Who, one of very few characters whose exploits have been able to be told in a straight line for decades, by the conceit that he's an alien (and thus extremely long-lived); a time traveler (and thus gaps between stories can be easily explained); and, most brilliant of all, that he regenerates into a new body when he dies (thus, allowing different actors to portray him.) It may have happened as an accident, an on-the-fly producer fix to deal with a lead actor leaving, but it's allowed Doctor Who to remain one of the most enduring shows in television history, with an internal logic that allows the audience to buy into the fact that there's a different guy playing the role every few years, and yet allows the narrative to continue in a straight line. The wizened William Hartnell of 1963 is the same Doctor that Matt Smith is portraying today, despite nearly fifty years passing. (Indeed, some estimates guess that, for the character, somewhere around 200 years of passed since The Doctor and his granddaughter, Susan, inadvertently kidnapped human teachers Ian and Barbara and dragged them on a whirlwind tour of time and space.)
But Doctor Who has been clever in other ways, too. The show has a number of internal controls that allow it to update and revise itself with minimum fuss: The first is that, while some events in time are often "fixed" and immutable, others maybe subject to history being altered. Thus, the villainous Daleks can have two or three origins, or there first encounter can be written off as being from near the end of their history, because the characters are traveling in time, and time, occasionally can change. Moreover, the simplest continuity control of them all has proved to be among the most useful: The Doctor lies, sometimes for no particular reason (although he probably has his reasons, we just don't really know them. His thinking is sometimes -- often -- alien.) The end result could be a muddle, but the series' legal owners, the BBC, have tended their garden well. There are inconsistencies over the course of five decades, but they're nothing to be fussed about. It's still, in its way, one giant story.
There are, of course, ephemera: Comic books, radio plays, novelizations, video games, odd appearances with symphony orchestras in London, all "authorized" but still out of continuity. And there are ostensibly in-continuity spin-offs, such as Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, which have deepened the central story but not overtly challenged it. On the whole, while there have been echoes, it's been abundantly clear which version is the real version at any one time. Which is funny, as there have been two real narratives for Doctor Who. The first: an alien adventurer casts off his stuffy people and comes to Earth (among other places) in search of adventure, and the second: The Last Time Lord travels time and space after his race is destroyed (mostly) in a war. But they're really two chapters in one story, and presumably, the story could go on for centuries, so long as the BBC is interested. It's a story that doesn't need an ending.
The immortal hero isn't entirely a new idea, of course. One could harken all the way back to mythology if one wanted to (although I always find it fascinating that the Norse myths have a an end story, whereas most myths don't, and more contemporary religious narratives mostly do, centering on the idea that this world is temporary or an illusion, and the real world is what comes after. You know. Like The Matrix. All theology aside -- please -- there's something about a looming end times which gives a narrative power, isn't there. A sense of urgency.) In a more literary context, one could look to Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion as a similar concept -- one hero, reborn an infinite amount of times and having vastly different adventures on different worlds, or to Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic, which tells the story of Dream of the Endless, the immortal personification of dreams themselves. But although Dream does eventually die, and is reborn in a new incarnation, as are others of the Endless, Sandman fundamentally tells one incarnation of Dream's story, and while the newer incarnation popped up here and there, his story's not really being told in any substantial way. Other characters are ostensibly immortal, such as the fairy tale characters in Bill Willingham's Fables, but that immortality is a meta-commentary on how those stories have endured, not part of the original stories.
No, The Doctor stands more-or-less alone as having one straight narrative, with clear ownership of who has the right to tell that story, and which commands a place in popular culture. And in a lot of ways, he's an odd duck to have that sort of presence. Unlike a lot of action heroes, he's not prone to violence, mostly relying on his intelligence to solve a crisis, and for the most part, compassionate, not lightly taking the life of an enemy, even one as monstrous as his fellow Time Lord and arch-nemesis, The Master. It happens -- The Doctor is, after all, responsible for the apparent genocide that wiped out both his own people and the Daleks -- but it's not a preference, and indeed, he mostly manages to avoid violence with regularity. Perhaps its no surprise that he largely disappeared (excepting radio plays and novelizations) in the era when excessively violent "heroes" such as Rambo and the Punisher were ascendant.
What then do we make of the character's endurance? Surely, there's something appealing about a madman in a box who appears from nowhere, reaches out his hand and invites some random person on a sightseeing tour of time and space. Who doesn't fantasize about that sort of thing? But it's more than that, isn't it? There's something inherently noble in The Doctor's constant search for a third way through a crisis that doesn't involve merely eradicating his enemies. Vengeance, destruction ... they all seem a bit too simplistic for the modern audience. Even Batman isn't motivated by vengeance. He's motivated, as one of the more compelling writers to write the character in recent years, Grant Morrison, once wrote, "to heal his city and hang up his cowl forever in the Batcave when the job is done. This is not a dream, but a plan." That Morrison probably will never get to write the plan -- as it would end the story -- is irrelevant. It sheds light on how the writer who is writing what must be considered the controlling version of the character (even more so than filmmaker Christopher Nolan) sees the story he's working on. Batman: a great detective, like Sherlock Holmes, who uses violence but is far more interested in healing (like a Doctor.) It takes very little brushwork to see that three great iconic figures currently at play in our popular culture -- a detective who's endured since the Victorian era, a crime-fighter born in the Great Depression, and an alien come to us from post-war England -- are really not so dissimilar after all. Highly intelligent, capable of violence but not interested in it for its own sake, engaging as characters but probably off-putting and unfathomable if we ever met them in real life, and capable of nobility, if not always prone to it as an end in and of itself.
In a lot of ways, all of them -- even Batman -- is a far cry away from what we might consider a hero, but their darkness, intelligence and the push and pull between their humanity and their fundamental otherness -- how they are both of us and separate from us at the same time -- seems to be striking chords. Is this, then, what the culture wants and needs in a hero at this particular moment in time? Perhaps. Cultural consciousnesses are hugely complex things, but it seems some symbols are pushing forward in a rather forceful way.
If there is anything which has kept these characters intact, it's been a reverence for the original writing of William Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and while there are popular versions of the characters' stories that don't entirely line up with the controlling narrative of these stories, one never feels that anything is lost when a divergent version appears. The original texts, after all, are right there on most of our bookcases or Kindles.
Most contemporary heroes, even the compelling ones, don't have this sort of luxury. Their stories are more fluid, being reset and updated with some degree of regularity: Batman and Superman have been around for 70-some years, after all, their continuities restarting with regularity -- often by way of a universe altering crisis -- in order to keep them young and fresh, while Spider-Man and other Marvel Comics characters simply rely on an ever-contracting time line, where despite being introduced in the '60s, their debut in the comics is consistently somewhere "around 15 years ago." Even Star Trek, ostensibly the story of Capt. James T. Kirk, abandoned the original cast for the adventures of other crews over time, occasionally revisiting the originals in movies, until finally giving up and rebooting the whole franchise with a new cast. It's hard to keep a story going that long, without having to make a few explanations. We want new Spider-Man stories, but we don't want him to be web-slinging in his 60s. We would find that odd. (And what that says about us, and ageism, is probably another blog post all together, save to say, heroes tend to resonate best when young people can see themselves in them.)
And then, there's The Doctor, from the British TV show Doctor Who, one of very few characters whose exploits have been able to be told in a straight line for decades, by the conceit that he's an alien (and thus extremely long-lived); a time traveler (and thus gaps between stories can be easily explained); and, most brilliant of all, that he regenerates into a new body when he dies (thus, allowing different actors to portray him.) It may have happened as an accident, an on-the-fly producer fix to deal with a lead actor leaving, but it's allowed Doctor Who to remain one of the most enduring shows in television history, with an internal logic that allows the audience to buy into the fact that there's a different guy playing the role every few years, and yet allows the narrative to continue in a straight line. The wizened William Hartnell of 1963 is the same Doctor that Matt Smith is portraying today, despite nearly fifty years passing. (Indeed, some estimates guess that, for the character, somewhere around 200 years of passed since The Doctor and his granddaughter, Susan, inadvertently kidnapped human teachers Ian and Barbara and dragged them on a whirlwind tour of time and space.)
But Doctor Who has been clever in other ways, too. The show has a number of internal controls that allow it to update and revise itself with minimum fuss: The first is that, while some events in time are often "fixed" and immutable, others maybe subject to history being altered. Thus, the villainous Daleks can have two or three origins, or there first encounter can be written off as being from near the end of their history, because the characters are traveling in time, and time, occasionally can change. Moreover, the simplest continuity control of them all has proved to be among the most useful: The Doctor lies, sometimes for no particular reason (although he probably has his reasons, we just don't really know them. His thinking is sometimes -- often -- alien.) The end result could be a muddle, but the series' legal owners, the BBC, have tended their garden well. There are inconsistencies over the course of five decades, but they're nothing to be fussed about. It's still, in its way, one giant story.
There are, of course, ephemera: Comic books, radio plays, novelizations, video games, odd appearances with symphony orchestras in London, all "authorized" but still out of continuity. And there are ostensibly in-continuity spin-offs, such as Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, which have deepened the central story but not overtly challenged it. On the whole, while there have been echoes, it's been abundantly clear which version is the real version at any one time. Which is funny, as there have been two real narratives for Doctor Who. The first: an alien adventurer casts off his stuffy people and comes to Earth (among other places) in search of adventure, and the second: The Last Time Lord travels time and space after his race is destroyed (mostly) in a war. But they're really two chapters in one story, and presumably, the story could go on for centuries, so long as the BBC is interested. It's a story that doesn't need an ending.
The immortal hero isn't entirely a new idea, of course. One could harken all the way back to mythology if one wanted to (although I always find it fascinating that the Norse myths have a an end story, whereas most myths don't, and more contemporary religious narratives mostly do, centering on the idea that this world is temporary or an illusion, and the real world is what comes after. You know. Like The Matrix. All theology aside -- please -- there's something about a looming end times which gives a narrative power, isn't there. A sense of urgency.) In a more literary context, one could look to Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion as a similar concept -- one hero, reborn an infinite amount of times and having vastly different adventures on different worlds, or to Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic, which tells the story of Dream of the Endless, the immortal personification of dreams themselves. But although Dream does eventually die, and is reborn in a new incarnation, as are others of the Endless, Sandman fundamentally tells one incarnation of Dream's story, and while the newer incarnation popped up here and there, his story's not really being told in any substantial way. Other characters are ostensibly immortal, such as the fairy tale characters in Bill Willingham's Fables, but that immortality is a meta-commentary on how those stories have endured, not part of the original stories.
No, The Doctor stands more-or-less alone as having one straight narrative, with clear ownership of who has the right to tell that story, and which commands a place in popular culture. And in a lot of ways, he's an odd duck to have that sort of presence. Unlike a lot of action heroes, he's not prone to violence, mostly relying on his intelligence to solve a crisis, and for the most part, compassionate, not lightly taking the life of an enemy, even one as monstrous as his fellow Time Lord and arch-nemesis, The Master. It happens -- The Doctor is, after all, responsible for the apparent genocide that wiped out both his own people and the Daleks -- but it's not a preference, and indeed, he mostly manages to avoid violence with regularity. Perhaps its no surprise that he largely disappeared (excepting radio plays and novelizations) in the era when excessively violent "heroes" such as Rambo and the Punisher were ascendant.
What then do we make of the character's endurance? Surely, there's something appealing about a madman in a box who appears from nowhere, reaches out his hand and invites some random person on a sightseeing tour of time and space. Who doesn't fantasize about that sort of thing? But it's more than that, isn't it? There's something inherently noble in The Doctor's constant search for a third way through a crisis that doesn't involve merely eradicating his enemies. Vengeance, destruction ... they all seem a bit too simplistic for the modern audience. Even Batman isn't motivated by vengeance. He's motivated, as one of the more compelling writers to write the character in recent years, Grant Morrison, once wrote, "to heal his city and hang up his cowl forever in the Batcave when the job is done. This is not a dream, but a plan." That Morrison probably will never get to write the plan -- as it would end the story -- is irrelevant. It sheds light on how the writer who is writing what must be considered the controlling version of the character (even more so than filmmaker Christopher Nolan) sees the story he's working on. Batman: a great detective, like Sherlock Holmes, who uses violence but is far more interested in healing (like a Doctor.) It takes very little brushwork to see that three great iconic figures currently at play in our popular culture -- a detective who's endured since the Victorian era, a crime-fighter born in the Great Depression, and an alien come to us from post-war England -- are really not so dissimilar after all. Highly intelligent, capable of violence but not interested in it for its own sake, engaging as characters but probably off-putting and unfathomable if we ever met them in real life, and capable of nobility, if not always prone to it as an end in and of itself.
In a lot of ways, all of them -- even Batman -- is a far cry away from what we might consider a hero, but their darkness, intelligence and the push and pull between their humanity and their fundamental otherness -- how they are both of us and separate from us at the same time -- seems to be striking chords. Is this, then, what the culture wants and needs in a hero at this particular moment in time? Perhaps. Cultural consciousnesses are hugely complex things, but it seems some symbols are pushing forward in a rather forceful way.
December 4, 2010
When is a House a Holmes?
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)
"Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and some day, if we're very very lucky, he might even be a good one." -- Inspector Lestrade, in the BBC TV show, Sherlock (2010)
The great detective, Sherlock Holmes, is a bit of a cultural zeitgeist right now, popping up in myriad iterations throughout the culture: the excellent BBC series Sherlock, where the story's recast in 21st century London, although remarkably faithful to the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories; the rollicking fun Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie and its forthcoming sequels, which are cast in the period but which differ wildly from the source material; a new comic book which I've not read, and of course the medical drama House, M.D., which re-envisions Holmes as a specialized medical diagnostician. All of them have their value, and even the film, the creators of which felt the need to make the lead more of an action hero and to introduce supernatural elements into the story, have something to say about the core mythos. And central to all of this is the idea of the thinker as hero: an outsider in many ways, with many acquaintances but few friends, for whom most human interactions are a distraction and who is, in most ways, not particularly likable. A man who goes to almost superhuman lengths to simply not be bored, which would be intolerable, in many ways, if it weren't for the fact that his pursuit of distraction didn't have an upside for society. (In this, he's actually pretty close to the BBC TV hero, The Doctor, from Doctor Who, and indeed, both are characters who are basically alien in their thinking to most of the people they come in contact with.)
Of course, there have been new iterations of Sherlock Holmes with some degree of regularity for 120 years. Basil Rathbone famously played him in 1939, cementing the look we most associate with the character. He's popped up in comics from Batman to Planetary to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he was one of the protagonists in Roger Zelazny's A Night at the Lonesome October (one of my favorite novels) and so on, and so on, and so on.
It would seem, in many ways, that no one owns Holmes. And, legally speaking, this is the truth. Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain at this point. Anyone can use him, and indeed, he seems to lend himself easily to adaptation, which is probably a consequence of his adventures being originally serialized. (Whereas Shakespeare only wrote one Hamlet.) There is almost a license to continue his adventures. If anyone owns Holmes, its the ghost of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, who seems to hover over each new incarnation, forcing the readers or viewers to ask themselves, "Is this really Sherlock Holmes?" It's a good question. Robert Downey Jr.'s version is much fun, as is Hugh Laurie's Gregory House, but have they traveled so far from the source material that they are now, entirely, something else? I'll leave that question for others, but the right of authorship is a thing that's constantly in question, whether it be whether there should be an incarnation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer without creator Joss Whedon's involvement (and indeed, when he turned it down), or the ongoing legal battle over the characters Jack Kirby created for Marvel Comics, which include the likes of Spider-Man and the X-Men.
The legal right to a character seems to come into conflict with rights that seem to be imparted by the works' creators, with courts and audiences (which are, also, a sort of court) weighing the validity of who gets to tell a story. And if a story is indeed legally allowed to be told, as the myriad Sherlock Holmes stories are, then another question entirely is posed. Is the story valid? Does it contribute something to the greater myth? At what point is a Sherlock Holmes story no longer a Sherlock Holmes story?
"Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and some day, if we're very very lucky, he might even be a good one." -- Inspector Lestrade, in the BBC TV show, Sherlock (2010)
The great detective, Sherlock Holmes, is a bit of a cultural zeitgeist right now, popping up in myriad iterations throughout the culture: the excellent BBC series Sherlock, where the story's recast in 21st century London, although remarkably faithful to the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories; the rollicking fun Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie and its forthcoming sequels, which are cast in the period but which differ wildly from the source material; a new comic book which I've not read, and of course the medical drama House, M.D., which re-envisions Holmes as a specialized medical diagnostician. All of them have their value, and even the film, the creators of which felt the need to make the lead more of an action hero and to introduce supernatural elements into the story, have something to say about the core mythos. And central to all of this is the idea of the thinker as hero: an outsider in many ways, with many acquaintances but few friends, for whom most human interactions are a distraction and who is, in most ways, not particularly likable. A man who goes to almost superhuman lengths to simply not be bored, which would be intolerable, in many ways, if it weren't for the fact that his pursuit of distraction didn't have an upside for society. (In this, he's actually pretty close to the BBC TV hero, The Doctor, from Doctor Who, and indeed, both are characters who are basically alien in their thinking to most of the people they come in contact with.)
Of course, there have been new iterations of Sherlock Holmes with some degree of regularity for 120 years. Basil Rathbone famously played him in 1939, cementing the look we most associate with the character. He's popped up in comics from Batman to Planetary to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he was one of the protagonists in Roger Zelazny's A Night at the Lonesome October (one of my favorite novels) and so on, and so on, and so on.
It would seem, in many ways, that no one owns Holmes. And, legally speaking, this is the truth. Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain at this point. Anyone can use him, and indeed, he seems to lend himself easily to adaptation, which is probably a consequence of his adventures being originally serialized. (Whereas Shakespeare only wrote one Hamlet.) There is almost a license to continue his adventures. If anyone owns Holmes, its the ghost of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, who seems to hover over each new incarnation, forcing the readers or viewers to ask themselves, "Is this really Sherlock Holmes?" It's a good question. Robert Downey Jr.'s version is much fun, as is Hugh Laurie's Gregory House, but have they traveled so far from the source material that they are now, entirely, something else? I'll leave that question for others, but the right of authorship is a thing that's constantly in question, whether it be whether there should be an incarnation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer without creator Joss Whedon's involvement (and indeed, when he turned it down), or the ongoing legal battle over the characters Jack Kirby created for Marvel Comics, which include the likes of Spider-Man and the X-Men.
The legal right to a character seems to come into conflict with rights that seem to be imparted by the works' creators, with courts and audiences (which are, also, a sort of court) weighing the validity of who gets to tell a story. And if a story is indeed legally allowed to be told, as the myriad Sherlock Holmes stories are, then another question entirely is posed. Is the story valid? Does it contribute something to the greater myth? At what point is a Sherlock Holmes story no longer a Sherlock Holmes story?
