Who watches the Watchmen? I do

(Please, excuse the cheesy title. I had to do it!)

I saw the Watchmen movie on Saturday. I’m not going to review it. I’m not going to give it stars. Frankly, I think it’s unreviewable. It doesn’t matter to me that the pretentious reviewer at the New Yorker panned the film. I am going to talk about the film and the New Yorker piece. But this is not a review. This is an analysis.

 

First, the movie. I sat there and watched this thing on Saturday and I marveled at the complexity and the sheer beauty of the thing. What surprised me most was how the film changed my recollections of the book. Watchmen is a comic I’ve probably read 5 or 6 times in my life. I would say that there are only two or three books/series that I have read an equal or greater number of times than Watchmen (and those would be James Robinson’s run on Starman, The Dark Knight Returns, and the first Sin City book). I watched the early scene with the police officers in The Comedian’s apartment, and I remember thinking, “wow, the dialogue matches the book very well.” However, when I went home and re-read that part of the book, they were vastly different. This, to me, is a sign of a good adaptation. Snyder used some dialogue verbatim, and some he re-worded, but it was done so well that you think you’re hearing that was written on the page.

I came to realize things about the characters that I had not realized before. The sheer fetishism of the whole superhero concept that permeates Watchmen is splayed before you on the screen. I would recommend that you read the book, then see the movie. If you still don’t get it, you have some issues with analysis and interpretation that you should deal with.

Now, The New Yorker. Did you follow the link? Good. I hope you read this review, and if you think the same way I think, you are probably disgusted. I’m going to hit these points one by one, because otherwise my rants will blend together.

1. Stop calling it a graphic novel. I posted about this at the end of last week. Technically, it’s a trade paperback. More accurately, it’s a comic book. This is from the author’s own mouth: It’s a marketing term. I mean, it was one that I never had any sympathy with. The term “comic” does just as well for me. The term “graphic novel” was something that was thought up in the ’80s by marketing people … The problem is that “graphic novel” just came to mean “expensive comic book” and so what you’d get is people like DC Comics or Marvel comics – because “graphic novels” were ge tting some attention, they’d stick six issues of whatever worthless piece of crap they happened to be publishing lately under a glossy cover and call it The She-Hulk Graphic Novel, you know? It was that that I think tended to destroy any progress that comics might have made in the mid-’80s.
2. The Dylan thing… Look, I love Bob Dylan. I probably have a more unhealthy fanboy attitude about Dylan than I do about comics. But people really need to stop acting like the guy sweats gold and shits Tiffany cufflinks. “was Dylan happy to lend his name to a project from which all tenderness has been excised, and which prefers to paint mankind as a bevy of brutes?” Give me a break! His songs are in the comic (two of them, “Desolation Row” and “Watchtower”). Are we really going to say that a guy who licenses his songs for use in Victoria’s Secret and Pepsi commercials isn’t allowed to license them for a film adaptation of a comic that he also licensed the use of his lyrics? He’s Dylan! He can do whatever he wants, and don’t use your crappy review of this movie as a way to take a swipe at Dylan.
3. The reviewer’s name is Anthony Lane. After reading the review, I have come to the conclusion that lane either a), never read the book, or b), read it and didn’t get it at all. I know, that’s the thing to say when a reviewer disagrees with you, but Lane complains about things that are integral to the theme of the book and the movie. Watchmen works on multiple levels; entertainment, political, genre, deconstruction, etc. On one of those levels is a simple analysis of the superhero in which Moore determines that anyone who puts their underwear on outside of their pants an goes swinging around the night beating people up clearly has something wrong with them, from sociopathic tendencies to sexual fetishism to a complete disconnect from the real world. So yes, people do bad things in the movie, but they’re supposed to. Rorschach’s voiceovers are over the top, but they have to be. Otherwise there is no point. Changing that would be the equivalent of Charles Foster Kane having a happy childhood.
4. I’m over 25, and I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Don’t be so condescending.

So there you go. Take away whatever you want, but don’t shit-can a film just because you don’t understand the subplot. And stop calling them graphic novels!

Can we please stop calling them “Graphic Novels?”

I know I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been busy with school. I’m going into the last week of the quarter, which means lots of work on the final paper. I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled houliganism after the 13th.

But I am taking a break from all of that because I decided to see what the critics were saying about Watchmen, not that I really care. I have my tickets already, 12:30 tomorrow afternoon, and nothing anyone says will stop me from going. But everyone keeps calling it a graphic novel, and that is reeeeallly annoying. You see, a graphic novel is not a general name that the intelectual elite substitutes for comic books. It has a meaning. So allow me to wwhip a little knowledge on you.

A comic book is a magazine or tabloid-sized book that either publishes a serialized story or self-contained short stories. They’re flimsy and they smell good, and they’re usually published monthly. They are the backbone of sequential storytelling. A graphic novel, however, is a long-form story that is originally published as a large bound volume. Watchmen is not a graphic novel. In fact, very few books published by DC and Marvel, 2 of the Big Three publishers, counting Image as the third, would count as graphic novels.

What is Watchmen? Watchmen is a comic book. At least it was. When a monthly comic is collected into a bound volume, it is referred to as a trade paperback. Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, V for Vendetta, Ronin,  and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are all trade paperbacks, as is the entire Sandman series, sans Endless Nights. I would wager that Sandman is the first comic book that stopped being a trade paperback and started being a graphic novel.

So why are they called graphic novels today? Simple: there are intelectuals out there who want to read comic books but don’t want to call them comic books. Are we really this vain? I consider myself a smart guy, but I will gladly admit to reading comics. I love them. they’re entertaining.

So if you’re like me and you are going to see Watchmen, remember: it’s a comic book. And that’s okay.

Sunday Sessions

I feel like crap. I’ve got some sort of upper-respiratory thing (I thought those would go away when I quit smoking!) and my head feels like it’s swimming. I’m getting cold chills. Basically, it feels like a fever, except the thermometer doesn’t read over 98.5. I don’t care what it says. I would have an argument with it, but at this point I’m afraid it would win.

So, here’s a couple of quickies for Sunday (and to prove how messed up I am, it’s technically Monday).

Is Genius Inherited? Time asks this question. The answer is “yes and no,” and, while I appreciate coverage of anything psychologically-related in the national press, I have to ask… Really? Haven’t we pretty much settled this one by now?

Anatomy of Thought Neurophilosophy has some beautiful engravings of the human brain.

I Love This Website

Polite Dissent. It’s medical reviews of comic books and House. It’s a geek’s best friend.

Mindfuck movies

Here’s a list of Mindfuck Movies, those films that alter reality in such a way that you have to score a lid to get over it. These are the kind of movies that will curl your toes, curve your spine, and cause us to lose the war.

I’m going to have to check out Primer.

It’s Sunday…

…and I don’t want to work too hard. So enjoy this video clip:

Joaquin Phoenix and the Bane of Trying to Diagnose Acting

If you follow entertainment news at all, you have no doubt seen and heard that Joaquin Phoenix has quit acting, grown a good Richard Manuel beard, and is starting a rap career. Phoenix was on The Late Show with David Letterman on Wednesday to plug his last movie, and it was a bit disjointed:

Letterman: You were teriffic in the film and I really enjoyed your work.

Phoenix: Thank you. [Long, awkward pause, broken by the audience tittering]

Anneli Rufus, author of the Stuckblog over at Psychology Today Blogs, wrote about the appearence, and seems to find the whole thing a bit disturbing:

He’s a major star. His new (and most likely last) film just opened. But … he’s clearly hurting. We don’t know why, and we don’t know how, and why should we, as we don’t know him personally and these things are private? He’s hurting. He’s in distress. It shows. Shouldn’t we leave him in peace to seek the help he needs — or to let his loved ones seek it for him?

Actually, he doesn’t look like he’s hurting to me. In fact, it looks like he’s playing a character. And i don’t see any reason to believe that he’s actually suffering from some kind of breakdown. None of his family has stated that Phoenix needs help. In fact, Phoenix’s brother-in-law Casey Affleck is filming the whole thing for a documentary. Another bit from Rufus’s post:

“What can you tell us about your days with the Unabomber?”

Phoenix recoils.

You might say: Well, Letterman has to do something to keep the show flowing. Caught off guard, he has to wing it. It’s a talk show, and when a guest sits there mutely a host can’t let the show completely fall apart. You might say Letterman was in a tight spot that night.

She sees a recoil. I saw him look up. And he grins. He’s in on it.

Letterman asks Phoenix about his plans. Phoenix says he wants to concentrate on making music. Letterman asks whether it will be the same kind of music the actor performed in the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line. Phoenix says no: “I do more of a hip-hop music.”

Letterman repeats: “Hip-hop music.”

The audience finds this hilarious. Phoenix shifts in his chair.

“Um — that’s a joke?” Phoenix turns to Letterman: “What do you have them on?” He means the audience. “What do you gas them up with? Nitrous?” Startled, insulted, confused, he mumbles something about “this maniacal laughter.”

She didn’t really display this as it happened. Phoenix seems to chuckle when he makes the gag about nitrous. Letterman responds with a comment about the kid in the front being drunk on warm Pepsi. I don’t know what that means, but knowing Letterman, he’s recalling a bit from earlier in the show. Phoenix even chuckles at this.

The way Phoenix is behaving here is not how a polished media professional normally reacts when being grilled by a celebrated comedian on national TV. But this IS how an ordinary human being who feels at risk, downhearted, depressed and distraught reacts when asked such questions by, say, his annoying cousin in a suburban living room. During the Letterman interview, Phoenix resembles with uncanny vividity my high-school friend Chuck. With his heft and beard, Phoenix is Chuck’s double. Chuck was funny, shy, an Elton John fanatic, and depressed. Some days, Chuck could barely drag himself out of bed, much less to school. My best friend Deb and I tried mightily to cheer Chuck up. We sang to him. We cut pictures of the tennis champ Chris Evert out of magazines for him. He really like Chris Evert. He smiled — in that thankful but faint and fleeting Chuckish way. We lost touch after graduation. Deb and I suspect that Chuck is no longer in this world.

Rufus sets up a false dichotomy. She is seeing anomalous behavior, tries to explain it by a paradigm that she understands (the way media personalities act when plugging a movie), doesn’t see it fit, and goes to her second option (He’s hurting, depressed, suffering, off his nut, etc.) without thinking that there may be a third. This is the same thing that UFO hunterd do when they see lights in the sky, saying “If it’s not an airplane or a weather balloon, it must be an alien spacecraft.” Rufus doesn’t consider that he may be putting us all on, and she filters her interpretations of Phoenix’s behavior through her paradigm (in pain) without considering the alternative (acting). And she basically attacks Letterman and the media in general because of her, I believe, misrepresentation of events.

I could be wrong. He could be in pain. I hope he isn’t. But I’m not the only one who thinks this is all a gag, that Affleck’s documentary is really a mockumentary. I think for now, we should just sit back and enjoy the ride. But I recommend you read Rufus’s post and watch the video itself and see what you think.