Adolescent fantasy thread
You state [fantasy’s place as an exclusively adolescent genre] as if it’s a universal, but that attitude is a pretty new development in literary culture. — swan_tower
This discussion touches on a whole host of issues like middlebrow vs. high brow; entertainment vs. art; fantastic genres vs. realistic genres vs. non-genre dramas. — curt_holman
That Homer’s fucked. — iainjcoleman
Ms. Tower correctly points out that "fantasy" as a genre was not always exclusively for the young. I would have done better to add "these days" to my description of the role of fantasy in our common storytelling world.
Some have asked me to define "adolescent" stories as opposed to "adult" stories. I would say that an adolescent story is designed to appeal to a primarily adolescent mindset — that is, the mind of an adolescent. The concerns of the adolescent are different from the concerns of the adult, and there’s not much you or I can do about that. The adolescent mind is still asking questions, taking its measure of the world and seeking its place within it. (Kurt Vonnegut was often accused of being "sophomoric," which he said was entirely intentional — he knew that if he really wanted to change the way people think, he had to do it while they were still young — the people with real power don’t read novels.) There is no qualitative difference between a story designed to appeal to children, a story designed to appeal to adolescents or a story designed to appeal to adults. Each can be well executed or poorly executed, transcendent or trashy, innovative or rote. "Children’s movies" includes both Bambi and Ernest Goes to Camp, and the realm of the adolescent movie, as I’ve said, spans almost our entire release schedule.
As for Homer, two things:
1. Yeah, Homer wrote adolescent power fantasies. Sorry. They are very good, and they have lasted a long time, and they bring great storytelling talent to bear on their narratives, but they are still, primarily and essentially, adolescent power fantasies.
2. That said, the fact that we’re still talking about Homer thousands of years later indicates that there is hope for the superhero genre. There’s no reason why, given time and development, Superman will not take his place in the mythological pantheon next to Odysseus and Achilles, to say nothing of Arthur or Heracles, or Cinderella or Peter Pan. All are fantastic stories that plumb the depths of what it means to be human, the only thing separating them is time. There is no reason why, a thousand years from now, people will not study superhero stories in serious college courses or create serious, adult dramas from what will then be considered classics. Superman, Batman and the rest, it seems to me, share a lot of things with those older characters, including being constantly reinvented as the society that imagined them shifts in its needs.
Superman belongs to no one, or rather he belongs to everyone, and always has — that’s one of the interesting thing about comics. The creator of a superhero may have something specific to say, but it’s the audience who actually decides who the hero is, and they decide by buying one comic and leaving another on the shelf. I was surprised to learn that when Superman first appeared, Siegel and Shuster hadn’t actually figured out his origin story or basic character outline. They tried out this, that and the other personality trait, letting the readers respond and thus re-shape the material. The audience would love one kind of story and shrug at another, so the material was tailored to meet the audience’s expectations. In seeking only to keep their aborning creation in print, they — through a kind of Darwinian process — created a strong, resonant hero that became the first, the original and, even today, the most influential character in his genre.
Fun fact: when I Googled "Homer" to find an appropriate image for this thread discussing this whole adult/adolescent fantasy debate, I had to wade through three pages of Homer Simpson until I found a picture of the Greek bard. I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.
Can superheroes grow up?
voiceofisaac writes:
"So, if most superhero comic books are adolescent power fantasies, what about them would need to be changed in order to make them a more adult fantasy? Or are all power fantasies adolescent by definition?"
ted_slaughter ripostes:
"First, ‘adolescent’? Are you saying it’s adolescent to desire power, or that comics are inherently jejune? Because I beg to differ, on both counts.
Ted and Isaac cut to the core of the issue here. This is, in a way, the whole ball game.
First, let me make something clear: there is nothing wrong, shameful or second-rate about adolescent fantasies. Adolescent fantasies drive the entire movie business and have for more than a generation. "Grown-up" drama was once where all the money was spent in Hollywood, now it’s the opposite: all the money is spent on adolescent fantasies, while adult drama must squeeze itself in where it can. Adolescent fantasies thus call the shots in this world of professionals — movies based on superhero comics, fantasy novels, children’s books and pop-culture flotsam attract the biggest names, the highest salaries and our brightest talents. No offense to the wonderful movies nominated for Best Picture this year, but the three movies I went to see more than once in the theaters, Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda and The Dark Knight, are not on the list. The question here is not "are superhero movies any good?" but "can superhero movies ever be anything but adolescent fantasies?"
Superheroes: Batman Forever
Batman Forever does something that Batman and Batman Returns were unable to do: it makes Batman a proper protagonist, with goals and desires of his own. Not merely reacting to events, Bruce/Batman is after something in Forever. His various allies and antagonists, seductions and betrayals are all thematically consistent and relevant to his struggle. This does not mean that the finished movie is without flaws.
Superheroes: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is in interesting entry in the world of long-form cinematic Batman stories for a few different reasons. First, it manages to do what the Burton movies were unable to — make Bruce/Batman the protagonist of his own story. Second, it’s primarily a detective story as opposed to an action story. Third, at least half of the story is told in flashback, a parallel-action setup ambitious for a movie thought of as primarily for kids. Lastly, the story it tells is rather emotional and internal — Bruce/Batman broods a lot in this movie, even by his own standards. The action sequences feel perfunctory and tacked-on. The two that come to mind — a truck chase and the explosive finale — are poorly motivated and don’t advance the plot in any meaningful way.
Superheroes: Batman Returns
Like Batman, Batman Returns presents three protagonists, almost the same protagonists as the previous movie — a deformed freak of a gangster (this time the Penguin), a blonde who’s crazy about bats (Catwoman subbing for Vicki Vale), and Batman himself. In addition to its three protagonists, it offers an antagonist from outside the traditional Batman world — a ringer, if you will, in the form of businessman Max Shreck.
It would be great to report that Batman Returns takes all of these worthwhile, interesting characters and weaves them into a single, unified story, but it does not. Instead, it presents two separate stories, each compelling in its own right, and kind of sutures them together like the irregular chunks of vinyl of Catwoman’s bodysuit. As this is an unusually complicated narrative with three separate, competing plot strands which actually take place in utterly different genres, let’s separate out each character’s storyline and examine them one at a time.
Superheroes: Batman (1989) part 1
Batman has an interesting agenda: the screenplay wants to keep its title character mysterious and elusive for as long as possible. Both Batman and Bruce Wayne are presented as cold, remote and unreachable. "Why won’t you let me in?" asks Vicki Vale, as well she might. Bruce Wayne takes a long time to emerge as a protagonist in Batman, and Batman takes even longer. For the longest time, Bruce/Batman is pursued, tangled with and drawn out, with the effect being to turn him into a kind of mythological figure, or even a fetish object.
Superheroes: Batman (1966)
(For those interested, my earlier thoughts on Batman can be found here.)
WHO IS BRUCE WAYNE? Bruce Wayne is tall, handsome, wealthy and dumb as a post. He lives with his ward, Dick Grayson, who is shorter, not quite as good looking, and also dumb as a post. Wayne refers to himself as a "capitalist" for the benefit of a woman he believes to be a Russian journalist, but as far as the narrative is concerned, Wayne is born rich, a playboy, and does nothing with his life but bear the name of the Wayne Foundation — a wealthy, carefree philanthropist. There is no mention anywhere of the murder of Bruce’s parents when he was eight years old, no mention of any demons or psychological issues that might compel a man to dress up like a bat to go out and fight crime. Like a lot of things in Batman, Bruce Wayne dresses up like a bat to go out and fight crime because the plot demands it.
Some thoughts on The Spirit
I was dreading The Spirit. I didn’t like the posters that showed up six months ago, the ones with the smutty writing on the women’s faces, and I didn’t like the look of the trailer. It looked weird, unpolished and campy. When some reviews showed up that called it, literally, one of the worst movies ever made, I felt a sigh of relief, thinking "Well, now I don’t have to see it, that’s a load off." Ah, but then my big superhero project came along, and how was I going to not see the new superhero movie?
Christmas day rolled around, and I found myself in a town with nothing to do and, well, I like to go see a movie on Christmas, it’s kind of a tradition ’round my place. I should have been working on a treatment I have due, but it was Christmas, and who wants to work on Christmas?
Dark Knight footnote
55seddel writes: "Will you speak to why [The Dark Knight] is a melodrama and not a tragedy?"
A melodrama is a drama where "good" and "bad" are easily distinguished (the name comes from how, when the original melodramas were staged, the band played a cue so that the audience would know who was good and who was bad), events are fantastical and emotions are heightened well beyond real life. The Dark Knight fits all those descriptions quite well — the good are good, the bad literally walk around with big distinguishing marks on them, the action is unrealistic (although grounded in a well-realized "reality") and the emotions — both on screen and in the audience — are greatly heightened. One of the acts even climaxes with a damsel tied to a big friggin’ bomb as the hero races to her rescue. In a traditional Victorian melodrama, the damsel is tied to the railroad tracks and the hero is the Mountie who always gets there in time. The Dark Knight plays this scenario out almost to a T — except that its hero races to the wrong address and the damsel gets vaporized.
A tragedy is, simply put, a story where the protagonist, trying to do good, causes his own downfall. Hamlet thinks identifying and killing his father’s murderer will set everything straight in Denmark, and instead he winds up getting everyone killed and losing the kingdom to an invading horde. And The Dark Knight certainly contains elements of tragedy, no doubt about it. One could find parallels to Bruce Wayne in Timon of Athens or Titus Andronicus, great leaders who boldly step forward to improve the life of their city, only to find in the end they’ve made everything much, much worse. And, like Oedipus, Bruce Wayne seeks to discover the source of the plague on his city, only to find that it is himself.
But to call The Dark Knight a tragedy is to overlook all the other things it does so well — it’s a great superhero movie (a genre melodramatic by nature), a great thriller, a great crime drama, and a not-bad detective movie. It is all those things on a very sophisticated level, so much so that it doesn’t quite have the time to develop a true air of tragedy. Better to appreciate it for what it is — an exceptionally intelligent, incredibly dense, impeccably crafted action thriller that smartly addresses its audience in a way its genre never has before, and raises the "comic book movie" to an entirely new level of excellence.
(Many thanks to faithful reader The Editor.)