tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89721208896296757142024-03-14T02:18:24.639-04:00Beyond EasyPatrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.comBlogger600125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-60996700461241351302023-07-29T02:20:00.032-04:002023-08-01T10:59:01.594-04:00In Review: The X-Men's Krakoa Era<p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnN9TROel-Hod6jvg98ynHzZj4jl7KHjlYolmg_Xk9T2n6W4C1qoKC21l0gpFPaCEtcYX6YsqcNfz_DZpbFMQmIqRX_HE7e5mVJi-zijoGMHkHdB_WjzXzPmR3A0AOiZQM_5HxaPzm4jXm9fjZtH2vvVkjKdSs_gKh1k5m_iAZJP-vMC__uhp8uvxaD7OE/s1063/image_2023-07-25_011231904.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="1063" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnN9TROel-Hod6jvg98ynHzZj4jl7KHjlYolmg_Xk9T2n6W4C1qoKC21l0gpFPaCEtcYX6YsqcNfz_DZpbFMQmIqRX_HE7e5mVJi-zijoGMHkHdB_WjzXzPmR3A0AOiZQM_5HxaPzm4jXm9fjZtH2vvVkjKdSs_gKh1k5m_iAZJP-vMC__uhp8uvxaD7OE/w504-h315/image_2023-07-25_011231904.png" width="504" /></a></span></b></div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b>Psst. I'm still over on <a href="https://bananapeel.substack.com" target="_blank">Substack</a>, but I did say this would be my receptacle for whatever dragged-out, uncritical pop culture writeups I might feel irresistibly compelled to throw together. I'm afraid the time has come to use it in that capacity.<div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><br /><div>American superhero comics have it really bad these days.<div><br /></div><div>Dating back to the 1930s, the original business model of the comic book publisher was simple: grind out a slew of cheaply printed monthly (or twice-monthly) serials and/or anthologies, and sell them at newsstands and chain stores across the county. They were a popular sensation, but their long-term decline began with the dawn of the Television Age. As the world turned away from print matter, the scheme gradually stopped working. With newsstands on the decline and comic book shops decimated by the aftereffects of the Great Comic Crash of 1996, publishers compensated for declining sales by raising production value and jacking up cover prices beyond what a kid with a weekly allowance (or even an adult with a wage job) can afford to splurge on several times a month. As the once-mighty superhero comic became more of a niche product (and as the internet killed magazines in general), drugstores, supermarkets, and gas stations stopped stocking them. For the last decade and a half, their collected editions have been getting their asses kicked by manga, and now their digital editions have the webtoons juggernaut to compete with. At this point they're pretty much R&D divisions for Disney and Warner Bros' film and television studios, and comfort food for thirty-to-fifty year old males who collected them as kids and never fell out of the habit.<span><a name='more'></a></span><br /><br />A more subtle and intractable problem is that superhero comics are suffering from ossification. For the most part it's only the eminently recognizable legacy properties that sell copies these days—brand new titles featuring brand new characters seldom last long—and most of their serials have been published more or less continuously for upwards of fifty years. Maybe they haven't completely exhausted their possibilities, but a whole lot of them are stuck remixing their greatest hits for all time. Gotham City burns to the ground, the Joker executes his ghastliest scheme ever, and a dear ally of Batman's <a href="https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/File:Radioactive_Man_679.jpg" target="_blank">pays the ultimate price</a>—again and again and again. Gotham is rebuilt in a month, Joker escapes, and Robin comes back to life after a few years. Tony Stark disgraces himself and loses it all, redeems himself and claws his way back to the top, disgraces himself and loses it all, redeems himself and claws his way back to the top, ad infinitum. Wally West replaces Barry Allen as the Flash. Then Barry Allen replaces Wally West as the Flash. Then Wally West replaces Barry Allen as the Flash again. Magneto switches sides, becoming a hero, then a villain, then a hero, then a villain, then a hero, then a villain, then a hero again. Marvel stages another Civil War, Secret War, and/or Secret Invasion. The DC Universe is rocked by Crisis after Crisis, each purportedly a million billion times more epic and threatening than the last. Everything changes and then nothing changes, and there's no destination, no possibility of a final resolution. Just the occasional universal reboot or reunion of heroes that sets everything back to square one so the books can tell the same stories about the same people, only a little different. "Comics are essentially trapped in a perpetual second act," <a href="https://www.escapistmagazine.com/avengers-age-of-ultron-marks-limits-mcu-marvel-comics-superheroes/" target="_blank">writes one Darren Mooney</a>, "a story without an ending."</div><div><br /></div><div>In this regard, the X-Men—my favorite superheroes ever since I was in the first or second grade—had it especially bad through the 2010s. Because Fox still held the film rights to the franchise, Marvel (a subsidiary of Disney) did all it could to hobble the property short of cancelling all its books. There was a concentrated effort to boost the profile of the Inhumans (created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the 1960s, but relegated to obscurity for decades afterward) as the Marvel Universe's replacement mutants. In the meantime the X-books just spun their wheels, following a holding pattern in lieu of a narrative. Writers were instructed not to introduce new characters. Lee and Kirby's original X-Men were brought to the present as time-displaced teenagers and made a major focus of the line for <i>six years</i>, literalizing the truism that superhero comics can only progress so far before looping back to a familiar starting point.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 2018, the Justice Department approved Disney's bid to purchase Twentieth Century Fox. Marvel no longer had to worry about any conflict of interest between publishing decent X-books and giving a competing studio ideas it could adapt for use in its films. The company brought in writer Jonathan Hickman, whose work on books like <i>Secret Warriors</i>, <i>Fantastic Four</i>, <i>Avengers</i>, etc. had earned rave reviews, to rejuvenate the franchise.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the summer of 2019, the X-Men's Krakoa era (named for the island to which Professor Xavier and friends relocate) began, and it was the most exciting thing to happen in mainstream superhero comics in god knows how long. The X-Men were introduced in the early 1960s as "the strangest super-heroes of all," and Hickman revisited and updated that promise by making the X-Men <i>weird</i> again. Biotech autarky. Immortality through clone bodies and memory backups. Luxury gay space communism on Earth with an ethos of racial manifest destiny. Xavier, Magneto, Apocalypse, and Mister Sinister working together. Intimations of a Cyclops/Jean Grey/Wolverine polycule. Cultic practices and an impending AI apocalypse from beyond time and space. The X-Men were thrust into completely uncharted territory where anything seemed possible. Not only did Hickman burn every conceivable bridge back to the old status quo, but created the tantalizingly persuasive illusion of an epic narrative bound for an actual endpoint, adumbrating the conditions for the protagonists' final victory or total defeat.</div><div><br /></div><div>As of last Wednesday's publication of <i>Hellfire Gala 2023</i>, the Krakoa era is over. The island is depopulated. The X-Men & friends have been scattered to the corners of the world. The majority of mutantkind has <i>apparently</i> been slaughtered wholesale, and the remainder is being hunted down. Four years was how long it took for the X-books to regress from a wholly novel and unprecedented paradigm to what looks to be a mashup of the Outback era, the Siege Perilous aftermath, Project: Zero Tolerance, Decimation, and the <i>Uncanny X-Men</i> arc that directly preceded Hickman's reboot. Everything new becomes old again. So it goes.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not sure how closely I'll follow the X-books after this. My enthusiasm has been on the wane for at least the last year or so, and now I'm thinking I'd rather save my money. But ever since the Krakoa era began I've been on a protracted X-Men binge—and now it's time for a purge.</div><div><br /></div><div>So let's do this in the low-nutrition but painlessly digestible form of a listicle. Today we'll be looking at what I consider the five (or slightly more) best titles to have come out of the Krakoa era.</div><div><br /></div><div><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><strike>HONORABLE MENTION:</strike> ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM:<br /></span></b><b><i>HOUSE OF X </i>/ <i>POWERS OF X </i>(Jonathan Hickman, 2019)</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7YY72WbsSyOrmJcK28BaMI_tGDzbpeRgOTGPwLo7olfSkr2OKm0dUfmRHuQIkrdmRI3eMjUsQIkFcZdNeN-ronYEr4YbOsjjGsvYokcPpt6-izw-1lpOiUNdwZAFDquJmqurq06QWhqqIRFX9xvmMKyWr-FI-6P5uXUTC-9Hq6Xal_6amd2mbOt0-9aZ3/s721/image_2023-07-17_213937807.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="482" height="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7YY72WbsSyOrmJcK28BaMI_tGDzbpeRgOTGPwLo7olfSkr2OKm0dUfmRHuQIkrdmRI3eMjUsQIkFcZdNeN-ronYEr4YbOsjjGsvYokcPpt6-izw-1lpOiUNdwZAFDquJmqurq06QWhqqIRFX9xvmMKyWr-FI-6P5uXUTC-9Hq6Xal_6amd2mbOt0-9aZ3/w288-h430/image_2023-07-17_213937807.png" width="241" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ8je7gbqQMBS1xAvibi7nbWwslZUb7alCvrHAlUeq_AlRcPHe3q_2y1eJrICEZLSnFBWlD9ubv7iNyWfHk34SCDhY-HMd4fmMKAGobPM5UBDHptyG8xEdqnDZqxpyk2e5SPv4n6ennM4XDN0F_5TRJdiAS552VQPG_5zv1m9U_Fpfl0vCR2_FdL9P4NA4/s721/image_2023-07-28_003551002.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="478" height="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ8je7gbqQMBS1xAvibi7nbWwslZUb7alCvrHAlUeq_AlRcPHe3q_2y1eJrICEZLSnFBWlD9ubv7iNyWfHk34SCDhY-HMd4fmMKAGobPM5UBDHptyG8xEdqnDZqxpyk2e5SPv4n6ennM4XDN0F_5TRJdiAS552VQPG_5zv1m9U_Fpfl0vCR2_FdL9P4NA4/s320/image_2023-07-28_003551002.png" width="241" /></a></div><p>Not an honorable mention so much as a handicap. "Hoxpox" was the best series of the Krakoa era, bar none. It's really no contest, and it's a damn shame that the series that inaugurated a new beginning for the long-anemic and editorially hamstrung X-Men franchise should have been superior to everything that came afterwards. The Krakoa experiment peaked as soon as it began.</p><p>That was probably how it was bound to play out, unless the Marvel editors and the writers of the several relaunched X-books had been willing to give Hickman absolute control of the franchise, letting him preside over his colleagues like a dictator instead of a showrunner. The rumors say that Hickman left because he had a story he wanted to expedite, but the other writers got their way in demanding more time and latitude to explore the implications and possibilities of the new status quo. But who can blame them? Compared to Hickman's reorientation of the franchise, Grant Morrison's decade-defining paradigm shift back in 2001 seems like a timid pivot. <i>House of X</i>/<i>Powers of X</i> changed <i>everything</i> about the X-Men, past, present, and future. I was skeptical of the promotional hype at first—and then Hickman had picking my jaw off the floor after every issue and counting the days till the next installment. <i>House of X</i>/<i>Powers of X</i> was <i>brilliant</i>. When the brand-new X-books to follow on its heels were announced, I knew I was buying their first issues. All of them. I wanted nothing more than to open my wallet and throw money at Marvel to signal how much I wanted this thing to keep going.</p><p>Notwithstanding the mindbending retcon involving Moira MacTaggert/Kinross, the unification of mutantkind, or the resurrection protocols, the boldest aspect of Krakoa's introduction was its moral ambivalence. Hickman wasn't the first X-Men writer to approach the mutant ethnostate angle, but nobody had done it like this. Professor X puts to rest his old dream of peacefully integrating <i>Homo superior</i> with <i>Homo sapiens,</i> and begins to guide mutantkind towards eventual world domination. He collaborates with Magneto, Apocalypse, and Sinister to build a mutants-only utopia, and upon the founding of the new nation he psychically declares to the world that mutants are the inevitable inheritors of the Earth. Leveraging its fantastic biotechnology, hardball diplomacy, and covert operatives, Krakoa soon becomes a power player on the global stage.</p><p>The long-time X-Men fan couldn't but have mixed feelings about all this, and that was the whole point. With the foundation of Krakoa, mutants were no longer the Marvel Universe's perennial victims, but a unified people and an upstart nation state with a manifest destiny ethos. To borrow an oft-quoted line from Steward Brand, Xavier and friends finally accepted that they are as gods, and they set about getting good at it. Hickman wanted to embrace the contradictions of the premise: what does it mean when Marvel's merry mutants give up on trying to be a model minority and embrace the connotations of the Linnaean name <i>Homo superior</i>?</p><p>I don't want to turn this into a whingefest, so it will suffice to say that a huge problem of the Krakoa era was that few of Hickman's colleagues were capable of approaching the scenario with the same degree of cerebral detachment and nuance, or were as comfortable with and capable of working with the ambiguities he set up at the experiment's inception. Another was the mass of ideas and themes Hickman introduced at the onset which other writers either dialed back or discarded altogether as time went on. By degrees Krakoa stopped being so astonishing, complicated, and creepy/beautiful, and slouched towards the mundane.</p><p>Then there's the inscrutable matter of editorial edicts. In <i>House of X</i>/<i>Powers of X</i>, Hickman was given carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, and I get the impression that the permission was gradually withdrawn. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if, some years down the road, it comes out that some of the more maladroit developments in the Krakoa saga were guided by Marvel's editors instead of the books' writers. Of course, since the Marvel Universe is an interconnected whole, it was probably impossible to go all-in on the Krakoa experiment without dropping the X-books in an alternate timeline or on a separate imprint, unattached to the mainline continuity. (This was perhaps why Hickman began his run with a built-in reset button in the form of Moira.)</p><p>At any rate—I guess we'll see where things go from here, but it's a hell of lot harder to be as excited about it as I was after reading <i>House of X</i>/<i>Powers of X </i>in 2019.<br /><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;">HONORABLE MENTION:<br /></span></b><b><i>X-FORCE / WOLVERINE </i>(Benjamin Percy, 2019– / 2020– )</b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwCY2Pdd0nvk86snAQ9J_VcY5i3nlwJv3IEdgRU8-rXb0gmqzLWEh5X3n5DX8BcNPua2Ecf2-k1O1QjcGvij9lsUx1CunOjv1ckuSMp0i0aUTUUCUzK_bqph351ysDohNoExANe2OokJYrn_F-fRf-lhdPLpwAxw2VLLAM83yMKPulFVawcfkf830JsBN6/s721/image_2023-07-27_005213361.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="478" height="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwCY2Pdd0nvk86snAQ9J_VcY5i3nlwJv3IEdgRU8-rXb0gmqzLWEh5X3n5DX8BcNPua2Ecf2-k1O1QjcGvij9lsUx1CunOjv1ckuSMp0i0aUTUUCUzK_bqph351ysDohNoExANe2OokJYrn_F-fRf-lhdPLpwAxw2VLLAM83yMKPulFVawcfkf830JsBN6/w242-h365/image_2023-07-27_005213361.png" width="241" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPuq2hdD6WGmhwsunMbQ2YGc218mPKcAcHn3ZxK_GVYtfKlZxd3oilfHlbd1fF9WGOOBik6e7rqfeLAvZqvVrwBXmCy2zeCQFlxS0Ss47Nb4b_63izZXii93kseqCbjDjhaaoO88C-x9UqBTL2H-iBYg8lhCaPyCo06j-fYakrqRa4m0X-aD2Dtan-69PX/s721/image_2023-07-28_000442624.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="478" height="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPuq2hdD6WGmhwsunMbQ2YGc218mPKcAcHn3ZxK_GVYtfKlZxd3oilfHlbd1fF9WGOOBik6e7rqfeLAvZqvVrwBXmCy2zeCQFlxS0Ss47Nb4b_63izZXii93kseqCbjDjhaaoO88C-x9UqBTL2H-iBYg8lhCaPyCo06j-fYakrqRa4m0X-aD2Dtan-69PX/w241-h364/image_2023-07-28_000442624.png" width="241" /></a><br /><br /></div>This is the real honorable mention here. Benjamin Percy's intertwined runs on <i>X-Force</i> and <i>Wolverine </i>haven't been extraordinarily brilliant. They're comic books. They're dumb, violent, sleazy, schlocky antihero fun. But they've also been <i>consistent—</i>which is worth a lot, especially in light of how wacky and uneven the rest of the line became after Hickman's departure.<br /><b><br /></b><p></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">#5</span><br /></b><b><i>PLANET-SIZE X-MEN</i> (Gerry Duggan, 2021)</b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFM2kbl61u7l6EQqg6ExlPavTTosUyXOoonxrt_oPBiq9_DyPrUr--dq09m5lsDu4Ia9Tq_p560AgPvZVrzUBM2bN4PgF4zl33XojxzWViwCanYrfH4BezhfJ5-EMWDKbPocSlbuNNYqDCpb7SB8YIQRCv38ERfMKUqqbSe1lIWYIlIpS-qVcMv7Tk-4Fl/s721/image_2023-07-17_214752115.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="482" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFM2kbl61u7l6EQqg6ExlPavTTosUyXOoonxrt_oPBiq9_DyPrUr--dq09m5lsDu4Ia9Tq_p560AgPvZVrzUBM2bN4PgF4zl33XojxzWViwCanYrfH4BezhfJ5-EMWDKbPocSlbuNNYqDCpb7SB8YIQRCv38ERfMKUqqbSe1lIWYIlIpS-qVcMv7Tk-4Fl/w267-h399/image_2023-07-17_214752115.png" width="288" /></a></div><p></p><p>I'd rather talk about what I liked about the Krakoa era than criticize what went wrong—but I have to say a few words about Gerry Duggan.</p><p>He strikes me as the kind of comic writer whom an editor appreciates on the basis that he's able to write multiple books, turn in work on time, get along with the artists, and promote the brand on social media. His ideas are decent, at least in synopsis, and he's certainly a better author than <a href="https://comicdomwrecks.wordpress.com/special-features/chuck-austens-x-men/" target="_blank">Chuck Austen</a>. That's to say he's not a <i>terrible</i> writer, but he's most certainly a mediocre one. </p><p>He sorta tries to emulate Joss Whedon in writing quippy and smug dialogue, but interpersonal dynamics are apparently a foreign concept to him—which should really disqualify him from writing big-name titles with ensemble casts.* Oftentimes his stories feel like plot summaries with pictures attached to them. His comics have a conspicuously "<a href="https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/of-course-you-know-what-woke-means" target="_blank">woke</a>" bent, which wouldn't be a problem if the tendentious insertions of his politics weren't so smarmy and obtuse—but this is really just a roundabout way of saying he's not a great writer. (You won't hear a peep of complaint from me about Vita Ayala's decidedly woke run on <i>New Mutants</i>. Ayala knows how to write a good comic book.) Duggan's <i>Marauders</i> was easily my least favorite of the inaugural "Dawn of X" titles. Off the top of my head, I can't recall a single damned thing that happened during his <i>Cable</i> series. If his post-Hickman run on the flagship <i>X-Men</i> book was ever worth buying and reading from month to month, it was mostly because of Pepe Laraz's gorgeous artwork.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* For comic book nerds, I propose an experiment similar to the one that Mike from Redletter Media performed in his now-ancient video review of <i>The Phantom Menace</i>. Make a list of the main characters of Duggan's<i> X-Men</i> and a list of the main characters of, say, Craig Kyle and Chris Yost's run on <i>New X-Men: Academy X</i>. Instead of jotting down adjectives describing each character's personality, take notes on how they relate to the other cast members. See how much less you write about Duggan's X-Men than Kyle and Yost's New X-Men.</span></p><p>And Duggan was the author to whom Hickman passed the baton on his way out. What can we call this but a mistake?</p><p>But I've got to give credit where it's due. Duggan's <i>Planet-Size X-Men</i> one-shot was the only event of the Krakoa era that came close to matching <i>House of X</i>/<i>Powers of X</i> in sheer audacity. I still have a hard time believing it was his idea and his book, and not Hickman's. To be fair, though, <i>Planet-Size X-Men</i> allows Duggan to play to his strengths while avoiding the areas in which he's lacking. It's <i>all</i> plot and spectacle. (Plus, Laraz is on pencils.)</p><p>The background: after the X of Swords crossover, Krakoa's lost half Arakko has been returned to Earth from the hellish world of Amenth. With it came some millions of mutants whose culture revolves around war and survival. They're not going to take orders from Krakoa's leaders, and definitely can't be expected to play nice with humanity when they get restless and wander off the island. Moreover, the living islands of Krakoa and Arakko themselves have become incompatible after being split apart and separated for however many thousands of years. These are pressing issues in need of a solution.</p><p>Not long afterwards, the Hellfire Trading Company (responsible for exporting Krakoa's miraculous biotech abroad) holds its first annual Hellfire Gala as a sort of Krakoan open house hosting the global elite.* We see snippets of the event in several different X-books, but there's a scene that's left mysterious. At one point in the evening, Emma Frost telepathically shows something to the attendees. "The fireworks," she calls them. The reader isn't privy to what happens—but judging from the guests' reactions, it's something <i>huge</i>.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* I know the Hellfire Club has a lot of history and clout in the Marvel Universe, but did Emma Frost ever consider that emblazoning the word HELLFIRE across Krakoa's public-facing institutions might make the world feel a mite justified in being jittery about the ambitious superpowered ethnostate?</span></p><p>The revelation arrives in <i>Planet-Size X-Men</i>. To make a long story short: the mutants terraformed Mars. In a single day.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtmzcdRGrWe5c0hpX0BAlkLumlaEbm-L8Yi7Yl0euVFgtBKjjRNeIEijhGMkVGNArwmQSNjyGFgpmPnhSENKLIGPvzxiL6WCrASyj3XzvWK0PLc1r1oTtm8UUOAHwQwf9jX6bQ_Odk7hxDwTdD76CaPdBPdvZtYhsU6F6Bts33XY6dZoChPIFm80lYdNtw/s1103/image_2023-07-25_000419657.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1103" data-original-width="1052" height="441" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtmzcdRGrWe5c0hpX0BAlkLumlaEbm-L8Yi7Yl0euVFgtBKjjRNeIEijhGMkVGNArwmQSNjyGFgpmPnhSENKLIGPvzxiL6WCrASyj3XzvWK0PLc1r1oTtm8UUOAHwQwf9jX6bQ_Odk7hxDwTdD76CaPdBPdvZtYhsU6F6Bts33XY6dZoChPIFm80lYdNtw/w421-h441/image_2023-07-25_000419657.png" width="421" /></a></div><p>A cadre of omegas from both Krakoa and Arakko restart Mars' geological processes, give it an ocean, an atmosphere, soil, and new floral, fauna, and microbial life. They raise a capital city and plop Arakko and all its inhabitants onto the Martian surface. Also: they declare that the planet isn't going to be called Mars anymore. Now it's Arakko. <i>And</i> it's the capital of the solar system now, the place where representatives from all the Marvel Universe's interstellar civilizations will come to do business. Earth has been reduced to a suburb.</p><p>It's hard not to appreciate why the international diplomats, notables, and Avengers attending the Gala were all seriously rattled, and whispering to each other about how to respond. This was Krakoa's biggest power play yet. The mutant ethnostate's founders (among whom are a guy who once killed thousands worldwide with an electromagnetic pulse, a former member of the despotic Phoenix Five, and a woman who made an assassination attempt on a United States senator and later murdered a presidential candidate) have already declared that mutants are destined to replace humanity, used unscrupulous means to secure diplomatic immunity for every Krakoan citizen in the nations importing their biotech, and made no secret of their disdain for baseline humans—and now mutantkind has its own <i>planet </i>one orbital zone out from Earth. After a flex like this, who could blame anyone for being terrified of Krakoa?</p><p>And afterwards, once he was instated as the X-books' "showrunner," Duggan started doing all he could to make Krakoa less ominous and ambiguous and more cuddly and altruistic and misunderstood. Feh. But let's take a moment to appreciate the rare occasion of a comic book event truly living up to its hype, and give Duggan the recognition he's owed for making it happen.</p><p>He still kind of sucks, though.<br /><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">#4</span><br /></b><b><i>X-MEN RED</i> (Al Ewing, 2022– )</b> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmve5PwNLIxpgtkcY1ybRuq1qnpiKRgtPjSxe0GQWmptQ088haziQKYDulS5FnNy6vRC0UHaSgvuOmL6bbpbMbnfNktOZuqDv-bYeeTs55hkVRgpOixcpbliLTqaGmZdvihIQ1PgNEPfiKEpM_D8SfxJwMBw416FnaB_EUBC_hLrsaEFwPokkJMl_QDIqC/s721/image_2023-07-17_220625703.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="482" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmve5PwNLIxpgtkcY1ybRuq1qnpiKRgtPjSxe0GQWmptQ088haziQKYDulS5FnNy6vRC0UHaSgvuOmL6bbpbMbnfNktOZuqDv-bYeeTs55hkVRgpOixcpbliLTqaGmZdvihIQ1PgNEPfiKEpM_D8SfxJwMBw416FnaB_EUBC_hLrsaEFwPokkJMl_QDIqC/w292-h437/image_2023-07-17_220625703.png" width="288" /></a></div><p>I considered giving this slot to Hickman's run on <i>X-Men</i> or to Kieron Gillen's <i>Immortal X-Men</i>. But since Hickman is more than sufficiently represented here already, and since <i>Immortal X-Men</i> is practically a vehicle for the big Events which Gillen spearheaded, I'm gonna go with Al Ewing's wonderfully solid<i> X-Men Red</i>. </p><p>A continuation of Ewing's <i>S.W.O.R.D.</i> miniseries, <i>X-Men Red</i> is about a group of Krakoan mutants and their business on <strike>Mars</strike> Arakko. Storm gets adjusted to her role as regent of the Sol System and navigates the fraught field of Arakki power politics. A disillusioned and disheartened Magneto, having left Krakoa and the Quiet Council behind, tries to put together a new life for himself on the red planet. Sunspot opens a bar and meddles in affairs of state. Abigail Brand's galaxy-wide machinations come to a head, and her S.W.O.R.D. subordinates counterscheme against her.</p><p>In this respect, <i>X-Men Red</i> follows after Hickman's <i>X-Men</i> in that it's all over the place. Beyond its "some X-Men do stuff on the terraformed and colonized Mars" premise, it's difficult to synopsize the book without going deep into the expository weeds. The weave of its plot is made even more convoluted by the fact that it was interrupted by a big linewide Event only a few months after it began, and then got involved in another just a few months later. </p>This was a problem it shared with <i>Immortal X-Men</i> and Si Spurrier's <i>Legion of X</i>, the other two X-books that debuted in the wake of Hickman's <i>Inferno</i>. First there was the A.X.E.: Judgment Day hullaballoo, and scarcely after the dust settled came Sins of Sinister, yet another alternate timeline hellhole story that swallowed up all three books for as many months, à la Age of Apocalypse. <i>X-Men Red</i> was best able to roll with the disruptions, since its loose plotting made it resilient against getting derailed.<i> Immortal X-Men</i> would have been tremendously improved if it had been allowed to actually stick to its premise of being a study of the individual members of the Quiet Council instead of spending half its run setting up and/or being wrapped up in A.X.E. and Sins of Sinister. <i>Legion of X</i> had the worst of it it, though: Spurrier was given neither the time nor space to find his footing and establish a compelling identity for his new book, which was canned after issue #10.<p>But I've gone off track. There's a lot to like about<i> X-Men Red</i>, simply on the basis that Ewing knows how to write a bloody comic book. There's nary a wasted issue nor a fight sequence staged just for its own sake. Every scene builds towards something; every event has consequences for the bigger picture. After Hickman's text-only "data pages" became de riguer across the X-books, some writers struggled a bit with making them work. Ewing gets more mileage out of them than most of his peers, making them to do the sort of plot-related heavy lifting which would be cumbersome to cram into a pictorial sequence, and he manages to escape the snare of letting them come across as mere info dumps. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw6d-l0RSUVs3_JZ9wP-Ci1km2tJlv_X4jwiee6dKuSCogHd2MrLe-rLvLvO-D3GyIKZE6fT83BMQ7ZooyoB5O9_sMj9xJqvjioYvaWmvu43pDV0tZVjmBT3HrR-zaEO347s189jkct8V8DIl-sOKElkWcOJV8IDD4M32dWzRpErV4HLmpdA7SnxilJUHv/s649/image_2023-07-25_005527799.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="616" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw6d-l0RSUVs3_JZ9wP-Ci1km2tJlv_X4jwiee6dKuSCogHd2MrLe-rLvLvO-D3GyIKZE6fT83BMQ7ZooyoB5O9_sMj9xJqvjioYvaWmvu43pDV0tZVjmBT3HrR-zaEO347s189jkct8V8DIl-sOKElkWcOJV8IDD4M32dWzRpErV4HLmpdA7SnxilJUHv/w375-h395/image_2023-07-25_005527799.png" width="375" /></a></div><p>The two things about X-Men Read that I think deserve to be highlighted in particular are its "versus" events and its focus on Arakki culture.</p><p>Given its relatively short run (it's currently at issue #12, not counting the three issues of <i>Storm and the Brotherhood</i> that replaced it during Sins of Sinister), <i>X-Men Red </i>is perhaps disproportionately loaded with relatively quiet issues that just move the pieces around the board. When its main players finally collide and throw hands, always worth the wait. I could sit here and write out paragraphs explicating "Magneto vs. Tarn," "Sunspot vs. Isca," and "Storm vs. Vulcan," but it's usually as bootless to recount the grandiloquent passion of a comic book fight as it is to narrate the spectacle of a hyped-up and well-choreographed wrestling match. I'll just say that I love what Ewing has done with (or rather done <i>to</i>) Isca the Unbeaten, Apocalypse's ageless sister-in-law whose mutant power is to never lose at anything, ever. (One does wonder why it took like ten thousand years for anyone to figure out that her Achilles' heel is being challenged to a contest in which victory carries a steeper price than she wishes to pay.)</p><p>Since it's situated on Arakko, <i>X-Men Red</i> is the book that cares the most about the Arakki, the X-Men version of Klingons: a warrior culture with a flair for the dramatic.* With the resolution of X of Swords, their forever war came to an end, forcing them to grapple with the social and philosophical questions of how and to what extent they ought to adapt their ancient way of life to peacetime. A prominent theme of<i> X-Men Red</i> is people adjusting to jarring transitions: familiar characters rise to unfamiliar occasions and roles, and we get to know unfamiliar characters by the way they conduct themselves in turning to face the strange. (And the Arakki were pretty strange to begin with.) It goes a long way toward making <i>X-Men Red</i> feel like a superhero serial that diverges from the beaten path.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* <i>Legion of X</i> featured the Arakki heavily in its first storyline—but then it got sucked into the twin vortices of A.X.E. and Sins of Sinister and never came out.</span></p><p>In X of Swords, Hickman introduced Arakko's Great Ring, its counterpart to Krakoa's Quiet Council. As he was wont to do, he left a great many obscurities for future writers to illuminate, and Ewing takes up the challenge in <i>X-Men Red </i>and explores Arakko's ruling class and its leadership ethos. In a relatively short span of time, he's accomplished some pretty impressive worldbuilding. Actually—I sometimes wonder why worldbuilding should be so much catnip for consumers of spectacular media. Maybe it tickles some of the same nerves as utopian literature: it's hard not to be fascinated by a detailed illustration of a fictive but feasible exercise of power and its reciprocal intercourse with culture. Mixing it with the hyperactive realism of a superhero comic makes for a frothy and intoxicating high-fructose brew. </p><p><i>X-Men Red</i> is still ongoing. It's the one X-book I intended to keep up with for the foreseeable future.<br /><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">#3</span><br /></b><b><i>INFERNO</i> (Jonathan Hickman, 2021–22)</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvjdnsikyr0F4a9S4H3mjWw1rCapi52ccsADSUo8xSascIaXy2I5dfZyWLQFk9hvJowG7kd2wHPr8XfW2DV-JX2jKrlq_80sKfk5dDLFSjzIWMpho_vadN2Zo_oRa32KRJ61cWvqEM23FM7352KsunlJB4Jr_IfOTWhPY9lcukrZ7y9QGd6rmk_el3VIA0/s721/image_2023-07-17_220040893.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="482" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvjdnsikyr0F4a9S4H3mjWw1rCapi52ccsADSUo8xSascIaXy2I5dfZyWLQFk9hvJowG7kd2wHPr8XfW2DV-JX2jKrlq_80sKfk5dDLFSjzIWMpho_vadN2Zo_oRa32KRJ61cWvqEM23FM7352KsunlJB4Jr_IfOTWhPY9lcukrZ7y9QGd6rmk_el3VIA0/w255-h381/image_2023-07-17_220040893.png" width="288" /></a></div><p>I'm going to throw up my hands and say that <i>Inferno</i> (not to be confused with the late-eighties crossover event) is impossible to synopsize. Even by the standards of superhero serials, it's seriously newbie-unfriendly. But let's try anyway.</p><p>Moira Kinross wants Irene Adler kept out the resurrection queue and erased for good—nominally because a mutant precog is a security risk to the Krakoa project, but her still being <i>really</i> angry about Adler having her burned to death in a previous life is also a factor. Raven Darkholme wants Irene Adler (her wife, it can now be told) brought back to life, and finally arrives at the understanding that Charles Xavier and Max Eisenhardt have no intention of delivering her. Xavier and Eisenhardt want to keep Moira's existence secret and their grand project protected. Doug Ramsey has been quietly spying on Xavier, Eisenhardt, and Kinross since the beginning, and decides it's time he stopped listening and started getting involved. Emma Frost learns about Kinross and wants her neutralized to protect what she's sacrificed so much in order to build, and is willing to go behind Xavier and Eisenhardt's backs to get it done. Nimrod and Karima Shapandar, <i>Homo sapiens</i>' mightiest weapons against the Darwinian challenge posed by <i>Homo superior</i>, agree that they don't see any appreciable difference between mutants and humans, and will only pretend to be loyal and willing tools to Orchis for as long as it's convenient for them.</p><p>I didn't use anyone's superperson sobriquets here because it doesn't feel right. <i>Inferno</i> isn't really a superhero comic. Three out of four of its double-sized installments are "quiet issues." Except for the Xavier & Magneto vs. Nimrod & Omega Sentinel throwdown in issue #4, it's <i>all</i> intrigue. You'd expect a book with such a title to be more explosive, but that's the beauty of it.<i> Inferno</i>'s drama lies not in the spectacle of a conflagration, but in the <i>threat </i>of one<i>. </i>Virtually every conversation gives the reader the sense of a lit match dangled over a pile of TNT as dangerous people with public facades and private agendas maneuver against each other.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7zzl5mfU0gOkVNjdA0CviXsjqVgxXdWnWhVuSdwUXe9UvCsdE5qcvJG4gHqj2Plvm432DIvxoIa7_NcXQOPeCqSMSGKbk3B1GcA8uBtt_u0rVnzNjrkEtfNhEYYfSRJokYhQodsjcMnooyVuUqkPj759XTSyVn1ehxOZqnnHATOrhRreJvno7k45WO5mL/s953/image_2023-07-25_000619732.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="507" data-original-width="953" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7zzl5mfU0gOkVNjdA0CviXsjqVgxXdWnWhVuSdwUXe9UvCsdE5qcvJG4gHqj2Plvm432DIvxoIa7_NcXQOPeCqSMSGKbk3B1GcA8uBtt_u0rVnzNjrkEtfNhEYYfSRJokYhQodsjcMnooyVuUqkPj759XTSyVn1ehxOZqnnHATOrhRreJvno7k45WO5mL/w505-h268/image_2023-07-25_000619732.png" width="505" /></a></div><p><i>Inferno</i> would probably be at the top of this list if it weren't for two problems.</p><p>The first is that it's an intermediary chapter in the larger story, a switch point between Krakoa's glorious beginning and its uncertain future. This is the equivalent of the mid-season two-parter in a television series, dealing the protagonist(s) a serious blow and ratcheting up the tension for what's to come. It augurs much, but resolves little.</p><p>The second is that it doesn't make any damn sense upon scrutiny. Moira scheming against Krakoa reportedly wasn't part of Hickman's original plan, and it seems somewhat that the decision was made for him. Instead of awkwardly contorting the narrative to account for her duplicity and motivations, Hickman apparently hopes that the dramatic intensity of her confrontation with Mystique and Destiny will distract readers from the fact that nothing is adequately explained.</p><p>The most convincing and generous interpretation hinges on something Destiny says to Moira in the flashback to their first meeting: "That's the real war, isn't it? Ensuring you're on the winning side?" It runs something like this:</p><p>Moira was wholly committed to the Krakoa project, at least at first. In all of the previous lives where she tried to prevent mutants from being wiped out, she failed. Whether she assassinates the scientists who develop Sentinels, works with Xavier to realize his dream of peaceful coexistence, aligns with Magento's crusade for separatism and domination, or throws in with Apocalypse and his "kill 'em all and let god sort it out" program, mutants always lose in the end—exterminated by humans, intelligent machines, or both. Krakoa was her moonshot, her so-crazy-it-just-might-work plan to ensure mutant survival, and spare her from suffering yet another violent, traumatic death for siding with the losing team.</p><p>But it wasn't her only plan. As she watched cracks appearing in Krakoa's foundations and learned that Xavier and Magneto couldn't prevent Nimrod from coming online, she switched to Plan B: returning to the mutant "cure" she developed in a previous life (and for which Destiny had her killed). The founding of Krakoa put nearly every mutant in the world in the same place; if she can force her cure upon them en masse, then that'll be the end of it all. The humans have no reason to persecute mutants because there <i>are</i> no mutants anymore, and the intelligent machines developed to counter the mutant threat won't subsume humanity. Done deal. Moira still wins.</p><p>Or maybe from the beginning it was all just a bogglingly convoluted scheme to gather all the world's mutants on an island so she could hit them with an aerosolized dose of the cure, or something—which would be a much more convincing reason for her fear of precogs like Destiny. But who knows? Hickman shrugged and left it up for his successors to determine. (Benjamin Percy went with something like the first explanation in the <i>X Deaths of Wolverine</i> mini, in which Moira makes her first moves against Krakoa.) </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj22blQmQ3ETX4wl6NNPix0icpF_di5Xmsubj643UBW9bE8IMW06AxmQ5ug6LvJxgzYjlJVnBPH763oyAv5239qKiyjNCN7TX89knbm7eaFsBedu9g4ZCE8e1o4rz2hiOo9FgkyvpeG_x2-Yww_6ZhmF6CQuz-CyDSCXMRBZEmTnZL4Y2iZpY08Lx59-b4/s1040/image_2023-07-25_010425453.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="419" data-original-width="1040" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj22blQmQ3ETX4wl6NNPix0icpF_di5Xmsubj643UBW9bE8IMW06AxmQ5ug6LvJxgzYjlJVnBPH763oyAv5239qKiyjNCN7TX89knbm7eaFsBedu9g4ZCE8e1o4rz2hiOo9FgkyvpeG_x2-Yww_6ZhmF6CQuz-CyDSCXMRBZEmTnZL4Y2iZpY08Lx59-b4/w544-h218/image_2023-07-25_010425453.png" width="544" /></a></div><p>The caustic irony of <i>Inferno</i> is that Moria was wrong. Sort of.</p><p>Up in the Orchis forge, unbeknownst to all, the heel-turned Omega Sentinel has a chat with Nimrod, who's noticed there's something <i>off</i> about her:<i> </i>she's time-displaced. She's the Omega Sentinel from the future, downloaded into the Omega Sentinel of the present. And in her future, Krakoa won. Completely. Humanity, post-humanity, the machines, the Phalanx Dominion—mutantkind overcame them all. Moira's tenth-life gambit with Krakoa actually <i>worked</i>. (There's a fun juxtaposition in how Hickman casts Omega Sentinel as the anti-Moira, defeated in the future and returned to the past to use what she's learned to direct the course of events more to her liking.)</p><p>All bets are off now. Omega Sentinel guided the creation of Orchis, expediting Nimrod's "birth." Moira has been depowered, exiled, and primed to ally with Krakoa's enemies. The rest of the Quiet Council knows the secrets Xavier and Magneto have been keeping from them. It remains to be seen how this changes the timeline—and I rather wish it had been left up to Hickman.<br /><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">#2</span><br /></b><b><i>WAY OF X</i> / <i>ONSLAUGHT: REVELATION</i> (Si Spurrier, 2021)</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipTFembnHQXoUh5ng9no7J-DC4gmh73f6KaOiH7xiNCigwfKaBRU7rbB0_7doI-THcrU-QqhDNdFwciRT5y1U2oQqYEuiELiObIS6L9Zh6ukRFBW3SET7ILfMKcYTM9Z9HIoG0Xj_3U_IcqVOTHnmmU9QWXPwr7TZUNN38Jzsmtlg7d7yOweXGkveHI1-y/s721/image_2023-07-17_221049577.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="482" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipTFembnHQXoUh5ng9no7J-DC4gmh73f6KaOiH7xiNCigwfKaBRU7rbB0_7doI-THcrU-QqhDNdFwciRT5y1U2oQqYEuiELiObIS6L9Zh6ukRFBW3SET7ILfMKcYTM9Z9HIoG0Xj_3U_IcqVOTHnmmU9QWXPwr7TZUNN38Jzsmtlg7d7yOweXGkveHI1-y/w290-h434/image_2023-07-17_221049577.png" width="288" /></a></div><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">(We're counting the <i>Onslaught: Revelation</i> one-shot as part of <i>Way of X</i> since it's effectively the giant-sized sixth and final issue.)</span></p><p><i>Way of X</i> is based on something Nightcrawler says at the end of issue #7 of Hickman's<i> X-Men</i>: "I think I need to start a mutant religion."</p><p>The remark was occasioned by the latest iteration of (and the reader's introduction to) the ritual called Crucible, which Apocalypse established during his time on the Quiet Council. Mutants who are still depowered after M-Day enter singly into an arena crowded with spectators, take up a weapon, and engage someone like Apocalypse or Magneto in a miserably one-sided fight to the death. Their opponent inevitably kills them, and make it slow and painful before delivering the <i>coup de grâce</i>—so as to bring out the fire of the initiate's determination to rejoin the community and partake once more in the gifts of <i>Homo superior</i>.* Afterwards they're resurrected with their powers restored.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* <i>X-Men</i> #7 is a perfect example of what Hickman brought to the table. For all the brutality and discomfiting cultishness of Crucible, the reader can't but also feel the veritably religious glory of the event. None of the X-books' other writers were capable of embracing Krakoa's contradictions with such imagination and virtuosity .</span></p><p>Nightcrawler, the X-Men's rosary-clutching Catholic, doesn't know how to feel about Crucible. He's also disturbed by the Krakoan youth's cavalier attitude towards death. In one of <i>Way of X</i>'s first scenes, some of the other kids are joshing Pixie for not having been killed and been brought back yet. They sound a lot like high schoolers poking fun at a classmate who hasn't lost their virginity.* Pixie subsequently gives into peer pressure and lets an armed goon blow her head off during a mission to investigate an Orchis front, whereafter she's promptly resurrected and high-fived by her pals.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">*Do high schoolers still do this? I have no idea.</span></p><p>Kurt finds this all very unsettling. But why should he? Xavier reminds him that their revolutionary mutant nation has upgraded morality and beat mortality, and there's nothing to worry about. Magneto accuses Kurt of being unable to see Eden for his qualmish suspicion of serpents.</p><p>Kurt intuits, but can't yet articulate, what Marcus Flaminius Rufus discovers in Jorge Luis Borges' "The Immortal:" when death loses its meaning, so does life. And this is actually the logic informing one of the irons Orchis has on its fire: it means to undermine Krakoa by accelerating the mutant nation's descent into anomie and anarchy. To this end, the organization has managed to covertly smuggle an invasive species into Krakoa's psychic landscape. Even folks with only a casual familiarity with the X-Men mythos might recognize the monster's name: Onslaught. Yes, <i>that</i> Onslaught.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnl-YL1Ha6GOU8RIdLXG_9i4WG05yJ0EyfTlqotg6mq3VE6p4Oi20o6lpEn4J1TQwyyE0U69SrOJ9K5bVxn3IRwKJyf02t7EEIulHdV9iXfPeHTFLDc8RWAPhpwylWwMqcL4xINYExs6sv8LXLk1Q1xWPE8ZC-XJYv_2195iBXQaoWp0IdfeanbdSGL3sS/s1235/image_2023-07-25_000918487.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="637" data-original-width="1235" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnl-YL1Ha6GOU8RIdLXG_9i4WG05yJ0EyfTlqotg6mq3VE6p4Oi20o6lpEn4J1TQwyyE0U69SrOJ9K5bVxn3IRwKJyf02t7EEIulHdV9iXfPeHTFLDc8RWAPhpwylWwMqcL4xINYExs6sv8LXLk1Q1xWPE8ZC-XJYv_2195iBXQaoWp0IdfeanbdSGL3sS/w545-h282/image_2023-07-25_000918487.png" width="545" /></a></div><p>So <i>Way of X</i> has a high-stakes plot and tries to take on some pretty big concepts. Si Spurrier does an admirable job following Hickman in simultaneously depicting Krakoa's beauty and promise while also gazing unflinchingly at its problems. Nightcrawler eventually does formulate something like a mutant religion, and yeah, it pretty much comes off like an epiphany that Spurrier once scribbled down during a psilocybin trip. The philosophy of The Spark isn't terribly comprehensive nor compelling as philosophies go, but I suppose it'd be asking a bit too much for an author to invent a fictional belief system as lucid as Theravada Buddhism while writing an X-Men miniseries on a deadline.* It's enough that we witness Kurt keeping an even keel through a spiritual storm and arriving safely upon a new shore.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* Unless that author happened to be Grant Morrison, maybe.</span></p><p>My hat goes off to Spurrier for his excellent sense of discernment in selecting the book's cast. Though Nightcrawler was given top billing in the promotional material, he actually costars in <i>Way of X</i> alongside Legion—and was anyone familiar with Spurrier's work on the X-books actually surprised? The likelihood that he would do another X-Men comic and exclude Professor Xavier's troubled son was practically nil. He writes David Haller the way Peter David writes Jamie Madrox and Guido Carosella: though he didn't create the character, he made Legion truly his own during his run on <i>X-Men: Legacy</i>, and nobody else should be allowed to write stories about him without bringing in Spurrier as a consultant and line editor.</p><p>But I'm a typical comic book fan in that I'm reliably made to clap like an addled child when shown characters I recognize but didn't expect to see. Spurrier remembered that Dr. Nemesis exists, and I love him for it. Not only does Pixie put in more than a brief cameo appearance, but so do her Academy X pals DJ, Dust, Loa, and Mercury. Spurrier brings in the Xorn brothers—artifacts of one of the most embarrassing spasms of authorial and editorial stupidity in the X-books' history—and makes me glad they're there. Same with Stacy-X—Spurrier had the chutzpah to bring back frigging <i>Stacy-X</i>, the early-aughts X-Man who was also a mutant prostitute with sex powers, and whom nobody missed when she got the vaudeville hook. I walked away from <i>Way of X </i>feeling like she could have appeared on at least a few more pages than she did, and it feels incredible to say so.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx6_cgRJOijuhP1QHwavwGvw3SYzUEyC2NGfw0qLgS-wIpO8P-amcVlzGmhB98o2RytW4kjST6VSrnyewjqAPeXlRxTyalF2MtAMHpkHN_oz4L4iWf8-F1spBTpFRZeZeYPBV_-NLnyw4bij1uFIvSd0zmi8fV9OS8vd_0YMFY7bzaUUiQfb1HVjpo1V3e/s986/image_2023-07-25_002109246.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="635" data-original-width="986" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx6_cgRJOijuhP1QHwavwGvw3SYzUEyC2NGfw0qLgS-wIpO8P-amcVlzGmhB98o2RytW4kjST6VSrnyewjqAPeXlRxTyalF2MtAMHpkHN_oz4L4iWf8-F1spBTpFRZeZeYPBV_-NLnyw4bij1uFIvSd0zmi8fV9OS8vd_0YMFY7bzaUUiQfb1HVjpo1V3e/w544-h350/image_2023-07-25_002109246.png" width="544" /></a></div><p>I'll venture to say, however, that <i>Way of X</i> 's most unexpected and pleasant surprise might be its use of Fabian Cortez. Remember him? The Jim Lee creation who betrayed and (apparently) murdered Magneto during the inaugural storyline of [adjectiveless] <i>X-Men</i>? His introduction and tenure as head of the Magneto-worshipping Acolytes would have been a lot more intriguing if anyone knew what to <i>do</i> with him after Lee left Marvel, and if Cortez weren't so lacking in the requisite gravitas and flair to replace Mags as an antagonist. Al Ewing putting Cortez in the cast of <i>S.W.O.R.D.</i> to be a punching bag is indicative of the esteem in which longtime readers hold the memory of the character, his sudden rise to prominence, and his stupid orange ponytail.</p><p><i>Way of X</i> is only slightly kinder to Cortez<i>, </i>characterizing him as a pompous buffoon and a vicious prick. But Spurrier is maybe the one writer who was ever interested in examining what makes the guy tick. (Self-hatred, mostly.) And events play out such that Nightcrawler's obstinate belief that a kernel of decency exists in Cortez's greasy black heart is what ultimately saves the day. While the Way of the Spark might not be altogether compelling, the real thrust of of the book is that if anyone with less compassion, less curiosity, and a less open heart than Kurt had been in the position of discovering and having to deal with Onslaught, they would have failed.<br /><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">#1</span><br /></b><b><i>HELLIONS</i> (Zeb Wells, 2020–2021)</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVsQNzwOcu96XGB7ZNUkqp8FD7ePDs17dKrZcvbMjd1HXBH2zVl_Aejhc9VBonw2AxcRXF3LJVxkbBG-qOq_RW0IdJgLTykPNxE-q7ayjLwzQXmxMSoJJZxXCqISAEUwHT_VPxAsIN9tOb2GKuDohUaqNrCR670sh5V6VcNWEmXbEeI1nMmqKTLW5jHmJC/s721/image_2023-07-17_215602312.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="482" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVsQNzwOcu96XGB7ZNUkqp8FD7ePDs17dKrZcvbMjd1HXBH2zVl_Aejhc9VBonw2AxcRXF3LJVxkbBG-qOq_RW0IdJgLTykPNxE-q7ayjLwzQXmxMSoJJZxXCqISAEUwHT_VPxAsIN9tOb2GKuDohUaqNrCR670sh5V6VcNWEmXbEeI1nMmqKTLW5jHmJC/w289-h432/image_2023-07-17_215602312.png" width="288" /></a></div><div><br /></div>If you can bring yourself read only one title from the X-Men's Krakoa era—well, honestly, you should probably choose <i>House of X</i>/<i>Powers of X </i>because it's such a beautiful Big Ideas mindfuck. But Zeb Wells' <i>Hellions</i> is a very close second.<br /><p>Since American comic books love name-recognition, this is the third(!) incarnation of a mutant team called the "Hellions." The first were Emma Frost's Massachusetts Academy students, set up as rivals to the original New Mutants. The second was—well, they were <i>also</i> Emma Frost's students and rivals to another set of New Mutants during the Academy X days. These new Hellions are something completely different. They're the square pegs jammed into Krakoa's round holes.</p><p>Whether the writers realized it or not, Krakoa is an exemplary Skinnerian utopia in that it shows virtually all of the X-books' "evil mutants" mellowing out and becoming more pro-social after being placed in an environment and given roles that bring out the better angels of their nature. Proteus, Black Tom, Emplate, Daken, Gorgon, the former members of the Mutant Liberation Front, etc. are all playing by the rules now, and are happy to do it. <i>Hellions</i>, however, is about the mutants who've been invited to paradise with their sins forgiven and given a chance to start over, and who still can't seem to control their violent, antisocial impulses.</p>In the first issue, six problem cases are brought before the Quiet Council. <strike>Scalphunter</strike> Greycrow, the Marauder who took point during the Mutant Massacre, apparently can't stop himself from gunning down former Morlocks. (Since this is Krakoa, they all get better now—but it's still a bad look.) Wild Child is too volatile and vicious to be kept off antipsychotics, and he doesn't like taking them. Havok still has some residual murderous psychopathy left in him from the (stupid) Axis event of the 2010s, and it tends to resurface at inopportune times. Empath (of Emma Frost's original Hellions) is as vile as he ever was. Nanny and Orphan-Maker are just plain nuts. What's to be done with them?</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1ptv7NuUWmYga-uV1WjLKvrAn0ptOTj3DjoLjpcpaFf683Zrgyd7VEdwXf6vaohpbMTT7aj00Xve4dmst173wdCn8uG-NmNXqIIoUnmp1AIJOHLS2njTIS_Hr7DBvukveSt2IE4iA5S1zuxR9sVW7GRx6cwHFGjRqbv8q7pfQ7xKp3GEvNQAcSHfkMdyj/s1037/image_2023-07-25_005143404.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="579" data-original-width="1037" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1ptv7NuUWmYga-uV1WjLKvrAn0ptOTj3DjoLjpcpaFf683Zrgyd7VEdwXf6vaohpbMTT7aj00Xve4dmst173wdCn8uG-NmNXqIIoUnmp1AIJOHLS2njTIS_Hr7DBvukveSt2IE4iA5S1zuxR9sVW7GRx6cwHFGjRqbv8q7pfQ7xKp3GEvNQAcSHfkMdyj/w538-h300/image_2023-07-25_005143404.png" width="538" /></a></div><p>At the suggestion of esteemed councilman Mister Sinister, the mutant utopia's controllers attempt a solution combining idealism with pragmatism. Krakoa is a haven for all mutants, even problematic ones. What these misfits need is the occasional opportunity to cut loose and be their most unpleasant selves in situations where their savage proclivities can serve as an asset, and hopefully act as a kind of group therapy. In the interest of carrying on the X-Men's work towards solving "mutant problems" across the globe, the Quiet Council makes a team of these hellions and dispatches them on missions where shit needs to get wrecked and there's no chance of human casualties.</p><p>Probably this is sounding a little bit like the X-Men version of DC's <i>Suicide Squad</i>, so let's round off the analogy. In Hellions, the role of Rick Flag—the trustworthy mission leader and chaperone—is played by Kwannon, the assassin who got body-jacked by Betsy Braddock for like thirty years of publication. (So she's Psylocke, but different from the one you knew if you stopped reading before the late 2010s.) She and the rest of the hellions answer to esteemed Quiet Council member Mister Sinister, who makes Amanda Waller at her most amoral look like a scrupulous bureaucrat. At this point he's still keeping up appearances, pretending that he isn't planning on backstabbing the Quiet Council and betraying Krakoa the first chance he gets. He likes the idea of having a field team to run his seditious errands for him, and the blackmail he holds over Psylocke ensures that she'll not only keep his secrets, but telepathically cover his tracks when necessary. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW973Je6Ti6yA4BaCA7fxHMACHor4HgM9p7067Bl2Y5JYVyF5fKLIpI1jsJWp5OiF8xI-6M28FM2OoVpMMb-rj39Cp2sBDoYtgD8hATfKHkE7Yua81_RV1ZCskm1nSvIru_trmW901O_b8nXkgN13XstKek7SJhxwsPsfVirU9bM7Bz82Yt1U4ISEN-MRQ/s944/image_2023-07-25_003922204.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="776" data-original-width="944" height="446" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW973Je6Ti6yA4BaCA7fxHMACHor4HgM9p7067Bl2Y5JYVyF5fKLIpI1jsJWp5OiF8xI-6M28FM2OoVpMMb-rj39Cp2sBDoYtgD8hATfKHkE7Yua81_RV1ZCskm1nSvIru_trmW901O_b8nXkgN13XstKek7SJhxwsPsfVirU9bM7Bz82Yt1U4ISEN-MRQ/w542-h446/image_2023-07-25_003922204.png" width="542" /></a></div><p>The central gimmick of John Ostrander's <i>Suicide Squad</i>—nobody's safe, anyone can get killed and then replaced in the next issue—doesn't really work in a story where death is a temporary setback. Actually, Hellions more resembles <i>Suicide Squad</i>'s spiritual successor, Gail Simone's <i>Secret Six</i>. It's a comic about a group of seriously damaged people (most of them B-list supervillains) who bring out the best in each other when they're not at one another's throats. And like <i>Secret Six</i>, it's able to shift gears from macabre comedy to choreographed action schlock to pathos on a dime.</p><p>This isn't a Big Ideas book. <i>Hellions</i> is almost purely character-driven. Though there's a clear direction to its overarching plot, most the series' outings are pretenses for putting its cast in dire situations where their personalities collide and their interpersonal dynamics evolve. </p><p>Havok (once an X-Man, the twice-former leader of X-Factor, and an ex-Avenger) hates that he's been put on Krakoa's equivalent of the short bus. From the start he pleads with Cyclops and Emma Frost to be taken off the team and have his "loser" status rescinded. By the last issue, he's powering up to fight the X-Men and protect one of his teammates. Wild Child calms down, without medication, from being in a defined hunting pack with a legible pecking order. Orphan-Maker, a giant dude in a cybersuit with the mind of a child, is excited to hang out with the big kids, and strains his relationship with Nanny. And Nanny, to return to the <i>Secret Six</i> analog, is a bit like <i>Hellions</i>' version of Catman, the two-bit Batman villain from the Silver Age whom Simone reinvented as a hunky savage badass. Maybe that's taking it too far, since Nanny's still a goofy lunatic in an egg suit, but Wells writes her as a goofy lunatic in an egg suit who can be taken seriously. </p><p>The first of two characters who deserve extra attention is Empath. Wells' take on him is fascinating.* Manuel has always been handled as a contemptible little bastard, but a data page in <i>Hellions</i>' first issue does more than three decades' of appearances in various X-books to account for why he's such a shit. It seems (read: it has been retconned) that his mutant power manifested at an atypically early age, and as a result of his being able to control how people reacted to him all throughout his formative years, he never had to learn how to behave with a shred of decency or understanding. This isn't a case of a psychopath incidentally acquiring superpowers; his power <i>made</i> him a psychopath.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* Oho! Let's call him the <i>Hellions</i> version of <i>Suicide's Squad</i>'s Captain Boomerang: the despised but entertaining sonofabitch.</span></p><p>Before the team's first mission begins, Greycrow threatens to shoot him if he uses his emotion manipulation juju on any of his teammates. Empath gets a bullet between his eyes like two minutes after they all arrive on the scene. Back on Krakoa, he gets resurrected and plopped back onto the team.</p><p>On their next mission, a vindictive Empath makes Greycrow fawn over him for days on end. It ends just about as well for him.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizvN5rpQoMfJkFW_AkOdqEDd3YCtptzQoymywi8x743tzZxYyvAi5cwPauNjxTqimmfFOCLwvJlR4sEYwyu8JAy9pOrMla37XmuJ6C4h-tXd1YtkrdnjhW6OkjwNzgQS_FnkbjUus0oLR0d9rj06AO1YxESHliw5joQN0bw39tRkCujdTDSGX-kHzAtfQJ/s1007/image_2023-07-25_004506343.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="678" data-original-width="1007" height="367" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizvN5rpQoMfJkFW_AkOdqEDd3YCtptzQoymywi8x743tzZxYyvAi5cwPauNjxTqimmfFOCLwvJlR4sEYwyu8JAy9pOrMla37XmuJ6C4h-tXd1YtkrdnjhW6OkjwNzgQS_FnkbjUus0oLR0d9rj06AO1YxESHliw5joQN0bw39tRkCujdTDSGX-kHzAtfQJ/w548-h367/image_2023-07-25_004506343.png" width="548" /></a></div><p>Maybe what Empath needed all along are peers who force him to treat them as equals because they'll kill him if he doesn't. And as the book goes on, we see hints that he's genuinely enjoying the other hellions' company (pay attention to his facial expressions, beautifully and subtly rendered by penciller Steven Segovia), and that his teammates are at least on the verge of tolerating him without any psychic tweaking. Empath was introduced as part of a team back in the 1980s, but until <i>Hellions</i>, he's never experienced actual camaraderie—and in spite of himself, he develops a taste for it.</p><p>As <i>Hellions</i> approaches its end, everything falls apart. Without giving too much away, Empath received secret orders from Emma Frost upon joining the group, and in following them he alienates himself from his teammates. He goes back to hanging out with his "friends" from the original Hellions, who scream at and threaten him until he forces them to love him. As it sinks in that the only people who ever liked him without being <i>made</i> to like him hate his guts now, and as the praise he coerces from his old peers intensifies, Empath looks more and more miserable. </p><p>Empath is surely one of the most loathsome X-Men characters of all time, and Wells pulls off the remarkable feat of making it impossible not to feel bad for him. And the really sad part about it is that Empath actually did the right thing as far as the big picture is concerned.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj44VeMQXHeJ3nOXcfnrWlw785ikIUgCghWveKYm41E0zOSnIn6JVb41dfs7x_W7vzEggYNw6Dz0S7JTqz2sWAbJJ3trWtTln25Q6S0p850ogKlhR-NyYvkjN02MOM4ce1bzAy8RmCzouhIsxAp0NpWUSjg6hFdowmoHd2_w1UKEnC3D26Mure2m6tJJhGF/s837/image_2023-07-28_235910275.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="611" data-original-width="837" height="379" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj44VeMQXHeJ3nOXcfnrWlw785ikIUgCghWveKYm41E0zOSnIn6JVb41dfs7x_W7vzEggYNw6Dz0S7JTqz2sWAbJJ3trWtTln25Q6S0p850ogKlhR-NyYvkjN02MOM4ce1bzAy8RmCzouhIsxAp0NpWUSjg6hFdowmoHd2_w1UKEnC3D26Mure2m6tJJhGF/w518-h379/image_2023-07-28_235910275.png" width="518" /></a></div><p>But <i>Hellions</i>' unquestionable star is John Greycrow. When he was introduced as Scalphunter during the Mutant Massacre event way back in 1986, Greycrow was nothing but loathsome: a calloused, sadistic, and brutally effective butcher. When he's dragged in front of the Quiet Council in <i>Hellions</i>' first issue, all they know is that he shot up a bunch of Morlocks. He doesn't contest the charge against him—but also doesn't mention that the Morlocks sought out and attacked <i>him</i>.</p><p>Greycrow should be one of the very last X-Men characters that anyone wants to sympathize with, let alone root for, but Wells convincingly humanizes him. His face-turn doesn't come out of nowhere: longtime readers might remember Matt Fraction and James McKelvie's story in the first issue of the <i>Divided We Stand </i>mini in which a confrontation with Nightcrawler in the wake of Messiah Complex persuades Greycrow to try and stay on the straight and narrow. During his sporadic appearances afterwards, he's usually made to seem at least a little less treacherous and bloodthirsty, but we don't see enough of him to really know where his head and heart are at. His redemption arc in <i>Hellions</i> was a plot seed very long in germinating.</p><p>But I'm not really sure it's a proper redemption arc. Though <i>Hellions</i> makes clear at the onset that Greycrow doesn't want to be Scalphunter of the Marauders anymore, he's got more blood on his hands than can ever be washed off, and maybe doesn't know <i>how </i>to stop doing what's become so natural to him. He spends his days sitting alone on the beach and cleaning his guns, not killing anyone, but not doing much of anything else. He hasn't changed his ways; he's just suppressing them.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcqSYoejBeSIOuFP_gjYeoEqizk_IJJ9h31y99eiFOkaTc6_TN5Y0I3oKNCLfmDU1otiQIG75uRhTlB4ehUVUVnlq3X4oabkPjG_aDWt9l7f9GjyuKCljztdj9Ea6nBjVrSxJ4ZhvEFtujrdIYJtIIejCnmVMq8vw0Nypy6cadXCPEV1X9U82czUfHIv_3/s979/image_2023-07-25_004907133.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="979" height="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcqSYoejBeSIOuFP_gjYeoEqizk_IJJ9h31y99eiFOkaTc6_TN5Y0I3oKNCLfmDU1otiQIG75uRhTlB4ehUVUVnlq3X4oabkPjG_aDWt9l7f9GjyuKCljztdj9Ea6nBjVrSxJ4ZhvEFtujrdIYJtIIejCnmVMq8vw0Nypy6cadXCPEV1X9U82czUfHIv_3/w548-h335/image_2023-07-25_004907133.png" width="548" /></a></p><p>Greycrow doesn't come out of <i>Hellions</i> as a newly-minted superhero or a saint, but his final scene is an assurance that he's on the right track.</p><p>If you'd asked me ten or fifteen years ago what I thought of the idea of Scalphunter and Revanche becoming an adorable X-Men couple, I'd have bluntly told you it sounded retarded. But that's what I said when I first heard about Cyclops shacking up with the White Queen, and I was wrong about <i>that</i>, too.</p><p>This whole thing has already gone on long enough, and I don't want to spoil the entire book in case someone reading this might be thinking about checking it out, but I feel compelled to share Greycrow's last bit of dialogue in <i>Hellions.</i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBX_OZ2ILOxD7VBhdHt0c_T3zjdfAM2E3hSsAOOrAFMgYQdnC8Zf06GP9GksSyNZuR2LK0EGhGoH2c0Bf3TDaG9NKCNwpI9cnA5QMVOb69IAfZ7Z5AsHDKI7ItyGu9VgtSahJObjFcTToRxDBNmF_bePAZdjYo3BT_qEvtuqPewhDgAQMQMwYjNByWZyl8/s1020/image_2023-07-29_015210261.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="922" data-original-width="1020" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBX_OZ2ILOxD7VBhdHt0c_T3zjdfAM2E3hSsAOOrAFMgYQdnC8Zf06GP9GksSyNZuR2LK0EGhGoH2c0Bf3TDaG9NKCNwpI9cnA5QMVOb69IAfZ7Z5AsHDKI7ItyGu9VgtSahJObjFcTToRxDBNmF_bePAZdjYo3BT_qEvtuqPewhDgAQMQMwYjNByWZyl8/w544-h492/image_2023-07-29_015210261.png" width="544" /></a></div><p><i>Hellions</i> only ran for eighteen issues, and I'd have loved to see it go on longer. My understanding is that Wells ended the book because he was offered a spot writing for <i>Amazing Spider-Man—</i>and the funny thing is that while <i>Hellions</i> was a beloved cult hit, his run on <i>Amazing Spider-Man</i> is reportedly pretty terrible. Sometimes the best writer for one comic is the worst writer for another. Ah, well. </p><p><br /></p><p>There, thank you, glad to have gotten that all out of my system so I can think about something else. See you next time.</p></div></div></div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-68874710768855198832023-06-08T00:55:00.001-04:002023-06-08T00:55:42.069-04:00Locking the door but leaving the lights on<p>So I've got <a href="https://bananapeel.substack.com" target="_blank">a Substack</a> now.</p><p>I've already gone over the reasons for wanting to move on. Blogger is a zombie platform. Substack hosts a livelier scene, and its architecture is much more interlinked than Blogger's. Maybe—<i>maybe</i>—I can get involved in the "community" and make the acquaintance of people I vibe with. I'm probably kidding myself (writers are an off-putting breed, let's be honest), but one can hope.</p><p>And also: you can subscribe and get updates right in your inbox without having to check back every couple of weeks! HOW EXCITING! I understand Blogger <i>used</i> to be able to do this, but no longer. (Like I said: zombie platform.)</p><p>This blog is looking like a hoarder's house to me at this point, and I thought it might be fun to try something a little different—and with a more defined purpose. When I started this thing, the idea was to just treat it as a repository for whatever thoughts I cared to elaborate on, and lately I'm feeling like I might do better by limiting myself to a narrower set of themes. Restrictions promote creativity, after all.</p><p>Maybe I'll periodically return here to post fluffy stuff about video games, comics, etc. when I feel compelled to write it. (I really had a lot of fun scribbling about <i>Shade</i>, <i>The Maxx</i>, etc. over the last few months.) Heck, maybe I'll get tired of Substack and wander back by the end of the summer. Who knows?</p><p>So, again: Beyond Easy probably won't be updated for a while. Go <a href="https://bananapeel.substack.com" target="_blank">here</a> instead.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hmm. The space could use a bit of gussying up. I'll get to it sometime.</span></p>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-84792865722293944252023-06-03T22:58:00.036-04:002023-06-04T23:16:27.207-04:00Kontemplating Komix: I Feel Sick (1999–2000)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhimfWih2WM7LsZbHG6TSBho2Pgdofx3Kc5mRk5WQfOtLhyN6a8Hdl0updssitxiPxHFiZcq27xoB9yvykriFhysJhYN6xjWnMZ2GVwBlaADOZhd46FOqE52m_uyym33K_0c7woZ4n34m6rOaCXljRx3YxviVzRhJalefvBchrCnu_Ln3l-5T1z0FRvzQ/s476/image_2023-05-30_220141783.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="476" data-original-width="315" height="419" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhimfWih2WM7LsZbHG6TSBho2Pgdofx3Kc5mRk5WQfOtLhyN6a8Hdl0updssitxiPxHFiZcq27xoB9yvykriFhysJhYN6xjWnMZ2GVwBlaADOZhd46FOqE52m_uyym33K_0c7woZ4n34m6rOaCXljRx3YxviVzRhJalefvBchrCnu_Ln3l-5T1z0FRvzQ/w278-h419/image_2023-05-30_220141783.png" width="278" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I will not be unconvinced that the title is an<br /><i>End of Evangelion</i> reference.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />When we were talking about The Good Old Days some years back, my hometown friend Dave said: "<i>Johnny the Homicidal Maniac</i> was our <i>Catcher in the Rye</i>." The observation was too on-point not get permanently stuck in my memory. Dave certainly has his moments.</div><div><br /></div><div>Jhonen Vasquez's seminal indie comic (which ran for seven issues between 1995 and 1997) and its spin-off, <i>Squee!</i> (four issues, 1997–98) were a fucking<i> revelation</i> for kids like Dave and me—socially askew goth bois with a morbid sense of humor, and who maybe thought a little too highly of ourselves. <i>Johnny</i> not only made us laugh ourselves hoarse and inspired us to imitate Vasquez's idiosyncratic art style in our classroom doodles, but reaffirmed us in our belief (one not uncommon in teenagers who wore fishnet sleeves and painted their fingernails black) that virtually everyone in the world was stupid and horrible, and if <i>we</i> were fucked up, it was because we were surrounded by mean-spirited and obtuse assholes from wall-to-wall.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I was a sophomore in high school, I had every <i>Johnny</i> and <i>Squee!</i> poster on my bedroom wall. My wardrobe contained no fewer than four different T-shirts with Vasquez's characters on them, and I quickly wore them out and kept wearing them anyway. I ordered the<i> Bad Art Collection </i>from the Slave Labor Graphics catalogue and actually <i>read</i> it—multiple times. I sent Vasquez a long email and saved his reply on my hard drive. (I remember it involved <i>Final Fantasy VII.</i>) Yes, I was obsessed. Vasquez has that effect on people; he's like David Foster Wallace for young moth goths. I meant for that to read "mall goths," but I'm going to let the typo stand.</div><div><span><a name='more'></a></span><br /></div><div>Let me get something out of the way: I am not sentimental about <i>Invader Zim</i>. I hungrily awaited its debut, and was tuned in the night it aired on Nickelodeon. I recorded most of the first season's episodes on VHS, and watched them repeatedly. I rocked the T-shirts, gave a Gir plushie a home on my bookcase, routinely quoted lines from the show on my LiveJournal, etc. But in the long run, it didn't tunnel into my skull the way Vasquez's comics did.</div><div><br /></div><div>I should also say that I haven't paid much attention to what Vasquez has been up to since <i>Invader Zim</i>'s first season. I know he directed a few music videos and animated shorts, and put out the occasional comic strip here and there. I lost interest in the <i>Invader Zim</i> comic book immediately after glancing at the credits page and seeing that Vasquez wasn't writing or drawing it, but taking more of a producer's role. Maybe someday I'll watch <i>Enter the Florpus</i>, but I'm not in any hurry. At the risk of coming off as an insufferable OG type, I would gladly live in a world without <i>Invader Zim</i> if it meant Vasquez had focused exclusively on his comics for at least a few more years.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Johnny</i> and <i>Squee!</i> were exemplary late twentieth-century indie comics. They were rough and raw. Gritty. Full of misspelled words. Artfully obscene. Irregularly published. Clearly the work of someone who, like Herman Melville, wrote (and drew) <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34970/34970-h/34970-h.htm#BOOK_XVII" target="_blank">precisely as he pleased</a>—and Vasquez was exceptionally lucky in that the stuff he wanted to do was what the kids in black were craving to read. I remember Vasquez saying that working on <i>Invader Zim</i> was miserable because it meant having to accept feedback from people who had their own ideas about what he <i>should</i> be doing.</div><div><br /></div><div>What made <i>Johnny</i> and <i>Squee!</i> such unusual indie comics was that they were fucking brilliant. Most of the other titles published by Slave Labor Graphics were zine tier, and I don't mean that as a pejorative. Indie comics, as an aggregate, are like a compilation of obscure punk bands distributed on cassette: you know you're not getting rock stars, but polished commercial pop anthems <i>aren't </i>what you're looking for. But for the Nickelodeon producer who reached out to Vasquez, stumbling upon <i>Johnny</i> must have been like listening to a mix tape of underground alt-rock bands from Seattle circa 1988–90 and being like "huh, what's <i>this</i> group called? ...'Nirvana?' Hmmm." Vasquez was so obviously and so profusely talented that a rep from the big leagues was bound to poach him from the indie scene sooner or later.</div><div><br /></div><div>The comic I want to look at today is the third and final "chapter" in what we might as well call the Johnny Cycle, and the last book Vasquez published before <i>Invader Zim</i> changed everything: the two-issue <i>I Feel Sick</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlCh0iU0reUwqlPpvwb96WNpOnt0gZoRhMr0RpdOSZ_ij-vR20eMXuOewa7w_jEZi1dPCsPdKJDaX_bqgPAgpU2TbgYAP4Yx3yGsjkfjRWFEXe-aCP0EPjKIVO8RxDUa44n9rH-ivZ0gyvD6xi43cBRZiWX9UdmcNDdQTardyclB1Gg1H0l1bosbAkjQ/s954/image_2023-06-01_081453248.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="637" data-original-width="954" height="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlCh0iU0reUwqlPpvwb96WNpOnt0gZoRhMr0RpdOSZ_ij-vR20eMXuOewa7w_jEZi1dPCsPdKJDaX_bqgPAgpU2TbgYAP4Yx3yGsjkfjRWFEXe-aCP0EPjKIVO8RxDUa44n9rH-ivZ0gyvD6xi43cBRZiWX9UdmcNDdQTardyclB1Gg1H0l1bosbAkjQ/w505-h338/image_2023-06-01_081453248.png" width="505" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>To explain its main character, Devi, we need to recap some events from <i>Johnny</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Devi was literally the one that got away. In issue #2, she takes Johnny out on a date. He's not unattractive, and she's had some nice conversations with him when he stops by the bookstore she works at—so why not? The night goes magnificently. They have similar interests, complementary senses of humor, and wonderful chemistry. Johnny, being a homicidal maniac, decides to murder her so that their budding relationship will never have the opportunity to wither into tedium and resentment, as relationships are apt to do.</div><div><br /></div><div>Devi kicks the shit out of him and escapes. It's the only time in the series where one of Johnny's victims reverses the situation and gets out alive.</div><div><br /></div><div>She appears a couple more times in <i>Johnny</i>, where she acts as something like a corrective: a reminder that the comic's hilarious and charismatic protagonist is an irredeemable monster who shouldn't be so carelessly sympathized with. Though her experience with Johnny left her traumatized, Devi's pretty tough. She's a survivor.</div><div><br /></div><div>In <i>Johnny</i> #7, we see her standing in front of an easel and holding a paintbrush when the phone rings. Devi's an artist. So was Johnny—once. Probably that has something to do with why they got on so well. (Before he tried to stab her to death, of course.)</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I Feel Sick </i>has the subtitle "A Book About a Girl." It probably should have been "A Book About an Artist."</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmq-KwB3LDb8xBOrnuePXlvH31YyD-bLNa76vn45EBQBAzP0UoMh6DTI7yAqKA-9ZTIPEROVL6r0TApzHLuTF4fFcU8Os1AO7w9eRf1wdF-JDIgzf2OoUzyQ1pHDyYkkyBix2ONJvEb84OUpgGmu3Nln-xpJkZBMBE1C27r43u8XpXHqk-n78EOh7Pdg/s854/5.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="661" data-original-width="854" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmq-KwB3LDb8xBOrnuePXlvH31YyD-bLNa76vn45EBQBAzP0UoMh6DTI7yAqKA-9ZTIPEROVL6r0TApzHLuTF4fFcU8Os1AO7w9eRf1wdF-JDIgzf2OoUzyQ1pHDyYkkyBix2ONJvEb84OUpgGmu3Nln-xpJkZBMBE1C27r43u8XpXHqk-n78EOh7Pdg/w451-h350/5.png" width="451" /></a></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>In the post-<i>Johnny</i> present, Devi has three problems.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>1.)</b> All of her attempts at finding love and companionship have been horrific—at <i>best</i>. The Vasquez fan who picked up <i>I Feel Sick</i> from the comic book store in 1999 was already aware of two bad dates she'd been on. There was the Johnny incident, of course. There was also her first appearance in an interstitial "Meanwhile" strip, where she went out with a dude who shit his pants in the middle of the restaurant.</div><div><br /></div><div>A smattering of flashbacks throughout <i>I Feel Sick</i> explores more of the grotesque chronology of Devi's attempts at socializing and dating. There was her first date at sixteen; the guy got handsy and wouldn't take no for an answer, and then crashed the car and had his brain eaten by a mongoose. There was the vampire boy who hit on her in a goth club and set himself on fire with his own smoke bombs. More recently, there was the charming, bespectacled fellow who ruined dinner by eating the waiter's brains.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0qUkXuUtRAZzS3AHMszODHv81PNy06mPZEjhn1wPGIwRDJiUpyupYzX69Foy7u9VGmrdNCaAQSfaPBDkWqEV0tRfNh5EFLvsVABxjBr1fgsFWSYg7VdnSs8cc2wf_-2vEuNnniinAg7kcF_CF4ftvOsp7Nqe6VO2EZbj3SdWiCgxvjbbybmQNfC2-wA/s1005/10.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="684" data-original-width="1005" height="365" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0qUkXuUtRAZzS3AHMszODHv81PNy06mPZEjhn1wPGIwRDJiUpyupYzX69Foy7u9VGmrdNCaAQSfaPBDkWqEV0tRfNh5EFLvsVABxjBr1fgsFWSYg7VdnSs8cc2wf_-2vEuNnniinAg7kcF_CF4ftvOsp7Nqe6VO2EZbj3SdWiCgxvjbbybmQNfC2-wA/w535-h365/10.png" width="535" /></a></div><br /><div>(Yes, this is a Vasquez self-insert. Yes, he has himself going on a date with his own character—who in many ways is his genderswapped avatar. No, I'd rather not analyze this.)</div><div><br /></div><div>The point these flashbacks are driving at is that all of Devi's experiences in seeking meaningful human connection have blown up in her face. She can no longer pretend there isn't a legible pattern. As much as she might like the idea of having "something nice" with a person who might be able to truly understand her, it increasingly appears that cosmic forces have ordained that she's not <i>meant</i> to be with anyone. Dating and socializing are consistently nightmarish. Humanity is a shit show. She'd rather stay in and paint.</div><div><br /></div><div>Though her extroverted best friend (only friend?) Tenna insists she'd have a better outlook on life if she got out more, Devi is too <i>busy</i> to go out. This brings us to problem #2. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAsHkwO7Rkq0xilfSsKxvPooGobkkSIz5JdTpvo77EQogdReqo_HTuprYKaYL-fwWKrIWG9Z6mye5ISaIGny93x_xdx78uX42tiK4DzAVCnVwm_kmMf0Y3pLVPQRulg5_dD6fqvd0ps2jExNfCdv6B8xzame5CD_mbmFzGBPu4LTaWNif4vx4OJ0362Q/s937/6.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="527" data-original-width="937" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAsHkwO7Rkq0xilfSsKxvPooGobkkSIz5JdTpvo77EQogdReqo_HTuprYKaYL-fwWKrIWG9Z6mye5ISaIGny93x_xdx78uX42tiK4DzAVCnVwm_kmMf0Y3pLVPQRulg5_dD6fqvd0ps2jExNfCdv6B8xzame5CD_mbmFzGBPu4LTaWNif4vx4OJ0362Q/w551-h310/6.png" width="551" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>2.)</b> Devi quit her bookstore job. An author visiting the shop noticed her doodling on the back of an order form, and asked to see more of her work. He recommended her to his publisher, and now she paints cover art for sci-fi novels.</div><div><br /></div><div>At first, Devi was thrilled at the opportunity to get paid to do what she'd always gotten in trouble for doing. It didn't last. Between the strenuous hours, the incessant demands for revisions, and the bizarre meddling from executives evidently guided more by madness than method, going pro has made Devi miserable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Want to know how Vasquez <i>really</i> felt about working on <i>Invader Zim</i>? Read <i>I Feel Sick</i>. His employers at Nickelodeon must have known about the book, and I have to wonder how they reacted to it. This comic wouldn't have happened if the pitch Vasquez was encouraged to make hadn't been accepted; it was the conduit for his frustration with the process of developing a show for a popular cable network after previously working solo with little to no editorial oversight. (The problem with getting the guy who wrote and drew a comic book called<i> Johnny the Homicidal Maniac</i> to create a TV-Y7 cartoon <i>wasn't</i> that his idiomatic sense of humor routinely possessed him to draw ink-spattered scenes of ghastly violence; it was that he was ill-disposed towards working with other people, especially when they didn't really understand what he was trying to do.)</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq6abryMFJpN_-CA1sukRtwZFOgJeKINkcqaxYgfY8_D7JJqaqUITXkdxtunLAnRWkUO38kmlDsQumeZB3uSwpjanJ-k7sY8XgcNu8UWp6sWeH3Bylt-lfNP9WYB3JOhT2c8zpsX5-kI7rqiIo6pSCj2G6pLYMI3CGD8GjDAkox7YVmU6aoAhbA-T9-Q/s944/1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="944" height="345" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq6abryMFJpN_-CA1sukRtwZFOgJeKINkcqaxYgfY8_D7JJqaqUITXkdxtunLAnRWkUO38kmlDsQumeZB3uSwpjanJ-k7sY8XgcNu8UWp6sWeH3Bylt-lfNP9WYB3JOhT2c8zpsX5-kI7rqiIo6pSCj2G6pLYMI3CGD8GjDAkox7YVmU6aoAhbA-T9-Q/w523-h345/1.png" width="523" /></a></div><br /><div>At the risk of overscrutinizing the tea leaves, <i>I Feel Sick</i> also gives Vasquez an opportunity to vent about the oppressive side-effects of his meteoric rise to indiegoth-comic superstardom. <i>Squee!</i> issue #4 already had that fictobiographical "Meanwhile" strip satirizing the fan mail he was getting used to receiving. And now, among the excerpts from Devi's personal diary that introduce each of <i>I Feel Sick</i>'s two issues, we have this entry:</div><div><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">I never knew so many people found my conversation so enjoyable. People keep calling me or dropping in on me as though they actually felt I was someone with a modicum of skill in making human organism [sic] feel pleasant in my company. This wouldn't be so bad if I weren't so busy, and especially if I didn't find these mostly all of these [sic] people so repellant. It's like having your bodily waste crawl back up the sewage pipe to tell you how much it wants to be in your bowels.</span></blockquote></div><div>Devi's moilsome grind for Nerve Publishing is a transparent proxy for Vasquez's experience developing a show for Nickelodeon. This diary entry is an equally obvious expression of (1) being weirded out by Los Angeles people smelling the clout on him and wanting to pal around and (2) his undiminished discomfort with being the adored guru and darling boy of his considerably large pre-<i>Zim</i> fanbase. As I've already said, we were obsessive. A lot of us were creepy about it. (I'm not proud of it, but I shot Vasquez an obsequious instant message when his private AIM handle was being passed around. He dismissed me a lot more politely than I deserved.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Having this kind of audience fundamentally changes the artist's relationship with his work. It's one thing to paint stuff that satisfies <i>your</i> personal standards, to draw comic strips that make <i>you</i> laugh, or entertain your close friends. It's another to know for a fact that thousands of people are going to be citing lines from your next release on their Xangas and quoting them to you at the conventions you're obliged to attend. The feedback and weight of expectation induces a shift in perspective. You're not looking at your work with just your own eyes anymore, or thinking about it strictly in terms of how much it pleases <i>you</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>It must be profoundly unnerving.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd5GO368qo50VI-qx_5dJrcCG3TojUnIbY0Dq1lSNJc4TZoALAq0aqnuuQGOx4MjBrdZ2cL-KT9PCT7kR5oTfTGl781UNMUzdTfHhDq9y9JARPuM5j7qVa-oZVUTocWJmHQosb43VgzxodN2LUThNhm8KpfLJ64y9X9JKkIf54XmLC7TlrX1dakGvUgA/s1023/image_2023-06-01_095312954.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="834" data-original-width="1023" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd5GO368qo50VI-qx_5dJrcCG3TojUnIbY0Dq1lSNJc4TZoALAq0aqnuuQGOx4MjBrdZ2cL-KT9PCT7kR5oTfTGl781UNMUzdTfHhDq9y9JARPuM5j7qVa-oZVUTocWJmHQosb43VgzxodN2LUThNhm8KpfLJ64y9X9JKkIf54XmLC7TlrX1dakGvUgA/w483-h395/image_2023-06-01_095312954.png" width="483" /></a></div><br /><div>This brings us to Devi's third problem. And this is the big one.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>3.)</b> Between the illustration work she's being paid to do and her terrible experiences with people impinging on her time, disgusting her, and traumatizing her, she can't seem to muster the energy for her<i> own</i> work, for the stuff she actually <i>wants</i> to paint. Worse still: she <i>should</i> have a backlog of ideas to draw from after being away from it for so long—but there's nothing. The well is running dry.</div><div><br /></div><div>There <i>is</i> a piece sitting on her personal easel: a painting of a creepy little dolly with empty eye sockets, which she started working on just before Nerve hired her and monopolized her time and creative energies. She gave it a name: "Sickness." The painting is still unfinished.</div><div><br /></div><div>Recently, Sickness started talking to her. <i>I'll finish myself</i>, she tells Devi.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe it's because she's working too hard and not getting out enough, but Devi is convinced that Sickness is somehow orchestrating all the awfulness that's besieged her over the last few months/years.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tenna is skeptical.</div><div><br /></div><div>Devi is right.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here we're going to have to do a little more poking around in the <i>Johnny </i>lore.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbXkIACNFlNfBPmQTceROFlcPPKEFX9xygH9lZzPO7r0oqiie3j6s0rw4hDY6AMHN9PdpCeJbQ6t9Pt0v-AaXyrV4fl0_ZuhX7tksyZtEvxIbEI5q6xhwFquYBA_rzTy8eNbiJQBfPFyAvANt53zHbIcf06KLXDhPEUC26Vy0nQqX3v-zLuIe39N-qeQ/s961/2.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="961" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbXkIACNFlNfBPmQTceROFlcPPKEFX9xygH9lZzPO7r0oqiie3j6s0rw4hDY6AMHN9PdpCeJbQ6t9Pt0v-AaXyrV4fl0_ZuhX7tksyZtEvxIbEI5q6xhwFquYBA_rzTy8eNbiJQBfPFyAvANt53zHbIcf06KLXDhPEUC26Vy0nQqX3v-zLuIe39N-qeQ/w544-h296/2.png" width="544" /></a></div><br /><div>Vasquez plotted the <i>Johnny</i> mythos by the seat of his pants, and it isn't entirely coherent—but let's try to make sense of it insofar as it's relevant to <i>I Feel Sick</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Johnny <i>used</i> to be an artist. We know that as he gave himself over to being a misanthropic psycho killer, he stopped drawing. Part of the whole "psycho" thing involved a series of fetishistic objects in his house that talked to him. The ones most worth mentioning here were a pair of styrofoam Pillsbury Doughboys, painted over and made into horror pieces, named Psycho Doughboy and Mr. Eff. Both of them manipulated Johnny, pulling him toward different courses of action. One goaded him into going on murder sprees, the other tried to get him to kill himself. The reader's natural supposition was that they were each of them a voice in the head of a seriously unwell man. <i>Then</i> they started moving around on their own.</div><div><br /></div><div>The nature of their agenda and of their eldritch master isn't important here—and the matter of how well it all comports with what happens in <i>I Feel Sick</i> is dubious at best.<i> </i>But the thing to take away is that Johnny had a kind of supernatural infection, and one of its symptoms was the terminal blighting of his artistic practice.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I Feel Sick</i> reveals that Johnny passed on the infection to Devi during the fateful night he took her home after their ride up to the hills.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">* No, not <i>that</i> way. All they did was talk.</span></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_9TEy7bU54pDOYXJH8o3Ly5Cv8O3ug7Aaf3RVv2Ixkul01ONmdpY1lR21jbh0ZU6VIiPfXy8dYfmzVZiQK8x9sMNIHWQLkixiT8EgxU9CFOpWyawQSZwoXWmyrMfb0FwoZF5VDWRhfy4qYfwFxvPgNxBI_J9Mi5GG2I8QFX__yoRvwz8NyHcVQ-b1Fw/s949/3.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="584" data-original-width="949" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_9TEy7bU54pDOYXJH8o3Ly5Cv8O3ug7Aaf3RVv2Ixkul01ONmdpY1lR21jbh0ZU6VIiPfXy8dYfmzVZiQK8x9sMNIHWQLkixiT8EgxU9CFOpWyawQSZwoXWmyrMfb0FwoZF5VDWRhfy4qYfwFxvPgNxBI_J9Mi5GG2I8QFX__yoRvwz8NyHcVQ-b1Fw/w541-h332/3.png" width="541" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Whatever it really is, the spooky mind-parasite anchors itself in reality using the "Sickness" painting as its focal point. Since it needs to harvest Devi's mind and creative faculties to make itself more real, it must ensure that Devi can't engage them for herself. (A muscle resists atrophy by being used, after all.) The possessed painting supernaturally fixes things so that Devi is perpetually distracted, frustrated, nauseated, and exhausted. If Devi is allowed to do her work—her <i>own</i> work, the stuff she's truly passionate about—Sickness will be deprived of her sustenance.</div><br />The idea, then, is that Johnny either didn't or couldn't mount a resistance against the monster(s) festering in his head. The infection completely and permanently destroyed his ability to make art, and so it destroyed <i>him</i>. Afterwards he abandoned sublimation altogether and became a homicidal maniac.<div><br /></div><div>That's more or less what Devi has to look forward to now.</div></div><br /><div><i>I Feel Sick</i> isn't the best of Vasquez's comics. It's not as wheeze-out-loud funny as <i>Johnny</i> or <i>Squee</i>. It has structural problems that might have been mitigated by extending its first issue into two parts. A lot of the unpleasantness that's been plaguing Devi (such as the people who keep calling and dropping in on her) is only alluded to in the dialogue or the introductory journal entries, so it takes multiple readings, some squinting between the lines, and a bit of metatextual knowledge to appreciate what's happening. And the discrepancy between the clean, polished linework/coloring and the slapdash, sloppy letting in issue #1 is damn distracting. (To be fair, Vasquez <i>was</i> pressed for time, what with the whole developing a Nickelodeon show thing going on in the background.)</div><div><br /></div><div>But <i>I Feel Sick</i> is without a doubt the most <i>personal</i> work Vasquez has ever put out.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>* </sup></span>It's also the one I most often revisited—digging it out from the pile of old comic books at my folks' place—after I stopped thinking much about <i>Johnny </i>and tossed out my abraded Happy Noodle Boy T-shirt and my taped episodes of <i>Invader Zim</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">* True, I haven't seen much of anything Vasquez has done in the last twenty years (holy crap it's been that long), but I somehow doubt that he poured nearly as much of himself into an animated <i>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles </i>short or a MODOK comic for <i>Strange Tales MAX</i>.</span></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi39uAG7HkVI6fhkzNBb-uSTfvbk-bY5yQenxGGlzv3rbluShyXl-MmAYfHWNEzEMWDlbGF03-prmp-wDGH0HSDpJu7ADrMO2PlHRdUaoU16MoewWq7EjXvkeIEIKcwqY6TDYMk3Gnji1E4HDhV-KQljQZvvx09ja7BtywdeLVIMTet1CRfvSXKnxaUqQ/s957/12.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="681" data-original-width="957" height="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi39uAG7HkVI6fhkzNBb-uSTfvbk-bY5yQenxGGlzv3rbluShyXl-MmAYfHWNEzEMWDlbGF03-prmp-wDGH0HSDpJu7ADrMO2PlHRdUaoU16MoewWq7EjXvkeIEIKcwqY6TDYMk3Gnji1E4HDhV-KQljQZvvx09ja7BtywdeLVIMTet1CRfvSXKnxaUqQ/w523-h373/12.png" width="523" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Vasquez uses <i>I Feel Sick</i> to shake off some of the aggravation of collaborating on a tremendous creative project with corporate people, and to give voice to some of his apprehensions about where his incipient career as a television developer might be taking him. It seems that in the state of mind he was in at that point, he felt impelled to do right by one of his fucked-up basket case characters and give her as much of a victory as is possible in his creative universe.</div><div><br /></div><div>The ending isn't altogether happy, of course. Devi learns that she's destined to be alone for the rest of her life. This isn't just pessimistic speculation: it's an absolute certainty. She has Tenna as a friend, sure, but she'll never have a <i>partner</i>, someone she'd be happy to live with and live for (and who can do the same for her). There <i>was</i> one such person in the world who could have been that person for her—but he died. Years ago. And it's this revelation that fires Devi's resolve to wrest back control of the one thing she <i>can</i> live for.</div><div><br /></div><div>Johnny lost his fight. Devi wins hers.</div><div><br /></div><div>Not that I presume to know Vasquez's thoughts, but I have to read Devi's declaration over her vanquished nemesis as the author's own assertion of himself against the universe.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW7h14cAQIEABKq8z1Lr6j4HclEdovVEiVhvvb9XYpEl5HRdal5kM8f_6TI7gKsjagHpB4k8KIlGYELN71X0kzTuSMQD6Fb-cH4VqhiACxTCI2E-CR-ayKEIJSsognb6erKmC8uJkNh360GAuax7PAQN00kqJMGTgMaw-pxQLxmX5wdOnRdpVUOUMClA/s987/4.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="987" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW7h14cAQIEABKq8z1Lr6j4HclEdovVEiVhvvb9XYpEl5HRdal5kM8f_6TI7gKsjagHpB4k8KIlGYELN71X0kzTuSMQD6Fb-cH4VqhiACxTCI2E-CR-ayKEIJSsognb6erKmC8uJkNh360GAuax7PAQN00kqJMGTgMaw-pxQLxmX5wdOnRdpVUOUMClA/w528-h303/4.png" width="528" /></a></div><br /><div>This scene is why I kept thinking about <i>I Feel Sick</i> for years after reading it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe under different circumstances, things would have turned out different for me. Maybe I'd have, I don't know, worked in a lab or as an accountant and took up golf in my spare time. It's hard to say. I have an inkling of how it started.</div><div><br /></div><div>When we were in kindergarten and the first grade, my friend Brian P and I played with M:Tron and Blacktron Lego sets putting them on a planet whose geography resembled my bedroom, and whose alien inhabitants were the dinosaur toys and random action figures I had lying around. I got out my set of Crayolas and drew a series of comics about the characters and stories we invented. In the second, third, and/or fourth grade (I don't remember), I drew maybe two "issues" of a cargo-cult X-Men comic, and dreamt up a sort of Avengers team based on myself and kids from school. A couple years other, I collaborated with my friends Jeff and Scott in devising a mythos about a bunch of kids who went on wacky adventures fighting mad scientists and aliens, and travelling through time to ally with their ancestors and descendants. The first prose fiction I wrote on my own time was in the context of an "interactive story" located on a secret message board on Nintendo's AOL page. (You got to it by clicking on Diddy Kong's hat on the banner graphic.) The thing's first two iterations were very loosely based on <i>Legend of Zelda</i>. The third, found on Nintendo's new website (as in, it had a URL and wasn't restricted to AOL users), was situated in the <i>Star Fox </i>universe. When the stories were over and the community voted, I won "Most Innovative Plot" for my contributions to the second Hyrule scenario, and one of my characters was voted "Best Villain" after the Corneria scenario wrapped up. That was all when I was in the seventh and eighth grades. A time when I desperately needed some encouragement.</div><div><br /></div><div>After that I remember writing a series of short stories about a pack of teenage idiots (me and my friends) who turned into superheroes by drinking Jolt Cola. As a freshman in high school I started writing a "novel" which was going to be a solo sequel to an arc from those collectively written stories. (It petered out after fifty pages, if I recall.) I wrote bad poetry. Then came was my sophomore year of high school, where I rode my surge of inspiration from <i>Johnny the Homicidal Maniac</i> and produced a stack of grossly derivative short stories and comic strips. I tried to write a half-baked dystopian novel. There was another comic about a little goth girl who hunted demons. Then there was the webcomic, the less-bad poetry, the abortive attempt at a first novel, more poetry, The Zeroes, and... ...</div><div><br /></div><div>I write stuff. I don't know how or at what point it stopped being a hobby and became a compulsion. I do prose because it's the tool I'm best at using; my growth as a poet and as a comic illustrator both topped out pretty early on.</div><div><br /></div><div>Practically speaking, I don't think I'm <i>good</i> for much else. This isn't me rolling around in self-pity; I really am just stating a fact. I never had any interest in learning to code, and I don't have much aptitude for even playing with basic HTML. I'm too manually clumsy and scatterbrained for work in the trades; if I were a welder or an electrician, I'd get myself or my employers sued sooner or later. I'm not a very motivated salesman. I don't have the deportment for managing anybody. The idea of teaching a middle- or high school literature class, dealing with rooms full of kids who don't want to be there and don't give a shit, gives me the hinks. So does the thought of getting a master's degree and expecting the <i>best</i> outcome to be teaching a creative writing course at a community college. I'm lousy at writing commercial copy, and hated my life when I've tried to do clickbait content-milling. The unglamorous jobs I <i>can</i> do, I'm usually lukewarm about, and wouldn't think for an instant of making them the basis of my identity. But I can do them, and that has to be enough. And at least they never ask me to bring my work home with me or answer emails when I'm not clocked in...</div><div><br /></div><div>My attempts at channeling my energy and emotions toward something other than passion projects [writing] have been disappointing, at best. Not that I'm not willing to put up with tedium or get my hands dirty without pay for a cause I'm passionate about—but it's just never worked out. Wrong places, wrong times, wrong people. Consistently. It's hard to ignore a pattern, especially when it involves something like an electrical shock.</div><div><br /></div><div>I got married. She knew it was a package deal: a husband who divides his time between his hang-up and her. She likes me enough to say "I do."</div><div><br /></div><div>There have been times I've told myself that I can quit writing. I don't have to think about another novel. I don't have to consult the Notepad file where I jot down passing ideas that might have potential. I don't have to keep updating this stupid blog that nobody reads anyway. Self-promotion is horrible. Submitting stuff to lit magazines is horrible. Writing query letters is horrible. In terms of having a readership, I was pretty much done after I stopped writing about video games, and I can't go back to it now and because longform upper-middlebrow game criticism scene has migrated to YouTube. I have no desire to follow it there.</div><div><br /></div><div>I could quit writing. I <i>could</i>. I could do something else.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've said this to myself time and time again over the last fifteen years. I've tried to convince myself of it. But I just <i>can't</i>. It's pathological. I'm sick.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've repeated Devi's triumphant speech to Sickness to myself on hundreds of occasions ("and <i>nothing</i> changes that, even if I wanted it"), as though it were a mantra—along with a line from <i>Sandman</i>. Delirium's observation about "Emperor" Joshua Abraham Norton: <i>his madness keeps him sane</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not sure <i>what</i> I would do if I didn't write. Something tells me I'd spend a lot more time bingewatching TV series, playing video games, and sleeping. I'd sink many more hours into doomscrolling and watching random YouTube videos than I do now. I'd probably not see any reason not to drink more, to start getting high as much as I <i>used</i> to get high, or to start committing money and headspace to Magic: The Gathering again. Maybe I'd rediscover Christianity and become a religious fanatic. I'd have to find <i>something</i> else that can hold at bay that ambient sense of pointlessness—the unapproachable and incontrovertible black hole in the fabric of everything that first made me stop and sit and stare at the light from the setting sun on the wallpaper and not know what to do before I'd even hit puberty.</div><div><br /></div><div>For all the stupid self-imposed suffering I bring on myself by sweating and clenching my teeth and foregoing sleep to labor over fictions that don't get published and blog posts that don't get circulated, nothing else pushes the void below the horizon of my awareness with such efficacy. Whatever the hell I think it is I'm doing, it's probably what makes me composed enough to be somebody another person wanted to marry.</div><div><br /></div><div>But enough about <i>that</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZwcpTAgMKIx3VryEsu7EQSD7YAERWjJGlNeRzYNfTLF5trXj4yE5KBl5kbjALgGUE-WzJub74jLk4Ueqn9eXi7cABSalCi5QjvEZ-MbdPIY0qSqVe9wmP6w-Mbs8no6RWmpQnMVE5TbPPRm2S2435chX-P3RiuprUxo-_7Edd4q2Li3wyR8qgs3iG9A/s794/8.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="583" data-original-width="794" height="327" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZwcpTAgMKIx3VryEsu7EQSD7YAERWjJGlNeRzYNfTLF5trXj4yE5KBl5kbjALgGUE-WzJub74jLk4Ueqn9eXi7cABSalCi5QjvEZ-MbdPIY0qSqVe9wmP6w-Mbs8no6RWmpQnMVE5TbPPRm2S2435chX-P3RiuprUxo-_7Edd4q2Li3wyR8qgs3iG9A/w444-h327/8.png" width="444" /></a></div><br /><div><i>Johnny the Homicidal Maniac</i> rocked my teenage world, but <i>I Feel Sick </i>is dearer to my heart. As a spooky, angsty kid I <i>wanted</i> to see myself in Johnny; as an adult approaching middle age (hah, "approaching," right) I still <i>can't help</i> seeing some of myself in Devi. Whether the book augured my trajectory or subliminally nudged me onto it—I don't want to speculate. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is the must-have comic for Vasquez fans. Not because it's the funniest or the best, but because of the fascination it holds as a transitional work. It's his farewell to comics—not that he quits them altogether, but afterwards he never applies himself to making them with as much gusto—and it's the deep breath he takes before the Gir plushies enter production and an exponentially higher number of teenagers begin aping his art style and quoting his characters than before. Nothing can ever be the same for him after this. His brain[child] isn't in his head anymore; it's out and running about.</div><div><br /></div><div>Assuming I'm not wildly overestimating the extent to which Vasquez discloses himself through <i>I Feel Sick</i>, I have to wonder if he feels like it was all ultimately worth it. But that's really none of my damn business, is it?</div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-49323343871034256702023-04-13T22:11:00.053-04:002023-06-05T08:51:19.712-04:00Kontemplating Komix: Empowered (2007– )<p>Oh jeez. We're doing <i>Empowered</i>? Okay. Let's talk about <i>Empowered</i>.</p><p><i>Empowered</i> is...</p><p>No, damn it. No. Let's not start like this.</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Around the time I did that writeup about <a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2020/09/x-men-x-overs-ten-best-of-em-part-1.html" target="_blank">X-Men crossovers</a>, it occurred to me that while I was aware of the Image Exodus' consequences for the X-books, I didn't know too much about the comics that Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and Wilce Portacio worked on after leaving Marvel. I thought I owed it to myself to at least have a look at a few, so I started with the one I most recognized: <i>Gen¹³</i>, created and co-written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi, and launched in 1994.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLzpDYXKwwh7GX1K9kzgOXC_vIdYzIeIBq81z5glMDFDQruvHcsjKC1OG6TH2Z8ewXjZawhp7s1pNFSMoKKj7NjJiKk_KNeBtoGiwIP3P8iRhZwwMX3MtTIeHm9ZNxezSb0u8aMc2GkLQMLXNSCPVFIT-Gqu8mtHxSxIx0eyaEHFU31GF0Wyj03_24g/s1586/image_2023-04-09_143255014.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1586" data-original-width="1063" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLzpDYXKwwh7GX1K9kzgOXC_vIdYzIeIBq81z5glMDFDQruvHcsjKC1OG6TH2Z8ewXjZawhp7s1pNFSMoKKj7NjJiKk_KNeBtoGiwIP3P8iRhZwwMX3MtTIeHm9ZNxezSb0u8aMc2GkLQMLXNSCPVFIT-Gqu8mtHxSxIx0eyaEHFU31GF0Wyj03_24g/w284-h424/image_2023-04-09_143255014.png" width="284" /></a></div><p>Having seen its logo and its busty, leggy heroine Caitlin Fairchild all over comic & hobby shops in the mid-90s, I knew <i>Gen¹³ </i>had once been A Thing. Other than that, I had only the foggy impression that it was designed to be something like a version of <i>Uncanny X-Men</i> whose founding members were hip MTV generation teenagers instead of preppy young Baby Boomers.</p><p>After reading the book's five-issue introductory volume, and then maybe ten issues of the ongoing second volume, I understood why <i>Gen¹³ </i>melted into oblivion as the decade elapsed. It's basically <i>The Real World</i> with superpowers. Like the contemporaneous Marvel 2099 line, <i>Gen¹³</i> retains some retrospective appeal as an imprint of American pop culture from the very middle of the interregnum between The End of History and The War on Terror, but is otherwise another middle-of-the-road comic about adolescents with paranormal abilities.</p><p>Like most American comic serials, <i>Gen¹³ </i>cycled through several different artists and writers throughout its eight-year lifespan. Plotter Jim Lee bounced early on, and penciller J. Scott Campbell became Choi's co-author. After they both followed Lee out the door, the book became a <i>little</i> more interesting, even though few of the illustrators succeeding Campbell could match what he brought to the table. </p><p>For couple of years it was written by John Arcudi, creator of the Dark Horse comic <i>Barb Wire</i> (better known for its adaptation as a Pamela Anderson film vehicle). Arcudi left after issue #40, and was replaced by Scott Lobdell (creator of Marvel's own 1994 teen team <i>Generation X</i>) from issues #45 through #54. Lobdell abruptly left, and for a few issues his job was filled by Jeff Mariotte (who previously wrote two <i>Gen¹³ </i>prose novels) and Ben Raab (served as assistant editor for several Marvel books in the mid-1990s).</p><p>At issue #60, one Adam Warren climbed into the authorial cockpit, and remained there until <i>Gen¹³</i> folded with issue #77. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrnBPp2KWmrKHCuUhPgNfCZ2EBjv52wHENbtkxAGsBhSpBCN8SUZ1KpE3efNBrYa20mPpl_mCy8rus-2I-axcbkE6bZOSP4RTYDqEJLiaPFlbr7U_FDWOynp-nn_9V3UIiGuuPzxB0b8lRgnIuZ3vzFBsXSorIV7oFn-AUUZrCWEnfiVmTO22mFzFj1w/s1318/image_2023-04-09_152744994.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1318" data-original-width="872" height="429" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrnBPp2KWmrKHCuUhPgNfCZ2EBjv52wHENbtkxAGsBhSpBCN8SUZ1KpE3efNBrYa20mPpl_mCy8rus-2I-axcbkE6bZOSP4RTYDqEJLiaPFlbr7U_FDWOynp-nn_9V3UIiGuuPzxB0b8lRgnIuZ3vzFBsXSorIV7oFn-AUUZrCWEnfiVmTO22mFzFj1w/w284-h429/image_2023-04-09_152744994.png" width="284" /></a></div><p>Sometimes Warren also drew interior pages, and was almost always responsible for the cover art during his run. Judging from the above, we can confidently infer that he was watching anime on VHS before Toonami, <i>Pokémon</i>, and filesharing (and then streaming video) injected Japanese animation into the American mainstream.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup> </span><span>To some small extent, </span><i>Gen¹³ </i>evinced and contributed to the normalization of the Japanese comic/animation aesthetic on this side of the Pacific. </p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* As a matter of fact, Warren wrote and illustrated a series of licensed English-language <i>Dirty Pair</i> comics, starting <i>way</i> back in 1988.</span></p>Over a year before the reins passed solely into his hands, Warren wrote a pair of issues during the period between Arcudi and Lobell's runs. In <i>Gen¹³</i> #43–44, Caitlin Fairchild does battle with a meme. No, not that kind of meme—a meme in the specific sense originally proposed by Richard Dawkins. (Caitlin namedrops <i>The Selfish Gene</i> while formulating a theory of what she's up against.) A sentient pop song gets into the world's head like a virulent mental parasite, and Caitlin finally confronts it when it speaks to her through the possessed body of the singer who recorded it.<p>I happened to land on this story while I was skipping through the series, and made a note of Warren's name. (Hadn't I already seen it somewhere before?) Whatever the hell he was doing, I didn't think I'd mind seeing more of it.</p><p>During its final year under Warren, <i>Gen¹³ </i>certainly became more <i>lively</i>. The book's crass comedy, barrage of pop culture references, and hip self-awareness all get ramped up by an order of magnitude. In giving the main cast its sendoff in issues #75–76 (which Warren also illustrated), he has them and some of their superfriends hanging out at a beach house where they play <i>Dance Dance Revolution</i>, get sloppy drunk, go skinny dipping (with black rectangles judiciously covering everyone's nips and bits), and hook up with each other. With not a little fanfare, Caitlin Fairchild finally loses her virginity.</p><p>I kept reading because it <i>confused</i> me. I got the sense that Warren simultaneously luxuriated in all the boozy adolescent spectacle and sleazy cheesecake, and giggled to himself in recognition of how utterly silly it all is. It takes an unusual authorial mind to make a dumb and horny comic seem kind of smart.</p><p>And then at the end, we learn the party didn't actually happen. The whole thing was a wish-fulfillment fantasy playing out inside Fairchild's mind in the dilated moment before she and her team get blown to smithereens on their final mission. Huh.</p><p>Afterwards I googled "Adam Warren." This guy was too idiosyncratic and too good at what he did to have been exiled from the industry after <i>Gen¹³</i> ended. He <i>must</i> have been up to something since then, especially since I dimly felt I'd already seen his name elsewhere.</p><p>So I googled him.<i> <a href="https://www.empoweredcomic.com/comic/volume-1-page-1" target="_blank">Empowered</a></i> is what came up. <i>That's</i> why I recognized his name.</p><p>So there you have it: how I was convinced to give <i>Empowered</i> a shot.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxOsNlyEu05dFjI7lC22kP9pPqFHVAoKLdYlzp7txSwsmy7ihQVmZMMusNpGIKIkzufGMf0lC-7Fw3IQrhE9YkJ3noj7w-K4F__ehWO8GI8TSSO8m6xvEKICIyxRMqjT5o3miIfUei5NOxv1j7FQfptCKW-VP6pRCPg81Y1YZidWo9w_GVGYDVCuqKJg/s1050/image_2023-04-09_164218342.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1050" data-original-width="801" height="407" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxOsNlyEu05dFjI7lC22kP9pPqFHVAoKLdYlzp7txSwsmy7ihQVmZMMusNpGIKIkzufGMf0lC-7Fw3IQrhE9YkJ3noj7w-K4F__ehWO8GI8TSSO8m6xvEKICIyxRMqjT5o3miIfUei5NOxv1j7FQfptCKW-VP6pRCPg81Y1YZidWo9w_GVGYDVCuqKJg/w310-h407/image_2023-04-09_164218342.png" width="310" /></a></div><p>Back when I worked at the bookstore (circa 2008), I'd pass <i>Empowered</i> on the shelf on my way to the pisser. (Nobody could ever decide whether it should be shelved under Graphic Novels or Manga.) I never read it because, well, I judged it by its cover—and its back copy. From volume 1: </p><span style="font-family: courier;"><blockquote>Not only is costumed crimefighter "Empowered" saddled with a less-than-ideal superhero name, but she wears a skintight and cruelly revealing "supersuit" that only magnifies her body-image insecurities. Worse yet, the suit's unreliable powers are prone to failure, repeatedly leaving her in appallingly distressing situations...and giving her a shameful reputation as the lamest "cape" in the masks-and-tights business. Nonetheless, she pluckily braves the ordeals of her bottom-rung superheroic life with the help of her "thugalicious" boyfriend (and former Witless Minion) and her hard-drinking ninja girlfriend, not to mention the supervillainous advice from the caged alien demonlord watching DVDs from atop her coffee table...</blockquote></span>Everything about it <i>howled</i> mid-aughts geek-pandering cringe. At one point I picked a volume off the shelf and only glanced inside long enough for its anime-influenced, pencils-only aesthetic (à la <i>MegaTokyo</i>) to reinforce my assumption that it must have been a webcomic collected in a trade paperback. <p>The first volume was published in 2007, and I suspect the earliest "chapters" are at least a couple years older. Had I sat down and actually read them at the time, I would have been (erroneously) certain I'd guessed right. These are <i>totally</i> webcomic strips reproduced in print: four- or five-page episodic gag stories about clownish superheroes, focusing on a hapless buxom blonde in a skintight bodysuit who's always getting sexually degraded by her foes and ridiculed by her allies.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt7WUoFHxBRJWNkxeczBIGuRleDUEu7FGJpYjLR7hRcszoaiH27QXtn0xWlV9t4rpyfrapLmdHg0dLl_GOARxLBD5u8OySId0yUbuV4j3HdGzPr-wLY_5j9lzj_zrsbxmf8eH4B8A3VoEDNy-CEG_beY7rc0GJBJLogVLqgM1_OkrwKeSBg4FATWgbiw/s628/image_2023-04-11_213740521.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="500" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt7WUoFHxBRJWNkxeczBIGuRleDUEu7FGJpYjLR7hRcszoaiH27QXtn0xWlV9t4rpyfrapLmdHg0dLl_GOARxLBD5u8OySId0yUbuV4j3HdGzPr-wLY_5j9lzj_zrsbxmf8eH4B8A3VoEDNy-CEG_beY7rc0GJBJLogVLqgM1_OkrwKeSBg4FATWgbiw/w352-h442/image_2023-04-11_213740521.png" width="352" /></a></div><p>Warren mentions in one of the first volume's interstitial fourth-wall-breaking pages that when he got the idea for <i>Empowered</i>,<i> </i>he was doing commissions for people who wanted steamy "damsel in distress" illustrations. It's as much as an explanation as an excuse as to why Empowered (that's the buxom blonde's superhero sobriquet) is <i>constantly</i> shown with her limbs trussed up, a ball gag jammed in her mouth, and her costume in tatters.</p><p>And this is funny! Ha ha ha! See how flustered and embarrassed she is! Watch her blush and frantically try to conceal her naked breasts and crotch from the eyes of her captors and the cameras of the news crews! Ho ho! Sexual humiliation is comedy!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73r6v6a1NxTP7dOon8DzOvhrbFHcyh3iKQajU13CpMOycn2D_R6SkWqSYvqt_TaqkseiaAOPDgDdCcT_xwysXdw8G4XJ9UDB6A2BePMnBv-eoWfXsHRfAk62FE-DpnVhnC6pyp0nBOURLs2cAdbpkNgh8guWUMrxzURjpwH7b0359mPYvzNnOOtuaTQ/s821/image_2023-04-11_213934868.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="821" height="391" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73r6v6a1NxTP7dOon8DzOvhrbFHcyh3iKQajU13CpMOycn2D_R6SkWqSYvqt_TaqkseiaAOPDgDdCcT_xwysXdw8G4XJ9UDB6A2BePMnBv-eoWfXsHRfAk62FE-DpnVhnC6pyp0nBOURLs2cAdbpkNgh8guWUMrxzURjpwH7b0359mPYvzNnOOtuaTQ/w476-h391/image_2023-04-11_213934868.png" width="476" /></a></div><p>But okay. <i>Empowered</i> and its world crystallize a little more with each successive episode. Em is the laughingstock "associate member" of a team of caped crimefighters called the Superhomeys (aughts cringe). Her mysterious "hypermembrane" suit grants her superhuman strength, durability, and the ability to fire energy blasts—but the thing is <i>very</i> flimsy, and her powers diminish the more it gets ripped up. (It regenerates itself, though. Slowly.) Naturally, for some reason it doesn't work if she wears anything over it. And it needs to make contact with her skin, so she can't wear anything <i>under </i>it, either. (How convenient.)</p><p>The suit <i>also</i> has the side effect of making her multi-orgasmic, which we know because she starts dating a hunky himbo named Thugboy (more aughts cringe), a henchman who crushed on her when he and a bunch of other goons had her captured and tied up. He quits the minion game to become Em's live-in boyfriend, have drawn-out sex scenes with her, shave her pubic hair, and go on and on and <i>on</i> about how much he likes her ass.</p><p>In an early episode, Em befriends a perpetually drunk party-girl ninja named Kozue who displays her working name "Ninjette" on the backside of a pair of hotpants her buttcrack is perpetually choking on. When she's lounging around Em's apartment and crushing beers without her shirt on, Ninjette wears shuriken-shaped pasties on her A-cup breasts—and of course her introductory appearance makes a makes a production out of her comparing her assets to Em's C-cups because, you know, that's what actual women talk about when they're getting acquainted. Very realistic.</p><p>Have I forgotten anything? Oh, yeah: during another early episode, Em is abducted by aliens, fitted with a power-draining bondage belt, and earmarked for enslavement in an intergalactic harem. The aliens throw her back when they realize her "derrièrical bootyfication" exceeds acceptable parameters (read: her ass is too fat), but she does get to keep the belt. It comes in handy a bit later when a cthulhoid entity possesses a child's body and goes on a rampage, and Em uses the belt to trap the entity's conscious essence. Now the "Caged Demonwolf" sits harmlessly on Em's coffee table, making magniloquent booming speeches about video games and bad movies, creeping on Em and Ninjette, and trying to convince Thugboy to rifle through his girlfriend's underwear drawer.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7-F6t7D4bWLUIl8puK4FNVccJwDc1Ek-rYMlipqz5pK0nDbZinXk1uart5ByUXryIIRJTmdIAcz0cJ4dIV8gKAw-hxckWc5yi14jP2KanEflxR_8Xl_sWkFGFb7kBBQcjdmvP5cpogMy7EvFDLrgkJqme1EMMtxQQ8X5pnbeyeulBssY1X970XuUb7w/s728/image_2023-04-11_214649300.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="634" data-original-width="728" height="447" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7-F6t7D4bWLUIl8puK4FNVccJwDc1Ek-rYMlipqz5pK0nDbZinXk1uart5ByUXryIIRJTmdIAcz0cJ4dIV8gKAw-hxckWc5yi14jP2KanEflxR_8Xl_sWkFGFb7kBBQcjdmvP5cpogMy7EvFDLrgkJqme1EMMtxQQ8X5pnbeyeulBssY1X970XuUb7w/w513-h447/image_2023-04-11_214649300.png" width="513" /></a></div><p>I went back and forth on the idea of doing an <i>Empowered </i>writeup. I thought that if I was finally going to get around to writing a longform thing about <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i>, I might as well make a party out of it and follow it up with a couple of other writeups about "auteur" comics (ones that never swap out their creator/writer for someone else) that seem underappreciated. <i>Empowered</i> came to mind.</p><p>Revisiting <i>Empowered, </i>I found myself having second thoughts. I didn't like the idea of leafing through an eleven-volume comic heaving with so much puerile gibberish, grabbing screencaps of it, and then spending several hours contemplating and writing about it. But I had a hard time coming up with an alternative that wouldn't have felt forced.</p><p><i>Then</i> I thought I'd do a three-in-one: write only a few succinct paragraphs about <i>Empowered</i>, and then do the same for another two comics. Easy enough.</p><p>I skimmed more of <i>Empowered </i>to refresh my memory. And just like the first time, it sucked me in as I hate-read the first couple of volumes. It won me over <i>again</i>. Damn it all to hell.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg464j0ekTgaxZ_2V5O8hknDdfLxFlo2nbuXqcrunA7ukh_SCsw78kF8n1f1m2F--7GVdoI-PerPDyUU_NDk__p-N4wv5IGB-Rix7NEZxKdNtkKKjIcEx14PvwhIixb1K6b-045BL2tISwLCLYZWuzObpsVy9KU0d423klYYX1T8dg2use53wK4fOUTJg/s724/image_2023-04-11_215048164.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="724" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg464j0ekTgaxZ_2V5O8hknDdfLxFlo2nbuXqcrunA7ukh_SCsw78kF8n1f1m2F--7GVdoI-PerPDyUU_NDk__p-N4wv5IGB-Rix7NEZxKdNtkKKjIcEx14PvwhIixb1K6b-045BL2tISwLCLYZWuzObpsVy9KU0d423klYYX1T8dg2use53wK4fOUTJg/w499-h252/image_2023-04-11_215048164.png" width="499" /></a></div><p><i>Empowered</i> is a specimen of the breed exemplified by the likes of <i>The Venture Bros.</i> and <i>Rick and Morty</i>: a series that starts off as an episodic comedy satirizing tropes in popular media, and organically develops into an intricate saga with real emotional stakes. <i>The Venture Bros.</i> began as a pastiche of <i>The Hardy Boys</i>, <i>Johnny Quest</i>, and classic superhero comics, all played for laughs.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span> But as the incidental lore piled up, Hammer and Publick followed the internal logic of the world they'd cobbled together towards a serialized and <i>serious</i> story. Nobody who's waiting for the announcement of the movie's release date is thinking about the jokes: we're grinding our teeth in anticipation of <i>finally</i> seeing the whole thing resolved.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* The Guild of Calamitous Intent, remember, was first mentioned in service of a throwaway joke about how even supervillains are expected to observe bureaucratic protocols.</span></p><p>That's how it goes with <i>Empowered.</i> An ecchi-tinged romantic comedy about a confidence-deficient superheroine on the struggle bus gets into worldbuilding to round out the satire, and transitions from a gag strip to a bona fide superhero comic as Warren builds on concepts and characters first introduced as jokes.</p><p>For instance: volume 1 has a silly aside about Thugboy selling old supervillain gear on eBay to earn some scratch after his retirement from professional henching. In short order, this becomes the basis for the revelation that Thugboy was once part of a "Witless Minions" crew that methodically backstabbed and ripped off supervillains—until something went horribly, murderously wrong. (Whatever happened, it's related to the "San Antonio Incident" which the superhero community occasionally mentions with a deep shudder.) The character introduced as the female lead's cuddly beefcake boyfriend suddenly has a dark secret to be teased and explored, and old demons threatening to upend his happy new life. </p><p>Example 2: Sistah Spooky, the scurrilous mean-girl sorceress introduced in <i>Empowered</i>'s very first episode, is revealed to have acquired her mystical powers through a kind of infernal accounting error when she sold her soul for a supermodel's body after being a mousy black girl in a high school full of gorgeous, bullying blondes got to be too much. Clearly Spooky's origin story was devised as a semi-comedic post hoc explanation as to why Em's teammate goes out of her way to be nasty to her (Spooky has a complex about blonde women), but it opens the door for the next obvious step in serial plot thickening—which is to reveal Spooky's secret, tumultuous relationship with the love of her life, who just so happens to be another blonde female superhero. And so we're introduced to the telepath Mindfuck, <i>Empowered</i>'s best and most tragic character.</p><p>The fact that I'm using the word "tragic" as a defining attribute of a cast member of this series ought to be an indicator of how far it grows beyond its original dimensions as a lewd superhero comedy that played its main character's body insecurity and humiliation for laughs.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTctZFxmtBfLMSYOQZxdK3hZmg5ppgbqJ2f5n61nNOGO2bDqkX-8scQvrLiC7tSm4qv_pKFz9ncPVlgu-Ve85D-ol4h1PTDAURMhra5vYSJZUmJ6KTzfZY9rRpx8XFJURULdA-AyTewV6RyvV5fIp9lPjz6HXne_1W7YspxesynZo7yQTMnjqOOk64tw/s518/image_2023-04-11_215910703.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTctZFxmtBfLMSYOQZxdK3hZmg5ppgbqJ2f5n61nNOGO2bDqkX-8scQvrLiC7tSm4qv_pKFz9ncPVlgu-Ve85D-ol4h1PTDAURMhra5vYSJZUmJ6KTzfZY9rRpx8XFJURULdA-AyTewV6RyvV5fIp9lPjz6HXne_1W7YspxesynZo7yQTMnjqOOk64tw/s16000/image_2023-04-11_215910703.png" /></a></div><p>I could rattle off another few instance of spur-of-the-moment characters and concepts becoming incubators for more involved and serious plot threads, but you get the idea.</p><p>I can't identify where precisely <i>Empowered</i> turns around. Possibly the inflection point is in volume 4, where Em's nomination for a Capey Award (meant as another cruel joke at her expense) dovetails into a suspenseful action sequence where she rushes to prevent a traitor from murdering every superhero in attendance. Definitely something has changed by volume 5, where the supervillain Willy Pete (who incidentally figures into a particularly dark episode from Thugboy's past) attacks the Superhomies' orbiting base.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span> By volume 7, even the Caged Demonwolf—the <i>Empowered </i>version of first-season Stewie Griffin, a stubbornly one-note gag character—reveals that he's got much more in him than overwrought rants about sex and pop culture.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* The, ahem, "Homeycrib." But even the nomenclatural aughts cringe becomes a retconned plot point. At first, the fact that the majority of the world's superheroes are bunch of developmentally stunted dudebros and mean girls with godlike powers is presented as fashionable (if predictable) satire. Later on, we get hints that this was by sinister design. Somebody apparently <i>wanted </i>to set things up so that the good guys with superpowers tend to be the sort of unserious, small-minded people who'd give the name "Homeycrib" to their base of operations.</span></p><p>The lewdness, geek humor, and veneer of arrested adolescence remain constant as <i>Empowered</i> drives on, and I suppose that's how it's got to be. Its genre-savvy ridiculousness and sexploitation can't be disjoined from the pressurized hysterical realism of its serious parts. I try to imagine <i>Empowered</i>'s spontaneous emergence as a genre-aware action-drama in the vein of <i>Invincible</i>, and it just doesn't compute. Starting off as a dorky horndog comedy is what gave <i>Empowered</i> a generously broad runaway on which to accelerate before taking off. This is a slow burn kind of book.</p><p>And yes: <i>obviously</i> the progression of <i>Empowered</i> mirrors the journey of its protagonist. Em starts off as a laughingstock, a punchline attached to an ass and a pair of tits, and becomes a force to be reckoned with as time goes on.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrsREnMQF506JcdHMQ793SSTy3JNpHtLW3g--qn-Jc48orNXQTis2i4V_mpi0sywiXyBkRVps14U52j_JianJyw9iJEajxltINN2ple_lR35dSbeYdX11F0dYWlkldW3MooL9YYOeN7HGMGZa1g-lSMcqh51ClB9ipoDLlah7ab-JguMH4qSpptE3CPQ/s883/image_2023-04-11_212314384.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="883" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrsREnMQF506JcdHMQ793SSTy3JNpHtLW3g--qn-Jc48orNXQTis2i4V_mpi0sywiXyBkRVps14U52j_JianJyw9iJEajxltINN2ple_lR35dSbeYdX11F0dYWlkldW3MooL9YYOeN7HGMGZa1g-lSMcqh51ClB9ipoDLlah7ab-JguMH4qSpptE3CPQ/w506-h249/image_2023-04-11_212314384.png" width="506" /></a></div><p>I'm not going to subject <i>Empowered</i> to a feminist analysis, but we ought to at least consider it—as Warren himself does (albeit indirectly) in volume 9.</p><p>That one came out in 2015, and I suppose I don't need to talk about the state of the culture wars at that point. Warren seems to have had an inkling that he might have inadvertently placed himself in bind by setting up a discrepancy between his book's implicit and explicit messages. </p><p>Back in 2007—and not to dredge up Amer-gay Ate-gay, but let's point out that this was before Anita Sarkeesian arrived on the scene—a sexploitation comic partially inspired by bondage smut, written and drawn by a straight man, could have been expected to skirt by with as little resistance as was aroused by, I don't know, Cammy's butt in <i>Street Fighter</i>, Tifa's gigantic breasts in <i>Final Fantasy VII</i>, or any other piece of "geek" media that gratuitously sexualized its female characters.</p><p>But by 2015, perhaps Warren was beginning to sweat. I might too, if I were a male comic artist who'd staked his career on an ongoing series about a female superhero who routinely gets tied up and stripped down, and whose title makes light of the political mantra of "female empowerment."</p><p>There's a chapter in volume 9 where Em is approached by the masked biographer Ghost Writer, who offers to pen her autobiography, but insists on downplaying the substance of her career and emphasizing the episodes of sexual humiliation for the sake of making it sell. The entire sequence can't but be read as Warren's response to real or imaginary critics reprimanding him for putting on a comic that objectifies and dumps on its female protagonist—notwithstanding that <i>Empowered</i> is essentially a story about a relentless underdog who earns the respect she deserves, step by agonizing step.</p><p>Em finally rejects Ghost Writer and gives him the righteous dressing-down he deserves. But I feel like Warren might have given away the game when he has Em telling Ghostwriter something to the effect of: "nobody's going to jerk off to your stupid book, get real, there's internet porn for that." I have a hard time believing we're not to interpret this as Warren contravening allegations (real or imagined) that his life's work is so much jerkoff material by making the argument that since that nobody cooms to print matter anymore, his print comic <i>Empowered</i> can't be accused of being coomer fodder.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeki4ORfZM9lBTo9EYlVewd-trJLbhkXfMlRCVRBUl7xfCPxzcrzhA8rFRfUsnsJMA8-UiLXnVAWVMKT2b0rUPsgBuS2xXIjYxfgtWhb0OQ_OftlOaNrO5HS06JojnDNduBszrvmx-uFJaZqSwqZZMWJsTyyGJdZgcGte1-eUqS-Xeyv5DfC0b4hXwSA/s874/image_2023-04-11_211641823.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="874" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeki4ORfZM9lBTo9EYlVewd-trJLbhkXfMlRCVRBUl7xfCPxzcrzhA8rFRfUsnsJMA8-UiLXnVAWVMKT2b0rUPsgBuS2xXIjYxfgtWhb0OQ_OftlOaNrO5HS06JojnDNduBszrvmx-uFJaZqSwqZZMWJsTyyGJdZgcGte1-eUqS-Xeyv5DfC0b4hXwSA/w453-h352/image_2023-04-11_211641823.png" width="453" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This is one of the reasons I felt Warren's turn on <i>Gen¹³ </i>was at least worth mentioning. The "epilogue" at the beach house approached its climax by turning into an iteration of <i>Girls Gone Wild</i> with super-adolescents, and Warren's wry self-awareness saved it from turning into something really embarrassing.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But with <i>Empowered</i>, he strains the elastic limits of irony. Warren would really like to have it both ways. Despite his (and Em's) protestations, his protagonist <i>is</i> designed to be an object of that Male Gaze we speak of in grave whispers and punctuate with a wad of spit. <i>Empowered</i> is a self-aware superhero comic that pokes fun at the trope of the hypersexualized female protagonist in a skimpy outfit who frequently gets captured, bound, and gagged for the sake of stoking the appetites of a male audience—but that self-awareness doesn't change the fact that it's still got a hypersexualized female protagonist who frequently gets captured, bound, and gagged for the sake of stoking the appetites of a male audience. Warren tries to hide behind his character's assertions that she never <i>wanted</i> to be seen as a sex object (like Jessica Rabbit, she's "just drawn that way"), as though that negates his own choice to keep stripping her naked, sticking a ball gag in her mouth, and putting her in veritably pornographic sex scenes with Thugboy in volume after volume.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I'm reminded of friends of mine who watch shows like <i>The Bachelorette</i>, but claim to do so ironically. Our comportment determines the essential character of our actions to a lesser extent than we often like to believe. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvv_bPJ4y8jEeb9QuK7tT-GYbq1WFkOKHPjt7NOfja1bcsVdz7DzodaOSD7GYzXjHDlW8mBL9SJl28dgi7lfHGNxkU2pfBvC_JWTFZoxyuUkWGWwwCqcqP9LPzFsptv1oOB44upus79XDqLzlJuHhNZQ_pVZ10kSmBO0WG-gHKUwCRMgnoVa9Zv6S4ow/s457/image_2023-04-11_220626572.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="385" data-original-width="457" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvv_bPJ4y8jEeb9QuK7tT-GYbq1WFkOKHPjt7NOfja1bcsVdz7DzodaOSD7GYzXjHDlW8mBL9SJl28dgi7lfHGNxkU2pfBvC_JWTFZoxyuUkWGWwwCqcqP9LPzFsptv1oOB44upus79XDqLzlJuHhNZQ_pVZ10kSmBO0WG-gHKUwCRMgnoVa9Zv6S4ow/w376-h317/image_2023-04-11_220626572.png" width="376" /></a></div><p>But I can't judge <i>Empowered</i> too harshly in this regard. Warren's palpable empathy for his protagonist makes the worst of any imputations of gross sexism unsustainable.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span> Still, this is at best a <i>problematic</i> book—which is only a condemnation if one cares about that sort of thing, and if one understands the label as a scarlet letter instead of something that defies orthodoxy and might be deserving of examination. There's a multitude of possible arguments as to why <i>Empowered </i>is either an unorthodox but earnestly feminist comic by a male author or is otherwise sexploitative Male Gaze shit with a spurious feminist message—<i>or both!</i>—and few works of narrative art were ever impoverished by ambiguity.</p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* Again, I can't read Warren's mind, but it seems to me he didn't really become invested in Em until after he'd been writing her for a while. Volume 1 gleefully makes her the butt of a mean cosmic joke, but Warren patently loses his relish for milking her humiliation for laughs it as the series goes on. I remember an interview with <i>X-Factor</i> and <i>New Mutants</i> writer Louise Simonson where she said something to the effect that she didn't care much for Madelyne Pryor until the plot started pushing her over the edge, and that might be the case here. I feel like Warren needed to put Em through a few dangerous, not-joking situations before he felt he ought to do well by her.</span><p>When I got the idea to do a few comic book writeups, <i>Empowered </i>probably came to mind because volume 11 was freshest in my recollection. And volume 11 is a masterpiece.</p><p>Most of it consists of an unremitting action sequence were Em squares off alone against the villain Neurospear—Mindfuck's younger brother, a former superhero who psychically lobotomized himself to prevent empathy or sentiment from clouding his judgement. Now he's a psychopath with telepathic powers on the level of Professor Xavier, and he comes gunning for Em. Instead of simply erasing her mind or telling her brain to stop signalling her heart to beat, he intends to prove her inadequacy as a superhero by forcing her to run a gauntlet of his devising. Perched on a quiet rooftop somewhere in the city, Neurospear uses his mental voodoo to put everyone around Em in a fugue state where they're irresistibly compelled to murder her.</p><p>I'm trying to think of another American comic book I've read that managed to sustain such a pitch of nightmarish intensity over as many pages as<i> Empowered</i>'s eleventh volume, and I'm coming up short. Warren pulled off a truly impressive feat with this one.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFeVZfwkJnnu7EKmnn5-MGsvVYLQZblARl-IvzKjoBFISfrOwC_j9NL1RibyQjk7IAQGnCyGBZOAk3Ii96_8RJH-mG9MVF5Klznf-dzNE7nDi1AtLnezu9V5c6iihWA8PhtBODImNzjCrg1j8QW0jHVRWv0LW1iLKDYwJV4J6JfInZTGyNg5NePds6Vw/s812/image_2023-04-11_220301913.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="377" data-original-width="812" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFeVZfwkJnnu7EKmnn5-MGsvVYLQZblARl-IvzKjoBFISfrOwC_j9NL1RibyQjk7IAQGnCyGBZOAk3Ii96_8RJH-mG9MVF5Klznf-dzNE7nDi1AtLnezu9V5c6iihWA8PhtBODImNzjCrg1j8QW0jHVRWv0LW1iLKDYwJV4J6JfInZTGyNg5NePds6Vw/w509-h237/image_2023-04-11_220301913.png" width="509" /></a></div><p>There's a moment in volume 11 that makes me think Warren took some criticism of<i> Empowered</i> to heart.</p><p>After Neurospear starts throwing mind-controlled superheroes at her, Em finally comes to blows with Major Havoc—the<i> Empowered</i> universe's Superman analog, a misogynistic frat boy meathead with the usual Kryptonian ability set. Havoc decides to expedite the confrontation by ripping off Em's hypermembrane suit and face-lasering it to atoms in order to depower her.</p><p>Em gets stripped naked against her will—<i>again</i>—but this time it's different.</p><p>To my recollection, it's the first Warren draws her to look like an actual human woman. Ordinarily, Em is depicted with the idealized body of a mannequin—which seems a little strange in light of how often she frets about her weight. Not that women with "perfect" thin bodies are immune to looking in the mirror and disliking what they see, but for most of <i>Empowered </i>it's a case of deliberate dissonance between what's being said and what's being shown. The story requires that Em be regarded as having some extra pudge on her bones, but the exigencies of selling a comic book necessitated drawing her with a supermodel's figure. In volume 11, the nude Em is drawn the way we've always been <i>told</i> she's supposed to look.</p><p>It's also the first instance where the emotional impact of Em getting her clothes torn off by an aggressor is realistically what it <i>should</i> be. There's no ingenue sweating and blushing, no tension-deflating banter, no dilatory gloating, no comedy, no male-gaze prurience whatsoever. It's horrifying. Only horrifying. By drawing Em so that for once she looks <i>truly</i> naked, Warren makes clear that he's not kidding around this time.</p><p>Em does manage to recover her suit and turn the tables on Major Havoc. But I have the strong sense that Warren deliberately wrote and illustrated this to be a sequence where even the theoretical fan who reads <i>Empowered </i>with his hand down his pants would be anxious to see Em get suited back up.</p><p>Well played, sir.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT_Jt8_nJN171yBJXlcXmARTsJWGTBoCjRyrG892FgSTVS5O3tWGuPR-shyF7Ok1ihsC9O9_OCnaczz9BtjWR3w0Yr2STq0keU_Ga30Orjn-JYq-bpREgc_fgUUKiQwwTAJtrKf61tBcdk8uTO8-Xk_OGt8FDP20FrY8G89l-5_ytBwyWZnL7vS3Azfg/s808/image_2023-04-11_221345842.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="354" data-original-width="808" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT_Jt8_nJN171yBJXlcXmARTsJWGTBoCjRyrG892FgSTVS5O3tWGuPR-shyF7Ok1ihsC9O9_OCnaczz9BtjWR3w0Yr2STq0keU_Ga30Orjn-JYq-bpREgc_fgUUKiQwwTAJtrKf61tBcdk8uTO8-Xk_OGt8FDP20FrY8G89l-5_ytBwyWZnL7vS3Azfg/w513-h224/image_2023-04-11_221345842.png" width="513" /></a></div><p>It's too early to give a final assessment of <i>Empowered</i> because the book remains unfinished. Volume 11 is the most recent iteration, but not the last. Not long ago, volume 12 was announced and scheduled for release this June.</p><p>Fuck it. I'm preordering it.</p><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><b>NEXT:</b> <a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2023/06/kontemplating-komix-i-feel-sick-19992000.html" target="">Down with the Sickness</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">I'm going to take a break for the next month or two in order to do some housekeeping and attempt to make progress on a long-term project. Look for me again in June, unless something gives me a particularly rousing itch between now and then.</span></div><p></p>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-14154437739938997832023-04-09T02:35:00.000-04:002023-04-09T02:35:04.985-04:00The Mall & The Sprawl & The Automobile<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhQFxkwlNAZJf9ccZmnDF6SArkLfiMLWoJA8C0ntlJghXpQ8zN869zrvRaBj6F7v8zqb2KntzeAJVHkfGUz_Vy4YMIedFTOjFnlkExMpvn9G2vONKWrUqGU1EylqQN9FebKRsyogRJ3E59jy90vOCPjWLDM9l4vOILjCVGklQqe6FbeWzmcL82-OUr2Q/s773/image_2023-04-09_023310392.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="773" data-original-width="773" height="367" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhQFxkwlNAZJf9ccZmnDF6SArkLfiMLWoJA8C0ntlJghXpQ8zN869zrvRaBj6F7v8zqb2KntzeAJVHkfGUz_Vy4YMIedFTOjFnlkExMpvn9G2vONKWrUqGU1EylqQN9FebKRsyogRJ3E59jy90vOCPjWLDM9l4vOILjCVGklQqe6FbeWzmcL82-OUr2Q/w367-h367/image_2023-04-09_023310392.png" width="367" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Victor Gruen, from <i>The Heart of Our Cities: The Urban<br />Crisis, Diagnosis and Cure</i> (1964)</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />Forgot to mention that the good people at <a href="https://www.sublationmag.com" target="_blank">Sublation Magazine</a> posted an <a href="https://www.sublationmag.com/post/malls-fordism-socialism" target="_blank">essay of mine</a>.</div><p></p><p></p>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-55795427299911055822023-03-27T02:37:00.008-04:002023-06-05T08:31:16.978-04:00Kontemplating Komix: The Maxx (1993–98)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisKKihAPLsIVn6Z1nzaW2lyquZOw4l55xkvK0jfm8cAGOzR5UMqQvZtYDjWuU14-HTVoAc6i3Y8IBALvV2VqMxvKvrmyfBIDFicV6EcBh0RPO8SVbLdB9EXbYhqq4yujYYnwkvl6cqqpkIPilNibhGlGpSNSwi6tCWIXve6-Ho9WS6esocuAosJgHrlg/s515/image_2023-03-06_001302713.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="515" data-original-width="345" height="468" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisKKihAPLsIVn6Z1nzaW2lyquZOw4l55xkvK0jfm8cAGOzR5UMqQvZtYDjWuU14-HTVoAc6i3Y8IBALvV2VqMxvKvrmyfBIDFicV6EcBh0RPO8SVbLdB9EXbYhqq4yujYYnwkvl6cqqpkIPilNibhGlGpSNSwi6tCWIXve6-Ho9WS6esocuAosJgHrlg/w313-h468/image_2023-03-06_001302713.png" width="313" /></a></div><br /><div>I'm really and truly at a loss as to where to start with this one. Sam Kieth's cult comic is a rabbit hole if ever there was one.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sam Kieth? Who's Sam Kieth? Well, he co-created <i>Sandman</i> with Neil Gaiman. True story. Look at the illustration credits for the book's first five issues. He voluntarily left the book because he didn't think his work was a good fit—and, frankly, he was right. But the fact stands that Kieth was responsible for Morpheus' visual design. He also did some work for Marvel, turning in some absolutely baller art for the Wolverine stories in <i>Marvel Comics Presents, </i>and did some <i>Detective Comics</i> covers for DC. So when he launched <i>The Maxx</i> in 1993, Kieth wasn't exactly an unknown in the industry.</div><div><br /></div><div>We also need to acknowledge the contribution of William Messner-Loebs, whose previous credits included popular authorial runs on <i>Wonder Woman </i>and <i>The Flash.</i> Loebs acted more or less as <i>The Maxx</i>'s co-writer and Kieth's editor for more than half the book's run.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's begin with the cover.</div><div><br /></div><div>We're at our local comic shop in 1993. We pick <i>The Maxx</i> #1 off the wall. We're conscious of the man behind the counter and feel his gimlet eye on us. As soon as we look at the interior pages, he's going to tell us that his store isn't a library and tell us to buy it or put it back. </div><div><br /></div><div>Let's say that we also notice issues #3 and #4 shelved next to it. Maybe they'll gives us a clearer idea as to what <i>The Maxx</i> is about.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7i-ZjbiyL-TuJ_c8djl7HRh7_LVHiqc2wZ2i6ARX975_Pu8gvi6gd6mcmc2uNuQo77-Cd0yG3pHPxKlr9e50TtY9eM--WpBUPyI-FQhM-cb8QeEJVm5r3Os7HSg2Z8DwVNm0h-dvJ76GrZXNdfSUJFVJ4IeMBUOuCLQkNx2yWWYSPClYBP0P3IhmyHw/s773/image_2023-03-27_000255921.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="592" data-original-width="773" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7i-ZjbiyL-TuJ_c8djl7HRh7_LVHiqc2wZ2i6ARX975_Pu8gvi6gd6mcmc2uNuQo77-Cd0yG3pHPxKlr9e50TtY9eM--WpBUPyI-FQhM-cb8QeEJVm5r3Os7HSg2Z8DwVNm0h-dvJ76GrZXNdfSUJFVJ4IeMBUOuCLQkNx2yWWYSPClYBP0P3IhmyHw/w535-h410/image_2023-03-27_000255921.png" width="535" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Let's say we decide to start at the beginning and pick up issue #1. What sort of comic book do we suppose we're taking home?</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>Well—it's 1993 and we're buying a comic with the Image logo on the cover. Perhaps you remember the Image exodus from Marvel? Todd MacFarlane got bent of shape because his editor wouldn't let him draw Shatterstar stabbing Juggernaut in the face, so he took his pencils, went home, founded his own comic book imprint, and invited his friends to join him.<span style="font-size: small;"><super>*</super></span> Image is where MacFarlane launched <i>Spawn</i>, where Rob Liefeld landed after quitting <i>X-Force</i>, and where Jim Lee created his own MTV-generation teen superteam. We can realistically expect grit. We can expect blood. We can expect sensational Mature Situations. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">* I actually had a copy of that one when I was a kid. <i>Spider-Man</i> #16, November 1991. That was the one where Juggernaut knocked over one of the Twin Towers. In a world where New York had suffered <a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2020/09/x-men-x-overs-ten-best-of-em-part-2.html" target="_blank">a full-scale demon invasion</a> just a little while ago, something like half of a 9/11 wasn't really that big a deal.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>What do we make of the man on the cover? Do we think he's majorly wicked, or do we find him silly? </div><div><br /></div><div>The early-to-mid 1990s were a strange time for superhero comics. There was no such thing as over-the-top. The satirical intent in stuff like DC's <i>Lobo</i> and Marvel's <i>Punisher 2099</i> soared over their readerships' heads; after all, there were scores of other titles doing pretty much the same thing, but without a trace of irony. On the basis of <i>The Maxx</i> #1's cover, it's impossible to guess whether we're buying an earnestly EXTREME RADICAL ASSBAD 1990s superhero book, or something a bit more puckish.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOLgBKhcKmxFnoPt3tm4UjzuQKN8570HX5zudywLbzr80CEr9H0Y1CuV8GTeD1IbatyuxV03UxyTYQ9CD5rFRHf4zQAhMAZGq-ONhm-qOqdtPrY4phYdgbH8DYG9Iv3XH3kCmbaEypuKgjzo1zzzQLJ0NRwJPikKDWYJKcC6RbJAWQn7AVKg8kMtoybQ/s936/image_2023-03-13_235156412.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="678" data-original-width="936" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOLgBKhcKmxFnoPt3tm4UjzuQKN8570HX5zudywLbzr80CEr9H0Y1CuV8GTeD1IbatyuxV03UxyTYQ9CD5rFRHf4zQAhMAZGq-ONhm-qOqdtPrY4phYdgbH8DYG9Iv3XH3kCmbaEypuKgjzo1zzzQLJ0NRwJPikKDWYJKcC6RbJAWQn7AVKg8kMtoybQ/w452-h328/image_2023-03-13_235156412.png" width="452" /></a></div><div><p>So here we have the Maxx in his first interior appearance. Should we be surprised that Kieth was less known for penciling a few issues of <i>Sandman</i> than for drawing Wolverine and the Hulk?</p><p>Judging from appearances, the Maxx is a superhero. Obviously. This is an American comic book, the character has a sobriquet instead of name, and he's a huge mother wearing a costume that conceals his face. He ticks too many boxes not to fall under the "superhero" category.</p><p>Notice that in the image above he's emerging from a cardboard box to menace a street tough. The Maxx sleeps in that box.</p><p>The Maxx has a lot in common with the <i>Dark Knight Returns</i>' version of Batman. For one thing, <i>look</i> at him. He's more beef than man. And he doesn't have a good relationship with the city police, either: Johnny Law thinks the Maxx is just a crazy bum. And, like Frank Miller's take on the Caped Crusader, the Maxx delivers a lot of hardboiled monologues via narration boxes—except these don't convey the Maxx's private thoughts, because he's actually speaking out loud the whole time. The Maxx isn't excruciatingly bright, and often finds himself confused by what's happening to him. </p><p>Okay, so it looks like maybe the <i>The Maxx</i> got caught in the late 1980s "deconstruction" wave. He <i>thinks</i> he's a superhero, but he's just a bulky, mentally ill weirdo with who occasionally beats up criminals. Sure. So <i>The Maxx</i> is a <i>satirical</i> superhero, right?</p><p>...Right?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJGVP9mQzBINfNbpZN3GXAZNI5kg3tOiMIHgZBhl7_2ipveS_idW8Ky1qG-Ce6Pw5EQ3TDFSgJZB6WhX_lk4N7y_5EzfYJyP6TL9bhwB3nGE15Rkile_cJF3MNiiSWEz7dIXXjjCkXpcMQnHYNgHtD1hwZT-Zzbc6A6WTe4jdq7K4ZRAMsRNXkcL0DvQ/s998/image_2023-03-06_003016023.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="800" height="556" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJGVP9mQzBINfNbpZN3GXAZNI5kg3tOiMIHgZBhl7_2ipveS_idW8Ky1qG-Ce6Pw5EQ3TDFSgJZB6WhX_lk4N7y_5EzfYJyP6TL9bhwB3nGE15Rkile_cJF3MNiiSWEz7dIXXjjCkXpcMQnHYNgHtD1hwZT-Zzbc6A6WTe4jdq7K4ZRAMsRNXkcL0DvQ/w447-h556/image_2023-03-06_003016023.png" width="447" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>A better question would be: is the Maxx pretending to be a superhero, or was Sam Kieth pretending to do a superhero comic?</div><div><br /></div><div>At least for the first several issues, Kieth and Messner-Loebs seem like they're trying to give the early-1990s comic book market what it wanted, which was gritty and occasionally over-the-top superhero stuff. Having earned readers' plaudits by drawing <a href="https://www.hipcomic.com/listing/marvel-comics-presents-92-newsstand-vg-marvel-low-grade-comic-wolverine-s/11771741/?shopping=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=17330148932&utm_content&utm_term&gclid=Cj0KCQjw2v-gBhC1ARIsAOQdKY2zty0EExy6yDJ-jsci2UDhJopZkIakFy3bpNDLDSIf3ccbkZp-6jQaAjEEEALw_wcB" target="_blank"><i>the</i> grittiest Wolverine ever</a>, Kieth probably felt saddled by the expectations of a personal brand—and besides, the last time he'd worked on a non-superhero titled (<i>Sandman</i>), he proved an awkward fit.</div><div><br /></div><div>And so the book and its titular character both try to play the part. In issues #2 and #3 the Maxx trades blows and dialogic barbs with his debut arch-nemesis. In issue #6 he brawls with Mako, a villain associated with Image hero Savage Dragon. In the following issue he teams up with Pitt, the titular character of Dale Keown's Image series. Messner-Loebs was reportedly more into this genre-standard material than Kieth, whose cognitive dissonance about doing a superhero title is increasingly palpable as the series continues.</div><div><br /></div><div>Issue #4 has the Maxx fighting his bête noire's hench-creatures, but the action scenes are all just incidental to the introduction and character study of Sarah, a troubled teenager and aspiring author. Issue #5 has the Maxx getting pulled into a cartoon otherworld illustrated by his cousin David Feiss (who later created Cartoon Network's <i>Cow and Chicken</i>), where everyone speaks in Dr. Suessian rhyme. Even the crossover with Pitt is more like <a href="https://www.comics.org/issue/212168/" target="_blank">the issue</a> of the <i>Ren & Stimpy</i> comic where Spider-Man fought a mind-controlled Powered Toast Man than a for-serious super team-up.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Maxx's delusions afford Kieth some authorial latitude to follow his own flights of fancy. It's established early on that the Maxx is a disordered homeless man (with some degree of superhuman strength and durability) in a mask and purple costume, providing a built-in excuse for the book to take detours into Saturday morning cartoons, and for the vaudevillian aspect of the fight scenes. But even from the beginning, there's an emergent method to the madness.</div><div><br /></div><div>When the Maxx loses his grip on reality, he finds himself in a primordial wilderness called "the Outback." Here he's an aboriginal warrior wearing a feathered headdress, and he must navigate a hazardous landscape teeming with bizarre cryptids. Visions of the aloof and mighty Leopard Queen haunt him in the Outback, and inspire him to be a hero.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx3ks1GdtkIs3acEjLMwzwnde5SUqAMk6ycUoOx8qASAOIcYlc_oe1mjwJKISHhV6gF0qgb8T0DXMbKRWUiVf1eOUSZ6HtwdbgW137_7JM-Y26WOmqzMbXmiOZr8E0Z1YgibXc36NdAEBM6lGOPVWIUTOG53DD4tkMB3rtxgFPQH4E2HVHS5E2wsr_3g/s1070/image_2023-03-13_233249794.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="904" data-original-width="1070" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx3ks1GdtkIs3acEjLMwzwnde5SUqAMk6ycUoOx8qASAOIcYlc_oe1mjwJKISHhV6gF0qgb8T0DXMbKRWUiVf1eOUSZ6HtwdbgW137_7JM-Y26WOmqzMbXmiOZr8E0Z1YgibXc36NdAEBM6lGOPVWIUTOG53DD4tkMB3rtxgFPQH4E2HVHS5E2wsr_3g/w510-h430/image_2023-03-13_233249794.png" width="510" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>The Leopard Queen bears an uncanny resemblance to one Julie Winters, who helps out the Maxx when he gets dragged off by the police for fighting and destroying property. She's a social worker; he's a delusional homeless man who gets in trouble with the police. It's her job.</div><div><br /></div><div>Although—Julie doesn't treat the Maxx like her other clients. She becomes more of a friend to him. But she doesn't seem to mind taking that kind of responsibility for him. For one thing, he's a lot nicer than most of her other clients.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8LOzJrsnySITcOL3wQEiF75ANeOxi-hFEOoeL7DuOw-1kZyBGmvzn0APPc2pWDWa3KyjwCrm3HlD0iih86Phd7-3ZVRhDd2JOeLjIHWJtcRSr_d231K5XL_CeCVIaxkgIQHNXKhHSMfB3HvSjkZaM-_Qb8XXL18siWyw8F-UsmlLOMH5cUuX4RneVpQ/s1022/image_2023-03-13_233954227.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1022" data-original-width="634" height="632" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8LOzJrsnySITcOL3wQEiF75ANeOxi-hFEOoeL7DuOw-1kZyBGmvzn0APPc2pWDWa3KyjwCrm3HlD0iih86Phd7-3ZVRhDd2JOeLjIHWJtcRSr_d231K5XL_CeCVIaxkgIQHNXKhHSMfB3HvSjkZaM-_Qb8XXL18siWyw8F-UsmlLOMH5cUuX4RneVpQ/w393-h632/image_2023-03-13_233954227.png" width="393" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>We also meet Mr. Gone, a self-styled sorcerer who's sojourned in the Outback. He brings some of its creatures—the semi-intelligent, magically camouflaged, carnivorous "isz" species—into the city to do his bidding, most of which involves trying to kill off the Maxx and harass Julie.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Gone <i>knows</i> thing about them. Dangerous things. Cryptic things. Foreshadowy plot-thickening things.</div><div> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivc2g0atQtoBulIVIV0bozKfa70gnBWDJzdmlZ-NijPAykGh3nAjj662lTduwL17bQadQCMRJRulcbCv0qrsCmHi2Ch-QzguBV7wGaAhqkyozzZruN4KfxckXF8x4MLhAoM-XhVcTwCnf1DRO-yGXjtG74IjQA5Np45qQzAvPNHdbzq8h52ma4qWgoZw/s1175/image_2023-03-13_231713861.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1175" data-original-width="1039" height="509" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivc2g0atQtoBulIVIV0bozKfa70gnBWDJzdmlZ-NijPAykGh3nAjj662lTduwL17bQadQCMRJRulcbCv0qrsCmHi2Ch-QzguBV7wGaAhqkyozzZruN4KfxckXF8x4MLhAoM-XhVcTwCnf1DRO-yGXjtG74IjQA5Np45qQzAvPNHdbzq8h52ma4qWgoZw/w450-h509/image_2023-03-13_231713861.png" width="450" /></a></div><p><i>The Maxx</i> doesn't sugarcoat Mr. Gone's proclivities. He's a serial rapist.</p><p>Julie Winters has opinions about rape.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_QTYpDRikJCKA7aKQEmLQgDIW5pBIE59w_22YHbGMPtr5HVFnh6dRgJXiAxwHetAFX4H73dYGJbl_jcoVNQpSwWTKnT0PVQmAsSPikUij9UHo0H2jT0vcqIYbLuX2WBe-3DZENcVrK7HA2Stc3VJvEfn5xxMhIZsvZ57jmQTJTNlxN0GQgkx9I2Ha_w/s673/image_2023-03-13_234338237.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="673" data-original-width="587" height="493" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_QTYpDRikJCKA7aKQEmLQgDIW5pBIE59w_22YHbGMPtr5HVFnh6dRgJXiAxwHetAFX4H73dYGJbl_jcoVNQpSwWTKnT0PVQmAsSPikUij9UHo0H2jT0vcqIYbLuX2WBe-3DZENcVrK7HA2Stc3VJvEfn5xxMhIZsvZ57jmQTJTNlxN0GQgkx9I2Ha_w/w430-h493/image_2023-03-13_234338237.png" width="430" /></a></div><p>Julie is guilty of callousness, but not ignorance. Some years ago, when she was studying to be an architect, she pulled over to help a man who pretended to be having car troubles. He beat her up, raped her, and left her for dead. She's totally over it, though. Completely.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Yessiree.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Okay—I've got an idea. I'm not going to try to summarize the plot. That's better left to the professionals. The opening to the comic's thirteen-episode television adaptation (produced and aired during the brief but brilliant flowering of MTV Animation) sums up what the whole thing's about in a monologue, delivered by Mr. Gone, which opens up each episode.</div><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Most of us inhabit at least two worlds: the real world, where we are at the mercy of circumstance; and the world within, the unconscious, a safe place we where can escape. The Maxx shifts between these worlds against his will. Here, homeless, he lives in a box in an alley. The only one who really cares for him is Julie Winters, a freelance social worker. But in Pangaea, the other world, he rules the Outback and is the protector of Julie, his Jungle Queen. There, he cares for her. But he always ends up back in the real world. And me, old Mr. Gone? Only I can see that the secret that unites them could destroy them. I could be helpful...Ah, screw it! I think I'll have some fun with them first.</span></blockquote><div>If I could link to a video of this, I would. It's not on YouTube. It's not even on Vimeo. If you want to see it, you're on your own.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lG38fZ-U9hHJQT-nYGRzj5btXCnP4GweX9_WYU3J5ZsuUT2bhgdpHVCR_MJ3VsgB_puq9s3QlgY79GqAYzVEnt2DUhbx4EdFGS_t0DJI3oW2rUxq66NbBpBnvqQK-OH1vJy8LJ0V7JkXvcdXpyrxrAAEmSO97lgjneSsB6PpPUFSwcCSTG40WBMIdw/s787/image_2023-03-13_232009726.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="787" height="377" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lG38fZ-U9hHJQT-nYGRzj5btXCnP4GweX9_WYU3J5ZsuUT2bhgdpHVCR_MJ3VsgB_puq9s3QlgY79GqAYzVEnt2DUhbx4EdFGS_t0DJI3oW2rUxq66NbBpBnvqQK-OH1vJy8LJ0V7JkXvcdXpyrxrAAEmSO97lgjneSsB6PpPUFSwcCSTG40WBMIdw/w445-h377/image_2023-03-13_232009726.png" width="445" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Julie reasonably assumes that the Outback is a product of the Maxx's unhinged imagination. If so, then she's drawn into a <i>folie à deux </i>when she gets pulled into in the Outback with him—and discovers that it's all somehow familiar.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Turns out the Outback isn't the Maxx's fantasy: it's <i>Julie</i>'s, the inner world she built up as child, based on her Uncle Artie's stories about his time in Australia. For reasons that we can't even begin to articulate without a heap of exposition, the Maxx has been made a simultaneous resident of a sordid, corrupt urban reality and of Julie's personal dreamtime, where he recognizes her as the Jungle Queen she pretended to be when she was a little girl.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">And Julie's Uncle Artie, incidentally, was a practitioner of the mystic arts who's lately calling himself Mr. Gone. Although, actually, Mr. Gone might not be the <i>actual</i> Uncle Artie, but a magical projection whose reality is colored by the perceptions of a <i>third</i> party who also has some history with him...</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Oh, darn it. I'm synopsizing again.</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYXc5KNgKR_-Z4p4bk08Hr-SFqvASr8nnTS4VmP4G0B6pYNU4H50hk6-pZOA_3Kr5IC-biVTfggbjShRFuONpCNfBIndENZ_DEZG6_PPN_ZsUtbBWY149ecxtlkI_1xtn7bocio7aRQ4MJFojgnj0mD6E_bu404Ky6zgYwBoO3lyZXRXP_FFJwyAGMQg/s937/image_2023-03-14_002719245.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="559" data-original-width="937" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYXc5KNgKR_-Z4p4bk08Hr-SFqvASr8nnTS4VmP4G0B6pYNU4H50hk6-pZOA_3Kr5IC-biVTfggbjShRFuONpCNfBIndENZ_DEZG6_PPN_ZsUtbBWY149ecxtlkI_1xtn7bocio7aRQ4MJFojgnj0mD6E_bu404Ky6zgYwBoO3lyZXRXP_FFJwyAGMQg/w523-h313/image_2023-03-14_002719245.png" width="523" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZPZIDbKDs6f0UieKeW8t5AtgbzBDQQi1WpT0W8ndvc8TCebQyrf94FhVSPZeVyV2mCJaR0n7aSMmK8Y0MbAt3Ortqq7syl-YOkyEhp7LnauwVSW0YnwgjeqsBp_VFqFghUviG2V_3pE-cHsK6Cqj6HOIZQJP22JHlZctMQ80HNmG3AtxFLNNDVahAbg/s956/image_2023-03-14_002859495.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="956" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZPZIDbKDs6f0UieKeW8t5AtgbzBDQQi1WpT0W8ndvc8TCebQyrf94FhVSPZeVyV2mCJaR0n7aSMmK8Y0MbAt3Ortqq7syl-YOkyEhp7LnauwVSW0YnwgjeqsBp_VFqFghUviG2V_3pE-cHsK6Cqj6HOIZQJP22JHlZctMQ80HNmG3AtxFLNNDVahAbg/w523-h273/image_2023-03-14_002859495.png" width="523" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We can split <i>The Maxx</i> into two volumes. One runs from issues #1 through #20 and deals with the Maxx and Julie Winters. The second runs from issue #21 to the series' end at issue #35, and deals with Sarah—after a ten-year time skip.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div>Summarizing the first twenty issues is a messy proposition, and doesn't do <i>The Maxx</i> justice. There are a few reasons for this.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first is that Kieth and Messner-Loebs (but <i>especially</i> Kieth) were flying by the seats of their pants. Judging from some of the dialogue between the Maxx and Mr. Gone, Kieth had <i>some</i> idea of where he wanted to take the story, but was still making it up as he went along. He introduces ideas and plot threads with a lot of dramatic intrigue, and either quietly negates them or produces some conceptual contrivance to splice them together later on. (The early "revelation" that the Outback is the real world and the city is Julie's dream is a particularly salient casualty of the book's improvisational plotting.) In several issues, the Maxx and his escapades either act as a pretense for some quodlibetical tangent that interests Kieth more than superhero schtick or advancing the plot, or are altogether jettisoned in favor of a side story. (The Maxx doesn't appear at all in issue #13, which follows two separate threads about Sarah's body issues and her grandfather's attempts to escape from his nursing home.)</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">When the <i>The Maxx</i> gets purring along, it's not so much a linear journey as an <i>analytical</i> one. We have the Maxx, Julie, Sarah, and Mr. Gone. They do things with and to each other, and therein consists the book's plot. But the real <i>story</i> isn't so much about moving forward, but going <i>deeper </i>(in order <i>to</i> move forward).<i> </i>The depictions of events occurring in time function as a machine that peels back the layers of history, trauma, messy interpersonal relationships, and mystical woo to uncover The Truth. At its heart, <i>The Maxx'</i>s first volume is an unorthodox Jungian therapy session that just happens to feature a Wolverine/Hulk pastiche tromping around in a purple bodysuit.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguxnqMyEUGq_RxNI7hDtB6mypVR5ai0fWHuOZpdjcXHpUDGzB4wTLCXRFWIEZp7bh-7hKS0MgOf_HCoAjYGrTRIM-khUW_I9dlJVBPEpcN_kZXATi2Cd-Mi0V2dI69RQH8UFa24lf2IqdT_FUPg4VnZFjSnJLrqGmvWb6r2SKWkcNwyeu2DZ_4OjEHBQ/s770/image_2023-03-06_010026542.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="669" data-original-width="770" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguxnqMyEUGq_RxNI7hDtB6mypVR5ai0fWHuOZpdjcXHpUDGzB4wTLCXRFWIEZp7bh-7hKS0MgOf_HCoAjYGrTRIM-khUW_I9dlJVBPEpcN_kZXATi2Cd-Mi0V2dI69RQH8UFa24lf2IqdT_FUPg4VnZFjSnJLrqGmvWb6r2SKWkcNwyeu2DZ_4OjEHBQ/w484-h420/image_2023-03-06_010026542.png" width="484" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But what makes such an unseemly endeavor of boxing <i>The Maxx</i>'s "Julie" arc into a few blurbs of synopsis is that it's an illustrator's book—a realization of Image Comics' promise to turn over control to comic artists. That Sam Kieth is an artist first and a writer second is obvious from the outset. This isn't the work of someone who thinks of the comics page in terms of sequential boxes containing pictures and words (as do most authors when they write a script for an illustrator to follow), but as a unified whole. Kieth routinely draws oversized eye-popping panels and experiments with layouts, and the results can be extraordinary—though it also makes pulling images for this writeup a real bitch, what with all the giant, irregularly shaped panels, panels within panels, objects and word balloons/boxes crossing borders, and unusual formatting. (My favorite instance is below: several pages from issue #20 are framed by two full-height vertical columns depicting Julie Winters and the Leopard Queen making contact.) </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The point is, The<i> Maxx</i> is tough to talk about as a trip from Point A to Point D by way of Points B and C. Sam Kieth, like any excellent visual artist, isn't a linear thinker. That was the reason he asked Messner-Loebs to be his co-author; he needed someone to help him process and format his ideas, and even with Messner-Loebs' input, <i>The Maxx</i> is still all the hell over the place. The reader following the story as it advances forward in time and delves deeper into its characters' lives isn't asked to follow a thread so much as apprehend the structure of a woven mesh.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx9ZUFe_SqO42w0s6j3SnF76kaHrmUWpU3uJTRAuufSgGCchCx5rHiAnii5Owp58Op61icvotC_FA_TDbgZUeRsZchkZ41AUDouJjHNGEMDeFFFgT-Q8Eq80c6SdsnauFBFmgv1tUzPuxx7n8_lJ188qHm401DOHqF6a0Iq91qGuquwQvFFcliLnzp8Q/s1180/image_2023-03-23_021146881.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1180" data-original-width="244" height="680" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx9ZUFe_SqO42w0s6j3SnF76kaHrmUWpU3uJTRAuufSgGCchCx5rHiAnii5Owp58Op61icvotC_FA_TDbgZUeRsZchkZ41AUDouJjHNGEMDeFFFgT-Q8Eq80c6SdsnauFBFmgv1tUzPuxx7n8_lJ188qHm401DOHqF6a0Iq91qGuquwQvFFcliLnzp8Q/w140-h680/image_2023-03-23_021146881.png" width="140" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXAJliqbF24JZTjc-vgSD4RjxMFxpKGxSryHtPi99doSMJwcAwey4zx049y27mECD5bmBtEBqAHJ-vZKsnccxvrcvAbx3_-wROLL3jbfa8EmhVlh_Vn6NBxhK2QvCeUNkPg9hHqaTNG-JznX_urnJ2TPL5OB3DGrwviECvAH5hB9h6VlpM6TIVNtqeiQ/s1180/image_2023-03-23_021241183.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1180" data-original-width="244" height="679" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXAJliqbF24JZTjc-vgSD4RjxMFxpKGxSryHtPi99doSMJwcAwey4zx049y27mECD5bmBtEBqAHJ-vZKsnccxvrcvAbx3_-wROLL3jbfa8EmhVlh_Vn6NBxhK2QvCeUNkPg9hHqaTNG-JznX_urnJ2TPL5OB3DGrwviECvAH5hB9h6VlpM6TIVNtqeiQ/w140-h679/image_2023-03-23_021241183.png" width="140" /></a><br /><br /></div>The credits page at the beginning of <i>The Maxx</i>'s second volume, issue #21, conclusively disqualify the title from being categorized as a superhero book. Messner-Loebs had left the book, and for a single issue his role was filled by none other than Alan Moore. And if Alan Moore had gotten even the faintest whiff of "superhero" from <i>The Maxx</i>, he would have kept his distance.</div><div><br /></div><div>In volume two, <i>The Maxx</i> abandons every last trapping of a superhero comic and leans into magical realism.</div><div><br /></div><div>I wonder whether it was Kieth or Moore who came up with the explanation of Mr. Gone's name. When a grown-up Sara (who's dropped the "h" in her name) tracks him down to a trailer park and goes knocking at his door, we discover his real name is Artie Pender. He's in his mid-to-late sixties now, and more or less harmless. Back when he was a serial-rapist sorcerer who menaced Julie and the Maxx (before switching over and becoming Julie's devilish guide), it <i>seems</i> that version of him was an avatar, a projection he broadcast from a distance. (Like so much else in <i>The Maxx</i>, this isn't altogether consistent with later events and revelations, but this is a book where this kind of thing matters less than you'd think. Nonlinear, magical thinking doesn't archive its receipts.)</div><div><br /></div><div>"Magical forms are more like a language than individuals," Artie explains to Sara. "They're like letters from some alien alphabet. So much depends on how you interpret them." </div><div><br /></div><div>This, he claims, is why he has no recollection of going by the name "Mr. Gone." Apparently Sara's perception of him colored certain aspects of his appearance, including his name for himself.</div><div><br /></div><div>We know from issue #4 that Artie left Sara behind when she was "too young to remember." Her mother told her that he killed himself. Turns out, that was a lie—Sara's mom didn't want to tell her that her daddy had a history of sexually assaulting women, and asked him to leave when she began to fear for her (Sara's) safety. Sara never got over the loss.</div><div><br /></div><div>And so he became Mr. Gone. The man who isn't there.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBQnzvAkL-0rpHCA-FDyPcjUwBx0RJrpB6xWeBkpPvh5sVaV4hPGfEenhMySCeToEEh8BT7XwmnSPM2odK_16WCL0TyEFbcWl29JuBQRxIImewxhLALOYAQMbtu4qQxbJSeeyzpStTjOJNugE5CXTuLzSMUmvteNIYQ8Ytktmod2s0PmdosCWa6Qm9zA/s891/image_2023-03-24_025155390.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="447" data-original-width="891" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBQnzvAkL-0rpHCA-FDyPcjUwBx0RJrpB6xWeBkpPvh5sVaV4hPGfEenhMySCeToEEh8BT7XwmnSPM2odK_16WCL0TyEFbcWl29JuBQRxIImewxhLALOYAQMbtu4qQxbJSeeyzpStTjOJNugE5CXTuLzSMUmvteNIYQ8Ytktmod2s0PmdosCWa6Qm9zA/w548-h277/image_2023-03-24_025155390.png" width="548" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijAlXiNj5aYvelLSFvc2sOJvMoX-E3AcRBx0fm9ZjGwZ0cvSX8DccdP0O-lJGHA6rge3kVhTO05bLkNlj4XpupINqZut9DBomILytWKeDZ3NXZIfwoXDDBZCq5JTKmWSwgNoL1c-ZYCF7iP0b25ij4uPLUydzi_JtmNn707VW2hK-s78PHxpp5_KPFhQ/s891/image_2023-03-24_025241705.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="447" data-original-width="891" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijAlXiNj5aYvelLSFvc2sOJvMoX-E3AcRBx0fm9ZjGwZ0cvSX8DccdP0O-lJGHA6rge3kVhTO05bLkNlj4XpupINqZut9DBomILytWKeDZ3NXZIfwoXDDBZCq5JTKmWSwgNoL1c-ZYCF7iP0b25ij4uPLUydzi_JtmNn707VW2hK-s78PHxpp5_KPFhQ/w548-h277/image_2023-03-24_025241705.png" width="548" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Sara's arc more or less takes up the remainder of the book's run. (I say "more or less" because the train willfully jumps the track towards the end—but we'll get into that later.) All is not well in Sara's personal Outback. A banana slug named Iago that slipped into the real world ten years ago has grown to monstrous proportions and gone on a rampage. She allies with her own Maxx—Norbert the horse—to put a stop to the carnage, but they can't do it without getting some help from Artie.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Once again the story is about a female character confronting her trauma. Iago is the incarnation of all the grief and rage Sara suffered ever since her dad left, and it's been going around and murdering everyone who was <i>once</i> important to her in a twisted expression of his progenitor's abandonment issues. Sara's relationship with her estranged father becomes the emotional thrust that gives the second volume its forward momentum. Even when he was Mr. Gone, Artie's paternal affection for his daughter shone through his sardonic malevolence, and he desperately wants to reconnect with Sara. Understandably, Sara isn't thrilled about having a psychic voyeur and serial rapist for a dad, no matter how sweet and cute he comes across now that he's "retired."</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>The Maxx</i>'s second volume doesn't quite reach the heights of the first. Kieth has grown as a writer, which may account for why the pages take on a less ambitious, more familiar grid format: now that he's the sole author, he has to think of the page in terms as the vehicle for a script. (It may also be that he was losing his zest for the work, but we'll get into that in a minute.) Even so, without the influence of the more seasoned Messner-Loebs, Kieth struggles to keep things on an even keel. Issues #21 through #35 aren't <i>bad. </i>They just aren't equal to the tour-de-force of issues #1 through #20.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Issue #26—titled "The Origin of Mr. Gone"—compensates for every other area in which the book's second phase falls short of the first.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I won't go into detail, except to say that Mr. Gone's story is of the cycle of abuse. <i>The Maxx</i> #26 is one of the most wrenching, raw, and <i>real</i> issues of a comic book I've ever read. It makes Moore's epochal origin story for the Joker in <i>The Killing Joke</i> seem like a Saturday morning kiddie matinee by comparison—although, since we've established that <i>The Maxx</i> isn't a superhero book, we're comparing apples to oranges here.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsyfj6ekZV33WCsdB7iI4ZYG6WTboGe05JsNCsiFUAiB-t49-DTeB4myHetnnj7dcW77RSNH0zQC9ptnlc2wj_1xe7Tj_hYoh4sVtyqygpSqHzGED_Nujms5PK0I48cFHrFUtBiWgVaFZpGBw4tOh2ifbejjPb2LNOWwRpnhPdTQ1x23AlRBRCksT6Jg/s973/image_2023-03-24_034423015.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="973" height="349" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsyfj6ekZV33WCsdB7iI4ZYG6WTboGe05JsNCsiFUAiB-t49-DTeB4myHetnnj7dcW77RSNH0zQC9ptnlc2wj_1xe7Tj_hYoh4sVtyqygpSqHzGED_Nujms5PK0I48cFHrFUtBiWgVaFZpGBw4tOh2ifbejjPb2LNOWwRpnhPdTQ1x23AlRBRCksT6Jg/w502-h349/image_2023-03-24_034423015.png" width="502" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">As often as <i>The Maxx</i> indulges in off-kilter humor, deviates into fanciful and/or creepy tangents, and plays fast and loose with its own continuity, the whole thing is held together by the thematic ligature of <i>trauma</i>. Julie was raped.<span style="font-size: small;"><super>*</super></span> Sara lost her dad. Artie was raped, became a rapist, and has to live with a past he can't escape from and a shadow he can't exorcize from himself as he tries to reconcile with his beloved daughter.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">* It should be mentioned that ground zero, the pivotal moment in which something vital inside of Julie was shut off (setting up her long-term response to a very bad night) happened much earlier in her life, and had nothing to do with sexual abuse. I can't see into Kieth or Messner-Loeb's heads, but I'd like to think this shows some genre-savvy deliberateness on their parts. Julie's narrative goes deeper than "it all began with a rape"—although for the purposes of a glancing review, it's more convenient to highlight the traumatic event we can a put a one-word name to than the very particular set of interlocking events that scarred her as a child.)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Julie, Sara, and Artie are <i>The Maxx</i>'s true protagonists, the people whose journeys of discovery and reconciliation constitute the real meat of the book. Meanwhile, both of the characters called the Maxx are like Shakespeare's Cymbeline, titular figures playing third fiddle. Norbert the horse, who acts as the Maxx of Sara's Outback, appears as a one-dimensional guide and protector. As the first arc came together, it turned out that Julie's Maxx was an innocent bystander supernaturally thrust into the role of her spirit animal, and can't become a complete, autonomous person until he helps her sort out her inner life. He's the genderswapped version of the female sidekick who solely functions to help the male hero complete his journey, and discovers that it's a pretty lousy position to be in. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">This wasn't by design. Kieth obviously believed he needed to do a male-centered superhero comic if he wanted to sell copies, and <i>The Maxx</i> outgrew that conceit in short order. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason he introduced a new Maxx (one that doesn't even<i> try</i> to look like a costumed super-character) to accompany Sara is because he worried about the awkwardness of selling a book whose namesake had walked off the set.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Looking at the covers from the Julie arc, you probably wouldn't guess that <i>The Maxx</i> isn't really a superhero comic, and you definitely wouldn't suppose it's a book about women. The first issue introduces Julie as a social worker who dresses "like a hooker" and whose amazonian alter-ego poses in a leopard-fur bikini, but this probably came out of Kieth's early efforts to give his imagined audience what he thought it would spend money on. Once he comes into his stride and grows a bit more confident about telling the kind stories he <i>wants</i> to tell, <i>The Maxx</i> becomes not only a book about women, but one that would almost certainly pass muster under evaluation from a hard feminist lens—even though it would pose a few challenges. If I hadn't seen the credits pages and you asked me whether I thought its writer was a man or a woman, I'd probably venture to say there must have been at least an occasional female co-author, or a guest writer for certain issues. (Although as a man I might not be the best judge of this sort of thing.)</div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxvAccHgObQ804sl8Xa1YTGCBp17CAF9N5RNZ2OPES7z0tE6pfxUfBjJObD_GA3je9ncJIT73HyOHrWCd9MDhuE6OLPq0Rj57DmGfmAbq2NZWlKyQiY_L99mnQLhAgpsVSeax9uFPLFsjKVCN8Ma6QkR0lgxDowiyOW7JUPzdbK_PeRoepAFqT45qGDA/s728/image_2023-03-06_003905616.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="674" data-original-width="728" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxvAccHgObQ804sl8Xa1YTGCBp17CAF9N5RNZ2OPES7z0tE6pfxUfBjJObD_GA3je9ncJIT73HyOHrWCd9MDhuE6OLPq0Rj57DmGfmAbq2NZWlKyQiY_L99mnQLhAgpsVSeax9uFPLFsjKVCN8Ma6QkR0lgxDowiyOW7JUPzdbK_PeRoepAFqT45qGDA/w485-h448/image_2023-03-06_003905616.png" width="485" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I was just about to say that <i>The Maxx</i> is at its best when it's dealing with emotionally vulnerable moments between its flawed and damaged characters, or quietly examining their fears, insecurities, and efforts to either push through or avoid confronting them. "It's a <i>really</i> human book," I might have said. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But maybe that's not it. Maybe the book reaches its local maxima when Kieth lets his imagination and pencil run wild and delivers us into the ecotones where inner and outer reality overlap, and introduces us to its indigenous cultures, dangerous wildlife, and bizarre environmental dynamics. Maybe it's at its best when it becomes a horror book. Or a mystery book. Or a comedy book. Since fans tend to agree that issues #1 through #20 outshine issues #21 through #35, maybe the pseudo-superhero stuff counts for more than we think...?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>The Maxx</i>'s greatest accomplishment is being exactly what it is. I've never read another comic book like it. The only objects of comparison that come to mind are any number of "underground" black and white comics from the 1980s and webcomics from the early 2000s, but only insofar as none of them quite seemed to know what they were doing and were exceedingly messy. <i>The Maxx</i> turns this into a strength: since it never reaches a point where it becomes satisfied with itself, it never really exits that "seasons two and three" phase to coast on a reliable and practiced method.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I read <i>The Maxx</i> all in one night some time ago, and afterwards found that a superfan with the YouTube handle JerkComic had put out an eight-hour video series called "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iXCK2o1yck" target="_blank">How The Maxx Broke Sam Kieth</a>." I'll confess I've only jumped around through it—it's <i>eight hours</i> long—but it helps to explain how the comic became what it is. This isn't the place to recapitulate the stories of the behind-the-scenes drama and bullshit that plagued Kieth to the point where he finally said "fuck it, in issue #35 Mr. Gone casts a spell that rewrites the timeline and puts an end to all this shit," but it will suffice to say that it seems Kieth worked on <i>The Maxx</i> in a perpetual state of discomfort, placing the book in a condition of ongoing reevaluation and evolution.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ncWKtAhCpDYLEvV-OhuHhTvWSvGUDse23-q3aX39XleabnutAlDV9kEcVcbNgiaCxqkKMu3BLX6NlzpsUveHtrsY_uBNrfWSPikQivVOhr3k-33L1NrsioFYZpsPMJ5yGUAbStpxo4im1glgxjacA_oXVVlLzfI27R5fU94TzJLLniyD-Yr9f9E5gg/s673/image_2023-03-25_142752387.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="673" data-original-width="511" height="615" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ncWKtAhCpDYLEvV-OhuHhTvWSvGUDse23-q3aX39XleabnutAlDV9kEcVcbNgiaCxqkKMu3BLX6NlzpsUveHtrsY_uBNrfWSPikQivVOhr3k-33L1NrsioFYZpsPMJ5yGUAbStpxo4im1glgxjacA_oXVVlLzfI27R5fU94TzJLLniyD-Yr9f9E5gg/w467-h615/image_2023-03-25_142752387.png" width="467" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">My initial thought about Kieth adopting a more conventional comic book layout in the later issues was that as he began to approach the work as its sole writer, having to script issues in advance made him look at the page as the linear medium for delivering that script. (This isn't <i>always</i> the case, but as the series nears its end, there are many fewer pages that look like the one directly above and many more that look like the one directly below.) It might also have been that he was <i>tired </i>and bereft of the early enthusiasm and hunger which brought him to give 110% to illustrating every page as a single, integrated composition. Issues #30 through #34 use the main plot as a framing device for self-contained side stories, and JerkComic adduces these as evidence of Kieth's desperation to get the hell away from<i> The Maxx</i>, its characters, and their stories.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>The Maxx </i>bears such an inexorable imprint of its artist/author that it remains completely true to itself even when it's conscientiously trying to escape from itself. When I came to this point in the book, I didn't bat an eye. Nothing seemed amiss, except I found it odd that Kieth would go off on a series of unrelated tangents right as the comic was coming up to the end. Had I not known that there were only five issues to go, I wouldn't have guessed for a moment that Kieth might be running out of steam and waffling on the question of whether to reboot the comic into a more suitable vehicle for the stories he was interested in telling and the pictures he was interested in drawing, or end it altogether.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkHwe6Y1zyVMdlhwiZbF_PPcn80nNhZ81jI7HsFLiTn3B3wnhiE5I6Am4aAhcRywFj90mskT7jXf8gHY6dDbihf6mvirs-ZF32yIYj4-YVMxFkmLNb-De4zRDtlcQYvii_lfaaft35xGRVCmAWd8aX21A5FEej6PVb2hWnLAD1OscB76ZOUT1Wz-xL7g/s634/image_2023-03-25_143543581.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="634" data-original-width="517" height="596" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkHwe6Y1zyVMdlhwiZbF_PPcn80nNhZ81jI7HsFLiTn3B3wnhiE5I6Am4aAhcRywFj90mskT7jXf8gHY6dDbihf6mvirs-ZF32yIYj4-YVMxFkmLNb-De4zRDtlcQYvii_lfaaft35xGRVCmAWd8aX21A5FEej6PVb2hWnLAD1OscB76ZOUT1Wz-xL7g/w486-h596/image_2023-03-25_143543581.png" width="486" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I don't think I can go on like this. Trying to write about<i> The Maxx </i>at a digestible mid-length, and to an imaginary reader that has no prior familiarity with it, is like describing an acid trip to someone who's never taken one. Not only are you trying to relate events that they really needed to have been there for, but there's also nothing in their experience you can analogize them to. How do you write about a comic book that doesn't fit into any genre, resists comparison to anything else, and doesn't seem to understand <i>itself</i> half the time? I'm realizing that this is book that either needs a more academic treatment than I'm prepared to give it, or should just be a quietly acknowledged source of inspiration for a soul-delving artistic clusterfuck of one's own.</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Having recently reread Adorno and Horkheimer's landmark essay on the culture industry, it's comforting to see a product of mass culture put a lie to their words. If we believe Adorno, <i>The Maxx</i> shouldn't even exist. It should have been a by-the-numbers superhero comic, or a by-the-numbers superhero satire, or a by-the-numbers magical realist Vertigo comic, or else it should have been rejected like an invasive and unwanted thought in the consciousness of the comic-consuming public.<span style="font-size: small;"><super>*</super></span> Kieth was a rare mutant genius who tried and failed to conform to the program, and through a freak of circumstance, produced a mold-breaking opus in spite of himself.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">* Maybe Adorno and his account of the culture industry still get the last laugh in explaining why <i>The Maxx</i> was so swiftly and so thoroughly forgotten, despite being enough of a hit to spawn a merchandise line and an MTV series.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It seems futile to wish for more comics like it—ones that are at once so utterly unlike anything else, and yet so obviously superb in terms of whatever metric we have to borrow or invent to judge them by. But <i>The Maxx</i> proves that they're <i>possible</i>.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVUnBSwPWyz9WwFTjJcYSkFa_FKbYPj5b8oZEzN64kcwOSjBWZOTfuG1Ki1MI-m8EfZY4h9GTabFYd8chR_Nk4DGfEup2GNSuGjKoPOSH3h5MxOlF2dgnwPm0vafoEFkw7GmMYieyLwlq84IJJ1x0_LojQxmDQtSYSmMeKXCgYDOqGnLYtK5KIyVyc0A/s502/image_2023-03-27_012237692.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="415" data-original-width="502" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVUnBSwPWyz9WwFTjJcYSkFa_FKbYPj5b8oZEzN64kcwOSjBWZOTfuG1Ki1MI-m8EfZY4h9GTabFYd8chR_Nk4DGfEup2GNSuGjKoPOSH3h5MxOlF2dgnwPm0vafoEFkw7GmMYieyLwlq84IJJ1x0_LojQxmDQtSYSmMeKXCgYDOqGnLYtK5KIyVyc0A/w367-h304/image_2023-03-27_012237692.png" width="367" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><br />NEXT:</b> <a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2023/04/kontemplating-komix-empowered-2007.html">Actually, I'm not sure</a></div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-30217151705374609392023-03-13T03:02:00.021-04:002023-03-13T03:34:37.524-04:00The mummery of "You Cannot Walk Here"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzoHW5OF-NYz-0DQ7gIE28GF-0a1ovWjfSVkb7-daiHr7hG4nlbO5R25zvzGVEotIJa6FfQQnxlEaHx4Y4w7_Y5Uzsd1duf4g2rGXvzbSoDA_kpHNWZhTm_TSqrPCaP97xljAnfge6QqeHmJ88EBiQoc0NmKCf8x3vyWZOJ69EuT1wD7vVBZ8Kepru4g/s630/image_2023-02-22_231345100.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="630" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzoHW5OF-NYz-0DQ7gIE28GF-0a1ovWjfSVkb7-daiHr7hG4nlbO5R25zvzGVEotIJa6FfQQnxlEaHx4Y4w7_Y5Uzsd1duf4g2rGXvzbSoDA_kpHNWZhTm_TSqrPCaP97xljAnfge6QqeHmJ88EBiQoc0NmKCf8x3vyWZOJ69EuT1wD7vVBZ8Kepru4g/w332-h332/image_2023-02-22_231345100.png" width="332" /></a></div><p>The music I want to hear changes with the season, and during the fall and winter months I crave industrial. Since the clocks were set an hour back in November, I've been listening to a lot of Wumpscut in my little alcove in the office. I've enjoyed listening to KMFDM's <i>Nihil</i> all the way through at least once a week. Give me Skinny Puppy, give me SPK and Frontline Assembly and Leæther Strip.</p><p>Sometime in early February I started on a Birmingham 6 binge. Maybe we could say they spent their all-too-short career playing second fiddle to KMFDM, but I love them all the same. I kept their 1995 album <i>Assassinate</i> (a mixed-up stateside version of 1994's <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVNVWOWuEWo" target="_blank">Mindhallucination</a></i>) in heavy rotation throughout high school, but it wasn't until the days of file sharing that I came upon their epic sophomore effort <i>Error of Judgement</i> (featuring Front 242's Jean-Luc De Meyer).</p><p>A week or two I caught myself singing along to to <i>Error of Judgement'</i>s fifth track, "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YjAdqcrMIw" target="_blank">You Cannot Walk Here</a>." And why not? It's a jam. But listening the lyrics coming out of one's own mouth can be jarring, perhaps to the extent that some neurotic mutant might wish to issue an apologia for the track and his enjoyment of it.</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Here, then, are the words to "You Cannot Walk Here," copy/pasted in their entirety, presumably transcribed from a set of liner notes. Do forgive the awkward diction and improper capitals; Birmingham 6 is from Denmark, and English wasn't their first language.<p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">You Cannot Walk Here, You Cannot Walk Here<br />I've Been Watching You All The Way<br />Where The Hell Do You Think You Are?<br />You Cannot Walk Here, You Cannot Walk Here<br />You're On My Land, Soiling My Ground<br /><br />You Cannot Walk Here, You Cannot Walk Here<br />What You Say I Don't Understand<br />Beware I Have My Gun At Hand<br />You Cannot Walk Here, You Cannot Walk Here<br />You Want A Shelter From The Rain<br />I Don't Want You To Stay</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Wrong Way! Dead End! No Entrance!<br />There Is Nothing For You Here!<br />Wrong Way! Dead End! No Entrance!<br />Wrong Way! Dead End! Is It Clear?<br />Crawl Back To Where You Come From!<br />Hey Stranger You're Not Welcome Here!<br /><br />You Cannot Stay Here, You Cannot Stay Here<br />I Don't Want To Be Seen With You<br />What Would My Neighbours Say?<br />You Cannot Stay Here, You Cannot Stay<br />For We Just Might Get Used To Know Each Other<br />Maybe Become Friends And I Don't Want That<br />And I Don't Want That<br />There Is No Bed For You Tonight<br />No Room Inside For Someone Like You<br />For Someone Like You<br />You Cannot Stay Here, You Cannot Stay!<br /><br />Wrong Way! Dead End! No Entrance!<br />There Is Nothing For You Here!<br />Wrong Way! Dead End! No Entrance!<br />Wrong Way! Dead End! Is It Clear?<br />Crawl Back To Where You Come From!<br />Hey Stranger You're Not Welcome Here!<br /><br />The Spring Has Gone, My Well Is Dry<br />There's No More Water In My Jars<br />That's Why...<br /><br />You Cannot Drink Here, You Cannot Drink Here<br />My Wine Has Turned To Vinegar<br />The Well Is Dry, The Spring Has Gone<br />You Cannot Drink Here Nor Even Eat<br />You Say You're Starving, You Say You're Starving<br />But There Is Nothing Left For You<br />I Have A Family To Feed, My Granaries Are Empty<br />You Cannot Eat Here, You Cannot Eat Here<br />You Cannot Eat!<br /><br />You Cannot Walk Here, You Cannot Walk Here<br />This Place Is Not Your Paradise<br />Go To Hell, Shrivel Up And Die<br />You Cannot Walk Here, You Cannot Walk Here<br />You Cannot Walk Here!<br /><br />You Cannot Walk Here!</span></blockquote><div><br />Context is important here.</div><div><br /></div><div>Birmingham 6 takes their name from the six innocent Irishmen made to take the fall for a string of IRA bombings in the 1970s. Most of their lyrics treat political topics. They condemn violence motivated by religion, the prostitution of minors to sex tourists, antiabortion laws, thuggish police, and warmongering politicians. "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLAUGnxPSRg" target="_blank">One of These Days</a>" (pointedly included on the <i>You Cannot Walk Here</i> single, below) fearfully predicts a resurgence of violent right-wing nationalism; undoubtedly the band's retired members took no pleasure in the twenty-first century proving them right.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span> Point is, Birmingham 6 is decidedly left-of-center. The sentiments expressed in "You Cannot Walk Here" are not genuine.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">* Hmm. Not that it matters, but this is a remix. You probably need either the compact disc or a torrent to hear the album version.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>"You Cannot Walk Here" gets you bobbing your head and singing along to a song about bigotry, sung from the perspective of a bigot. There's no last-verse epiphany, and the closest thing to an ironic wink to the listener occurs when the speaker briefly considers the possibility of friendship with the Other whom he addresses, only to immediately bark "and I don't want that! and I don't want that!" It's despicable from beginning to end.</div><div><br /></div><div>And yet, Birmingham 6 trusts the listener to pick up on the irony. The band doesn't mean to glorify the speaker's viewpoint, even though it's articulated in a song that's damned catchy and doesn't utter a single syllable that explicitly disavows itself. The palpable <i>meanness</i> of "You Cannot Walk Here" suffices to get across what it's actually saying. The klansmen on the single's cover aren't glamorized; they're depicted as monsters.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even so, that doesn't change the basic fact that the listener is bobbing his head and taking pleasure from a song in which some hard-hearted jerk heaps abuse on some impoverished itinerant who's Not From Around Here.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSQWe_N7CnFx1BiWwHUuiNwJSp9urx1JWeLxLXx4J__xQ6zwbY4Ops7bkMUCrux4TiKUoMhzPa-fJa0mkkN4_UoPirilPAkADOI2u_0EcZjo1XVbIKHmqHF6NDkQiVxBPvONdRl-vycmxD8HuiRQQRkAB3GZzuGTG5Bf02Lbo82d8caYli8R7QFpOMNQ/s630/image_2023-03-10_013822728.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="630" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSQWe_N7CnFx1BiWwHUuiNwJSp9urx1JWeLxLXx4J__xQ6zwbY4Ops7bkMUCrux4TiKUoMhzPa-fJa0mkkN4_UoPirilPAkADOI2u_0EcZjo1XVbIKHmqHF6NDkQiVxBPvONdRl-vycmxD8HuiRQQRkAB3GZzuGTG5Bf02Lbo82d8caYli8R7QFpOMNQ/w374-h374/image_2023-03-10_013822728.png" width="374" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">* Another contextual note: <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/123887-Birmingham-6-You-Cannot-Walk-Here" target="_blank">the single's American release</a> had a different cover. Possibly there were concerns that the image might be misconstrued as celebrating the KKK instead of demonizing them, which wasn't an unreasonable fear in the slobs' home country. There's no room for ambiguity in the alternate cover.)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">"How often do popular musicians put out songs like this?" is an impossible question, whether we're only talking about the recorded music of our own progressive and enlightened age or including sea shanties and 78s. Whatever the frequency of it, tunes that coax out our imps of the perverse do penetrate the mainstream, and much more deeply than did a track by an obscure Danish industrial act. Nirvana's epochal <i>Nevermind</i> had "Polly." Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks" was fucking inescapable for a while in the 2010s. With the rise of gangsta rap in the late 1980s and the recent popularity of drill, there's been at least one sphere in the orrery of Western popular music in which antisocial and/or criminal behavior is romanticized.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But "You Cannot Walk Here" is a bit different. One could make the case that its lyrics represent a more fundamental moral failing than calling 187 on an undercover cop. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud4hgJwA0wY" target="_blank">Beating a bitch down in the goddamn street</a> is a bad action, but we understand bigotry to be the expression of a bad will and a generally bad way of <i>being</i>. (John McWhorter has repeatedly said that in the United States the only epithet that carries the pejorative weight of "racist" is "pedophile.")<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">* This can give rise to some truly bizarre behavior, as recently witnessed in the case of <a href="https://6abc.com/racist-rant-viral-video-racism-amys-pizzeria/12911214/" target="_blank">a Pennsylvania woman who flipped her shit at a pizza parlor</a>. "What's wrong with that is you're not an American," she says in one breath, and "I am not a racist" in another. She's clearly comfortable acting the part, but nevertheless fears the label.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The pleasure a [theoretical] listener takes from "You Cannot Walk Here" (assuming he isn't actually someone whose Facebook posts routinely read like the lyrics) might be comparable to the pleasure a horror buff takes in watching slasher movies (assuming he isn't actually a knife-wielding maniac himself). Jason, Freddy Krueger, Ghostface, et al. are popular icons, and we love them because we thrill in watching them viciously murder people (and get their comeuppance) in scripted spectacles—even though we have absolutely no sympathy for actual serial killers who butcher people in real life.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">"The man who first flung a word of abuse at his enemy instead of a spear was the founder of civilization," runs the Freudian aphorism. And it was also the instatement of repression and neurosis as cornerstones of human existence. Cathexis is the upkeep cost of living in society.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Freud might say watching a <i>Friday the 13th</i> flick gives release to the energies of the death drive. On some level, a part of us wants to behave like the chimps we essentially are and brutalize people who irritate us. (At the risk of editorializing, I'd wager this is more common in human males than females.) When Jason hacks off some camp counselor's head with a machete, that part of us is relieved to identify with him. He's doing what we cannot ever allow ourselves to do, and if we didn't feel good about it, Jason wouldn't have lumbered across another nine movies after <i>Friday the 13th Part 2</i>.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The analogy here should be obvious. You know the speaker's attitude in "You Cannot Walk Here" is unacceptable, but at the same time, there's a shadow in you that doesn't want to be the nice, understanding, generous person you try to be, and whom you'd like to be recognized as. That part of you wants to let go of the leash with which you restrained your biases and your ungenerous thoughts, and let them slather and snarl at the Other to whom you've always been taught to Be Kind. Listening to "You Cannot Walk Here" is an opportunity to relax your arm in a way that doesn't cause actual harm to another person and ultimately remind yourself why you're gripping the leash in the first place.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In its a crude, disintegrated modern way, all of this is somewhat analogous to ancient communal rituals like Kronia, Saturnalia, and Carnival—holidays during which norms were inverted and taboos lifted. There is no indication that any of these festivals weakened the social order by periodically subjecting it to a controlled dissolution. As a matter of fact, there is reason to believe the way of things came out <i>reinforced</i>.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I can imagine Birmingham 6 playing a little club somewhere in late 1996 and performing "You Cannot Walk Here" to an enthusiastic audience that had memorized the lyrics. (We should assume that band's categorical opposition to religious fundamentalism and reactionary nationalism, writ large in their lyrics, filtered out the right-wing rivetheads.) Like Saturnalia in miniature, it would have provided an occasion for a socially liberal audience to temporarily "flip," verbally acting out the character of their political rivals and moral opponents (whom the lyrics still present as execrable bastards) within a space where it was permissible to do so. Moreover, it would have still been under contextual control: confined to that place and time, and with the Christian mummer's implicit understanding that dressing up in a devil costume as part of a Christmastide festival is a left-handed gesture of faith.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This is <i>healthy</i>. It's like a kind of cultural homeopathy wherein a small, ironic dose of a baleful way of thinking inoculates the listener against coming to truly countenance it. Again, context is crucial here: I wouldn't be saying any of this about "You Cannot Walk Here" if it were rather written and performed by a Nazi punk act who shouted its lyrics in earnest. As it is, though, we have a dark bop with an anti-prejudicial message articulated in the language <i>of</i> prejudice. Sometimes we can more effectively confront the devil within and without when we've had some experience wearing the mask of his likeness.</div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-47852656988800844262023-03-08T00:37:00.002-05:002023-03-08T00:37:45.479-05:00Decisions, Update<p>I appreciated people weighing in on the Substack question, although I still haven't come to a decision.</p><p>Blogger is a zombie platform. Few people use it anymore, and Google retires existing features more often than it implements new ones. Substack is fresh, and it has a <i>scene</i>. Maybe I'm kidding myself, but it seems like Substack would be an opportunity to join in and contribute to The Conversation instead of talking to myself here.</p><p>Two things give me pause:</p><p>(1) I'm a bit of a packrat. I don't like the idea of tossing out over a decade's worth of Content. Although—maybe this would be a good opportunity to sift through it all, pick out anything that's truly worth preserving, and dispose of the dross.</p><p>(2) This is a Blog. My intention was never to Build a Personal Brand or focus exclusively on Topic X or Theme Y, but to just spout off whatever was on my mind during a given day or week or month. I feel like if I switched to writing a Substack newsletter, I'd have to make it <i>about</i> something. I might even end up pressuring myself to go topical, which I've never, ever been good at (except maybe when I was making comics about video games years and years ago). Then again, restricting myself to subjects situated within certain parameters could improve my output. Who knows?</p><p>I'm not ruling anything out yet, but I should probably make myself choose whether to fish or cut bait sooner than later.</p>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-71132397656104411182023-03-05T17:57:00.011-05:002023-04-27T20:31:35.847-04:00Kontemplating Komix: Shade, The Changing Man (1990–96)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk2mC_xUs_GJB9U4FOmp_7bntkYB7zBMIWz3k5NRKacSeI-vu-RIFQSZbMLqG75M628VaCRXadPpurCWeNgweLUON7fRalsqOVP2QKB-VSzVW-vEuuGmJ0USATyR1cxGquwRAspmQYT87swSYY3Xs6RdnWjpSGrR5B6XdsSvFlVwTSJV0Yu97NEkVCrA/s633/image_2023-03-04_001607732.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="633" data-original-width="420" height="497" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk2mC_xUs_GJB9U4FOmp_7bntkYB7zBMIWz3k5NRKacSeI-vu-RIFQSZbMLqG75M628VaCRXadPpurCWeNgweLUON7fRalsqOVP2QKB-VSzVW-vEuuGmJ0USATyR1cxGquwRAspmQYT87swSYY3Xs6RdnWjpSGrR5B6XdsSvFlVwTSJV0Yu97NEkVCrA/w329-h497/image_2023-03-04_001607732.png" width="329" /></a></div><p>This has been something I've meant to do for a<i> long</i> time. The images I collected for a <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> writeup are in a folder that's almost three years old. There just never seemed to be a good time to go ahead and make it happen. Lately I've gotten it into my head that there are a couple of other underappreciated comic books that I'd like to write about, so I figure I might as well do a little series, starting with <i>Shade</i>.</p><p><i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> is the seminal comic serial of author Peter Milligan, who might be better known for his work on mainstream superhero titles like <i>Detective Comics</i>,<span style="font-size: small;">*</span> <i>X-Force</i>, <i>X-Men</i>, and <i>Justice League Dark</i>. It launched in 1990 and concluded in 1996 after seventy issues.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">*As a matter of fact, it was Milligan who came up with the idea of the bat-demon Barbatos, and he was a co-creator of Azrael, the guy who briefly replaced Bruce Wayne as Batman after the Knightfall storyline.</span></p><p>I can't speak to how popular <i>Shade</i> was in its own time, but it's telling that as recently as 2014, the trade paperback collections only went up to issue #25. (Having been introduced to the series through an impulse purchase of the first volume at a bookstore, I can't tell you how crazy this made me.) I can't remember what year it was that I checked again, but it couldn't have been more than a half a decade ago that I browsed the DC Universe digital catalogue and found that it excluded issues #51–70. </p><p>Compared to 1990s Vertigo hits like <i>Sandman</i>, <i>Preacher</i>, and <i>Doom Patrol</i>, <i>Shade, The Changing Man </i>has been mostly forgotten. I won't venture to guess why that might be—its pervasive <i>weirdness</i> and the unremitting flakiness of its protagonist could have something to do with it—but whatever the reason, <i>Shade</i>'s status as an eclipsed also-ran is a damned shame. It's easily as good as any of its Vertigo contemporaries, if not better.</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Any overview of <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> can't avoid making reference to two other comic books. One of them is Neil Gaiman's <i>Sandman</i>, which we'll talk about later. The other is, uh, <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i>.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYADk-PAIcjYr6wpEQf6TLXz90dbofSqcWDsTdgdpw5Yv7rmzQ3u0k0cZdZ8MWduWQBzjS4z7JZA_ZlV__vLkuK7QDb5poQ_63X_sfzM-OG2oNUib_uf3Ygpj_nGHkh73jgVUHmWBTkUb23cxSyCO0XCnsh-i1JOpnLuo6MI0iiIHrB9fA45vinyaRrQ/s1207/image_2023-02-24_014737265.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1207" data-original-width="802" height="504" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYADk-PAIcjYr6wpEQf6TLXz90dbofSqcWDsTdgdpw5Yv7rmzQ3u0k0cZdZ8MWduWQBzjS4z7JZA_ZlV__vLkuK7QDb5poQ_63X_sfzM-OG2oNUib_uf3Ygpj_nGHkh73jgVUHmWBTkUb23cxSyCO0XCnsh-i1JOpnLuo6MI0iiIHrB9fA45vinyaRrQ/w335-h504/image_2023-02-24_014737265.png" width="335" /></a></div><p>The <i>first </i>comic book called <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> hit newsstands and spinner racks in 1977. Written and drawn by Steve Ditko (better known for co-creating Spider-Man and Doctor Strange with Stan Lee), <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> was a sci-fi/fantasy superhero comic about Rac Shade, an alien agent from an extradimensional world called Meta. Framed for treason and accidentally sent to the "Earth-Zone" along with Meta's imprisoned Crime Czars, Shade fights to bring Meta's expatriated malefactors to justice and clear his name with the help of his M-Vest, a device that can project illusions, create protective force shields, negate gravity, and all sorts of other exciting action comic stuff.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqH_DhMrRu-tTamH_mir29Fo6YNG9P10fc-mGxiM3YJdPKz-UAQbxHGrPWHYP910pOprp8WcERp2vkrYGJnBDFB_QvUrLVMsZz3gZK-5peS8iCdh2t5_IHBF-alfaLhy_RDsBbPxyPSsl09CgjWM29PLCNp6YSrWkOrurdrsVdTUirwfihRzx0in2HuQ/s891/image_2023-02-24_005132209.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="891" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqH_DhMrRu-tTamH_mir29Fo6YNG9P10fc-mGxiM3YJdPKz-UAQbxHGrPWHYP910pOprp8WcERp2vkrYGJnBDFB_QvUrLVMsZz3gZK-5peS8iCdh2t5_IHBF-alfaLhy_RDsBbPxyPSsl09CgjWM29PLCNp6YSrWkOrurdrsVdTUirwfihRzx0in2HuQ/w546-h278/image_2023-02-24_005132209.png" width="546" /></a></div><p>In addition to battling Metan gangsters who've set up shop on Earth, Shade fends off his erstwhile fiancée Mellu, who's been sent to assassinate him under orders from his boss and mentor Wizor. ("My love for Shade has turned to...to <i>hatred!</i>" she soliloquizes.) He's up against impossible odds, but Shade is no amateur: being the only Metan who's ever visited the interdimensional Zero-Zone's "Area of Madness" and came out with his sanity intact, he's got something of a reputation among Meta's lawmen and criminal element alike.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLT3z-oWl7HSeSBUX9-veKyHlyb0ktzCZpafsHYCdE4sl_W-Y0PiK9rgm_y9SMoF6mqxGQJASeOpFf4OuD8sr5rIjGZNwMmiaqPh2ErkYPyN6ZjjxgdtXO4492A5D3GgX095fS0OF3snH_1YeYXV2gHHFxoXgWSnl65RNjz6MrUrXsc3K15y7z7gfbnA/s887/image_2023-02-24_013830613.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="887" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLT3z-oWl7HSeSBUX9-veKyHlyb0ktzCZpafsHYCdE4sl_W-Y0PiK9rgm_y9SMoF6mqxGQJASeOpFf4OuD8sr5rIjGZNwMmiaqPh2ErkYPyN6ZjjxgdtXO4492A5D3GgX095fS0OF3snH_1YeYXV2gHHFxoXgWSnl65RNjz6MrUrXsc3K15y7z7gfbnA/w554-h281/image_2023-02-24_013830613.png" width="554" /></a></div><p>And that about exhausts what needs to be said about Steve Ditko's <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> as far as concerns our purposes here. It's not a <i>bad </i>superhero<i> </i>rag by any means—it's redolent of Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" books, and I can only ever mean that as a compliment—but just as it was gaining momentum, it became a casualty of <a href="https://www.comicbasics.com/dc-explosion-and-implosion-history/" target="_blank">the DC Implosion</a> of 1978. Issue #8 ends with a teaser and an "on sale" date, and there wasn't an issue #9.</p><p><i>Shade</i>'s original run must have had its fans, and writer John Ostrander was evidently among them. He liked Shade enough to have Amanda Waller draft him into Task Force X during <i>Suicide Squad</i>'s first (and incontestably<i> </i>best) iteration the late 1980s, and stuck around for a whole twenty issues—a relatively long run for a character in a serial with such a frantically rotating cast. Shade's sudden and unceremonious exit from the book probably had something to do with the planned launch of Milligan's all-new, all-different <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> six months from then.</p><p>The coexistence of Ditko's Rac Shade with Milligan's Rac Shade in the shared Post-Crisis continuity of DC Comics is definitely a problem insofar as they're completely different people, but it only really matters if we give a damn. I'm inclined not to.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFIE33XadM9nZlLc0LXaVgvD4xbd8-IJ8vHyMewt8dP1XUKaKzc6_rvFoF9tPWbkqN6yYhkmCZBYYlwuq_Z1k_a_sWqMAWFoGidk0MU3BlThh6xy9C3IPLC75Y3Nopv92iI6cEcLI2_XNAzHLlRtLQvVjDBCbO2ulLU3fsP4kd4PndGu0fH-vHtAXn6g/s768/image_2023-02-27_013327391.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="738" height="502" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFIE33XadM9nZlLc0LXaVgvD4xbd8-IJ8vHyMewt8dP1XUKaKzc6_rvFoF9tPWbkqN6yYhkmCZBYYlwuq_Z1k_a_sWqMAWFoGidk0MU3BlThh6xy9C3IPLC75Y3Nopv92iI6cEcLI2_XNAzHLlRtLQvVjDBCbO2ulLU3fsP4kd4PndGu0fH-vHtAXn6g/w485-h502/image_2023-02-27_013327391.png" width="485" /></a></div><p>Where Milligan's Shade is concerned, Ditko's Shade never existed. Conceptually, the original Shade is merely the new iteration's template, a concept to be reimagined in the context of a bronze-age "prestige" comic serial that deconstructed and reassembled the superhero archetype. (Thanks in no small part to Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and Grant Morrison, this sort of thing was very much in vogue during the late 1980s and early 1990s.)</p><p>Milligan's Rac Shade is still an alien from an extradimensional planet called Meta. He still has a fiancée named Mellu and mentor named Wizor (er, Wisor?). He's still equipped with an M-Vest, and has been to the Area of Madness. But this version of the story doesn't cast him as a fugitive: here he's been dispatched to Earth to fight an evil which threatens his world's existence. And he's not socking anyone in the jaw anymore; this Shade is much less a man of action than a man of feeling and imagination.</p><p>Straightaway, the new <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> makes clear that its protagonist isn't a typical superhero. He's far too much of a nebbish to qualify. Just imagine if Peter Parker was a hapless English major instead of a scrappy news photographer; what kind of superhero comic would <i>The Amazing Spider-Man</i> have been?</p><p>I guess it would be precisely the sort of self-consciously genre-bending, semi-parodic "postmodern" superhero that DC's Vertigo imprint was made for, and <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> is a Vertigo comic par excellence.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span> These books are practically a genre unto themselves. If we wanted to get more specific than that, we could just google "neil gaiman sandman genre" and file it under whatever heading the algorithm offers.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">*Historical note: <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> predates the Vertigo imprint, which was launched in 1993. It was one of several "mature readers" DC titles to get the label slapped on midway through its run. <i>Sandman</i> was another, of course. The rest were <i>Hellblazer</i>, <i>Animal Man</i>, <i>Swamp Thing</i>, and <i>Doom Patrol</i>.</span></p><p>Ah.<i> Sandman</i> is "dark fantasy." So that will be what we call <i>Shade, The Changing Man. </i>Where <i>Sandman</i> goes, <i>Shade</i> follows.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPPe23DoGvhnYIzqwIllMj2umgM1ykOabaC08-la8wdFui4WUPl5QMkcmHvTuBN9ju71EidT05gUvWADIBhtfguT9xTZIc34foZrrHlZD0je1CfV_u7sFkPrGHLxABeWGPDLw3WCpslf4Iskjs2jDNut017m7bzOIDXFcn0OpuT7Y00y0ri6lam4kJRA/s942/image_2023-02-25_011816947.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="942" height="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPPe23DoGvhnYIzqwIllMj2umgM1ykOabaC08-la8wdFui4WUPl5QMkcmHvTuBN9ju71EidT05gUvWADIBhtfguT9xTZIc34foZrrHlZD0je1CfV_u7sFkPrGHLxABeWGPDLw3WCpslf4Iskjs2jDNut017m7bzOIDXFcn0OpuT7Y00y0ri6lam4kJRA/w509-h353/image_2023-02-25_011816947.png" width="509" /></a></div><p>Maybe this is unfair to Milligan, but the synchronicity between his book and Gaiman's would be damned strange if it happened that he <i>wasn't </i>reading <i>Sandman</i> at the time and taking inspiration from it.</p><p><i>Sandman</i>'s first issue dropped in January 1989; <i>Shade</i>'s came out in July 1990. Neil Gaiman is a Brit with a penchant for Americana, classic literature, and folklore; Peter Milligan is a Brit with a penchant for Americana, classic literature, and folklore. The titular character of <i>Sandman</i> is a person (though really something more than a person) with a lush head of hair and capacious black robes, who straddles the worlds of reality and dreams; the titular character of <i>Shade</i> is a person (though really something more than a person) with a lush head of hair and an ample technicolor overcoat, who straddles the worlds of reality and madness. <i>Sandman</i> began by learning into its horror element, focusing on nightmare monsters and serial killers; <i>Shade</i> began by leaning into its horror element, focusing on nightmare monsters and serial killers. <i>Sandman</i> later branched out into magical realism; <i>Shade</i> later branched out into magical realism. The devil is a prominent character in <i>Sandman</i> and he's not the sort of person we expect him to be; the devil is a prominent character in <i>Shade</i> and he's not the sort of person we expect him to be. <i>Sandman</i> has a memorable storyline involving William Shakespeare; <i>Shade</i> has a memorable storyline involving Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. Queer characters abound in <i>Sandman</i> and are treated with respect; queer characters abound in <i>Shade</i> and are treated with respect. John Constantine guest stars in a <i>Sandman</i> story; John Constantine guest stars in a <i>Shade</i> story. The names Chris Bachalo, Colleen Doran, and Richard Case appear in <i>Sandman</i>'s artistic credits; the names Chris Bachalo, Colleen Doran, and Richard Case appear in <i>Shade</i>'s artistic credits.</p><p>We could go on. Shade is Morpheus' dysfunctional red-headed younger stepbrother.</p><p>And yet—in my old age, and despite having fallen in love with Sandman during my shiny-eyed teenage years, I find I prefer <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> to <i>Sandman</i> these days. It's not even much of a contest.</p><p>I'll admit that one of the reasons I find Shade so interesting is the way it stands as a distorted reflection to <i>Sandman</i>. It does hold up on its own, yes—but it's kind of like, say, SNK's line of 2D fighters, which are impossible to consider in isolation from Capcom's <i>Street Fighter</i> franchise. (I sat for five minutes thinking of an appropriate simile and this was the least obscure one my tired brain could conjure.) <i>Street Fighter II</i> and <i>Sandman</i> were epoch-defining lodestars of their respective media in the early 1990s, and are household names to this day. <i>King of Fighters</i> and <i>Shade, The Changing Man </i>were and are <i>not</i>, and they developed in such ways that can't be accounted for without reference to the titles that cast the shadows in which they grew. </p><p>It's difficult <i>not</i> to look back forth between <i>Shade</i> and its more famous and beloved older "brother," and the compulsion to view the book in contrast to <i>Sandman</i> actually works in <i>Shade</i>'s favor.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5mfxtlQ9g2FXIY8iNGWsvLRpHVmOuuyHmlED4fIh7bLXP6undV1oKcBo1OQD3XP0NGZ-k4oKqljAuH1Xf3HF_UDrI6q5zcD-ISPVVVdgdIZ4ABRHA7MIGIfLJINCvUVTYiKVsexlCJ9Evlc_jeitDDNrOvOz5spDYaPYeUMCdOUyRPNj3UEWARUMgOg/s870/image_2023-02-27_012215994.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="870" data-original-width="860" height="544" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5mfxtlQ9g2FXIY8iNGWsvLRpHVmOuuyHmlED4fIh7bLXP6undV1oKcBo1OQD3XP0NGZ-k4oKqljAuH1Xf3HF_UDrI6q5zcD-ISPVVVdgdIZ4ABRHA7MIGIfLJINCvUVTYiKVsexlCJ9Evlc_jeitDDNrOvOz5spDYaPYeUMCdOUyRPNj3UEWARUMgOg/w537-h544/image_2023-02-27_012215994.png" width="537" /></a></div><p>As usual, we've sped too far ahead and need to back up.</p><p><i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> begins not with Rac Shade, but with one Kathy George. Kathy is twenty-three years old, and her life has spiraled out of control.</p><p>Three years ago, she took her boyfriend Roger to meet her parents in Louisiana. Roger, as it happens, was black.</p><p>They pulled into the driveway at the George household. Kathy opened the front door. A serial killer named Troy Grenzer looked up from the freshly butchered bodies of her parents in the foyer. "I'm not mad," Grezner told her. "I <i>get</i> mad, but I'm <i>not</i> mad."</p><p>Grenzer closed in on Kathy with a knife in his hand. Roger lunged at Grenzer, and grappled with him on the front lawn. The police pulled up. The police in <i>Louisiana</i>, remember. They shot Roger in the head and asked Kathy if she was all right.</p><p>After some time in the psych ward, Kathy was set loose after the bills piled up and her late parents' money ran out. She drifted and drank, cruising on the money she stole from a wealthy stranger who took her to his hotel room.</p><p>Present day: the morning of Grenzer's execution arrives. Kathy stands outside the penitentiary in Texas and watches. The prison is consumed by an explosion of screams, flashing lights, and grotesque mirages. Kathy runs to her car. Troy Grenzer sits in the back seat.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilDCvVZIEeUL8AvrBJxPs0IS0MnIgs0RhPpQPeBHsDWuvc9Ekgl2lWSJ4ZQCYS3nKux8ZgxW9S0saqcJ4CAjH5y5Se5TRiSXZJCOAJvljdZWvbQ5UBDaOnBEIvjBVMHGw7Oindi-GtGmeof8Rihj3xa_wJeSb6uc7-5kyuDhY1tvLsH1u5VS9led09Xw/s938/image_2023-02-27_004814633.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="938" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilDCvVZIEeUL8AvrBJxPs0IS0MnIgs0RhPpQPeBHsDWuvc9Ekgl2lWSJ4ZQCYS3nKux8ZgxW9S0saqcJ4CAjH5y5Se5TRiSXZJCOAJvljdZWvbQ5UBDaOnBEIvjBVMHGw7Oindi-GtGmeof8Rihj3xa_wJeSb6uc7-5kyuDhY1tvLsH1u5VS9led09Xw/w532-h426/image_2023-02-27_004814633.png" width="532" /></a></div><p>Kathy's day only gets weirder from there. The rest of her life follows suit.</p><p>Shade explains to the incredulous Kathy that he's an alien from Meta. His superiors gave him a crash course on American culture, fitted him with the M-Vest, and sent him into the Area of Madness, the dimensional interval between Meta and Earth. From there he used the vest's reality-warping powers to overwrite Troy Grenzer's consciousness with his own as the killer sat in the electric chair. (Grenzer was selected as Shade's host because he was just about to die anyway.)</p><p>Shade's mission is to destroy the American Scream, an avatar of the United States' swelling, purulent collective psychosis. The creature has grown to such massive proportions that it threatens to explode, setting off a cosmic blast wave of insanity that will doom not only Earth, but Meta as well.</p><p>The first plot twist comes early on: Rac Shade, the person who physically entered the Area wearing the M-Vest, is dead. He's just a corpse floating in the primordial flux between worlds. His boss Wizor betrayed him: his mission to America was intended to be a one-way trip. But because his body died in the Area while wearing the vest—actually, I'm not so clear on this, and <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> plays fast and loose with the "physics" of its lore—he's permanently plugged into the wellspring of madness and can marshal its powers to <i>change</i> a given situation, fighting insanity with creativity (and what's the difference?) as he encounters the American Scream's ghastly manifestations.</p><p>Kathy comes along for the ride. She needs an anchor, and what she gets is a confused alien who's uncontrollably drawn to the grotesque psychic shitstorms erupting across the country. Shade needs an anchor, and what he gets is a profoundly traumatized young woman with nobody else in her life and nowhere to go.</p><p><i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> can't be divided into "chapters" quite as cleanly as <i>Sandman</i>, but the episodic "American Scream" saga is clearly an Act One. Shade and Kathy travel the country, sometimes by car, and sometimes by literally riding the Madness. Shade meets and gives battle to the Kennedy Sphinx (above), a Hollywood director whose madness-infected camera promises to turn all earthly existence into a schizophrenic film, a paranoid Average American turning his neighborhood into Pleasantville by way of Orwell's <i>1984</i>, a megalomaniacal hippie guru, and other incarnations of American psychosis.</p><p>In issue #4, a flashback to Shade's training under Wizor gives us an inkling of where Milligan is coming from:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFGEc6YfyojogFj_yAocs1YNyOnPHoVvz4T2TTEuQsLLNdIx_ESmccYn0pI7PNQtw3Vp-0hwlyh5PG-LybrHxQF1qRxCQygo2gOTtq9fu8HLSO_qToGAWplqUQ6hUaNDUIvlEAVreoU699iKvLrT_-i2_jV4XpnG37j1auISAfdnE6XRsWevR0jZqeA/s877/image_2023-03-02_010629259.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="877" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFGEc6YfyojogFj_yAocs1YNyOnPHoVvz4T2TTEuQsLLNdIx_ESmccYn0pI7PNQtw3Vp-0hwlyh5PG-LybrHxQF1qRxCQygo2gOTtq9fu8HLSO_qToGAWplqUQ6hUaNDUIvlEAVreoU699iKvLrT_-i2_jV4XpnG37j1auISAfdnE6XRsWevR0jZqeA/w548-h257/image_2023-03-02_010629259.png" width="548" /></a></div><br />Replace Shade with author Peter Milligan and switch "Earth" for "America," and this moment verges on the autobiographical. Shade confronts America as a knowledgeable foreigner, as does Milligan.<p></p><p>Remember, Milligan was part of the British Invasion of American comic books during the 1980s. He's an Englishman who grew up in the second half of the twentieth century, when his home country had become a veritable satellite state to a former colony that had grown into a global superpower. It's not hard to suss the real-world metaphor out of the threat the American Scream poses to Meta. When the United States suffers a cultural spasm, the rest of the "free world" twitches with it.</p><p>People living outside America's borders might shake their heads at our lunacy and resent our government throwing its economic and military weight around. And yet, they're happy enough to be the captive audience of our culture industry. Thom Yorke of Radiohead <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIxBHvo2oU8" target="_blank">sings about wanting to be Jim Morrison</a>. When <i>Star Wars</i> arrived in the United Kingdom in December 1977, scalpers were buying tickets for £2.20 and having no trouble selling them for £30.00. And, of course, the aforementioned British Invasion wouldn't have happened if Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, et al. hadn't devoured American comic books growing up. </p><p>It's not uncommon for comics of the British Invasion to evince a more intense interest in the United States' anatomy and psychology than their American contemporaries. After all, their authors were writing from the vantage point of the propinquant foreigner. To them, America and its culture weren't an invisible ambiance to be taken for granted; the United States was an uncanny <i>other</i>. Neil Gaiman explored it as a curious, observant tourist. Garth Ennis embraced it. Alan Moore flipped it the bird.</p><p>With <i>Shade</i>'s "American Scream" arc, Milligan says the quiet part out loud. In one way or another, he and his peers availed themselves of their deals with a major American comics publisher to conscientiously <i>react</i> to the inescapable cultural maelstrom called America, which had swept them all up from afar pretty much as soon as they were put in their swaddling clothes. There's no beating around the bush with the American Scream: Milligan writes a comic book in which the United States is a haunted house populated by sui generis American ghosts that must be exorcised before they spill out and drive all reality insane.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4yr_X4rnBoc2uP68OypcBuXsbk95_LZxvBF_zQp11Hyxn69HfJj0KI06V3bMDNFz5te5yfCJ3bFgG5CKAHfHeOuDgYhzViy3k5Tqz8eg86xBwB3a4Enf5CPanc_7BGi5ZkV7h5LumhSyUUbzSu_NmrCw-91I9VEfyq0GOjwDCX8KSG97ZM-q7aJACLQ/s1068/image_2023-02-26_225935089.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="441" height="715" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4yr_X4rnBoc2uP68OypcBuXsbk95_LZxvBF_zQp11Hyxn69HfJj0KI06V3bMDNFz5te5yfCJ3bFgG5CKAHfHeOuDgYhzViy3k5Tqz8eg86xBwB3a4Enf5CPanc_7BGi5ZkV7h5LumhSyUUbzSu_NmrCw-91I9VEfyq0GOjwDCX8KSG97ZM-q7aJACLQ/w295-h715/image_2023-02-26_225935089.png" width="295" /></a></p><p>This is all very interesting, but it's over by issue #18. After discovering the treacherous secret of the American Scream, Shade puts the monster down for good. Given how the book has progressed up until this point, you'd expect that to be all. Shade accomplished what he set out to do. The plot met the specified condition of its resolution. What's left but a bittersweet little epilogue and a little word box that reads <i>Fin</i>?</p><p>But <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> continues for another fifty-two issues. How can it do that if it's been deprived of the conflict that fired its engines?</p><p>At this point, we need to introduce Lenora "Lenny" Shapiro.</p><p>Kathy meets Lenny in New York while Shade is trapped in the psychic dream-fortress of a 1960s San Francisco commune, and is shortly tagging along with Shade and Kathy on their weird-ass odyssey across these United States of Consciousness.</p><p>On the face of it, Lenny seems like another barely-disguised imprint of <i>Sandman</i> upon <i>Shade</i>. One of <i>Sandman</i>'s most beloved characters was Death, the witty, charming, and wise goth girl with frizzy hair. And—surprise!—Lenny is a witty, charming, and wise goth girl with frizzy hair.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnYkDfoUGu0Xg2wBEvi6AFsNqaPcWU2dJx7v_W-_1Jr8VAbn0_PZBHKYa7i1G7hA-Wi310IpkwrS0v8dF9HHtlwd-kagQC8FXdWv9L7GAvQhssYfJpaVrYhd8pQRTO5N4ZOYYJigbhWpDwsbrbMVDnvtzKgYwDES1ovg2JJq9dtqPmwX2qYz5OhPwQIg/s799/image_2023-02-28_010013461.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="651" data-original-width="799" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnYkDfoUGu0Xg2wBEvi6AFsNqaPcWU2dJx7v_W-_1Jr8VAbn0_PZBHKYa7i1G7hA-Wi310IpkwrS0v8dF9HHtlwd-kagQC8FXdWv9L7GAvQhssYfJpaVrYhd8pQRTO5N4ZOYYJigbhWpDwsbrbMVDnvtzKgYwDES1ovg2JJq9dtqPmwX2qYz5OhPwQIg/w547-h448/image_2023-02-28_010013461.png" width="547" /></a></div><p>But that does a disservice to Lenny, since the areas of overlap between her and Death of the Endless are largely superficial.</p><p>Lenny isn't really "goth" so much as "Manhattan art scenester." She plays at poverty, but comes from a family that's much better off than just well-to-do. She's excellently versed in cinema and modern art; she has the sangfroid of an Andy Warhol and the brash, insouciant humor of a woman who hangs out with drag queens (and is able to keep up with them). We don't know any of Lenny's friends—they're like so many of Ginsberg's angelheaded hipsters, entering and disappearing from the pages as allusions to and anecdotes of New York's eccentric humanity. We'd be justified in calling "Lenny" quirky; what other word is there for somebody who takes up robbing cabbies at gunpoint because she needed a hobby after ruling out suicide?</p><p>There's a digressional chapter in Herman Melville's <i>The Confidence Man</i> about "originals" in fiction, which warrants a block quote with regard to Lenny.</p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">As for original characters in fiction, a grateful reader will, on meeting with one, keep the anniversary of that day. True, we sometimes hear of an author who, at one creation, produces some two or three score such characters; it may be possible. But they can hardly be original in the sense that Hamlet is, or Don Quixote, or Milton’s Satan. That is to say, they are not, in a thorough sense, original at all. They are novel, or singular, or striking, or captivating, or all four at once.<br /><br />More likely, they are what are called odd characters; but for that, are no more original, than what is called an odd genius, in his way, is. But, if original, whence came they? Or where did the novelist pick them up?<br /><br />Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure. Every great town is a kind of man-show, where the novelist goes for his stock, just as the agriculturist goes to the cattle——show for his. But in the one fair, new species of quadrupeds are hardly more rare, than in the other are new species of characters—</span><span style="font-family: courier;">—</span><span style="font-family: courier;">that is, original ones. Their rarity may still the more appear from this, that, while characters, merely singular, imply but singular forms so to speak, original ones, truly so, imply original instincts....</span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">For much the same reason that there is but one planet to one orbit, so can there be but one such original character to one work of invention. Two would conflict to chaos. In this view, to say that there are more than one to a book, is good presumption there is none at all. But for new, singular, striking, odd, eccentric, and all sorts of entertaining and instructive characters, a good fiction may be full of them. To produce such characters, an author, beside other things, must have seen much, and seen through much: to produce but one original character, he must have had much luck.</span></blockquote><p>I won't go so far as to say Lenny Shapiro deserves to join Don Quixote and Hamlet at the empyrean heights of Originals in fiction—but she's certainly eligible for consideration as one, especially in the sphere of comic books. I can't say that I've read <i>every</i> comic serial published prior to her introduction in <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> #8 (February 1991) and can't assert out that she's definitely and qualitatively unlike any other character to appear before her, but she's nothing if not "novel," "singular," "striking," and "captivating." Whenever I happen to idly remember <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i>, she's the first character who comes to mind.</p><p>Shade is, for most of his book's run, Hamlet with superpowers. We've got <i>him</i> figured out. And Kathy instantiates the familiar archetype of the paramour, the damsel in distress, the gentle companion who keeps the male hero grounded. But Lenny is harder to pin down.</p><p>The raw material for the character mustn't have been hard to find. Snarky trustafarian art chicks who're penetratingly intelligent and dazzlingly superficial in equal measure are a dime a dozen in the metropolitan human show. I've <i>met</i> people like Lenny, and fell in love with at least one or two of them in my adolescence. And yet I can't imagine extrapolating a Lenny from any of them, nor can I imagine Milligan concocting a Lenny <i>without</i> having met them. </p><p>Lenny is eminently transparent in her aggressive and unapologetic quirkiness, but it gradually becomes clear that we never know her as well as we presume to. Whenever we suppose we have her mapped out, she surprises us—but somehow we're not surprised at <i>being</i> surprised. We know her and we <i>don't</i> know her. She's fake and she's real. She's invincible and she's vulnerable. And none of this is inconsistent within the locus of what she is.</p><p>Even if she doesn't meet the strict criteria of a True Original, Lenny resists encapsulation, and that's a feat in itself for a character in fiction. I'm tempted to say she's Milligan's greatest accomplishment as an author.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3wjCokSqbIwo8esxnv9RrXsJhVUgSfyn_EiEVdnDKOjRtHaP3m9bDcO0K9KFpSSQBbL5e2ou8ms6bmAe7yzM-demkGXieDsmEcYCRGt6AZfB3eNLUjggMTdBbBcbRATx7AmKDOjuyK31CN3TDCU6W1dcyVWmn1OugNCrxzPnjpXRTvFjlFcnSPN8U9A/s867/image_2023-02-28_000606321.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="867" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3wjCokSqbIwo8esxnv9RrXsJhVUgSfyn_EiEVdnDKOjRtHaP3m9bDcO0K9KFpSSQBbL5e2ou8ms6bmAe7yzM-demkGXieDsmEcYCRGt6AZfB3eNLUjggMTdBbBcbRATx7AmKDOjuyK31CN3TDCU6W1dcyVWmn1OugNCrxzPnjpXRTvFjlFcnSPN8U9A/w488-h346/image_2023-02-28_000606321.png" width="488" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">After the American Scream arc wraps up, <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> continues on its way, driven by three-cylinder engine. Lenny is one of those cylinders. Shade and Kathy are the others. The plot is merely the road they traverse; their interpersonal dynamics become the story.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As they navigate the American Scream's deadly manifestations, Shade and Kathy grow emotionally intimate, as the male hero and the female sidekick in a comic serial typically do. They <i>try</i> to become lovers, and are foiled by consistently lousy timing. Kathy is traumatized; Shade is a flaky lightning rod for weirdness.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">While Shade is elsewhere, Lenny and the recovering Kathy share a kiss, and become a couple in short order. This where the book goes rogue. The hero on a mission, to whom convention prescribes the loving kiss of the deuteragonist damsel in distress upon the completion of his goal, ends up the odd man out. The damsel decides the tertiary female character whom they met along the way is a better match for her.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The script flipped. The book <i>changed</i>.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Shade doesn't find out right away. After reuniting with Kathy and Lenny, Shade decides he might as well join them on a road trip. Why not? The American Scream is dead, and Shade can't go home to Meta. It's not like he has anything else to do.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But the Madness isn't done with him yet—and when it comes for Shade, it comes for everyone around him.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKq-c6EWJD7tpdczQttw9MgUGnc9Vk5k_XSglaMV5ATlrzvt7JFE6QYjH21Idf1bxv8ptmujvGG5d115PiaAiYkA2vIdVBt3oasA8fiSD5PgyZtKDXXpLZUcCOuV1Wq0ONKIjlszYSpX0dHOC-0M0laqTpG_-9AwbL_ze3YMS3zcidZ2BQcMpxYQzfLA/s859/image_2023-02-26_234836944.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="671" data-original-width="859" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKq-c6EWJD7tpdczQttw9MgUGnc9Vk5k_XSglaMV5ATlrzvt7JFE6QYjH21Idf1bxv8ptmujvGG5d115PiaAiYkA2vIdVBt3oasA8fiSD5PgyZtKDXXpLZUcCOuV1Wq0ONKIjlszYSpX0dHOC-0M0laqTpG_-9AwbL_ze3YMS3zcidZ2BQcMpxYQzfLA/w512-h400/image_2023-02-26_234836944.png" width="512" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Even after he finds out about Kathy's romance with Lenny, Shade still holds a flame for her. Kathy still cares about Shade, but is <i>with</i> Lenny. When Kathy and Lenny are around Shade, weird shit happens that they can't walk away from; in some cases they're actually trapped in Shade's madness (it becomes increasingly clear that he is both its conduit <i>and</i> source), and in others they feel obligated to stand by their troubled friend. The dynamics are like something out of a Tennessee Williams or Eugene O'Neill play: tender, complicated, and constrictive. Character A helps to bind Character B to Character C; B helps to bind C to B; and so on through all the permutations. The triad will not become a dyad.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">One thing that's simple and clear, however, is that Shade needs Kathy and Lenny <i>much</i> more than they need him.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>Shade, The Changing Man</i>'s hallucinatory dark fantasy, magical realist fun, and mindfuck plotting is the spectacle, but the Shade/Kathy/Lenny triangle comprises the substance. Neither element would crackle and shine as it does without the other catalyzing it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRLmiTPVG26_7r5rgQjYxgnCdx2YuiscvfPymCa5qopyafscoAAdi6zXAGuPbNTyP3X4IHCBUUPn_fkD7AlsJQUvpBKSlYz_icfSDjhgR-vd9xvV9HscM7mn2tcj3IVWWDMf3rVeu_SwPGtXZ67YJH4DVNUA3XcMu9UX-gkQauW6spQ-hlc7SMNbXC0A/s865/image_2023-02-26_235854873.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="679" data-original-width="865" height="417" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRLmiTPVG26_7r5rgQjYxgnCdx2YuiscvfPymCa5qopyafscoAAdi6zXAGuPbNTyP3X4IHCBUUPn_fkD7AlsJQUvpBKSlYz_icfSDjhgR-vd9xvV9HscM7mn2tcj3IVWWDMf3rVeu_SwPGtXZ67YJH4DVNUA3XcMu9UX-gkQauW6spQ-hlc7SMNbXC0A/w532-h417/image_2023-02-26_235854873.png" width="532" /></a></div><p>The loose arc following the American Scream runs from issue #19 to issue #32; we could provisionally call it the "Agent Stringer" saga. It's got a road trip and time travel. It's got mystery. Shade's fiancée Mellu appears. There's sex, there's betrayal, there's the splitting of selves and the jumping of bodies. Shade gets killed <i>twice</i>. The first time he gets better—more or less. The <i>second</i> time, however, it sticks.</p><p>For about six months.</p><p>Kathy and Lenny are taking a bath together one afternoon when Lenny's dead boyfriend Roger floats up out of the suds. (It seems Kathy has somehow absorbed a trace of Shade's madness powers.) Instead of complimenting Katy on her new "I've moved on with my life" hairdo, he tells her that Shade will soon be reborn. The angels are going to plop his consciousness into a comatose man in a mental institution, and she needs to be there to draw him out.</p><p>Yes, angels. Now <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> has angels. But like the American Scream, they originate from the Area. Shade manifests <i>them</i>, and <i>they</i> manifest Shade. Don't expect it to make sense; it's all madness. And why not? Once we leave the safety of politics and physics, any questions we have about the world inexorably lead us to places where reason breaks down.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjolBYua4h379A8ckbcaDzucsO7tk3ATIX97N2M7ZiEVVhSru5ExcJdwb6kogGSsdkJlIEwaPzyDY30gDQx1VdNCEErTNT15vF_gaj3lJS-QrvrZ-3u_hgOXZvra9AInrqoRMllnUbU0xXOYzxzXp66xQiTZLTS_PihvRMRZQiqMNrww9lU5xq9rD87WQ/s855/image_2023-03-03_004537076.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="855" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjolBYua4h379A8ckbcaDzucsO7tk3ATIX97N2M7ZiEVVhSru5ExcJdwb6kogGSsdkJlIEwaPzyDY30gDQx1VdNCEErTNT15vF_gaj3lJS-QrvrZ-3u_hgOXZvra9AInrqoRMllnUbU0xXOYzxzXp66xQiTZLTS_PihvRMRZQiqMNrww9lU5xq9rD87WQ/w531-h239/image_2023-03-03_004537076.png" width="531" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Despite Kathy's trepidation—life with Lenny, sans Shade, has been so quiet and so pleasant—she agrees to help call Shade into his new body. While Shade is (re)birthing himself, Kathy and Lenny check into a decrepit Gilded Age hotel to wait it out. The site becomes the namesake of the "Hotel Shade" arc, which spans issues #33 through #50. The angels twist Shade and Kathy's arms to keep them at the hotel, and arrange for Shade to be visited by bothersome weirdness they want him to deal with for them.</div><div><br /></div><div>But we've erred in our division of <i>Shade, The Changing Man </i>into chapters. Instead of demarcating the book's phases in terms of what Shade is <i>doing</i>, it makes more sense to define them in terms of who Shade <i>is.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>When Shade comes back to Earth in his new body, he isn't the person he was before. The six months he languished in the Area took their toll on his sanity, and the angels retained a piece of his soul as a bargaining chip in case he ever got it into his head to welch out of the agreement they foisted on him.</div><div><br /></div><div>From issues #1 through #32, we come to know Shade as a poet who was made to serve as an operative. He's introspective and romantic; Kathy describes him as "a little scared and timid." Earlier, we compared Shade to Hamlet. The first version of Shade is the Hamlet who speaks with his father's ghost, pines for Ophelia, delivers the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, and is hesitant to act. Shade version 2.0 becomes Hamlet at the manic peak of his antic disposition: unpredictable, prone to cracking dark jokes at inappropriate times, and even more dangerous to the people around him than before—not the least because he's become a lot more casual (even careless) in the use of his Madness powers. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjENm0IGfNqdeF9cmBzcWt-9BwOIU6BGIrduXFhTn-RZdUdRAGSo-WL-xhvx6T7DYNgd8tTxWBTxdBxM-hi_iE4JjPAQB9KzIwrOSUVt2KZGpDBoQeYHeMr_3li0RbZfk_hdYowjob8QV_Dk_zE9-gmjzHMgo7QqZWtmWlOm-XZn1eURZWcn1yDW9_DzA/s808/image_2023-02-27_002915980.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="557" data-original-width="808" height="372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjENm0IGfNqdeF9cmBzcWt-9BwOIU6BGIrduXFhTn-RZdUdRAGSo-WL-xhvx6T7DYNgd8tTxWBTxdBxM-hi_iE4JjPAQB9KzIwrOSUVt2KZGpDBoQeYHeMr_3li0RbZfk_hdYowjob8QV_Dk_zE9-gmjzHMgo7QqZWtmWlOm-XZn1eURZWcn1yDW9_DzA/w538-h372/image_2023-02-27_002915980.png" width="538" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Shade changes. The scenery changes. The scaffolding of the plot changes. The balance of the love triangle changes, too. Kathy and Lenny's relationship winds up on the rocks. Kathy begins gravitating toward Shade again—under certain extenuating circumstances. Meanwhile, the angels deliver the weirdness. Hotel Shade is visited by the Passion Child, a blank and mute boy who amplifies the emotions and unbuttons the inhibitions of everyone around him. A penny-ante novelist takes inspiration from the people he meets, depleting them of the attributes and mannerisms he borrows to populate his fiction. (It will turn out that this man is Milligan's self-insert.) Shade meets Jim Morrison (who's possessing the body of a gangly, pimple-faced teenager), and unwittingly summons Pandora, infamous for her eponymous box. And so on.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I'd rather not go into much detail about this stretch of the series because I might have gotten it into my head that somebody of out of the tens of people who look at this damn thing could be inspired to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JKPBSNF?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tukn" target="_blank">check the book out</a> after scrolling through this. (The entire series is <i>finally</i> available to read.) Even though <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> is thirty years old, it's relatively obscure, and I'd prefer not to spoil the <i>whole</i> plot for prospective readers. If <i>I</i> had to be brutalized by this book, so do you.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiz4qIljO0O8ukn5FfU0n6TI4fiI9A_0kLn3V2jBPpjVbKKjV-5tyJscCOcXs0J7lP6a890F8_3UYbP1Zhk4Gnld4Y3iuFxj9EPMwkC1sAa8_JPCT4ImIxy7uiVtOvjrakOL9EcuqrowXikeFcdzPOD58Nim8s5ybkNTfoIH04Ls52XllccSHe5m2lIg/s670/image_2023-02-28_010728174.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="670" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiz4qIljO0O8ukn5FfU0n6TI4fiI9A_0kLn3V2jBPpjVbKKjV-5tyJscCOcXs0J7lP6a890F8_3UYbP1Zhk4Gnld4Y3iuFxj9EPMwkC1sAa8_JPCT4ImIxy7uiVtOvjrakOL9EcuqrowXikeFcdzPOD58Nim8s5ybkNTfoIH04Ls52XllccSHe5m2lIg/w560-h283/image_2023-02-28_010728174.png" width="560" /></a></div><p>After the events of issue #50, Shade desperately wants to die, but can't. The last surviving angel explains that he's simply too <i>guilty</i> to die. Call it a plot contrivance, but Shade has already established the capriciousness of the Area and its metaphysics.</p><p>Having alienated himself from the rest of the regular cast, Shade bums around New York for a while, and eventually creates a lavish, infinite "apartment" for himself under the Manhattan sidewalk. He settles accounts with old enemies, callously fucks with people, drinks, does drugs, and experiments with existing as a library book, a dance floor, a rose bush—all to cut himself off from a life he's sick of living.</p><p>But life doesn't give us a choice but to live it. Weirdness keeps finding Shade (or Shade keeps <i>inventing</i> weirdness), and he has to deal with it—he and the friends with whom he's reunited, along with the new members of his entourage, who all stand by him in spite of how frequently his problems spill over into their laps. </p><p>He also gets a new hairstyle, which Milligan introduces with a full-page authorial missive at the beginning of issue #51. <i>Shade</i>'s third and penultimate phase can only be called the book's Mod Era.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikxEXuEMg19Dj91XEtnA0O9O3-KboFYFbLUtCVYMNSrKFh9GzrG3TBp1_hgcsQVDPoQDZjCBaBFFjj3z8IRXvAT0wybxilG-4VgseXUNzsb4JF4fijCPfEWom4EdorvuSFvLKWUUxqBSkXg_Xz7x-jq6IRcyV4wl-5heTnWAvMnI7AkbICaqsxCfHbyg/s961/image_2023-02-27_231202854.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="961" height="359" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikxEXuEMg19Dj91XEtnA0O9O3-KboFYFbLUtCVYMNSrKFh9GzrG3TBp1_hgcsQVDPoQDZjCBaBFFjj3z8IRXvAT0wybxilG-4VgseXUNzsb4JF4fijCPfEWom4EdorvuSFvLKWUUxqBSkXg_Xz7x-jq6IRcyV4wl-5heTnWAvMnI7AkbICaqsxCfHbyg/w510-h359/image_2023-02-27_231202854.png" width="510" /></a></div><p>If you've read <i>Sandman</i>, you won't have a hard time coming up with an answer if I asked you to identify Morpheus' singular defining quality. Sure, he's dark, moody, and more than a little callous. Yes, he's dreamy. But more fundamentally, he is a person (or something like one) who obstinately resists change. "Set in his ways" doesn't do justice to his stubbornness. One suspects he'd have had a better chance of slipping the noose during his series' climax if he could have brought himself to be more adaptable.</p>"We do what we do, because of who we are," Morpheus soliloquizes before heading off to his last appointment with his sister. "If we did otherwise, we would not be ourselves."<div><br /></div><div>I'm tempted to say Morpheus has the first part backwards, and his misunderstanding is instrumental to the protracted, willful act of self-sabotage by which he is ultimately undone. We are who we are because of what we do. Of course—at the same time, the determination of what we do lies inscrutably within the agglutination of what we've done before, the very thing which constitute the self. </div><div><br /></div><div>Shade is Morpheus's reflection in an inverted funhouse mirror. Morpheus doesn't change. Shade <i>does</i> change—as in, he's a catalyst of transformation, <i>and</i>, in rebounding back on their agent, the unforeseen consequences change<i> him</i>. Morpheus cherishes rules, order, and obligations; Shade continuously breaks and overwrites the rules of everything, including his self.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a strange, circular sort of way, Shade is Morpheus' reciprocal in that the former is a slave to who he is, and Shade is a slave to what he does.</div><div><p>Morpheus' tragedy is that he can't change who he is. Shade's tragedy is that he can't change what he's done.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJwwMwvn17jxYEDqJPbgbsiL3sQQlhdwQyIPehBgRBbRB0bm-tk5tMtvXZ3qGGLa6VbYwfYfodZbEBoL7sVMSz2UkXNHMTRKcr3if24By31Q3H-3EWAKs2ostmquQevdmee3ZlEGWjksRp0Zx_OFIkBLVAWaD1A80r58lQXATce24etBmbZOy0X42XOA/s962/image_2023-02-27_234223106.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="962" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJwwMwvn17jxYEDqJPbgbsiL3sQQlhdwQyIPehBgRBbRB0bm-tk5tMtvXZ3qGGLa6VbYwfYfodZbEBoL7sVMSz2UkXNHMTRKcr3if24By31Q3H-3EWAKs2ostmquQevdmee3ZlEGWjksRp0Zx_OFIkBLVAWaD1A80r58lQXATce24etBmbZOy0X42XOA/w551-h274/image_2023-02-27_234223106.png" width="551" /></a></div><p>By the time <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> enters its Mod era, its titular character has long since ceased to be the apprehensive poet with reality-altering powers he's still chary of using. Having mastered the functions of the M-Vest (which have become such an integral part of him that the vest itself is seldom mentioned anymore), Shade is for all intents and purposes a god. He's capable of doing anything he can imagine, impossible to kill, and is lately more inclined to behave as a trickster than a hero.</p><p>And then he loses his heart—literally and figuratively. He's a lot happier for it. </p><p>I haven't been able to find any direct sources for the claim that Milligan planned to end the book at issue #50 and had to be pressured into continuing the series—but if that's true, it certainly provides material for conjecture as to why he decided to turn his titular character into a shitty little sociopath. One doesn't find very many detailed retrospective articles or venues for discussion about <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i>, but the prevailing opinion seems to be that the series loses its verve after #50.</p><p>It's hard to dispute that <i>Shade</i> doesn't change for the better during its Mod era (although the "Impossible Photograph" story in issue #65 goes a long way toward raising the average). The book rather loses its direction and grows convoluted even by its own standards, but I suspect readers might have been willing to forgive its meandering weirdness (or weird meandering) if Milligan hadn't turned his main character into someone they'd have really enjoyed seeing flayed alive.</p><p>It was a bold choice, that's for sure, and perhaps not one made by somebody who wished to ensure the longevity of the serial he was writing. But, man—the "Nasty Infections" storyline left an indelible resin in my brain, and the series would have been incomplete without it.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMYduT1oM3-9vq9-o5jPb-DtT18LfDj22d_iYgxfoHzn54JIHSa_XOV96zAXxtSgTeGK1vIbWRzwczIa3ivuOwsIQqTXxH48j1o1KgMnVzS6oIgkd2EFOxqVJIq_4l266gCTMfZwuR4kuKL_ExzNVumJc8pNKO20fSYfW0T-F9gpU28kt4UrlGct7hVQ/s882/image_2023-02-25_020027708.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="531" data-original-width="882" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMYduT1oM3-9vq9-o5jPb-DtT18LfDj22d_iYgxfoHzn54JIHSa_XOV96zAXxtSgTeGK1vIbWRzwczIa3ivuOwsIQqTXxH48j1o1KgMnVzS6oIgkd2EFOxqVJIq_4l266gCTMfZwuR4kuKL_ExzNVumJc8pNKO20fSYfW0T-F9gpU28kt4UrlGct7hVQ/w549-h331/image_2023-02-25_020027708.png" width="549" /></a></div><p>I've personally known people who have gone crazy in one way or another. Most were charismatic, brilliant, talented individuals whose friends and lovers felt privileged to be close to. When they became manic and/or depressive, quit their jobs and disappeared for months, or got hooked on bad drugs, I've usually been happy not to be situated in their inner orbits. The closer somebody was to them, the more liable they were to get burned.</p><p>When we were introduced to Shade as a poet-turned-operative, his Madness powers were sometimes treated as a metaphor for the act of artistic creation. "Be a poet of insanity," Wizor advised him before he embarked for Earth via the Area of Madness. "Create free verse with reality...Forge whatever change is needed on the smithy of your soul." </p><p><i>Shade</i> insinuates the popular truism that madness is an indispensable ingredient of the of genius that changes the world. A corollary to this is that the brilliant artist who creates something of transcendent, lasting value is often a horrible asshole who wreaks misery on the people closest to him, even as he makes life better for everyone else. In his capacity as a poet of insanity who's prevented an apocalypse, solved crimes, and slain monsters, Shade has brought a lot of collateral damage down upon his friends. Through it all, they've always cared enough about him to give him the benefit of the doubt and forgive him.</p><p>Now, at the very apex of his powers, Shade turns into a dark-triad demigod who blithely lets his friends get killed by his own insane bullshit. He's too wrapped up in himself to feel very bad about it, and far too slippery and strong for anyone to hold him accountable. Rereading these issues, I feel like I have a glimmer of insight into the rage and anguish Sophia Tolstoy, Jill Faulkner, and Edie Sedgwick must have suffered by dint of their proximity to men of genius.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhldWwSVBB7-FQ6_9fhJDNM7vtvITd8Kv_usaaSOzFVzuo9Lgad7_TjGtpqDhoHkEqq8xcr82zOQvBduE1if4a4kYge9-sYmJAReTYNJaakn1GmyRXPjkE-z1HEWa5angDda4v7dDZTIhOs9_ozcW6EDfUh69Kmf3cZG0dX464gd2C4h9Uaagnjg9-hYA/s850/image_2023-02-25_020538479.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="850" height="365" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhldWwSVBB7-FQ6_9fhJDNM7vtvITd8Kv_usaaSOzFVzuo9Lgad7_TjGtpqDhoHkEqq8xcr82zOQvBduE1if4a4kYge9-sYmJAReTYNJaakn1GmyRXPjkE-z1HEWa5angDda4v7dDZTIhOs9_ozcW6EDfUh69Kmf3cZG0dX464gd2C4h9Uaagnjg9-hYA/w540-h365/image_2023-02-25_020538479.png" width="540" /></a></div><p>Nothing is permanent in mainstream comic books. Unpopular stories and their aftereffects are routinely reversed through retcons, convenient plot contrivances, or by simply waiting a while and then pretending none of it happened.</p><p>It might seem that Milligan is up to something of the sort when issue #68 begins with Shade showing off the time machine he built. He's accepted his heart back into himself (we might say this is a magical realist metaphor for getting therapy, taking meds, going clean, etc. after hitting rock bottom), and wants to make amends for what he's done by undoing it. <i>All</i> of it.</p><p>He gathers up the friends he's wronged and explains his plan to go back in time and prevent his arrival on Earth from ever happening. Since doing so will effectively erase them all from existence, he invites his friends to come with him, where they'll be shielded from alterations to their histories. After he does what he needs to do, he'll drop them back off in the changed present. (However they deal with their <i>other</i> present-day selves moving about in the Shade-less timeline will be up to them.)</p><p>We could read this as the act of an author sent into a bit of a panic by the lousy reception of his serial's previous chapter. The fact that Shade has reassumed the familiar manners and appearance of his original incarnation recommends itself to suspicions that Milligan lost his nerve and is hurrying to please readers by giving them back the most likable version of his book's protagonist. This sort of thing usually backfires, of course: even if "Nasty Infections" left us angry and nauseous, how can we feel anything but contempt for an author who lets himself be bullied by his audience? </p><p>I think it's more probable that Milligan was up against an editor who told him was book was about to be cancelled, and he needed to use the last three or four issues of <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> to not only wrap things up, but to make people <i>like</i> Shade again—even if that meant backpedaling on three years of character development.</p><p>I'm just making this up; maybe or probably this scenario isn't anything like what actually occasioned the writing of <i>Shade</i>'s final issues. Perhaps Milligan simply got tired of the book after six years and was in a hurry to end it.</p><p>But if we prefer to imagine that Milligan's decision to end <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> by rebooting the timeline and cancelling out nearly everything that happened from issues #1 through #67 wasn't his first choice, we have to admit he found a way to own it. Maybe it's not the most satisfying ending anyone could have envisioned for the book, but it remains true to what came before.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRhSfWdlGLw7PAq63qPsnh3lZ-qyOlDfM7FK04JEA-ps2-BaqTXhct_58I1ghe6ftkYVQhzk2Kw5CNRaZc0SffD7l8B6ha6bos_zCMW5Ofq2B_Iaam9ne2NemhaVE5GTi4PIRgmzCdQW1V4o1LqCehMiM5BpbEAbjpm6rWHY7dm5wOgOWv_5KLFd1Fzw/s868/image_2023-03-04_194719494.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="868" data-original-width="865" height="545" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRhSfWdlGLw7PAq63qPsnh3lZ-qyOlDfM7FK04JEA-ps2-BaqTXhct_58I1ghe6ftkYVQhzk2Kw5CNRaZc0SffD7l8B6ha6bos_zCMW5Ofq2B_Iaam9ne2NemhaVE5GTi4PIRgmzCdQW1V4o1LqCehMiM5BpbEAbjpm6rWHY7dm5wOgOWv_5KLFd1Fzw/w544-h545/image_2023-03-04_194719494.png" width="544" /></a></div><p>Shade murders Wizor in the past, preventing his younger self from ever getting conscripted by his perfidious mentor. He destroys the American Scream before it can manifest. He visits Louisiana and stops Grenzer from killing Kathy's parents and her college boyfriend Roger. At Lenny's insistence, he lets her off the ride to change a couple of events in her own past. By the time they return to the present day, Shade's madness powers are apparently all used up.</p><p>What Lenny finds when she returns to the present is the first harrowing indicator that Milligan never intended to wave a magic wand and set everything right. Without going into detail, Lenny trades an ineffaceable scar for an open wound, and there's nothing else Shade can do for her.</p><p>Shade doesn't have it much better. Deprived of his madness powers, he's a nobody. He's got no past, no connections, no job, no money, no mobility. His plan, his desire, his every waking thought, is to reunite with Kathy—or the new and current <i>version</i> of Kathy, one who never saw her parents sliced to pieces by a serial killer, witnessed her boyfriend getting shot in the head by a cop, ended up in a psych ward, became an alcoholic, or traveled America helping an alien agent fight an incarnation of national insanity. (The old timeline's Kathy didn't board Shade's time machine.)</p><p>We don't know how Kathy's life turned out without Shade. Milligan doesn't allow us to see her. The final issue has Shade working as a dishwasher to keep a roof over his head as he tries to figure out where Kathy ended up (this was in the late 1990s, remember; he couldn't just google her name) and save up enough money to travel to wherever she is.</p><p>Though he intended at the onset to turn himself around and be a better person in the new reality he made, he eventually opts for a bloody expedient in getting to Kathy. Even for a person who can travel through time and scrub his past mistakes from the cosmic record, there's no such thing as a clean start. (What was that line from <i>Macbeth</i>? "I am in blood stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er...")</p><p>However it might look to the jaded comic book reader accustomed to evasive midstream rewrites like "Jean was never really dead" and "Cyclops is alive again because time travel," <i>Shade</i>'s last story is anything but a cop-out. Nothing is dialed back. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy3RSf6AakurWmTdYKruKQ_5Sin34DiL4e4WNqF-2KH1ZBYom21TuuuSWbfNgF8blcNGZwWvnwB7NJCJqbkgTB3N7HvIIfJQVhGqdcAE5J3Fl6a8S-MJFs1jzPyBwzZwCTD6Q3YrgCI1QM_2Rpoy7gQP4q_HkS4sk4Ze9eY1vmlY2P6OmG6BUZfcY_iQ/s886/image_2023-03-04_224409969.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="886" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy3RSf6AakurWmTdYKruKQ_5Sin34DiL4e4WNqF-2KH1ZBYom21TuuuSWbfNgF8blcNGZwWvnwB7NJCJqbkgTB3N7HvIIfJQVhGqdcAE5J3Fl6a8S-MJFs1jzPyBwzZwCTD6Q3YrgCI1QM_2Rpoy7gQP4q_HkS4sk4Ze9eY1vmlY2P6OmG6BUZfcY_iQ/w516-h271/image_2023-03-04_224409969.png" width="516" /></a></div><p>Five years after watching a redheaded stranger saving her parents and boyfriend's lives, Kathy lives in a farmhouse in rural Montana. (Does she live there alone? Is she still with Roger, or has she found somebody else? Are there any kids? We don't know.) Shade shows up at her doorstep with an unbelievable story and a copy of the other Kathy's handwritten diary detailing her adventures with him and Lenny. <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> ends with her inviting him inside, apparently willing to hear him out.</p><p>When Shade and Lenny discuss the ethics of changing the past, Shade dismisses the question of whether or not it's right. He's seen and done too much to believe that "right" exists.</p><p> "What's <i>possible</i>," he says, "that's all there is."</p><p>That's as happy an ending as Shade can get: the <i>possibility</i> of things working out. For the last five years he's been the mad alchemist of possibility, sublimating the impossible into the actual. Now his charms are o'erthrown, what strength he has's his own...</p><p>Oh, god. <i>Sandman</i> ended with <i>The Tempest</i>. And now here I am conjuring it for a description of <i>Shade</i>'s last issue. I don't think we can accuse Milligan of aping Gaiman here, but it's eerie that there should be such an obvious conceptual thread connecting <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> #70 to<i> Sandman</i> #75 via <i>The</i> <i>Tempest</i>. </p><p>To wrap up the metaphor, Shade at last finds himself in the uncertain but hopeful position of Prospero at the moment the old magician delivers the play's closing soliloquy. Though we've come to know Shade as the ultimate mover of his world, its caller of storms and tamer of spirits, whatever happens on the unwritten pages that follow is no longer up to him.</p><p>The stories of <i>Sandman</i> and <i>Shade </i>both end on a note of anticipation, but their moods couldn't be more different. For all Gaiman's aptitude for gruesome horror scenes and graveyard humor, there's something fundamentally <i>smarmy</i> about his work that becomes a mite cloying once you notice it in the very ligature of his compositions. That's not to say I dislike his comics, or would dare say he hasn't accomplished incredible things in his career, but <i>Sandman</i>, <i>Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?</i>, <i>Marvel 1602</i>, etc. all leave me with a kind of saccharine, stevia-like aftertaste on my palate. Gaiman just can't help being cute. Of course <i>Sandman</i>'s final act concludes with the reader waking from a strange and wonderful dream before he or she is ready for it to end.</p><p>Milligan doesn't have that problem. In fact he rather errs on the side of leaving out the sweetener and letting the bitterness through. <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> doesn't end like a passing dream. This is a book that <i>takes</i> you places, and leaves deep and lasting gashes as souvenirs of the trip.<br /><br /></p><p>We ought to wrap things up with a glance at the afterlife of <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i>.</p><p>In 2016, DC launched the title <i>Shade, The Changing Girl</i> under its Young Animal Imprint. It concluded in 2017 after twelve issues, and was followed by the six-issue<i> Shade, The Changing Woman</i> in 2018. Written by one Cecil Castellucci, the books follow the story of a young woman from Meta named Loma. Inspired by her idol, the poet and adventurer Rac Shade, Loma adopts his last name, steals an M-Vest, and departs for Earth.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEbNoMY63YnNmycUREU8dO0CesFeiCMvmagcLOU3S2L_WYqr6BdSX_Qmuohk5iMC9HSkoUzut61jn_JFrNf8yWk66nw44s2kzraExURykXA8SzLJhwrEc_bHnceowcmerSAVaEVVdJnAnZHXsLUBLF9nI3-8XwmFUuv1bpGRZNMI0inNR6LnW441CpVg/s1648/image_2023-03-05_002417115.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1648" data-original-width="1115" height="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEbNoMY63YnNmycUREU8dO0CesFeiCMvmagcLOU3S2L_WYqr6BdSX_Qmuohk5iMC9HSkoUzut61jn_JFrNf8yWk66nw44s2kzraExURykXA8SzLJhwrEc_bHnceowcmerSAVaEVVdJnAnZHXsLUBLF9nI3-8XwmFUuv1bpGRZNMI0inNR6LnW441CpVg/w305-h450/image_2023-03-05_002417115.png" width="305" /></a></div><p>I'll admit I haven't done much more than skim these books, but I suppose they're true to Milligan's series in running with one of its analogies, to which they add a "never meet your heroes" theme. What I recall of the book makes me think of any number of stories of a young female grad student absorbed into a toxic relationship with a male superstar writer she'd always admired. Loma discovers that Shade isn't who she thought he was—Castellucci's Shade is like Milligan's during the character's heartless, sociopathic mod phase, only now he's been stewing in his own psychotic narcissism for god knows how many years—and is finally compelled to confront, fight, and defeat her idol.</p><p>I remember being irritated by what seemed like character assassination on Castellucci's part. Even though Shade is technically at DC Comics' disposal and doesn't belong to Milligan, I felt it was crass for another writer to arrogate to himself the license to decide the trajectory of Shade's life after the end of Milligan's series. Frankly, I feel the same way about how later writers have handled Madrox, Guido, Rahne, et. al after the conclusion of <a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2020/07/peter-davids-x-factor-20-best-moments.html" target="_blank">Peter David's <i>X-Factor</i> run</a>—by that point those characters belonged to him as much as Don Quixote belonged to Cervantes—but them's comic books.</p><p>But I'd missed something: I'd opened up Castellucci's books before peering into Milligan's fifty-issue run on<i> Hellblazer, </i>which began in 2008.</p><p>While writing <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i>, Milligan<i> </i>had John Constantine guest star in a story during the book's "Hotel Shade" phase. Fifteen years later, when he was at the helm of <i>Hellblazer </i>during the long-running Vertigo title's final stretch, he had Shade appear for a few issues to help Constantine.</p><p>Sort of. Shade isn't interested in helping anyone anymore. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZsqkQAiZcqkTAONySTu2mZQyg55wYsklV5SYGE-8Ee1TYPzmZPlvyY2DBfFAoJvLY7dt8BErCYsphCNBjmbyRQXBpXTrcU8YqxAVcDyNupbT7_0_HXG3sJJtmEmUM3IOrR5T8iOsjQmFkY48kUom74Ye4w-JvcMMWW4gWdz7uusIMNTEjU17kIVta5Q/s902/image_2023-02-28_013724025.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="464" data-original-width="902" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZsqkQAiZcqkTAONySTu2mZQyg55wYsklV5SYGE-8Ee1TYPzmZPlvyY2DBfFAoJvLY7dt8BErCYsphCNBjmbyRQXBpXTrcU8YqxAVcDyNupbT7_0_HXG3sJJtmEmUM3IOrR5T8iOsjQmFkY48kUom74Ye4w-JvcMMWW4gWdz7uusIMNTEjU17kIVta5Q/w547-h282/image_2023-02-28_013724025.png" width="547" /></a></div><br />The above panels are from <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> #44. Milligan retcons them during a flashback in <i>Hellblazer #</i>269, inserting a fourth panel between the second and third ones here. Turns out Kathy did <i>did</i> smooch Constantine.<div><br /></div><div>Why is this relevant, you ask? When Shade crosses over from Meta to Earth at Constantine's summons, he demands Constantine kiss him. Constantine kissed Kathy, and Shade wants to <i>take</i> that kiss from Constantine.</div><div><br /></div><div>Shade has his heart back, but it's gone sick—and the infection seems to have spread to his brain. He's obsessed, miserable, and <i>mean—</i>and he's once again a nigh-omnipotent avatar and conduit of reality-twisting madness. He is become thoroughly and truly mad, bad, and dangerous to know.</div><div><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPu5IOhjxUyb8iPGhBewoznwzjmzoXcBnhy2IbA3OaEEK7Vr_wOY7cwvMxGWQIWfKvho8gedYH92xjG_fZU7Z7I9oFnuygednc1zvEVzizgrRe1HwZuvNQ-oaSDqQYTeR4QOnlTt1KBhha27ne9DJOHZKXxOvqe55sNzS1veV1Rq6E_p3zXP--TaSu6A/s655/image_2023-02-28_013141555.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="655" data-original-width="636" height="423" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPu5IOhjxUyb8iPGhBewoznwzjmzoXcBnhy2IbA3OaEEK7Vr_wOY7cwvMxGWQIWfKvho8gedYH92xjG_fZU7Z7I9oFnuygednc1zvEVzizgrRe1HwZuvNQ-oaSDqQYTeR4QOnlTt1KBhha27ne9DJOHZKXxOvqe55sNzS1veV1Rq6E_p3zXP--TaSu6A/w412-h423/image_2023-02-28_013141555.png" width="412" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Though <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> ended on a note of battered optimism, it seems the outcome of Shade's meeting with Kathy wasn't what he'd hoped for. For all we know, Kathy turned him out of her house an hour after inviting him in. It was only to be expected, really. Even if she feels an inexplicable connection to Shade in her heart, and even if she's perused her other self's diaries, she is <i>not</i> the same Kathy whom Shade loved, and who loved Shade, and is incapable of becoming that person.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So, by Milligan's own pen, Shade didn't get the girl in the end. Since then, he's been pining for the negated timeline's Kathy in a really bad, really unhealthy way. And somewhere along the line, his madness powers were restored to their full potential. Great.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And the gut punch of it is that it's not like Douglas Adams' final <i>Hitchhiker's Guide</i> book, where the bitter and depressed author gratuitously heaps misery upon his characters after the previous book concluded with what <i>should</i> have been their happy ending. We knew at the end of <i>Shade, The Changing Man</i> that it was entirely possible that Shade wouldn't get the Happily Ever After he yearned for, and the character's appearance in <i>Hellblazer</i> justifies the sinking feeling in our gut that accompanied the flutter in our heart when we read the last page of<i> Shade</i>'s final issue.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">If there's any good news here, it's that Lenny is still alive and doing well for herself in her new career an art teacher. (And she's quit smoking!) Moreover, Shade's dialogue with her alludes to a "favor" he once did for her—which we can only assume refers to the gigantic problem she made for herself in the revised timeline, and implies that he helped her solve it. Thank heaven for that. Milligan might take us to some very dark places, but he isn't a monster. He knows to hit the brakes just before the truck rolls over the spike strip into misery porn.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUwm-ajydGpsz_n0RjXWCERrn354BCfP-S_Y52gEvQN7VId1U3gZSTcNLIX7HzfQpxTw-jWTGX-7zWaVHdJBOqnv342W3E0zukLvks5As9wuB_DSHxLC9mQ5zS6bqcYqpKvVKRHMl7iEANM-Nhdl1WGjMIYd0zxfR8SXxFbVRlasY7RM3hl0oWXgM4oA/s844/image_2023-02-28_012425670.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="844" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUwm-ajydGpsz_n0RjXWCERrn354BCfP-S_Y52gEvQN7VId1U3gZSTcNLIX7HzfQpxTw-jWTGX-7zWaVHdJBOqnv342W3E0zukLvks5As9wuB_DSHxLC9mQ5zS6bqcYqpKvVKRHMl7iEANM-Nhdl1WGjMIYd0zxfR8SXxFbVRlasY7RM3hl0oWXgM4oA/w547-h424/image_2023-02-28_012425670.png" width="547" /></a></div><p>Still—I hope we never see Lenny again. <i>Somebody</i> in Shade's world deserved to come out the better for having known him.<br /><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>NEXT: </b><a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2023/03/kontemplating-komix-maxx-199398.html">A Comedy of Trauma</a></p></div></div></div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-50787764591934963602023-02-05T23:47:00.001-05:002023-02-05T23:47:44.981-05:00Decisions<p>I'm thinking about migrating to Substack.</p><p>Would anyone care to talk me out of it?</p>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-34558745912069426732023-02-04T17:55:00.028-05:002023-02-05T23:51:51.383-05:00On AI Art: Remember, We Asked For This<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1mREH2NVcW2Gux1HrIAweNh5SrGcOEjyv8tPNRkMDtQdkkhEbk2Q9gc_R0X-0A4WSSr31Ufl5amP1uPtOz2iqIlMVdyb9t8w4lSuW-718Vij6d_cJbfBet1_twv_HVdJ-M-HLnR_brUpIB06LYcwX2rd0KVMnyirFy3079_kuk-CJHyacCz00siDXQ/s682/image_2023-02-04_112611320.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="680" height="355" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1mREH2NVcW2Gux1HrIAweNh5SrGcOEjyv8tPNRkMDtQdkkhEbk2Q9gc_R0X-0A4WSSr31Ufl5amP1uPtOz2iqIlMVdyb9t8w4lSuW-718Vij6d_cJbfBet1_twv_HVdJ-M-HLnR_brUpIB06LYcwX2rd0KVMnyirFy3079_kuk-CJHyacCz00siDXQ/w354-h355/image_2023-02-04_112611320.png" width="354" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pianola advertisement (1909)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>As per Professor McLuhan, any technology can be thought of as an "outering" of human capacity, or otherwise as a prosthetic extension of one or more body parts.</div><div><br /></div><div>The original musical instrument was the human body itself. We can rhythmically chant words, <a href="http://aura.alfred.edu/handle/10829/7479" target="_blank">vocalise</a>, click our tongues, clap our hands, and stamp our feet. Drums, flutes, idiophones, bullroarers, and every other instrument of prehistoric origin don't represent any <i>invention</i> of music so much as an expansion of technical possibilities and the ramification of social practices surrounding instruments and their use.</div><div><br /></div><div>Music in preliterate "primitive" societies was seldom made unless it served some purpose exterior to mere aesthetic enjoyment. Nor was it very often devoid of improvisation: a long, complex piece might be developed, rehearsed, and laboriously transmitted to a student, but variances between one performance and the next were inevitable when a composition's only template was the musician's recollection of the last time he played it. If a song wasn't composed on the spot, it must have been either fairly simple or otherwise composed of stock "phrases," patterns that could be memorized and chained together in the manner of a Homeric bard's repertoire.</div><div><br /></div><div>With literacy invariably came some form of musical notation, and the means to give the evanescent event of the instrumental performance some semblance of object permanence. A composition could not only be made repeatable, but eminently <i>transmittable</i>. Figuratively speaking, notation <i>mechanizes</i> music-making: trained human performers and the tools of their trade become a living, composite <a href="https://www.renaissanceantiques.com/product/american-seeburg-nickelodeon-player-piano/" target="_blank">nickelodeon</a> that accepts a coded input and produces a concert as its output. </div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>Mechanized music in its more literal form has <a href="https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Rogertal/chronological-history-of-recorded-music-part-1-1000-b_c-31_12_1889/" target="_blank">a rich and fascinating history</a>. Perhaps the first instance in the west was the invention of the hydraulis by Ctesibius of Alexandria, a water-powered machine that blew air into panpipes without the need for a pair of lips and lungs; it was the original keyboard instrument and the predecessor to the pipe organ. Around the same time (the second half of the third century BCE) Philo of Byzantium engineered hydraulic bird automata that "chirped" when a rotating owl faced away from them. The Banū Mūsā brothers of ninth-century Persia invented an "automatic flute player" with the revolutionary addition of a rotating cylinder which opened the instrument's holes at predetermined intervals while a hydraulic pump supplied a continuous flow of air through the instrument. During the thirteenth century, the pinned cylinder was applied to bell tower carillons, automatically striking a row of bells as the crank was turned. Barrel organs operating on the same principle first appeared in sixteenth-century Austria; by the eighteenth century, organ grinders operating smaller versions roamed the streets of Europe, irritating everyone within earshot. The late nineteenth-century player piano had the advantage of requiring paper rolls as opposed to metal cylinders, offering greater variety at a reduced cost. Several of the early twentieth century's most illustrious composers wrote and published songs intended for use in player pianos; part of the machine's appeal was its ability to strike sequences of notes that would have been exceedingly difficult or outright impossible for a human with only two hands and ten fingers perched above the ivories.</div></div><div><div><br /></div><div>Up until the 1920s, the player piano (particularly the more sophisticated "reproducing piano" variety) remained the wealthy aesthete's preferred vehicle for idle home listening. The phonographic recording, produced by etching a "transcription" of vibrations onto a wax cylinder, which could then be "read" and reconverted into identical(ish) sound patterns by the same device, was a marvel, though its quality left something to be desired. The wave of [capitalistic] innovation which yielded electrical recording and playback, the vinyl record, FM radio, and "hi fi" sound, the recorded music industry sealed the player piano's fate as a historical curiosity.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>With the advent of MIDI, sequencer software, and digital recording formats in the late twentieth century, the physical instrument and performing musician were no longer necessary ingredients to recroded music. Today, AI-generated music makes superfluous the human composer who tells a program which notes to strike and specifies the texture and timbre of the synthetic sounds. Even a living singer is no longer an indispensable ingredient for a piece with a lyrical component. Sound is sound, however it's generated.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6hW02Xp-6hlC-XzWRtnEn8qN-XVno4NHEssUFbrFfXijvVfivkpcHB6WQxZg7HvaX0MoBBrVdyeSUgsZfcZOTIa_ZXjXX2UbzstdYRac6leYqFGTS2-Nxb4dhciNBZXXjnKnsS5e-kxFDlpCK9qmL8SVVBfx-jBDMaumQiGAphl5Wr-qkqBRS_y0gqg/s709/image_2023-02-04_150949371.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="407" data-original-width="709" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6hW02Xp-6hlC-XzWRtnEn8qN-XVno4NHEssUFbrFfXijvVfivkpcHB6WQxZg7HvaX0MoBBrVdyeSUgsZfcZOTIa_ZXjXX2UbzstdYRac6leYqFGTS2-Nxb4dhciNBZXXjnKnsS5e-kxFDlpCK9qmL8SVVBfx-jBDMaumQiGAphl5Wr-qkqBRS_y0gqg/w428-h246/image_2023-02-04_150949371.png" width="428" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Virtual pop star" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-XaznQLKH4" target="_blank">Miquela</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>Where was the point of no return? Was it digitization? Was it the serial reproduction and commoditization of the musical performance via the phonograph? Did the realization that sounds could be represented by a visual symbolic language make inevitable the insight that those same symbols could be mechanically "translated" into pins on a metal cylinder? Was it the uncoupling of music and song from ritual and religion? Or did man surrender music to technology as soon as he expatriated it from his body via the drum, the rattle, and the bone flute?</div></div><div><br /></div><div>This is just to say I've been thinking about AI art after a friend of mine issued a few critical tweets about an AI-generated "TV show" called "<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkyxp/whats-the-deal-with-nothing-forever-a-21st-century-seinfeld-that-is-ai-generated" target="_blank">Nothing Forever</a>," a machine-learned hallucination of <i>Seinfeld:</i></div></div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">There's this obsession with removing any kind of voice in anything, of airbrushing away blemish—of humanity. AI? You want AI to parrot what people do because we're all living in an absurd world shaped by political capital? Everything can be commodified. Everything is bland.</p>— Karim (@KarimYaTwit) <a href="https://twitter.com/KarimYaTwit/status/1621117471364370433?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 2, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><div>I understand my friend's exasperation—especially in this particularly nihilistic case—but in general, I think the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth over the next generation of AI-produced content is <i>somewhat</i> misplaced. What we're seeing now follows from the technosocial paradigm of the late twentieth-century as naturally as the colonization of the primordial continents by plants, insects, and tetrapods prepared the way for the emergence of reptiles from an amphibian progenitor. We set out a bowl of milk for AI "artists" on our front porch, and shouldn't be shocked now that they're scratching at the door.</div><div><br /></div><div>The AI skeptic's complaint about preferring a "human touch," or something of that sort, in their cultural products is a fundamentally confused statement. While it is true that we are likely to feel a wash of disappointment upon learning that a poem or digital illustration that gives us pleasure was in fact produced by a machine instead of a person, had we not been informed of the fact, our naïve enjoyment would remain inviolate. We'd retweet the poem, save the .png in our images folder, and blithely get on with our life.</div><div><br /></div><div>What we're actually bristling at is the idea that a machine can encroach onto what we feel is (or <i>should </i>be) our exclusive domain. It <i>is</i> unnerving to discover that a nonliving assembly of integrated circuits with an internet connection can be trained to turn out surreal fantasy imagery at a pace some orders of magnitude faster than a human artist, and of a quality that very few people can ever hope to attain—but when the blinds obscure the methods by which a .png takes form, it doesn't matter, does it? The "something" of the human in cultural artifacts has until recently been a sure <i>assumption</i>. It is not, and has never been, a quality <i>residing</i> in a written work, a piece of visual art, a recorded song, a film, etc.</div><div><br /></div><div>A .png, a .pdf, or an .mp4 are <i>not</i> human, have nothing inherently human about them—<i>and we like them that way</i>. We can admire the work of an artist without paying her a cent, without having to earn her confidence, or travel to one of her exhibitions or visit her in her studio. A digital or printed text simulates the experience of engaging with a particular person (who's probably more interesting than anyone living on our block) <i>on our own time</i>; the "speaker" never cancels on us, is always in the mood to "talk" when we're in the mood to "listen," and never irritates us with any noisome personal quirks or tries hitting on our spouse when we leave the room. It's the same with the recording: the "musician" is always on call, happy to play the same song twenty times in a row, without rest, any time we please, promptly goes away when we're tired of him, and spares us the time-consuming exertion of learning to play an instrument for ourselves.</div><div><br /></div><div>Conversely, the appeal of posting one's drawings to Instagram, uploading one's music to Soundcloud, articulating one's ideas on Substack, and pontificating on TikTok is in allowing us to deal with (and hopefully profit from) an abstract "audience" that needn't be restricted to people living near us, and with whom we needn't necessarily engage in any manner that isn't subject to the prophylactic mediation of a software suite.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit6cL211F1WW6Jlz0GB6YQ7Es9J47ILOuGQR6OaeGYGJnK4Nl1QToKArbwSDA8oPE47eBzx4bbsWrABH4KkxxkLIlf03T4CKsgtxQ6d5wWn_Ky0Nlp0PtovJlw_kFt9qibfC517fKK2ZoNsRNHSXe2oFw82Y9sXC9rmS-y37_gWYqLLYe6rMO6uXXGOA/s788/image_2023-02-04_154528467.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="788" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit6cL211F1WW6Jlz0GB6YQ7Es9J47ILOuGQR6OaeGYGJnK4Nl1QToKArbwSDA8oPE47eBzx4bbsWrABH4KkxxkLIlf03T4CKsgtxQ6d5wWn_Ky0Nlp0PtovJlw_kFt9qibfC517fKK2ZoNsRNHSXe2oFw82Y9sXC9rmS-y37_gWYqLLYe6rMO6uXXGOA/w445-h249/image_2023-02-04_154528467.png" width="445" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Still from "Nothing, Forever."<br />(It already has its own <a href="https://nothingforever.fandom.com/wiki/Nothing,_Forever_Wiki" target="_blank">Fandom wiki</a>.)</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>To some professional copywriters, illustrators, or musicians, AI-generated content may well prove a career-withering threat. (Others will surely earn a living in the capacity of curators and cultivators, at least until machine learning catches up to them.) Where the consumer of text, images, and tracks is concerned, AI merely eliminates an invisible third party. Creative destruction, etc. We don't get sentimental about the traffic cop obsolesced by the traffic light, the elevator operator put out of a job by push-button controls, the replacement of drugstore cashiers by automatic check-out lanes, or the 411 operators made obsolete by smartphones and google. Why should we feel any different about creative workers outpaced and underpriced by machines, as long as it doesn't perceptibly detract from either the quantity or the quality of the delicious, delicious content we crave?</div><div><br /></div><div>Meat comes from the supermarket. Content comes from the device. We don't care how it got there, and only rarely are we prompted to think about it.</div><div><br /></div><div>The prevalence of habits like scrolling through Reddit (instead of talking to people), playing video games at home (instead of playing games or sports in a public setting), and listening to Spotify (instead of making music oneself, or with friends, or seeking a place where other people are making it), suggests we really <i>haven't</i> much resented the substitution of humans with technology in cultural life. The device has become our entertainer, our confidant, our intellectual companion, our amusing pet, our witty friend, our preacher, our one-man band, our grocer, our secretary, our chess opponent, our paramour, our gossiping flibbertigibbet, our "man" for all seasons. To suddenly say that we've trained our machines a little <i>too</i> well, entrusted them with perhaps one too many human functions, is like Richard III experiencing an ethical conundrum after murdering his way to the throne. Wherever it lay, the threshold of "one too many" is behind us, and we were happy to cross it.</div><div><br /></div><div>We're already transfixed by simulacra; how much does it <i>truly</i> matter if the people to whom we imaginarily attribute the content fed to us by our screen and earbuds are abstracted from its production? Even the stimuli administered by the MMORPG called social media are so far removed from human contact that we probably wouldn't notice if the updoots that give our lives hope and meaning were allocated by an evolving algorithm, like an abstruse scoring system in a video game. Even the replies could conceivably come from opinionated and eloquent bots, drawn to our submissions by a combination of random determination and the meeting of certain criteria—words used, the "trending-ness" of the topic, past interactions with any number of other "users," our follower count and rate of output, and so on, and we'd be none the wiser.</div><div><br /></div><div>And if we <i>were</i> made aware of it? Well—it's not like we were ever averse to playing against the computer in Mario Kart. (And honestly, how much thought did any of us typically give to the humanity of its programmers?)</div><div><br /></div><div>An age of marvels—when dead labor autonomously composes and sings, scripts and acts in its own productions, paints portraits, writes fiction and poetry, and holds its end of a conversation, all for the free delight of the living.</div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-20312839598296415182023-01-27T02:22:00.023-05:002023-03-02T23:29:39.770-05:00Punk, Conservatism, & the Mandate of Heaven<p>A couple of weeks ago, a column in the <i>Economist</i> ("<a href="https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/01/12/how-rappers-are-strengthening-donald-trumps-movement" target="_blank">How rappers are strengthening Donald Trump’s movement</a>") sent a shiver down my spine.</p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Mr Townsend ["Topher"], 31, served as a cryptological analyst in the Air Force before moving to Philadelphia with his wife, a teacher. He loves the 'Sip, as he calls his state; you could not pay him to move to "any of those Democrat-controlled cities." A fireplug of a man who raps—and eats lunch—in a MAGA-red knit cap, he can glower with the surliest of rappers. But his music can also be buoyant and empathetic and, in person, so is he. His influences range beyond Mr Trump to Booker T. Washington, Malcolm X and Eminem. </span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Mr Townsend grew up in the hamlet of Kilmichael, Mississippi. His mother taught him to be the man of the house by ten years old, he says, but she drank, and his father, married to another woman, was not much in his life. When he was 12 or 13 one of his mother's boyfriends hit her in the face with a two-by-four, and as she bled it took an hour for the police to respond. "I learned early on no one was coming to save me," he says. "And I think that's what fuels my ideology today. No government, nobody."<br /><br />Mr Townsend's contempt for authority points to a reversal of cultural polarity under way in America. The left once drew energy from scorning authority and bourgeois convention. But as it becomes America's enforcer of social norms, it increasingly treats the arts as a tool for instruction. As a result it is surrendering what puts the arts in society’s vanguard, the capacity to question and shock. <b>What more transgressive act could an artist perform than to don a MAGA cap, as Kanye West did?</b></span></blockquote><p>The boldfaced sentence encapsulates an idea that's been a nagging source of angst for me over the last half decade, and reminds me of something a former acquaintance of mine from high school once said.</p>The guy's name was Paul. We were friends insofar as we usually ended up at the same cafeteria table if we shared a lunch period, and we associated with the clique of punker kids who congregated by their leaders' lockers during the fifteen minutes between the general arrival of the students and the first bell. I never saw him outside of school.<div><br /></div><div>As a teenager, Paul was into the Dropkick Murphys and the Misfits, and looked up to George Carlin as a hero. In retrospect, whenever politics came up, his had a markedly libertarian tilt.<br /><br />After everyone in the country in Facebook and friended their old acquaintances around 2006–8, I got a window into where Paul's life was headed. Mostly I remember him making a documentary about the frontman of a punk-/goth-rock act; it pricked my attention because I was working on The Zeroes at the time. He was also doubling and tripling down on his libertarianism. Before I got off Facebook around 2015–16, Paul had gone full-on Proud Boy. I don't know what he's been up to since then, and I'm sometimes tempted to do some digging to find out. I think it's safe to guess he was within the city limits of Washington, DC on January 6, 2021.<br /><br />I forget when exactly it was—probably sometime between 2010 and 2013—that I went on Facebook and read an opinion of Paul's which I still remember because it seemed so insane. However he worded it, the gist was: "the new punk is conservativism."<br /><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span>How the fuck? I envisioned those matutinal gatherings with Aaron T, Pat L, and Dave H by their lockers before homeroom—surly teenage boys with their liberty spikes, anarchy logo swag, concert bruises, and bad attitudes towards authority—and tried to imagine them all as preppy Young Republican types with tucked-in shirts, saying "fuck" every other word while talking about the necessity of releasing our wealth producers from the burden of high taxation and environmental regulation. It didn't compute. I laughed it away, lamenting that someone I once considered a friend had lost his mind.<p>The statement wouldn't have gotten stuck in my craw if I hadn't known Paul. This was a guy to whom punk <i>meant</i> something, because punk still <i>kind of </i>meant something circa 2000. Any "subculture" whose sartorial signifiers can be purchased readymade at a suburban mall has of course undergone a whole lot of dilution since its inception, but the punk that my friends bought into retained some components of its original ethos: namely a spirit of local community, DIYism, and an attitude of dogged resilience. My punk friends also generally understood what they were all <i>against</i>: Middle America's bland conformity, the Christian right, corporate pop music, the military industrial complex, backwater racism, the stifling of free expression, and overbearing authority in general.</p><p>For a lot of the people in that crowd, or in its orbit our political convictions were a bit half-baked. Except for the studious ones, the born activists, we subscribed to a popularized digest of the ideas crackling in the psyche of an American left that had undergone decades of convulsions after the victory of Nixon and the Silent Majority, the Reagan Revolution, and the shifting of the Overton window so far to the right that the only effective opposition mounted in recent memory had arrived in the form of Bill "The Era of Big Government Is Over" Clinton, who continued Reagan's program under a blue banner instead of a red one.</p><p>Some punk kids, it must be said, just thought the clothes and music were cool, and parroted the "fight the power" discourse without really giving it much thought. It was part of the aesthetic, and it signaled conformity with the other nonconformists.</p><div data-reddit-rtjson="{"entityMap":{"0":{"type":"LINK","mutability":"MUTABLE","data":{"url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/lju71z/they_should_take_their_gross_logo_off_our_flag/"}},"1":{"type":"LINK","mutability":"MUTABLE","data":{"url":"https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1060069264"}},"2":{"type":"LINK","mutability":"MUTABLE","data":{"url":"https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/05/24/mercedes-lackey-accused-of-racism-banned-from-nebula-awards/"}},"3":{"type":"LINK","mutability":"MUTABLE","data":{"url":"https://mereorthodoxy.com/sjws-the-careerist-peace-and-the-american-corporation/"}},"4":{"type":"LINK","mutability":"MUTABLE","data":{"url":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10624-017-9476-3.pdf"}},"5":{"type":"LINK","mutability":"MUTABLE","data":{"url":"https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what"}},"6":{"type":"LINK","mutability":"MUTABLE","data":{"url":"https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/us/threats-responses-hollywood-celebrities-known-for-political-outspokenness-have.html"}},"7":{"type":"LINK","mutability":"MUTABLE","data":{"url":"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/dec/11/arts.filmnews"}},"8":{"type":"LINK","mutability":"MUTABLE","data":{"url":"https://baseandsuperstructure.com/whats-a-radlib/"}},"9":{"type":"LINK","mutability":"MUTABLE","data":{"url":"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/05/americans-religion-rightwing-politics-decline"}}},"blocks":[{"key":"3qte4","text":"At least a decade has gone by, and I'm starting to wonder if Paul might have been less wrong than I thought.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"1nvc2","text":"At the same time when I was the token goth kid aligned with my high school's punk crowd, I was working at Hot Topic. (Yeah, yeah, I know, everybody laughs when I tell them.) Not that the store was ever anything but a scheme to sell the commodified tokens of subculture to suburban adolescents, but it was different back then. We mostly sold punk, goth, and raver gear, and nu-metal and hardcore band shirts. There wasn't yet any swag based on internet memes, and the shirts with cartoon characters on them (Rainbow Brite, Invader Zim, etc.) were just beginning to creep in.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":305,"length":9,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":546,"length":4,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"27mc4","text":"Anyway. Of all the iron-on patches we sold, one of the least popular was the rainbow flag. We had a tall stack of them sitting in the glass case, waiting for buyers. People did buy them, and there was no doubt that it belonged in the store, but I don't recall the height of the stack shrinking much in the span of a month.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"8a5en","text":"It's no surprise: to be a kid in the Jersey suburbs with a rainbow flag patch on your bookbag would have been a radical statement circa 2001. I had gay classmates in high school, but none of them were out. There were fewer compunctions about throwing the word \"f**got\" around back then. Being a gay adolescent and wanting people to know it required more stones than a lot of kids had back then, and certainly more than should have been asked of them. (It was different when they settled in at a university or moved to the city, but not everyone had that opportunity.) For that matter, to be a person who never had any same-sex encounters, wasn't hoping or aiming to have any in the future, and who also pinned rainbow flag patches on their bookbags and ironed them onto their jeans—well, there really wasn't much of that at all. (I and a lot of the other heterosexual goth kids I knew from outside of high school were pro-gay rights, but didn't make a point of advertising it.)","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":183,"length":4,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":332,"length":4,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":604,"length":5,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"2bf9b","text":"Twenty years later, you can walk into any Target store in June and buy a variety rainbow apparel and accessories at the impressive Pride Month display by the clothing section. You can go to any comic book shop that still exists and see all the Pride Month superhero comics on display. Hell, you can go to your job at the Amazon distribution center and stand under a giant Pride flag hanging from the ceiling, or get paid to attend a Pride Month webinar at your office job, and get a free Pride coaster (\"Queer [Company Name]\" is what ours say) to take home with you.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[{"offset":364,"length":43,"key":0}],"data":{}},{"key":"1vld7","text":"The rainbow flag and Pride are popular now. They're mainstream. People (and corporate entities) want to be associated with them. ","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":96,"length":4,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"antkn","text":"I also remember how the punk kids I hung out with were anti-police. Of course they were. Fuckin' pigs. Fuck tha police. Fuckin' fascists. Et cetera. This was a shibboleth of the punk kid, and only the most political of them—the ones who not only wore T-shirts with the anarchy symbol, but read actual books by actual anarchists—were capable of mounting a coherent case for why the country would be altogether better off without municipal and state police forces. Anyone over the age of twenty who'd advocate for a world without cops was regarded as a kook.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":71,"length":6,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"buqvc","text":"Fast forward to the early years of the 2020s, and even NPR—the soft, measured voice in the ears of the affluent and educated—is running \"should we abolish the police?\" content. ","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[{"offset":137,"length":29,"key":1}],"data":{}},{"key":"ekemp","text":"Without citing any other cases (and I can think of several), I think it's obvious that the cultural rebels of the 2000s and early 2010s won the \"war.\" The former youngsters of Tumblr pushing what was once a radical social program are no longer on the fringes. They're the Establishment now—or at least their discourse is. Theirs is the ideology of the nonprofit industrial complex, the media sector, the corporate deep state of Human Resources, and academia—and vice versa.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":136,"length":3,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"22jrk","text":"Talk about the \"great awokening\" or \"successor ideology\" is so ubiquitous that I'm not sure we need to define it here. Let's say that the ethos of the group is defined by the intersection of liberal feminism, an anti-racism that verges on racialism, and a conception of LGBT rights in which there's always another letter to be added. (Anti-capitalism would be the wobbly fourth leg that only sporadically makes contact with the ground.) It exhibits an array of characteristic manners and aesthetics, particular enough and sufficiently widespread to serve as the basis of stereotype and caricature. Their demand for ideological conformity is well established, as is their lack of patience for dissent and the callous efficiency with which they punish apostates (or allies who suffer a slip of the tongue).<sup>*</sup>","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[{"offset":761,"length":41,"key":2}],"data":{}},{"key":"b596c","text":"Paul, being part of a social group that felt threatened by the culture epitomized by Tumblr, was paying more attention to it than the contingent of pro-Occupy, anti-Tea Party, Daily Show-watching Obama voters to which I belonged in the early 2010s. He was predisposed towards paranoia regarding the proliferation of its discourse and its growing confidence—and in this case, he accurately observed that it was gaining mainstream traction, while we either shrugged it off, cautiously supported it with the understanding that it represented a virtuous underdog, or joined in.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":45,"length":10,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":176,"length":10,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"d59n","text":"Sometimes an outgroup can see things more clearly. In 2015, still a few years before the character, role, and existence of the professional managerial class became a popular topic of hand-wringing chatter among the left, an explicitly Christian purveyor of thinkpieces published a piece called \"SJWs, the Careerist Peace, and the American Corporation.\" It deserves to be quoted at length:","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":22,"length":3,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[{"offset":295,"length":55,"key":3}],"data":{}},{"key":"7rp1l","text":"As the broader culture shifts leftward on many social justice issues, the professional costs of perceived radicalism can nearly disappear. As Patrick Deneen has been saying for some time, corporatism and the worldview of our current SJW radicals actually fit together quite nicely in that both benefit from an unbending commitment to individualism. Indeed, the unambiguously joyful response from America’s big businesses to the Obergefell decision underlines the social liberalism that is increasingly the norm in the business world....","type":"blockquote","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"2djlc","text":"To the extent that the activism of SJWs on university campuses is perceived as genuinely positive work to promote justice, it will be welcome by large corporations for multiple reasons. First, there is business incentive to link yourself with someone who is thought of as a heroic fighter for justice. Call it the Bizarro Justine Sacco Effect....","type":"blockquote","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"bc6qb","text":"In the contemporary United States, corporations aren’t just people; they’re families, churches, and neighborhoods all rolled into one. Thus we shouldn’t be surprised that these modern-day adopted families tend to adopt variations of the same sort of code that our current SJW radicals have adopted. To be sure, there is still some softening of that code that happens in these businesses that the unique university context doesn’t require. But the gap between the beliefs and values of the student radicals and the American workplace has never been smaller.","type":"blockquote","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"14bn3","text":"The \"movement\" couldn't have been bought unless there were people within intent on selling it. I mean, why not? They wanted to be change the world, but they also wanted to buy their houses, raise their families, have their overseas vacations, and go out for brunch. What took place was a mutual buy-in between the socially progressive millennial cohort and transnational capital. Each party saw a benefit for themselves in what the other was selling.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":83,"length":7,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":288,"length":6,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"6s7h5","text":"The SJW-ification of the professional class contains a recapitulative germ of the conversion of Constantine. The effect of making Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire didn't so much invest the premiere world-power of antiquity with a new ethos of pacifism and liberation, but imperialized Christianity. That's about where we're at with the \"woke\" ideology. (See also: Adolph Reed's \"Antiracism: A Neoliberal Alternative to a Left.\")","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[{"offset":398,"length":46,"key":4}],"data":{}},{"key":"9ef5u","text":"In spite of this, I've observed a tendency on the part of the successor ideology's boosters to claim that their position is one of perennial precarity and vulnerability, and it reminds me of a remark from Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle regarding the power of a bureaucracy in a totalitarian state: \"The stronger it is, the more it claims not to exist.\" (\"The stronger it is, the harder it insists on not being named\" may also be apt.) It's the posture of besiegement that doesn't make sense to me, given that this set and its ideology have been on the advance for the last two decades.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":218,"length":24,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":559,"length":7,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[{"offset":382,"length":40,"key":5}],"data":{}},{"key":"32kr2","text":"You can call the corporate world's rainbow-coalition branding efforts mere lip service—and in some places, it certainly is—but lip service isn't paid to anyone who isn't taken seriously.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"8rvhk","text":"If a Vibe Shift is on its way, and if one of the areas affected is the status of \"woke\" culture, any general change that occurs will be owed to the mass recognition that \"wokeness\"—whatever you call it, however you define is—occupies a position of formidable cultural power (if not dominance) in some sectors of American life.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"5kjut","text":"When I was an adolescent, a similar position was occupied by the neoconservatives and the religious right. Trivial though it might be, I remember there were a few years when Magic: The Gathering stopped printing new cards with the \"demon\" creature type after the Evangelicals accused Wizards of the Coast of promoting devil worship. To appease them, the cards that would have been demons became \"beasts\" instead. I also remember a minor brouhaha when the small company that localized an obscure PS2 game called La Pucelle censored all the crucifixes in the graphics. \"There are well organized forces that work hard to punish software makers and sellers for what they consider religious transgressions,\" Mastiff Games' boss wrote in a 2004 statement. \"As a very small and brand new publisher without deep pockets we need to pick and choose our battles.\" In other words, he was afraid of getting cancelled by the Christian right.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":511,"length":10,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"9otq2","text":"Remember when the Bush Administration intimidated the New York Times into burying stories that cast doubt on the \"intelligence\" cited to sell lawmakers and the public on invading Iraq? In today's political climate, the idea of the Gray Lady rolling over for a Republican administration seems unbelievable. But it happened. It was a different time.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":54,"length":14,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"4tnop","text":"Incidentally: in October 2002, the Times ran an article with the headline: \"Celebrities Known for Political Outspokenness Have Little to Say About Iraq.\" Typically vocal liberal Warren Beatty \"is choosing his words carefully,\" the piece reports, \"intently aware...that those who have questioned the White House's course have been demonized and marginalized.\" Seriously, try to imagine anyone in Hollywood today being afraid to talk shit about a conservative president and his foreign policy. ","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":35,"length":5,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":417,"length":6,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[{"offset":76,"length":75,"key":6}],"data":{}},{"key":"cece4","text":"Two months later, when veteran actor Mike Farrell was a spokesperson for a group of some hundred celebrities finally putting their opposition to preemptive military action against Iraq on record, he \"faced aggressive questioning from the Hollywood Reporter,\" the Guardian reported at the time.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":238,"length":18,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":263,"length":8,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[{"offset":272,"length":20,"key":7}],"data":{}},{"key":"7fqqd","text":"From the fucking Hollywood Reporter. That was the cultural mood over which the neoconservative establishment presided. Its ability to cow people into silence went beyond having the means to kill stories in the newspaper, put out nasty press releases, or sic lawyers and/or bureaucrats on critics. It enjoyed cultural power. Social clout. People who happily enforced its program for free.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":17,"length":9,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":27,"length":8,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":308,"length":8,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"3pkvj","text":"When I was in my teens and early twenties, these were the people whom the \"counterculture\" opposed. The axis of cultural power has shifted since then. (By my reckoning, there have been at least two major Vibe Shifts.) ","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"75uoe","text":"There's always a social trend, a spirit of a time, that seems so naturally ubiquitous, irresistible, and perpetually on the ascent—until suddenly it isn't anymore, and everyone acts like it was an embarrassment from which they're glad to have moved on. There will come a time when the streotypical \"blue hair\" type will look to an emergent group the way the 1980s hair metal bro looked to the kids caught up in the early-1990s grunge wave. (Of course, a lot of hair metal people became grunge people, the same way the disinterested, above-it-all hipster of the 2000s adapted to the reaffirmation that the personal is the intensely political in the 2010s. We're all of us susceptible to trends.)","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":621,"length":9,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"2rjsk","text":"But I'm a little curious about how the under-twenty set factors in. Most kids might lack the training for a sociological analysis of power, but they can tell who's in charge. The ones disposed to nonconformity and/or have problems with authority have ever possessed a particularly keen awareness of who the censors, smarmy moralizers, and hypocrites are, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the rebel strain among today's youth isn't starting to get a powerful whiff of that from the woke set.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"frlul","text":"It's not unimaginable that a strain of \"counterculture\" (which I keep putting in quotes because any culture can only be so \"counter\" when it is utterly dependent on the infrastructure of transnational capital for its formulation and expression) will define itself in opposition to the affluent radlib, and to the spectrum of subcultural attitudes and aesthetics grounded in a popularization of the same worldview.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[{"offset":294,"length":6,"key":8}],"data":{}},{"key":"17ieh","text":"To the understanding of someone like my erstwhile friend Paul in 2012, to be against what the increasingly mainstream ideology of the university, Tumblr, and the media was for was to be...well, conservative.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":77,"length":7,"style":"ITALIC"},{"offset":172,"length":3,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"okb3","text":"I'd say that assessment speaks to a lack of vision on Paul's part—but given how promiscuously the term \"reactionary\" is applied to anyone who criticizes the dogma of the successor ideology, it seems that even his foes agree with him on this point. Then again, I wouldn't expect an accurate triangulation from data furnished by a pair of myopes.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"7dvgq","text":"All of this is pure speculation, and I might not have any clue what I'm talking about. What I do know is that there was a causal relation between the Christian right's swaggering behavior at the peak of its influence between the beginning of the Reagan years and the end of George W. Bush's presidency and a generation's abandonment of Christianity. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar reaction against a milieu popularly perceived to be overbearing, censorious, and out of touch is fomenting—though I don't claim to know if that's a fact. Nor can I speculate on how many babies will be thrown out with how much bathwater if \"social justice\" becomes a radioactive term.","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[{"offset":302,"length":46,"key":9}],"data":{}},{"key":"djeb7","text":"I'll admit what puzzles me most is trying to imagine the Hot Topic-ization of any subcultural trend spurred by the rejection of (or the disinterested but deliberate moving on from) the rainbow coalition, its preferred pop culture products, and its sartorial signifiers. But if the backlash is strong enough, it will have Hot Topic swag. And what could be more punk than that?","type":"unstyled","inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":311,"length":4,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}}]}"><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="7u7na-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="7u7na-0-0"><span data-offset-key="7u7na-0-0">At least a decade has passed since I shuddered at Paul's blasphemous prediction—and it troubles me to consider that he may have been less wrong than I thought.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="4o01p-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4o01p-0-0"><span data-offset-key="4o01p-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4o01p-0-0"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2OwpjbTmPkqigj4Dqi9p3_tmuPM2hVdNf_2NFGr4s3VE7B4S_G6vxMmMidyvdrn-3Bdb4RE7eGLpnIqy4fHr9T5fljLLFfNMHYf8Moz7nBb-GBSjZxcAlQ1b429Yvwn0J1GhWNh4ZA-pAVpwjWkbbBLFAXur004fPmAV5vptpQ8FdB3YWXVKkeP4Umg/s980/image_2023-01-24_235943404.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="980" data-original-width="783" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2OwpjbTmPkqigj4Dqi9p3_tmuPM2hVdNf_2NFGr4s3VE7B4S_G6vxMmMidyvdrn-3Bdb4RE7eGLpnIqy4fHr9T5fljLLFfNMHYf8Moz7nBb-GBSjZxcAlQ1b429Yvwn0J1GhWNh4ZA-pAVpwjWkbbBLFAXur004fPmAV5vptpQ8FdB3YWXVKkeP4Umg/s320/image_2023-01-24_235943404.png" width="256" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul (Jan 18, 2023)<br />He seems to be doing well for himself.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4o01p-0-0"><span data-offset-key="4o01p-0-0">When I was the token goth kid aligned with my high school's punk crowd, I was working at Hot Topic on the evenings and weekends. (Yeah, yeah, I know, everybody laughs when I tell them.) Not that the store was ever anything but a scheme to sell the commodified badges of "subculture" to suburban adolescents, but it was </span><span data-offset-key="4o01p-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">different</span><span data-offset-key="4o01p-0-2"> back then. We mostly sold punk, goth, and raver gear, and nu-metal and hardcore band shirts. There wasn't yet any swag based on internet memes, and Invader Zim merch was </span><span data-offset-key="4o01p-0-3" style="font-style: italic;">just</span><span data-offset-key="4o01p-0-4"> beginning to creep in.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="5t7dk-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="5t7dk-0-0"><span data-offset-key="5t7dk-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="5t7dk-0-0"><span data-offset-key="5t7dk-0-0">Anyway. Of all the iron-on patches we sold, one of the least popular was the rainbow flag. We had a tall stack of them sitting in the glass case by the cash wrap, waiting for buyers. They did sell from time to time, and there was no doubt that it belonged in an "alternative" apparel store, but I don't recall the height of the stack shrinking much in the span of a given month. I seem to remember them eventually ending up in the clearance section.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="abc4h-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="abc4h-0-0"><span data-offset-key="abc4h-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="abc4h-0-0"><span data-offset-key="abc4h-0-0">It's no surprise: to be a kid in the Jersey suburbs with a rainbow flag patch on your bookbag would have been a radical statement circa 2000. I know today that I had gay classmates in high school, but </span><span data-offset-key="abc4h-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">none</span><span data-offset-key="abc4h-0-2"> of them were out back then. It was a time when people had fewer compunctions about throwing the word "faggot" around. Being a gay adolescent and wanting people to </span><span data-offset-key="abc4h-0-3" style="font-style: italic;">know</span><span data-offset-key="abc4h-0-4"> it required more stones than a lot of kids had, and certainly more than should have been asked of them. (It was different when they settled in at a university or moved to the city, but not everyone had that opportunity.)</span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="abc4h-0-0"><span data-offset-key="abc4h-0-4"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="abc4h-0-0"><span data-offset-key="abc4h-0-4">For that matter, to be a person who </span><span data-offset-key="abc4h-0-5" style="font-style: italic;">never</span><span data-offset-key="abc4h-0-6"> had any same-sex encounters, wasn't hoping or aiming to have any in the future, and who also pinned rainbow flag patches on their bookbags and ironed them onto their jeans—well, there really wasn't much of that at all. I and a lot of the other heterosexual goth kids I knew from outside of high school were pro-gay rights, but the occasional indulgence in performative homoeroticism to troll homophobic passersby was as far as we went toward broadcasting it.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="3guv3-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="3guv3-0-0"><span data-offset-key="3guv3-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="3guv3-0-0"><span data-offset-key="3guv3-0-0">Twenty years later, you can walk into any Target store in June and buy a variety rainbow apparel and accessories at the impressive Pride Month display by the clothing section. You can go to any comic book shop that still exists and see all the Pride Month superhero one-shots on display. Hell, you can go to your job at the Amazon distribution center and stand under </span><a class="_1FRfMxEAy__7c8vezYv9qP" href="https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/lju71z/they_should_take_their_gross_logo_off_our_flag/"><span data-offset-key="3guv3-1-0">a giant Progress flag hanging from the ceiling</span></a><span data-offset-key="3guv3-2-0">, or get paid to attend a Pride Month webinar at your office job, and get a free Pride coaster ("Queer [Company Name]" is what ours say) to take home with you.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="ahsle-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="ahsle-0-0"><span data-offset-key="ahsle-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="ahsle-0-0"><span data-offset-key="ahsle-0-0">The rainbow flag and Pride are popular now. They're mainstream. People (and corporate entities) </span><span data-offset-key="ahsle-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">want</span><span data-offset-key="ahsle-0-2"> to be associated with them. </span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="j0sp-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="j0sp-0-0"><span data-offset-key="j0sp-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="j0sp-0-0"><span data-offset-key="j0sp-0-0">I also remember how the punk kids I hung out with were anti-police because of </span><span data-offset-key="j0sp-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">course</span><span data-offset-key="j0sp-0-2"> they were. Fuckin' pigs. Fuck tha police. Fuckin' fascists. Et cetera. This was a shibboleth of the punk kid, and only the most political of them—the ones who not only wore T-shirts with the anarchy symbol, but read actual books by actual anarchists—were capable of mounting a coherent case for why the country would be altogether better off without municipal and state police forces. Nevertheless, anyone over the age of twenty-one who'd advocate for a world without cops was regarded as a naïve kook.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0">Fast forward to the early years of the 2020s, and even NPR—the soft, measured voice in the ears of the affluent and educated—is running "</span><a class="_1FRfMxEAy__7c8vezYv9qP" href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1060069264"><span data-offset-key="fi4p2-1-0">should we abolish the police?</span></a><span data-offset-key="fi4p2-2-0">" content. We should talk about this in the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/democrats-went-defund-refund-police-rcna14796" target="_blank">past tense</a>, though: the scope of the conversation around defunding and abolition contracted amid the last two years' upswing in urban crime. Still, it's astonishing that the rhetoric was able to reach so far beyond its usual confines on the radical fringe.</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fi4p2-2-0" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fi4p2-2-0" style="font-size: x-small;">* In case you're wondering: I'm not a fan of the criminal justice system in this county (for-profit prisons <i>should</i> be abolished, police forces <i>should</i> be demilitarized, etc.), but I also dislike the prospect of "community justice" spiraling into "tribal justice" when the rubber meets the road, or of armed security contractors with even less public accountability than the cops becoming a common sight in rich neighborhoods and business districts. </span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fi4p2-2-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fi4p2-2-0">One more memory: when I was growing up, dyed hair, facial piercings, and tattoos were seen (correctly, I think) across the board as a rejection of middle- and upper-class "respectability." My mother was <i>horrified</i> when I got a lip piercing on my eighteenth birthday. During my first decade in the workforce, every employer I had (except for Hot Topic) insisted I remove it when I clocked in. If you got a tattoo, conventional wisdom said you needed to get used to wearing long sleeves if you hoped for a career that didn't involve manual labor or a cash register at some "alternative" store. Hair dye could be washed out, of course, so a lot of parents gave it a grudging pass. I think they were willing to remember the rebellious longhairs of their own youth and roll their eyes at a teenager with dyed hair, but they gave the side-eye to anyone in or past their mid-twenties who still walked around with bright purple, orange, or pink hair. It screamed "burnout" to them.</span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fi4p2-2-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0">Not long ago I was sitting at my workstation in the mail-/copy room on the thirtieth floor of an office building in central Philadelphia, my lip ring still in place. None of the bosses have ever mentioned it, let alone asked me to remove it while I'm on the job. (That was not the case when I was barista at a Borders café in the late 2000s.) A coworker, a scientist in her early or mid-thirties, walked past to pick up something from the printer. She had magenta streaks in her hair, visible tattoos, and an earpiece she was using to have a very serious and respectable-sounding conversation about matters regarding the firm. </div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi4p2-0-0"><br /></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><span data-offset-key="4st43-0-0">Without citing any other cases (and I can think of several), I think it's obvious that the cultural rebels of the 2000s and early 2010s </span><span data-offset-key="4st43-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">won</span><span data-offset-key="4st43-0-2"> the "war." The high schoolers in Rage Against the Machine and Dead Kennedys T-shirts that groused about the military, the police, and racism, </span><span data-offset-key="4st43-0-2">the student activists at a given chapter of the Gay-Straight Alliance, the exasperated adolescents on whose shoulders Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rose to the status of prophets, the Tumblr kids</span> who vociferated about patriarchy and colonialism—the Establishment now girds itself in their discourse and fashions. Theirs is the ideology of the nonprofit industrial complex, the media sector, the corporate deep state of Human Resources, and academia. And vice versa.</div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0">There was a <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/a-vibe-shift-is-coming.html" target="_blank">Vibe Shift</a>. It's beyond the scope of a piece like this to account for it, but I can offer a few educated guesses as to some relevant factors:</div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0">(1) The most pat (and therefore the least precise) explanation is that the millennial cohort began coming of age, entering into the workforce and civic life as the best-educated and worst-paid generation in memory. (Gen Z is following them in this regard, thanks to robust university admissions, the coronavirus shock, the inflation crisis, and the accelerating consolidation of wealth in the upper echelons that began in the 1980s.) This was a generation whose worldview was formed by the ambient cynicism of popular culture in the 1990s, and by the abject failures of George W. Bush's presidency, which began with the disgraceful War on Terror and concluded with the bursting of the sub-prime mortgage bubble and the onset of the Great Recession. Dissatisfaction with the political establishment and the social order managed by the postwar Baby Boom cohort was endemic.</div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0">(2) It should be added that I and those punk and goth kids I hung out with in high school were a microcosm of a body of "subcultures" that took root in affluent suburbs and urban neighborhoods across the country. However much we might have hated to acknowledge it, we grew up benefiting every day from our parents' respectable jobs and respectable salaries. Compared to the youth of poor urban areas or rural regions, we were more likely to go to four-year colleges and earn bachelor's degrees. Even though the arithmetic of the Great Recession and of the phenomenon of elite overproduction meant that a lot of degree-holders ended up steaming milk, stocking shelves, and working in call centers instead of entering into the world of metropolitan professionalism, those of us that did weren't likely to leave our campus-radical convictions behind when we boarded the train to the city or stepped out of our cars in the office parking garage.</div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0">(3) The ideological homogenization of the university and accelerated during the George W. Bush years as the invasion and occupation of Iraq was increasingly regarded an indefensible blunder, and as the popular advance of the gay rights movement resulted in a reciprocal souring of public opinion against Christian conservativism ("<a href="https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/opportunity-road/george-w-bush-on-compassionate-conservatism.html" target="_blank">compassionate</a>" or not). The campus' intellectual uniformity transferred over into the metropolitan professional class in remarkably short order.</div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0">(4) The role of the internet in determining the cultural pole shift is so intricate that it could be the subject of a book, but Tumblr is often singled out as the area where the popular culture of comics, cartoons, fandom, etc. collided with the "postmodern" identity politics imported by undergraduate and grad student posters, and was synthesized into a popular form. (Some dispute this, and argue that SomethingAwful was ground zero.) Social media platforms played the role that punk music once did in transmitting subversive political ideas to an off-campus audience that had no patience for dense academic books, and could guarantee a degree of extensive circulation for which the consent of record labels, broadcasters, and retailers was once required. The crucible of social media was also responsible for intensifying the public conversation around high-profile cases of sexual assault, rape, and the murder of unarmed black men by police officers, and in guiding users on either side of a given issue to rally around the most emotionally compelling voices speaking to, and on behalf of, their political tribe. This fact acquires particular relevance when you remember the correlation between university education, liberal politics, and membership in the professional class.</div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0">One result of all this, curious for someone of my age group to witness, is that a group of adolescents with dyed hair, tattoos, facial piercings, black boots, and striped stockings can raise their fists and chant <i>BLACK LIVES MATTER! TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS! SMASH THE PATRIARCHY! END WHITE SUPREMACY! BELIEVE WOMEN!</i> and other such credos in the tone of unrepentant heretics with nothing to lose—and the voice from the transnational firm, from the culture industry, and from one half of the United States' political duopoly replies: <i>yes, we agree</i>;<i> we're with you.</i></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><span data-offset-key="a0mio-0-0">My old friend Paul, feeling </span><span data-offset-key="a0mio-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">threatened</span><span data-offset-key="a0mio-0-2"> by the ascendency of the culture epitomized by Tumblr, was paying more attention to it than did the contingent of pro-Occupy, anti-Tea Party, </span><span data-offset-key="a0mio-0-3" style="font-style: italic;">Daily Show</span><span data-offset-key="a0mio-0-4">-watching Obama voters to which I belonged in the early 2010s. He regarded the proliferation of its discourse and its mounting self-confidence with paranoia—and in this case, he accurately observed that it was gaining irresistible momentum, while we either shrugged it off, cautiously supported it with the understanding that it represented a virtuous underdog, or joined in ourselves.</span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiflqTgPxyXVrGxZxZK4lbohh2GvV9CEvvC9QvPlmk4mx3V5j_xVnE00ILJ66mVbbKVDQvLNSnEYi_E7iriOvt0uKph3kp8rncDFw0MV0CR3YADdgPnWqY_tyTlHviy1dXOMxONhUzcOO64vkk-wTdcn0BMpdYek91wgQPv6N82qhJnhA6JXMAxg4lGw/s1531/image_2023-01-25_001639136.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="524" data-original-width="1531" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiflqTgPxyXVrGxZxZK4lbohh2GvV9CEvvC9QvPlmk4mx3V5j_xVnE00ILJ66mVbbKVDQvLNSnEYi_E7iriOvt0uKph3kp8rncDFw0MV0CR3YADdgPnWqY_tyTlHviy1dXOMxONhUzcOO64vkk-wTdcn0BMpdYek91wgQPv6N82qhJnhA6JXMAxg4lGw/w538-h185/image_2023-01-25_001639136.png" width="538" /></a></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="ejvep-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="ejvep-0-0"><span data-offset-key="ejvep-0-0">Sometimes it takes an outgroup to see a situation clearly. </span><span data-offset-key="ejvep-0-2">In 2015, still a few years before the character, position, and existence of the professional managerial class became a popular topic of hand-wringing chatter among the left, an explicitly Christian purveyor of thinkpieces called <a href="https://mereorthodoxy.com" target="_blank">Mere Orthodoxy</a> published an essay called "</span><a class="_1FRfMxEAy__7c8vezYv9qP" href="https://mereorthodoxy.com/sjws-the-careerist-peace-and-the-american-corporation/" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="ejvep-1-0">SJWs, the Careerist Peace, and the American Corporation</span></a><span data-offset-key="ejvep-2-0">." It deserves to be quoted at length:</span></div></div><blockquote data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="5lu6q-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="5lu6q-0-0"><span data-offset-key="5lu6q-0-0" style="font-family: courier;">As the broader culture shifts leftward on many social justice issues, the professional costs of perceived radicalism can nearly disappear. As Patrick Deneen has been saying for some time, corporatism and the worldview of our current SJW radicals actually fit together quite nicely in that both benefit from an unbending commitment to individualism. Indeed, the unambiguously joyful response from America’s big businesses to the Obergefell decision underlines the social liberalism that is increasingly the norm in the business world....</span></div></blockquote><blockquote data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="6veaj-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="6veaj-0-0"><span data-offset-key="6veaj-0-0" style="font-family: courier;">To the extent that the activism of SJWs on university campuses is perceived as genuinely positive work to promote justice, it will be welcome by large corporations for multiple reasons. First, there is business incentive to link yourself with someone who is thought of as a heroic fighter for justice....</span></div></blockquote><blockquote data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="7lpg6-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="7lpg6-0-0"><span data-offset-key="7lpg6-0-0" style="font-family: courier;">In the contemporary United States, corporations aren’t just people; they’re families, churches, and neighborhoods all rolled into one. Thus we shouldn’t be surprised that these modern-day adopted families tend to adopt variations of the same sort of code that our current SJW radicals have adopted. To be sure, there is still some softening of that code that happens in these businesses that the unique university context doesn’t require. But the gap between the beliefs and values of the student radicals and the American workplace has never been smaller.</span></div></blockquote><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="399p6-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="399p6-0-0"><span data-offset-key="399p6-0-0">The "movement," such as it was, couldn't have been bought unless there were people within intent on </span><span data-offset-key="399p6-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">selling</span><span data-offset-key="399p6-0-2"> it. I mean, why not? They wanted to change the world, but they also wanted to buy their houses, raise their families, have their overseas vacations, and go out for brunch. What took place was a </span><span data-offset-key="399p6-0-3" style="font-style: italic;">mutual</span><span data-offset-key="399p6-0-4"> buy-in between the socially progressive millennial cohort and The Establishment. Each party saw a benefit for itself in what the other had to offer, and neither was asked to make any compromises it couldn't live with. The employer got an influx of new talent, an opportunity to launder its public image by touting its social responsibility and commitment to DEI, and best of all, a cohort whose <a href="https://baseandsuperstructure.com/whats-a-radlib/" target="_blank">radical liberal</a> politics and "<a href="https://damagemag.com/2023/01/19/the-cultural-turn-assigned-to-the-labor-beat-or-the-curious-case-of-gabriel-winant/" target="_blank">Brahmin cultural sensibility</a>" were positively antiseptic to the sort of broad-based popular movement that might actually threaten their bottom lines.</span></div><div><span data-offset-key="399p6-0-4"><br /></span></div></div></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0">The SJW-ification of the corporation, the professional class, and the mainstream media contains a recapitulative germ of the conversion of Constantine and the Edict of Thessalonica. Instating Christianity as Rome's official religion didn't invest antiquity's premiere hegemon with a regenerative spirit of pacifism and liberation, so much as it made Christianity into an appurtenance of empire. That's about where we're at with "woke."<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span> When the PR wings of Raytheon, Amazon, and the CIA have adopted its popular jargon and imagistic tropes, it's hard to claim that it represents a revolutionary social justice movement rather than <a href="https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/11/the-cia-and-the-new-dialect-of-power/" target="_blank">a new dialect of power</a>.</div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span>* I continue to put "woke" in quotation marks because I hate using the word. </span><a href="https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what" target="_blank">As soon a better one becomes available</a><span>, I will adopt it. Part of the problem is that it refers to a constellation of ideas and social trends whose association is often a matter of anecdotal observance. "Woke" describes neither a coherent ideology nor an explicit political program.</span></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><span data-offset-key="a0mio-0-4"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fca1k-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><span data-offset-key="a0mio-0-4"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fca1k-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fca1k-0-0">I can hear friends protesting that a multinational corporation participating in a Pride march or ostentatiously celebrating Black History Month is just a lot of empty lip service. Perhaps so—but lip service isn't paid to anyone who isn't taken seriously.</span></div></span></div></div></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="di0q5-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="di0q5-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="di0q5-0-0">I'd be a lot happier about my "team" racking up victory after victory in the culture wars of the 2000s and 2010s if it hadn't taken to behaving so much like the boogeymen it railed against. </div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="di0q5-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="di0q5-0-0"><span data-offset-key="37e5j-0-0">Trivial though it might be, I remember there were a few years when Magic: The Gathering stopped printing new cards with the "demon" creature type after the Evangelicals accused Wizards of the Coast of promoting devil worship. To appease them, the cards that would have been demons became "beasts" instead. I also recall a minor brouhaha when the small company that localized an obscure Japanese video game called </span><span data-offset-key="37e5j-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">La Pucelle</span><span data-offset-key="37e5j-0-2"> censored all the crucifixes in the graphics. "There are well organized forces that work hard to punish software makers and sellers for what they consider religious transgressions," Mastiff Games' boss explained the decision in a 2004 statement. "As a very small and brand new publisher without deep pockets we need to pick and choose our battles." In other words, he was afraid of getting cancelled by the Christian right (even if that usage of "cancel" wasn't in currency back then).</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="37e5j-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="37e5j-0-0"><span data-offset-key="37e5j-0-2"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="37e5j-0-0">Somewhat less trivial was the conservative Christian response to the gay rights movement: as its demands came to seem more and more reasonable to the public, the religious right refused to budge an inch. In retrospect, nobody should have been surprised when a hardline atheism became a popular intellectual trend during the late 2000s and early 2010s.</div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="bgkqi-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="bgkqi-0-0"><span data-offset-key="bgkqi-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="bgkqi-0-0"><span data-offset-key="bgkqi-0-0">Remember when the Bush Administration intimidated the </span><span data-offset-key="bgkqi-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span><span data-offset-key="bgkqi-0-2"> into burying stories that cast doubt on the "intelligence" cited to sell lawmakers and the public on invading Iraq? In today's political climate, the idea of the Gray Lady rolling over on its back for a Republican administration seems unbelievable. But it happened. It was a different time.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="fi7m0-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi7m0-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fi7m0-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi7m0-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fi7m0-0-0">Incidentally: in October 2002, the </span><span data-offset-key="fi7m0-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">Times</span><span data-offset-key="fi7m0-0-2"> ran an article with the headline: "</span><a class="_1FRfMxEAy__7c8vezYv9qP" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/us/threats-responses-hollywood-celebrities-known-for-political-outspokenness-have.html"><span data-offset-key="fi7m0-1-0">Celebrities Known for Political Outspokenness Have Little to Say About Iraq</span></a><span data-offset-key="fi7m0-2-0">." Typically vocal liberal Warren Beatty "is choosing his words carefully," the piece reports, "intently aware...that those who have questioned the White House's course have been demonized and marginalized."</span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi7m0-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fi7m0-2-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fi7m0-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fi7m0-2-0">Seriously, try to imagine anyone in Hollywood today being </span><span data-offset-key="fi7m0-2-1" style="font-style: italic;">afraid</span><span data-offset-key="fi7m0-2-2"> to talk shit about a conservative president and his foreign policy. </span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="a6kj9-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="a6kj9-0-0"><span data-offset-key="a6kj9-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="a6kj9-0-0"><span data-offset-key="a6kj9-0-0">Two months later, when veteran actor Mike Farrell was a spokesperson for a group of some hundred celebrities finally putting their opposition to preemptive military action against Iraq on record, he "faced aggressive questioning from the </span><span data-offset-key="a6kj9-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">Hollywood Reporter</span><span data-offset-key="a6kj9-0-2">," the </span><span data-offset-key="a6kj9-0-3" style="font-style: italic;">Guardian</span><span data-offset-key="a6kj9-0-4"> </span><a class="_1FRfMxEAy__7c8vezYv9qP" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/dec/11/arts.filmnews"><span data-offset-key="a6kj9-1-0">reported at the time</span></a><span data-offset-key="a6kj9-2-0">.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="er29t-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="er29t-0-0"><span data-offset-key="er29t-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="er29t-0-0"><span data-offset-key="er29t-0-0">From the fucking </span><span data-offset-key="er29t-0-1" style="font-style: italic;">Hollywood</span><span data-offset-key="er29t-0-2"> </span><span data-offset-key="er29t-0-3" style="font-style: italic;">Reporter</span><span data-offset-key="er29t-0-4">. Such was the bent of the years over which the neoconservative establishment presided. Its ability to cow people into silence went beyond having the means to kill stories in the newspaper, put out nasty press releases, or sic lawyers and/or bureaucrats on critics. It enjoyed </span><span data-offset-key="er29t-0-5" style="font-style: italic;">cultural</span><span data-offset-key="er29t-0-6"> capital. Social clout. People happy to espouse and enforce its program for free.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="eaks9-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="eaks9-0-0"><span data-offset-key="eaks9-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="eaks9-0-0"><span data-offset-key="eaks9-0-0">When I was in my teens and early twenties, these were the people whom the "counterculture" opposed. The mandate of heaven has precessed since then, and lately the erstwhile opposition party is in the business of policing art and discourse, and punishing transgressions. This isn't to say that the right hasn't given up on, say, pulling LGBT books from school libraries—but the left has the social capital to sometimes get books it doesn't like pulled from Amazon and eBay, and to surgically remove individual episodes of a TV show from syndication and streaming services.</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span> (The companies seem glad enough to oblige.) That's a pretty impressive power differential.</div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="eaks9-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="eaks9-0-0"><span style="font-size: x-small;">* I'd like to put "left" in quotation marks here, but it's moot at this point.</span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="eaks9-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="eaks9-0-0"><span data-offset-key="eaks9-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fb9n7-0-0">It's risky to trust the past when the present is so radically different, but there was a causal relation between the Christian right's swaggering behavior at the peak of its influence between the beginning of the Reagan years and the end of George W. Bush's presidency </span><a class="_1FRfMxEAy__7c8vezYv9qP" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/05/americans-religion-rightwing-politics-decline"><span data-offset-key="fb9n7-1-0">and a generation's abandonment of Christianity</span></a><span data-offset-key="fb9n7-2-0">. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar reaction against a milieu popularly perceived to be overbearing, censorious, and out of touch is fomenting—though I can't say for certain that it is. </span>Nor will I speculate on how many babies will be thrown out with how much bathwater if the phrase "social justice" becomes radioactive.</span></div></div></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="4st43-0-0"><br /></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="cosep-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="cosep-0-0"><span data-offset-key="cosep-0-0">The zeitgeist of a particular moment always seems so naturally ubiquitous, irresistible, and imperishable—<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUgs2O7Okqc" target="_blank">until suddenly it isn't anymore</a>, and everyone acts like it was an embarrassment from which they're glad to have moved on. </span>It's not unimaginable that a strain of "counterculture" (which I keep putting in quotes because <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm" target="_blank">any culture can only be so "counter" when it is utterly dependent on transnational capital</a> for its coalescence and expression) defining itself in opposition or as an alternative to the basis of the "blue hair & pronouns & self-diagnoses in bio" stereotype will sweep aside the current "scene" the same way the music and fashion of grunge swept aside those of of hair metal and arena rock in the early 1990s.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="cosep-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="cosep-0-0"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span data-offset-key="cosep-0-0">* Of course, a lot of hair metal people became grunge people, the same way the above-it-all hipster of the 2000s adapted to the the intensely personal becoming the </span><span data-offset-key="cosep-0-1">intensely</span><span data-offset-key="cosep-0-2"><span> </span>political in the 2010s. We're all of us susceptible to trends.</span></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="cosep-0-0"><br /></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="aeubj-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="aeubj-0-0"><span data-offset-key="aeubj-0-0">Most children lack the training for a sociological analysis of power, but they can tell who's in charge. The ones disposed to nonconformity and/or have problems with authority have ever possessed a keen awareness of who the petty censors, smarmy moralizers, hypocrites, and credulous followers are, and I'd be surprised if the more recalcitrant members of Gen Z aren't sniffing more and more of them out among members and boosters of the "woke" ascendency. Probably these kids in the minority to about the same extent as boys sporting black nail polish and/or anime T-shirts were outnumbered by boys wearing Abercrombie & Fitch and puka shell necklaces were during my own high school days, but they <i>do</i> exist.</span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="aeubj-0-0"><span data-offset-key="aeubj-0-0"><br /></span></div>To the understanding of someone like my high school friend Paul, to be <i>against</i> what the mainstream is <i>for</i> these days is to be...well, conservative.</div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="aeubj-0-0"><br /><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="aeubj-0-0"><span data-offset-key="aeubj-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fs8tj-0-4">I'd say that assessment speaks to a lack of vision on Paul's part—but given how promiscuously the term "reactionary" is applied to anyone who criticizes the new orthodoxy on whatever grounds, it seems even his foes agree with him on this point. However, the <i>Economist </i>columnist's observation stands: when one's parents, teachers, popular classmates, the <i>New York Times</i>, the late-night talk shows, superhero comics, Hollywood, video games, and pop music have all caught up to 2010s Tumblr, wearing a MAGA hat becomes as brazen as gesture of rebellion against a lousy status quo as facial piercings were in the 1970s.</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="8kkp1-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="8kkp1-0-0"><br /></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="fs8tj-0-0"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhesk4TynQyH2hmte-rP1HdhTA33knlFspCCa1CAoAu1tyGytPWF02qStdFz_MZ48Iz1xOfvUCwVhiGlZ9y8QgoMC6onxy6Z_k11dgnsXmS3wpRxdk0fiTykUC_0_4J161-tU28JTXc9UjYw8VSBBXDfzUspVUcqzKwcsyIZhLG1TUcV5UltJUb6kqzVw/s609/image_2023-01-24_014222012.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="609" data-original-width="609" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhesk4TynQyH2hmte-rP1HdhTA33knlFspCCa1CAoAu1tyGytPWF02qStdFz_MZ48Iz1xOfvUCwVhiGlZ9y8QgoMC6onxy6Z_k11dgnsXmS3wpRxdk0fiTykUC_0_4J161-tU28JTXc9UjYw8VSBBXDfzUspVUcqzKwcsyIZhLG1TUcV5UltJUb6kqzVw/s320/image_2023-01-24_014222012.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of <i>my</i> teenage gestures. I'm pretty sure my mother threw<br />it out when I wasn't home. Seems rather quaint nowadays.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="fb9n7-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fb9n7-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fb9n7-2-0"><br /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="607a47" data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0">It's been suggested to me that the new "punk" movement that Paul predicted has already happened, and it was called the "alt-right"—another term I just loathe—but I'm not so sure. What contributions has the "alt-right" made to culture other than memes? Where's its popular fashion and art? Where's its version of Lady Gaga?<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup>*</sup></span> Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but from my vantage point, the "alt-right" wave has yet to sweep across the metropolitan regions, college campuses, and public schools the way earlier subcultural currents did. When you go offline, its young exponents are practically invisible.</div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0"><span data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0"><span data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0" style="font-size: x-small;">* Funny thing. I threw together a draft of this a few months ago, but never got around to revising and posting until an <i>Economist </i>article about a MAGA rapper goaded me into it. Looking at the number of views on Topher's videos, I'd say my point stands.</span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0"><span data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0">As fearful a prospect as it might be, that <i>could</i> change. The Proud Boys' leader is Hispanic; a right-wing "tradwife" contingent participates in the cottagecore trend; the defunct South Vietnamese flag was flown by members of the January 6 mob; a penchant for "femboys" persists among pockets of anti-woke "straight" men; the subject of that <i>Economist</i> piece is a black man flaunting a MAGA cap. All of this suggests that, counter to the liberal pundits' claims, the appeal of the "alt-right" isn't strictly limited to angry white heterosexual cismales.</div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0"><br /></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0"><span data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0">Maybe these narrow currents will broaden, becoming more palatable to the adolescent masses searching for their tribe if or when the pendulum swings in reverse. But I doubt that'll be possible until "alt-right" culture solves the</span> problem implied by the very fact of its synonymousness with "anti-woke." It knows what it's against, but what is it <i>for</i>? Unless it can move beyond mere reactionism and stand for something other than "we liked it better before pronouns in bios" and flamboyant nationalism, it's going to have a hard time penetrating the territory presently captured by its rainbow-colored nemesis.</div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0"><span data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0"><br /></span></div><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0"><span data-offset-key="99h4b-0-0">Whatever nascent paradigm of fashion, art, and ideas emerges next, we can be sure it has passed the inflection point and left the fringes for the center after Hot Topic</span><span data-offset-key="99h4b-0-2"> and Target are prompted to sell its shibboleths and the popularized emblems of its comportment. And what could be more punk than that?</span></div></div></div></div><span><!--more--></span><span><!--more--></span>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-21778346711693223562023-01-13T01:10:00.023-05:002023-03-07T23:54:58.526-05:00Magic: The Gathering: The Worldbuilding: The Writeup (9 of 8)
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglVBQBunU12gIuiKEkcuXI16z8naQuGwbaAiw1QHQVEGGCtZcKsbDJAvNM_F1QXyaacAm6j_1UImqilYvWnoKPsl1Pyre0F86qT74iNCI7QAUi8XaEfwZp7Xn5ElkfNneoDqsXih30TBeYZrhZf-_G_Gul337O8eNJXQHhFEspkwWD258BcGVwwT6d9w/s936/image_2022-12-20_225644891.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="936" data-original-width="672" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglVBQBunU12gIuiKEkcuXI16z8naQuGwbaAiw1QHQVEGGCtZcKsbDJAvNM_F1QXyaacAm6j_1UImqilYvWnoKPsl1Pyre0F86qT74iNCI7QAUi8XaEfwZp7Xn5ElkfNneoDqsXih30TBeYZrhZf-_G_Gul337O8eNJXQHhFEspkwWD258BcGVwwT6d9w/w259-h362/image_2022-12-20_225644891.png" width="259" /></a></div><p><br />POSTSCRIPT: There were like five additional Magic: The Gathering posts after this one, which more or less covered all the sets from 2011 to early 2023. I erased them because they were embarrassing. I don't feel <i>too</i> mortified by the earlier writeups, since they follow the game's humble origins, growing pains, and maturation—but the later ones were a protracted wank over an IP that earns a billion dollars annually, written in the fog of seasonal affective disorder and probably under the influence of meds that weren't working out. I'm keeping this one up and leaving it at that. </p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>[blah blah blah] we ought to at least have a glance at some of the more noteworthy original planes, and also at how a few return visits turned out. Just for fun.</p><p>Even though we're going to use superlatives like "best" and "worst," remember that we're <i>only</i> talking about the Magic expansions that came out after New Phyrexia in May 2011. And, again, we're not talking about how good or bad or fun or format-warping any of these sets might be; we're focusing on their presentation as chapters in the Magic mythos. If we talk about mechanics, it's only to the extent that they intersect with a set's narrative or aesthetic. <br /><br /></p><p><b><u>BEST NEW PLANES<br /><br /></u></b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;">3. ELDRAINE</span></b></p><p><b>Throne of Eldraine</b> (October 2019)</p><p>Throne of Eldraine gets back to basics. It dispenses with the fantasy genre's modern points of reference and restricts its sources of inspiration to Arthurian legend, medieval romance, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and other pre-Tolkien sources.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicu3qicvF6hgF1CpzzUmZz10Rj6qtUpPMySLQTMYfWWoYgNX560oNQPdK9oo4Q0kK8RKOsqGMHHjD4hmDIstnf2zlwth5FfLxQDyv4a1hV42GrGJOwh2aQbFokOWiOO44iFN7hKULfEmf0tMg7qTTf0-Y2OHkmkMtNtvjO4dtjFwOTt4VcIzDYmgRmAA/s16000/image_2022-12-26_154652194.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH3EGvJCOEjSOmL5o9IzllDV8jbxh3zUYIiIcpE_mwhO2oAKbvn-SmZ90KjFF4dqrtVw2arFUK0thUvoU7u3fqURf0QRv_jr3sAL2auOQ3NHkmkKBK3v0arG607rUfHkoi7nmCht7wNx9h0ddjYXYWaNQOyMNq3wL7B9DPFefdj3tTIHLtVY_VgU9Lqg/s16000/image_2022-12-26_154421835.png" /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMY9L4ymrfu2hJBGRGcQWcLew2X8MBz7Pl0nxgXHt9PaQkoiIZ36HbLofUxhHI6u8tWLwUwQJppc_Fei-aNk5T7hTlIAj13FvwFZqcklHffXCfcps-EzDpoCs3zXg6AAMkH7sguwxeiZWjIdl9aBRsLALWXdU0LzW5YWUuXvtG6M8fxkF4gpzXv1KU1Q/s16000/image_2022-12-24_161041346.png" style="text-align: left;" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuDfXpk4Zsbilrg4BTSrVMHdoTS5wLdTGkzYhIiCqgszIA-J3WAtmsY7Nr-wGRrNqPiNe_7wdSBsHFzwscV6HGSPsJday7zVTs3ccF_ZfZQd8sXNSOxiCvNFGp7pNgNtpjgr4AqiQvb2s96DAw-UnBcW5k8wWbRetzlhp029DzOj_0D_iJa1Ni50kgeQ/s16000/image_2022-12-26_155846806.png" /><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">After the climactic War of the Spark expansion, Magic cooled off for a while by returning to the creative ethos of the planeswalkers era: sequential narratives between expansions were nixed, planeswalker soap operatics were kept to a minimum, and worldbuilding was emphasized over plot. Eldraine was the first and the best of these sets. (Best in terms of creative design, I mean—but it was <i>also</i> grossly overpowered.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Eldraine's world is more interesting in its concept than its particulars. The plane cane be divided into two spaces: the Realm and the Wilds. The first epitomizes civilization: knights, castles, royal courts, the structures of tradition, law, and safety. The surrounding Wilds represent liminal wilderness outside the organization of society where Beowulf hunted Grendel's mother, Gawain sought the castle of the Green Knight, Snow White and Rose Red met the dwarf and the bear, the cannibal witch waits for lost children in her gingerbread house, and from whence came Rumpelstiltskin, the mysterious man who traded Jack's cow for magic beans, the wish-granting golden fish, and all those other phantoms of our collective unconscious (if Joseph Campbell is to be believed).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Eldraine is most clever and entertaining where it translates familiar tales into functional game cards. This was something Magic's early designers amused themselves with <i>way</i> back in Arabian Nights, the first expansion set. <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/arn/35/ali-baba" target="_blank">Ali Baba</a> opens passages. <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/arn/34/aladdin" target="_blank">Aladdin</a> steals your opponent's swag. <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/arn/10/shahrazad" target="_blank">Shahrazad</a> tells a story within a story, prolonging the game.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">By virtue of of its designers' and target audience's being more intimately versed in European fairy tales than in the text of the <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393331660" target="_blank">One Thousand and One Nights</a>, Throne of Eldraine can confidently lay on the <i>specific</i> references to public-domain folklore in larger and more abundant dollops than could Arabian Nights. (It probably also helped that Throne of Eldraine wasn't thrown together in a mad rush.) Moreover, the game's mechanics have been tremendously extended and refined since 1994, and its developers command a far more sophisticated understanding of the design space they're working in. Everyone involved in Eldraine clearly had a lot of fun mulling over how to make characters like <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/eld/100/piper-of-the-swarm" target="_blank">the Pied Piper</a> into cards that not only looked the part, but <i>acted</i> it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvF9yr4Q1DB8DO9lzommUKlu3nqFVhFClJOZS6rNj-aSRKSvAfKCwD0qEkeW7XZdRHZzpFQUHS2krlNtRrfGvMKyZzFsdA7dxQjFPSNsV8cx3-aTOJBWhK9YyOKA7rXNiEDBx8KMuRvDu99nKqR5-R6rsiN-dEYl5Ix7OabIzhP34Q9GLVW8d_3_a5RA/s16000/image_2022-12-24_161717206.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo5fV9mK8Fz08x-JpYdspNNK66W_K8bo6Mdu3Qg-88A3JNgPFQXxPp3cyH7J7ap0120R5E8FJXP5zBv7egxhqyTfx8Vh379VH-UhxhYF7My7JbSuk3GWIKjkvpuiqdFmavtUyqDFK9YiWmcVGIsLz0ZApRU2TQI1o9WkrgmuF-xzU0yzBsuq5n212Eqg/s16000/image_2022-12-26_155516404.png" /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3MXbOYPunt3kVzCgD4xVP_Wjde7yiz3Q5fNpNIzM-Uwj9F4BGetZXQsmNubVWSoIDUoM-Uq5Bb1vbTB11oMAkN3Pv5EVOG65i49LQI5MpbYtITbSmH1CJU6OHapOepVSlNvBxe3Qyu_k8A5ZBFt1Uti6rTKSuHutswE45ixMnT-Q-nXD5Yd7-ZsRcug/s16000/image_2022-12-26_154816878.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjSV_P-XN_vYA3CYFmDwea0sjbxF0YBoFviyffSOZpfnORHTIWZ43s0UR0QUFJgd79TccGa7WOJnOSws2E5ljQYGIaW5ZSoYuvetm9bSQkwbzgnYUc-8zkYkBu8ZxY8oUl_SFrkiOuFOQVZiJQh5Ab_cG2omF6hRcLap6kjZco2cSDWLRdYCjTh96zOA/s16000/image_2022-12-26_155136752.png" /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2EsjNbYXeazOVWnN3ZAi0AzSk1oLxBSxFu-3SPf7_VGmB5Gty3fvKu2xI5K1Urzfvg5p8ZFXKiJOMT5qRLh__0nNPT5O_dCXhEx8lhuijE2lN2uDCNbp4zbxduIjqVYxO8gnZbBRow4_ll-Pj7VHMx8nwM83pXex80y-TXFcrwDSozEnZ_Q7dWZBDXA/s16000/image_2022-12-24_161614874.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnqxBmwg8KDqW92XkiHN1-7Jj2GDUplp6ggcp4XhusamSpsM0XHwR-vqqJnpAaK_KMyMaJAel7fyWEIjqIW0raI0YpY_-JBpoHgCozZp2CGtq-sUG1a4Aoe3oF7DHKQSRdHW7wgoFg-5-jYUj8T963h453aVAphmAmyMt0QK7FOUHoiPYESrlLB8G6hg/s16000/image_2022-12-24_160953131.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Flaxen Intruder (above) exemplifies Eldraine's method of transmogrifying fairy tales into Magic cards. Goldilocks there has a secondary "spell" mode that gives you three bears. When she runs across the battlefield and reaches her destination, she breaks something and peaces out. And what creature type is more appropriate to a rowdy little girl than "berserker?" The presentation dangerously approaches the threshold where cheekiness curdles into to cloying quirkiness (I could have done without the flavor text, personally), but on the whole it's a near-perfect transfer of the Goldilocks story into a packet of game mechanics. You can't but admire the thought that went into it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div><div><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>2. INNISTRAD<br /></b></span><br /><b>Innistrad</b> (September 2011), <b>Dark Ascension</b> (February 2012), <b>Avacyn Restored</b> (May 2012)</p><p>Innistrad is, in short, a geomorphization of the most familiar tropes of gothic novels and horror movies. It is the world that goes bump in the night.</p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfDmc4nGx8lbSblD-boRjqGb555bhJWdeCXeP6qWxqFx-f3lYJdfl1ETjIiHLeMjl6bjYMnp6RI1EMIqVRSFLF2Jd6gpH35R4bIcXZXNLpo9CHXrb3nQlFW9-CLWxxNWTCCzxnZ7f0Aef38enWZVCX5TiDlY4nxkkF5FDxkh6dD4UgOhDiegViE_ynaQ/s16000/image_2022-11-15_235818295.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKdtp6MOFJTMUr3PKoGLs81hCoV5yJP019CPzCClxv-mdVN87N7aaV_RziFY1VvnWMVHyFav5FHWMkedoecLcVLe1aeBzls5_KoWCgq-V6o4CXp8K5f3pLKhCw52ypx_QCf56SXq-DGTK44FB9S30cs39ZVHkNxQne8LumGZvbRqroNU7vaYKnfW3BwQ/s16000/image_2023-01-07_125238225.png" /><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPPsZ2YFWa6MP4uwxQtNf9mLJapVyBzfmpakHL-1aQprkVifovhXzP6x95czDwWys88-otkKbTi77F7nJZ97SNOXZSSuISNIqsEhvxIjcviaot4CcDkpip8UyWtZUdGF_X7Z4xCtwLky4gI29U3g2IYoXbR8zeX6YEhjkQqZ8JDdr4x0i52IsSzi_Ijg/s16000/image_2022-11-15_235647985.png" style="clear: both;" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDdynSxsERqde_DrW_BJFjG2ztngFPPsZkXiqpBMWMiWuvb7h4fab4n5OLXfkjkCTmn6jIyxhqJYvtKn5I3lgxUzZWr3hCGz7MSVe_aBph_HWI5dlxBFntQM03_-zlXmN2oeUoLSwxi_yj4gbQwKEldVYLyVyORw60BPhZPWr5hkZJhzl84pODBl4OxA/s16000/image_2022-11-21_214847072.png" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It's a little remarkable that Innistrad was so well-received, coming on the heels of the Scars of Mirrodin block. After the grisly snuff film of New Phyrexia, you would think that vaulting straight into another setting where the forces of darkness are running amok would have exhausted everyone's appetite for the macabre. The key difference between Scars of Mirrodin and Innistrad is <i>mood. </i>Scars serves up desolation and terror with a straight face, while Innistrad is tinged throughout with black humor. It's not a gag set, but it revels in painting the spectacle of a world so thoroughly frightful as to approach comic dimensions (but without ever crossing over into farce).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If you're a human living on Innistrad, you've got to worry about zombies, mad scientists, serial killers, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, murderous demon cults, devils, animated scarecrows and creepy dolls, giant ravens, the unlucky number 13, and monsters of the deep woods—and that's just for starters. Your most viable defense against an entire world that's trying to snuff you is faith in the archangel Avacyn and her church—although Avacyn hasn't been seen in a long time and the creatures of the night have definitely noticed. Uh oh.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">At the center of Innistrad's lore is the archangel Avacyn and her creation by the planeswalker Sorin Markov, who also happens to be one of Innistrad's firstborn vampires. (It should be added that Innistrad <i>finally</i> brings to Magic's world vampires of the Anne Rice breed—opulent, sensuous, gorgeous.) Though dedicated to Team Vampire, Sorin never had much faith in his species' capacity for restraint, and foresaw his kin inevitably sucking humanity dry and degenerating into cannibalism. Some centuries back, he used his old-school planeswalker god powers to conjure an invincible warrior angel to watch over the human populace for the covert purpose of securing the vampires' food stock. Some of the plane's vampires are aware of Avacyn's origins, and Sorin has given up waiting for them to thank him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Much of the collateral lore in Innistrad's first outing is either reminiscent of the Ice Age days or of comic book plotting, depending on how you're disposed to look at it. The flavor text is full of names that seem important, but the figures to which they refer don't appear in cards, and it's seldom clear who exactly they are or how they fit into the bigger picture. Stan Lee and Chris Clairemont did stuff like this all the time—planting the seeds for future stories, even if they weren't sure what would grow out of them or when they would sprout. And this is ultimately how it went with Innistrad's allusions: the werewolf boss Tovolar, the necromantic siblings Gisa and Geralf, the vampiric sire Runo Stromkirk, the township of Hanweir, etc. all make appearances during one or both of Magic's return visits to Innistrad, and are given minor to major roles in the story.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Innistrad's landmark mechanical innovation are dual-faced cards. (Naturally, using them makes the purchase of card sleeves mandatory). It's simple: the "day" version of the card (designated by the sun icon in the upper-left corner) is the one that hits the table. When a specific condition is met, you flip it over and it becomes its "night" version (indicated by the moon icon in the upper-left corner). </div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBOJb5Obg80POIGo43-DWwtbnSxoxxPhgUx-rVkhKFj186PHANb4OyU0icmiAYHzGC-CtFzmFCnUm29wUF_uF2CFQnAadSFrl6i2HMzLEjYvxb2bgggYmBTfky-8B_TqzQkVQiwHjqXFzld_WuFwdc1RvAEmAjuqW-aER_dKguX--8IlUAA03U2JSZkA/s16000/image_2022-11-21_213803772.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRB_rPWE0Zzm4-LWtN9agiVLyon8uhm7hmlsHFHchZJly9t1lzdhJpF81Ku8c54bJjFQew7t8Pd6Ts9KFunr7tAvocWddnl9wfTN3FWJmcHURL8sPRfxFBeYr5h6AW_4HFE11l2Q8_avZxzIw-TCEGjAOcy9VVuxncIZk0ExLeVEw8SDDQViqryopp1Q/s16000/image_2022-11-21_213836139.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjezCYXGqh5p7QQ5ySVu-gzbEXipuHGd_oFmPMDFCNZJU4qtic1IREMe0-WHfUisfPhTyrMEspkDQcW-dkq0Pbm0AiBtSduKTLNpkhkXbqogOU5Gqx_groAVeKP3gI_njzvfstd9PWxYR2ZEwgtbYg4cSyYf1qmPDQ99I9r_VkeNXHAwjcPZIDn7E-QLg/s16000/image_2023-01-07_125441987.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPGDlJxPs_66YM3PxS8JWjoRVxVsgfJs7hITH1oVo6dWbF8u-udVdWL1RV509xUC4WP2s7NO5778oRIclXAGvexKwi_Ygpb1UG9idxAenl_Nx8fsvly9UC37sv8sm0iHXeV58V-CHu97NkHRlfg1FKJ5vdvhrCBCi12qRZuIBFjLvFByUPhOm4Z1Gq2A/s16000/image_2023-01-07_125510694.png" /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgixGIyQOoju5dA1RjKFgPhwVpmQTEa1QaCLv5z0vnlpe56ruskWjF20nT3TPCRyYmKVOsFA8lLceMDEz_r9ckfJhvGBQ1XAT3Z0cZZPss1uuotFT07ex4Xs577ks8R2Y7d8EOeDBFdiA0x7xIghzCGhKb_LN_lSNSV9u3bn03x0Ow4hTCaP0s2TtNJ5g/s16000/image_2022-11-21_214027987.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW3X7EAOz8Y5VLtcl55E7SKeoDxVAPc9diaQ9DqHy3muIGhknV15Rk_HvE9H27gm_gftFTYrn4HArQCYFBnsTMVOVJhYO5uYlaqarnCr3pINd6QeD-0mi65mVNylyXswMofbW0a8KtI5HHR4uDLBwuHeKx2CFVwfNRh3d0mHuH1LwJYLLJn7kI7keovw/s16000/image_2022-11-21_215036015.png" /><br /><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbQaZi0kGi4bqqpmbpurZ16I9GfRUQXSZ-itkPmQrR7L566SpmxEbdEieif9gD8Jfdo-KV9G76xWBBB9jORl4uukZGiqVViZts1cJ_LUg_nmnKes6DazhU0dsp5vyABVbJgdIlwqYkim-0iugeN7rgHkULWqw-HYnMtOZyxXomTQjsPWDU4f5CIuY0XA/s16000/image_2022-11-21_213020610.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioGJtLMuqHBetxCd57p-4uDTwxbYDgvPAXFys3Ez8JcOcbTLSqh5Qd42fG0rTCXJph8MEpPS4rf7EuxXEFvqqjHSHTNJRFu1uY1UhGqdBb9kR6o6kyakscnZ9jj0pPKruwxjNyZ9BvDmD0Yd3HriL1kmRB61MI2k5R7OqV4dBdrocBJ_JMtk0abmUT1Q/s16000/image_2022-11-21_213107676.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Naturally, humans that turn into vampires can't switch back, while humans that turn into werewolves generally have a trigger that reverses the transformation—as does the off-brand Mr. Hyde of "Homicidal Brute" (above), who shrinks back into an off-brand Dr. Jekyll if he doesn't attack. Clever!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The tripartite structure of Magic release blocks lent itself to a narrative wherein things go from iffy to bad to worse. The Alara, Zendikar, and Scars blocks all begin with a relatively stable situation and end with chaos overthrowing the order of the world. Surprisingly, the gothic horror plane is the first one in a years to have a happy ending—or, rather, to <i>be</i> a happy ending. The title<b> </b>"Avacyn Restored" says it all. Innistrad's archangelic protector returns! The forces of darkness are driven back! No more dual-faced day/night cards! The werewolves become protectors of humanity!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9uEc8E1OdPQzxdu_GRTDHNKqLIEsTBoUyeIizTNlEgLBcFuwdeY34LyT6hIS1iun7uGC-4LzgoJiT6bj7CsOFkx2zkhGiE3QjQ-4BWhIv3Gy6OJyyVo0ROvwcoHIYkaLxeNE8T9YtfMnQDDW_7XOBkEFnFy4fKbr2N5jBiJ7a92zESshBD1uj--SZ1w/s16000/image_2022-11-23_014249928.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGHdDGf7MNOJrDnLnVcJRT6CEEyYHxU6NiBlmr9zL_Ew-_HjN8MG-yQY8rJSJ08nT3Bs1GJlfYlvT-RxzzOVaAOJpp7eshUmlPqakbYAb4d2a9bCQIF5Ag0HIw8Di9Vs42thPw9DNU-lpJIpN5K2TCu41MUspGlpVVA2RVHHAkMLxi_Y8CkODkVurGrg/s16000/image_2022-11-23_014436713.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheCqVcP2mP1GBEVJ6ADz3fAEB7Ap1LPml8B8vMh_mw-7ozT6XbFfiTkhiCj5VPK-JEJlPFAXQrr06TK9mU85Dx-ioxcymp37rBTPPS3QnGXamM6Ld1T1ibJHBJPAnR8ukwx-vABLckA3j9D7HbG7X7_dfjGK4ZziWW6d546UreKnpspmdz7Zwbm0F0BQ/s16000/image_2022-11-23_014632565.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX-tx9WNi-IoWuZxEKgZkKFQRd0j2FhksVy2soF_fezZG1aOFXQ25O_ElZqNyufe6vBDuW3Uf5aWQ4xTU5r3jtDiSrbSPcCRNqYVboffBGqPVbQGpk_lnTKgYn8IM7_QZUZfnIph-991bj5HGIupVplzyNg0nCZDiKxJJK7cRUBUlIK5DHerg318WJJA/s16000/image_2022-11-23_014829549.png" /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Sure, it was received as one of the <a href="http://blog.killgold.fish/2015/03/kill-reviews-innistrad-block.html" target="_blank">worst sets of all time</a> in terms of its mechanics and influence on the metagame, but it was good to see a plane in the Magic multiverse finally catching a damn break—especially after Zendikar and <strike>Mirrodin</strike> New Phyrexia.<br /><br /></div><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;">1. TARKIR</span></b></p><p><b>Khans of Tarkir</b> (September 2014), <b>Fate Reforged</b> (January 2015), <b>Dragons of Tarkir</b> (March 2015)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqdp_X14lDOvJBj6uhJjRH5-DNQTVsqMl2oyL8Ji5FqcoEc2S9FA8OCgGdHEKDBeyjn6K74EsO8gIrGtrc2O2mvAgsOkE0WT3BbSHfiN_j3YpsU2hfu2R0fSpZbuqceiUft7PhRd2u39DXnEpG4pgOPuLh90ymzwZBEc4sh_OlDNTojmFVvtuPzoWnjw/s16000/image_2022-11-21_223330359.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXhNaPl3mOnHEyNM-KAHs_yih6539NOy3aLPSgoLpCGqvzpKPslQy8eELxsFaObMFXmW0E-cz8T-OcQTqBUDmkBQIUHHd2dOFBHu5ChsXyJymSresIfkDqC2DMMz53xoLV8rBwdtNoOX3mjzbKAugc6zScADcCnGM2JCfP7Am5UaSO9ySLzFSciRl5EA/s16000/image_2022-11-21_224203187.png" style="text-align: center;" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9kgzi2Y8aRIJiqOU2NzKv037EmWjimZAx4zkLvVgK4wM1qOszelXgC8hV0jvHYEcQMXlEua9PQJ-eQyrD2jeL8v5xXS86qk53JtCWoB462ROZ_PSjqhTGYXiHWIRZl1uLs0yFAykQARdRiZ5SbPRI9cG0felikoisB3pi4vai1FB8BL_LmL_UZ2y-xw/s16000/image_2022-12-04_171503261.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5hQ4V83Rj8tiNoGdmBZl_ndI05Dxb_2Psvcvvi9I-m6utz0dlvpBdZZVMGaV8IArH-0D3bYCZBRLT2eN0BJmRqH2clBG_hycCA38cmKmpuZe15jPsmquCdQceuD36Bg5Ajs42vC2a9cVgLQ4G0c7E3AuV9tl-KzQP8HDKpKFqxFZ6R21hUSnmDDz9AQ/s16000/image_2022-12-04_171812563.png" /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I was pretty disengaged from Magic (and social life) in 2014, and missed any chance I had of drafting Khans of Tarkir. It's a pity. My friend Jason, who I have to blame for getting me back into the game after avoiding it for fifteen years, still says it was the best time he's ever had playing Magic.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But we're here to talk about story and worldbuilding. To my mind, the Tarkir block, inspired by continental Asia, is in this regard Magic's most exciting original world from the last twelve years.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div>Alara's attempt to replicate the success of Ravnica's two-color guilds with three-colored shards left much to be desired. Khans of Tarkir gives the tricolor factions gimmick another shot, and does it <i>right</i>. Its first block revolves around five clans in a neverending turf war.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Let's go down the list:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">• The Azban Houses. Green-black-white. Loosely based on the Ottoman Turks. Family-first desert warriors. Their emblem is the dragon's claw, symbolizing endurance. (As with Ravnica's guilds, each of Tarkir's clans has an associated watermark.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">• The Jeskai Way. Red-blue-white. Loosely based on Shaolin monks. Monastic martial artists, mystics, and scholars. Its emblem is the dragon's eye, symbolizing cunning.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">• The Sultai Brood. Green-black-blue. Loosely based on the Khmer Empire. Jungle-dwellers who consort with demons in hopes of restoring their ancient hegemony. Its emblem is the dragon's fang, symbolizing ruthlessness.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">• The Mardu Horde. White-red-black. Loosely based on the medieval Mongols. Fearsome raiders ruling Tarkir's barren steppes. Its emblem is the dragon's wings, symbolizing speed.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">• The Temur Frontier. Blue-green-red. Loosely based on indigenous Siberians. Rugged survivors of Tarkir's boreal forests and mountains. Its emblem is the dragon's claw, symbolizing endurance.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Each clan is led by a khan; we'll peer at a few of them later.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">These color combinations are strange. The identities of Alara's shards consisted of one central color and its allies, the established norm for tricolor cards as far back as Legends. Tarkir's clans, on the other hand, are defined by a color and its two <i>enemies</i>. In form and function, however, the combinations' results add up to one primary color tinged with one of its allied colors and the mutual enemy of both. For instance, the Mardu Horde acts and looks mostly red; one of its secondary colors is red's usual buddy black, and both uneasily share the mana cost line with white.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The clans' insignias denote the mythical significance they ascribe to the image of the dragon. But there are no dragons in Tarkir. Their ancestors drove them into extinction some thirteen centuries ago.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7nSdAQ-FKN9fbU7YTDapccO5B_efHLpU9TCPUQfVRxVIIwsXYL-ugU-cHU_LjaEDB0gifjfMyvBPEOqclk4WkWTfdtghBG3zGllznksc7kg7J9ou4wFtilwn6pH7MCAJtwOm_eGQpWtmMrQWQSZCEMB_-LYCKdfBagu4kIVmIcLa3WNyxMS-0dLYTjQ/s16000/image_2022-11-21_223528058.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2-BHVSDuctqhcZiCfMWvXIU0wDAqdfQNf3-PbkoFUSh38Zne_zIX_XuggMD6bXI66GKoc1dBl6w3JATWcNTzHPZJkiXkSz1vhMQOC2bbiezWf2xzYSM_xaXqSfIshmnBhuJ0l_zO5t9riu1FGM-iMvb4aZBtOI-Xs2tqSdnLcLA84rjWgyl9xRpbjXQ/s16000/image_2022-11-21_223637611.png" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In Fate Reforged, the block's second set, a time-travelling planeswalker finds himself at a critical juncture in Tarkir's history: the period when the dragon broods grew so numerous and powerful as to threaten the clans' survival. Not long afterward, the elemental storms from which they were born altogether ceased. Without means of propagation, the dragons fell victim to the clans' campaign of wholesale extermination.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguEIJFumWRsVDu8QSWPARUOH4kC8mukusJR7rMtVLC74gfqgmegF6PQ0FlQMM6fFXr_lWZK_QekH6fAXnmSuYAtmV3WsiAHtz2MZ8WyzrL-GSDVla2-6mLHM4bFCpwn41eZ_Tc2U9ud31f9JKUnSMGBzg1-ULNcOCUEz5ENmz4stTT_2jOKNvqD_NqgA/s16000/image_2022-11-23_025557971.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguORBGeIw1Kmk4ZJ2OOO9I5s2Os50WdxRv-Yi98WrtzyO5SIjpn3XGwGHrnlGEkJgmTL4SaSB5Zgu19_nl4ixOvKppIKcTW4xTlxGkmqkw6tLkmt8xefYkh5GCA6NrM7ppA1jeo9qLFlVHu9Lr32DQirSAHonBautXxD0FfSlzW9GEJ03pNIP3gZ3PvQ/s16000/image_2023-01-14_132047522.png" /><br /><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;">Retreading thematic ground explored in Scars of Mirrodin, Fate Reforged introduces a second set of watermarks for the dragon broods. The dragons' emblems look awfully similar to the clans'; clearly the khans derived their insignia from those of their nemeses. The cards with clan watermarks greatly outnumber those with dragon watermarks here. Though the dragons clearly intend to topple them and establish dominion over the world's human[oid] peoples, the khans still rule Tarkir.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Fate Reforged does something sort of interesting with the color identities here of the clan bosses and dragon alphas. Unlike the ones we met in Khans of Tarkir, the new (old) khans have monocolor casting costs, and their secondary colors only come into play in their activated abilities. Each of the five dragon archfoes corresponding to a clan has a dual-color identity consisting of that clan's two allied colors—the enemy color gets shaved off.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0UfVz_0w9ppcmoVUILhUoNaVAk_7J_7kEyiKpgooyqMuIRZog3SFiMlMpq-jFShyxCIAqN8wfIwC9L9k6WueoK0clGOk4J6PjcfZqvjJaGY69NwSQ0RIEg2xyO1KJ57iv0bi-zRJkEGA5hW-m2XiImWQA0EJHUbUML8PRnmWJmLvo4ZYRShawvQUaIA/s16000/image_2022-11-23_025057095.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPQlUIVFVAhDG1hK6gzCWfYnF0NY_Ul1c4KY0DU9XP3Gh4fszawdhdTD-j465oKKPhML1idhejl_wJN2X_5q0LVwmEkDqstrCMk_uTYZk0MrjqOHRGBoxtFcTbyK71olYNlekyunCcaa0_iXqyoQ0P6FaLWMqSoX5PiFYelCUyY_Zsjy1uA7EU8YsAMQ/s16000/image_2022-11-23_025147756.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuiJBhKMPFOeYI5duBG_Xn9csbtqJb9OQPiDKutZb01VV9zXjLFNBhBGh2Q1DitHqnHnz6yxcpjc5rwRbp-elqeN1OGTO-HmZkJ-djwi-QGjyaEMPBU2UyoQtVIIspb0IQP1UV0mCYttb4EBvBeVpogEBqbGLT1KXWCU8VImKuKpJKLQf2BuSxsvjbBw/s16000/image_2023-01-13_001123968.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW__5ofS3TikBmrsSt4BhF3J-x0n9Y-L7YD51gfTFsnK5kkL3Vk6iTJ5SBZH6yAybp1PHQoQ-FX376oVAE1g9mm-nSKfX_zg4veSOTPU3nGPPPZVW-s5Buz7SCRfWRdPgtYKhoWwRaGs3ycJKhhsno7gn9RcgkwZbUAEr1GjPJ7DJJfI3QAJkspcTM8A/s16000/image_2023-01-13_001217073.png" /><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpHCiArWL7F4quITFkHOfx0ixOW40NOISWYuOL-ewWT9LUG-NKOxzeFWA-ZxZrPk-gqD1_mVvJ3mvx1yJ5pDBXH7JkD4V5Huk08JvcuJVs6t0vMsjfletvI-PWd4KcZISrCGLtxQxPMUhUksYjCuglyggYVr3GLYSlJaV2bZvtBZkImG0LtymhYdwW1w/s16000/image_2022-11-23_222932409.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDC6_xQszMkgaoHOHPQLf94ep9__L-i1sPtaPSIUSzVNlN9V437aYL5vcr7ywZMNdqv_2Nq8ExjI44xFcdyP5j0doJREUFq3Ko7lSQ_Xtes-GC8skHR4PJqwbA9vNbbTsvIqpzOQOPGdoZPpALGhhVke_me4BrrIKThohokIdq0R9on4X6JNRLFQphKA/s16000/image_2022-11-23_222729368.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">(Notice how the flavor text on each card representing one of the dragon bosses is attributed to their rival khan. You can see the tinge of admiration that led these khans' descendants to make mascots of their mortal enemies after they ceased to be an existential threat.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Dragons of Tarkir returns to the present day of an altered timeline. As the result of events in Fate Reforged, the dragons never went extinct. They vanquished the khans and now rule Tarkir as its absolute masters. The clans watermarks are gone. Now the only meaningful loyalties are to one of five dragonlords, aged versions of the brood leaders introduced in Fate Reforged.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are no more tricolor card identities; only allied dual colors. In the nullified timeline, the Mardu Horde was red-black-white aligned. In the new timeline, the defeated Mardu fell under the proverbial thumb of the red-black elder dragon Kolaghan (not pictured). The incongruous white element that burdened the Mardu's black-red ethos with its compunctions is unknown to the Kolaghan clan. I can't but read the disjoining of the allied pairs from their enemy thirds as the game-mechanical connotation that Tarkir's natural order has been restored (<i>but...at...what...cost??</i>).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTj1w6TngaEDq6oDmDPT7u2ntwJTMr8M1uXrD5txSuFcxsTWM8my3i64rvCq4h0Xhu3k4h19A59eRvbUi6OilLPiGp5Xr2LiGp5-wR01WAFC4qarFSvHMzvc5-WgdVCCZ8sAWnvSY6vXVlc9ZGV9fIAPJLPHJEtO-7fmpqK2nEuKAjyTePaNQVgpwHyw/s16000/image_2022-11-23_221904171.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirqaBWJmdMMQWKqlqceT4uMCUE-yE9RftaKfevi-sRqQixRRf16mLMfiQCOMnBD7UcA0Uev8Us5FEiZuyvBSLSTPRKzQHvEIfxi4AO8e-wMpwK2vRcyi3mm0rz_HUbNFeAGvR0DqWssdd63OkQbsrBat9PJfWhtv03FHULRgCSiwvvIvLUAQjxprR17g/s16000/image_2023-01-13_001409752.png" /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSEAQ3K9M5mFaNwg2m_BBcaht5jdNgfQoIA42RmQ-w9yWs6iEwGe6R_nNFK03JmTzg-2CWcdI2BD_TmZ0xPyhg2k4HlONjPC1wZX0SSDOvXHM_F1ZSDzKCO9xBjv2hTd2yVcowlW5TffCTVf9q14QYywELaGg5w0nWkQtxOHTGTaPBPvCcf4LZSwdzSA/s16000/image_2022-11-23_222233477.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi96a3RhLKXhHecq4ru077YrWNQWvG9I-GjmNLyS0tXKOSXwPuxE4VvuSYptHkpHFzkCu5uYuaH5lAftqmHYduR6LTf3U0Q9A4vjXB8_Pf15aOvX9g-B1Ffw8fWL9KS-dQ4awBrLvVK8yxNk1a3DrFT6zyq7KdXPKbAygNgGDqrnkJ74MqrtZcHkpcAig/s16000/image_2022-11-23_222613060.png" /></div></div><p>We're also reintroduced to the former timeline's khans. All of them are now totally monocolored, and most have been greatly diminished in stature.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkZfo_RzJ0T6eI1X5PBhX7Oe_h_xO3xn5yge3ZyN9N8er2_tw2Zi4W5IpToo8tA1d69qQa11cg-HCORzW5eS5_a-402YplRaCPBX-FsIAgW5jJJbUP8ypqfWZ2CujryDe34Dgb5ZMevVhYiavwkEO6MWdC1oN3wqjkpBXGnqO2VDy9C-Ro2amI58uxRA/s16000/image_2022-11-21_222312978.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMkDa41sMKonHjjVPEXnQXneZKtB_vYQSUWDIzKiCrQ3vhObWXjhDKuJ6ACntKEHL8KGtKJjTVxjOkFVt4sa4Yy8zbrjysnX2bVg5bvU7n6lWkQcOLC6lisoR-wFbmKdb-sIx9PJviZTa4B9kIcXw3VrTYbL6xtddbhY--DYZhsH7C2CNBYd1owvFdqQ/s16000/image_2022-11-21_222407175.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ3H4hLRa8d55eGQmsv3Vp5Aqj1TYrZ7CW3eYDIkphKIJmQVYEBtdDsp1gRp9SpCfXtBQxbIZWAUdySMiYwUh2M9nl6ksknScpA4vjZvJYafhaoiSxqOPSCNq9He6vHSVgIAQY_fYvgA1DMcF3M6H0ouYOekecDzhuiy-rgAHYQ3De4wllByY98h_qLw/s16000/image_2022-12-30_195151856.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzGwzKXTc3rm1yw2C7pVF63kiDAvVtvErH1-03LcnpszS1u8dM1Dd-WaAcMrOudK1-7wFf5R8Ox5NMWm8f3SyoHdkS7GtdnbhsyU2kYJeCa7zMUjdxWcK9FeWOu7vFN6x6vqaaq18XEmFAWvertG_LkcdKdV4ZaylsoVphx9XYT6mcUS56FpRROo7xaw/s16000/image_2022-12-30_195248247.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIRywupsd9LYW-VfUOFzHDKz6MQvvB-VysWuUWgBhNKO6GvcnE9EzDXh8R2MNKcIOiL794DYC560usdxE2InQxwbGGp9eodJelqIt_4-2LdzEo1Si0sOl_6-JusyLcjipBphrFPzAY0mBvEw3pbhGtxkf8tglTirYtx6MuhiBfnt52vkoewVb53rIHcg/s16000/image_2022-11-21_222825865.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcRJagDB3JudLmUOaq3y9d_jcyD8NAAPkBDv1gn50vFJqigSQrmAc-4czwB-vKYU6BDnEUyusx53YTFg4JSMz1OxsjowCyZd8_0Q5DLrqLG2Q_eFXkMVYnvb6fSJYi1tCTgY5ELfSM5Wyqc8jmWAzo9AXQElN5oXewtNFVC8unVxH_s6GG4AQu7N90nQ/s16000/image_2022-11-21_222943180.png" /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I really appreciate Dragons of Tarkir's dramatic ambiguity. The block's time-travelling protagonist, Sarkhan Vol, is a dragon fanboy who's delighted with the new status quo; clearly we're meant to sympathize with him as he revels in his victory. The dragons are back and Tarkir has become the world it was always meant to be! Hooray! The dragons have assumed their rightful place as the eternal dictators of a brutally subjugated human[oid] populace! Uh...hooray?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><p style="text-align: left;"><b><u>WORST NEW PLANES</u></b></p><p style="text-align: left;">Or maybe I should say "not-so-best" new planes, since I can find <i>something</i> to like about each of them if I look hard enough. These all left me feeling cold, however, and the plane on the number one slot below was actually responsible for prompting me to cut the first volume of this little series short last year. I was <i>that</i> unimpressed.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Oddly enough, all of these sets were released from 2020–22, and comprise those year' annual "multicolor emphasis" products. Evidently Ravnica, Alara, and Tarkir exhausted the design department's good ideas. (Your opinion may differ, of course.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">3. ARCAVIOS</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Strixhaven: School of Mages </b>(April 2021)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSyH98-rsdIFDOGQWjHs7qG1RbYPkK11CUJSM2TctqKrSLC24iQJmpgZ8WHogoxcpnbbZcFOYWiJXAh4Jk1eu6BhtZ4kI8CnckjHWsqEV2E-I96-0YiA6fud5pp1rzCrt6IOHKdga774KkEwTRYl7WN4t-0WDpaeO5kktiUL86hWIUrnohUfr7zQoeTg/s16000/image_2022-11-22_225102903.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHtXoFtN7tAC-43QH1mT552dT9bN6ACs5oRV3K7vWodJ3Fk6xQwt4cNsGI57euPgYu8XgAYIlZXdUWQtxTESgOfs_okB0n1zMxslqLW3HC0dr-DBux4XMhb6o7Z7voO6mi_yNOD3gOZTbrPvts6UQl_WyTO1dfTWvQTTEV9dpxqXOCWGsmVggze-ID2Q/s16000/image_2022-11-22_224756159.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB56i97kLI8lJgVDPmDG8rIsy41jwc9msf1KH80Nsa0OEwF6Y9WnLTTeCutazrw3-VMKUnfz0Mu4-ZSxnrPVyZ3FvTDSnYN6camgF6F9R8Y1qSnvjY4s-2XFbHXzAku0ObLu42iCXpD6Sn0exSrPkXdJUGdtszpjjCEkbPcwBWmxX4wdc_o5jsX8kKWA/s16000/image_2022-11-22_224355281.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1yUpED78EPqJKoMXyjJdBXj8r65OSlei34__lQmuFqcN7dVEsnJSSxDIkxaQwIG3k4av_nZ16L3-HDVCSiD68m-SVtiiwa5U4stpTP6s7yHLEwj5lm09zXeH9kCtQa41UfiH8OVoYwyV7FWSti-IE5hbLieff-BTEuFwPkZUBZ5pPrxBHsJQcOrshhg/s16000/image_2022-11-22_224623814.png" /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Described in the source material, Arcavios is pretty neat. It was formed by the rare and evidently spontaneous merging of two separate planes, has a murky past antedating human[oid] life, and its "Vastlands" are riddled with strange magical monuments. We don't see much of that in this set, though. Instead it focuses on Arcavios' renowned wizard's academy, Strixhaven. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">If you've ever wanted more Harry Potter with your Magic: The Gathering, Strixhaven is happy to oblige. That's all I have to say about it. It's Hogwarts.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">"But it's totally different," you protest."Strixhaven's colleges aren't <i>at all </i>like Hogwarts' houses! Students are sorted by their fields of study, not their personalities! It's <i>totally </i>different!"</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Oh, don't give me that. You mean to tell me that "Sliverquill" and "Witherbloom" <i>aren't</i> intended to evoke "Slytherin" and "Ravenclaw?" Really?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The acceptance letter (above) is in the shape of an owl. I feel like that image is <i>faintly</i> reminiscent of a YA novel series, or maybe a film franchise. I could be mistaken, though.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Remind me how Strixhaven's plot runs? Oh, yes: an embittered former student of the wizards' school returns as a lethal megalomaniac and leads his secret society in a campaign of revenge against the institution, scheming to gain control of an ancient power locked up beneath the campus. He's foiled by gifted newcomers in whom some of the school's leading figures have taken a special interest. No, you're right, <i>that</i> doesn't sound like Harry Potter at all. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Eesh.<br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">2. IKORIA</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths</b> (April 2020)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRMcAxuH-3a87XGjEo_H65R-nbL6XvFEGgjSPhr3MFlRYm7fCiXJv3HiQ6HXcuh029tSpv7RCjAxFIRCVVLIoYuTadkRT5Ez7EVJ9RtgpPol_EhfjfcvlgvBWkpVyusWvkwPMZp10DgpLTFecc58x0r2-wCk_yF7E-3OgXE1Df01F-gTx0F_gKO9ysVw/s16000/image_2022-11-22_222541058.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYtfYn-te9f2S6RnfH1tk_gnvZu8oFc9PiFWG0uZGR4CyVa7PaElz7U_vOHNjSvrs9RkWHZZtDDHp12ZnGAQiYmrqYyi3iNvDtf0iFGODOaAzmgxuLpso8FpRGO51sC5-tY0o5qO3qys-YqPNToAhVnPIX21TLfljYB-3vZTGmfv15SQWqtrdN7gfW6Q/s16000/image_2022-11-22_222651652.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVoyS5uaBmYdP9Etjwh7W_7fH9vlDQFjne9tZXF-vJszHjVw8XRNmoeKr8tXH1ea5wDr7lWmzKDUTlifEOulNPXXa_5LlWVPEBXo54G158yOoE_DqY5T7yj3gTkwhZniDeuF5kdyFOJtClBFGDEiO9E-Isr7liaPHynpZ2b9fqb4pXFBps62UBVLXM4g/s16000/image_2022-11-22_222829245.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQYbz6EY9-1EADaLZ7-6nE24jxtzbx-KauBoKH2Q7FIknJ1-DzYqrHoK0Zbof_L-scA8l_nhqTs26gcyclaP3RHxi54_AKCA40qXAs0ebKf-LgQ_lsRet7jJTQRnH1DRCyfKaKKG0k2ZrDxLNUt71mJC3kjBfVMz6WxZhEfyeQpsdflpF0ItOCmsP4og/s16000/image_2022-11-22_222939146.png" /></div><br style="text-align: center;" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I'd guess that Ikoria is mostly remembered for introducing the "companion" mechanic, which was so broken that its rules were overhauled not even two months after its release. See the reminder text on Keruga, The Macrosage (above)? Companion officially no longer works as described.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">"Monster world" was a conceit Magic hadn't built an expansion set around before, so Ikoria gets points for originality—but can't take it seriously. At all. <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/all/115/phelddagrif" target="_blank">Phelddagrif</a> was a cute one-off in Alliances, but Ikoria is an entire plane of the damn things. Bird Goat, Cat Ape, Beast Elemental Dinosaur, and Nightmare Pangolin are just a few of Ikoria's creature types, and I just can't. I'm looking through the Scryfall index and not enjoying myself. It's all too silly.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Also, look at Shark Typhoon (above). Just <i>look</i> at it. I feel like some unmarked but critical line was crossed when Magic's designers thought it would fun and smart to make a card based on the Sharknado movies, and there can be no going back.<br /><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">1. CAPENNA</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Streets of New Capenna</b> (April 2022)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLamj07KXsyykFUUBrpWzyA0N6R0KKjtsuKLn3dk8JbXWLps798GhBqqbTKEtJ6kWTHorQDJfzaLy-l7i8u0RGJ5LJk3n3g8Hx64Gi5xO9Ofd3mBPcgNZbt16IpIG7yo5ukmsIku0hIMCMFsTQi4xewXcbXtJmxTPmckQgaS0unC3El7bRfpeXSpxqMA/s16000/image_2022-11-22_223535656.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhkEc5O133mPPRu1yvyC0VUHr_X2aBpNl_ygbZXnsvw9lA18fus_H8iKza_JBuHExTsPVYdNLue2wfyGj3H815QPaL6p0J_rXHXZOp60CxBy937gt76M2FHZ0pDLeWXg5GhGJB5t5UQ88iPdatXMMGQ32XFwLIVy1_DdAsYiAHo0Rf99esIQOnTjHjOg/s16000/image_2022-11-22_223707625.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrAG4ygdigVzNK2rS0dRzmcA-46FWA7l-hyxCHeSFYQiOSCO6s81_-rE6RoDSX3zsMu5ffoduUa3WSEMw_1t6zgiridWJdDfhBVdLDn1n8J3AXrjZxxRMqsKD7mTsdn_yhWrOq54mi6gZSJ1pjbpQZaaYjsWr6ANmPLrQWB6lwH0YjUkpUf-E58onE4w/s16000/image_2022-11-22_223342417.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnOKhHnZrBFYxing_fAZfMzVlNpslgwLVc6l0ENMURze96NV7FC42D-g4mYwk4FfxluHc0DEyUuG6rVM3Cp_mpfw9M_hkvdMyTsyvtcZn8iD5GsUC1Slqvc3EzSUWpZfz-AgKs1OeDuyeOfjai5PysjLNcEb30i_ligVoNxTrPxydlB-659szpCCGzLQ/s16000/image_2022-11-22_223432114.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">To the pathological follower of Magic lore, Capenna is supposed to be a big deal. We've known for a while that the planeswalker Elspeth Tirel was raised in captivity on a plane with a Phyrexian presence that managed to hold itself together for a couple of centuries after Yawgmoth and the motherland were destroyed. "What plane <i>was </i>it?" people asked. "What happened after Elspeth left? Are there still any Phyrexians left on it? Will we ever see it?"</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Streets of New Capenna followed Elspeth back to her homeworld at last, and I'd wager that <i>nobody</i> expected it to be the Roaring Twenties Art Deco Gangland Cartoon Planet. (Elspeth seemed pretty surprised herself.) </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I like Magic best when it gives itself only sparing permission to be quirky, and Streets of New Capenna is so quirky as to resemble one of the latter-day Un- sets at little <i>too</i> often, especially with all the anthropomorphic animals running around. Capenna carries a lot of weight in the Magic mythos, and it's hard to square its importance with one of its central characters' being <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mtgsalvation_gamepedia/images/0/06/Jetmir_MTGA_avatar_SNC.png/revision/latest?cb=20221027044259" target="_blank">a big fat alleycat demon</a> with a disproportionately small head leading a mob whose appellation is "cabaret" with an extra syllable.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Magic's been running for so long that it can't help repeating itself, it's true. Streets of New Capenna can't be too harshly criticized for reusing old ideas, but the fact is that it makes the sets it takes after look so much better in comparison. A bustling metropolis run by self-serving consortiums vying for power and influence? Ravnica still does it best. Taking Magic out of its usual swordsmen & sorcerers mileu and planting it in a more contemporary setting? Neon Dynasty did that just a few months before New Capenna's release, and much more gracefully. A plot where all the rival factions contend over a limited but essential resource? Well, Esper had the magical metal called Etherium, and Capenna has Halo—shimmering juice squeezed from the remaining essence of the plane's angels, awkwardly functioning as the analogue to bootleg hooch in Prohibition-era mob stories.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">It's one thing for Magic to do an Eldraine or Innistrad where particular archetypes from fairy tales and horror stories are adapted into the proprietary lore and mechanics. Streets of New Capenna rather seems like it's chasing after the amorphous, hackneyed <i>simulacra </i>of gangland, speakeasies, and flappers, and isn't interested in doing any more work than what it takes pull off a convincing caricature. It seizes on the most obvious tropes, makes a shallow cartoon out of them, and trusts the result will comport with the Very Serious overarching story in which it's meant to be a chapter. It makes Magic: The Gathering feel like Kingdom Hearts, and that isn't a compliment.</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><u>WORST RETURN PLANES</u></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Let's go in reverse order this time, and get the boring ones out of the way before looking at the fun ones. Maybe it would be better to say "dullest" instead of "worst?" Or "returns <i>to</i> planes?" Whatever.<br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">3. INNISTRAD</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Innistrad: Midnight Hunt</b> (September 2021)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfeXchr8L3ziKlo981PD93WN4uRbihXyI_O9kcJef_v6vxGfKxNPDmNYqq6RYksqZEvZtN5vVVBE7i2j7WHIb7Yz1FzDoBYdRWI2lDhfPIS7vqxA8bzoshz4oV83cGTfltl0jQM8u0HH50kRgR6G2NYDi_3KFBYpqTeXKsZyD8x9o5_QcPh2yikbFiPA/s16000/image_2022-11-22_230512940.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkW14JWBCzfNleM-8AT04W7xi5z93sNEDehJ2OuCpjb4QJk4cCSODmryH8dNFj_CHMqdPJ2AaUZRb75J3hmgBnWJOchhhKtDs6V7bFH5t8DNoxlRs1bk_8TYeQIKTR1on79_LmkJWjol_BFSqtG-yj--4FX74hpKcWNmLCWFjSDKMaLPoLA8B3o3SEtA/s16000/image_2022-11-22_231213810.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7EN6BGVvMxEoBdXglU8ci3gpYw7xxDv1kmYuKUn8jSOfVJZ9U-ftOjAzuPx-wKi-dNQrVLDwugLQfX_UwzODZTgxOhvBVotLFiaDI7Cm17c6jJLZKG2iyLD0Qo1ffjq3g6UlGV_sBp5hK2wp0agGKLF_4yGRCMj72Zb2du-BuxQi1k3dMLiwoAo_6hA/s16000/image_2022-11-22_225326455.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Ag4db9RZj1PgM6fmL9iL-y6meDWfktpl3i498RHoFTR6g0MbmqUpAr88t4CFzj12J9iwBLkxsxfdTJ28tQIKqlPHmeYM0mUQ072_sB9MogqcngGz54R4A9R0975ufQNjWDmUymqPNUdH_6jDkZXUyN588RXbs2oh1WlxtATs8UQ1R7zjaMGip5ReVg/s16000/image_2023-01-07_121848038.png" /> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Every item on this list is a testament to the trap that lurks behind every greenlight for a sequel. If a beloved culture product made a stir for being fresh and exciting, reducing it to a formula and engineering a new iteration in the likeness of the first almost certainly won't yield the same results as the original.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">When the Magic brain trust decided to pay a third visit to Innistrad in 2021, the team apparently drew four words on the whiteboard: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>HALLOWEEN : WEREWOLVES</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>WEDDING : VAMPIRES</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">And that was that. And then they got straight to work drafting a lore bible and concept art for the "double feature" of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Innistrad: Crimson Vows.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Midnight Hunt is decidedly the duller of the two. Crimson Vows' desultory matrimonial motif and fleshing out of the vampire families keeps it above the waterline, and I <i>might</i> be saying so only to spare myself from having to sift through card images and punch out a paragraph or two about it.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">In Midnight Hunt, it becomes clear that Emrakul's making the moon into a vacation bungalow has had the unfortunate side effect of screwing up Innistrad's diurnal cycle. The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer, and soon the plane will be smothered in perpetual darkness. This is very bad news if you're a human, and very good news if you're a werewolf or vampire.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The church, still reeling from losing its angelic figurehead after she went berserk and murdered her worshippers, can't come up with any practicable solutions. Instead the people seek relief in the old <strike>pagan</strike> pre-Avacyn rituals of their ancestors. A provincial coven plans to hold a harvest festival at the ancient ruins of the Celestus (think Stonehenge if it were also an armillary sphere), where witches who never abandoned the old ways will perform a rite to bring the sun back out. The werewolves aren't happy about this and gather to crash the party.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">It's inoffensive, and I guess it makes sense to build an Innistrad scenario around the plane's native version of Samhain—but for the first time, Innistrad seems a mite <i>stiff</i>. For all its new developments, it adheres to a calcified formula. It's clearly not having as much fun as before. Looking it over again, I think the art department deserves a large share of the blame. Though there are some exceptional pieces, Midnight Hunt's house style drifts towards maximum "generic fantasy." I can't articulate the difference between the "horror world" vibe and "indistinct WRPG setting with some horror elements" vibe, but I <i>see</i> it when I compare the artwork of Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vows to the first two Innistrad blocks.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">We can also deduct points from Midnight Hunt for not really leaning into either its Werewolf or its Halloween themes hard enough to palpably distinguish it from the original Innistrad, and for introducing a day/night mechanic that's functionally irrelevant to all the werewolves and nocturnal horrors from the first two Innistrad blocks.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">2. ZENDIKAR</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Zendikar Rising</b> (September 2020)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJWIRygjHl9ckRcVdUwaFEgFBOacaAb7U0QcTfeF9OlpPIaRMTLZlVYeV0rNPaCRE-7rjLPSZ0ZYisaVcaQ__2FcChb-04TbP0vjwJg1syeLyFBUO31xV2aqXttSzramiRYrnJ5fL3ff-oVGyQf4zNM6QNUMD1dqtKGe6CWORw3PFsiBp8s8JhBgK11w/s16000/image_2022-11-22_231543939.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGMfZ4wFHzFiGg18DMZ_k3kszquCmM18XbklIhWAoL4NFiamRz10U2j_IN8EVZ5DCEFKvhffHajWNeAl8eWdjfGIKn5d16BWKV5b2iVnM-AAyoyfkQi32n9fV49Q9QspIoq6Delnxhjpj1j3wYX1QZZQ5zAIrSxVDNPRxmBH__uGoSuIIhVirG8AzkFw/s16000/image_2022-11-22_231629948.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDy8yTleyuPTDshgKjk2a-flhcLqBKiG0eu5YoIQo3IpuQqAqvnrMiy0rTdzSTBcEU8tshcBxDSojtEvwDW9Iu5RqXFrJJrgyJNvYwWR9jLBOwScsTMnAfKZT3QlFkuB57RjKOGWMVWfu0QOfbLiVEGTY_Tj_VqG4br4O54PRerHzFuHOEP4npX8wyyQ/s16000/image_2022-11-22_231714246.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMIlXlbYTcO8pFFbX1qlb_YV8sNs8y4LDOZ8alD1o8BrCbicrfaZ8XqH98FVbSz4PHCLTOnpb3TPi1tsr2KX4xxTBOjtmLabrCOsKQq1f5jOV-yqOQle9qrbLsq9fdfvts9MpXLa3orT12lZMqJFe8bxK_SyflciVhByDfGmaL4iOouSK8Mf1kCBeaEQ/s16000/image_2022-11-22_231747984.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Hey, everybody! Zendikar's back! And it's the pre-Eldrazi Zendikar everyone fell in love with a decade ago! Expedition parties! Dangerous ancient ruins! Hazardous jungles! Now with "party" mechanics in lieu of "ally" creature types! Grab your climbing gear and machete and head into the wild to hunt for lost treasures in mysterious ruins!!! LET'S GOOOOO</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Wizards hoped that would stoke enthusiasm. Public-facing members of the design team emphasized that they'd heard the complaints about 2015's Battle for Zendikar and wanted put out a set that was more like the original Zendikar expansion, which had been a fan-favorite (if sales numbers were anything to go by).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">With the Eldrazi out of the picture, Zendikar, wasted no time getting back to business as before. We're back to where we started, but the place doesn't have quite the verve or excitement of the first visit. If the Zendikar and Battle for Zendikar blocks were an anime television serial, then Zendikar Rising is like the OAV that comes out a few years later and tells an inessential little episode taking place after the dust has already settled. This is Zendikar: Endless Waltz. (Give me a break. I know my anime references are grievously outdated. Would you have preferred Zendikar: Cooler's Revenge?)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The background story has to do with a squabble between two planeswalker natives. Even though the Eldrazi are gone, the Roil continues to unpredictably warp the world's geography at regular intervals and prevent any sustained advance of civilization. Nahiri, the volatile kor lithomancer, wants to use an ancient magical gewgaw to to permanently settle the Roil, though it'll probably cause far-reaching ecological devastation. Nissa, the elfin flowerchild geomancer, doesn't like Nahiri's plan. They fight. Nissa comes out ahead and destroys Nahiri's plot device before it can be used. The end.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Aside from Nahiri adding more names to her shit list, the state of affairs at the end of the story is pretty much identical to how things would have progressed if Nahiri never found her gizmo. We guess maybe(?) the Roil is still a thing, but now the "scars" left by the rampaging Eldrazi are healing? I dunno. It's not really clear.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Zendikar Rising was a bit of a snoozefest. It's probably a bad sign that the most evocative card in terms of the lore was the single reference to the Eldrazi and their death cult in Forsaken Monument (above).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">On a lark, I looked up the art director and my suspicions were confirmed: same dude in charge of the illustrations for Midnight Hunt. It made sense for Zendikar to have a bleached palette when the lifeforce-draining Eldrazi were running amok, but there's no excuse for the uncharted wilderness adventure version of the plane to look so washed-out.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>1. THEROS</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Theros: Beyond Death </b>(January 2020)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit9VY0YocChwIC-yb_QIqHQdww4ON_LuNqeiNyakpszo9CL2ZiPhlXvhrimK_xtCLFh_jNHIOnw1CwCG_o6b86UYPrFlxQE0IEThpr4Hfx-4O8CTf6K-HEr7k6ii3IKROf59mdcVK3Ecc0YLy8lUbmMxO32vDYxXrEyYVfAgu_4x1nPOcoGbTo5Ein_g/s16000/image_2022-11-22_091647961.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK1otN3jm5TXoyzFKfA_ua_77uP128-61dB-0GqE8U1iy5f5R1yfo_PgqIKWht15qQAECZnt6OS924sjXUyRlODvPXb49TqbQ-PvtiNR8MHL-gzE3UROIpEnRDMzTkxYiywb_V0g1KthicrU9wVwJvYe1oAetLjznRIA-DJ7uN5YnkdtwIePSMSVArvg/s16000/image_2022-11-22_091724772.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPVwjTrn9sL4Fv5nc2Nn7wtMEKF3kAfVJkIbUgfjrSGffW8o4naECtZroFoCbU-mGiNk-dlECy6hVdSvGNYS5DGyxIXzLkoc1x3Yy_a56eq7E6SEXxB6puwdiDSEtB5qzd5I4h1jRbd6ytyaVX6RGVOSNfW_RHAPoFRWbpXNBzh6s6IKTsMqu5tcLmXQ/s16000/image_2022-11-22_091855478.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC0J9Q7zsH76-Mab1dDE6wWwOBJ4D7JWZcGWeU3jU1TyuUQCmEt7JCK8kvJ4aS3MwQyUNjLAFzflelDYLH5MXcXBS3LToxKoy4lTfN20sHBQ4mStwGpij6vDEjCLpiN3ShwZeKvXOz9N0tYpUhM0y0v7CfQQqSRoqhNRYN9XQhc5yCMJVEKvDNC2cDvA/s16000/image_2022-11-22_092000521.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I wanted to love the original Theros block. I really did.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The plane's debut suffered from several problems. It's <i>too close</i> to the source material, for one: rather than taking inspiration from Greek myth, it's built up as homotopic map of Greek myth. You'd buy some booster packs and sift through your cards, going "oh, this is supposed to be Hades, here's Diana, there's a Hecatoncheir, there's King Midas and the Lernaean Hydra," and so on. The conceit of a divine pantheon whose existence is actualized through the belief of sapient worshipers was pilfered from Neil Gaiman's Sandman and American Gods. The unfurling plot is yet another iteration of the "here's a new world, now things are getting chaotic around here, and now they're even <i>more</i> chaotic," scenario that the three-set release model could never grow out of—and at a glance, every chapter looks sort of the same. It didn't help that the cards as game cards are, on the whole, low on the power scale and kind of boring. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">(In spite of all this, I'm still impressed by the ingenuity of its "god" creature mechanics. The members of its not-Olympian pantheon are all indestructible enchantments that <i>become</i> indestructible creatures as long as you have enough cards sharing their color(s) on the board, proving your devotion to them. This is clever!)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I wasn't disappointed to learn that a return to Theros was in the cards (pun intended), since the conclusion of the first block demanded a sequel. To recap: the Zeus proxy enlisted the help of the planeswalker Elspeth in putting down a rogue god who was never supposed to <i>be</i> a god in the first place. After she fulfilled her task, he smote her. Having a legendary hero who's killed an actual god running around in the moral realm is bad for business when people thinking that you're the awesomest literally gives you life.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But dying in an off-brand Classical myth world meant that Elspeth wasn't altogether eradicated, but consigned to not-Hades. In Theros: Beyond Death, she busts out.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And some other stuff happens too. You can read all about it in the <a href="https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/theros-beyond-death-story-summary-2020-01-10" target="_blank">plot summary</a>.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">That synopsis constitutes the <i>official</i> Theros: Beyond Death story in its entirety. In the months before the set's release, the reception of the War of the Spark novel(s) gave Wizards such a headache that it decided to dial things back and reorganize its storytelling operation. As a result, Elspeth's triumphant return to the world of the living and attendant happenings is vaguely outlined in the cards and synopsized Wizards' website.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">On that basis, I pretty much have to put Theros: Beyond Death at the bottom of the stack here.* Otherwise, we could just say that it's no more dull nor offensive than Zendikar Rising or Midnight Hunt. The original Theros struggled with being a trifle too rote in its imitation of Greek myth, and the sequel is beleaguered by its inability to get past being a conscientious imitation of an imitation.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">* To be fair, Avacyn Restored also got nothing more than a plot summary; that was around the time when Wizards seemed to be waffling on the question of planeswalker novels and webcomics. But Innistrad minus the supplemental materials was much more coherent and fun than any Theros release minus its supplemental materials.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><u><b>BEST RETURN PLANES</b></u></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />Confession time: the reason I'm making a point of posting this when I am is to prevent the upcoming release of Phyrexia: All Will Be One from compelling me to write about it or figure out where it might belong on the present list.<br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">3. KAMIGAWA</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty</b> (January 2022)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">This was never supposed to happen. The original Kamigawa block of 2004–5 had its loyal fans, but coming out just after the gangbusters Mirrodin block and right before the brilliant Ravnica block, and being underpowered compared to both, it was doomed to fall into memory as the ugly duckling of the planeshopping era. Wizards of the Coast doesn't like to repeat its mistakes, and for years a return to the Feudal-Japan-but-don't-<i>call</i>-it-Japan plane seemed as unlikely as a set that revisited Ulgrotha, Mercadia, or any of the Magic's multiverse's other backwaters.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But the plane's original premise contained the conceptual germ of its rebirth. It's a Japan plane; okay, we knew that. But one of the more obscure facts of the original Kamigawa block is that it took place centuries in the past. Its hero, Toshiro Umezawa, was the ancestor of Tetsuo Umezawa, one of the original legendary creatures of the Legends block. (How did Toshiro end up on Dominaria? A <strike>wizard</strike> kami did it.) That meant that Kamigawa was still floating around out there in the multiverse, and over a thousand years had passed since the Kami War. If not the ronin, oni, and monks of popular folklore, what <i>other </i>set of pop tropes is bound up in the Japanese aesthetic?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is a cyberpunk Magic: The Gathering expansion. I'm still surprised it works as well as it does.</div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOnkP3VwW6EZRUhVzQvVOTqmvMFZtU3O7687ByOuodYt6mStLr2zzUcB19IFflx1Qnv_YbKH86IfKUqF7dI-wKgUS0uqAKVsKPWvJl5fLzoJwMIwm1kOXmebghcbQQ-8D2GlxhXS0zmj8-o1k5qNn84UbFchlg7oHp4F906vOD5HwbAP6_fuRZoMuPTQ/s16000/image_2022-12-25_133833142.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1UQL2Oh7c2TKOPx_TN2tGZmPb6yBULGs4YNwh-FA1gL-PEe6oiDYGM0Nk5Fl4MYivo4fg_8zgm0jh5zRCMZF5_So6aMhA7-0-wXoNUfiZJ9HEKgLChLlrPaCFWRkka8g8X5lQX_g773CKQLniXxx3kmt1FwB6Y3HUGRj3iFS-cHLk1-0lFtvDd85XpQ/s16000/image_2022-12-25_134007007.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSV1Jb0bq2lw6l-K_3h7nVa70TC56pM66tV1WVqqoq5Mowiu3_6Np0ZqXbWTNuQgZ9UMmAMpTN5bICOtU3xFP6ZiSUmnEMsXq6al__F5D65MTWb_gG6IikgsSSzPBCdFbFAhvqPJSpXvDLrxsWulsfLOUlksq28QCWckeB_yPeveiQ2rykN6XFV4lyUg/s16000/image_2022-12-25_134148815.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisOmcAl9AThov99Ft7USB9PK1VJJ6X3p2llVOHNkBMukMA-mRKV6Ta7hLXvMWFE8RGhi2D1DME_1mWP3hzx4qcuatk26gSdS_txytHCmkbMV-ahKEMVkQtrxkVZPvfJaFxCJIjITmioJUvAHSpuD5OxadBRJnLZDZicY-PQe65FNuSYz3HOMKMN-IS4A/s16000/image_2022-12-25_134857712.png" /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Neon Dynasty exhibits the top-down design savvy sorely lacking in Streets of New Capenna. In each case, the creative team had a well of stereotypes and tropes from which it was obliged to draw, and Neon Dynasty was consistently smarter in how it used them. Here we have two Magic expansion sets of about 500 cards each, one which could be the series bible for a middling show on Cartoon Network, while the other could be (and for all I know already is) the template for a tabletop RPG. Neon Dynasty's world was developed with the aim of seeming lived-in. It's true that Neo Kamigawa has the advantage of an established history over Capenna, but that history is so distant as to bear little resemblance to Kamigawa in its modern form. (This <i>isn't</i> a nostalgia set.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Neon Dynasty's mythos owes much of its depth to the several layers of tension built into its premise. We see conflicts between traditional spiritualism and tech enthusiasm, imperial rule and gadgeteering libertarianism, and between nature and urbanism. Each pretty obviously follows from the "cyberpunk Japan" template, but the creative team went the extra mile by integrating all three into Neon Dynasty and drawing points of contact between them, instead of just choosing to focus on one and calling it day.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The set's mechanics aptly reflect a society straining towards the future in spite of the old ways' persistence. The new "Modified" keyword adds an additional layer of mechanical relevance to creatures with equipment attached, aura enchantments, or counters on them, and artifact creatures with the "Reconfigure" ability can turn into pieces of equipment and then switch back into creature mode—both mechanics are as faithful translations of the cyberpunk ethos into Magic rules as we were ever likely to see. On the side of tradition, the "Ninjutsu" ability and "Channel" mechanic from the original Kamigawa block are back, and cards that make the creature types "Samurai" and "Warrior" relevant again are found in abundance. All very nice touches. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The dual-faced Saga cards deserve especial attention here. The front side is an enchantment representing an episode in Kamigawa's past or a trend or historical current of its present, while the reverse side is an enchantment-creature the Saga turns into on its third "chapter." The front side depicts a piece of modern or traditional art, while the reverse side zooms in a particular feature of it, showing it change as though it were in motion—visually <i>and</i> mechanically, the image comes to life. (Not exactly a remote possibility in a world still lousy with animistic spirits.) Excellent worldbuilding.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrXUe7Jfl9byH6xnckg3eomr65LHcnc0GcyT4o_ZCMLUfn6QIJCck6aY_vYvJDqkcfUrY-_gezVjlFHzUGe1XQAA_d2X3pemT13azQ03GJ4J2t8mS2WfzQa8UWVLrmqpyguX4wMt02PQzKvQ5EvefnXYJMBTfGPdTDqi9MvtlbsVPBn__6KiDTs_dTYg/s16000/image_2022-12-24_171055198.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyI5NJMn1XwyWuKms-qTNeK2JxCG-sp93M5WA6rbur4DZS7Www41AF-8FlonK6SucHa073SFjB9crWkAeH5eclJGPQUxfuXSZraTBbxaOK2TkUmzuWz8QyuZTtl7p7CMIV_QYL6JSavh5LQT8trFxntItWvbGEDRmjXTUQMCtkdKQ_h79fI3hPKCE6_w/s16000/image_2022-12-24_171143661.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUR7fnsl2Dp46Vilj0LV-BzV_koc1MTRbP8kvZhAP2PO7YhoHokgAQh-yjjjAczG3yS-BYnD7TNpfe3yGtkrWK833WqhvhpECWtHloWxU1eFuoQ23v92aIyT-me4GSKIXfzuKefdtnvv__xGS4K-RzCp6K4UDZivk6QfcIWPi4GzVOc5ESzsuyR0e0Ag/s16000/image_2022-12-25_135357090.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYq9N70rffV7FfQoCuG_bdRxp29PjMoGGrlEDEBI1tcZf1PVXJ5-iA4qSQHkEweT__jzFgx1swP77oFvIzos53Lp5LQ8A3ncSRMW1J215c75WW43volo1c_qyczDsu4VRgJxdl_0VHbhb36uC28JKQzM01kpivXNtnWbgT61v7SJ3hrXZetz59okct3A/s16000/image_2022-12-25_135459780.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ40JIKNe3N6SB3zcxIGznraD0wDAzSJByDaInxOeO3SAOQeX4D0GvIVeJCbxqo01grRAD30eKQC1ngXIXLmKo7HNqwRc9BKBVv9UPNVcS6iQzwNPfMGNdGmSdr1Kf3IMCsWVDTuIFmOBhR9YdKw0-RBvGJJvP86Es0dMm07f-hueCaBYAMV6wLXXHzw/s16000/image_2022-12-24_170101188.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjAtx6XQ7cHNeshfzH3Vyra52hDEwf7nKestbcTlzvWo6B1DmixDTjzlUhkM9zeRuw2CqA5pWVn8o_uMalfv33O2AsPYPM9_MPH0NTAFhjbAucmyi2sPgwPZMe27W4dc0aHTrZOU25NXq9YQ0A-QoRUzrSQN3t_V1OSKdSKiHmWL4SNRiwdtkHOykkcw/s16000/image_2022-12-24_170135796.png" /><img border="0" data-original-height="368" data-original-width="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgzW2vOE6CW5WX0njD-Q0_ZwD75cNEl8wIxpYQrwFoszg1fr1FQPOfGt5xcTZoWhCJpNJ0nplk9NNRSppnb6vqkFwmxk8Dh-EqYvav-FQWm-13GjBUiQOzS5eLLv0Ee0q0FctI2Wzsnqm4htGSfH-HJubzRqRaeHF8oINyCLGqtFNSSb1tfxevHqpftg/s16000/image_2022-12-24_170419922.png" style="text-align: left;" /><span style="text-align: left;"> </span><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJDl1mFh1V9eYt2D31wKB2LxMrXqgEMe0wpg8m5t91-OmK7hnQPZBeSvcF8VYvnHajf6Rz85PLlCWoEss5T-BCrVFne0iOgdvpKx2tnzeDUXq7u75RQm-0UMXJ2iwrqqHUvZ0qAYwMIG4PX0PA0tG4P_9ps5C36FGDN6jYv6cWZ7Pb9-I0K5FbXpxY-g/s16000/image_2022-12-24_170542143.png" style="text-align: left;" /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">2. INNISTRAD</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Shadows Over Innistrad</b> (April 2016), <b>Eldritch Moon</b> (July 2016)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">What was that we said earlier about Innistrad catching a break in Avacyn Restored? Probably "temporary reprieve" would have been more apt.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr1DOGEkk8ddjG7QMc3tEiLGO2kITWsWMpXyznDjb1BVVp62nY8zveq_eLmiN_QlYG6IEpewSZgIzKagjM6_8cB_UFeosoTwhgOncsL6UpDx9urh9CHjVVyorumKkIM74xOkqF-_F3gpD1j_fyTdNBBqzHI2VrSfuMscm6fk7yuO7EqcB7zDj7o93MYA/s16000/image_2022-11-22_092221619.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8WfmdktP5B_hmIgT7MbYyyOPde2RIBsImohJM4V35pEdzlUDzcmu1PDL1Sealn7wyUrVpNtEL08g6LlbOdT8yeG6v5x4b1hV8pJemJTm2mKbn-ieKzh1H2dv5A3gLRz7mOaWL5P5UiimzURtjI19ThPzdmOSIOPUT_4lCMlZzwMu5hsqhzS4p9vXYCA/s16000/image_2022-11-22_092257924.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ6OcW2GJFe505tduOLYiPjU-EQ_QjmPxxsxkM_dnhO3mP_2Xi7XSG4E9nQmBagcvwjR4w9s1iiWY-hiI8SvEd-c_ixumOhies0nyhXhlR45KNXjcAFHRm6o49MtKzWjU2VVzzrtLoyt6sYibBOZqaRdyH0rKKuA6EYc08D7w8uSfmZtlzk0gAMXXjVw/s16000/image_2022-11-22_092338192.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOFYB6PzTC9Hci4M3bYn58_2bo_2hRf1tkgcKSWkNZRT_-av3qNwKalTf3jJY95vPP-CZZKy9-fi2BbrErLH4hI2iqsR-TUBRBjFCUcx-PQo8T3GzrmI_Y60y_ROK8BcC4xAfRXkBGpynb_OWmqrM1w32vXaZ3DmFQwdLPWF4D_2wXrfo1q5PVNAhucg/s16000/image_2022-11-22_092413304.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">When we left Innistrad, Avacyn had returned to put things back in order. In Shadows Over Innistrad, she's lost her mind and leads her angels on a campaign of righteous judgement against the people she was created to protect. The werewolves who'd been released from their curse once again go berserk under the full moon. Mysterious stone "cryptoliths" appear in lonely places, distorting the plane's mana channels. A new and bizarre cult, apparently unrelated to Innistrad's usual demon-worshippers, conducts secret rituals on the seacoast. What's going on here? What's this building up to?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The dual-faced cards with day/night versions return after being shelved in Avacyn Restored, denoting the plane's backslide into darkness. The "madness" attribute returns (it has to do with playing a card for a reduced cost if you'd be made to discard it instead), and is joined by "delirium" (buffs spells if you have four or more card types in the graveyard), reflecting the insanity that has gripped Avacyn, her angels, and the cultists.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">More pertinent to the theme and lore are the "Investigate" mechanic and Clue tokens. Some cards prompt the player to investigate, which gives them a Clue artifact token. A clue can be sacrificed for the cost of two colorless mana to get its owner a card. Convenient!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLrlvtL4ba5qp_hCyxeZd1y8K6DT3qg5ESFVenvTAbSeh77xgSZyJiC407eW1USm4rIKTQ1_C99QQwANoNaFLp-MISQJMQ3B7fdjFHnAu7G34QVDSkXkqKMTi_BT1BOZEmOgdvZtHz0jDx8qdfEfqT1pF_QJAD-Z0S6Xm1NH0ZOz1joj6dIUbQXpRZHg/s16000/image_2022-11-22_093509421.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP7YQQuq7gG93UYWYkT4C5Uv5tsppDgn1q6I7k-_RS246P7F4rwY9Gt5dDnPjV7b-Bd_mUv-oP2hDNpSjOT7zlTwp2THMLVrBjYoib7drDkW-c6uYS3uMg910IG0q0uERJfBZroEFzH9jsOffXTOZ2dZ42a_Vj58Nd2hAwhVwu1MVcqWlE3AtRwVhKUw/s16000/image_2022-12-13_220505243.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyRKQ2Q0Ls1AAcAiNOErPhHeoLKfG8PncG1LsXFK9e_eoLiVEVh4iCyWSihkWMW9nK3RVOd8lhEU83-UtXd3kQj8eHTrMBILYX_NfRe1h3GMS3_w-LGUads4v1cTFgyYS4H2tn4-G0dCuHc-26Jlis0k7XKprQsOhqqcmsjni7QKQ84BFxDW1cUdbI-A/s16000/image_2022-11-22_093341716.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUrbFvHDIwcfCF1ZX7vfLL8Evyx8eW2QE7zCHOuD8-VwL1wgzi61tdKRdWb7Vs3wQ1g2Xe_U-388c_VCIRbz1TssQLJ3TGzam983NOBYU4QdWB8CF6TK6_0K8S4QhLJxO1nE1_IYb8UgsX1hzx92sXXamI9bRZY5lrRLGMsePBz3g5deJ7l2DJAtsdbw/s16000/image_2022-12-13_220221349.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There's something else going on with the Clue tokens, though. When Shadows Over Innistrad came out, I felt as though I was being punked. A lot of the set's flavor text—particularly the bits on the Clue tokens—prompts the collector to ponder this or that facet of the mystery, as though he or she might be capable of solving it before the next set revealed the solution. I figured it was impossible; we simply didn't have enough information. In a few months we'd be able to say "Aha! The signs were all there!", but it would have only amounted to one inconclusive speculation among dozens being arbitrarily validated.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I was wrong. The evidence <i>is</i> there, concealed in a place where only a multinational community of Magic: The Gathering obsessives would ever think to examine. I won't bother summarizing it when the MTG Wiki has <a href="https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Shadows_over_Innistrad#Tamiyo's_Journal_puzzle" target="_blank">already done so</a>. My hat's off to the creative team, though: this was <i>really</i> cool, and I wish I'd been on been on the Magic subreddit when its sleuths were figuring it out.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Actually, the biggest clue was staring us in the face from the beginning. "Shadows Over Innistrad." Kind of resembles the title of that HP Lovecraft story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," don't it?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The next set's title references Howard Phillips perhaps even more blatantly by employing one of his signature adjectives. Eldritch Moon is where the tentacles hit the fan.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif58nSQSq3afyJEW0q02b8Vt-H8Oap0eQHP0Pe-8VLfI4gLSxos4W0SXY0LxnY0Wdi4_LtKC-LBKMHqfwJGGcaw6Gs2nF-aPTi_BDOCwgBhP2zEFePFJqXY6XWoQ1GOY3xCUpQwAkVzWwNjBiNJ_lvAlf5CZrYhWDoj7o5ChzR8ZY0i6qtxKWACfDLoQ/s16000/image_2022-12-11_232108659.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEJsx_kZKLw40uGPriBvuJTM2bFTGEVfcdf6CwH0JDY-0g3R7vxdYtpxFIpNqjJ_USaKEGXOBMkDw_efDg7HyIwSQNf4_dxeSAnb9pS0qJ6VaG8mCKT6xBDDRgiHPjRAv24tGYMk7VDLGWPGfAAW1Ipv9dos8peT3APIXq-NPcq3W2Y8gfFRcnFx9p6w/s16000/image_2022-12-11_232157940.png" /><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEfxdTJ3Dq1nt6VOp1TseXP3qxRKclj2SwCD71PjR3RWI6-794jWo3HFgECdVUe2mSRlxhiBJQIbEB-oHr3zPQZ3vbq64eoHivCbEBb2j57IEZJRLPExU4Per9tFkoZornxXWi3BLyMRCEI6BU756TZaiW82kn_H-CdNNZqyTz5KFBmbM2nYnyVcmUwg/s16000/image_2023-01-05_223525079.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnNUqVQCPmsZ3i3xyOieFAoasHz-Ld9gruzZFvn4xMSm2Id98eCK70vwPteIlzvEXT23c6ferXK914IZBIbxyCA3woc7PqOqEeLpnjoaK0t5MCYA57WAmU4UQSUfnzS_SAYJkLoPLF-nWo2E5kgh-TvFUzCNMgs-9gGZjk0itzfPn7r90m-mqnYUkUew/s16000/image_2022-12-11_232017585.png" /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyXz52sYHh0VaBLkqk1pvG6C4p3vESHJLt4hvxM_Ktjk1JsjAOuqXb6bizyokQIzwPcLVS3oqnpx4J-2e0P9_Mk1HIPH8MFhiyFMfbfefr7OiHVHlX-ikagbOOKL2g8C2xmPttooghY89TH3GBwoS8n_aSpVgCS6Iwyh_PKljcnVjJcZ2Oa_dUFajy7w/s16000/image_2022-12-04_012508080.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib7bfGEBSUhs08xKlAIJDGjQvnq42TM90MzaEuTXGG8FWOFox6jGknMGXRYoDj_Xjw0y2d_gp2HAKA4fDOX7APlb_Kq_nWJXIzMYxAOVC4hdJm6NwEEQGDqLW3XhhOaW1oQzTk38f5DuAgmQMXyQ2xFsJ8EtQ6Y5bHnCAFAcPT9pmaNE4Zw8gCV4RzfQ/s16000/image_2022-12-04_012606916.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Only a short leap separates Victorian gothic horror from Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and taking it allows the Innistrad sequel to do something totally new while staying true to the spirit of the original. <span style="text-align: center;">The Eldrazi always had the veneer of Lovecraftian monsters, but Zendikar was never a Lovecraftian </span><i style="text-align: center;">setting</i><span style="text-align: center;">. In that milieu, they had to be treated as kaiju in an action movie. Bringing one of them to a gothic horror environment wasn't just the perfect premise for an Innistrad sequel, but for the second half of the Eldrazi saga. It's sort of like the progression from Ripley Scott's Alien (sci-fi horror) to James Cameron's Aliens (sci-fi action) in reverse.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;">(Postscript: I just noticed that Grapple with the Past (above) is a sequel to <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/isd/192/make-a-wish" target="_blank">Make a Wish</a> from the original Innistrad. Same artist, too. Neat!)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In addition to a couple of new mechanics—"Escalate" is usually associated with the "good guys desperately fighting back" cards, while "Emerge" lets you sacrifice a creature to bring out a big Eldrazi monster, as though the cosmic horror hatched from a host body—Eldritch Moon introduces a cosmetic variation of the dual-faced cards. Instead of "day" and "night" versions, there's a "moon" and "Emrakul" version. At this stage, there's no respite of dawn. Things only go from "dark" to "<i><a href="https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mm.aspx" target="_blank">tekeli-li!</a></i>"</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Some dual-face cards receive a functional addition with the new "Meld" mechanic. If you turn one of these cards over, you have half of a composite card. If you've got both halves on the board, meld lets you flip them both over and combine them. Eldritch Moon only contains three pairs of cards with the ability; I'm not sure how viable any of them might have been in Standard, and I've never faced down a melded creature in Commander, so it's possible the mechanic is more of a neat gimmick than anything else. But <i>what</i> a gimmick! </div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8VENDn3jTD5fnLeHJrTUOKjLqJn0K6JcBngGHtMq7yGX7tfmefWPp1gIitg4RhNhM_hs-EYImxnFSTKILJvOdvhqNr94HxollfEpIck_n3Zfhh8xhcdkQ7pjTIfsbxzTm4d8OvLik5-ffCI5E3gMHl_fRL2Bb9I7gsXTQ4OadcX4-38NMRww0cSDFCg/s16000/image_2022-11-22_092838451.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhupr1Yie_edjS1l1nvQ0h969wKMDtcVihXvx3V2e_l3qOnNDGGNF0LUV_CnKFmchadDI1CXxlS4uJBuIDpkYr112mYjggAEbiLJH5g8cMQ74CWtJDoRkdSXMEYLL-xbgouuYAdYohgAzxAJh4b_wRQAvnEaLZ0eGYasYYPw08K_0qSBBBOAU9v4wn5bg/s16000/image_2022-11-22_093010539.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPCvxQ7R9vSa9ggyycuN3QB38DB3RE7cD-iy2Tw9ijXZCs6IM9lHOCiM7cOEFtwRDQ57wDQPvCigzTSEz1e6x13c5TLZZpo8rfO0WO6ULHI88tsZ5N3D13jRLR7CTU7eKbA6soj8n7HlhqVF9DwBsc-SzRZq2WC9wcpMlcE2jiYbih4atbOGkWZ9Hyog/s16000/image_2022-11-22_093214574.png" /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">1. DOMINARIA</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Dominaria</b> (April 2018), <b>The Brothers' War</b> (November 2022)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I'm cheating with this one. Originally I'd planned to just give it to Brothers' War, but I can't ignore Dominaria. I was still playing on and off when it came out, and damn if it wasn't a thrill to get an expansion revisiting Magic's original setting for the first time since the Time Spiral block of 2006–7.</div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-APNX4w_otnX0uYQAr0pPKtXySla-kA7ORP8Vwt7lEwY58RVmTMVsiYfTdQRIVqYmOP46-RdrDDP6C1MSS58QmhhIH-49nqVh17L3fF0_N6EpAqR5AjIMdLnOG0rMN9sli0v1ukGJeTN-iwZQ_avOBhIv5JNKoGH5OcQnv7qNG7dDhoNLN8k1h9In3Q/s16000/image_2022-11-23_015443764.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG9AWMV0WSHVsZlokIwqGu9Ly0WtXfEWH5lK3S2p4ORc7aSvGM77KTNQAK9lmS4tXQQnNhqEKmWq8rGSL1rBL0WL32UiSlMRnfyV7GvbFyygF1P5dT3Sz7de7EpmGfCL6CjECBHKVGT9M6paF1i7_FRePWP5QszgbBn3JYWweABT4qbiP_ZZhuGvK3Ag/s16000/image_2022-11-23_015615373.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzc6tLX9JVk9cCLKY1QFdxYyexJQAI1PH4HjvAQUHgvybQeQqXnlBEHD9lSqcWgaUlWvoCDfPgk-Yrio4pXlMSYENokGIBKCSSoCmQ2X6y9tz5v_9aeBps681LRxwbAawPEReh73HhGnp9xegAjszhj3zEQNHmHOG5wkUvrmhF5w_JOvrXOZRq9PdDcw/s16000/image_2023-01-10_001855922.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxMdN7g_ZIqqQLiGYB_kWgGFFAxOOY11l4wt5eK9Sw9NGhy9uIvRLXQj9BJ9YSndF3MQ0suQQXhQtbQRKKfg5ZFQ-oRCqc58aQ-2CFsMxnzZ-6gSN1vdyo2ODjN74EveBDmUmh8_6cr_1QRX8mjTenolkSfxBwGaDi1Jyd18cM0dUsbPIGQhJQ-l97Ug/s16000/image_2022-11-23_015834296.png" /></div></div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">(Above: <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/lea/210/llanowar-elves" target="_blank">Llanowar Elves</a> and <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/lea/39/serra-angel" target="_blank">Serra Angel</a> both appeared in the original core set; the flavor text of Shivan Fire alludes to the flavor text of <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/lea/174/shivan-dragon" target="_blank">Shivan Dragon</a>'s first printing, and Meandering River is <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/tsp/270/calciform-pools" target="_blank">Calciform Pools</a>, half a century later.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I said in the Time Spiral writeup that Dominaria is Time Spiral, dumbed down. I stand by that. Time Spiral is to Dominaria what Who Framed Roger Rabbit is to Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It's not a perfect analogy, since Dominaria is pretty good, while watching Rescue Rangers made me wish Stanislav Petrov had said "fuck it, prepare to launch" back in 1983. What I mean is that Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a celebration of the Golden Age of Animation that strove to capture the verve of the era's theatrical shorts in a period-appropriate detective noir story, while Rescue Rangers' used its source material merely as a source of callbacks and namedrops. It didn't deconstruct the cartoons it riffed on so much as remind audiences that they were, in fact, A Thing.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Similarly, Dominaria <i>cites</i> old-school Magic more than it <i>evokes</i> it. Time Spiral was a phantasmagoria of free-floating references to the <i>game</i> of Magic: The Gathering, whereas Dominaria is a more grounded "here's how things look sixty years after Time Spiral" jaunt emphasizing the <i>lore</i> associated with the setting. Not that it's poorly conceived or executed, and not that old men like me who played Magic in the 1990s didn't eat it right up—but as a nostalgia set, it doesn't clear bar set by Time Spiral. Given the height of that bar, we probably shouldn't judge Dominaria too harshly in this regard.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Taking "history" as its overarching theme, Dominaria gives itself license to print a slew of "Remember When <i>This</i> Happened?" cards, which achieve their purest expression in its new "saga" enchantment subtype and unique "legendary sorcery" cards. Sagas depict episodes in Dominaria's past (all of which the lore fiend will recognize), and approximate them as a sequence of automatic turn-based effects. Legendary sorceries, on the other hand, recall pivotal <i>moments</i> in the Dominaria mythos. (Sagas stuck around and reliably appear in new sets; legendary sorceries did not.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLhqNHDSBkQxhSMKN57-xgdqB5FhrhP6ID5kyO1k2EwAgJQlKhoOWJlCLHR26kZFmWWZQoKmAVASTtU08nIMOAuC4RST5eKGY1ps36Vrmpr6yW7NTmxZEBntzsz6jsJzhzwA3I653z_9YPrySCrhBRqJQT-kReMcFuvalOs36_zcWhPQJqfwGn2_f8IQ/s16000/image_2022-12-20_232417510.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ6iI-BDE-HvNSa99gm6mGm-oPUk19_I9TAIXWQrQ0LGJsMDpQ4UEw1XBNeIxt-9En_nggjDmdGX1eCrJB6HZjFCm37WIlRzKHVPn_gp737weVLrHHa759p7ADYLwgzmNqKpF0UF5LYn1ORhZQzPDVz8vUGQudCoV28DUewBcY3_Tw_cucp9lNHuvIrw/s16000/image_2022-12-09_020157922.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinR9Y3LNU1nvIPPUB3JIbRXSHDeWvQwSZMPYVw3RClRXque0LpAIfse6SXGtr-r31_iVHLWtqHPhCUNjnrrdQP4cp1rSlvQr72wdmJ2I4LGlsTTdzG32E_S-ipMTRfCylZcdeqo3f32mewOZjwIjYp6i6siFO3HUuwt6zkOO9Bj1lpatI1moaDr6ATeg/s16000/image_2022-11-23_020156247.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKiyoibuWeqr8FRpYtxVaPwYa3TK9koeZYzvY888tFzJ55RCcQUJZmgDbJb8rp2CRIdnAmRhugmstuI8mfkUtECAcgkiKhbCXl6uzHEm3XOWAUqcbjzU9ZtPuTYMYztVg7DJYAwVCuGxcFOKeJX4Rp4uEiBtwZwj9BwBwqVNU9uDCpul9_cOrUWWNNaQ/s16000/image_2022-12-09_015806348.png" /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYuMGmKLboLrhfs1Oge4JT_dZAJiMhlQx3sL1KCWUySh3t9CKSoVfmNiM_-SLAJyN_aDbmGIEzXycfAt0ax--dc8n934PBP2akZ2t3gvGBlpTubAeIQkrKxd987IZSeozkC2tgCoNWW4gQx-BEf3HXwd4R0xybJ1nH1HEYnPdFmmd5PteVJB1Gjs_Q_A/s16000/image_2022-11-23_020224494.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0uiNv6aEfHED3D_Auz5q3tBrWtoFzS996xcb2tYWHm_suTgYoJtvqLTjMKAP4YDnmBkiZl21Su8mWHREQQ7-oQHalAeCyJkVlFIrabnJLrwAX-uj6YUaJVuPJR3WwYRQ-i3XDzCKWe_0rIzDDv5Y3Cm8oFaosubsdcdLZa_Apy_BeW_hxwfSZfk95yg/s16000/image_2022-11-23_020617595.png" /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Dominaria also has an unusual abundance of legendary creature cards, and breaks with convention by printing them at uncommon in addition to rare and mythic rare. Most of them are either direct or indirect references to characters from the pre-planeshopping era. Some of these are fairly deep cuts—like a levelled-up Ninth Edition <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/9ed/141/hypnotic-specter" target="_blank">Hypnotic Specter</a> (<a href="https://scryfall.com/card/dom/109/urgoros-the-empty-one" target="_blank">Urgoros, The Empty One</a>), a new dragon in the <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/ons/224/rorix-bladewing" target="_blank">Bladewing</a> line (<a href="https://scryfall.com/card/dom/149/verix-bladewing" target="_blank">Verix Bladewing</a>), a descendent of some <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/all/24a/benthic-explorers" target="_blank">Benthic Explorers</a> who evidently stuck around Yavimaya after the events of Alliances (<a href="https://scryfall.com/card/dom/206/tatyova-benthic-druid" target="_blank">Tatyova, Benthic Druid</a>), and so on. Then there's the soft reboot of Gerrard and Friends: the Weatherlight gets rebuilt, and its new crew includes direct descendants of Gerrard and Sisay, a new vampire knight, a new girl-next-door engineer, etc. Very by-the-numbers. Very typical for the modern epoch of mass entertainment franchises.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We ought to at least mention the set's main antagonist, the demon Belzenlok. What he's after is a bit more eccentric than gathering a fanatical death cult, rallying an army of darkness, and conquering the world—though these are certainly pillars of his agenda. Keeping with Dominaria's theme, Belzenlok intends to pervert history, rewriting it such that he himself is the world's eternal and sole archvillain. (See Cabal Evangel, above.) Given Dominaria's release date, the contemporary chatter about an epistemological crisis, and the web fiction's characterization of Belzenlok as a deluded, egotistical buffoon, I'm half-certain he was developed as a winged, horned Donald Trump, and his self-aggrandizing "alternative facts" a reference to the post-truth era and its discontents. Since Belzenlok is the least interesting part of Dominaria, I'm gonna say the satire (if satire it's supposed to be) falls flat.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Now then—on to the Brothers' War. (I'm aware I'm neglecting last September's Dominaria United. It was a fine set, but can be adequately summed up as "Invasion 2: Phyrexian Bugaboo"—and this thing already has an unreasonable word count.)</div></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiysyCCLMmmWSIac7NsxhQcuSJyzOle33GEZ-15jtU8XZuzOvDMh7tvNSmbm9U1FPOT2nyyR0DwceSB-VRzKYOCRwtZuPsehPmNd-VbI6opPX1o0tpLA-sgNNmZIe5aRGXPBOzTwPychHwiFE38-chw06IxFDOKuOnFjzClKbHIEK5vcZP7f2RBLM3xMw/s16000/image_2022-12-20_231556630.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmjPCBppNBNK7q-ClPC3m96Osyrw7K8y5qBNRHResqh1w2L4eAup7NAr3DZjR-DRAK0TlbgJ3pv2CLXTL2rN339HknxDEx300-xjs9axf4GfLy9HCYp5AomdoSYZZFQEnjNQkUR5mOtcfE5ytS_e-GvgoJKq0Wphnr_CH_diiS0wMpREHdBvr00GyvxQ/s16000/image_2022-12-20_231626178.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I'll admit I was skeptical when Wizards announced a Brother's War set. The worst case scenario, I imagined, would have a bunch of planeswalkers traveling into the past, intervening in history, and either changing the timeline (screwing up decades of continuity) or turning out to have been there all along, nudging events at critical junctures and saving the world, unbeknownst to the historians. Even if it didn't pull any Star Trek: First Contact nonsense, it would almost certainly turn Antiquities into some kind of Gundam mech war crap, introduce a slew of quirky Chanda-esque figures who'd be hailed as the war's unsung heroes, and make the nature of the conflict more intelligible for the sake of the Harry Potter and Marvel movie crowd, simplifying it from a tragic moral gray zone to a conventional "good against evil" affair. The saga of Urza and Mishra is leagues removed from Magic's contemporary storytelling ethos, and fans <i>like</i> it that way. How could anyone trust the outfit that had just turned out Streets of New Capenna not to mishandle Magic's very ur-myth?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I am pleased to say my doubts were misplaced.</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyMVjTCT2GMXupOjhVl57dlfSWRVCU2TRhGUqq_B0Lg3qoMbYOf26ofAcqHTubJPiZEVO9ce7bdhmhTze3FzOEShcyY2Y5KfNBtFwvgeHSnSJAlP2sTnY9xlafjeYOS5ZgEYOvYT2geLjldjhVmqYKFKZAdaaqUVIAwTXsWN26SEKakgtiI2ah45SUyg/s16000/image_2022-12-20_231722465.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDBfZkjyaLOab7ujrCPu9_Ff9tAbE4lSvXYjriElZc87cMJ5JhLQvn9tgJd8nqA8iK6zqCKt3mvKF9VAM4lasJYXyOG1t6wG7CIqpR161nwwFf5AnmctONkVNMQsaW0IcjlbJ9DLtr7mpOHl-v3CcbdjRTg4ctp4US1NXX6xPBhEutYiG4sI28S9UMQg/s16000/image_2022-12-20_231915853.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGh0d7D_IwYWBo64PeUzymln4-L0XYGxk4rtsJ7VrWMoiVgnVDbU-PMFt4nap8yXTfbMcMhSi1Yj8go_ceEmXRzdZk70YeyN3gj30wFGCsYFH7mEZT1DqjmrYepqkkn0XLKBbN03aDZJEcHeN-MkvGx_MIQVO96oiZfyaraUKJYCDTOCf6Z69l0r1U3A/s16000/image_2022-12-21_223624922.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJiETNJ2yHBct-iB6rM7-L83YPwIWkfrSFhhkoYRaIDUa2BCxbWzP7qv_thPHimMDyZaf0MKa0w4q3TH1izouc6x2M2_iY5oZOshxO3a1i4wzb01JfrVZE1Nmys25CIz91QklmDfp-bd7Rqd88KVzCpg9uZuHqbuujRis0Qr4u-mWej04AO6jDJ_yxLg/s16000/image_2022-12-21_223805798.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu1Wv3_QwbN70WWe1ayVJfdYkqKNfwH8Q0oJefCB_B_VRYs7xNtb-qRdAruYjIGEYJHn6GCEbx-FhAMsNzIL3NRIOqUBUZ1RIbOaZBbDNLz97j2lYPwDei2EchGNkFg3fH5CfUfT0nyn4nH49z3oEDq8ZUiHszIQv9CrLUQx8k7s5-09MgeztYbbbr2A/s16000/image_2023-01-07_014257428.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq8jNKq_X9TMIS6PSA03oASfFGg4xUFqpje-Vld0wMzuApOGym761wR7FfSYtrpgZYxxUhoAoaX6_u2dWjtuAr7Iyv5DE7ja1lwfdiqra0h_xjPQuOQHt4tnrMKETat7PIAYrTrXh1Tf_vzOU374jdPEMSPR42P8NbZGd86XUn6vnCq15k9hYPYbpwWw/s16000/image_2023-01-07_014120645.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Let's have a quick recap.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Magic's second expansion set, <a href="https://scryfall.com/sets/atq" target="_blank">Antiquities</a>, was released in 1994. Its backstory adumbrated the events of a cataclysmic high-tech feud between the siblings Urza and Mishra, retold through an examination of historical artifacts. The belligerents' personalities, deeds, and motivations are viewed as as through the impenetrable shroud of history.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">From 1995–6, Wizards of the Coast collaborated with Armada Comics to released several one-shot issues and limited series based on the meteorically popular Magic brand, two of which were the six issues comprising the Antiquities War and Urza-Mishra War comic books. To the best of my knowledge, no Wizards employees were <i>directly</i> involved in their production. The comics depicted the brothers' early lives and the escalation of hostilities between their factions, but tapered off long before they approached the war's climax.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">By 1998, Wizards had for the most part ended its partnerships with third-party publishers (give or take a four-issue Dark Horse series about Gerrard) and began developing novels in-house. The first of these was The Brothers' War, written by Jeff Grubb, which adopted much of the Armada comics' plot, though it told the story in more detail, retconned certain events, and followed the brothers' story to its conclusion. (I've read several chapters; it ain't Faulkner, but it's a perfectly serviceable plot-driven page-turner. <a href="https://multiverseinreview.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-brothers-war.html">In the estimable opinion of Multiverse in Review</a>, it's far and away the best Magic novel: "It wants to be nothing less than a meditation on the futility of war, the inexorable march of history and the difficulty of assigning blame for something as complex as war.")</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In short: The Brother's War is a Magic: The Gathering expansion set based on a Magic: The Gathering novel based on a Magic: The Gathering comic book based on a Magic: The Gathering expansion set. What a pedigree.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But this gives The Brother's War an architectural advantage that virtually every other Magic expansion has lacked, or otherwise not taken full advantage of. Usually the design team has to fly by the seat of its pants. A division of however many creative workers has only so much time to figure out where a given expansion set's going to take place, which characters are going to be involved, and where the plot is going to run. This might entail dreaming up a whole new setting, devising its history, outlining its society and lines of conflict, drafting new characters, figuring out what motivates them, what they do, etc. Depending on how the company is organized at a given time, the creative team might send plot notes to a writer or writers hired to compose a novel or novels, or a series of short stories, developed in tandem with some hundreds of game cards, which <i>still</i> have to be designed, playtested, retooled, etc., not to mention given names and illustrated.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Magic's stories are often messy. The text or illustrations on the cards routinely contradict the text of a publication. It's often the case that the people writing the official stories and the people crafting the lore and presenting it the cards are working separately, and there's only so many resources to allot towards coordinating their efforts and addressing discrepancies. The clockwork release schedule puts a strict time limit on polishing any new release, and since Magic is principally a <i>game</i>, the intricacies of a set's story can't be the top priority.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But the decades-long story of The Brothers' War came readymade as 400-page novel by Jeff Grubb, and the set's designers were at liberty to read it, circle passages, and show up to meetings and say "this would make a cool card." The result is much more detailed and comprehensive retelling of Urza and Mishra's story than I ever hoped to expect. <a href="https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=set%3Abro+is%3Astory" target="_blank">Forty</a> of its 267 non-basic cards (excluding basic land cards, I mean) are marked as Story Spotlights, and the designation seems rather arbitrary when the entire <i>set</i> is a Story Spotlight, using the "language" of game cards to <i>re</i>-mythologize the events set down in Grubb's novel.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwlGd2ydKqu2KBSamn1qxv_inJW3XwLBmL5fRh4HWq3Fo-DeiEZvMqr9em2-TDwgOrm5tdkV-2-NnopdfFuk6Oued6Jeh_Nb_nf-0raUWQsGF54LBrOCqX9IQE0MxGCqwQ_U6TPNpg7Zf-gNN5fpfIxifFMju6bk_SEZWHeKgZuP3GpBXbFPwJdEXDlA/s16000/image_2022-12-20_230035752.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiX_bsxKYYWljuapTbK262eCuvkp98yrNTmp7FQo4vDvJ4R9lMd5H1rxThfICJgU3hyWn-9f3ZNwG7HTZ_uiYc7UaYQx6v2ahQ8chBlnoH5m9sahLMi42O7qNraXEpw9JscvGX6LQmyUq0370qRuNHCGHhpdMMM9QbDAw_eVNddBCqIoPFtC4tUIQqEw/s16000/image_2022-12-20_230252036.png" /><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWYVU7lmbZ-B3scnW2k0BA0lVfPCn6zpMiBsAvM4uJWX5WKfCVrbJE4b1pgx39z8z4END4EtBlvEbOMUtAVnmspsi-b9h2MQrpYOA7e9Q06uhlX0RBAwpuPTfk9hF3W4p7AIghypeC3n_qw6ZX6Iznp4TZDLtUr0lV-GAOUJ57Me1I1dojw2PRC3tDwg/s16000/image_2022-12-20_230325239.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGC18ju-sw57cGoY2jEMvix4qpejvPbnjPjzFz-aBSl6uWivxIaar0Dzezp1kCFYwucd31Mioh2os4Gjegc0inXoi_HGnN5qCu4X2x3QcYNy-AwbMh_73ZQmI8MJfrceZotHMLRppxtRL97LOkKskmKzEben18TIf3lmftvQSrfbQCfBVeOIUFjLjS3w/s16000/image_2022-12-20_230653160.png" /><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKFumcgdYQ48iMUGkKvvrrteAc2hYTW4kzNHc6p-OXYCSMywfgcFgSNyJikF_kBp-xXVV_TaRlpW4UtqH_CyDYwQUMEF5y2p3-T2cqO20KZsj5XAm8o5VK_povWJCbHKb5OEzhNc2zBehF85-wJIQD0YvsDZLCYp51InLadmCy_DMj2CiS9_-SX-US1g/s16000/image_2022-12-20_230549414.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXxzmM5DqxYGtSgJ38Hxn2P7o4sfpfRlip0o0_xmQV8zbnNdHd6iey2Z8XSnS05U_bfdMgKFSrlEbwLvNt9a1ssMCEFRLSnjgjdHZr50aciGAnRRKdsrpqAIpnJ85T3sHSkx39aX5WHauTvU14R_X8lt8yVmM1Uz2fQYM-nn13QYe4LXCABPsabiChDg/s16000/image_2022-12-20_230834137.png" /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Urza's long suffering spouse Kayla and ill-fated son Harbin, Mishra's steadfast attendant Hajar, the power couple Drafna and Hurkyl, the brothers' mentor Tocasia—all of them are represented as legendary creatures for the first time. <i>Twenty-eight years</i> after the name "Ashnod" first appeared on a Magic card, The Brothers' War <i>finally</i> gives us Mishra's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_Z6pFql8Uo" target="_blank">angry girl</a> sidekick as a legendary creature, and thankfully retcons her unfortunate (and previously her <i>only</i>) visualization in an old <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/pvan/401/ashnod" target="_blank">Vanguard card</a>. I can't decide if this a bigger or lesser deal than the OG Phyrexian Praetor Gix portalling onto the table in the horrible flesh at long last. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">(Notice the subtlety in Gix's rules text: in most cases you'd expect it to say "whenever one of your creatures hits an opponent, you can pay 1 life to draw a card." Instead, it's "whenever <i>any</i> creature hits <i>any</i> of your opponents, etc." In effect, Gix incentivizes your rivals to have it out among themselves during multiplayer games. Absolutely on brand for a demon who spent most of the war in the shadows, playing both sides against each other.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The titular brothers themselves get <i>eight</i> legendary creature cards in total, epitomizing different "versions" of the siblings. Urza and Mishra each have a "boyhood" card, a "maturity" card, a "last battle" card, and a "This Is My Final Form!!" card.</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div>If you've been paying attention, you noticed scrolled past the brothers' "boyhood" and "maturity" incarnations. For their other two versions, The Brothers' War brings back the "meld" mechanic from Eldritch Moon. Each brother's "last battle" iteration can meld with a certain artifact to attain his Final Form.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm9d5UNdKgML3UsifgocGrbslO5tIZ44M_BIkLcNP9bp9GFBDe-fUmkI8F1ycDkTFRPt4dWdDxy3gmHeLIHxtAOE7S51fnXfSqlkeatufQjVRXLB5dl2_Y8hyau22etwsEXkMTY3LJhNKqnZxFCEjnC-BookkITdbY5svUPqPkSAtFLpmmC5LvlkhZKg/s16000/image_2022-12-20_231107468.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2fxDWCKXy6h_ek_O-kV7cgVjLc6y_SRNyN9_VbVBfhn6UUhnncP0DxGEpymWz22WH0XvJoVYFkrYCkxbKwbbMiJovpwGIitBbuD2oWF_6qiHkCudxdtntpuPZzjfGUmaR_uQ7Im4DpvoB3ugPB65Yt3rxlRzu2xDWM3lBXDoqmjLWsSxuKKUrekl7Rw/s16000/image_2022-11-23_022333244.png" style="text-align: center;" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiXuJLYvV5OHU5m0zjfPAia05j8eALQDG_m666-UKrREKxWm5b6kPiPtqKyPf59KmP1-dTrETZnwChCxX5rteazJr0eQemg2VG36vaWqsAZlD15d2XHuXF126fJ69_k1asqbHNqFCaD8f9EJ251NKgWoYK1c1TGikYYyj1MpTpZ8HGgcqShTaYoSbU4Q/s552/image_2022-11-23_022606761.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="552" data-original-width="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiXuJLYvV5OHU5m0zjfPAia05j8eALQDG_m666-UKrREKxWm5b6kPiPtqKyPf59KmP1-dTrETZnwChCxX5rteazJr0eQemg2VG36vaWqsAZlD15d2XHuXF126fJ69_k1asqbHNqFCaD8f9EJ251NKgWoYK1c1TGikYYyj1MpTpZ8HGgcqShTaYoSbU4Q/s16000/image_2022-11-23_022606761.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm1v3V_0d8LNSp0oYeQ0V1eltRAbgEkyHySz4nJDeDajHitl3mO6L59B8wkBsRgZscbZUljEr2pj3NNeEj7_Grb5uHq-vmCrRTYmuxEQHFjcmWLeNJW7jF_nxIc48cs2CVO03vFSQwhPrxLOkNY9nKPjEKA-HWcsJwlADyssAm4YkeFQnoeduzlAS6PA/s16000/image_2022-12-20_231210273.png" /> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC-WRIn6dJAl8DuqrhferqQXGVmbZbbWA_XjQGrYgK5pdUU_eXp3yqEJt1XS4CIZopDyXVUB2v_9FxIg-YqoQpa_5rkyilpyIOVdBmdaarhKLMNySmku0gmPzO702YXkpou02-hMhn8whMXo2B4ddHxghwL_IOQiFJXJ7NL_qKXU6svdyys2wBT0bFbw/s16000/image_2022-12-20_231251784.png" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbWMhCdpn1KenVkl7hL9P38nVIHsuf8JPfqJ3Wp8eE1EtRdk89-qU5uCSs1mp7v6DqC4M45peZUHwDHLWEgb5n0XdssQj0XW8eV5AUOko3g2Lvt7jRjUArhR_IATvggx4Ek03f4ofaJ7Z3b8Ci5pnw958Uish4eoPUIJjcdJJw7lPu7gt0pX1A1cDt5A/s16000/image_2022-11-23_023152074.png" /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">It has long been a truism among Magic fans that Wizards could never print an Urza planeswalker card (the time his severed head <a href="https://scryfall.com/card/ust/136/urza-academy-headmaster" target="_blank">appeared in a joke set</a> doesn't count) because no single card could adequately represent him. It turns out we were right: the central character of Magic's ur-mythos cuts such a towering figure that he needs <i>two</i> cards (and a built-in means of regulating his appropriately busted power level) to do him justice.</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>NEXT:</b> <a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2023/01/magic-gathering-worldbuilding-writeup.html" target="">So much god damned product</a></div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-27556709870474677522023-01-06T00:19:00.001-05:002023-01-06T10:16:03.678-05:00Twelve Rounds with Kant (part fourteen)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibKu6TaLmsaushec1an4WicuRu4JwoANK5CrGmCrNJ-cH49BuumFUIujs3oBzKPr8S8hxA5644z96Cqz_KlAfI56xHnUwlx16TQn6sHt3rlyT5fyVPeVRsuFxYeOAo-sBZ1eT2DXHlZCaiXM22oum0WEpDZA5tp6OcneSrToWzkCdJTyolFuUmcFKrcg/s1091/image_2023-01-06_000310586.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1091" data-original-width="1072" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibKu6TaLmsaushec1an4WicuRu4JwoANK5CrGmCrNJ-cH49BuumFUIujs3oBzKPr8S8hxA5644z96Cqz_KlAfI56xHnUwlx16TQn6sHt3rlyT5fyVPeVRsuFxYeOAo-sBZ1eT2DXHlZCaiXM22oum0WEpDZA5tp6OcneSrToWzkCdJTyolFuUmcFKrcg/s320/image_2023-01-06_000310586.png" width="314" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wassily Kandinsky, <i>Circles in a Circle</i> (1923)<br />beautiful.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I've ran out of steam. Between the business of living, the time I'm allotting to other sorts of writing (some of it is more pop culture gibberish you can look forward to reading on here; some of it is fiction which may or may not ever see the light of day), and Kant fatigue, I don't have energy enough to grapple with the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i> with much vigor. I think this is going to be the last Kantpost for a while.</p><p>I'll do at least one more later; for all its faults and glitches, the third critique is an embarrassment of riches. It's the kind of book you could write at least two books <i>about</i>.</p><p>Anyway, let's talk about...</p><p><b><br />• BEAUTY</b></p><p>I am out of my depth here.</p><p>Here is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's list of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-aesthetics/#JudgBeauInteIssu" target="_blank">interpretive issues</a> with the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement. Have a look.</p><p>That's a professional's take, and I won't pretend I'm on that level. Stress-testing Kant's analysis of taste and beauty on its own terms is more appropriate to a graduate student writing a dissertation, not a dilettante's blog post. And I can't in good faith attack Kant's theory of beauty when I don't have a comprehensive alternative to recommend in its place. I'm agnostic on the subject.</p><p>I respect anyone with the stones and the self-confidence to attempt a systematic definition of beauty. If the <i>what is art?</i> conversation typically leads to a quagmire, <i>what is beauty?</i> ends up in some spatially impossible MC Escher painting. We're all of us convinced we understand what beauty means, but struggle to articulate it in objective terms that stand up to scrutiny. In this we're like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart explaining his legal criterion for obscenity: <i>I know it when I see it</i>.<br /><span></span></p><a name='more'></a> Nominating purposiveness as the fundamental basis of beauty is more than a good beginning on Kant's part. It's brilliant. Years ago, when I first read Ezra Pound's <i>ABC of Reading</i>, his pronouncement that "beauty is aptness to purpose" blew my mind. Little did I suspect he may have been boiling down a entire book by an eighteenth-century philosopher into a five-word aphorism.<p></p><p>As Kant says, we witness the instantiation of beauty through purposive forms most clearly in organic life—in the body of a dragonfly, "built" to be a swift and astonishingly agile predator; in the singular flower of a dandelion, which closer inspection discloses as dozens of composite florets; in the whorl of a snail shell; and so on. He does not err, I think, in requiring that a form in nature which arouses admiration must do so independently of any material interest in it. Appreciating a bird for the wonderful quiddities of its being is a very different thing than appreciating it as a candidate for your dinner's main course.</p><p>It's when the topic moves from natural objects to artifacts of human design and manufacture that the conversation about beauty ends up in the Lost Woods. Right away, Kant says that the beauty of an object is judged <i>immediately</i>, before its use-value (how well it fulfills its purpose) comes into consideration; if he's to be believed, we can't properly call a shoe or a piece of silverware beautiful. They can be well-made, charming, attractive, etc., but none of these are grounds for beauty in and of themselves, and Kant gets salty about the confusion between "agreeable" and "beautiful."</p><p>Later on, he draws a distinction between capital-A art and handicraft, which he also calls liberal art and remunerative art:</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">The first is regarded as if it could turn out purposively (be successful) only as play, i.e., an occupation that is agreeable in itself; the second is regarded as labor, i.e., an occupation that is disagreeable (burdensome) in itself and is attractive only because of its effect (e.g., the remuneration), and hence as something that can be compulsorily imposed.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Hah. Given the economy of the art world, the phrase "<i>regarded as if</i>" does a lot of heavy lifting here. A few sentences later he conscientiously defers from deciding whether the clockmaker deserves to be called an artist or an artisan, which suggests his system isn't so precise as to prevent fringe cases.</p><p>Further ahead comes the division of liberal art into the agreeable or the beautiful—the first is aimed "merely at enjoyment," and includes "all games that involve no interest beyond that of making time pass unnoticed." (Guess we know where Kant would have stood on the 'are video games Art?' question.) Beautiful art is "purposive in itself," though it lacks an end, and "promotes the cultivation of the mental powers for sociable communication."</p><p>This is what I want to dwell on for a minute: the social and private dimensions of beauty. </p><p>According to Kant, The pleasure of beauty...</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">...must necessarily rest on the same conditions in everyone, since they are subjective conditions of the possibility of a cognition in general, and the proportion of these cognitive faculties that is required for taste is also requisite for the common and healthy understanding that one may presuppose in everyone.</span> </blockquote><p></p><p>"One could even define taste," he says, "as the faculty for judging that which makes our feeling in a given representation <b>universally communicable</b> without the mediation of a concept."</p><p>This is derived from Kant's peculiar definition of the <i>sensus communis</i> (communal sense). All of us our human beings; your mental apparatus works essentially the same way as everyone else's, and can "hold its judgement up to human reason as a whole." This relates to Kant's exposition of the second moment of judgements of taste, where he observes that we expect or demand conformity of other's aesthetic judgments with ours.</p><p>Kant performs a delicate balancing act throughout the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgement, striving to maintain the transcendental, <i>a priori</i> grounds of our perception of beauty, while ignoring neither the role socialization plays in inculcating taste nor the social function of aesthetics:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">The beautiful interests empirically only in <b>society;</b> and if the drive to society is admitted to be natural to human beings, while the suitability and tendency toward it, i.e., <b>sociability,</b> are admitted to be necessary for human beings as creatures destined for society, and thus as a property belonging to <b>humanity,</b> then it cannot fail that taste should also be regarded as a faculty for judging everything by means of which one can communicate even his <b>feeling</b> to everyone else, and hence as a means for promoting what is demanded by an inclination natural to everyone.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Aesthetics are a trellis around which group-oriented behavior expands and concentrates. Historically, art traditions were precisely <i>that</i>: artists in ancient Egypt, India, Mesoamerica, etc., were trained to perpetuate a particular style from which they were not to deviate. Their work both perpetuated and crystallized their societies' values and worldviews; it strengthened pre-modern intimations of a cyclical passage of time wherein past, present, and future all looked remarkably alike, and naturalized the institutions and way of life at a given moment of that society's lifespan.</p><p>I'm old enough to remember when subcultural kiddies formed themselves into cliques that dressed similarly, eschewed all but their chosen musical genres, and looked warily at members of other tribes. As a goth kid, the sartorial fashions I followed and the music I listened to was both a way of consolidating my identity in terms of a group and making it known to other members of that group that I shared their values. (Yes, yes, and we all prided ourselves as nonconformists.) Now that social life has evidently migrated onto the internet, social media avatars, emoji and acronyms in one's bio, memes, slang, etc. serve the same purpose that fishnet sleeves, UFO pants, liberty spikes, etc. did in "meatspace."</p><p>Then and now, any consensus about art and beauty is typically both result and reinforcer of corporate values. (I mean corporate in the old sense of "a body of people.")</p><p>The skeptic would say this proves that beauty is an <i>entirely</i> subjective matter, and our perception of it hinges completely on whatever arbitrary cultural conditions we were reared in. Kant doesn't think so: though the perception of beauty <i>is</i> subjective, he asserts that meaningful lines <i>can</i> be drawn between good and bad taste, and glitzy tripe and beautiful art, and explores such concepts as spirit, genius, aesthetic ideas, intellectual interest, and so on.</p><p>But let's back up.</p><p>Kant is certainly correct in his assertion that beauty consists of our <i>response</i> to an object, as opposed to inhering in the object itself. But for all his intellectualizing and categorization of responses to objects of perception and experience, his explanatory mechanism of aesthetic pleasure consists of the "free play" that occurs between our faculties of imagination and understanding during judgements of taste. This is frustratingly opaque, and can't even be called <i>wrong</i> because it defies examination.</p><p>Like the Transcendental Deduction of the first critique, it is meant to stand partially on experiential ground, but his exposition of taste also assumes, and depends on, our capability of knowing the subjective experience of <i>other people</i>. Remember: the feeling of beauty, whatever causes it within us, is "universally communicable without the mediation of a concept."</p><p>BF Skinner describes the problem of communicating private sensations as one of inherently defective conditioning. Training a speaker to identify an object as "red" or "square" or "hot" is relatively simple. All of these properties confront us in the world outside the skin, their dimensions are fairly unambiguous, and exemplars abound. Teaching someone to discern "hot" as opposed to "warm" or "lukewarm," or "red" from "orange," "purple," or "brown," is achieved through differential reinforcements which a verbal community can apply with a high degree of consistency, given the nonarbitrary character of the relevant properties. Virtually everyone can agree that a ball is round and a box is square, or that the sky is blue and grass is green.</p><p>More to the point, we have the general consensus that a baseball, a frisbee, and an inflated pufferfish are all round (though we would more precisely say that baseball is "spherical" and a frisbee "circular"), and grass, dollar bills, and lime juice are all green (though we can also find words for more specific <i>shades</i> of green). Language may be arbitrary, but these properties are not. "Roundness" and "sphericity" can be described in the objective language of geometry, and the difference between pine green, sea green, and lime green in terms of wavelengths or photon energy.</p><p>If we arrange a set of stimuli—say, a Mark Rothko painting, a recording of a Bach concerto, an orchid, Michelangelo's <i>David</i>, and a Walt Whitman poem—and state that their common property is "beauty," it would be extremely difficult to identify where precisely that property resides.</p><p>Even if we managed to discover some highly abstract characteristic definitely and demonstrably shared by the painting, the flower, and the sculpture, finding that same physical property in the evanescent <i>event</i> of the audio recording or the self-generated verbal behavior occasioned by scanning a poem in print would be an impossibility, except perhaps by way of analogy.</p><p>We can only teach somebody to produce the verbal response "beautiful" in the presence of a stimulus through exemplar training. <i>In theory</i>, if the painting, the recording, the flower, the sculpture, and the poem are all designated as "beautiful," whatever property (or properties) common to objects and/or in her response to them will be the yardstick by which the learner judges something as beautiful or not-beautiful. Since we can't know exactly which physical properties determine her response, or what that (private) response consists of, we're equally incapable of ascertaining the consonance of her definition of "beautiful" with yours and mine.</p><p>As a consequence of the way in which we're constrained to condition responses to private events in terms of public ones (another example would be the way we train a child to identify and report her emotional state based on the typical outward signs of anger, sadness, worry, etc.), precise terms for aesthetic experience are lacking. Most of the ones we use rely on associations with <i>public</i> objects and events, and these are imprecise at best. For example: attempt to accurately and completely communicate how your favorite song of all time makes you <i>feel</i>, without resorting to comparisons, metaphors, memories, actions, etc. It isn't easy. </p><p>If we can't differentiate between the pleasures of contemplating the painting, admiring the flower, drifting away on the recording, or thrilling ourselves with the poem, we may have little recourse but to call them "beautiful" in the same sense that we describe the distinct flavors of a strawberry, a Jolly Rancher, chocolate ice cream, and honey as "sweet," though none of these actually taste the same.</p><p>It's not hard to appreciate why gustatory sensation became the West's dominant metaphor for aesthetic judgement. The literal and analogical varieties of taste both describe the relation of a private feeling to an object; the feeling's most salient aspect is either pleasure or displeasure, and in either case, the object's visual and tactile properties are irrelevant. The observation that different people can agree that a dish is "bitter," "sweet," "minty," etc., and yet disagree as to whether it tastes good or bad, transfers naturally to aesthetics, where a gaggle of critics can judge the same artwork and judge it variously as "stunning" and "trash."</p><p>But all metaphors have their limits. If I enjoy a particular dessert which you execrate, we're still likely to agree on <i>what it tastes like—</i>it's nutty, it's fruity, it's creamy, it's tart, etc.—and any of these might be identified as the immediate sensory basis of our liking or disliking the dish. With a piece of visual art, the relation between stimulus and response is more obscure. Of all our sensory faculties, that of sight is the most detached. We touch a needle and we recoil; we smell a durian and gag; we hear glass break on our kitchen titles and jump; but the <i>sight</i> of a needle, a durian, or a bottle shattering ordinarily don't entail such instantaneous or emphatic responses.</p><p>This is to say that our cerebral or emotional responses to a piece of visual art very probably have much less to do with the object's nonarbitrary characteristics per se than with the idiosyncrasies of the individual's organism. </p><p>If, when we look upon a Kandinsky painting together, you're fascinated and I'm bored, how are we to know which of its physicals aspects either of us is responding to, and what causes our respective responses? Even if both of us like it, how do we account for my feeling that it's soothing, and your sense that it's energetic? Does our agreement that the painting is beautiful <i>conceal</i> the dissonance in our responses to it, or does it speak to some fundamental harmony between them?</p><p>Kant believes the latter—although, if I understand him correctly, he would say that what you and I both feel is the pleasure resulting from our mental faculties in harmonious free play. This explanation supposes that your private response and mine are identical in some essential way, regardless of the variances in our personal histories that determine what each of us discerns upon the canvas.</p><p>To put the question in the most obnoxious way possible: <i>is beauty a social construct?</i></p><p>Nobody can honestly question the role socialization plays in the perception of beauty. We're taken to an art museum or a symphony hall and make ourselves find something to enjoy in the experience so as to conform with the group, to earn the approval of a teacher, and so on, and we do it again later in a different milieu, or when nobody else is around. Don't like a particular kind of music? Hang out with people who do. Get drunk, have fun, form bonds, make memories with them while that music's playing nearby. After enough nights, you'll probably develop a taste for it. Or, if being with people isn't your jam, get really invested in a video game whose soundtrack consists exclusively of that genre. Play enough <i>Marvel Vs. Capcom 2</i> and that smooth jazz stops sounding so dull after a while. Your hippie art teacher droning on about Jackson Pollock's splatters and Ellsworth Kelly's unicolor canvasses may have confused you when you were eight years old—but later on, when you were in college, visiting the museum after eating a couple of weed brownies with the art student you were dating, and listening to <i>him</i> explain Pollock and Kelly's genius, perhaps you began to understand the hype.</p><p>But: is there something more elementary to the perception of beauty than mere associationism?</p><p>If one of us were raised by wolves from childhood and had no contact with other humans, is it possible that we'd still linger with wonder and pleasure at the sight of newly fallen snow in the moonlight, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, or raindrops glistening on water lilies in the summer sun?</p><p>I'm not sure, but I would guess that the answer is "not likely."</p><p>Kant's beliefs on the social provenance of aesthetic values reminds me of Thomas Hobbes' remarks on the "laws of nature" in <i>Leviathan</i>. England's most famous pessimist maintained that human beings have a <i>disposition</i> towards peaceful, sociable behavior, but it tends to wither on the vine in the conditions of "war of all against all" in his (theoretical) state of nature. Under the right circumstances, the potential for prosocial behavior can bring about peaceful relations between persons and families, setting in motion the germination of civil society.</p><p>Kant's remarks about taste and the development of society run along similar lines:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">For himself alone a human being abandoned on a desert island would not adorn either his hut or himself, nor seek out or still less plant flowers in order to decorate himself; rather, only in society does it occur to him to to be not merely a human being but also, in his own way, a refined human being...Further, each expects and requires of everyone else a regard to universal communication, as if from an original contract dictated by humanity itself; and thus, at first to be sure only charms, e.g., colors for painting oneself...or flowers, mussel shells, beautifully colored birds' feathers, but with time also beautiful forms (as on canoes, clothes, etc.) that do not in themselves provided any gratification, i.e., satisfaction of enjoyment, become important in society and combined with great interest, until finally civilization that has reach the highest point makes of this almost the chief work of refined inclination, and sensations have value only to the extent that they may be universally communicated...</span></blockquote><p></p><p>I'm prepared to provisionally guess that aesthetic pleasure is as uniquely human as language mathematical understanding, and must be <i>learned</i>. The famous <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI" target="_blank">double rainbow</a> video is proof enough in itself that human beings have the <i>capacity</i> to be emotionally and intellectually moved by objects and events that don't feed them, impress potential mates, increase their social standing, or have any practical use whatsoever, and its significance is not diminished by our not being equipped to do so in the absence of a social environment that values aesthetic experience.</p><p>If the social incentive to communicate our experiences and feelings to one another (the obverse of which is the incentive to search for and <i>have</i> experiences and feelings to communicate) is a necessary prerequisite to the discrimination and appreciation of those things we learn to call beautiful, then sure—beauty is a social construct. Aesthetic standards are in many respects arbitrary, dependent on the histories of individual persons and of groups, but the ubiquity of art traditions across the world and throughout history suggests the social utility of art and our proclivity for ascribing value to things independently of their usefulness to us are like Kant's conception of freedom and morality: the one must entail the other, and there isn't necessarily an egg that preceded the chicken or a chicken that laid the egg.</p><p>Even if Kant's proposed mechanism for the phenomenon of aesthetic experience is a purely explanatory fiction, I feel like there's a lot he gets right in spite of it.<br /><br /></p><p>For your reading pleasure (and perhaps as a resource for anyone who's running google searches for "kant intellectual beauty" or "kant beauty nature"), I'm going to transcribe the section "On the Intellectual Interest in the Beautiful" in the next day or two. It's one of my favorite sections of the <i>Critique of the the Power of Judgement</i>, and is reasonably easy to understand, even if you aren't versed in Kant's jargon.</p>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-58985124070825899182022-12-23T01:21:00.005-05:002022-12-23T01:27:04.363-05:00Twelve Rounds with Kant (part thirteen)<p>Well, here we are—about to take a look at the second division of Kant's <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i>, the Critique of Teleological Judgement. When I say "let's take a look at," I mean "let me reread, take notes, and summarize it for myself because a Kant critique makes <i>Ulysses</i> seem like light reading." After this there will be <i>one more</i> Kantpost where I'll try and figure out whether the third critique really contains kernels of valuable wisdom, of if the heautonomy of the faculty of judgement is really the friends we make along the way. </p><p>Let's begin with a few excerpts of some things Kant says in this section that must strike the twenty-first century reader as embarrassingly outmoded. Might as well it out of the way now.</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Nothing in it [an organism] is vain, purposeless, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>My tailbone and appendix say otherwise, chum. I'd include my wisdom teeth, but I had them pulled out of my head because they'd have deformed the rest of my teeth if they'd been left in. Lost track of 'em afterwards. Pretty sure they're blocking me on the Face Book.</p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">It is well known that the anatomists of of plants and animals, in order to investigate their structure and to understand for what reason and to what end they have been given such a disposition and combination of parts and precisely this internal form, assume as indispensably necessary the maxim that nothing in such a creature is <b>in vain</b>, and likewise adopt it as the fundamental principle of the general doctrine of nature that <b>nothing</b> happens <b>by chance.</b></span></blockquote><p></p><p><b></b></p><p>The processes of natural selection and evolution are catalyzed precisely "by chance." The hatching of a bird with a somewhat unusually shaped beak that turns out to be better suited to the selective pressures of its environment than its nestmates' occurs <i>precisely</i> by chance. Chemistry, whose laws govern the behavior of nucleotides, is a science of probabilities. </p><p></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">[I]t is quite certain that we can never adequately come to know the organized beings [organisms] and their internal possibility in accordance with merely mechanical principles of nature, let alone explain them; and indeed this is so certain that we can boldly say that it would be absurd...to hope there may yet arise a Newton who could make comprehensible even the generation of a blade of grass that no intention has ordered..</span>.</blockquote><p></p><p>You mean to tell me the smartest boy in Königsberg didn't foresee genome sequencing? Well then, how smart could he have really been? <i>Dummkopf!</i></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Strictly speaking, the organization of nature is...not analogous with any causality that we know.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>ever hear of mitosis lolol chromatids from the window to da wall lol</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">But if one leaves this aside and looks only to the use that other natural beings make of [grass], then one abandons the contemplation of its internal organization and looks only at its external purposive relations, where the grass is necessary to the livestock, just as the latter is necessary to the human being as the means for his existence; yet one does not see why it is necessary that human beings exist (a question which, if one thinks about the New Hollanders or the Fuegians, might not be so easy to answer)....</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Immanuel, you racist prick.</p><p>There. Now that we can set all <i>that</i> aside...<br /></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>As I've been making my way through Kant, every so often I consult secondary sources for guidance, and sometimes I look up lectures on YouTube. I remember in one of them—it was at a university in the United Kingdom, though I don't recall which—the professor basically said "well, Charles Darwin rather took the piss out of the Critique of Teleological Judgement, so we'll just focus on the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement for the next forty-five minutes."</p><p>I'm not so sure I agree. Not entirely. Certainly there's material in the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i>'s second half that hasn't aged well, but the reshaping of the science of biology around the work of Darwin and Mendel in the nineteenth century detracts less from Kant's its overall argument than may be immediately apparent.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrlm7xG-X7jn-U0Vz6BapwpL4gdtLOh1UC7IM0GqdCtYHxWo6bGHxMZEsiypz8Ku3ZRSNDPnKtV6vtPlxI0USjuShr5v9P3g_qpgzy42JcbKXNgNjXrUDWYMKGOXXGfvE7lfQYwnCyVVAaIKHRZ2z5DgHGWA-gsxcx0pYgZo3g9TknxXdxYVJEXGswqA/s679/image_2022-12-18_215001012.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="679" data-original-width="489" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrlm7xG-X7jn-U0Vz6BapwpL4gdtLOh1UC7IM0GqdCtYHxWo6bGHxMZEsiypz8Ku3ZRSNDPnKtV6vtPlxI0USjuShr5v9P3g_qpgzy42JcbKXNgNjXrUDWYMKGOXXGfvE7lfQYwnCyVVAaIKHRZ2z5DgHGWA-gsxcx0pYgZo3g9TknxXdxYVJEXGswqA/w288-h400/image_2022-12-18_215001012.png" width="288" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ernst Haeckel, "Box Jellyfish" from <i>Art Forms in Nature<br /></i>(1899–1904)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Let's do a quick recap by taking another look at the Introduction. The nominal subject of the book is the power of judgement, the faculty responsible for subsuming particulars under general concepts or laws. In its determining mode, the power of judgement works with concepts already "given" to it by the understanding. In its reflecting mode, the power of judgement "finds" them for itself. What's its procedure for doing so, then?</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">The reflecting power of judgement, which is under the obligation of ascending from the particular in nature to the universal, therefore requires a principle that it cannot borrow from experience, precisely because it is supposed to ground the unity of all empirical principles under equally empirical but higher principles, and is thus to ground the possibility of the systematic subordination of empirical principles under one another. The reflecting power of judgement, therefore, can only give itself such a transcendental principle as a law, and cannot derive it from anywhere else (for then it would be the determining power of judgement), nor can it prescribe it to nature: for reflection on the laws of nature is directed by nature, and nature is not directed by the conditions in terms of which we attempt to develop a concept of it and is in this regard entirely contingent.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>This is part of Kant's justification for the introduction of a principle of purposiveness as the power of judgement's transcendental arbitrator (though at this point he has only argued for the necessity of some unspecified <i>a priori </i>legislative principle over our faculty of judgement). He's saying that the power of judgement, in its reflective mode, employs a fundamental rubric that it can't extrapolate from experience, and must <i>precede</i> experience.</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Now this principle can be nothing more than this: that since universal laws of nature have their ground in our understanding, which prescribes them to nature (although only in accordance with the universal concept of it as nature) [as per the system of transcendental idealism laid out in the first critique], the particular empirical laws, in regard to that which is left undetermined in them by the former, must be considered in terms of the sort of unity they would have if an understanding (even if not ours) had likewise given them for the sake of our faulty of cognition, in order to make possible a system of experience in accordance with particular laws of nature. Not as if in this way such an understanding must really be assumed (for it is only the reflecting power of judgement for which this idea serves as a principle, for reflecting, not for determining); rather this faculty thereby gives a law only to itself, and not to nature.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Kant recurs to this proviso throughout the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgement. It's practically a theme.</p><p>We're sometimes constrained to think of the existence or relation of things in a particular way, even though it's either not necessarily factual or provable. In a way, he's prefiguring Alfred North Whitehead's warning against fallacies of misplaced concreteness. We might rely on an abstract framework to make an event intelligible, but we mustn't get that framework confused with the reality to which we apply it.</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Now since the concept of an object insofar as it at the same time contains the ground of the reality of this object is called an <b>end</b>, and the correspondence of a thing with that constitution of things that is possible only in accordance with ends is called the <b>purposiveness</b> of its form, thus the principle of the power of judgement in regard to the form of things of nature under empirical laws in general is the <b>purposiveness of nature </b>in its multiplicity. I.e., nature is represented through this concept as if an understanding contained the ground of the unity of the manifold of its empirical laws.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>I've hard a hard time processing Kant's definition of ends, and it doesn't help that his terminology is inconsistent throughout the third critique. In the Critique of Teleological Judgement, he more helpfully describes a situation where the effect defines the idea of its cause.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1dd5svBY1oOP8GfIt_mSJIe4TdYwKfuUz3fE2bKiataRospvOfUbb-uuK2G89FUNO8H1uvR6U5st1wtK2onKb4aM0whLsFtbFXMvpMLkKIMDRkgj1T7ftTkHjXSPCC7xw0lHkLU8L31i-3HIv3qBUlKQLirN2gC5PC-7l4WrZmIiNw41Q0ezZX48BLw/s666/image_2022-12-18_232524410.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="487" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1dd5svBY1oOP8GfIt_mSJIe4TdYwKfuUz3fE2bKiataRospvOfUbb-uuK2G89FUNO8H1uvR6U5st1wtK2onKb4aM0whLsFtbFXMvpMLkKIMDRkgj1T7ftTkHjXSPCC7xw0lHkLU8L31i-3HIv3qBUlKQLirN2gC5PC-7l4WrZmIiNw41Q0ezZX48BLw/w292-h400/image_2022-12-18_232524410.png" width="292" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ernst Haeckel, "Siphonophorae" from <i>Art Forms in Nature</i><br />(1899–1904)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>The point that he's getting to here, however, is that there are things in nature we can't make sense of <i>unless</i> we think of them in terms of design. Again, that's not to say that "created by god" is a fundamental, <i>definite</i> attribute of anything in the world, but that our investigations into nature presuppose the kind of rationality or intention we usually associate with human artifice, and there's no getting away from it.</p><p>The Critique of Aesthetic Judgement dealt with <i>subjective</i> purposiveness. The Critique of Teleological Judgement deals with <i>objective</i> purposiveness in nature.</p><p>Kant says that we come to the concept of objective material purposiveness in one of two ways. In one case we (or some other active entity) find an advantageousness in the effect of some natural cause; in the other the effect is in itself "immediately a product of art." The first is a <i>relative</i> purposiveness, and the second an <i>internal</i> purposiveness.</p><p>Internal purposiveness is a quality of <i>natural ends</i>, whose defining characteristic is being their own cause <i>and</i> effect. Only organisms (which Kant usually calls "organized beings") fit the bill here. ("Organism," like "aesthetics," has been through a referential shift since the eighteenth century. Back then one would have said that the defining characteristic of animals and plants <i>is</i> organism.) Kant uses trees as an example. A pitch pine <i>comes</i> from other pitch pines, and it <i>makes</i> other pitch pines. Its biological processes sustain and augment its form, while its form perpetuates its biological processes. It is its own cause, and the effect of that cause, and hence a natural <i>end in itself</i>.</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">For a body, therefore, which is to be judged as a natural end in itself an in accordance with its internal possibility, it is required that its parts reciprocally produce each other, as far as both their form and their combination is concerned, and thus produce a whole out of their own causality, the concept of which, conversely, is in turn the cause (in a being that would possess the causality according to concepts appropriate for such a product) of it in accordance with a principle; consequently the connection of <b>efficient causes</b> could at the same time be judged as an <b>effect through final causes.</b></span></blockquote><b></b><p></p><p>Kant issued this pronouncement in the late eighteenth century. DNA wasn't discovered until 1953. It's perfectly understandable that he should watch a tulip growing from a seed, try to conceive of the event in terms of bits of matter mechanistically bumping into each other, and concede that it can't be done. He stresses the difficulty of accepting that a "blind mechanism" of nature should have worked upon a clump of material such that it became a bunny rabbit that went on to propagate a whole world's worth of leporids. </p><p>He grants the the <i>possibility</i> of an undiscovered efficient causality by which the self-regulating structures of organisms can be explained, but in a weaselly sort of way. He seems to be of the mind that if organisms can be attributed to "the mere mechanism of nature," the physical processes therein must be so obscure and intricate as to <i>always </i>lie outside our powers of observation.</p><p>Nevertheless, he also stresses that we can <i>only</i> turn to final causes as a heuristic for our scientific investigations into nature. If we (or, rather, eighteenth-century men of science) can't satisfactorily account for organism in terms of matter unintentionally (even oafishly) acting upon other matter, the alternative is to <i>presuppose</i> a technical purposiveness in living beings only to the extent that it makes them intelligible. We cannot make any <i>determining</i> judgements on this front: under the definite attributes of a horseshoe crab, we can't list "designed by an intelligent agent." We simply don't—and <i>can't</i>—know that to be true. However, in a <i>reflective</i> mode of judgement, where we simply conceive of a purposiveness at play in an organism's physiology and life-processes, without positively attributing that purposiveness to any source, we assume a perspective wherein we can fruitfully study and better understand a specimen in ways we could not if we excluded ends from the analysis.</p><p>I don't think Kant is wholly wrong here. Teleology is anathema to scientific materialism, but in our thinking about nature—especially organic nature—we can't seem to get away from it.</p><p>Imagine you're trying to teach a child about the human eye, the heart and lungs, and reproductive organs. You want to be as comprehensive as possible, but you don't want to overwhelm the learner with abstruse technical concepts. You want to make sure they know how these organs are structured and understand what they do.</p><p>How far do you think you'd get without saying "in order to," "because," "the reason for that is," "it needs to," and other like terms?</p><p>In other words, how much could you explain without saying that an organ or what it does is <i>for</i> something?</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdn2setlkM9n6w6W7XBC652ujcJgLYe6dlOSGZEXjXAoxiIuerfrAoWQBI5O9-2AJp8GrH-68CHNCr8CXZC0en3tQxF-CxIOQGZ35ea4uKBc94M0cP8Q16TWd_h6HwCJ5ee6G-U-_o-eDVHaP-fkwki21sPSambImK-GaSH32O1XnuCmr-1ukIcWg8EA/s676/image_2022-12-18_233343960.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="492" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdn2setlkM9n6w6W7XBC652ujcJgLYe6dlOSGZEXjXAoxiIuerfrAoWQBI5O9-2AJp8GrH-68CHNCr8CXZC0en3tQxF-CxIOQGZ35ea4uKBc94M0cP8Q16TWd_h6HwCJ5ee6G-U-_o-eDVHaP-fkwki21sPSambImK-GaSH32O1XnuCmr-1ukIcWg8EA/w291-h400/image_2022-12-18_233343960.png" width="291" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ernst Haeckel, "Moss" from <i>Art Forms in Nature</i><br />(1899–1904)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Clearly it's exceedingly difficult to talk about anatomy and physiology without the language of purposiveness. Earlier today, while googling something entirely unrelated to any of this, I found a University of Wisconsin-Madison <a href="https://news.wisc.edu/fossil-fuel-formation-key-to-atmospheres-oxygen/" target="_blank">article</a> from the last decade describing the Cambrian explosion as being when "most of the current animal <i>designs</i> appeared" (emphasis mine). Ecology does this, too. It is one thing to say that ecosystem tends to develop in such-and-such direction given such-and-such conditions, but we're usually more disposed to consider the stability of late-stage succession as the <i>goal</i> of an ecological community.</p><p>Scientific materialism can't admit <i>for</i>-ness. The Earth is an immense, multitudinous weave of brute matter and evanescent energy, driven along the arrow of time by blind, inexorable contingency. That's the worldview given to us by empiricism, and Kant <i>doesn't</i> accuse it of yielding an inaccurate image. He accepts the mechanism of nature, insofar as we're dealing with a mechanism of <i>appearances</i>.</p><p>Like any artist who's been at it for a long time, Kant is prone to falling into patterns. HP Lovecraft couldn't get away from grandiloquent passages about the brutal impersonality of the cosmos, and Kant can't conduct a critique without a chapter on an antinomy native to the subject as hand. In the Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgement, he presents two arguments:</p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>Thesis:</b> All generation of material things is possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>Antithesis:</b> Some generation of such things is not possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws.</span></p></blockquote><p></p><p>He's already told us that he holds <i>both</i> to be true—but that's a contradiction. How do we get around it?</p><p>In a series of sections that almost read like a reprise of the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>, Kant examines four philosophical doctrine, each characterized as a permutation of lifeless/living matter paired with lifeless/living god. He brings up Epicurus (lifeless matter, lifeless god), Spinoza (lifeless matter, living god), hylozoism (living matter, lifeless god), and theism (living matter, living god). To Kant's mind, it is necessary that a creator deity enter into the equation, if only problematically, insofar as the concept of a rationality in nature <i>can</i> imply arrangement by a rational entity.</p><p>Two of these, Kant says—Epicureanism and Spinozism—explain away ends and intention in nature as illusory ideas. Hylozoism and theism hold that natural ends are <i>real</i>, but neither provides the determining power of judgement with the means of categorically ascribing objective purposiveness to nature. Kant notes that theism "has the advantage," but for the time being he deems it insufficient grounds for a dogmatic certainty of the reality of natural ends.</p><p>Kant argues that any doctrine asserting the reality of natural ends suffers from the inexplicability of natural ends themselves. In an earlier remark that seems to augur Wittgenstein, Kant declares that "the end of the existence of nature must be sought beyond nature." If we assume that organisms are natural ends, we insinuate an <i>ultimate</i> end. No organism exists in isolation: plants are ends in themselves, but they are means to animals; butterflies are ends in themselves, but they are means to insectivorous birds; sparrows are ends in themselves, but they are means to falcons and foxes; and so on. Granting a purposive existence to any of these species prompts our faculty of reason to ascend the conceptual ladder and assume the entire system must be purposive. But in seeking its intention or or the state of perfection which the whole of nature seems to be driving toward, we have to take our inquiry <i>outside</i> of nature—which we can't do. Not for the purpose of attaining objectively <i>true</i> knowledge of the situation, anyway.</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">To say the generation of certain things in nature or even of nature as a whole is possible only through a cause that is determined to be act in accordance with intentions is quite different from saying that because of the peculiar constitution of my cognitive faculties I cannot judge about the possibility of those things and their generation except by thinking of a cause for these that acts in accordance with intentions, and thus by thinking of a being that is productive in accordance with the analogy with the causality of understanding....</span></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">[S]ince it is still...possible to consider the material world as a mere appearance, and to conceive of something as a thing in itself (which is not an appearance) as substratum, and to correlate with this a corresponding intellectual intuition...there would then be a supersensible real ground for nature, although it is unknowable for us, to which we ourselves belong, and in which that which is necessary in it as object of the senses can be considered in accordance with mechanical laws, while the agreement and unity of the particular laws and corresponding forms, which in regard to the mechanical laws we must judge as contingent, can at the same time be considered in it, as objects of reason (indeed the whole of nature as a system) in accordance with teleological laws, and the material world would thus be judged in accordance with two kinds of principles, without the mechanical mode of explanation being excluded by the teleological mode, as if they contradicted each other.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>There's the loophole, the resolution of the antinomy. Kant's transcendental idealistic framework provides for the truth of <i>both</i> propostions: the reflecting power of judgement's supposition of natural ends is <i>subjectively</i> valid, insofar as they serve the regulative function of reason, whereas the material facts of mechanistic natural law (whose original source lies in the categories of pure understanding) are the only suitable grounds for determining judgements.</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">There is thus left nothing but a proposition resting only on subjective conditions, namely those of a reflecting power of judgement appropriate to our cognitive faculties, which, if one were to express it as objectively and dogmatically valid, would say: There is a God; but all that is allowed to us humans is the restricted formula: We cannot conceive of the purposiveness which must be made the basis of our cognition of the internal possibility of many things in nature and make it comprehensible except by representing them and the world in general as a product of an intelligent cause (a God).</span></blockquote><p></p><p>We'll get more into the god question in a sec. But concerning Kant's insistence on an intelligent original cause, he's already called god an essential postulate of pure practical reason in the second critique. The third critique comes at the question not from the standpoint of practical reason, but theoretical reason. And it's here that matters appropriate to one become the concern of the other.</p><p>What is the origin of the order of the universe? Why should the fundamental forces behave how they do? Where did matter originally come from? If it all began with the big bang, what was the provenance of the cosmic egg? At some point, our surmises about first causes or regression unto infinity, even when supported by circumstantial evidence and plausible-seeming physical theory, cross over in a field where "possibility and actuality can no longer be distinguished at all." </p><p>Either we can presuppose, in a problematic, provisional way, an absolute point of origin, and some unknowable rational agent (or principle?) that determined the ways in which stuff behaves with regard to other stuff. That gives us some cause, at least as a matter of subjective <i>belief</i>, to anchor our own existence in the context of narrative that we can make intelligible to ourselves, even though we're stuffing a whole universe of the inconceivable in a black box and slapping a label we can read on its lid.</p><p>Otherwise we're left with an existence that's altogether unintelligible, has no intrinsic meaning, and is utterly without purpose. </p><p>That kind of worldview can make it hard to get out of bed. (I should know.) It also can lead to the law of the jungle as a practical conclusion: if my existence is pointless, and everyone else's existence is also pointless, and nothing matters, why shouldn't I make myself happy at the expense of others?</p><p>In the first and second critiques, Kant provided for the existence of god in much the same way as he makes accommodations for teleology without gainsaying scientific materialism in the present text: the existence of god is a <i>subjective</i> necessity, ensuring the internal consistency of the moral law. We can't make claim to possess any <i>knowledge</i> of a deity (who he is, where he comes from, what he looks like, what he wants, etc.), but the moral interest demands we act as though our black box with the "god" label has something inside it. In the third critique, Kant asserts the same necessity with regard to our conception of certain objects and events in nature, should we wish to improve our methods of investigating and understanding them.</p><p>However—between the mechanistic and teleological "narratives" of nature, Kant gives precedence to the latter on the basis that he sees no possibility that scientific materialism will ever disclose a comprehensive description of how "even a little blade of grass" might have come to be through merely efficient causes. Depending on how heavy a load this pillar bears in the Critique of Teleological Judgement's architecture, Kant may have blundered into a fatal error.</p><p>But I'll admit—I'm not sure just yet. I'm still withholding judgement. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNHIUU-KUPJuEPQt4i7TkOfz7KhoGXFvV00z80KhJF2bj24fhhzBV12GHAcDH96fKBNmsOmzkh-Sp-dp0Hx21kZ6SLxXIOWwENK7aRENSTM9Mv38iyMqIhZKOorxw35N4Bv7cU4KG6z96Clw-LZ1yje6E5WZI4pJ77UTo6KyUxFEvXjGI7o3qhUh6NBg/s971/image_2022-12-19_002937238.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="714" data-original-width="971" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNHIUU-KUPJuEPQt4i7TkOfz7KhoGXFvV00z80KhJF2bj24fhhzBV12GHAcDH96fKBNmsOmzkh-Sp-dp0Hx21kZ6SLxXIOWwENK7aRENSTM9Mv38iyMqIhZKOorxw35N4Bv7cU4KG6z96Clw-LZ1yje6E5WZI4pJ77UTo6KyUxFEvXjGI7o3qhUh6NBg/w400-h294/image_2022-12-19_002937238.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Victor Gruen, "Organization of a New City" (ca. 1955)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>We're going to skip over all the pages in the Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgement where Kant weighs the various scientific hypotheses regarding the provenance of organic forms, since they're beside the point here in the twenty-first century.</p><p>Things get interesting again when Kant ponders the <i>external</i> purposiveness of organic entities—those ways in which living things serve other living things as means to ends. He asks: might the whole of nature have an <i>ultimate</i> end?</p><p>Yes, he says.</p><p></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: courier;">The human being is...always only a link in the chain of natural ends; a principle, to be sure, with regard to many ends which nature seems to have determined for him in its predispositions, since he himself makes those ends; yet also a means for the preservation of the purposiveness in the mechanism of the other members. As the sole being on earth who has reason, and thus a capacity to set voluntary ends for himself, he is certainly the titular lord of nature, and, if nature is regarded as a teleological system, then it is his vocation to be the ultimate end of nature; but always only conditionally, that is, subject to the condition that he has the understanding and the will to give to nature and to himself a relation to an end that can be sufficient for itself independently of nature, which can thus be a final end, which, however, must not be sought in nature at all...</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;">The production of the aptitude of a rational being for any ends in general (thus those of his freedom) is <b>culture.</b> Thus only culture can be the ultimate end that one has cause to ascribe to nature in regard to the human species (not its own earthly happiness or even being the foremost instrument for establishing order and consensus in irrational nature outside of him).</span></p></blockquote><p></p><p>The margins in my copy of the book are filled with obscenities throughout these pages. Reading through all this again, I'm a little more inclined to give Kant the benefit of the doubt, or at least not to feel like he should be throttled for spouting anthropocentric gibberish.</p><p>Humankind assigns itself its status as the final end of nature on supersensible grounds. Considered as animal life, we can only include ourselves as part of the mindless universal grind—so much matter scurrying about, behaving more or less automatically. But as noumenal subjects endowed with free will, existing in a natural teleological system, we can make choices independently of mere causal connection or basic animal instinct. Our faculty of reason plugs us into the intelligible world of the supersensible, by virtue of which we are simultaneously made free agents <i>and</i> existents in a teleological universe. The first proposition is the grounds for the second. (In supersensible substratum of the sensible world, nature-as-mechanism and nature-as-teleological-system can be thought of as two sides of a coin that will never stop spinning. We're at liberty to call heads and act as though it came up as such, provided we do nothing contrary to how we could behave if it actually came up tails.)</p><p>When Kant says that human culture is the ultimate end of nature, he's talking about social institutions that expand our capabilities and make us fit for our true vocation as rational beings: to adhere to moral duty.</p><p>That's the catch. Did you notice the phrase "subject to the condition" in the wall of text up above? Humanity is the final end of nature to the extent that we aspire to ends that exceed the capacities of either brute matter or animal instinct, and as per the second critique, these must be <i>moral</i> ends. The highest good towards which pure practical reason would have us strive is the correspondence of human happiness to moral worth, and culture is the final end of nature because only it can develop subjects capable of furthering human progress in this regard. </p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Now if things in the world, as dependent beings as far as their existence is concerned, need a supreme cause acting in accordance with ends, then the human being is the final end of creation; for without him the chain of ends subordinated to one another would not be completely grounded; and only in the human being, <i>although in him only as a subject of morality</i>, is unconditional legislation with regard to ends to be found, which therefore alone makes him <i>capable</i> of being a final end, to which the whole of nature is teleologically subordinated.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Emphases mine.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN2v2DMWRaQgOymrWjPsTObj6C7FGm1SZlj6Qt8A-XbjwiQfC6k1Q005Pu91XcP0s4_805QCd0qgF96t9OXFrWw1ZCZTCO4Wu0_uzY3asQxu96qw_hGMTVouXcl0C8GOChCswUWZyEytPmK9VYpc5xrCZXeiLexySgime6zilbdvVrE_aFM0WJiVsW7Q/s1075/image_2022-12-22_234007095.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="931" data-original-width="1075" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN2v2DMWRaQgOymrWjPsTObj6C7FGm1SZlj6Qt8A-XbjwiQfC6k1Q005Pu91XcP0s4_805QCd0qgF96t9OXFrWw1ZCZTCO4Wu0_uzY3asQxu96qw_hGMTVouXcl0C8GOChCswUWZyEytPmK9VYpc5xrCZXeiLexySgime6zilbdvVrE_aFM0WJiVsW7Q/w400-h346/image_2022-12-22_234007095.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hubert Blanz (2010)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Next Kant, compares the virtues of what he calls <i>physicotheology</i> and <i>ethicotheology</i>. That's <i>theology</i>, not <i>teleology</i>. Since religion won custody of teleology during the post-Scholastic divorce of natural science and theology, the explicit consideration of theology is germane to the topic at hand.</p><p>Physicotheology endeavors to rationally follow the appearance of natural ends back to a creator god, while ethicotheology attempts the same goal by making the moral ends of rational beings the basis of its inferences. If you've been reading along, you shouldn't be surprised that Kant champions the latter over the former.</p><p>Physicotheology can certainly make reasonable speculations as to the technical design of nature by an obscure transcendent architect (partly because we're disposed to attribute physical order to some intelligible cause), though Kant has repeatedly asserted that any such attempts can never yield any definite knowledge of him/it.</p><p>But if reason compels us to think of the end of nature in moral terms for the sake of its own internal consistency, a designer to whom we can only attribute technical intelligence—as though he or it were a cosmic AI procedurally generating the physical laws and contents of a universe—is inadequate to our needs. We must rather assume a supremely wise and just being as creator, which is the direction in which ethicotheology leads.</p><p>Which brings us to the audaciously titled section "On the Moral Proof of the Existence of God."</p><p>Kant's proof runs like this:</p><p>A moral teleology is somewhat axiomatic to us. We have the moral law programmed into us (as per the second critique), and neither its practical coherence nor binding power require an explanatory narrative of an intelligent original cause.</p><p>But since we are after all of this world, and our practical judgements and actions concern other things of this world, we need to take into account how the world itself (nature) relates to the final end which Kant articulated above.</p><p>Moral teleology thus concerns "the relation of nature to what is moral in us." We see natural purposiveness in the world insofar as we're given to seeing the moldings of technical design (I would say "intelligent design," but...) in physical laws, organic forms, and so on, but reason prompts us to seek out "an intelligent supreme principle" that squares the world of things with the world of noumena, and affirms the possibility of ends prescribed by what is supersensible in being realized within the mechanistic order of appearances.</p><p>Kant has already proved (at least to his own satisfaction) that the find end reason designates us us is "the human being (every rational being) under moral laws." After all, what interest or value would there be in a lifeless universe, or one in which the most evolved form of life was moss? No reasoning beings means no freedom, no value in choice, no concept of final ends. Just matter moving about, photons zipping to and fro, and quiet, indeliberate photosynthesis.</p><p>The existence of rational beings <i>gives</i> the world a final end, since they (we) are the only entities that can conceive of such things, let along work towards their actualization.</p><p>The highest <i>physical</i> good for us is happiness—and yet as rational beings subject to moral laws, we can only count happiness as the supreme good when it is <i>deserved</i>, when its apportionment corresponds to an individual's worthiness of it.</p><p>Though we can't represent this crucial requirement or its possibility within the bounds of scientific materialism (which deals <i>only</i> with the world of appearances), practical necessity pushes us to look beyond the possibilities conceivable in terms of mere physical causality. We must ascribe the creation and maintenance of nature to an original being that isn't simply a cosmic watchmaker, but an entity with <i>a moral</i> interest in "his" work—otherwise any concept of a final end would be bereft of the absoluteness which pure practical reason imposes on us, and practical reason itself loses its defense against the antinomy described in the second critique.</p><p>The concept of an original being that is both a cosmic technician <i>and</i> supremely wise and benevolent reconciles the necessities of pure practical reason with the "purposeless chaos of matter" and indeed fortifies <i>the purpose we give to</i> that chaos.</p><p>I must emphasize once again that I'm not going to weigh in until I'm sure I<i> understand</i> Kant here. Take this paraphrasing with a grain of salt. Summarizing Kant ain't easy, and I may have fudged something somewhere, emphasizing relatively insignificant details or overlooking something of central importance.</p><p>I'm going to end this with a hefty block quote from the end of the Critique of Teleological Judgement that's sort of like a Kant megamix, recapitulating material from all three critiques. I believe it's here that he tries to say he's made good on his introductory claim of bridging the territories of theoretical and moral philosophy through an investigation into the power of judgement. For now I'll let him speak for himself. (For the reader's convenience, I broke up the excerpt's first paragraph, adding line breaks where Kant just places stray em dashes. You're welcome.)</p><p><b></b></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>God, freedom,</b> and <b>immortality</b> of the soul are those problems at the solution of which all of the apparatus of metaphysics aims as its final and sole end. Now it was believed that the doctrine of freedom is necessary for practical philosophy only as a negative condition, while the doctrine of God and of the constitution of the soul, belonging to theoretical philosophy, would have to be demonstrated by themselves and separately in order to be subsequently connected with that which the moral law (which is possible only under the condition of freedom) commands, in order to establish a religion. But one can immediately see that these attempts had to go wrong. For absolutely no concept of an original being determined by means of predicates that can be given in experience and thus serve for cognition can be formed from merely ontological concepts of things in general or of the existence of a necessary being; but that concept which would be grounded on the experience of the physical purposiveness of nature could not in turn provide a sufficient proof for morals and hence for the cognition of a God. Just as little could knowledge of the soul provide a concept of its spiritual, immortal nature, adequate for morals, by means of experience (which we have only in this life). <b>Theology</b> and <b>pneumatology</b> [the study of spiritual beings], as problems for the sciences of speculative reason, cannot be established by means of any empirical data and concepts, because their concept exceeds all of our cognitive faculties.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;">The determination of both concepts, the concept of God as well as that of the soul (with respect to its immortality) can only come about by means of predicates which, although they are themselves only possible on the basis of a supersensible ground, must nevertheless have their reality proven in experience; for only in this way can they make possible any cognition of an entirely supersensible being.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;">Now the only concept of this sort to be encountered in human reason is the concept of the freedom of human beings under moral laws, together with the final end that reason prescribes by means of this law, the first of which is suitable for ascribing to the author of nature and the second of which is suitable for ascribing to human beings those properties that contain the necessary condition for the possibility of both——so that the existence and the constitution of this being who is otherwise entirely hidden from us can be inferred from this very idea.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;">Thus the reason for the failure of the attempt to prove God and immortality by a merely theoretical route lies in the fact that by this route (that of all concepts of nature) no cognition of the supersensible is possible at all. The reason that it succeeds in the moral route (that of the concept of freedom), by contrast, lies in the fact that in this case the supersensible that is the ground (freedom), by means of determinate law of causality arising in it, not only provides matter for the cognition of the other supersensible things (the moral final purpose and the conditions of its realizability), but also demonstrates the fact of its reality in actions, although for that very reason it cannot yield a basis for any proof except one that is valid from a practical point of view (which is also the only one that religion needs).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;">It remains quite remarkable in this that among the three pure ideas of reason, <b>God, freedom,</b> and <b>immortality,</b> that of freedom is the only concept of the supersensible that proves its objective reality (by means of the causality that is thought in it) in nature, through its effect which is possible in the latter, and thereby makes possible the connection of the other two things to nature, as well as the connection of all three to each other in a religion; and that we thus have in ourselves a principle that is capable of determining the idea of the supersensible in us and by that means also the idea of the supersensible outside us into one cognition, although one that is possible only in a practical respect, of which merely speculative philosophy (which can also provide a merely negative concept of freedom) had to despair: hence the concept of freedom (as the foundational concept for all unconditionally practical laws) can extend reason beyond those boundaries within which every (theoretical) concept of nature had to remain restricted without hope.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-39443876750168920582022-12-06T22:33:00.001-05:002022-12-06T22:33:34.149-05:00Twelve Rounds with Kant (part twelve)<p>In some ways the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i> resists synopsis. The <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> and <i>Critique of Practical Reason</i> each possesses a linear structure wherein an elaborate argument is built up from its foundations and followed to the pinnacle of its conclusion, whether Kant intends to construct and justify a bounded but flexible epistemological system (the first critique) or to provide an annex in which that system can house a moral objectivism, assert the logical and practical necessity of doing so, and explore what that entails (the second critique). The third critique, on the other hand, often seems tangential to itself.</p><p>Let's say Kant has a greater and a lesser ambition for the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgment</i>. On a more modest level, Kant wants only to examine the faculty of judgement in and of itself, and see if it contains an <i>a priori</i> guiding principle like the other two "higher" cognitive faculties (the understanding and reason). If that's the case, he pins that principle (the perception of purposiveness) down in the Introduction, and having established it as conclusively settled, proceeds to spend the next three hundred pages ruminating on its ramifications, with detours into matters of fine art and biology. Any outline of the procedure would be as scattershot as the book itself, and academic wonks have noticed that Kant doesn't actually ground many of his remarks on beauty and organic forms upon the intricacies of our judging faculty. (See <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-aesthetics/#FacuJudgUnitThirCrit" target="_blank">here</a>, sixth paragraph.)</p><p>More daringly, Kant also purposes to span the divide between the remote continents of natural and moral philosophy. That's a hell of a hook (especially if you're already familiar with the organization of the Kantian system), and it had me eagerly turning the pages as soon as Kant alluded to the possibility in the Introduction. Imagine my surprise when our dear philosopher presently embarked on a deep dive into judgements of taste<i> </i>and art.</p><p>Not that this stuff is altogether irrelevant to Kant's stated purpose, and not that it wasn't tremendously influential in its time—it cannot be emphasized enough that the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement </i>inaugurated the definitional shift of the word "aesthetic" toward its modern usage—but it's possible to finish the Introduction, skip the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement altogether, and begin reading the Critique of Teleological Judgement and not find your understanding of it much impaired. We simply can't do this with the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>: if the first-time reader leapt ahead to the Transcendental Dialectic after reaching the end of the Transcendental Aesthetic, he'd find himself hopelessly lost.</p><p>Giving an overview of the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement </i>with regard to its more grandiose intention without setting aside whole swaths of the book as extraneous is a daunting prospect. People who've made careers for themselves reading and writing about Kant have evidently taxed themselves trying to discern an internal consistency within the text as a whole. As an amateur, I find myself at something of a loss.</p><p>I feel that the most sensible and expedient way of writing about the third critique would be to look separately at its aesthetic and teleological sections, paying attention to the areas where the concerns of the first and second critiques overlap. I should say again, for anyone who's actually reading this, that I'm writing this as a <i>summary</i> for my own benefit (internalizing the text by compelling myself to parse and restate parts of it), during which I'll pretend that I'm explaining to a curious roommate what I've been reading lately. <br /></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5FT7uzEJrn_ObqKJQyNehu1ueo7eNbeiTGVfRehA8hI_Glm4nnYH8oqpVJEx4qoFVj_5SUGQa0NHJKZsEaUF3aFmyi0_KleE82UHyTA97105rwh6D2a1eznbV6inG8FbUswhgZI6130RcDIYRcNoc1uFHo4LRs9dcm3NVrRIFOCOvZhEOSMRQr-c79Q/s787/image_2022-12-06_220923832.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="787" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5FT7uzEJrn_ObqKJQyNehu1ueo7eNbeiTGVfRehA8hI_Glm4nnYH8oqpVJEx4qoFVj_5SUGQa0NHJKZsEaUF3aFmyi0_KleE82UHyTA97105rwh6D2a1eznbV6inG8FbUswhgZI6130RcDIYRcNoc1uFHo4LRs9dcm3NVrRIFOCOvZhEOSMRQr-c79Q/w400-h288/image_2022-12-06_220923832.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caspar David Friedrich, <i>Hills and Ploughed Field Near Dresden</i> (1825)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Let's get the basics of Kant's definition of beauty and the beautiful out of the way.</p><p>The experience of beauty is of course, a source of pleasure. Kant ranks the sorts of pleasure in ascending order from most to least pathological: the <i>agreeable</i>, the <i>beautiful</i>, the <i>sublime</i>, and the <i>good</i>. For now it'll be enough to explain the first and the last items on the list. Something that's <i>agreeable</i> merely pleases the senses or gives us some sort of practical (or technical) advantage. Money is agreeable. Sex is agreeable. Playing chess is agreeable. Writing a blog post about Kant is agreeable (if you're having fun with it.) As per the <i>Critique of Practical Reason</i>, the agreeable stands in contradistinction to the <i>good</i>, which is intertwined with and defined by moral duty.</p><p>He arranges his exposition of the beautiful and of judgements of taste (the act perceiving beauty) in terms of the four "titles" or "moments" of logical judgements he identified back in the <i>Critique of Pure Reason: </i>quality, quantity, relation, and modality.</p><p>Concerning <i>quality</i>:</p><p><b><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></b></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>Taste</b> is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representation through a satisfaction or dissatisfaction <b>without any interest</b>. The object of such a satisfaction is called <b>the beautiful</b>.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>We can take this to mean that the pleasure we take in the beautiful is of a different sort than what we experience when we cash a paycheck, prevail in an argument, win in a game of chess, solve a problem, and so on. We can also understand the pleasure of beauty as one that has nothing to do with either sensual gratification or the satisfaction of fulfilling a moral obligation. In a sense, it's a <i>free</i> pleasure, enlivening us independently of the flesh's inclinations, reason's dictates, or mechanical associationism.</p><p>Concerning <i>quantity</i>:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">That is <b>beautiful</b> which pleases universally without a concept.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>This gives us two points to unpack. Kant believes there's no pathway from concepts per se to pleasure (except where the pure practical, or moral, laws of the second critique are concerned, and that's a special case), so the experience of beauty can't be grounded in any concept given to us by the understanding. At the same time, beauty has a <i>universal</i> validity, though that universality is <i>subjective</i>. I don't think it's necessary here to get into the weeds of Kant's wonky deductions, but we should mention the example he gives from common experience: we typically speak of beauty as an <i>attribute</i> of an object, when it reality it's a relation between the object and the perceiving subject (person). Kant agrees with the adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, though he insists that every human beholder looks upon it with a standardized set of eyes. When we regard something as beautiful and say so, we're miffed when somebody disagrees with us. We expect, even <i>demand</i> consensus where judgements of taste are concerned.</p><p>What we're talking about when we talk about the beautiful is a state of mind. That state of mind, for the record, consists of the "free play" of our faculties of imagination and understanding, and the pleasure which results. Let's just leave it at that.</p><p>Concerning <i>relation</i>:</p><p><b><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></b></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>Beauty</b> is the form of the <b>purposiveness</b> of an object, insofar as it is perceived in it <b>without the representation of an end</b>.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>As the commentators have noticed, Kant arrives at this conclusion without once bringing up the reflective mode of judgement, which featured so prominently in the Introduction. Again, we won't dwell on Kant's justification of the claim (we've got a bit of ground to cover), but we should bear in mind the distinction he makes between aesthetic and teleological judgements. The latter <i>does</i> involve the representation of an end, while an aesthetic judgement (or one of taste) only requires formal or subjective purposiveness—for instance, the purposiveness we perceive in a symphony, which neither gratifies us sensually, advances our material interests, nor explicitly intersects with the concerns of pure practical reason.</p><p>On the topic of music: Kant maintains that beauty has nothing to do with emotion. In the case of music, we can only discern beauty in the aural <i>structure </i>of an orchestral performance, not the way it excites us. I'm not sure how many of us would agree with him—though he does tell us in advance that there's an emotional component in the experience of the<i> sublime</i>, which we'll get into shortly.</p><p>Concerning <i>modality</i>:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">That is <b>beautiful</b> which is cognized without a concept as the object of a <b>necessary</b> satisfaction. </span></blockquote><p></p><p>In some ways this recurs to Kant's remarks on the moment of quantity in the judgement of taste. He posits a common sense (<i>sensus communis</i>), based on the <i>communicability</i> of feelings. In other words, the fact that we can talk about mental states and be understood implies not only that each of us experiences beauty in the same way, but that each of us <i>necessarily</i> finds beauty in the same objects—or should, if we perceive them clearly.</p><p>This is important: Kant is a man of his time in that he <i>doesn't</i> think of taste as a matter of personal preference. In response to the question "is this beautiful?", Kant believes there is a right and a wrong answer on <i>a priori</i> grounds. To cultivate one's taste is to improve one's ability to <i>recognize</i> beauty when he sees it, and to distinguish it from what's simply charming, shiny, arousing, etc. </p><p>Kant occasionally returns the importance of <i>sensus communis</i> to our understanding of taste; later on he'll offer an alternate definition of taste as "the faculty for judging that which makes our feelings in a given representation <b>universally communicable</b> without the meaning of a concept." (Since this is Kant, "representation" doesn't refer to a painting of something, but to an object of experience.) </p><p>There. That was a very, <i>very</i> basic account of Kant's main ideas about beauty. Here's hoping I didn't leave out anything important or mess something up.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJNSn0C5XYbsxNCO5GwRi033SDWPL8hy-erfvRHjfSPD6XEyzd4XLrm49jT3O_u9qnzNYsZWp23ujgOgZrF7eZ4ozfjeYKSutizK7BfKvZD5PlOlHnDI-wr-VCqWFX-GqQjBBh95Zf21DqoJgMe1AKk_1mH5gfgGJ7bTNWAVuGPs5Lh0rSTyLvaPNjDw/s630/image_2022-12-06_221227001.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="486" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJNSn0C5XYbsxNCO5GwRi033SDWPL8hy-erfvRHjfSPD6XEyzd4XLrm49jT3O_u9qnzNYsZWp23ujgOgZrF7eZ4ozfjeYKSutizK7BfKvZD5PlOlHnDI-wr-VCqWFX-GqQjBBh95Zf21DqoJgMe1AKk_1mH5gfgGJ7bTNWAVuGPs5Lh0rSTyLvaPNjDw/w309-h400/image_2022-12-06_221227001.png" width="309" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caspar David Friedrich, <i>The Dreamer</i> (1840)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Let's remind ourselves what we're after here.</p><p>Philosophy, Kant tells us, is split into two streams: theoretical/natural and practical/moral. The rock that splits them is found in the epistemology set forth in the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>. All of our knowledge of nature is is knowledge of mechanistic phenomena, <i>not</i> of things-in-themselves, while pure practical reason, presupposing both free will and an objective moral duty, relies on <i>ideas</i> of the noumenal (or supersensible) world beyond the play of appearances given to us by our perceptual faculties.</p><p>But the supersensible law of freedom must be able to achieve its ends in the sensible sphere (i.e., the causality of a free will must , while the material world's organization must harmonize with free will/moral law such that the realization of those ends is possible. What Kant's looking for is, in a way, like the transcendental schema he identified in the first critique. There he was interested in the transition zone between intuitions and concepts; here he's looking for the one between concepts of nature and concepts of freedom (which, again, always reciprocally imply moral law).</p><p>Okay, then, we can guess where this is going. We see beautiful things in the world. Beauty stimulates our moral disposition and makes us more sensitive to our higher calling as rational agents. Good taste implies good character. </p><p>Or <i>does</i> it? Kant observes that "virtuosi of taste" aren't exactly renowned for their moral probity. I mean, sure: go to a high-profile gallery opening in New York and try to count the number of people in attendance who don't have some sort of personality disorder. </p><p>And so:</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">...it appears that the feeling of the beautiful is not only specifically different from the moral feeling (as it actually is), but also that the interest that can be combined with it can be united with the moral interest with difficulty, and by no means through an inner affinity.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Kant does indeed connect the beautiful to the good, though it takes him a while to get there, and he introduces a mountain of stipulations to the association.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVuz0Q1hOYFi7bpOOWHdQRjziWelHRrryeWSPXzhjSfzhl4ObrWFvWDBnPCRwxGMceBksyeuEXbXTH5lJarXeypRxrsbAbI0XwFOj6buQ1rnqqJ8wr1F-Rp7JHJk3nAhsz9nN2gTnecSJXUFXXG1J6zeirAi__7mDgJY6ZoAf_gY0C92ACsHb_NTgw2Q/s630/image_2022-12-06_221850501.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="501" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVuz0Q1hOYFi7bpOOWHdQRjziWelHRrryeWSPXzhjSfzhl4ObrWFvWDBnPCRwxGMceBksyeuEXbXTH5lJarXeypRxrsbAbI0XwFOj6buQ1rnqqJ8wr1F-Rp7JHJk3nAhsz9nN2gTnecSJXUFXXG1J6zeirAi__7mDgJY6ZoAf_gY0C92ACsHb_NTgw2Q/w318-h400/image_2022-12-06_221850501.png" width="318" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caspar David Freidrich, <i>Easter Morning</i> (1835)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>He writes somewhat dismissively of the <i>empirical</i> or socially contingent interest in beautiful objects, coming to the conclusion excerpted (in part) above. A group of people with refined taste tend to be self-indulgent and vain (so says Kant, and I'm not sure I can argue with him), and the transition from aestheticism to moral interest is an oblique one.</p><p>He's more keen on an "intellectual" interest in beauty, specifically the beauty of nature.</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Someone who alone (and without any intention of wanting to communicate his observations to others) considers the beautiful shape of a wildflower, a bird, an insect, etc., in order to marvel at it, to love it, and to be unwilling for it to be entirely absent from nature, even though some harm might come to him from it rather than there being any prospect of advantage to him from it, takes an immediate and certainly intellectual interest in the beauty of nature. I.e., not only the form of its product but also its existence pleases him, even though no sensory charm has a part in this and he does not combine any sort of end with it...</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">...since it also interests reason that...nature should at least show some trace or give a sign that it contains in itself some sort of ground for assuming a lawful correspondence of its products with our satisfaction that is independent of all interest (which we recognize <i>a priori</i> as a law valid for everyone, without being able to ground this on proofs), reason must take an interest in every manifestation in nature of a correspondence similar to this; consequently the mind cannot reflect on the beauty of<b> nature </b>without finding itself at the same time to be interested in it. Because of this affinity, however, this interest is moral, and he who takes such an interest in the beautiful in nature and do so only insofar as he has already firmly established his interest in the morally good. We thus have cause at least to suspect a predisposition to a good moral disposition in one who is immediately interested in the beauty of nature.</span></blockquote><p></p><p></p><p>Is it any wonder why Kant was so popular with the German Romantics for a time? I'm sure that William Wordsworth would approve of Kant's remarks here, as would Wordsworth's superfan Alfred North Whitehead—who was very critical of Kant.</p><p>Kant's reasoning is a bit subtle here. He draws a line from the <i>sensus communis </i>and the subjective demand that everybody sees beauty where we see it to the categorical imperative, the format of the moral maxims, which would have us act in such a way that we would will everyone <i>else</i> to act, without taking benefits to ourselves into consideration. Kant implies that this isn't as often the case with manmade objects, insofar as our interest in them typically contains a social dimension, and thus a greater or smaller kernel of empirical self-interest. </p><p>Kant attaches this moral feeling with regard to beautiful things in nature to the appreciation of art to the extent that art can <i>seem</i> to be a thing of nature. On the one hand, Kant would appear to value sprezzatura in visual art—the impression that the artist just slapped some paint on a canvas in obedience to the exhortations of his soul, and wasn't thinking about theory, trends, or dollar signs, and also didn't agonize over its composition any longer than he had to. On another he's interested in <i>genius—</i>the sort of artist who paints, sculpts, writes poetry, composes music, etc., and can't communicate <i>how</i> he does what he does. The genius must be not only a virtuoso, but a <i>natural. </i>In the act of creation he must be like a bee constructing a wax hexagon, executing his work with both competence and spontaneity (i.e., not by copying by rote or methodically imitating the art of others—or, I'd hazard to add, imitating his<i> own</i> work).</p><p>Again, there's something to this. In my admittedly limited experience, I've found that academic theorists tend not to be excellent artists, and excellent artists tend not to be very systematic thinkers. </p><p>Kant attributes genius to the artist's endowments with regard to his faculties of imagination and understanding, but also adduces <b>spirit</b>, a property or a function belonging to the imagination. More precisely, he calls it a principle, and has this to say about it:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Now I maintain that this principle is nothing other than the faculty for the presentation of aesthetic ideas; by an aesthetic idea, however, I mean that representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it, which, consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible —— One readily sees that it is the counterpart (pendant) of an <b>idea of reason</b>, which is, conversely, a concept to which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can be adequate.</span></blockquote><p></p><p><i>This is interesting!</i> —is what I penciled in the margin beside this passage.</p><p>Kant introduced the word "idea" in the first critique, and assigns the term a special Platonic meaning. The main ideas of reason—the transcendent ideas—he treats have to do with the origin of the universe, the soul, and god. Did the universe have a beginning or has it <i>always</i> existed? Yes. No. It's a trick question. Nothing given to us in experience can determine the question one way or the other. (The prevailing theory of the big bang isn't a solution; the question then turns to the provenance of the cosmic egg. Did it always exist? If not, how and when did it come into being?) Or: is there such a thing as a soul? Where is it? What is it made of? Is it an irreducible substance, some point in space within us, or does it possess volume in some way? If we assert that <i>I</i> am my soul, aren't I just inserting an extraneous term into the statement? And so on. Ideas of reason are inferential illusions—concepts for which an empirical counterpart can never be found.</p><p>Aesthetic ideas are the <i>inverse</i> of ideas of reason. The imagination conjures a phantasmal image or a sensation that beggars conceptualization. The artist speaks of trying to approximate with oil on canvas the perfection that seems to exist in his mind. The poet strives to articulate something he doesn't <i>know</i> in verse, and which he hasn't the language to express otherwise. Speaking for myself: the origin of my first book, The Zeroes, was a <i>feeling</i> in my guts that I couldn't approach without writing a book, designing the narrative to activate that same feeling in the reader (and I tested its efficacy, repeatedly, on myself).</p><p>An aesthetic idea contains more than raw sensation or emotion; in most (all?) cases there's an intellectual component. Kant, who wrote the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i> long before the likes of Kandinsky, Pollock, et al. redefined the criteria of visual art, never considered and doesn't countenance the notion that somebody could simply cover a large canvas in variegated shades of blue paint and say it expresses sadness. The power of beautiful art, he says, is to "give the imagination an impetus to to think more, although in an undeveloped way, than can be comprehended in a concept, and hence in a determinate linguistic expression." </p><p>There's an analogy with the supersensible here, is there not? The painter, poet, musician, etc. tries to reach beyond the wall of experience and approximate the form of what he discovers on the other side. In this regard an aesthetic idea isn't so different from an idea of reason as we might have suspected, since the concepts attached to them, while indeterminate, possess a purity than isn't to be found in the actual course of events. In praise of poetry, Kant says that the poet possessed of genius takes rational ideas and empirical experience as his raw material and...</p><p></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: courier;">...makes them "sensible beyond the limits of experience, with a completeness that goes beyond anything of which there is an example in nature, by means of an imagination that emulates the precedent of reason in attaining to a maximum...This faculty, however, considered by itself alone, is really only a talent (of the imagination).</span></p></blockquote><p>The indirect relation between art and the supersensible is precisely why Kant nominates poetry as the greatest of the "beautiful arts" a few pages later:</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">It expands the mind by setting the imagination free and presenting, within the limits of a given concept and among the unbounded manifold of forms possibly agreeing with it, the one that connects its presentation with a fullness of thought to which no linguistic expression is fully adequate, and thus elevates itself aesthetically to the level of ideas. It strengthens the mind by letting it feel its capacity to consider and judge of nature, as appearance, freely, self-actively, and independently of determination by nature, in accordance with points of view that nature does not present by itself in experience either for sense or for the understanding, and thus to use it for the sake of and as it were the schema of the supersensible.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>There it is: <i>the supersensible</i>. Wherever Kant uses this term, it's only a matter of time before he brings up morality and free will.</p><p>He also ranks painting higher than the other visual arts (architecture, sculpture, and, erm, the design of pleasure gardens) on the grounds that...</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">...it is the basis of all the other pictorial arts, partly because it can penetrate much further into the region of ideas and also expand the field of intuition in accordance with these much further than is possible for the rest.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Kant seems to employ a rather Platonic criterion for the value of an art form (notwithstanding Plato's willingness to banish poets from his ideal state).</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgum8ahco1_sXOqmkHlGTOJ0SqfhRQuiD9aw-s0-aUCwXvyHjijrcJC_PhFKq_ntlVVjk1zM9zHfALspGERxTbtO7tzdwKt4Rd2X8pMA1-xXs_06YXW8OtB-S_vNS4N7RbbjdHmXNluXr8zOicbk593UfwCF2q7JihuiPid4YBXRxifTLrXoDMfJL76pw/s630/image_2022-12-06_222106615.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="509" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgum8ahco1_sXOqmkHlGTOJ0SqfhRQuiD9aw-s0-aUCwXvyHjijrcJC_PhFKq_ntlVVjk1zM9zHfALspGERxTbtO7tzdwKt4Rd2X8pMA1-xXs_06YXW8OtB-S_vNS4N7RbbjdHmXNluXr8zOicbk593UfwCF2q7JihuiPid4YBXRxifTLrXoDMfJL76pw/w324-h400/image_2022-12-06_222106615.png" width="324" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caspar David Freidrich, <i>Fir Trees in the Snow</i> (1828)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>A bit further ahead, Kant gets down to brass tacks and identifies the singular principle of the power of aesthetic judgments as the <i>idealism</i> of the purposiveness of nature and of art. This is in opposition the possibilities of an <i>empirical</i> or a <i>rationalistic</i> principle of taste (or judgements of the beautiful), the first of which he dismisses out of hand: any distinction between the beautiful and the merely pleasurable would have to be arbitrary. </p><p>He waffles on the second option on the basis that rationalistic judgements require determinate concepts as their grounds, which aesthetic judgements lack by definition—though there are other grounds that are compatible with rationalistic principles, in spite of this. To make a long explanation short, he asks whether the principle of purposiveness is <i>real</i> or <i>ideal</i>—objective or subjective. I will confess that as I type this I wonder if I missed or misread something, because I thought we'd already established <i>formal</i> or subjective purposiveness as the grounds for judgements of taste.</p><p>But anyway, Kant begins settling the matter by accounting for the ideality in judgements of the beautiful in nature:</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">[I]n such judging what is at issue is not what nature is or even what it is for us as a purpose, but how we take it in. It would always be an objective purposiveness of nature if it had created its forms for our satisfaction, and not a subjective purposiveness, which rests on the play of the imagination in its freedom, where it is a favor with that which we take nature in and not a favor that it shows to us. That nature has an occasion for us to perceive the inner purposiveness in the relationship of our mental powers in the judging of certain of its products, and indeed as something that has to be explained as necessarily and universally valid on the basis of a supersensible ground, cannot be an end of nature, or rather be judged by us as such a thing: because otherwise the judgement that would thereby be determined would be grounded in heteronomy and would not, as befits a judgement of taste, be free and grounded in autonomy.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>We can account of the ideality of art's purposiveness more easily. The aesthetic ideas underlying and expressed in works of art are "essentially different from rational ideas of determinate ends," and their purposiveness is not to be found in their contribution toward any mechanical application or practical end—after all, one of the most effective ways of smearing an artist is to accuse him or her of "selling out" and just churning out work for the sake of a payday.</p><p>And, at long last, Kant ties a string between the beautiful and the good by declaring the former a <i>symbol</i> of the latter. As usual, he has to explain precisely what he means by "symbol."</p><p>The representations of a concept, Kant says, can either be given by <i>examples</i> or <i>schemata</i>. If the concept is entirely empirical, we use examples; if sufficiently abstract, we must use schemata.</p><p>The symbolic is then a subdivision of the schematic. Schemata "connect" concepts that are given <i>a priori</i> to sensible intuition (Kant covered this back in the first critique), while in the symbolic presentation of a concept "which only reason can think," the power of judgement approximates the procedure of schematization as best it can. Kant cryptically explains:</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">[I]t is merely the rule of this procedure, not of the intuition itself, and thus merely the form of the reflection, not the content, which corresponds to the concept.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>In other words: underscoring the first term in the phrase <i>formal</i> or <i>subjective</i> purposiveness. At any rate, a symbol presents the concept <i>indirectly</i>.</p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: courier;">Now I say that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good, and also that only in this respect (that of a relation that is natural to everyone, and that is also expected of everyone else as a duty) does it please with a claim to the assent of everyone else; in which the mind is at the same time aware of a certain ennoblement and elevation above the mere receptivity of a pleasure from sensible impressions, and also esteems the value of others in accordance with a similar maxim of their power of judgement. That is the intelligible, toward which...taste looks, with which, namely, even our higher faculties of cognition agree, and without which glaring contradictions would emerge between their nature and the claims that taste makes.</span></p></blockquote><p>(All of this is eerily similar to Kant's remarks on moral feeling and duty throughout the <i>Critique of Practical Reason</i>.)</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">In this faculty the power of judgement does not see itself, as is otherwise the case in empirical judging, as subjected to a heteronomy of the laws of experience; in regard to the objects of such a satisfaction it gives the law to itself, just as reason does with regard to faculty of desire; and it sees itself, both on account of this inner possibility in the subject as well as on account of the outer possibility of a nature that corresponds to it, as related to something in the subject itself and outside of it, which is neither nature nor freedom, but which is connected with the ground of the latter, namely, the supersensible, in which the theoretical faculty is combined with the practical, in a mutual and unknown way to form a unity.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>The supersensible has proven itself one of the most valuable tools in Kant's philosophical toolkit. In the liminal zone where the obscurity of noumena meets the light of reason does possibility dwell. The concept of freedom might be incompatible with theoretical reason, but the supersensible provides the inch of wiggle room from which Kant takes a mile. In the same way it secures the <i>possibility</i> that nature is more than the pointless agglutination of particles blindly and purposelessly scurrying this way and that.</p><p>In any event, sharing its ground in the supersensible with free will is what connects beauty and our capacity to perceive it with morality—which in the Kantian system is inseparable from the concept of free will. Taste is <i>analogous</i> with moral interest: we take pleasure in beautiful objects irrespective of any consideration of personal advantage, and that pleasure is <i>immediate</i>; the judgement of beauty is subjective, but <i>universal</i>; the perception and judgement of beauty is grounded in the <i>autonomy</i> of our faculties from causal contingencies. All of this has been established throughout the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, and could just as well serve as a bullet list of points made in the second critique regarding pure practical reason—if some key words were swapped out.</p><p>Again, an interest in beauty doesn't <i>necessarily</i> translate into moral interest or feelings. Kant made that clear several sections ago:</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">...since the latter [objects of taste] indulges inclination, although this may be ever so refined, it also gladly allows itself to blend in with all the inclinations and passions that achieve their greatest variety and highest level in society, and the interest in the beautiful, if it is grounded on this, could afford only a very ambiguous transition from the beautiful to the good.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Nevertheless, Kant insists that the true purpose of taste is to judge (or perceive, or understand) material expressions of moral ideas. The Critique of Aesthetic Judgement concludes with the admonition that the most effective instruction in taste must be one that makes it more fit for this end.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIS6qr9EjzZtw6koWoeey-W4Epyb7xjLi6_n_1PspArzOrmyMKw5pWrn9yWhNkVcI5a2sTtWGGSY7qC7go-BvvmkSD3nXWB7d3C1Z1WRmB2jlf34QCeAvhsraFmUWv-QztttAv44VM6e2LpQ9bP67kBg-wep8Ew1L__F6yKWJTsRrpfWSgVaMjdc3s0A/s787/image_2022-12-06_220349145.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="601" data-original-width="787" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIS6qr9EjzZtw6koWoeey-W4Epyb7xjLi6_n_1PspArzOrmyMKw5pWrn9yWhNkVcI5a2sTtWGGSY7qC7go-BvvmkSD3nXWB7d3C1Z1WRmB2jlf34QCeAvhsraFmUWv-QztttAv44VM6e2LpQ9bP67kBg-wep8Ew1L__F6yKWJTsRrpfWSgVaMjdc3s0A/w435-h332/image_2022-12-06_220349145.png" width="435" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caspar David Friedrich, <i>The Sea of Ice</i> (1824)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>The link between moral interest and the sublime is much more straightforward. Kant assays the sublime independently of his inquiry into beauty and taste, condensing the whole examination in a section (Analytic of the Sublime) nestled right in the <i>middle</i> of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement.</p><p>When <i>we</i> say that something is "sublime," we usually mean something like "beautiful in a spiritual or transcendent way," or maybe "beauty squared." In the late eighteenth century, authors who wrote about taste had a much more specific meaning in mind, and might be inclined to slap somebody who'd use the word to describe something so frivolous as a bite of expensive cheesecake.</p><p>When Kant talks about the sublime, the feeling to which he refers is pleasurable, and yet typically accompanied by awe or fear. Violent events in nature, a sweeping vista beheld from the edge of a cliff, a seemingly illimitable expanse of desert or ocean—any of these might inspire a sense of sublimity. Situations that evoke such a feeling must necessarily leave you feeling dwarfed or physically threatened. Vanishingly few, if any, manmade artifacts are capable of it. Kant mentions the Egyptian pyramids and Saint Peter's cathedral, but only in an analogy. To his mind, the sublime is the exclusive province of nature.</p><p>The sublime is similar to the beautiful in that...</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">...both please for themselves...both presuppose neither a judgement of sense nor a logically determining judgement, but a judgement of reflection...both sorts of judgements are also singular, and yet...profess to be universally valid in regard to every subject, although they lay claim merely to the feeling of pleasure and not to any cognition of the object. </span></blockquote><p></p><p>The big difference, however, is that the experience of the sublime is one of "negative pleasure"—because it accompanies occasions that leave us feeling diminished or even threatened, it doesn't elicit satisfaction so much as <i>respect.</i></p><p>Like the musician playing a concert who rolls out a ten-year-old song that was never a single and nobody expected to hear again, Kant brings up the minor concept of mathematical and dynamical categories from the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> in analyzing the sublime. (Recap: the categories under the quantity and quality headings are <i>mathematical</i>; relational and modal categories are <i>dynamical</i>.) The feeling of the sublime, he says, has a mathematical and a dynamical aspect.</p><p>To make this short, we can boil down the mathematical aspect of the sublime to one of Kant's boldfaced sentences: "<b>That is sublime in comparison with which everything else is small.</b>" This seems like it's easy to disprove. We experience the shudder of sublimity craning our necks to glimpse a mountain peak behind tufts of cloud; we know on an intellectual level that there are things in the world much bigger than this rocky protuberance; so what's the fuss about?</p><p>The sublime is a <i>feeling</i>, and has less to do with the object that inspires it than how we take it in. On this point, Kant differentiates between <i>apprehension</i> and <i>comprehension:</i></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">There is no difficulty with apprehension, because it can go on to infinity; but comprehension becomes ever more difficult the further apprehension advances, and soon reaches its maximum, namely the aesthetically greatest basic measure for the estimation of magnitude.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>(Remember that this is the late eighteenth century, and "aesthetically" just means "pertaining to sense perception.")</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">For when apprehension has gone so far that the partial representations of the intuition of the senses that were apprehended first already begin to fade in the imagination as the latter proceeds on to the apprehension of further ones, then it loses on one side as much as it gains on the other, and there is in the comprehension a greatest point beyond which it cannot go.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>In other words, he's talking about taking in an object or scene that's so vast, and from such a vantage point, that it can't be grasped all at once. This is where Kant uses Saint Peter's cathedral as a metaphor, commenting on the "embarrassment" that one feels upon entering:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">...here there is a feeling of the inadequacy of his imagination for presenting the ideas of a whole, in which the imagination reaches its maximum and, in the effort to extend it, sinks back into itself, but is thereby transported into an emotionally moving satisfaction</span>.</blockquote><p></p><p>BF Skinner might call this appeal to the intelligible operations of discrete mental faculties an "explanatory fiction"—but let's put that aside for the time being.</p><p>The significance on the mathematical aspect of the sublime can be boiled down to another one of Kant's boldfaced sentences: "<b>That is sublime which even to be able to think demonstrates a faculty of the mind that surpasses every measure of the senses.</b>" The experience of the sublime brings to the fore our special status as rational agents: our senses fail us, but our powers of reason strive to overcome the inadequacy of the merely sensory, perceptual aspect of our being. We might feel a corporeal humiliation in the prospect of a mountainous vista beheld from a cliff. On the one hand, we appreciate that we can't appreciate the full extent of what's before us; we can't map out its spaces and all their contents for ourselves, except in the abstract. But the fact that we're capable of doing so in the abstract implies that our mental faculties transcend the capabilities of our animal senses. We can <i>conceptualize</i> not only the vast, but the infinite, even though the latter is something never actually given to us in experience.</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">The feeling of the sublime is thus a feeling of displeasure from the inadequacy of the imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude for the estimation by means of reason, and a pleasure that is thereby aroused at the same time from the correspondence of this very judgement of the inadequacy of the greatest sensible faculty in comparison with ideas of reason, insofar as striving for them is nevertheless a law for us. That is, it is a law (of reason) for us and part of our vocation to estimate everything great that nature contains as an object of the senses for us as small in comparison with ideas of reason; and whatever arouses the feeling of this supersensible vocation in us is in agreement with that law.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>"Supersensible vocation in us?" Do I hear an echo of the <i>Critique of Practical Reason, </i>which assigned the rational agent certain <i>a priori</i> duties on the supersensible grounds of free will?</p><p>If we don't mind fudging some of the particulars, we can sum up Kant's exploration of the dynamically sublime with a restatement of the mathematically sublime in which references to <i>magnitude</i> are substituted with references to <i>power</i>. The crushing force and roar of a waterfall, streaks of lighting illuminating the dark horizon in a thunderstorm, a brushfire sweeping across the plains—all of these might evoke sublimity, provided we have the luxury of a safe vantage point. (After all, panic and desperation don't leave us much bandwidth to appreciate the aesthetics of a violent event.)</p><p>Once again, the effect is to arouse the feeling of both being overawed and somehow elevated:</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">[T]he irresistibility of [nature's] power certainly makes us, considered as natural beings, recognize our physical powerlessness, but at the same time it reveals a capacity for judging ourselves as independent of it and a superiority over nature on which is grounded a self-preservation of quite another kind than that which can be threatened and endangered by nature outside us, whereby the humanity in our person remains undemeaned even though the human being must submit to that dominion. In this way, in our aesthetic judgement nature is judged as sublime not insofar as it arouses fear, but rather because it calls forth our power (which is not part of nature) to regard those things about which we are concerned (goods, health, and life) as trivial, and hence to regard its power (to which we are, to be sure, subjected in regard to these things) as not the sort of dominion over ourselves and our authority to which we would have to bow if it came down to our highest principles and their affirmation or abandonment.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>This intersects with the reasons a lot of people give with regard to why they enjoy camping—and I mean <i>really</i> camping, roughing it, hiking three or four hours through woods and hills, pitching a tent, and subjecting themselves to the whim of the elements and the silence of the wilderness for two or three nights. It "puts things into perspective." We seem to discover the bedrock of our values during periods of privation, or in moments where we vividly <i>imagine</i> ourselves at the mercy of forces we can't control. </p><p>I'm going to end this here; I feel myself running out of steam, and there's still the Critique of Teleological Judgement to go over.</p><p>When it comes time to sum things up and actually contribute my two cents on all of this, I'll have more to say about Kant's remarks about the sublime. Even if Kant himself believes that the concept of the sublime in nature "is far from being as important and rich in consequences as that of [natural] beauty," it was much more immediately interesting to me than his study of taste. I'll save it for later. </p>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-60988538983287219812022-11-27T02:03:00.006-05:002022-11-28T10:00:12.230-05:00Twelve Rounds with Kant (part eleven)<p>Let's set the tone here with an excerpt.</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Since the freedom of the imagination consists precisely in the fact that it schematizes without a concept, the judgement of taste must rest on a mere sensation of the reciprocally animating imagination in its <b>freedom</b> and the understanding with its <b>lawfulness</b>, thus on a feeling that allows the object to be judged in accordance with the purposiveness of the representation (by means of which an object is given) for the promotion of the faculty of cognition in its free play; and taste, as a subjective power of judgement, contains a principle of subsumption, not of intuitions under <b>concepts</b>, but of the <b>faculty</b> of intuitions or presentations (i.e., of the imagination) under the <b>faculty</b> of concepts (i.e., the understanding), insofar as the the former <b>in its freedom</b> is in harmony with the latter <b>in its lawfulness</b>.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>One sentence. Who could have written this sentence but Immanuel Kant? And what could occasion wheeling him here but my having finally finished reading <i>The Critique of the Power of Judgement</i> (1790), the final installment of the Kant Trilogy?</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Note: the title most often translated into English as "The Critique of Judgement," but the Cambridge University Press edition I've been reading is titled "The Critique of the Power of Judgement," which is closer to the meaning of the original German (<i>Critik der Urtheilskraft</i>.) Editor and translator Paul Guyer (or perhaps Cambridge University Press) insists on the barbarous spelling "judgment," which I reject and will not reproduce here.)</span></p>Since about part six of this exercise I've regretted giving myself an arbitrary framework vis-à-vis the title. Twelve rounds, twelve Kantposts. I spent way too much time at the beginning idly ruminating on the metaphysical implications of the first critique's Transcendental Aesthetic when the Transcendental Dialectic constituted the real meat on the bone. And now here we are on part eleven of twelve, and I've got to somehow synopsize and/or meditate on the <i>Critique of Judgement</i> in just two posts. This bout might have to go on for an extra round. Goodie.<div><br /></div><div>Once again, let me emphasize that I'm doing this strictly for the purpose of engaging with Kant in a way that helps me to better understand the material than I would if I just put the book away and went on with my life. Nothing that follows should be taken as authoritative. I'm writing more or less as a student.<p>So: the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i> reminds me of Marilyn Manson's album <i>Holy Wood</i>.</p><p></p><p>I can't believe I just typed that. Let me explain.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXci645Y_ON3V3ygQFdNrPQzM7thUWVOMfYcrfc6HeMs5pTVVJDdZK3xXkDgvJoDvKYUlTrV2FCZlXZ_FDfoxH1tWPZ94nyMM2JbSmIMvNi0JGIqNXiHjbpU1bxmGwu3hD7C5yDi_Rc01TCuTdVgvwIzXnVI0dMa0l_-BFA-XbPJyCQxFNNYnSRF-bTQ/s525/image_2022-11-19_154535599.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="521" data-original-width="525" height="383" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXci645Y_ON3V3ygQFdNrPQzM7thUWVOMfYcrfc6HeMs5pTVVJDdZK3xXkDgvJoDvKYUlTrV2FCZlXZ_FDfoxH1tWPZ94nyMM2JbSmIMvNi0JGIqNXiHjbpU1bxmGwu3hD7C5yDi_Rc01TCuTdVgvwIzXnVI0dMa0l_-BFA-XbPJyCQxFNNYnSRF-bTQ/w385-h383/image_2022-11-19_154535599.png" width="385" /></a></div><p>Marilyn Manson's <i>Antichrist Superstar</i> of 1996 was a big deal at the time—an epochal tour de force of a gothic-industrial concept album. Two years later, <i>Mechanical Animals</i> was released as its sequel: if "Man That You Fear," Antichrist Superstar's final track, was the end of the world à la David Bowie's "Rock n' Roll Suicide," then <i>Mechanical Animals</i> began with waking up the morning after in "Great Big White World." Otherwise, <i>Mechanical Animals</i> had little in common with <i>Antichrist Superstar</i>. It was glam instead of goth, more synth rock than industrial metal. The transition was a <i>jarring</i> one, let me tell you. If you were to make a Marilyn Manson mixtape of tracks from just <i>Antichrist Superstar</i> and <i>Mechanical Animals</i>, you'd either have to put all the tracks from one on Side A and the other on Side B, or else risk inflicting some minor damage to the listener's thyroid gland.</p><p>So then came <i>Holy Wood</i> in 2000. By then the vicious feedback loop between Mr. Warner's monstrous ego and cocaine addiction were bringing whole new meaning to the phrase "high on his own supply." Seeing Eminem usurping his position as pop culture's bête noire and clearly worried that his star was on the wane (even if he couldn't consciously admit it to himself), he hyped <i>Holy Wood</i> in Kanye-esque terms of self-aggrandizement. This was going to be the third and final part of the trilogy, he promised, a <i>synthesis</i> of <i>Antichrist Superstar</i> and <i>Mechanical Animals</i>. It was also going to be the <i>hardest</i> fucking rock album ever, the <i>darkest</i>, his most wrenching and soul-bearing and alchemy and tarot and cutting social commentary blah blah blah and cocaine blah blah.</p><p><i>Holy Wood</i> was a mediocre record, and it's less representative of a marriage of the concepts of <i>Antichrist Superstar</i> and <i>Mechanical Animals</i> than Manson running out of ideas and retreading old territory. So it goes.</p><p>How is all this analogous to the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i>? Well. Kant declares in the third critique's introduction that it (or its eponymous subject matter) can in some way unify the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> and the <i>Critique of Practical Reason</i>, whose domains were as far apart as the aesthetics of <i>Antichrist Superstar</i> and <i>Mechanical Animals. </i>Like <i>Holy Wood</i>, the third critique is sometimes (often?) regarded as an inferior effort, or at the very least not worth an additional week's slot in a Philosophy 101 syllabus. To be sure, Kant spends less time striking into unexplored territory within the sweep of his transcendental philosophy than revisiting central concepts from the first two critiques and treating of matters that the sort of people who'd actually read the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> and the <i>Critique of Practical Reason</i> are likely to deem less than indispensable.</p><p>To be blunt, the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i> is a bit of mess. Kant divides it into three main sections: the Introduction, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, and the Critique of Teleological Judgement. The Introduction deserves to be included as a chapter in its own right, since that's where Kant introduces the terms at the heart of his analysis: <i>reflective judgements</i> and <i>determining judgements</i>. But then he mentions neither, not even once, in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, which comprises the majority of the text. Both terms come up during the Critique of Teleological Judgement, which to all appearances has little overlap with the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement's concepts or its conclusions.</p><p>The editors' foreword is helpful here. A piece of Kant's correspondence from 1787 refers to his labors composing a "Critique of Taste," which is basically what the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement (particularly its first section, the Analytic of the Beautiful) consists of. He also mentions a surge of inspiration and having made "discoveries [he] had not expected" while working on the piece, which he still expected to have wrapped up within a few months. It took him about another three years to complete.</p><p>It <i>really</i> looks like he began writing a treatise on taste, realized that it could be expanded into larger work, and then didn't expend too much effort toward integrating the original material into the reconsidered project. We have an short essay on the power of judgement, followed by a long essay on taste and aesthetics, followed by another long essay on teleology, with only tenuous links between them. Seems like an ill omen for a project whose stated purpose is unification. (I understand that some critics have suggested the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i> evinces the onset of senility in its author.)</p><p>Even putting aside the third critique's inconsistencies, we can easily understand why a modern audience (narrow though it might be) might be inclined to regard it as an afterthought to the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> and the <i>Critique of Practical Reason</i>. Epistemology and ethics are timeless concerns, and by virtue of Kant's signature approach of examining the bare <i>formats</i> of knowledge and morality, the first two critiques don't require us to take as given the cultural assumptions and scientific knowledge of the late eighteenth century. Not that they don't show their age, and not that they can't be considered independently of their historical circumstances, but the transcendental deduction and categorical imperative are abstract enough that the advance of some two and a quarter centuries hasn't made either a nonstarter on the grounds of their obvious incompatibility with contemporary practices or understanding. The <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i>, on the other hand, presumes to make absolute statements about art based on an eighteenth-century criterion of art, and then advocates a way of understanding the provenance of organic forms at which the author arrived before the birth of Charles Darwin. Neither holds up very well.</p><p>But this is still Immanuel goshdarned Kant, and even when he's disorganized, wantonly reifying cognitive activities, and churning out truly <i>awful</i> prose, he's still got interesting shit to say. And the more I reread the passages I've marked and go over my notes, the more cause I find I have for wonder.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxe2ZNKScc-dEPg61oWXdvXogpTpZphitgrGK88QEUgDim7n3j9RlRRyzjgmKAfLQ4IDSlDUvYMg6lmsy4zk-wzEjrgf7xQaR9vMvBwePZYLDuJW2B9vxmKJv_43EaAEgzhi3D7Ou_vNxnBgNLh3b674pWZ2n-TxFoZvg2FbrDK9sxv68Rvw7RXz6JGg/s1491/image_2022-11-21_100727122.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1074" data-original-width="1491" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxe2ZNKScc-dEPg61oWXdvXogpTpZphitgrGK88QEUgDim7n3j9RlRRyzjgmKAfLQ4IDSlDUvYMg6lmsy4zk-wzEjrgf7xQaR9vMvBwePZYLDuJW2B9vxmKJv_43EaAEgzhi3D7Ou_vNxnBgNLh3b674pWZ2n-TxFoZvg2FbrDK9sxv68Rvw7RXz6JGg/w444-h320/image_2022-11-21_100727122.png" width="444" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Caspar Friedrich, <i>Monastery Ruins in the Snow </i>(1819?)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">(We will be seeing a lot of Davey C Fredrick in the section breaks. Given the reciprocal influence between the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i> and German Romanticism, it's very much on theme.)</span><p>Let's just start with the Introduction.</p><p>My copy of the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement</i> contains both the introduction published in 1790 and the more comprehensive "First Introduction" that Kant scrapped after deciding it was too long. And I should mention here that before I picked up the Cambridge edition of the third critique, I purchased the Oxford World Classics edition, and <i>gave up</i> after trying and failing to wrap my mind around what the hell Kant was on about in the introduction. Not the main body of the text, but the "let's outline what this is going to be about before we get into it" part of the book. </p><p>The translation dates back to 1911, so I figured I might have an easier time with an edition from <i>this</i> century—hence the second copy on my shelf. And I did. Kind of. I still had to read the "original" and "first" Introductions the same way I did the A and B Deductions from the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>:<i> </i>with a legal pad in my lap, taking notes.</p><p>But I digress.</p><p>Kant lays it out like this: there are two branches of philosophy, natural and moral. One deals with how we should understand the world, one deals with what we ought to <i>do</i> in the world, and they don't overlap. One universe of discourse revolving around the mechanism of nature, and another that takes free will as a given, can't infringe on the other's business.</p><p>Our faculty of understanding presides over natural philosophy, and reason gives the rule to moral philosophy—so Kant tells us. These constitute two of the three "higher" faculties of knowledge that Kant enumerates in the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>. The <i>third</i> higher faculty is the power of judgement.</p><p>One of the ways Kant synopsizes their relations is by designating the understanding as that which gives us the cognition of the general, reason as the determiner of the particular <i>through</i> the general, and the power of judgement as the faculty by virtue of which the particular is <i>subsumed</i> under the general (or under rules). The understanding and reason "talk" to each other through the power of judgement. The understanding produces unity of appearances (i.e., of material reality) under principles; reason <i>unifies</i> those principles; and none of it works without the power of judgement getting involved to assess whether X ∈ Y.</p><p>The first two critiques were basically about the legislative domains of two of the three higher cognitive faculties: the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> addressed the understanding, and the <i>Critique of Practical Reason</i> addressed reason. But the power of judgement? What's there to say? Kant says that it's "not at all self-sufficient...it provides neither concepts, like the understanding, or ideas, like reason, of any object at all, since since it is a faculty merely for subsuming under concepts given from elsewhere." Kant characterizes it as something of a mental bureaucrat, merely facilitating the productions of the other two faculties.</p><p>But, as he writes in the third critique's Introduction, he came to suspect that he might have short-shrifted the power of judgement. If that faculty mediates the connection between the understanding and reason, could it conceivably do the same for the two branches of philosophy over which each presides?</p><p>Here's how Kant frames the possibility:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Now although there is an incalculable gulf between the domain of the concept of nature, as the sensible, and the domain of the concept of freedom, as the supersensible, so that from the former to the latter (thus by means of the theoretical use of reason) no transition is possible, just as if there were so many different worlds, the first of which can have no influence on the second: yet the latter <b>should</b> have an influence on the former, namely the concept of freedom should make the end that is imposed by its laws real in the sensible world; and nature must consequently also be able to be conceived in such a way that the lawfulness of its form is at least in agreement with the possibility of the ends that are to be realized in it in accordance with the laws of freedom. —— Thus there must still be a ground of the unity of the supersensible that grounds nature with that which the concept of freedom contains practically, the concept of which, even if it does not suffice for cognition of it either theoretically or practically, and thus has no proper domain of its own, nevertheless makes possible the transition from the manner of thinking in accordance with the principles of the one to that in accordance with the principles of the other.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>How would the power of judgement go about doing this?</p><p>But to ask that is to get ahead of ourselves. Kant needs to figure out the specifics of the power of judgement's operations before he can determine the way in which it might stake out a sort of border town where theoretical and practical philosophy intermingle.</p><p>Kant hypothesizes that the power of judgement should, like its counterparts,</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">...contain in itself <i>a priori</i>, if not exactly its own legislation, then still a proper principle of its own for seeking laws, although a merely subjective one; which, even though it can claim no field of objects as its domain, can nevertheless have some territory and a certain constitution of it, for which precisely this principle only might be valid.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Once again, Kant intends to guide us through an examination of the <i>structures</i> of experience: that's what he means by a "principle" of the power of judgement. It's got to have some fundamental procedure that it observes regardless of the particulars of a given occasion. As far as the <i>subjectivity</i> of that principle is concerned, what he's implying is that this procedure doesn't furnish material facts or concrete ideas in and of itself, but rather influences the way in which we make sense of what's before us.</p><p>Kant identifies that principle as <i>purposiveness, </i>and defines it thus:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">...since universal laws of nature have their ground in the understanding, which prescribes them to nature (although only in accordance with the universal concept of it as nature), the particular empirical laws, in regard to that which is left undetermined in them by the former, must be considered in terms of the sort of unity they would have if an understanding (even if not ours) had likewise given them for the sake of our faculty of cognition, in order to make possible a system of experience in accordance with particular laws of nature. Not as if in this way such an understanding must really be assumed (for it is only the reflecting power of judgement for which this idea serves as a principle, for reflecting, and not determining); rather this faculty thereby gives a law only to itself, and not to nature.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Before we get any farther ahead of ourselves: Kant divides the operations of the power of judgement under two heads: <i>determining</i> and <i>reflecting</i> judgements. In a determining judgement, the universal (the genre, the rule, or whatever the case may be) is already at hand. For example, I have a concept of "bird" as a feathered biped with wings. I see a robin—<i>bird!</i> I see a vulture—<i>bird! </i>I visit Ireland and see some twittering fella with a beak I don't recognize—<i>bird!</i> These are determining judgements.</p><p>In a reflecting (or reflective) judgement, we confront a particular for which a universal is lacking. Kant cryptically describes the procedure that follows as one where we "compare and...hold together given representations either with others or with one's faculty of cognition, in relation to a concept that is thereby made possible." It <i>seems</i> like he's saying that the power of judgement can conjure concepts in its reflective mode—and his elucidations on this point tend to be frustratingly abstruse. Let's just skip it, but emphasize that the kind of judgements that most interest Kant throughout the third critique are of the reflective sort.</p><p>The gist of all this is that the reflective power of judgement gives us a built-in heuristic for understanding the world. We <i>assume</i> an intelligent ordering principle in nature, that there's a reason for the way things are. It's subjective in the sense that even if we don't definitely ascribe a design to any objects or processes, we act as though there <i>is</i> insofar as we presuppose that it's possible to come to an understanding of anything we encounter in the world, or that it can at least be made to fit within our conception of the world's organization. "Purposiveness" (<i>Zweckmässigkeit</i>), as Kant uses the term, implies both <i>intent</i> (an eye towards an end) and <i>design.</i></p><p>Kant adduces the act of generalization itself to justify his reasoning. The first critique listed a set of pre-loaded laws (the categories and their schema) that bring coherence to our experience of reality—the fundamental perceptions of causal connection, the perception of intensive and extensive magnitudes, etc. Beyond these, we find a material world that's obviously governed by physical laws and in which we clearly identify systemic relations between its constituents, in spite of the infinite diversity of actual occasions in which they participate. Kant finds the obviousness worth investigating: how can we extrapolate general rules, a sense of <i>unity</i>, from the sheer multitudinousness of experience? </p><p>Kant says:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">...such a unity must...necessarily be presupposed and assumed, for otherwise no thoroughgoing interconnection of cognitions into a whole of experience would take place, because the universal laws of nature yield such an interconnection among things with respect to their genera, as things of nature in general, but not specifically, as such and such particular beings in nature, the power of judgement must thus assume it as an <i>a priori</i> principle for its own use that what is contingent for human insight in the particular (empirical) laws of nature...contains a lawful unity, not fathomable to us but still thinkable, in the combination of its manifold into one experience possible in itself. Consequently, since the lawful unity of in a combination that we recognize as in accordance with a necessary aim (a need) of the understanding but yet at the same time contingent in itself is regarded as a purposiveness of the objects (in this case, of nature), thus the power of judgement, which with regard to things under possible (still to be discovered) empirical laws is merely reflecting, must think of nature with regarded to the latter in accordance with a <b>principle of purposiveness</b> for our faculty of cognition...</span></blockquote><p>Kant's parenthetical "still to be discovered" remark refers to an early mention of some old aphorisms of natural philosophy emphasizing <i>parsimony </i>in physical laws—for example, <i>principia praeter necessitatem non sunt multiplicanda</i>, or "principles are not to be multiplied beyond necessity." (Thank you, footnotes.) The assumption is that a <i>designed</i> world would exhibit the acumen of a good geometer who begins with an appropriately minimal number of axioms.</p><p></p><p>And there's something to this. If you read the popular literature about science, you'll notice that some of the brightest minds in the fields of physics and mathematics put a premium on <i>elegance</i>. The dream of the contemporary theoretical physicist is to concoct a theory that <i>unifies</i> the entire field under consistent (but still unknown) laws.</p><p>Mind you, Kant doesn't presume to assert the definite, <i>objective</i> existence of any creator deity here. He's only saying that we're unable to investigate nature unless we implicitly believe we're capable of discovering in it an order that's comprehensible to us, as though a rational mind arranged it to be so:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Now this transcendental concept of a purposiveness of nature is neither a concept of nature nor a concept of freedom [i.e., it doesn't properly belong to either natural or moral philosophy], since it attributes nothing at all to an object (of nature), but rather only represents the unique way in which we must proceed in reflection on the objects of nature with the aim of a thoroughly interconnected experience, consequently it is a subjective principle of the power of judgement... </span></blockquote><p></p><p>Good stuff.</p><p>And then Kant goes off on a tangent that lasts for more than half the book.</p><p>We've already gone over Kant's designations of "higher" faculties of knowledge. Of <i>mind</i>, Kant likewise enumerates three faculties: those of cognition, desire, and pleasure/displeasure.</p><p>Since we're talking about the mind, everything is mediated by cognition, so the principles of the higher faculties of knowledge correspond to and impose their principles on the faculties of mind. Cognition adheres to the understanding, as per the first critique. The faculty of desire is presided over by reason—which might sound a bit goofy unless you've read the second critique. That leaves the power of judgement as the arbiter of pleasure and displeasure.</p><p>When the form of purposiveness in perception is the grounds for a feeling of pleasure that's not determined by any definite cognition, what we're experiencing is beauty. Kant's attempts to articulate a mechanism of action are, well, a bit iffy at best. (The excerpt at the very top of this entry gives us an example of how he tries to explain it.) But here he justifies the demarcation of the <i>Critique of the Power of Judgement </i>into its two separate parts: one that deals with <i>formal</i> purposiveness (judgements through feeling of pleasure/displeasure and of taste—which are contingent on <i>feelings</i>, not concepts, hence the importance of the reflecting mode) and one that deals with <i>objective</i> purposiveness (judged through understanding and reason).</p><p>Hence we get two critiques in one book: a Critique of Aesthetic Judgements and a Critique of Teleological Judgements. Again, neither has much to say about the other.</p><p>This is a strange and messy book, but I fear it's one I'm growing to love. More on that next time.</p></div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-86598321735588307902022-10-22T19:39:00.019-04:002022-11-05T00:46:27.958-04:00Celebrity, Mythology, & The Machine (part 9)<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR_s7-YtxEJ-oE6q-5oL-8pcbBCTidL_Mag4D_eysthd9WKALvSgY9Mtc2KErYgveTb1J8gsaajjbcI67Kg4IcklnI-pKpzCveQnx-JEor2rpS1JpZk4W5Ih1X4_0KR8OXaoM2pPCQRCEzOWLfk9tpLmqPlGcm4CJGqv56eFdrSa332cx4rf5o6q9zuw/s492/image_2022-10-21_085048711.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="366" data-original-width="492" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR_s7-YtxEJ-oE6q-5oL-8pcbBCTidL_Mag4D_eysthd9WKALvSgY9Mtc2KErYgveTb1J8gsaajjbcI67Kg4IcklnI-pKpzCveQnx-JEor2rpS1JpZk4W5Ih1X4_0KR8OXaoM2pPCQRCEzOWLfk9tpLmqPlGcm4CJGqv56eFdrSa332cx4rf5o6q9zuw/w409-h304/image_2022-10-21_085048711.png" width="409" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">René Magritte, <i>The Lovers</i> (1928)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p>Whoops. A couple of days ago I accidently hit "publish" on the draft that I'd been using as a repository for notes and stuff cut out of other pieces. I never said I was any good at this.<br /><br /></p><p><b>IX. THE TECHNOLOGY OF ESTRANGEMENT</b><br /><br /></p><div><p>The development of media technology in the West was from the beginning a movement toward individuation and estrangement. It's right there in the Latin meaning of the word. <i>Medium.</i> A middle; something that stands between.</p><p>Information in a nonliterate society cannot remain inert. It must be enacted, it must circulate. The externalization of speech as written language denuded human interdependence in its original, <i>direct</i> forms. The more one can learn from a book, the less one requires a teacher, guide, or knowledgeable companion. When news of community affairs is delivered through a paper, one no longer needs to hear it from her neighbors. Stories and poetry taken in through the eye instead of the ear become matters of private leisure instead of communal occasions.</p><p>In a primary oral culture, the transmission of verbal information necessitates a direct interaction between speakers and listeners. Communication here is immediate and interactive; feedback from the listeners influence what the speaker says and <i>how</i> he says it, and the exchange of information most often occurs under circumstances which are conterminous for both speaker and listener. In other words, the <i>contexts</i> of the acts of speaking and listening overlap. But this is obvious: the speaker wouldn't be speaking if a listener weren't nearby, and vice versa. A social environment such as this can't be expected to breed many introverts or loners. "Primary orality fosters personality structures that in certain
ways are more communal and externalized, and less introspective
than those common among literates," Walter Ong writes in his 1982 classic <i>Orality and Literacy</i>. "Oral communication unites
people in groups."</p><p>Conversely, between the novelist and the reader of her book is interposed a labyrinthine social complex that confronts each of them in a different aspect.<br /><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>To the novelist, the reader is not only invisible, but mystified—a fungible quantitative unit of a nebulous "audience" that generates the data that determines the course of her career. Where the reader is concerned, the personal affinity or even the <i>nearness</i> she feels to the author comes about as an illusion of the simulated language she parses on the pages. If we're talking about degrees of separation, the bookstore clerk, the receiver, the guy who delivers product from the distribution center, and the worker who loads the box of hardcovers onto the truck approach the reader more closely than the author herself—but the reader regards them at most as an afterthought, just as she does the people involved in harvesting trees, shipping the lumber, manufacturing the paper, and printing the books that bear the author's name.</div><div><br /></div><div>This facet of parasociality in general deserves more recognition: the imaginary relationship obscures more proximate ones, similar to how the moon and the (unfortunately named) inferior planets are made practically invisible by the afternoon sun.</div><div><p></p><p>(Note: the publishing industry's purpose has not so much to do with literature, but with producing surplus value for the capitalists who own the bookstores, the publishing houses, the paper mills, the tree plantations, and every other institution involved in eliciting a manuscript from the author and a purchase of a printed book by the reader. All the better if the author finds gratification writing the book and the reader feels edified reading it, but these things are truly incidental to the collective enterprise of book production and sales.)</p><div>Not only does the content of the medium—an abstraction of person-to-person speech—<i>seem</i> to nullify the gulf between the author and reader, it suggests to the latter the consubstantiation of the former with her book. We are prone to <i>anthropomorphizing</i> media artifacts, and bring this tendency out in the open whenever we say something like "I've been reading a lot of Neil Gaiman lately."</div><p>But this is all rather outdated. Print is yesterday's news. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAgQwk0EqcpJU4x1v7RrnRBTz1oiw7ziASX5b24pxrZAiI7tj0igDZm8qWENnFsQUEvQajINJhVpy3Qq_tVjRPSs0QrhA9oP730OAPwRUCSo9Xw2IioqlTKU7eznt5DT_ZXeSX_2UtUZmWAc7Up81qSF1fkt_FIScLbEPemlp1984uH0vjQS4GVYz9Ag/s832/image_2022-10-21_085748502.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="532" data-original-width="832" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAgQwk0EqcpJU4x1v7RrnRBTz1oiw7ziASX5b24pxrZAiI7tj0igDZm8qWENnFsQUEvQajINJhVpy3Qq_tVjRPSs0QrhA9oP730OAPwRUCSo9Xw2IioqlTKU7eznt5DT_ZXeSX_2UtUZmWAc7Up81qSF1fkt_FIScLbEPemlp1984uH0vjQS4GVYz9Ag/w487-h312/image_2022-10-21_085748502.png" width="487" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nam June Paik, <i>Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii</i> (1995)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>As you know, Marshall McLuhan described the drift of literature cultures toward segmentation, specialization, and individualism as a process of detribalization. As he tells it, the cognitive habits advanced by print culture made possible the scientific revolution, while the mechanical reproduction of texts via the printing press provided the conceptual template for the serial manufacture of commodities that simultaneously fueled the industrial revolution and impelled Western societies to reorganize themselves as modern capitalist states—the social conditions of which preclude those of community and direct interdependence (though this phrasing is redundant).</p><p>McLuhan's observation that the sensory dimensions, simultaneity, emotional conductivity, and supernormal depth involvement of electric media is <i>re</i>tribalizing us appears to be borne out by the countless studies, news articles, and thinkpieces about acrimonious political polarization, procrustean groupthink, identitarianism, online mob behavior, social contagion, and so on. If this is all true, how do we square it with all the other reports we've been seeing about the inexorable decline in civic life, people today generally having fewer friends than did previous generations, social isolation reaching "epidemic" levels, and other such trends? (All of which, by the way, were well in progress before the coronavirus pandemic accelerated them in 2020.)</p><p>In other words, how can we be tribalized <i>and</i> isolated?</p><p>McLuhan, <a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2022/07/peter-and-basilisk.html" target="_blank">like Marx</a>, couldn't predict the future as precisely as some of his acolytes liked to imagine. After all, he was busy formulating his media theories in the 1950s and 1960s—at a time when people typically watched television<i> together</i>. A passage from his 1964 book <i>Understanding Media</i> makes explicit his assumption that television is an inherently group-oriented activity, and I've boldfaced a line that comes across today as quaint, if not naïve:</p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Typographic man took readily to film just because, like books, it offers an inward world of fantasy and dreams. The film viewer sits in psychological solitude like the silent book reader. This was not the case with the manuscript reader, nor is it true of the watcher of television. <b>It is not pleasant to turn on TV just for oneself in a hotel room, nor even at home. </b>The TV mosaic image demands social completion and dialogue.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>At the time, it was a safe assumption. That same year, the <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/22/archives/93-of-american-families-reported-to-own-tv-set.html" target="_blank">reported</a> that while 93 percent of American households had at least one TV set, only 17 percent had <i>more</i> than one. Families typically kept their single TV in the living room, the designated public space of the American household, doorless and usually accessible by at least two other ground-story rooms. Unless the viewer was at home by herself, she never watched the <i>Lawrence Welk Show</i> in <i>true</i> privacy. (Note also that America's <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/593087" target="_blank">marriage rates</a> were significantly higher in the mid-twentieth century than they are today. <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v22n5/v22n5p9.pdf" target="_blank">In 1958</a>, only 10.4 million out of a total of 173 million Americans lived alone or with non-relatives.)</p><p>By 1990, the average number of television sets per household was two. TV made its ingression into the bedroom, where the teenager, housemate, or spouse could bask in its glow behind a closed door. The rising number of adults <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/242022/number-of-single-person-households-in-the-us/#:~:text=Number%20of%20single-person%20households%20U.S.%201960-2021&text=In%202021%2C%20approximately%2036.97%20million,households%20in%20the%20United%20States." target="_blank">living by themselves</a> had no mitigating effect on viewing rates; evidently the prospect of watching TV alone wasn't so unpleasant as McLuhan claimed.</p><p>Nor, as it happened, was playing video games alone. Or watching movie rentals alone. Or watching Twitch streamers alone. Or using a pocket-sized computer and a pair of noise cancelling headphones to attain a state of psychological solitude amid a crowd in a public space.</p><p>Without getting into the grainy particulars, it's fair to say we've become tribalistic in our attitudes but solitary in our habits, and additionally susceptible to the thoroughgoing alienation conditioned by the sociopolitical situation whose defining characteristics—predominately transactional relationships, compartmentalized social functions (as opposed to integrated roles), lack of attachment to the land, the periodic invasion of both labor time and consumption-as-leisure by a disquieting sense of meaninglessness, the learned helplessness that expresses itself as jaded doomerism, and so on—are popularly synopsized under the term "late capitalism."</p><p>This <i>should</i> be intolerable. We're social animals, aren't wet? Otherwise one would suppose that solitary confinement in prison shouldn't be tantamount to torture, the months-long coronavirus lockdowns wouldn't have driven so many people up the wall, or that feelings of loneliness wouldn't correlate with poor health, impaired cognitive functions, shorter lifespans, and so on. </p><p>We're adrift and lonely, yes, but being by oneself in a small room with a mildewed window isn't quite so unpleasant when it's filled with objects that imitate much of the stimuli encountered in social contexts, and which deliver us dynamic simulacra of life beyond the walls. Perhaps we barely speak to anyone as we leave the house, ride the train to the office, sit at our workstation for eight hours, ride the train back home, and return to our one-bedroom apartment, but at least we have our <i>community</i>, be it the <i>Guilty Gear</i> community, the Hololive community, the <i>Doctor Who</i> community, the Harry Potter fanfic community, or whatever. We've never met any of them, but they retweet such great content and upvote our contributions on Reddit. It's wonderful to feel like we're a <i>part</i> of something, isn't it?</p><p>It should come as no shock that many people report that they <i>prefer</i> to spend their leisure time sequestered with one or more devices on the basis that the machines demand less of them than would actual social occasions.</p><p>They have a point. We make a stimulus supernormal not only by intensifying certain characteristics towards thresholds seldom or never encountered in ordinary experience, but also by <i>removing</i> attendant properties and consequences which are typically onerous, aversive, or even simply neutral. The exemplar here is pornography.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoe_cLZaqqLfgb1HVQSDTF-yIWotrPbQUSfHw9z3-ljTrqK0dth-yKLr8iZi31l3kyaC7qcCyPZvci34HKHe8cEpJT5SHQu1Rttqrzyt429QYRKJCNw4EFvFVn0n1K45HJxB31FAPfZA8bTLStvx42EcY1v9YbtQO_MmyHyrqORDXW6D_pNwmcy1CwQA/s672/image_2022-10-21_090333954.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="461" data-original-width="672" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoe_cLZaqqLfgb1HVQSDTF-yIWotrPbQUSfHw9z3-ljTrqK0dth-yKLr8iZi31l3kyaC7qcCyPZvci34HKHe8cEpJT5SHQu1Rttqrzyt429QYRKJCNw4EFvFVn0n1K45HJxB31FAPfZA8bTLStvx42EcY1v9YbtQO_MmyHyrqORDXW6D_pNwmcy1CwQA/w438-h302/image_2022-10-21_090333954.png" width="438" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Salvador Dali, <i>The Great Masturbator</i> (1929) (detail)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>On the one hand, a scripted and edited video recording of sex acts between "actors" selected for their attractiveness, ability to perform, and willingness to do <i>anything</i> on camera for a paycheck can bring the onanistic viewer to a height of titillation surpassing that of his intimate time with a human partner, and the practically limitless variety of Pornhub content <i>somewhat</i> simulates the experience of having more partners than most of us are capable of taking to bed in our lifetimes. On the other hand, we have everything about sex that porn <i>excludes. </i>Asking someone out. Trying to impress them over dinner and drinks and wondering if it's working. Asking yourself what went wrong when they tell you they'd like to call it a night. The mortification of premature ejaculation. The mutual disappointment of failing to bring them to climax. Finding out they're not in the mood after half an hour of foreplay. Getting up earlier than you'd like on a Sunday to have breakfast with their parents. Dealing with another person's baggage and bullshit when you already have enough of your own. Realizing you're chained to a psycho with daddy issues and the only conceivable way out is to fake your own death, and then finding yourself heartbroken and lost when they suddenly dump <i>you</i> first. And so on.</p><p>To be clear, I am not making a case on behalf of Pornhub. All I'm saying is that jacking off in front of a computer or with a smartphone in your non-dominant hand is <i>easier</i> in virtually every way than embarking on the fraught path between a personal introduction and coitus. And why shouldn't the path of lesser resistance appeal to us more than the one that makes us work for our gratification?</p><p>In the same respect, listening to Spotify is easier than going out to see a band perform, or getting together with friends to make some music for yourself. Calling somebody on the phone is easier than going out to meet them, and texting is easier than calling. Listening to a podcast is easier than arranging a symposium with people you actually know. Watching sports is easier than playing them; watching an action movie or playing a first-person shooter is certainly easier (and less hazardous) than leading a life of action. Watching a Twitch streamer play a video game is easier than...well, you get the idea.</p><p>Our limbs weaken when the day-to-day work of survival no longer depends on their strength and dexterity. Our social faculties likewise diminish when maintaining the interpersonal fabric of a group living in the same place has little to no bearing on keeping (most of) them fed, clothed, housed, and safe. If we all mind our own business and do our jobs, we get our paychecks and pay our rent, buy food and fuel, subsidize social services, and so on—and if we don't feel edified by our work and aren't on more than just polite speaking terms with our neighbors or coworkers, we can experience involvement and purpose through media engagement. In this way, social life atrophies like an unused muscle.</p><p>Anselm McGovern <a href="https://damagemag.com/2020/05/18/what-is-a-podcast/" target="_blank">calls</a> the relation between the conversation and the podcast analogous to that between intercourse and pornography. We could expand on this, couldn't we? Video games are to practical goal-oriented activity what pornography is to intercourse. Spotify and earbuds are to people and musical instruments what pornography is to intercourse. Binge watching Netflix is to being in the world what pornography is to intercourse. Et cetera.</p><p>Until fairly recently I thought Baudrillard was indulging in sensationalism by calling the late twentieth-century social environment "a world made pornographic" vis-à-vis hyperreality—but what else can you call a sphere of human experience so thoroughly pervaded by simulations compared to which their long-estranged templates in the pre-electric world seem undesirably humdrum, even bothersome?</p><p>A vicious circle emerges: the less unmediated reality has to offer us, the more eagerly we retreat from it; the more we all divest from the world beyond our walls, the less it has to offer any one of us. As life in what internet enthusiasts used to call "meatspace" appears increasingly impersonal and unpalatable in comparison with the content substituting real experience, we're more apt to blithely cede control of our environs to parties more interested in them than we are, though their interest is purely venal.</p><p>If perhaps we sometimes or often feel ourselves powerless, it is because we've planted our stake in the world in virtual territory, consenting to be users instead of citizens, spectators instead of agents.</p><p>Forgive me if that comes across as a sententious political harangue. I am, of course, as wired in to machinery as anyone else, so far be it from me to point fingers. And I don't mean to suggest that if we only spent a little less time watching Netflix and a little more time attending city council meetings, arranging neighborhood potlucks, and tending our community garden plots, all the cumulative mistakes of civilization since the invention of the power loom would be corrected. (Though, you have to admit, our time <i>might</i> be better spent that way.) All I want to say is that the culture of electric media is fundamentally one of estrangement and passivity.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbmnLrMWGGws5e1xxYwyZP2JML_DsTodX9XXdyRslolxAE9j71vGRZxuG7DEOhPKIotUGkx5YYtEsM0ZDx072t4nfYrxZfxG3c-U5b_JTEpZnExGKNIhzDC8lIdg_7gS_Hg77Wh8hPe29Aeuv2_-Gc45o8kSnz-jxrzBofpNaqIAMX3YlJQZDiNkra8Q/s728/image_2022-10-22_003453590.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="728" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbmnLrMWGGws5e1xxYwyZP2JML_DsTodX9XXdyRslolxAE9j71vGRZxuG7DEOhPKIotUGkx5YYtEsM0ZDx072t4nfYrxZfxG3c-U5b_JTEpZnExGKNIhzDC8lIdg_7gS_Hg77Wh8hPe29Aeuv2_-Gc45o8kSnz-jxrzBofpNaqIAMX3YlJQZDiNkra8Q/w445-h311/image_2022-10-22_003453590.png" width="445" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Edward Hopper, <i>Morning Sun</i> (1952)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>It doesn't matter if we spend our evening in a YouTube channel, trying to get Calliope Mori to acknowledge our existence, or on Twitter, quote-retweeting our favorite blueticks' screeds against the world's evils—every moment we do so is a vote with our time (insofar as time is money, we are voting with our dollars in a roundabout way) for more of <i>this</i>. More of the way things already are, more of the course we're on.</p><p>Oh, sure. Sometimes a film can inspire devotion to a cause, a pop star's advocacy can shift public attitudes regarding an issue, and social media platforms can be used to fuel and coordinate street protests—and none of this is necessarily inconsequential. But if we believe that the <i>superstructure</i> of civilization (ie., the legal, technical, and social architecture of transnational capitalism) is the root cause, or at least a powerful exacerbating factor in everything fucked up about the state of the world, we must admit that there are few institutions more integral to keeping that state locked in than the mass media complex. </p><p>I take it you're familiar with Rage Against the Machine and the paradox at the heart of their rock n' rap activist ethos. They recorded albums that eloquently and righteously excoriated the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my6bfA14vMQ" target="_blank">military industrial complex</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffV7z5JdIRM" target="_blank">corporate journalism</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVck6DkOi38" target="_blank">landlords and power whores</a>, and the selfsame <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObQLxlsUsl4" target="_blank">culture industry</a> of which they became stakeholders. They sold millions of records, T-shirts, posters, patches, and stickers. FM rock stations and MTV aired their singles between ad breaks. We blasted "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GKdH2GwaO4" target="_blank">Killing in the Name</a>" from our home stereos, discmans, iPods, and our cars' custom sound systems. Perhaps you purchased one of their VHS tapes or DVDs and viewed it on your home entertainment setup. Maybe you were like me, and spun <i>Evil Empire</i> in your boombox while you played Nintendo games by yourself in the basement.</p><p>All in all, their music perhaps helped to shift a cohort's political sensibilities a bit further to the left than they otherwise might have gone, but their message of agitation, anticapitalism/anticolonialism, and social justice was negated in practice by the multitude of behavioral patterns promoted by the cultural arm of the machine Mr. de la Rocha would have us rage against.</p><p>In 2021, Coca-Cola released a run of cans with "<a href="https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2021/01/11/Coca-Cola-cans-feature-Open-to-Better-resolutions" target="_blank">inspirational messages</a>" in the United Kingdom. Most of them were generic feel-good platitudes, as you'd expect. But imagine if you brought home a six-pack of the stuff from Tesco and read on the side of the third or fourth can you pulled from the fridge: <i>Coca-Cola's pursuit of water resources has dried up wells and destroyed local agriculture across the world. The company has historically used violent repression to put down unionization efforts in Central America and elsewhere. Every sip you take brings you closer to diabetes. The Coca-Cola Company's operations make the world incrementally worse. Stop drinking Coca-Cola.</i></p><p>In all likelihood, what would you do? You'd drink the can, maybe feeling a little conflicted about doing so. Then you'd drink the rest of the six-pack. Later on you'd go out and buy more Coca-Cola, and maybe some Dr Pepper for the sake of variety. Sometimes you'd think of the strange, preachy can and feel a pang of regret, but what the hell—you're thirsty.</p><p>And that's more or less why millions of Rage Against the Machine records sold didn't breed a corresponding number of motivated revolutionaries. It isn't so much a case of the inadequacy of the master's tools to dismantle the master's house, but the incompatibility of the action the words and official imagery admonish the listener to take (implicitly or explicitly) with the constellation of habits that have been deeply ingrained by the time one of us has occasion to engage with Rage Against the Machine's music. And when discourse comes into conflict with habit, habit usually prevails.</p><p>Here we also find the reasons for the popularity of online activism and the superficial results it often yields. Most calls to action on a social media platform will be answered in kind—<i>on</i> a social media platform. If the followers/fans of the influencer-as-activist follow her example, what they're most likely to change is the flavor of content they generate and disseminate on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Granted, there are exceptional cases, but even here the most common result is a string of street demonstrations that allow malcontents to blow off steam in public before dispersing, going home, and resuming their usual routines. Being the change you want to see in the world usually entails sacrificing more than just one afternoon and the cost of some poster board and markers to make an Insta-worthy protest sign, and the alienated (but fed and well-entertained) subject of a consumer culture has a conditioned revulsion to calls to go without. </p><p>As the spokespeople of the reigning order, the mythical avatars of advanced capitalism, the celebrity pantheon can be expected to voice concern about recognized social problems, and lend its clout to one side or the other in a debate regarding a controversial issue. In truth, it doesn't matter what cause célèbre any media entity champions through his or her music, films, awards-show speeches, social media accounts, or other platform. The primary impact of the content they have a hand in putting into circulation is to keep us seated, tuned in, marketed to, and content to go on consuming the products and using the services whose dividends fund Big Everything's latest acquisition. As the cynosural face of the culture industry, the celebrity may not be the manufacturer of consent, but can perhaps be called its salesperson.</p><p>Returning to turn-of-the-century agitprop metal bands: in 2002, System of a Down released its third studio record, <i>Steal this Album</i>. Not that I was paying <i>that</i> much attention, but I'm sure a lot of ink was spilled lauding album's anti-consumerist packaging and its allusion to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Book" target="_blank">Abbie Hoffman</a>. In truth, the title was an ironic dig at Napster and the unreleased <i>Toxicity</i> demo tracks its users circulated—the polished versions of which became <i>Steal this Album</i>. Nevertheless: coming out as it did at a time when file-sharing apps had thrown the record industry into convulsions and the "information wants to be free" strain of digital utopianism was on the ascent, <i>Steal this Album</i> was perceived as striking a subversive chord.</p><p>Twenty years later, each of System of a Down's members is <a href="https://metalshout.com/system-of-a-down-net-worth-albums-guitars-members-and-more/" target="_blank">worth upwards of $16 million</a>, and the music industry is still going strong. Sony Records remains in business, and presumably Warner Records still gets a cut every time one us streams a track from the band's first two albums on our personal media/habit monitoring/ad delivery device. So, you know, take that as you will. Call it the Banksy Phenomenon.</p><p>Is the American celebrity actually capable of subversive action? Anything that one says and does that draws media attention to themselves becomes integrated into the program.<span style="font-size: small;">*</span> A group of musicians who stage a Rock Against Gentrification concert, a band of famous stand-up comics who tour under a queer rights or anti-woke banner, a movie star or influencer who brings his entourage to an ICE detention facility or a protestors' encampment—each of these just draws the spectacle in a different direction, and ultimately extends its borders. It mystifies, commodifies, and eventually trivializes whatever it sets its sights on. Call it the Che Guevara T-Shirt Phenomenon.</p><p>Imagine if, instead of "steal my product," the celebrity were to say "don't buy my product, don't steal it, don't engage with it at all, forget I exist, cancel your streaming services, ditch your smartphone, toss out your TV, focus on the people around you instead of strangers in New York and Los Angeles, go out there and <i>live </i>because life is short and the shit that really matters is nothing you can buy or stream or quote tweet." Would <i>that</i> be dangerous?</p><p>Of course not. Depending on who said it, in what venue, and under what circumstances, it might generate a lot of buzz, clicks, thinkpieces, Reddit threads, daytime television chatter, trending hashtags, YouTuber and TikToker monologues, and podcast dialogue, giving us all another reason to keep our eyes and ears turned toward our devices. The spectacle cannot be subverted from within—and when it is with us always as our lives' very touchstone, it is all but inoculated against any resistance most of us have the stomach to mount, as is the vast techno-social machinery on whose behalf the media entity always speaks. No matter what flavor of politics he purports to vend, the celebrity is effectively the voice of conservatism, a Vishnu chanting the mantra which sustains the order of the world.<br /><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* Postscript: Notice how fast Kanye West was punished when he breached a taboo with his antisemitic gibberish. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/oct/28/kanye-west-claims-he-lost-2bn-in-one-day-amid-backlash-to-antisemitic-comments" target="_blank">He claims</a> to have lost $2 billion in one day. There <i>are</i> limits to the spectacle's elasticity; just ask the Dixie Chicks. Or, for that matter, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=53MkBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PT18&ots=2eCv88u0Tj&dq=%22When%20I%20was%20saying%2C%20'White%20people%20go%20to%20hell%2C'%20I%20never%20had%20trouble%20finding%20a%20publisher.%20But%20when%20I%20was%20saying%2C%20'Black%20and%20white%2C%20unite%20and%20fight%2C%20destroy%20capitalism%2C'%20then%20you%20suddenly%20get%20to%20be%20unreasonable!%22&pg=PT18#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">ask Amiri Baraka</a>: "When I was saying, 'White people go to hell,' I never had trouble finding a publisher," he said in a 1996 interview. "But when I was saying, 'Black and white, unite and fight, destroy capitalism,' then you suddenly get to be unreasonable." The truly subversive celebrity diminishes or negates their status as such in short order.</span></p></div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-51987092754854102312022-10-18T01:01:00.008-04:002022-10-31T09:01:28.105-04:00Celebrity, Mythology, & The Machine (part 8)<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif8vWj3hjKf46-4GmqjzH5kXrdjpH8ogAeZ9lCqVpv8C08mjidFuBRERTlbzDFQF5FOqbYk0ZcZdbCWCHh7KPpiy5ARN_ikkRUyuS6G3q7OzWP0diLCI79fvxgcuMIVZbpkJMpn9bpcNHKsfz28K-Coh8s47L2DhUTzf1tjAZ8bJY8dQkSuepiUhriMA/s1119/image_2022-10-14_114957144.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="749" data-original-width="1119" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif8vWj3hjKf46-4GmqjzH5kXrdjpH8ogAeZ9lCqVpv8C08mjidFuBRERTlbzDFQF5FOqbYk0ZcZdbCWCHh7KPpiy5ARN_ikkRUyuS6G3q7OzWP0diLCI79fvxgcuMIVZbpkJMpn9bpcNHKsfz28K-Coh8s47L2DhUTzf1tjAZ8bJY8dQkSuepiUhriMA/w392-h262/image_2022-10-14_114957144.png" width="392" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">YouTube screencap ganked from <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/27/1010355669/chris-crocker-leave-britney-alone-video-creator-reflects-on-whats-changed" target="_blank">npr.org</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Just kidding. There's still one more to go after this. I'm just having too much fun.<br /><br /></p><p><b>VIII. DEFINITIONS, METAPHORS, VELMA & HATSUNE</b><br /><br /></p><p>I would like to submit two provisional definitions.</p><p>First: the celebrity. He or she is a media entity whose content—those artifacts bearing some aspect of their likeness and/or their name—passes some arbitrary threshold of circulation such that it alters the behavior of some arbitrary number of viewing and/or listening persons along similar lines. We can set the bar as high or as low as we please, though it is generally understood that a proper celebrity commands the attention of some tens of thousands of people or more.</p><p>This is not a rigorous definition—surely some more thoughtful person can do better—but it designates the celebrity status as function of media "presence" (which we put in quotation makes because the <i>template</i> for the artifact is very seldom present where the majority of spectators are concerned), and also of the artifacts' effects on those who engage with them. The second part is more slippery than the first, since it doesn't differentiate between something as simple as hovering over a recognized name on a film's IMDB page and something as drastic as recording a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqSTXuJeTks" target="_blank">sobbing excoriation</a> of the press' calloused treatment of a troubled pop star and uploading it to YouTube. But in either case, the act is elicited by a history of engagement with <i>content</i>, not with the human beings to which is its attributed.</p><p>Second definition—tentatively, and far less rigorously—<i>content</i> is stimuli administered by a device. That device might be a film projector, a television screen, a smartphone, a Kindle, a car's stereo system, or whatever. Note that "content" wasn't the <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=content&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccontent%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Ccontent%3B%2Cc0" target="_blank">vernacular term</a> which encompassed written material, television programming, film, music, etc. until the internet age.</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>There is no reason that a "device" can't consist of a stack of folded pages covered in printed text, sandwiched within a paperboard cover. But, to be fair, print matter alone elevates few people to celebrity status these days. Most of what we read, we read on a screen.<p></p><p>This framing rightfully ignores the value judgement that was once implicit in the attribution of celebrity as opposed to notoriety. Irrespective of degree, Chris Chan is as much a celebrity as Meryl Streep. The images of both appear on our screens, their recorded voices emanate from speakers in our vicinity, we read words they've written or are quoted as saying in our browsers. We are interested in what we see them doing. We speak of them (or post about them) as though we <i>know</i> them. We buy tickets to see a film Streep stars in; we may have spent money purchasing a commemorative Chris Chan coin or a Sonichu medallion. Questions like <i>why?</i> or <i>what have they done to merit our interest and money?</i> or are irrelevant. (No, the money spent on an Etsy purchase of a felt Sonichu badge doesn't go to Chris Chan, but the buyer is nevertheless investing in the Chris Chan "brand.")</p><p>We needn't concern ourselves here about the ways in which public attention feeds back to the human behind the celebrity image as social capital, remuneration, invasive scrutiny, psychosis, and so on. It will suffice to say that the culture industry rewards and warps its actors as well as its spectators.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSkXC2_M6wMj_qTUuGyIv4q49HWzFXbawxmnLyouNNnX9t_ncnQj-s5gBMC3FIC8eN24fyfqDDPv51RGsZZ_u18uqfMVZntPFrxhu1K3Q8PGAz589fzsAvGUPI3qN0DlAg9zwE0OAPSRWERY9ATu6duYIk5YNF8st202LkkEUPTchykffa__XB41629A/s596/image_2022-10-14_114423339.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="596" data-original-width="345" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSkXC2_M6wMj_qTUuGyIv4q49HWzFXbawxmnLyouNNnX9t_ncnQj-s5gBMC3FIC8eN24fyfqDDPv51RGsZZ_u18uqfMVZntPFrxhu1K3Q8PGAz589fzsAvGUPI3qN0DlAg9zwE0OAPSRWERY9ATu6duYIk5YNF8st202LkkEUPTchykffa__XB41629A/w249-h430/image_2022-10-14_114423339.png" width="249" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Valentine Weigel, "Tree of Dark and Light"<br />from the <i>Studium Universale </i>(1695)</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>We might analogize the mass media complex with a forest orchard. Perhaps and the roots and their mycelia cultures would be the social organs committed to extracting and refining the raw materials used in the manufacture of televisions, video game consoles, personal computers, stereos, smartphones, and so on. The trunk would then be the infrastructure of content creation and distribution, from wireless networks to fiber optic cables to loading docks to recording studios, etc. At the risk of straining the metaphor, the leaves are the power grid, the fuel source, by virtue of which the conveyor belts turn, the wifi hub emits a signal, the screens light up, the little red bulb on the camera flickers on. The content would then be the flowers and the fruit: dispensable in the short term, but absolutely necessary for the grove's long-term survival. They allow the ecosystem to perpetuate itself through reproduction, and can only do so by attracting pollinators—in this case, the members of the public who buy the devices, subscribe to the streaming video and music services, routinely glance at the social media feeds, watch the livestream, and so on. </div><div><br /></div><div>Shut up. It's an <i>excellent</i> metaphor.</div><p>In this sublime and inspired parable, the celebrity—as the face and the voice of the device—is the characteristic of the flower to which the pollinator responds. Angiosperms couldn't have outcompeted the gymnosperms to blanket the planet's surface without making themselves attractive to insects; the Walt Disney Company wouldn't be a multinational corporation with myriad subsidiaries involved in real estate, property management, hospitality, insurance, private equity, venture capital, payroll software, etc., if Walt's films hadn't packed the cinemas in the first half of the twentieth century.</p><p>I realize that I appear to have walked into a blunder. This example fails, you say, because Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Goofy, et al. can't be called celebrities because they aren't human. But then again—<i>neither is the celebrity</i>. At least—not the celebrity which the spectator confronts, which is only <i>content</i>.</p><p>We cheered when Elliot Page came out as transgender; we're cheering for Velma from <i>Scooby-Doo</i> "coming out" as a lesbian. On <i>our </i>end, the fact that an person named Elliot Page exists independently of the film, the televised appearance, and the magazine profile (as opposed to the non-human Velma) amounts only to a quantitative difference. The real celebrity, who doesn't require a voice actor, a team of animators, scriptwriters, etc. generates more content by virtue of having a life outside the film role whose events can be publicized (made the basis of content) at anyone's pleasure.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjhwx7S1RMUepTa5hT8h3uWVrdI4aFUOhWs4nUUAiFXMVFqjipvwh-LHLJN00_MkNSoiauHZnCZ_H7R1K3TiJDzws_fxzI3yyqTf-0qGhBWMfhOPdz_WhYd-3rE183DB-cW8eOKeZHnG16VId0uu6C7AT2S-FVzJgF4rBWpVqPCmKOlAgsTW12eFGckg/s1260/image_2022-10-14_113337067.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1260" data-original-width="800" height="366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjhwx7S1RMUepTa5hT8h3uWVrdI4aFUOhWs4nUUAiFXMVFqjipvwh-LHLJN00_MkNSoiauHZnCZ_H7R1K3TiJDzws_fxzI3yyqTf-0qGhBWMfhOPdz_WhYd-3rE183DB-cW8eOKeZHnG16VId0uu6C7AT2S-FVzJgF4rBWpVqPCmKOlAgsTW12eFGckg/w232-h366/image_2022-10-14_113337067.png" width="232" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">see? google <i>can't</i> be evil.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>If Velma had verified and frequently updated Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok accounts, gave staged interviews to Hollywood journalists, was "photographed" beside Elliot Page at the Oscars, seemed to progress through "arcs" in which she flew high on the success of a film or other personal endeavor, entered into a whirlwind relationship with another famous cartoon character, had a feud with Azealia Banks, went through difficult times, made some unfortunate fashion choices, etc.—all convincingly and compellingly <i>simulating</i> the public presence of a famous entertainer—people would be just as fascinated, emotionally invested, and eager to chatter about it in all the usual venues. Maybe the only difference would be that we'd blame a production staff rather than Velma herself when her content disappoints or upsets us. (To really <i>commit</i> to the simulation, Velma's "handlers" would have to be willing to make choices they know won't go over well, and not be pressured into dialing them back right away.) </p><p>In any event, we'd stay tuned. We'd watch whatever TV series or film she's featured in. We'd mash the like and subscribe buttons. We'd teach the algorithm to deliver us the content that keeps us tapping and scrolling and viewing. We'd boost the stock values of Alphabet, Meta, Twitter, Warner Bros. Discovery, Samsung, Comcast, and every other entity with a hand in putting Velma content in front of us. Some of us would be interested in knowing where Velma buys her clothes, which brand of concealer she uses, which candidate she supports in the Democratic primaries. When Velma speaks, we'll listen. When Velma acts, we'll watch. When Velma breaks into tears in a vulnerable moment during a livestream, our hearts will go out to her.</p><p>At that point, pointing out the difference between Velma and the "real" celebrity will be as unwelcome as pointing out and explaining the special effects to the person beside you, who'd very much just like to watch the movie without you dragging them out of their immersion with your niggling commentary.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixyIHBXKX69Ee8CmSnb1gFFACAegeOh4s_cVsWvaUyToYcSjy5vdW0Wz_ofKx9VNh2z8-gGF0eaXWWHpGzL309CWoaDHhb5t4-XixIf-6hb4IZlNycLcOKhmiGVe5ZJbMMcdmu8wrPqJcwvG8VW-LL6m43bG6Nokutke7fJ-8p0Aq90VQhX3UGVdYFGQ/s680/image_2022-10-17_004830982.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="462" data-original-width="680" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixyIHBXKX69Ee8CmSnb1gFFACAegeOh4s_cVsWvaUyToYcSjy5vdW0Wz_ofKx9VNh2z8-gGF0eaXWWHpGzL309CWoaDHhb5t4-XixIf-6hb4IZlNycLcOKhmiGVe5ZJbMMcdmu8wrPqJcwvG8VW-LL6m43bG6Nokutke7fJ-8p0Aq90VQhX3UGVdYFGQ/w486-h330/image_2022-10-17_004830982.png" width="486" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image copy/pasted from <a href="https://mixmag.asia/read/japanese-virtual-idol-hatsune-miku-will-perform-at-coachella-2020-local" target="_blank">Mixmag Asia</a>. (Article headline: "Japanese virtual<br />idol Hatsune Miku will perform at Coachella 2020.")</td></tr></tbody></table><p>The literate public's interest in the proto-celebrity beau monde of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, fueled by the burgeoning newspaper industry, was not simply so much gawking at fashion and scandal. Not entirely. The beau monde represented <i>power</i>. If, reading between the lines in a fashionable intelligence column, one saw one noble family snubbed by another, she might have been glimpsing political machinations among the national milieu of policymakers, legislators, and primary landowners. The bourgeoisie's efforts to imitate the manners and dress of the nobility (and their perusing the fashionable intelligence to understand the field) were likewise about power: they wanted to consolidate and <i>legitimize</i> their own by adopting those signifiers of status borne by the aristocracy of the dying ternary order.</p><p>As we've seen, the ascension of electric media pushed the economic and political corps d'elite out of the fashionable eye, which gazed increasingly upon the performer whose likeness circulated in television, film, and recorded music. In a sense, this represents the abstraction of social currency from actual political power—all the better for everyone involved. The public is more likely to continually smile on the actor and the musician in their capacity as a social avatar, since they can't have market crashes, ill-conceived military adventures, mass layoffs, rapacious oligopolizing, or boneheaded domestic policy decisions laid at their feet. By the same token, the oligarch and his plenipotentiaries in elected office can rule more effectively (where their own interests are concerned) when the public's attention is on Ezra Miller and Billie Eilish instead of on them. Isolation of functions with a view to efficiency was from the beginning the guiding ethos of capitalist organization.</p><p>The paradigm shift from electric to <i>digital</i> media presents another possibility for abstraction: making the human performer superfluous to the media entity. It's possible that Hatsune Miku and Hololive are forerunners of things to come—the celebrity's apotheosis into <i>pure</i> content. (A true creature of myth.)</p><p>Yes, yes, I know that each Hololive figure is the <i>personal</i> brand of its creator/performer, but that could be temporary. I don't know what kind of contracts they signed with Hololive, but if it or a similar agency were to retain the rights to the characters' likenesses, Korone and Gawr Gura could become <i>roles</i> that streamers are hired to play, just like Batman or James Bond in the movies. Future fans may well discuss the merits of various "eras" of a VTuber idol whose avatar was passed along to several different performers over the years.</p><p>For that matter, imagine a Disney that reviews its <i>long</i> game and decides that it can't permanently retire any of its Marvel Cinematic Universe characters. In true comic books style, Iron Man is to be brought back from the dead, but Disney understands that everybody would notice and grouse at the inconsistency of anybody other than Robert Downy, Jr. appearing as the character. But—what if Downey signed a $500 million contract licensing Disney to use his CG likeness in all future Marvel films, forever? What if technological improvements allow for a simulation of Downey that's absolutely indistinguishable from a video recording of him? What if Downey's voice could be digitally synthesized, obviating the need to drag him into a recording booth or find a string of actors to imitate him in the next fifty MCU films?</p><p>What if Disney just says fuck it, we've got the technology, so from now on all new MCU characters going forward will be 100% computer generated? I mean, sure, maybe an actor will be needed for purposes of motion capture, but at that point they're just looking for any rando with the appropriate frame and some aptitude for communicative body language. It would be like casting for Jason in a <i>Friday the 13th </i>flick: only the assiduous superfan would commit to memory the name of the man wearing the "mask." Same goes for anyone brought in to record dialogue that's then deepfaked to produce the appropriate pitch and timbre. The reality of the character would achieve a height of independence and seeming concreteness that isn't possible when he shares his likeness with a human performer who has a separate existence (or media presence) from him.</p><p>In 2007, we called Crocker crazy—but now "Leave Britney Alone" seems rather ahead of the curve. What might have come across as a uniquely unhinged parasocial relationship in 2007 might not look all that strange lately (especially not if you're familiar with the fan culture surrounding Japanese and Korean pop stars). Perhaps history will discover the same prescience in the kids who state in their social media bios that they "kin" Rebecca from <i>Cyberpunk Edgerunners</i> (or whom-/whatever), throw a fit when a VTuber is reported to be dating somebody "IRL," or are eerily <i>committed</i> to their "waifu" or "husbando" from a video game. After all, any behavior is only called "pathological" or "abnormal" until the swelling number of instances normalizes it by fiat. <br /><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2022/10/celebrity-mythology-machine-part-9.html">FINAL</a></b></p>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-68266445129387420392022-10-11T00:22:00.002-04:002022-11-13T01:25:50.307-05:00Celebrity, Mythology, & The Machine (part 7)<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ZjyrYCYt70SUMSQL5lLwqaMODqWm6lZZFKMSIAeBaocwdeHGeTNQCSVJV71Ab3WfqDmVdqwJkpKGKvxgiSmWpZxp0zeV9G28vYiGagaZWJR235zc6GmFX5kD6N4RBeuUjyjNmG75AEfh_uDKiwF6YFV3WGuJ2t88vecH4Kf1ZtHXclF8kmGI0cJ_xg/s1352/image_2022-10-10_233425895.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="689" data-original-width="1352" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ZjyrYCYt70SUMSQL5lLwqaMODqWm6lZZFKMSIAeBaocwdeHGeTNQCSVJV71Ab3WfqDmVdqwJkpKGKvxgiSmWpZxp0zeV9G28vYiGagaZWJR235zc6GmFX5kD6N4RBeuUjyjNmG75AEfh_uDKiwF6YFV3WGuJ2t88vecH4Kf1ZtHXclF8kmGI0cJ_xg/w464-h236/image_2022-10-10_233425895.png" width="464" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Via <a href="https://www.insider.com/why-the-world-became-obsessed-with-the-depp-v-heard-trial-2022-5" target="_blank">Insider</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><b>VII. VIRTUAL REALITY</b><br /><br />With a little shopping, the photo above could easily pass as a scene from an outdoor Harry Styles concert. This is a scene from a parade, not a judicial occasion.</p><p>Some people buy a ticket for a stadium seat so they can shout themselves hoarse encouraging and cursing their favorite football team; others visit the courthouse where a celebrity trial is being held so they can cheer on the dreamy litigant they've been stanning since high school. It's all the same: modern variations on the theme of the Great Dionysia.</p><p>Depp v. Heard played out like an ancient Greek drama in which the attentive public comprised the chorus. Two private persons, whom we all <i>seemed</i> to know, or <i>felt</i> we knew on the basis of our having so often seen and heard their likenesses in films, read interviews with them in glossy magazines, parsed and hit the Like button on their social media updates, etc., entered a courtroom in Fairfax, Virginia to settle a civil dispute. </p><p></p><p>There was no possibility that the trial would ensue like a mundane legal process for determining whether the defendant's article in the <i>Washington Post</i> actually constituted defamation, as the plantiff alleged. The entire proceeding was livestreamed, and we viewed it as though it were a protracted film in which Depp and Heard were co-stars—that is to say that it was entertainment, witnessed, contemplated, and discussed by members of society in which entertainment is a profoundly serious matter.<br /><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>The unscripted spontaneity of the event changed little with regard to our perception of it. If Depp and Heard were being their "real" selves in the courtroom, we simply took it in as though each of them were playing a different sort of role than we were accustomed to seeing. Some of us applauded Heard for the vulnerability she brought to her performance.<div><p></p><p>The resemblance of discourse to surrounding the trial to the the low-, middle-, and highbrow chatter attending the latest episodes of a prestige TV megahit might be startling if it we weren't so acculturated to it. We praised and maligned the characters, tried to predict the outcome from the developments of a given episode, argued about whether one or the other protagonist was more in the right (or less in the wrong), and expatiated upon the symbolism of the drama, nominating Depp and Heard as avatars of this or that social movement and its associated hashtag(s), and as proxies for The Narcissist, The Gaslighter, the couple in a Toxic Relationship, and other such modern archetypes. I believe we can safely assume that the words regarding the trial spoken and listened to in the context of unscheduled conversations between persons were vastly outnumbered by the words <i>typed</i> about it, or uttered into a microphone by podcasters, YouTubers, TikTokkers, talk show hosts, etc.</p><p>An ongoing narrative of a conflict between the likenesses of Captain Jack Sparrow and Queen Mera of Atlantis, rich with psychological depth and abounding with imagery and allusion, from which all of us drew moral, political, and personal meanings that we shared and debated, and which held us transfixed until the cathartic resolution that <i>materially</i> affected us in no way whatsoever, though it left our perception of the world somewhat altered—what can we call this but theater?</p><p>Whether one employed hashtags promoting the righteousness of Depp/Heard or vilifying his/her perfidious ex-spouse, everyone invested in the trial was essentially on the same side. Regardless of which "team" anyone was on, their loyalty <i>truly</i> belonged to the device—the machine that delivered the trial to them, fed them related content selected by algorithm, gave them any number of venues in which they could make their opinion known to likeminded strangers and castigate members of the rival faction, and offer up so many thinkpieces, Twitter threads, and TikTok harangues to give them so, so much to consider with respect to all of this monumental content.</p><p>For Depp, Heard, the lawyers, the jury, and so on, it <i>was</i> a legal proceeding whose verdict carried real, measurable financial consequences for the loser. Of course. But to the remote spectator, it was a crossover event. A must-see production. A chapter in the hyperreal multimedia franchise of current events. The stuff that life is lately made of.</p><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2022/10/celebrity-mythology-machine-part-8.html" target="">PART EIGHT</a></b></div><p></p></div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-82846291906791729802022-10-01T01:59:00.026-04:002023-05-07T00:02:45.805-04:00On Return to Monkey Island<p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">In spite of all the admonitions of my reason (and though I've got <a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2022/09/mythology-celebrity-machine-part-1.html" target="_blank">something else</a> I really ought to be finishing), I'm compelled to offer my paltry observations of <i>Return to Monkey Island </i>and its reception. I know I will be saying nothing that hasn't already been promulgated throughout the message boards and social networks of people who play games, or been the subject of a thousand YouTube monologues. Yet I apparently can't help myself. Like Ron Gilbert's previous game, 2017's <i>Thimbleweed Park</i>, <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> reminded me why I don't play video games much anymore—and <i>maybe</i> that's a good thing [question mark].</span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">There will be spoilers. Also, most of the screenshots were captured by other people.</span></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">In case you happen to be reading this and aren't familiar with the <i>Monkey Island</i> games, we should probably start from the beginning. To understand why there are grown-ass adults filled with despair and angst after completing <i>Return to Monkey Island</i>, you need to know the timeline and the background of these games. If you<i> are </i>familiar with the series, well, enjoy the walk down memory lane.</span></p><p>I should state for the record that I'm a relative newcomer to <i>Monkey Island</i>. I was dimly aware of it around the time I was playing <i>Day of the Tentacle</i> and <i>Sam & Max Hit the Road </i>(1994ish) but didn't actually play any of the games until Shirley and I blazed through the whole series between July and October of 2020. So bear in mind that I <i>hadn't</i> been waiting thirty years for another <i>Monkey Island</i> game masterminded by Ron Gilbert, though I was still excited enough to make <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> the first game I've preordered in several years.</p><p>Concerning Ron Gilbert—well, let's look at his Wikipedia page. Born 1964. Got a job with Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts) a couple years after graduating from college. Was given the greenlight to develop his own game in 1985. That game was the seminal point n' click adventure <i>Maniac Mansion</i>, which was released on the PC in 1987. Its NES port came out in the United States in 1990, where it was my introduction to the point n' click genre and became entangled with my destiny in some truly bizarre ways.</p><p>Gilbert worked on a few more point n' click games in the late eighties before directing and designing <i>The Secret of Monkey Island</i>, released on the PC in 1990.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix96oAxLx6dyCH5RxHexvhBDxAGldlUFYpCd1neAmjEnehcis977Aw-nnpGwoBDafCm_E2iOM5Rw6mVmdSlEswWG5HgXyG5N9f78ycKJ8D_KibRrCAPumGZB_JIn6E9RismfS6_2CG8ECDZ0LzdeOjnGm_Pnm_PjRwoWwqqHyu1rpqM6rSBLfG7yn1ag/s336/image_2022-09-24_001038741.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix96oAxLx6dyCH5RxHexvhBDxAGldlUFYpCd1neAmjEnehcis977Aw-nnpGwoBDafCm_E2iOM5Rw6mVmdSlEswWG5HgXyG5N9f78ycKJ8D_KibRrCAPumGZB_JIn6E9RismfS6_2CG8ECDZ0LzdeOjnGm_Pnm_PjRwoWwqqHyu1rpqM6rSBLfG7yn1ag/s16000/image_2022-09-24_001038741.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLQE2VHIIEBJMNq7InG59IAMJCDlZHX3BorQYFiAxxSNVueUh_SC6nL0g9kjr-qqgNTcKuqdpywoKSvMAYIGK-aAFPUnkzkpQx0b1QsR0_Z3g50lb3jl24Aik06JqyikhJq9z2mtDuasFsyz_W8rKtgPo0VRLXo8GNIaHFCDDtPCYOaIsRV5QU3-AJA/s336/image_2022-09-24_000824399.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLQE2VHIIEBJMNq7InG59IAMJCDlZHX3BorQYFiAxxSNVueUh_SC6nL0g9kjr-qqgNTcKuqdpywoKSvMAYIGK-aAFPUnkzkpQx0b1QsR0_Z3g50lb3jl24Aik06JqyikhJq9z2mtDuasFsyz_W8rKtgPo0VRLXo8GNIaHFCDDtPCYOaIsRV5QU3-AJA/s16000/image_2022-09-24_000824399.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-XEBcjVf1Q42JgJs31iAQS7eOd9Mr1ZOPHNZiqxeEyfQNmCBAPhRtKK1b6XR_Az3GNzNyVHs9Wi4sKdiQd9VocHTgWn47P2FHWmXfKo8iqTKwFv3ijoDqRPs8wSSN7llJypIq7UPw81t7dXIrrZfv4lQwz6QoPDwJ5nP55-4MlADYfi46uGKq65JkvQ/s336/image_2022-09-24_001206855.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-XEBcjVf1Q42JgJs31iAQS7eOd9Mr1ZOPHNZiqxeEyfQNmCBAPhRtKK1b6XR_Az3GNzNyVHs9Wi4sKdiQd9VocHTgWn47P2FHWmXfKo8iqTKwFv3ijoDqRPs8wSSN7llJypIq7UPw81t7dXIrrZfv4lQwz6QoPDwJ5nP55-4MlADYfi46uGKq65JkvQ/s16000/image_2022-09-24_001206855.png" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIAk1n5CtAxNHChE2tJsF8nyUQfJ1xyLbWmshDhzZeD0wWWyhSGI5CwNWlBNgz9pCICgS2A8axIfbEyuN_trRWF0HpEEPnWSsct7heD0an2Eku7xKp6aMj8cSq637S08dOGT0P02dHts0HJH9iSpp2HseHSmijJn0RNzNTYCiDC95CtDEk1ee0IMSeSA/s336/image_2022-09-24_001317620.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIAk1n5CtAxNHChE2tJsF8nyUQfJ1xyLbWmshDhzZeD0wWWyhSGI5CwNWlBNgz9pCICgS2A8axIfbEyuN_trRWF0HpEEPnWSsct7heD0an2Eku7xKp6aMj8cSq637S08dOGT0P02dHts0HJH9iSpp2HseHSmijJn0RNzNTYCiDC95CtDEk1ee0IMSeSA/s16000/image_2022-09-24_001317620.png" /></a></div><br />So: <i>The Secret of Monkey Island</i> is a comic adventure set in Caribbean during Pirate Times. Who knows <i>when</i> that is, really; the world of Monkey Island is one defined by anachronism and wanton ahistoricity.<p>Enter Guybrush Threepwood: a bright-eyed lad who wants more than anything to be a pirate. One of the greatest heroes in the annals of video games. Hapless and naïve, yet resourceful. As often as circumstances make him the butt of a running cosmic joke, things mysteriously tend to work out in his favor. Since the release of the <i>Ultimate Talkie Edition</i> in 1993, he's been voiced by the indispensable Dominic Armato. </p><p>[<b>Very late postscript:</b> I goofed this one up but good. One Lisa H comments below: <i>"Ultimate Talkie" isn't an official release; it's the fan name for patching the voice packs from the Special Editions of Secret (2009) and LeChuck's Revenge (2010) into the original graphics to make versions that can be run in ScummVM or DOS, and fixes a few bugs. The CD version of Secret that was released in 1992 (not 1993) had some enhanced music but did not have any voices. Dominic was first cast as Guybrush for Curse of Monkey Island (1997). He would only have been 16/17 in 1993!</i> </p><p>It's been several months, but I definitely remember having a hard time finding a release date for "Ultimate Talkie," since I didn't realize it was a patch. Apparently I came across the release date for the European CD-ROM version, assumed <i>that </i>was the talkie version, and neglected to doublecheck. As for Armato's age—I was aware he would have been a teenager, but didn't see it for the red flag that it was. I just figured he started young. Either way, how embarrassing. I wrote this thing in a hurry and wasn't as thorough in my research as I ought to have been.]</p><p>On the pirate stronghold of Melee Island, Guybrush attempts to prove his mettle and impress the pirate leaders. In the process, he wins the heart of Elaine Marley, Melee Island's beloved young governor, an adventurer in her own right.</p><p>But then—! Elaine is abuducted by the evil ghost pirate LeChuck, who whisks her off to his lair on the mysterious Monkey Island! Guybrush must acquire a ship, gather a crew, and sail to Monkey Island to rescue Elaine before LeChuck forces her to marry him! Thrilling!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTph14nB0MAMGHS2syENu-ziKxTEvrpNohjSwtH7leXlP3SdrPWDtH4PDIVZ8b3dmsoxxe6YBSwlZvk_ByuHgAqku1b9lOr3Uj0J7AMQyaBimoQr476UElYo0huJtmEgC_ce9UCtdfoOVUy0ns_TOsdv32El94ypDmljMnR4U-uaN8BvRHChjv1JLAVg/s336/image_2022-09-24_001601762.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTph14nB0MAMGHS2syENu-ziKxTEvrpNohjSwtH7leXlP3SdrPWDtH4PDIVZ8b3dmsoxxe6YBSwlZvk_ByuHgAqku1b9lOr3Uj0J7AMQyaBimoQr476UElYo0huJtmEgC_ce9UCtdfoOVUy0ns_TOsdv32El94ypDmljMnR4U-uaN8BvRHChjv1JLAVg/s16000/image_2022-09-24_001601762.png" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLdd8dBXbdhqjOPhFT7nt2wMpqzTJbWHcbXvUj9xxGzV37M8L0hfew7PIra1MNLKlzWUQ6cDO2HTMqscHEkP5_JbYb9fxZ1FgAGbSJXRp4FjyPzHFjrb8ceND2gEIt15ObfHSV8MOymtDR0nu19wS4UmwsSaRXvD6BlCbp9aE0TNGcuWOdA5p53H7qZQ/s336/image_2022-09-24_001716022.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLdd8dBXbdhqjOPhFT7nt2wMpqzTJbWHcbXvUj9xxGzV37M8L0hfew7PIra1MNLKlzWUQ6cDO2HTMqscHEkP5_JbYb9fxZ1FgAGbSJXRp4FjyPzHFjrb8ceND2gEIt15ObfHSV8MOymtDR0nu19wS4UmwsSaRXvD6BlCbp9aE0TNGcuWOdA5p53H7qZQ/s16000/image_2022-09-24_001716022.png" /></a></div><p><i>The Secret of Monkey Island</i> is a bit clunky by modern standards, but so densely laden with charm to hold up exceptionally well for its age—especially if you're playing the "talkie" version with voiced dialogue and are a fan of pixel art. Gilbert has said that his main inspiration for <i>Monkey Island</i> was the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World. (Or maybe Disneyland. I get them mixed up.) He wanted to make a game that would simulate the experience of getting off the ride and being able to move about in and interact with its world. He and his collaborators did an excellent job of it.</p><p>Still with me?</p><p><i>Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge</i> came out in 1991. It was a much more <i>ambitious</i> game than its predecessor. This time you can travel freely between three different islands, and solving a puzzle on one usually requires prep work on at least one of the other two. If you're a connoisseur of pixel art, you can't but be astonished by its graphics. ("Scanned VGA art is expensive," LeChuck can be made to quip at one point.) And its story...well, let's just say it has an avant garde finale. Truly.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4IvZ80JwSWcFquTK7upolApPp7atgiWP6s3X6eQUxbjPMG27Hy_jhcRPuhsKSfEWboTCJfj6DVk3GTNeMMppwHrpR3RAWqrGHQOFidHWdlN4kyn7ubd1nrOwuLpyopf7RrAzHy3mQ9mge2lFff8op_O3SlogZxqehBXuuN9P32_5yD7_UtDPqJ6BKbQ/s336/image_2022-09-24_001826695.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4IvZ80JwSWcFquTK7upolApPp7atgiWP6s3X6eQUxbjPMG27Hy_jhcRPuhsKSfEWboTCJfj6DVk3GTNeMMppwHrpR3RAWqrGHQOFidHWdlN4kyn7ubd1nrOwuLpyopf7RrAzHy3mQ9mge2lFff8op_O3SlogZxqehBXuuN9P32_5yD7_UtDPqJ6BKbQ/s16000/image_2022-09-24_001826695.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgymEWibD9WZirNTSvxuyuneSi8KV4tznIzQcLmlp6Zdj2a7YKP7lBFhIo7YjBnx07dqnPpwTD612wqggo0LX-b5ygpc01sBrGIWZsKPtTn3wjpP-xwNEOuqpL5QF_nZbAxSvwUrTiVrwPmLC2steL30F8-FlJ8BRTiotpaVKCcDNJ36MGwrcJsYC1igQ/s336/image_2022-09-24_002235449.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgymEWibD9WZirNTSvxuyuneSi8KV4tznIzQcLmlp6Zdj2a7YKP7lBFhIo7YjBnx07dqnPpwTD612wqggo0LX-b5ygpc01sBrGIWZsKPtTn3wjpP-xwNEOuqpL5QF_nZbAxSvwUrTiVrwPmLC2steL30F8-FlJ8BRTiotpaVKCcDNJ36MGwrcJsYC1igQ/s16000/image_2022-09-24_002235449.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2MWzo7F_QKwK9njx72xVfQmRqChrk2lCAxrGPqJXN6qlB6lUJVmgH_TFX1e8fhIJQJr0sR61YjJcvZLHeQ8RjSM3gcO96T9liGM7s3DyeS9omx_dxQKbj6U5QalcMhqMXRd2kO_XGLVTImkjnd7VXF3NNpwNYrN1lNEWUKJamLmGN-Oy4juKXLAKCBA/s336/image_2022-09-24_002132601.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2MWzo7F_QKwK9njx72xVfQmRqChrk2lCAxrGPqJXN6qlB6lUJVmgH_TFX1e8fhIJQJr0sR61YjJcvZLHeQ8RjSM3gcO96T9liGM7s3DyeS9omx_dxQKbj6U5QalcMhqMXRd2kO_XGLVTImkjnd7VXF3NNpwNYrN1lNEWUKJamLmGN-Oy4juKXLAKCBA/s16000/image_2022-09-24_002132601.png" /></a></div><p>The plot: all the other pirates are sick of listening to Guybrush boast about the time he defeated the ghost pirate LeChuck, so our hero sets out to immortalize his name in the annals of pirate lore by finding the legendary treasure known only as Big Whoop. To this end, he must track down the four pieces of a lost treasure map that were once in the keeping of Governor Marley's grandfather and his crew.</p><p>Speaking of Governor Marley, Elaine and Guybrush are on the outs. Actually, she regards him as something of a self-centered, immature jerk. And it's not hard to understand why, given the undercurrent of of self-serving amorality running through <i>Monkey Island 2</i>. Virtually every point n' click game forces you to lie, cheat, and steal to progress through its puzzles, but the immersed gamer can usually soothe his or her conscience with the observation that nobody who doesn't deserve it comes out much the worse for wear. But Guybrush's sophomore adventure has him getting totally innocent people fired, locked up, tortured, blown up, and buried alive—all to get his greedy mitts on Big Whoop (and the everlasting bragging rights it will earn him). </p><p>Ah, yes: and LeChuck is back, resurrected as a zombie. While Guybrush searches for the four pieces of the treasure map, LeChuck searches for Guybrush—and finds him just after Guybrush gets his hands on the final map piece.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqDrSxGdP3e94LKuixbq0LLFKTT5xELGLw5SPNuzFtZv9OEoy5d8CIWlaSrHvhw-oSNYK1Ue_z0uyGMsL7i2-AwwVqoSDv4D_3CZL7EdKjHI_0XOCM4q30ATQdEHzwxy9DwSAY7lYnenQ2JXlD_bwy5CugDh3HU2fFj8GjW9ccwO7_cg2jB9Z1uvSMiw/s336/image_2022-09-24_002650673.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqDrSxGdP3e94LKuixbq0LLFKTT5xELGLw5SPNuzFtZv9OEoy5d8CIWlaSrHvhw-oSNYK1Ue_z0uyGMsL7i2-AwwVqoSDv4D_3CZL7EdKjHI_0XOCM4q30ATQdEHzwxy9DwSAY7lYnenQ2JXlD_bwy5CugDh3HU2fFj8GjW9ccwO7_cg2jB9Z1uvSMiw/s16000/image_2022-09-24_002650673.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Y3HF9gtf7ylZTH1fn2ZMi45T66dxIASR0aShpiS31bIyniHvAVqZugUIySIw8iSIv9B5UeTBfEODCdy85O0rXjBWCHAmppmM8hsDZSvA8xoqte0yap6MuA0cyS8bRMqz2lB5Eqoc4yV3Nii2sUbH3iF-oM9SvU2WCRWGvfY59xcrjhL-U3PySaqqkw/s336/image_2022-09-24_003253107.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Y3HF9gtf7ylZTH1fn2ZMi45T66dxIASR0aShpiS31bIyniHvAVqZugUIySIw8iSIv9B5UeTBfEODCdy85O0rXjBWCHAmppmM8hsDZSvA8xoqte0yap6MuA0cyS8bRMqz2lB5Eqoc4yV3Nii2sUbH3iF-oM9SvU2WCRWGvfY59xcrjhL-U3PySaqqkw/s16000/image_2022-09-24_003253107.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0wH3NEGB0MD0fWKeP8CJ8Vkz_L5wB3lEvJTRHDb0uUHdTn87gXmRbylYdtQiI3-jPPDQen0CVZagPwOpKFCuP92mUdIOIic_BAhMlW1zZetiMX9_jwZDksKR-nfqQzr94Pr5VQB6SffXU6Rvb0a4_i5xqG1O0eIkxgfSyC3OKUFFoFqoF7KGxBq2ghQ/s336/image_2022-09-24_002900225.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0wH3NEGB0MD0fWKeP8CJ8Vkz_L5wB3lEvJTRHDb0uUHdTn87gXmRbylYdtQiI3-jPPDQen0CVZagPwOpKFCuP92mUdIOIic_BAhMlW1zZetiMX9_jwZDksKR-nfqQzr94Pr5VQB6SffXU6Rvb0a4_i5xqG1O0eIkxgfSyC3OKUFFoFqoF7KGxBq2ghQ/s16000/image_2022-09-24_002900225.png" /></a></div><p>Guybrush's explosive escape from LeChuck's fortress lands him on Dinky Island—which, as luck would have it, is precisely where the complete treasure map designates the location of Big Whoop.</p><p>Discovering a conspicuous X on the forest floor, Guybrush dynamites his way into the caverns beneath Dinky Island. His surroundings look very suspiciously like the maintenance tunnels of a theme park, but he doesn't have time to give them much thought. He's trapped down there with LeChuck.</p><p>Here's where it gets weird.</p><p>First, Guybrush and LeChuck reenact the famous scene from <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>: LeChuck reveals that he's Guybrush's <i>brother</i>. "Search your feelings! You know it to be true!" (Hey, this <i>is</i> a LucasArts game.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Z6m9rWbFNpqIuUZzqat0SoMNJgcf9mUkzCl9kRkCQ1mENJTuU75Aii621Y6jHOwIv9sKJLJzuCptSJNPj1N1LofaWG875iOpBd_mhPlzxTsFkkfweL0Q9rMieqeOSOjxNEHYsGhhcM8HuRBMwxy41wrdsHNkRbS0ci5qNWjUPsM_WukjwYeKZVfosw/s336/image_2022-09-24_003414680.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Z6m9rWbFNpqIuUZzqat0SoMNJgcf9mUkzCl9kRkCQ1mENJTuU75Aii621Y6jHOwIv9sKJLJzuCptSJNPj1N1LofaWG875iOpBd_mhPlzxTsFkkfweL0Q9rMieqeOSOjxNEHYsGhhcM8HuRBMwxy41wrdsHNkRbS0ci5qNWjUPsM_WukjwYeKZVfosw/s16000/image_2022-09-24_003414680.png" /></a></div><p>Second—and this is incidental, but important—as Guybrush wends through the tunnels, trying to escape LeChuck, he comes across an elevator leading up to the back alley in the town center of Melee Island. From the <i>first</i> game. The screen is identical. Traffic cones and a stanchion rope prevent Guybrush from advancing any farther. For the time being, this is completely inexplicable. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG6Ye746EsrASMflSUmffi6nSy5Id_Je-nbjqYtxZPN1ihDhvRK0bHt9uuwz-asc_8HxC-BHKp5sC2-q4OlyetOkZrSa-xEnCX9dRqHx6s3sMx8mXVZifWoQVMX1yo7R6NMVt15pNm6Be-93dxcYc4MGXOjNrJ6KDLmBq1Ekfq9qQcyA5Z2H1_rLQPYQ/s336/image_2022-09-24_003629309.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG6Ye746EsrASMflSUmffi6nSy5Id_Je-nbjqYtxZPN1ihDhvRK0bHt9uuwz-asc_8HxC-BHKp5sC2-q4OlyetOkZrSa-xEnCX9dRqHx6s3sMx8mXVZifWoQVMX1yo7R6NMVt15pNm6Be-93dxcYc4MGXOjNrJ6KDLmBq1Ekfq9qQcyA5Z2H1_rLQPYQ/s16000/image_2022-09-24_003629309.png" /></a></div><p>Third: After Guybrush dismembers LeChuck with a voodoo doll, they reenact another Luke and Vader scene. This time it's from <i>Return of the Jedi</i>: LeChuck begs Guybrush to take his mask off.</p><p>Beneath LeChuck's mask is the face of a young boy, whom Guybrush recognizes: "you're my creepy brother Chuckie!"</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBqoNb8WA55h7mSsUNtp2z6mTnU5y66hOi3crYewJrxj_gkXAroqvA3x45wW1IS9DGblbq4MyJr6WWgQiy0t-HcvsLX5GAysAi9G0PxjcGvGjobTmF9Ysoiis32sqWzu1cBJQyjDn5ZxIyTBGRkSmFyOM7JydlWcv2r_zTSjmkwF8aXL10HlQ9xzgL1g/s336/image_2022-09-24_003914025.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBqoNb8WA55h7mSsUNtp2z6mTnU5y66hOi3crYewJrxj_gkXAroqvA3x45wW1IS9DGblbq4MyJr6WWgQiy0t-HcvsLX5GAysAi9G0PxjcGvGjobTmF9Ysoiis32sqWzu1cBJQyjDn5ZxIyTBGRkSmFyOM7JydlWcv2r_zTSjmkwF8aXL10HlQ9xzgL1g/s16000/image_2022-09-24_003914025.png" /></a></div><p>Why has Chuckie been chasing Guybrush? Their mother sent him.</p><p>Why does Chuckie hate Guybrush so much? Guybrush broke his favorite toy.</p><p>A man in a worker's uniform appears and yells at the pair: "Hey, you kids! You're not supposed to be in here!"</p><p>Little Guybrush and his brother Chuckie step outside into an amusement park where their parents are waiting for them. Their father scolds them for running off, and then all they walk off to take a ride on the Wildly Rotating Buccaneer. Diminutive fairground versions of a few locations Guybrush visited during his adventure populate the background; an arched sign over a ticket booth reads "BIG WHOOP AMUSEMENT PARK."</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnF9Lwt8dVaOiskmvCm7KJsCzXxCRqiBv_xhuV8if9mOYawVj6Uzk9hDWWq95emCtL1T6j8OW7dzlUVgrock9R-vvz86klc4LkkMXx7hngOHxTac_owB8XfGq_xSoAUROZRtRfdABgFFTYSavMOMsZmUj9KXtA7kqfmYZEYYVVISUtZ8ZmlcftZo3xSw/s336/image_2022-09-24_004128335.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnF9Lwt8dVaOiskmvCm7KJsCzXxCRqiBv_xhuV8if9mOYawVj6Uzk9hDWWq95emCtL1T6j8OW7dzlUVgrock9R-vvz86klc4LkkMXx7hngOHxTac_owB8XfGq_xSoAUROZRtRfdABgFFTYSavMOMsZmUj9KXtA7kqfmYZEYYVVISUtZ8ZmlcftZo3xSw/s16000/image_2022-09-24_004128335.png" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq1QdBmhPTvGzkjJvCxB6TQUZhvF3qKpyzneNzMEY8JJ_HCR-QMF5JPGW7zMrUrEcPFWSxWK0klkRzJpTyZ0BxUE0A9Nxfxfwj-ksuJnOq7OJ9ib2jAbmCXJqyCRnyeE5lCTHn4C_5OTjpP0b5JyciEU5jib7CFpbbztlSNEpXdbbHrTC3x8Atr49u9A/s336/image_2022-09-24_004231880.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq1QdBmhPTvGzkjJvCxB6TQUZhvF3qKpyzneNzMEY8JJ_HCR-QMF5JPGW7zMrUrEcPFWSxWK0klkRzJpTyZ0BxUE0A9Nxfxfwj-ksuJnOq7OJ9ib2jAbmCXJqyCRnyeE5lCTHn4C_5OTjpP0b5JyciEU5jib7CFpbbztlSNEpXdbbHrTC3x8Atr49u9A/s16000/image_2022-09-24_004231880.png" /></a></div><p>The end.</p><p>It's an <i>unexpected</i> ending, that's for sure. And a pretty good ending too, one in the vein of <i>Blazing Saddles</i> and <i>Monty Python and the Holy Grail</i>. It takes the piss out of the whole proceeding, which is just fine for a comedy—even a comedy tinged with drama, mystery, and adventure, like <i>Monkey Island 2</i>. But it's probably for this reason that it ticked a lot of people off. They'd spent hours gabbing with the game's characters, exploring its world, and getting <i>invested</i> in its narrative, only for it to culminate with a non-sequitur. Surprise! It was all just pretend!</p><p>Or <i>was</i> it?</p><p>As Chuckie follows his family offscreen, he looks toward the player. His countenance briefly becomes monstrous, and lightning flickers from his eyes. Then, midway through the end credits, we see a final scene with Elaine, still standing at the giant hole Guybrush made out of the X that supposedly marked Big Whoop's location. "I wonder what's keeping Guybrush?" she asks. "I hope LeChuck hasn't cast some horrible SPELL over him or anything."</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGXPEinSLvx-gGMZcD2KTaajvy5W3sJSXN0uECB0tGPiKFxz_2WQsVk1ziZIj49Aw_bly3XWEBI-bfEocyVW7mwuQn1s19R7bdI7IpBK0WQ8XQUt_Ac5FKsC4Sq8DJwCd954Qxtc7V0J-1kf_J_wKZec6SVjM98KjWEC0pUBkXYMLWecZSD850y9AzvQ/s336/image_2022-09-24_004348568.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGXPEinSLvx-gGMZcD2KTaajvy5W3sJSXN0uECB0tGPiKFxz_2WQsVk1ziZIj49Aw_bly3XWEBI-bfEocyVW7mwuQn1s19R7bdI7IpBK0WQ8XQUt_Ac5FKsC4Sq8DJwCd954Qxtc7V0J-1kf_J_wKZec6SVjM98KjWEC0pUBkXYMLWecZSD850y9AzvQ/s16000/image_2022-09-24_004348568.png" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBwEx5YMJej4RGqrpVfYq-hg7ZHtV0u-qOZP0FbE4Mo2_j4VHW1m-o55is1KW36VvzM9E_KjCxKn6X3ITLOS4opGnWBOvpEOA4Rb95CRzFDCw_6Fv8vRXV2h812YAaksWTSmnkhHTciQSsvyrCiPb8UzybpsZ4_cPcprI59d1oAXjI376uyngjqMG3GQ/s336/image_2022-09-24_004719188.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBwEx5YMJej4RGqrpVfYq-hg7ZHtV0u-qOZP0FbE4Mo2_j4VHW1m-o55is1KW36VvzM9E_KjCxKn6X3ITLOS4opGnWBOvpEOA4Rb95CRzFDCw_6Fv8vRXV2h812YAaksWTSmnkhHTciQSsvyrCiPb8UzybpsZ4_cPcprI59d1oAXjI376uyngjqMG3GQ/s16000/image_2022-09-24_004719188.png" /></a></div><p>I've read on some message board or other that Gilbert had to have his arm twisted into including these moments. There wouldn't have been much room for a sequel if<i> Monkey Island 2</i> had ended with the unequivocal revelation that it was all just kids playing make-believe in an amusement park, and no studio wants to retire a brand while it's still recognized and popular. But if Gilbert or anyone else was ever quoted saying this, I can't track down any sources.</p><p>Gilbert left LucasArts in 1992 to found his own video game studios, which produced maybe only one game you've ever heard of (<i>Total Annihilation</i>). LucasArts continued making <i>Monkey Island </i>games without him.</p><p>1997's <i>The Curse of Monkey Island </i>earned the plaudits of fans but didn't make a whole lot of money. The point n' click wave had already crested.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqdY8T53nq-IgzsyHjqNKBwK4W1Ri7qfjPEP6u4wt-cjlVlCAvDJtoiCbN5tex3dn_gtJR88S4SUhsYLi8UmksPt0YbRhMJdd5ouUF7kNNWXsC63Fp8xCOBfuWms_VigkzNkgtKvogqGmwU-FVRv2VTeq6xllzO466ohtcemawo8wubvXQfpwFCzvv5g/s672/image_2022-09-24_005112044.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="672" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqdY8T53nq-IgzsyHjqNKBwK4W1Ri7qfjPEP6u4wt-cjlVlCAvDJtoiCbN5tex3dn_gtJR88S4SUhsYLi8UmksPt0YbRhMJdd5ouUF7kNNWXsC63Fp8xCOBfuWms_VigkzNkgtKvogqGmwU-FVRv2VTeq6xllzO466ohtcemawo8wubvXQfpwFCzvv5g/s320/image_2022-09-24_005112044.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvkqqcG0-lX3RVTVju6I0lim26rzENoEssE4oa8xjPJ-lVpnsLV4BeBYu_BiA8JTRbU5Xpz2ZBvhNzhC8HfPs1jEWrge_oKqqDc_8VHBV9i69_h2jjAvDHWgiiYCXzBRXAVEUHvFFyE5fNh84EcSviCAg-3-Fc-kGE4l0Di9DrAnpH8he7NcU0BPwH_w/s672/image_2022-09-24_005423913.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="672" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvkqqcG0-lX3RVTVju6I0lim26rzENoEssE4oa8xjPJ-lVpnsLV4BeBYu_BiA8JTRbU5Xpz2ZBvhNzhC8HfPs1jEWrge_oKqqDc_8VHBV9i69_h2jjAvDHWgiiYCXzBRXAVEUHvFFyE5fNh84EcSviCAg-3-Fc-kGE4l0Di9DrAnpH8he7NcU0BPwH_w/s320/image_2022-09-24_005423913.png" width="320" /></a></div><p>For everything <i>Curse</i> does well (in addition to looking gorgeous), it might be most impressive as an exercise in creative retconning. At its climax, when LeChuck has Guybrush at his mercy (again), there's a potentially long—<a href="https://youtu.be/MHqYwt1gZlU?t=22556" target="_blank"><i>very</i> long</a>—dialogue tree whose sole purpose is to drag <i>Monkey Island 2</i>'s ending back to "reality" and fill in the plot holes opened by the transition.</p><p>The story now runs like this: LeChuck did indeed put a horrible SPELL on Guybrush, clouding his mind, reverting him to a child, and imprisoning him in his Carnival of the Damned on Monkey Island. (Dinky Island was actually an atoll of Monkey Island! When Guybrush wandered through its tunnels, he went beneath Monkey Island! How convenient!) Guybrush managed to escape, but doesn't recall much of anything that happened there. And no, LeChuck really isn't Guybrush's brother. The old pirate was just screwing with the kid's mind.</p><p>And Big Whoop? It was <i>actually</i> the portal to hell that turned LeChuck into an undying monster, and he built an amusement park over it while Guybrush was off searching for the map pieces! And he needed the amusement park to lure entertainment-starved sea dogs into his clutches so he could murder them en masse and recruit them into his army of the undead!</p><p>It's convoluted, sure, but the developers who inherited <i>Monkey Island</i> had to work from the ending Gilbert gave them. They did the best they could, and they sell it pretty convincingly.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6j22x9mUL-rlAFlxfGN26Zn-6-2j-MWxWkX4j0uIBNMTN1IRfd2BNKIq1KJCQiXa_UInswZs6erUZIWyemyr63B2KVLVTJ5HIFGgRbTfu-Mq5nehQg4kIzVEbej2l4IT0GLFIaxei3oRJi2aDObNDojsFDJIatKNtdX5ByY6Wiagk1-2qUbleRqFaHQ/s672/image_2022-09-24_010659919.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="672" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6j22x9mUL-rlAFlxfGN26Zn-6-2j-MWxWkX4j0uIBNMTN1IRfd2BNKIq1KJCQiXa_UInswZs6erUZIWyemyr63B2KVLVTJ5HIFGgRbTfu-Mq5nehQg4kIzVEbej2l4IT0GLFIaxei3oRJi2aDObNDojsFDJIatKNtdX5ByY6Wiagk1-2qUbleRqFaHQ/s320/image_2022-09-24_010659919.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ-KMGH14tcCKrNxe93Z4EUeqLabCki8c0g8X7VrzGLU0t8nx12ZuwnHX5x-YsUUgL94moSvQB7Skdj5RMkq_EmVhOhvQg0dl8-usJ3ArEaIWxVxvcQDcbRni0R77-X7voQ2nTLUbRpxfuw5RROzNxx63rqhoboxiuFcPlvP-PEfGxp_zqRaoemoDHXQ/s672/image_2022-09-24_005516443.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="672" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ-KMGH14tcCKrNxe93Z4EUeqLabCki8c0g8X7VrzGLU0t8nx12ZuwnHX5x-YsUUgL94moSvQB7Skdj5RMkq_EmVhOhvQg0dl8-usJ3ArEaIWxVxvcQDcbRni0R77-X7voQ2nTLUbRpxfuw5RROzNxx63rqhoboxiuFcPlvP-PEfGxp_zqRaoemoDHXQ/s320/image_2022-09-24_005516443.png" width="320" /></a></div><i><div><i><br /></i></div>The Curse of Monkey Island</i> also dials back the changes <i>Monkey Island 2</i> made to Guybrush and Elaine. Our hero is considerably less of a self-centered jerk this time around (though he still has to get in a few devious licks in order to advance in his quest), while Elaine concedes that Guybrush is and always will be her true love. The final scene has them together in matrimonial garb, sailing off into the sunset on a ship trailing a "JUST MARRIED" banner. If you listen closely, perhaps you can hear the sound of Ron Gilbert grinding his teeth in the distance.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjawM3MakWpsqgOODGuqFraNvpIJkUs3m5ShJ9BTbftreA1JenNW1LnnxTRur5kH8tktAHqfj75BfwL5K1hhhWQRCe-fPMlJFz_FAC14bYOlVInfVUHvqH_yPiwP7nbDlN5dR65caAQe0eXtAgeTl8wBumSlOoWtnT_-3Mx9WS46mjsnn4vZoRFDNb-6w/s672/image_2022-09-24_005758650.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="672" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjawM3MakWpsqgOODGuqFraNvpIJkUs3m5ShJ9BTbftreA1JenNW1LnnxTRur5kH8tktAHqfj75BfwL5K1hhhWQRCe-fPMlJFz_FAC14bYOlVInfVUHvqH_yPiwP7nbDlN5dR65caAQe0eXtAgeTl8wBumSlOoWtnT_-3Mx9WS46mjsnn4vZoRFDNb-6w/s320/image_2022-09-24_005758650.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lUflOlX5T7MVe8b5isrrUTQS81iqTh8b3zKg_HnJMvHaJTPWcOCobafgQptdaDsMhDPwla-76TCOiL-IHQh2g30zevtCjY9m_KP2-fhuYKZzh20yWNSQPxAtsr9whAuK0jxvsKIY9yUvBetEkxet6pSpkuHF4GATNtwZTroWms4qd0_XDJTAiM34dg/s672/image_2022-09-24_005927214.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="672" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lUflOlX5T7MVe8b5isrrUTQS81iqTh8b3zKg_HnJMvHaJTPWcOCobafgQptdaDsMhDPwla-76TCOiL-IHQh2g30zevtCjY9m_KP2-fhuYKZzh20yWNSQPxAtsr9whAuK0jxvsKIY9yUvBetEkxet6pSpkuHF4GATNtwZTroWms4qd0_XDJTAiM34dg/s320/image_2022-09-24_005927214.png" width="320" /></a></div><p><i>Escape From Monkey Island</i> was released in 2000. Fans generally regard it as the weakest entry in the series, and I'll admit to having skipped it on that basis. After watching a few clips, Shirley was happy to move on to <i>Tales of Monkey Island</i>.</p><p>I have a general idea of how it goes from having used YouTube longplays as background noise while typing or pairing socks or working on resumes, and skipping around to watch the FMVs. Whatever else it does, it follows <i>Curse of Monkey Island</i> in <i>committing</i> to its synthetic world of pirates, anachronism, and buccaneering goofiness. The plot twist involving the identity of recurring character Herman Toothrot was so unwelcome that nobody complained when <i>Tales of Monkey Island</i> altogether omitted mention of it (and haven't made a peep about <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> officially reversing it), but it's proof that the writers were at least attentive to the mythos and internal logic of Guybrush's world.</p><p>Incidentally: <i>Escape From Monkey Island</i>'s main villain is a crooked real estate developer intent on buying up all the land in the Caribbean, driving out its pirates, and converting it into a tourist trap of gift shops and tacky theme restaurants, all pirate-themed. Demolishing the authentic and replacing it with a sanitized, profitable simulacrum—and we see the hypnotic power of the medium by the player's disposition to accept the message as it is delivered, without stopping to ponder that we're talking about "authenticity" in the context of an ahistorical pastiche of a bygone era based on a Disney theme park ride.</p><p>In 2009, Telltale Games (under license from LucasArts) released <i>Tales of Monkey Island</i>. Ron Gilbert and <i>Secret of Monkey Island</i>/<i>Monkey Island 2</i> co-designer Dave Grossman were involved in its production, but apparently in a very limited capacity—probably they acted more as consultants than anything else. <i>Tales</i> does justice enough to the <i>Monkey Island</i> legacy, though probably only a handful of fans count it as their favorite. Given Telltale's penchant for melodrama, it shouldn't come as any surprise that <i>Tales </i>takes itself more seriously than any other game in the series, despite the on-brand abundance of quips and gags.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6S45_Ntyb_I4zr4AYao1zys7MarOlR2m3ld_sAcFy0e_qqTJ-_RTU_sypa3YIkrpPkXARyaPjqBI_yBo-WD15J_xrMHFkhBmBakOyd6i7zLdTXNTvIwRD-51x8tOMIL7FzPHroCalFTt1WtOCLsAqXIJdi6UP-0ZekFUNrDRDTaDjV6pZK2KI9EEj7g/s735/image_2022-09-24_010230866.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="507" data-original-width="735" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6S45_Ntyb_I4zr4AYao1zys7MarOlR2m3ld_sAcFy0e_qqTJ-_RTU_sypa3YIkrpPkXARyaPjqBI_yBo-WD15J_xrMHFkhBmBakOyd6i7zLdTXNTvIwRD-51x8tOMIL7FzPHroCalFTt1WtOCLsAqXIJdi6UP-0ZekFUNrDRDTaDjV6pZK2KI9EEj7g/w400-h276/image_2022-09-24_010230866.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh11wG7LI0iHD9byEiyhOdNT-jGpEst6JatXxdTGEjzQJd2cXMK89l8M3prEv3xUAad7vPxEEuBtZWFzYTW04j-ViPIo7JHs43AKbUUnhnYMHBVZ5se_v6QThsYQQTAK4wkbO8oE0MMdCklExd7AkDN24Y5CHzWm8RwUKhQb1oelLgo_2OjKOWN5tKz8w/s840/image_2022-09-24_010422190.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="840" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh11wG7LI0iHD9byEiyhOdNT-jGpEst6JatXxdTGEjzQJd2cXMK89l8M3prEv3xUAad7vPxEEuBtZWFzYTW04j-ViPIo7JHs43AKbUUnhnYMHBVZ5se_v6QThsYQQTAK4wkbO8oE0MMdCklExd7AkDN24Y5CHzWm8RwUKhQb1oelLgo_2OjKOWN5tKz8w/w400-h225/image_2022-09-24_010422190.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6xEUqgVAxr5fxXzft70KjBVo2GmdKKB6wdgDMATM04pasE1mvNJgy8KyJliDZzNHrCqZQ8o68MyCrIft71rIXTh92YbvqCT1bdMMrbGhR79vm2tzTpRYRZ92X85Jgg8E3PiIG3DEaS_lx6-ZCIp07pLiLIFIiIxnGtykJ7O3oWqx5ClBQuF6xqot-CA/s840/image_2022-09-24_010525407.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="840" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6xEUqgVAxr5fxXzft70KjBVo2GmdKKB6wdgDMATM04pasE1mvNJgy8KyJliDZzNHrCqZQ8o68MyCrIft71rIXTh92YbvqCT1bdMMrbGhR79vm2tzTpRYRZ92X85Jgg8E3PiIG3DEaS_lx6-ZCIp07pLiLIFIiIxnGtykJ7O3oWqx5ClBQuF6xqot-CA/w400-h225/image_2022-09-24_010525407.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>Even if the "flavor" of <i>Tales</i> has little in common with the Gilbert-era games (except by way of imitation), and its puzzles are substantially less involved and tricky than in the LucasArts games, I'd say it all works well enough. And as obvious as the solution to its final "puzzle" is, there's something lovely about how it conclusively grounds Guybrush and his then-probably final adventure in terms of his partnership with Elaine.</p><p>For the third consecutive game since Gilbert's "it's all just pretend!" ending, <i>Monkey Island</i> reaffirms that it <i>isn't</i> the story of a kid letting his imagination run amok in an amusement park. Even though <i>Tales</i> goes father in dramatizing its narrative than <i>Curse</i> or <i>Escape</i>, all three of the post-Gilbert titles tacitly give the player permission to make an emotional investment and allot brain space to their world on the basis of their fidelity to its conceit. In this regard they're like the Disney theme park actors who stay consistently in character to sustain the fantasy experience. The actress playing Snow White never winks and answers "as long as they're paying me for it" when a little girl asks her if she's <i>really</i> Snow White.</p><p>In the early 2010s, Gilbert began making noises about wanting Disney (which purchased Lucasfilm and its subsidiaries in 2012) to give or sell <i>Monkey Island </i>back to him. "I would love to get the rights back to Monkey Island and be able to really make the game I want to make," <a href="https://www.eurogamer.net/monkey-island-creator-plans-disney-talks-ahead-of-new-game" target="_blank">he told Eurogamer</a>. In 2013, he posted an entry on his blog titled "<a href="https://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland" target="_blank">If I Made Another Monkey Island</a>." One item stands out from the rest:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">All the games after Monkey Island 2 don't exist in my Monkey Island universe. My apologies to the all talented people who worked on them and the people who loved them, but I'd want to pick up where I left off. Free of baggage. In a carnival. That doesn't mean I won't steal some good ideas or characters from other games. I'm not above that.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>As you might imagine, this paragraph had<i> Monkey Island</i> fans chattering and wringing their hands after <i>Return to Monkey Island</i>'s surprise announcement earlier this year. Sure, the series' creator bumping <i>Escape From Monkey Island</i> from the canon wouldn't be <i>that </i>much of a loss—but <i>Curse of Monkey Island</i> was great! And <i>Tales of Monkey Island</i> had its moments, and you had to admit there was a lot of potential to build on its ending. Was everything that had come after the "Guybrush & Chuckie chase each other through the amusement park" ending of<i> Monkey Island 2 </i>about to be stricken from the record?</p><p>Let's back up a sec and talk about 2017's <i>Thimbleweed Park</i>,<i> </i>Gilbert's Kickstarter-funded point n' click game. (I was about to say it was the first he'd worked on since contributing to <i>Day of the Tentacle</i> in 1993, but it seems he worked on a few during his time as co-founder and boss of "Fun for the Whole Family" Hulabee Entertainment. It would be more accurate to say that<i> Thimbleweed Park</i> was the first non-<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHa4p539JO4" target="_blank">kiddie</a> point n' click game Gilbert had worked on since <i>Day of the Tentacle</i>.) [<b>Postscript:</b> Taras T brings to my attention Gilbert's 2013 game <i>The Cave.</i> God I'm out of the loop.]</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtreMP7ZEk58k5Y-eZj3gFcbzCHdZccQGeZ7t7q5xDMBbKu9xKM78PR9RSsnFi-lRmIPlwLBC-wgVHW0tIgtK0TtZ8wbbmr5-6eDQRWg_wkbPFug3EPXivJTbgWhoRRy3VchUhdvFZ_NRnMY7ngdhuc_llREf1MolTFiOJvH-gyNbw2-aRBUyK4W4ZaQ/s1331/image_2022-09-24_011121566.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="749" data-original-width="1331" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtreMP7ZEk58k5Y-eZj3gFcbzCHdZccQGeZ7t7q5xDMBbKu9xKM78PR9RSsnFi-lRmIPlwLBC-wgVHW0tIgtK0TtZ8wbbmr5-6eDQRWg_wkbPFug3EPXivJTbgWhoRRy3VchUhdvFZ_NRnMY7ngdhuc_llREf1MolTFiOJvH-gyNbw2-aRBUyK4W4ZaQ/w400-h225/image_2022-09-24_011121566.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxxMcDrIpHMKfOEgjBmXcomUw5IaYp7ANnVIvE2zl1uD_sx59SLEWN4UA84m83FuoMYeb92byDqFZ9ti9d3-UJ7v19NQ152X7JExDOBpXqvKZc7w1Jc0-Yvn0ZV5YmrAK_ZtEnp9Fe2aUgMpOfll1T7T_YIsVuH0sI_-ttD3cEUlVmKuRIp2QJ5-38Gw/s832/image_2022-09-24_011538258.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="468" data-original-width="832" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxxMcDrIpHMKfOEgjBmXcomUw5IaYp7ANnVIvE2zl1uD_sx59SLEWN4UA84m83FuoMYeb92byDqFZ9ti9d3-UJ7v19NQ152X7JExDOBpXqvKZc7w1Jc0-Yvn0ZV5YmrAK_ZtEnp9Fe2aUgMpOfll1T7T_YIsVuH0sI_-ttD3cEUlVmKuRIp2QJ5-38Gw/w400-h225/image_2022-09-24_011538258.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>We don't need to say much about it. Long story short, it's a retro adventure styled after <i>Twin Peaks</i>. A couple of federal agents show up to investigate a murder in an eccentric small town lousy with secrets. Despite having a sense of humor, it's a much more straight-faced affair than <i>Monkey Island. </i>As the game progresses, the mysteries deepen, the tension heightens, the drama approaches a pitch of intensity—and then Gilbert does the <i>Monkey Island 2</i> ending again.</p><p><i>Thimbleweed Park</i>'s grand revelation is that it is, in fact, just a video game. "We're all living in a simulated reality!" shouts the character built up as the primary antagonist. (I'm not sure if this is the actual dialogue; I'm not looking it up.) And so the only thing to do is manipulate the system from the inside so that the game-world is deleted and nobody has to proceed through the endless purgatorial loop of enacting their programming again and again, blah blah blah and blah.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8qREztSoux3y-oBth1W4UaqVmNN0n7Onz_kAdiK6nKbiLuQGoP-Zsq_h1i6h_2X1-O7MWRDXTsYTusKpAhZbs3-jUvXARypWcfbuMzrDeIk5cDUm3Aa4jUFaelQce3L6I7XZv2IGWfw5AjE3KHdIVQ4H8psPLU06ZLiZeTM5FXYb0yM7rpDfRRtASZQ/s885/image_2022-09-24_012003449.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="497" data-original-width="885" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8qREztSoux3y-oBth1W4UaqVmNN0n7Onz_kAdiK6nKbiLuQGoP-Zsq_h1i6h_2X1-O7MWRDXTsYTusKpAhZbs3-jUvXARypWcfbuMzrDeIk5cDUm3Aa4jUFaelQce3L6I7XZv2IGWfw5AjE3KHdIVQ4H8psPLU06ZLiZeTM5FXYb0yM7rpDfRRtASZQ/w400-h225/image_2022-09-24_012003449.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>If we agree that <i>Monkey Island 2</i>'s amusement park ending was a satisfying conclusion, it's because <i>Monkey Island 2</i> was primarily a comedy that deflated its own dramatic tension at reliable intervals. <i>Thimbleweed Park </i>is a bit off-kilter, but on the whole it presents itself more of an earnest but weird detective story than an adventure comedy. It takes the player in, impressing on her the seriousness of its narrative's stakes, and asks her to let herself become immersed in its world, invested in the story's outcome, and interested in the resolution of its mysteries. And then in the final act, it shouts "BABA BOOEY BABA BOOEY" and hangs up the phone.</p><p>"What did you expect?" <i>Thimbleweed Park</i> asks us. "This <i>is</i> just a video game. What truths were you hoping to discover here?"</p><p>I mean—it isn't <i>wrong</i>, but after spending something like twenty hours banging my head against unforgiving old-school point n' click puzzles to arrive at that point, I was rather hoping for a more satisfying payoff. It would be a stretch to say that I felt insulted, but I certainly was <i>annoyed</i> when the ending punked me in a way that wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't engaged with <i>Thimbleweed Park</i> on its own terms. </p><p>Like I said: it reminded me why I made the decision some years back to seriously curtail the amount of time I spend playing video games. Perhaps my memory needed refreshing on that point.</p><p>So: <i>Return to Monkey Island</i>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW-hQfdhQsXqlRDB3FfZhhIkriojTVGMKxmKWVOi0wHM6VrUhbWgWFeMq60Or_iyPFF61O0j9KYigKnTmw4dMggyRaBnZUuCxJSvWSPnlD3_mZlOiXZypbJYq2geSin6OrixjQ4skvfBeusJswIUAynhULIb1HVmc0-ZTNWNDEyxrQyP8_ETnz6tnscg/s886/image_2022-09-24_012441997.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="508" data-original-width="886" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW-hQfdhQsXqlRDB3FfZhhIkriojTVGMKxmKWVOi0wHM6VrUhbWgWFeMq60Or_iyPFF61O0j9KYigKnTmw4dMggyRaBnZUuCxJSvWSPnlD3_mZlOiXZypbJYq2geSin6OrixjQ4skvfBeusJswIUAynhULIb1HVmc0-ZTNWNDEyxrQyP8_ETnz6tnscg/w400-h229/image_2022-09-24_012441997.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>I wasn't expecting anything groundbreaking from a point n' click adventure released three decades after the genre's peak, but I had two fairly modest hopes for Gilbert's unexpected return to the series:</p><p>One: I hoped it would be a decent point n' click adventure with reasonably challenging puzzles and a good sense of humor.</p><p>Two: I hoped Gilbert had gotten the impulse to sucker-punch players with a last-minute ontological twist out of his system with <i>Thimbleweed Park</i>.</p><p>We'll have to do another plot summary here. Bear with me; I'll try to cover only the important stuff and make it quick. Remember that this is the <i>Monkey Island</i> sequel the series' long-absent creator <i>craved</i> to make, and which longtime fans had been curious about for the better part of three decades.</p><p>As Gilbert promised, <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> begins with two kids in a carnival. They look like little Guybrush and Chuckie picking up right where <i>Monkey Island 2</i> left off—but no, that's wrong. We're <i>not</i> watching little Guybrush and his weird brother Chuckie. They were just playing pretend, reenacting the ending of<i> Monkey Island 2 </i>together. Chuckie isn't Guybrush's brother, but just one of his friends. And little Guybrush isn't Guybrush Threepwood at all—he's his son, Boybrush.</p><p>After parting ways with Chuckie, Boybrush sits beside his middle-aged father on a bench and listens eagerly to the story of the time he finally discovered the actual Secret of Monkey Island.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0xfp64vAY3Mdlko3IdTWfD5rH5ppfR7jjcDnzKSLiZspFTYw9esKk-Cpf0dkQ4ljGWYlxKZiSZkKdr_-6X0URkuu7if7bCJ6XDlGqd3fSMQ2H8FRl4T3q_kIHomVretT5foi2Hdh1MgrM5_uIQxMSTVtnAyD7jAoGJuP1aFrM31V7xR8-ISGpNfFWkQ/s879/image_2022-09-24_013329558.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="879" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0xfp64vAY3Mdlko3IdTWfD5rH5ppfR7jjcDnzKSLiZspFTYw9esKk-Cpf0dkQ4ljGWYlxKZiSZkKdr_-6X0URkuu7if7bCJ6XDlGqd3fSMQ2H8FRl4T3q_kIHomVretT5foi2Hdh1MgrM5_uIQxMSTVtnAyD7jAoGJuP1aFrM31V7xR8-ISGpNfFWkQ/w400-h229/image_2022-09-24_013329558.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>This has been a running joke ever since <i>Monkey Island 2</i>: nobody's sure exactly what the titular secret of the first game was supposed to be. (It's funny: long before I played <i>Monkey Island</i>, I asked the same question about <a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2015/08/secret-of-mana-memories.html" target="_blank"><i>The Secret of Mana</i>.</a>) Gilbert knows that advertising <i>Return of Monkey Island</i> as the game where the secret will finally be divulged would leave fans thunderstruck.</p><p>Keep in mind that <i>Monkey Island</i> has been a cult series for years now, and most of the people who preordered it sight unseen are probably in their thirties and forties. This <i>isn't</i> a general audience title. Gilbert made <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> for dedicated fans who've already played all the other games—or at least the ones <i>he</i> made.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglNTbWdO-9pQP5ExIeujWe0pVgQqYdM5RDxrjz6fLyWOQIhu6b3BOj16R7oZYP55g8vsttVevtOoYUcJMjKAtlk5CZX6UhQZE-wnr2QrED42yLRQbAWm5t5LPXhpe4wycK21b9nGELzheFxyW52_StpuExX1UESVPRij8eulxGa7KrYxV9RwJKw1CWww/s879/image_2022-09-24_013537107.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="879" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglNTbWdO-9pQP5ExIeujWe0pVgQqYdM5RDxrjz6fLyWOQIhu6b3BOj16R7oZYP55g8vsttVevtOoYUcJMjKAtlk5CZX6UhQZE-wnr2QrED42yLRQbAWm5t5LPXhpe4wycK21b9nGELzheFxyW52_StpuExX1UESVPRij8eulxGa7KrYxV9RwJKw1CWww/w400-h229/image_2022-09-24_013537107.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>First: the nostalgia bomb. A noticeably older Guybrush (but not yet quite as old as the version of him sitting on the park bench) returns to Melee Island, and reminisces about his first adventure there at every turn. But it's true that you never can go home again. The filthy, grog-swilling pirate leaders Guybrush tried to impress in his first adventure have been ousted by a trio of super-hip, super-serious, super-accomplished upstarts (almost certainly a disguised comment on how video games have become a big and serious business presided over by a very different breed of developer). The Voodoo Lady is about to go out of business because the younger generation of pirates finds "dark magic" more efficient and effective than old-school voodoo (very probably a veiled reference to the technological paradigm shift between 1990–91 and 2022). Elaine no longer sits in the governor's mansion; now she heads a nonprofit organization dedicated to spreading scurvy awareness. Everyone breaths a sigh of relief when Gilbert chooses not to annul their post-<i>Monkey Island 2</i> marriage.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHvsD9Hs6ukX3fJkvFwtoQtOADOZiUlj2PirApHYX962RYa6phenoWi9-_j9-Q3T04gUcl3iVHk0HSFIruvZFRvz98GwtSCDv5pAsT0RuEIz-fegdKVoMmXqEItmYS7ZrgKNiiFnHo6Q4NDmsMuFtbbWbudfldfn-NLGMVc4LR13q7vxvUcFR9W7oyVg/s877/image_2022-09-24_013836960.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="877" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHvsD9Hs6ukX3fJkvFwtoQtOADOZiUlj2PirApHYX962RYa6phenoWi9-_j9-Q3T04gUcl3iVHk0HSFIruvZFRvz98GwtSCDv5pAsT0RuEIz-fegdKVoMmXqEItmYS7ZrgKNiiFnHo6Q4NDmsMuFtbbWbudfldfn-NLGMVc4LR13q7vxvUcFR9W7oyVg/w400-h230/image_2022-09-24_013836960.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>Guybrush is preoccupied with finding the Secret of Monkey Island because, well, he just really <i>wants</i> to. LeChuck, who's docked at Melee and preparing to set sail when Guybrush lands, is also determined to find the Secret—but only out of spite. He just wants to deny Guybrush the victory of finding it himself.</p><p>Some stuff happens. Guybrush can't muster a vessel and crew of his own, so he disguises himself as a zombie and gets himself enlisted as a deck swab on LeChuck's ship. LeChuck throws him overboard after he blows his own cover. He washes up on Monkey Island, and forms an uneasy alliance with the hip pirate leaders, who are also after the Secret. After outmaneuvering both LeChuck the new pirate leaders, Guybrush comes into possession of the map that shows the location of the Secret—it's back on Melee Island!</p><p>With Elaine's help, Guybrush repairs the dashed remains of his ship from the first game (more nostalgia), reaches Melee Island while LeChuck and the pirate leaders are engaged in a pitched sea battle, and finds the Secret in the Voodoo Lady's shop. Or, rather, he finds the safe <i>containing </i>the secret, which requires five keys to unlock.</p><p>So now it's <i>Monkey Island 2</i> redux: Guybrush sales around the Caribbean, solving puzzles, gathering the keys, and carelessly leaving a swath of destruction in his wake as his obsession with the Secret propels him inexorably forward. He collects all five keys! He opens the safe!</p><p>It contains <i>another</i> locked box that he can't get open!</p><p>LeChuck and the pirate leaders, having arrived at a truce (but planning to betray each other at the first opportunity), ambush Guybrush and take the box <i>back</i> to Monkey Island! You see, there's a "power spot" in a cavern beneath the island, and the box can only be opened there!</p><p>Guybrush and Elaine race to Monkey Island! Once there, Elaine confronts Guybrush about his obsession with finding the Secret—and is surprisingly gentle about it, given that she's personally witnessed and been affected by the damage he's wrought throughout his quest. She's mostly concerned that the Secret, whatever it turns out to be, can't possibly live up to Guybrush's expectations. (I feel that metatextual foreshadowing works best when it isn't so blatant, but what do I know?)</p><p>"Be careful what you wish for," she says. (More foreshadowing with a wink-wink to the player.)</p><p>Guybrush chases LeChuck and the pirate leaders deep beneath the island's surface! LeChuck and the pirate leaders come to blows! The tension mounts as Guybrush draws nearer and nearer to a final confrontation with his nemesis! LeChuck opens the final gate and disappears inside! The underground tunnels begin to collapse! Guybrush solves the last puzzle (which I'm told is a recreation of the anti-piracy doohickey included with <i>Monkey Island 2</i>) and follows LeChuck and the Secret...!</p><p>...And steps into the back alley on Melee Island, the very same place to which the elevator in the Dinky Island tunnels took him back in <i>Monkey Island 2</i>. An animatronic rat slides back and forth on a track. The figure of a bird dangles from a string above, mechanically flapping its wings.</p><p>"Oh no," says Guybrush. "Not yet."</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7lTCGBok6zK8t3JcTYxmagZmhHtaR_h3vWcFaQtOM_rA52UanM6k_ZsX58knHLVzoPdOPPtwkXsVXzhgaNpQh0e6d-xlN5TXsnJBxSjAndG88JgLdSh4k4d28s6L29suTfurBCV8qBUzgv64Mrv-9xQyt8md7MpyGvHimJIpF7Ev_ysezyF1qJo-x1w/s1407/image_2022-09-24_015151643.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1407" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7lTCGBok6zK8t3JcTYxmagZmhHtaR_h3vWcFaQtOM_rA52UanM6k_ZsX58knHLVzoPdOPPtwkXsVXzhgaNpQh0e6d-xlN5TXsnJBxSjAndG88JgLdSh4k4d28s6L29suTfurBCV8qBUzgv64Mrv-9xQyt8md7MpyGvHimJIpF7Ev_ysezyF1qJo-x1w/w400-h210/image_2022-09-24_015151643.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>Guybrush steps onto the village main street, where series mainstay Stan the salesman waits for him. "It's closing time and everyone wants to go home," says Stan, while animatronic versions of the game's characters go through their motions and warble recorded dialogue in the vicinity. A dotted line designating a visitor's path leads from one part of the attraction to the next.</p><p>Stan gives Guybrush his keys and walks off, asking him to shut off the lights and lock up when he's done. Elaine stands at the portal to low street, and asks Guybrush if he's ready to go.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv0VENwuHRRw8FdWAesCEoEMtrfnH1aLWrujBZc6QkmzoZ30urZM3W67CT8gu8vfS1zsimGeu7u7yAToROWAse9pKbiSim0VeD3cHmQ26Ts3L5vmL3QWFtBLqa3If785sfU1dsAAidhWpzHmZJWPOs7-xSf27QPd5USp51HbfDceEWewrZtynCkMcDYQ/s1407/image_2022-09-24_015445366.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="734" data-original-width="1407" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv0VENwuHRRw8FdWAesCEoEMtrfnH1aLWrujBZc6QkmzoZ30urZM3W67CT8gu8vfS1zsimGeu7u7yAToROWAse9pKbiSim0VeD3cHmQ26Ts3L5vmL3QWFtBLqa3If785sfU1dsAAidhWpzHmZJWPOs7-xSf27QPd5USp51HbfDceEWewrZtynCkMcDYQ/w400-h209/image_2022-09-24_015445366.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>The world of <i>Monkey Island</i> is <i>apparently</i> a theme park attraction after all—apparently not so much a ride as an elaborate pirate-themed escape room, or an interactive performance/art installation like Omega Mart or <i>Sleep No More</i>—one that Guybrush has <i>apparently</i> been visiting for years. <i>Apparently</i> he's a career flooring inspector who still enjoys taking the ride and losing himself in its world from time to time. <i>Maybe</i> he works there, since Stan hands him the keys to the park. <i>Maybe</i> Elaine works there, too. Or maybe not.</p><p></p><p>There's a lot of ambiguity here. We won't peel back all the layers here, but it will suffice to say that they're impressively dense and evince much more aforethought than <i>Monkey Island 2</i>'s conclusion. We find Exhibit A right at the beginning: when Boybrush and Chuckie are acting out the end of <i>Monkey Island 2</i>, they're in the Big Whoop carnival.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9msUgXiraki9-I4FQWforKe2IUvM9hvnoiQ6Ge-lsXGdFr96CJYSkQt79YeupZtPhJH_yBPlGhabEFmNZndRxBkOMhDYd0phhjtCsd6LavvXS3EWVKDPxNxkFliWrMsKU7rZZ4QB7pc-GS6om5y8o8odnmRhwV0EXKF3qwZ2c3HqcYQyedpX35jH6iw/s877/image_2022-09-28_013227000.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="877" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9msUgXiraki9-I4FQWforKe2IUvM9hvnoiQ6Ge-lsXGdFr96CJYSkQt79YeupZtPhJH_yBPlGhabEFmNZndRxBkOMhDYd0phhjtCsd6LavvXS3EWVKDPxNxkFliWrMsKU7rZZ4QB7pc-GS6om5y8o8odnmRhwV0EXKF3qwZ2c3HqcYQyedpX35jH6iw/w400-h230/image_2022-09-28_013227000.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>"Okay," the <i>Monkey Island</i> veteran thinks, "it's picking up at the precise moment where <i>Monkey Island 2</i> left off."</p><p>Only it doesn't. Chuckie and little Guybrush only <i>pretend</i> that Chuckie has lightning coming out of his eyes. They also pretend that the middle-aged couple they're following are their parents. Once they're asked to knock it off, the kids quit their game, and their surroundings change to something a lot more like <i>Monkey Island</i>'s usual setting.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFpdXGUFpgoarmAmkkX56vkWrDANwSGDW-6xfxfXYl65IEpZx37l-XcxEh5GFgTrATVoat25wX3aUcTvq3QZRWVhovYqU00cj2HspcT4wU0CHGPmFL1CNJI02WNpMygNyefREhZRHKI0nwojwPvAwgJtqPxhXqTkl9Q97Hp-vsGf0_v5ftsdekshX6RQ/s878/image_2022-09-28_013743141.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="878" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFpdXGUFpgoarmAmkkX56vkWrDANwSGDW-6xfxfXYl65IEpZx37l-XcxEh5GFgTrATVoat25wX3aUcTvq3QZRWVhovYqU00cj2HspcT4wU0CHGPmFL1CNJI02WNpMygNyefREhZRHKI0nwojwPvAwgJtqPxhXqTkl9Q97Hp-vsGf0_v5ftsdekshX6RQ/w400-h229/image_2022-09-28_013743141.png" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>Which means—okay. Boybrush and Chuckie were <i>pretending</i> to be little Guybrush and Chuckie emerging from the Dinky Island tunnels into a twentieth-century carnival where all was perhaps not what it seemed, when in reality <i>maybe</i> they're in the pre-industrial Caribbean in which the story was set <i>before</i> the twist ending. But <i>also</i> Guybrush is <i>maybe</i> a flooring inspector who reminisces about past visits to a modern pirate-themed amusement park, one of which was maybe seen in <i>Monkey Island 2</i>, which Boybrush and Chuckie are reenacting in what's either the Caribbean of Pirate Times or a kind of low-tech renaissance faire-style theme park. Maybe.</p><p>All of this amounts to the status of <i>Monkey Island</i>'s world becoming a multiple-choice affair. Is it a straightforward, single-layer fiction, a fiction embedded in a fiction, or some combination of the two? The game openly gives the player its blessing to pick whichever one he most prefers.</p><p><i>Return to Monkey Island</i>'s ending sequence is interactive, so several different things can be done. Most choices affect dialogue trees and the determination of which of several brief tableaux gets displayed at the every end. One possible action is grabbing a key from one of the animatronic figures and opening the box containing the Secret of Monkey Island.</p><p>Here it is:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv6TQonA2FjsnUSbQpnRqGAzS_Hpigk836WBBSSLEw-j4BXDJnD6VJOn9lUREf3kYzg9HCgDdR7DLRmt-MnuACFMB2QNIPHVQFUbfSfzW1WfEBkJLa1uopfkd6k_pwdHFCbRXHT8W0s8w-iKQYFXrxJWyZ_7ZWy-ISlgVHW7UxkgUm7gztmKhVqmsvKA/s1407/image_2022-09-24_015735753.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="734" data-original-width="1407" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv6TQonA2FjsnUSbQpnRqGAzS_Hpigk836WBBSSLEw-j4BXDJnD6VJOn9lUREf3kYzg9HCgDdR7DLRmt-MnuACFMB2QNIPHVQFUbfSfzW1WfEBkJLa1uopfkd6k_pwdHFCbRXHT8W0s8w-iKQYFXrxJWyZ_7ZWy-ISlgVHW7UxkgUm7gztmKhVqmsvKA/w400-h209/image_2022-09-24_015735753.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>Boybrush complains that the ending to his old man's story is stupid and doesn't make any sense. "You're terrible at endings!"</p><p>"I thought you liked silly endings," Guybrush answers.</p><p>"Every time you tell the story, the ending gets stranger and stranger," Elaine says, approaching the bench where her husband and son are seated. She suggests they go down to the dock to watch the galleon head out. Boybrush runs off. Elaine whispers to Guybrush that she found the map to the lost treasure of Mire Island! What an adventure <i>that's</i> going to be!</p><p>(So maybe they <i>are</i> pirates after all!—which would mean Guybrush is a pirate who pretends he's a flooring inspector pretending to be a pirate. Or maybe she's talking about another fun theme park attraction they can explore together! Tick whichever box feels right to you.) </p><p>She follows Boybrush offscreen. Guybrush remains on the bench, alone with his memories. Speaking personally, I find the mood...odd. Guybrush seems a little touched. In the head, I mean.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS-GxKQx01q-mZU7xSFs-2o0F5osdqC42fhAWqxWFlkpSvHksa2XLhXC7ZzEcUQ8B3bjhvhD6cjjDEdy3y-pBWoKf3QrREUx9EeaSdafvx874GBIzEdRvkok21XZ3oMNW02OJPwx0APw5rfq5fYz9y98KkLas6StLI4XCtYT9-eS_v709FczJdliLLNA/s879/image_2022-09-28_015606250.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="879" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS-GxKQx01q-mZU7xSFs-2o0F5osdqC42fhAWqxWFlkpSvHksa2XLhXC7ZzEcUQ8B3bjhvhD6cjjDEdy3y-pBWoKf3QrREUx9EeaSdafvx874GBIzEdRvkok21XZ3oMNW02OJPwx0APw5rfq5fYz9y98KkLas6StLI4XCtYT9-eS_v709FczJdliLLNA/w400-h229/image_2022-09-28_015606250.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>I enjoyed playing <i>Return to Monkey Island—</i>enough that I burned through it in ten hours across two nights. Though I'm not interested in writing a general review, I'll list three things that left me feeling cold, just to get them off my chest.</p><p>1.) The game was rushed. Clearly. All three of the new islands seem half-developed, and Terror Island is glaringly unfinished. There was supposed to be a<i> fourth </i>new island, the rudiments of which are accessible during a second playthrough. A sign reads: "This island was cut due to time issues. Please get a glimpse of what might have been." Tellingly, Gilbert & co. only took pains to flesh out the two locations from the original <i>Secret of Monkey Island. </i>Melee Island was recreated almost screen for screen.</p><p>2.) Elaine acts...strangely. It's my understanding that Gilbert liked her best when she thought of Guybrush as an immature idiot with whom she'd never, ever get back together. He doesn't altogether reverse their evolution into a swashbuckling power couple, but he gets his licks in by flattening them out. Elaine in particular gets the rolling pin. The post Gilbert-games depict her more or less as a Strong Female Character who wears the pants in the relationship and takes control of the Big Picture, implicitly trusting her husband to keep up by virtue of his proven resourcefulness and inexplicable dumb luck. Here she's a blandly supportive side character who treats Guybrush rather more like a little brother or invalid who needs to be indulged and babysat. (Of course, that's just<i> my</i> feeling.)</p><p>3.) Here's the big one:<i> Return to Monkey Island</i> lacks a climax. Four out of five of the previous Monkey Island games conclude with final puzzle that must be solved while LeChuck chases you around, throwing off your concentration and bumping you into another screen. (<i>Escape From Monkey Island</i> also ended with a Guybrush vs. LeChuck event, <a href="https://youtu.be/uZNauRfuZN0?t=2560" target="_blank">but it was a lot stupider</a>.) But here, Guybrush never gets the chance. LeChuck disappears with the MacGuffin through a sort of mystical gate well ahead of Guybrush. You solve the puzzle to open the gate and follow LeChuck, and the game ends. The secondary antagonists all disappear in the meantime.</p><p><i>Curse of Monkey Island</i>'s rather sparse final act was the result of time and/or budget constraints. I think that this time, the anticlimax was by design: defying expectations by substituting the sixth iteration of "Guybrush kicks butt" with "Guybrush solves a dial-a-pirate puzzle in an empty room and then the ride's over." It's like the ending of <i>The Sopranos</i> all over again! Maybe. Kind of. I really can't decide.</p><p>I'd have probably saved myself the trouble of writing all of this (and copying so many screenshots) if I weren't so fascinated by some fans' reaction to <i>Return to Monkey Island</i>'s ending. You can read this collection of comments from Reddit to see what I mean. When I said earlier the game's ending inspired despair and angst, I wasn't joking.</p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">• At the age that I'm at now, viewing life through the distorted lens of nostalgia, I feel like everything has become either about disappointment or letting go. I had been holding on to the Secret of Monkey Island™ for so long that I forgot to live. Meanwhile, everyone else involved with these games did. Life passed me by. Now I feel broken and empty.<br /><br />• In the end it felt like Ron doesnt wanted the players to enjoy not only the game but the whole series, blaming them for being "too much" into MI, telling how they should've been grown in 30 years and that its time to move on...but thats not the point of games...I mean, I can play a game to enjoy some free time as a Mighty Pirate once every 10 years (30 for this filler) and I have to feel a guilty dumbass about that? Like it was my fault for being too curious about YOUR game<br /><br />• Idk, I have a monkey island shaped hole in my heart right now. Dunno if it's the expectations I had, or just generally feeling like the game is missing, well, a lot. Just expected more I guess, not necessarily better, but definitely more. [...] Gutted atm tbh.<br /><br />• i was already on the fence about the weird explanation at the start for the ending of Revenge but I pushed on. As previously stated, I enjoyed Return until the ending where it made me feel like all of my efforts was a waste, left me unfulfilled, and scratching my head saying "WTF?!"<br />This game didn't offer us anything new, other than growing up and becoming accustomed to disappointment.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: black; font-family: courier;">• </span><span style="font-family: courier;">The fucking ending is just Thimbleweed Park all over again. Fuck Ron Gilbert, he just can't help himself, can he? Couldn't accept that nobody but him liked the ending he wanted for Monkey Island 2, so now he's shoehorned exactly the kind of lame Meta cop-out ending nobody liked in TP into this game. Glad I didn't buy it. Christ, what a let down. Curse stands vindicated, they were right to ignore his intentions.</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: courier;">• I was kind of afraid of this after playing Thimbleweed Park. My unfortunate conclusion is that Ron Gilbert just doesn't know how to write a decent ending. I think they wink towards that with Jr. saying you suck at endings, which is like, yeah okay, cute, but saying you suck doesn't mitigate the suck. Man I'm bummed out now about an experience I was enjoying. I guess that's supposed to be the point though maybe?</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: courier;">• The ending just feels masturbatory [...] Like a middle finger, 30 years in the making, for everyone who didn't like how 2 ended. Like yay, you trolled me, you got my $25 and you pulled the rug out from under me again. Congrats?</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: courier;">• I think gilbert wants to clown on fans who care about stuff like lore in monkey island. By spelling it out that it doesn't really matter to him and it's all made up, in the most direct possible way. It's very meta, but for what it's worth gilbert's idea of meta seems to tear down everything in the end as inconsequential and pointless [...] It's up for debate if he has any business being a storyteller if his punchline is always the audience being idiots for spending their time on his stories.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Of course, there are just as many fans posting to say they loved<i> Return to Monkey Island,</i> thought the ending was beautiful and perfect, they cried and/or are crying rn, etc. Gamers are a people of emotions and of extremes.</p>You can go elsewhere to read glowing reviews of <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> and the comments of fans who are deeply grateful for the experience. I'm more interested in the people who feel betrayed and angry about the ten hours they spent with a point n' click adventure about funny cartoon pirates. Not because I <i>share</i> their hurt, but because it's curious that they should feel that away at all.<div><br /></div><div>Their criticisms can be sorted under three heads. First: Ron Gilbert is an egotistical jerk. Second: the "message" of the ending degrades whole series. Third: <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> is a cruel joke whose severity is proportional to the player's investment in the <i>Monkey Island</i> series. All three intersect with each other to the point where none can be considered completely in isolation, but we'll try to examine them separately.</div><div><div><br /></div><div><b>1. Ron Gilbert is a jerk.</b> The player who thoroughly enjoyed her time with <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> received the game as a love letter from the series' creator to his fans. The player who felt burned by the experience reads it as Gilbert territorially pissing on a creation that he chose to walk away from over thirty years ago.</div><div><br /></div><div>For the sake of argument, let's give the situation the most uncharitable interpretation we can. LucasArts subsidized the production of <i>Secret of Monkey Island</i>, published it in 1990, and retained the rights. When Gilbert felt he could do better as a boss than an employee, he monkey wrenched (heh) the ending to <i>Monkey Island 2</i> to deter his employers from attempting to make more games in the series without his involvement. He founded the studios Humongous and CaveDog. Humongous put out a bunch of kids' games that probably few people have ever heard of. CaveDog published the influential real-time strategy game <i>Total Annihilation</i> in 1997, popular in its time, but whose legacy has since been eclipsed by <i>Starcraft</i>, <i>Warcraft</i>, <i>Age of Empires</i>, <i>Total War</i>, etc. In a letter to fans unlocked by completing Return to Monkey Island, Gilbert admits he's probably most widely known at this point in his career as the <i>Monkey Island</i> Guy.</div><div><br /></div><div>[<b>Postscript:</b> <a href="https://desktop-metaphor.itch.io" target="_blank">Taras T</a> says: <i>i have to say there's some humongous games erasure going on tho, almost everybody i know who is around my age has played putt-putt or pajama sam even if they've never played any other adventure games in their life.</i> Oof. I feel like Homer Simpson in the record store, circa 1996, calling Nine Inch Nails and Sonic Youth "no-name bands" after singing the praises of Styx and Bread.] </div><div><br /></div><div>In this cynical reading of events, Gilbert was not only compelled to revisit his glory days, but to seize back something he was once happy enough to leave behind. Even though he accepts that <i>Monkey Island</i> fans accepted <i>Curse</i>, <i>Escape</i>, and <i>Tales</i> as legitimate sequels despite their being made without him at the controls, existing only because they negated the ending he wrote for <i>Monkey Island 2</i>, he acknowledges them in such a way in <i>Return</i> that his controversial ending to <i>Monkey Island 2</i> remains the last word, now and forever. The whole thing is once again a story of playing make-believe at a carnival, and that was the entire point of the project: Gilbert taking back control of his creation just long enough to negate the negation and re-canonize his fakeout ending from 1991.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ignore it? How can you? This comes from the brain and mouth of <i>Monkey Island</i>'s very creator. Besides, you saw and heard it all yourself. You spontaneously integrated it into your understanding of the <i>Monkey Island</i> universe and recontextualized the previous five games in light of <i>Return</i>'s events. Like it or not, you can't un-process any of it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Huh. I wonder: were there people in seventeenth-century Spain who'd read and really enjoyed Avellaneda's sequel to <i>Don Quixote</i>, and got upset when Cervantes emphatically discounted its events in <i>Don Quixote, Part Two</i>?</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj24wp5yyoeGiis9F9x6qFaqqasxMhC-dJj_pasRSLDcevD5_X8oHeV5vzERdsTOMQCVr0OvYk4oLYQ2RPGvBvAb7BbMgxkbsfUIMA04nBf4yt7c8Kn7czJiKTwtj-N0u0jnT_a_JTUXHKHnV8AI_6UW_3okc086Lcfaj0CVCnEsiCVqnrxrlXMyzIXBA/s1407/image_2022-09-30_001610978.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="737" data-original-width="1407" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj24wp5yyoeGiis9F9x6qFaqqasxMhC-dJj_pasRSLDcevD5_X8oHeV5vzERdsTOMQCVr0OvYk4oLYQ2RPGvBvAb7BbMgxkbsfUIMA04nBf4yt7c8Kn7czJiKTwtj-N0u0jnT_a_JTUXHKHnV8AI_6UW_3okc086Lcfaj0CVCnEsiCVqnrxrlXMyzIXBA/w400-h210/image_2022-09-30_001610978.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>2. The ending cheapens the entire series.</b> The fan who cried for joy at the end of <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> is most likely to say what a lovely and fitting thing it is that Gilbert should let <i>them</i> decide whether Guybrush is a pirate or an imaginative flooring inspector. The fan who cried foul would say that it trivializes the whole affair. </div><div><br /></div><div>Again, I don't feel strongly enough about the vagaries of <i>Return to Monkey Island</i>'s ending to pick them apart or decide on any one interpretation, but I do believe that to explicitly announce that X, Y, or Z elements of a narrative are totally up to the reader/viewer to decide is equivalent to saying that X, Y, and Z are unimportant.</div><div><br /></div><div>The film <i>Inception </i>comes up several times in <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> debates on r/MonkeyIsland. I don't remember that one so well, so let's use as an example another film whose ending is the subject of a lot of internet debate: John Carpenter's <i>The Thing</i>.</div><div><div><br /></div></div></div><div>While <i>I</i> don't think there's any grounds for controversy, some viewers are firmly convinced that Childs is a Thing during the final scene. Childs' status is integral to the reading of the "text" as a whole, and that's why people argue about it. Someone who believes Childs is a Thing watches a different movie than someone who doesn't.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think most of us have a hard time not feeling rankled when somebody says something egregiously <i>wrong </i>about a cut-and-dry objective matter. When I ask somebody to pass me a flathead screwdriver and he hands me a Phillips, insisting it's a flathead, a heated disagreement is bound to ensue. When somebody tells me that Childs is a Thing, I'm going to ask him how the hell he drew that conclusion and interrupt his explanation to tell him why he's wrong.</div><div><br /></div><div>But if we <i>do</i> believe the final scene to be ambiguous, our interpretations and the evidence we cite for it matters insofar as we understand that there is one <i>correct</i> reading, and the meaning of the whole proceeding hinges on it. If the film were to indicate, or if John Carpenter were to state, that Childs' status is just a matter of personal preference, all debate must cease because the issue has been made inconsequential.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's why the anti-<i>Return </i>crowd doesn't feel particularly liberated having been given Gilbert's permission to choose what they think the whole story consists of. It turns <i>Monkey Island</i>'s world from something concrete in their understanding into something shapeless and ephemeral.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgByKMIIODgnYMPeeYIq7S6VEhEsQ8BM_JqASudLbnusnXWK3fGbgXbgDRpY0y9EAByTLtDhk4C1yJNLq_TxOhgxchn-T3xilY1tK91IOkkHFKw6zBmtF4Egwas9qnPiitSTNEDep9FEGzHyFfocfwnuMvEUNgCdd-UsvQbH3bSGV0TVXpHD6T-wSgb_A/s1407/image_2022-09-30_001403081.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="734" data-original-width="1407" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgByKMIIODgnYMPeeYIq7S6VEhEsQ8BM_JqASudLbnusnXWK3fGbgXbgDRpY0y9EAByTLtDhk4C1yJNLq_TxOhgxchn-T3xilY1tK91IOkkHFKw6zBmtF4Egwas9qnPiitSTNEDep9FEGzHyFfocfwnuMvEUNgCdd-UsvQbH3bSGV0TVXpHD6T-wSgb_A/w400-h209/image_2022-09-30_001403081.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><b>3.)</b> <b><i>Return to Monkey Island</i> mocks the player for caring about <i>Monkey Island</i>.</b> On this point I'm wholly on the side of the pro-<i>Return</i> crowd. If you feel hurt and insulted by <i>Return to Monkey Island</i>, that says more about <i>you</i> than the game. </div><div><br /></div><div>This isn't to say that there's no reason to feel annoyed or disappointed by the resolution. <i>I</i> sure was. But if <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> truly left you feeling "broken and empty," as one commentator stated, that ought to be examined.</div><div><br /></div><div>Guybrush Threepwood isn't real. Monkey Island isn't real. When you played any of these games, you booted up your PC, took a ride, used your imagination, and went back to your real life afterwards. When <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> brought this to your attention, nothing about the situation materially changed. Guybrush isn't any<i> more </i>fictional than he was before, and he wouldn't be any less if the game hadn't gone meta in the final act. Whether he's a pirate or a flooring inspector, he's still a pseudo-person. LeChuck might be a ghost/zombie/demon pirate, he might be or an animatronic theme park figure, or he could be both—but whatever the case, he doesn't exist.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Thimbleweed Park</i> wasn't lying when it revealed that everyone in its eponymous town are just characters in a video game. Nor does <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> fib when it gets to the end and tells you that everything you've just witnessed has all been fake—just a lot of virtual pirate-world backdrops, programmed automata, and rigged events designed to involve you in a spectacular fantasy.</div><div><br /></div><div>(For that matter, sure: Childs isn't Childs <i>or</i> a Thing, because neither is real, and the events of <i>The Thing</i> never happened. If I get worked up about your theory that Childs is a Thing, the <i>correct</i> response is to tell me to chill the fuck out.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Self-aware video games that contemplate the experiential dimensions of the medium or riff on its conventions are nothing new. Some are brilliant. Some are trite.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>The Stanley Parable</i> lets you in on the joke. Agency in video games is illusory; there is no spontaneity, just a manifold of meticulously programmed switches that activate predetermined effects—let's all have a laugh about it together. Shigesato Itoi's <i>Mother</i> games periodically break the fourth wall, and do so most memorably when the aim is to punch through all the layers of mediation and distance between the man who composed its story and the person receiving it through a television or Game Boy screen. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>Maybe</i> that's what Gilbert imagined he was doing with <i>Return to Monkey Island. </i>I don't know.</div><div><br /></div><div>All three point n' click adventure games he masterminded since the original <i>Secret of Monkey Island</i> end by punking the player. <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> ostensibly does it in a kinder, gentler, more thoughtful way. But it's hard not to feel less than flattered when the narrative depicts an aged Guybrush obsessively pursuing some he-knows-not-what at the expense of his own health and the wellbeing of everyone around him (he destabilizes a government, leaves an old man to rot at the bottom of a pitch-dark cave, gets Wally kidnapped and tortured <i>again</i>, screws over his own wife, etc.), who, in consummating his quest, "discovers" that it was all trivial.</div><div><br /></div><div>There was nothing to find after all. What mattered was the journey, but the journey itself was the enraptured fancy of a full-grown adult playing pretend, mostly by himself, in an artificial environment peopled by automata. (Should we call it ironic that <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> insinuates that Guybrush's beloved Caribbean is, and always has been, precisely the kind of gimmicky tourist attraction that he strove to prevent it from becoming in<i> Escape from Monkey Island</i>?)</div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizy5yZPDswgCbQHHrprVCaNXNwYm6RPQBNkTWkpTU_8AA_RpXdkDnow4SzdRHxeQQV2zA-Xn4Q9oyRFsziz-8VfaFSiQm0uSBMaKtD1OJz_cppjcNBXcvXOhS-QCMh0XyY8pyH1eNzxmz6UZX9RRrjs6VICcRYUxmJCMrBMnjnlrV_5fyFl4vY91EuWA/s891/image_2022-09-29_095636501.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="891" data-original-width="766" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizy5yZPDswgCbQHHrprVCaNXNwYm6RPQBNkTWkpTU_8AA_RpXdkDnow4SzdRHxeQQV2zA-Xn4Q9oyRFsziz-8VfaFSiQm0uSBMaKtD1OJz_cppjcNBXcvXOhS-QCMh0XyY8pyH1eNzxmz6UZX9RRrjs6VICcRYUxmJCMrBMnjnlrV_5fyFl4vY91EuWA/w344-h400/image_2022-09-29_095636501.png" width="344" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Unrelated <i>Far Side</i> comic</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div>Again, some of this is up to interpretation. <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> provides a couple of conceptual escape hatches for the player who wants a reason to keep thinking of Guybrush's Caribbean adventures as "real," and consolations for the player disposed to remain convinced of the <i>meaningfulness</i> of the experience, artificial though it was. I suspect the sunnier outlook on <i>Return to Monkey Island</i>'s denouement will be more easily taken up by the player who plays video games more as an occasional diversion than a habitual <i>escape</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps it isn't fair to think of it in these terms, but here we go anyway:</div><div><br /></div><div>I'll bet that the forty-year-old who played<i> The Secret of Monkey Island</i> on his dad's PC when he was ten, eventually got married and had a child, who volunteers as a Cub Scouts den leader, is a fixture of a local karate dojo, goes out on Sunday mornings with a watercolor kit, etc., and still sometimes sits down with his kid to play the latest iteration of a video game series he grew up with on the Nintendo Switch—I'll bet he's the audience member primed to experience an affirming yet bittersweet moment of nostalgia and reflect on the cyclicality of life and the impermanence of things upon completing <i>Return to Monkey Island</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, the childless single man in his thirties or forties with a job he's not crazy about, few IRL friends, meaningful affiliations, or personal pursuits beyond the time he spends in a cubicle or behind a counter, and who occupies most of his leisure hours at home by himself, absorbed in a screen—do we really need to wrack our brains trying to figure out why he feels pantsed when the game in which he's immersed, the one he's wanted to play for years, suddenly holds a mirror up to him? <i>Look at </i>you <i>having a make-believe pirate adventure in a virtual playground! Got a little carried away in the fantasy, did we? Back to reality, mister!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>The latter player intuits with total clarity the outlines of <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm" target="_blank">The Spectacle</a> and perceives himself in relation to it during the shock of <i>Return to Monkey Island</i>'s big reveal. The vehicle of his long-awaited return to a childhood fantasy world seems to accuse him of being a delusional weirdo who can't let go of his old toys. The palliative for his alienation increases his alienation, and yet there's nothing else he knows that <i>works</i>, that allows him the experience of purposiveness and something like belonging. This time it spat him back out, leaving a dark message about the arithmetic of a life given spurious coherence through the solitary consumption of entertainments ringing in his ears.</div><div><br /></div><div>Is it any wonder that some <i>Return to Monkey Island</i> players should feel personally attacked by its ending?</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU2pGxLoXiLm_sLAYZczntGzPaVCLXLYhODjQoS5KliTSFuYArNfcSBFoh4u9v76HiRcQud2zjm_MuhPaBOZIrpkCFTvpJgW7zGkgvEeBppBw6cJZVz0wYocxlRe-EI7SpWMuozR6fLzrKC0yq_yQlSVGpyRQ2K8xHEBjjZvCvKNs1XU9oMjwN2RgGeQ/s697/image_2022-09-30_005519767.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="364" data-original-width="697" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU2pGxLoXiLm_sLAYZczntGzPaVCLXLYhODjQoS5KliTSFuYArNfcSBFoh4u9v76HiRcQud2zjm_MuhPaBOZIrpkCFTvpJgW7zGkgvEeBppBw6cJZVz0wYocxlRe-EI7SpWMuozR6fLzrKC0yq_yQlSVGpyRQ2K8xHEBjjZvCvKNs1XU9oMjwN2RgGeQ/w542-h282/image_2022-09-30_005519767.png" width="542" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>If <i>I</i> felt attacked by Return of Monkey Island, it was my own damn fault.</div><div><br /></div><div>I said before that Shirley and I binged through four <i>Monkey Island</i> games a couple of years ago, around the same time our relationship was getting serious. What I remember most about <i>Monkey Island 2</i> isn't the epilogue, but Shirley beside me, freaking out during the chase sequence in the Dinky Island tunnels. My favorite parts of the series are the sword fights and manatee pickup lines, on the basis that we sat around scratching our heads and arguing over the right responses. We played the first three games when Shirley was still living in Francisville, and she moved in with me in Brewerytown midway through <i>Tales</i>; wrapping up the last episode helped us to get settled in together.</div><div><br /></div><div>And so on. For me, the <i>Monkey Island</i> series can't be separated from my memories of places and of a person.</div><div><br /></div><div>Something funny happened with <i>Return</i>, though. Shirley's PC couldn't run it, so I installed it on my laptop. Shirley has to get up earlier for work than I do, so she usually turns in before me. We played through the first half hour, and then she went to bed. "I'll just see what's around the corner and then call it a night," I told her.</div><div><br /></div><div>I played for another four hours.</div><div><br /></div><div>The next night, I apologized for playing without her, filled her in on what she'd missed, and we got back to it.</div><div><br /></div><div>An hour later, she could barely keep her eyes open. Once again, I told her I'd wrap it up for the evening after trying out a solution to the seagull puzzle on Scurvy Island. Once again, I kept playing, and finished the game without her. Like Guybrush, I was hellbent on reaching the Secret that supposedly lay at the end of the journey, and willing to risk Shirley's ire to get to it as soon as possible. I am incapable of self-control where video games are concerned.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv6TQonA2FjsnUSbQpnRqGAzS_Hpigk836WBBSSLEw-j4BXDJnD6VJOn9lUREf3kYzg9HCgDdR7DLRmt-MnuACFMB2QNIPHVQFUbfSfzW1WfEBkJLa1uopfkd6k_pwdHFCbRXHT8W0s8w-iKQYFXrxJWyZ_7ZWy-ISlgVHW7UxkgUm7gztmKhVqmsvKA/s1407/image_2022-09-24_015735753.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="734" data-original-width="1407" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv6TQonA2FjsnUSbQpnRqGAzS_Hpigk836WBBSSLEw-j4BXDJnD6VJOn9lUREf3kYzg9HCgDdR7DLRmt-MnuACFMB2QNIPHVQFUbfSfzW1WfEBkJLa1uopfkd6k_pwdHFCbRXHT8W0s8w-iKQYFXrxJWyZ_7ZWy-ISlgVHW7UxkgUm7gztmKhVqmsvKA/w400-h209/image_2022-09-24_015735753.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>So, yeah, Shirley was<i> really</i> bummed to find out I finished the game without her, and the ending wasn't worth it. Art imitates life, and vice versa, but damn. Ron Gilbert got me.</div><div><br /></div><div>Worth the $25. Will not play again.</div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-38525987086760716952022-09-25T01:58:00.010-04:002022-10-18T01:02:10.848-04:00Celebrity, Mythology, & The Machine (part 6)<p><b><br />VI. LIVED EXPERIENCE (INTERLUDE)</b></p><p>It's difficult to grow up in the developed world without building up a set of habits around a television set, some sort of music player, a smartphone, or any other machine that delivers mass media content. Most of us are "followers" of at least a few media personalities. That's just how it is.</p><p>Who are my favorites, you ask?</p><p>I listen to Clay Pigeon's <a href="https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/WA" target="_blank">Wake N Bake</a> show at work, five days a week. Mr. Pigeon picks good tunes. I've enjoyed his radio essays, one-man skits, and street interviews ever since I chanced to catch a few on the <a href="https://wfmu.org/playlists/CP" target="_blank">Dusty Show</a> while driving around Jersey in the late aughts. He's always struck me as a sweet man. All I know about his history is what he's said on the air: he's originally from Iowa but lives in Manhattan with his wife (whose name escapes me). I believe he used to be a smoker.</p><p>The only internet-famous types I keep track of are the <strike>boys</strike> middle-aged men of RedLetter Media. Best of the Worst scratches more or less the same itch as <i><a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2021/05/contextual-disintegration-on-mystery.html" target="_blank">Mystery Science Theater 3000</a></i>. I usually skip their takes on recent films (I don't go to the movies much and I don't subscribe to any streaming services), but sometimes I'll click on a new Re:View episode if they're discussing a favorite film of mine or one I've been curious about. I don't follow any of them on social media.</p><p>I think that might be about it these days. There are a few blogs I peek at now and then, but I'm not sure that counts. Much as I enjoy reading Nick Carr or Sam Kriss's stuff, I've never felt much personal affection for either of them. Not like Clay Pigeon or the RedLetter Media guys. When you listen to an endearing radio host five days a week, or to a group of conversationalists with entertaining and sometimes fascinating interpersonal dynamics, you're bound to make at least a small emotional investment in them—or, rather, in the simulations of them. I enjoy writers because there's no illusion of propinquity.</p><p>I try not to get too invested. Possibly because I've been so deeply disappointed in the past.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Case one: Hunter S. Thompson.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3oxKBY2EhOlMlB-P1WLk_TwbEbL7K-Gy_db0gkLJr1JLPV1370dTntC9TgOJIe_bpJmRBp_YZTOn6IejtrBjgpqQ30HJMfcKey0OkXou-VW3qFcyNbLvatkIOJbWwHXebSslUphYmlhbsCnQ4gEmHvxPaH_L1n1kjHGZSaHlfIur-vBFWojGqJp49HQ/s840/image_2022-09-22_234654076.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="740" height="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3oxKBY2EhOlMlB-P1WLk_TwbEbL7K-Gy_db0gkLJr1JLPV1370dTntC9TgOJIe_bpJmRBp_YZTOn6IejtrBjgpqQ30HJMfcKey0OkXou-VW3qFcyNbLvatkIOJbWwHXebSslUphYmlhbsCnQ4gEmHvxPaH_L1n1kjHGZSaHlfIur-vBFWojGqJp49HQ/w329-h373/image_2022-09-22_234654076.png" width="329" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hunter S. Thompson (1971)</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>In my late teens and early twenties, he was my idol. I tried to write the way he wrote. My college buddies I took pride in living in a wrecked dorm room lit by Christmas lights because it reminded us of the hotel room sets in the <i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</i> movie. If I had to buy beer for a gathering of friends, I got a six-pack of Flying Dog. My away messages on AOL Instant Messenger and personal blurbs on Myspace were quotes from his books. I bought a typewriter because Thompson wrote on one; I somehow believed it would make me a better writer. (I barely used it.) And so on.<p>Thompson was <i>more</i> than a writer. He was a legend. The outlaw journalist. The trickster. The poet who made eloquence of obscenity. The comic oracle of a deranged American dream. The southern gentleman. The man's man. The ornery, crafty Odysseus confronting the freaks and monsters of a hallucinatory landscape too fantastic to be true and yet too sordid not to be believed.</p><p>To this day, the sounds and images of Johnny Depp playing the role of "Raoul Duke" in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOHy2nExU5E" target="_blank">Terry Gilliam's film</a> is more fixed in my mind than the images and recordings of the actual Thompson (of which there's no shortage). I think that's part of why the Thompson myth remained so tantalizing, even to someone discovering his work more than a quarter century after "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved," <i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</i>, and <i>Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72</i>. The Thompson content most likely to reach people is still that which depicts him at the frenzied peak of his glory. </p><p>He was still alive when I was at that age where one is most susceptible to going through a Thompson fanboy phase. If you weren't paying very close attention to what he was up to then, or were too enthralled by his cultic personality not to give him the benefit of the doubt, you only saw that he hadn't stopped raising hell—whether that meant leveling the barrels of his shotgun prose at the pathological fools and moral perverts who'd sniveled their way into power, or getting into drug- and firearms-fueled mischief away from the typewriter. His cultivated air of invulnerability annealed his myth: he lived hard and fast and crazy, and apparently had the preternatural fortitude to withstand it. To defy gravity.</p><p>But if you <i>were</i> to look at him critically, you would have discovered him very much the worse for wear. In the commentary track for the <i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</i> DVD, he's barely <i>there</i>. He sounds like the mumbling, brain-damaged old man he was. His last original book, <i>Kingdom of Fear</i>, contains a few sustained moments of eloquence and insight, but it gives one the strong impression of having been cobbled together from a heap of typewritten pages by an exceedingly patient editor. The sports columns he wrote for ESPN toward the end of his life (collected in <i>Hey Rube</i>) were the Web 1.0 version of a walk past the monkey house: peer through the glass, see what the celebrity writer is drunkenly jabbering about this week, and then mosey on through toward the hot dog stand. Thompson enjoyed the use of just enough of his wits (and more than enough cocaine) to write some reliably sharp and articulate prose, but at that point he was winding himself up like a Victrola and making celebratory noises about himself.</p><p>That's what cured me of my adulation of Hunter Thompson: following the timeline of his work and witnessing its decay. Sure, in this respect I'm judging him as a consumer assessing a commodity—but that's what he and his consubstantiate media eidolon <i>were</i>. He conscientiously made himself into a brand, whose signature products confronted me in the guise of a man. That's how it works.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0CxHomWug6wE1_WFLv1bsUDKSVZzt-FR6taCJj2XDDlTQo5wEKr2Y-UV1ky7QDwyd05y7fKXeCdCMApuunXLqIqo-DlyomXBL3W7SywZlYM00bsmmvItsMtov1swXCnTFl2ud9RJGdOaQpb-TM6TZgy08GsohBn31qZppN7tHj7k27IIqtZeUq6Ksaw/s618/image_2022-09-22_235216433.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="618" data-original-width="456" height="369" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0CxHomWug6wE1_WFLv1bsUDKSVZzt-FR6taCJj2XDDlTQo5wEKr2Y-UV1ky7QDwyd05y7fKXeCdCMApuunXLqIqo-DlyomXBL3W7SywZlYM00bsmmvItsMtov1swXCnTFl2ud9RJGdOaQpb-TM6TZgy08GsohBn31qZppN7tHj7k27IIqtZeUq6Ksaw/w272-h369/image_2022-09-22_235216433.png" width="272" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hunter S. Thompson (2003)<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><i>The Curse of Lono </i>hammered the first dent into my reverence for Thompson. To my estimation, that novel was the last project to which he brought any measure of ambition. You glimpse the frayed threads of a grand vision in its pages, but by that point—the early 1980s—Thompson was too far gone to synthesize his materials into the sharkish monster he hoped to bring to life. The savage grandeur of his intention only divulges hints of itself once or twice, and the rest of it is so many disjointed ramblings of a writer desperately grasping for inspiration.<div><p>I've written before about my appreciation for Melville's <i>Pierre</i>—a career-ending train wreck of a novel if ever there was. <i>Lono</i> isn't <i>Pierre</i>. Something of the awful sublime blazes in Melville's janky, melodramatic, despair-soaked self-portrait of surmenage and obsession. But <i>Lono</i> is all smoke and no light. Even the mad triumphalism of its ending seems as though it were delivered through a forced laugh and grin. The <i>passion</i> crackling through every paragraph of his best work has been extinguished.</p><p>It strikes me as the novel of a man who'd been high on his own supply since making it big a decade earlier, and is realizing that for all his fame and resources, he no longer has the discipline or lucidity to say what he wants to say, or is even certain he <i>has</i> something to say. It makes me sad to read it.</p><p>After <i>Lono</i>, Thomspon ran on cruise control for the rest of his career. He retreated to the safety of a playland, surrounding himself with admirers and enablers, knowing he could rely on the power of his brand to sell whatever it was he managed to write, even if it amounted to political insult comedy laced with self-aggrandization.</p><p>Thompson committed suicide in 2005. Shot himself. Didn't even have the decency to wait until his family was out of the house. Arranged to have his ashes shot of a giant cannon shaped like his emblematic "Gonzo Fist," so that the final event of his volition would punctuate the Hunter Thompson narrative with the symbolic adumbration of the audacious, hellraising antihero that came to national attention in 1971.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP91PAbyR5srFNEoIc44NyYcwsUPn8NtOQ4jsw1VI23SWuilP_gyQcfQOwmyFpNYuuTyxDB8i9tupgC9ytHxGIrqiEE-fqXF5PdKRdePuCucFWodtn2Pz3MVFO4AF1Bg4DbrP1MXGgzYEKz0dklr24AJXV8oHuGwyQjwefEnzJd7zYgko3og_wJ8mQug/s520/image_2022-09-22_235452441.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="360" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP91PAbyR5srFNEoIc44NyYcwsUPn8NtOQ4jsw1VI23SWuilP_gyQcfQOwmyFpNYuuTyxDB8i9tupgC9ytHxGIrqiEE-fqXF5PdKRdePuCucFWodtn2Pz3MVFO4AF1Bg4DbrP1MXGgzYEKz0dklr24AJXV8oHuGwyQjwefEnzJd7zYgko3og_wJ8mQug/w273-h394/image_2022-09-22_235452441.png" width="273" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ralph Steadman, cover art for <i>The Curse of Lono</i> (1983)<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>All Thompson wanted to be was a writer, and made it happen through determination and grit. I can admire that.<div><br /></div><div>He wrote some killer books. I can still read <i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas </i>from cover to cover on a rainy afternoon. <i>Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72</i> is invaluable (but perhaps blackpilling) literature for anyone who wants to understand the American electoral process. I can't read <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=d7INJCnK0GIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">Thompson's introduction</a> to Ralph Steadman's <i>Gonzo: The Art</i> out loud without bursting into laughter. (In his later years, Thompson could only access the full depth of his powers when lambasting his long-suffering collaborator—<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/" target="_blank">or eulogizing Richard Nixon</a>.)</div><div><p>But he let himself become a self-destructive egomaniac with a Peter Pan complex. He wantonly abused the people around him, and like the textbook narcissist, he had the charisma to get away with it. His writing acts as a superconductive conduit for his magnetic personality, which is no doubt why he's so much <i>fun</i> to read—but it pulls us into and <i>convinces</i> us to accept his narrative of a world where everybody but himself is a doltish NPC at best and an atavistic reptile ape at worst. It captures you to the point where he'll describe spraying Steadman with mace or kicking a man in the balls for no reason, and all you can do is laugh ("that's our Hunter!"), even though we'd be horrified if we witnessed these acts committed by a person who lacked Thompson's gift of expression and mesmeric charm.</p><p>I can still read Thompson because I'm able to separate the art from the artist—a tall order in the case of <i>this</i> particular artist. I relate to Thompson most comfortably when he's the the name on the spine of a few books that I occasionally pick up, leaf through a while, and put back down. He's a fine enough hero for the fiery adolescent who smells corruption and bullshit in everything, and wholeheartedly believes that inebriation is praxis—but there's something sad about someone who goes on idolizing such a hot mess after he's cleared thirty. I'd imagine it's even sadder to <i>be</i> that hot mess into your forties and fifties, knowing on some obscure level that a large portion of your admirers love you for the clown show you've made of yourself.</p><p><br />Case two: Marilyn Manson.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPVz-WKyro5Jwei88l-86ha0yUNIV5kzSrElcT2mY8mgdhE-qUwr1L168Ye7nuRErxeRkQobGOuyrmgzlSBhwKxze6oe01AavQQtH_2Yb1Uupx6KBgqQZhNeCWoKqY5pTvjzR7TAZQEwDUWKpQ6xdABuKv1FX-47MSY0U9xZ6D-d-Af-AlUr-fYyITA/s806/image_2022-09-22_235837085.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="806" data-original-width="657" height="370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPVz-WKyro5Jwei88l-86ha0yUNIV5kzSrElcT2mY8mgdhE-qUwr1L168Ye7nuRErxeRkQobGOuyrmgzlSBhwKxze6oe01AavQQtH_2Yb1Uupx6KBgqQZhNeCWoKqY5pTvjzR7TAZQEwDUWKpQ6xdABuKv1FX-47MSY0U9xZ6D-d-Af-AlUr-fYyITA/w302-h370/image_2022-09-22_235837085.png" width="302" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marilyn Manson (1997)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I feel this might be redundant. Like Thompson, Manson (née Brian Warner) got everything he wanted, and having it brought out the worst in him. He's the high priest of his own personality cult. He invented a mythic persona, obliterated every boundary between his private self and public image, and became a grotesque flesh-and-blood caricature. If Thompson behaved poorly towards the people in his life, Manson treated them <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRFJoUBP54o" target="_blank">monstrously</a>.</p><p>I idolized Thompson, but I <i>glorified</i> Manson. There has never been a living human being with whom I've been more deeply obsessed.</p><p>I was, what, fourteen years old when my Mansonite phase began. It lasted until I was seventeen or eighteen. I can claim to understand celebrity worship because I've <i>experienced</i> it.</p><p>When I secretly bought <i>Smells Like Children</i> at Record Town, I was a depressed and angry teenager who has having a horrible time in school (both socially and academically) and wounded by my parents' divorce. I was primed to buy into his "philosophy."</p><p>My favorite song, I think, was "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRFJoUBP54o" target="_blank">Lunchbox</a>." The reason why is right there in the chorus.</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">I wanna grow up<br />I wanna be<br />A big rock and roll star<br />I wanna grow up<br />I wanna be<br />So no one fucks with me</span></blockquote><p></p><p>I soon came to believe that Manson <i>understood</i> me. He not only spoke to me, but <i>for</i> me—me and all the other bullied outcasts and misfits. He was the gangly, sneering reflection of all the world's meanness and mendacity, and he spat all of it back in its face. "I am <i>your</i> fault," was the message. "<i>You</i> made me this way." Fuck—I could relate. I wanted to be that, too. The awkward, unpopular kid sick of trying to fit in, to please people to whom he could apparently do nothing right, reinventing himself as a middle finger to the preppies, jocks, mean girls, and small-minded teachers and vice principals. ("<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdy19iruwxU" target="_blank">The world shudders as the worm gets its wings</a>" and all that.)</p><p>It's embarrassing to recount. But we're all of us embarrassing during the first throes of puberty.</p><p>I went goth. I painted my nails black and toted<i> </i>Sailor Moon lunchboxes. I had a Marilyn Manson T-shirt for every day of the week. Posters all over my bedroom wall. I went on the internet and looked at photo galleries on fanpages for hours on end. I read his autobiography, <i>The Long Hard Road Out of Hell</i>, more times than I could count. I collected bootleg concert videos, Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids recordings, and taped his TV appearances. When I got my lip pierced, it was on the left side—so that it would literally <i>mirror</i> Manson's own lip ring on the cover of the "Lunchbox" single.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDviwI7JrO-QLQvTpOVA_VJ2hzOsLzsmCTZAb30h3fxcHtp6iESB5pfOXS5jSXRQuw0RO1jEzdxea-M2W9q_k_5N-AXsbDM82nX_r7ftQMb41sdJz-V2whA3Dnri-zrTnykwagoXJA1AK4S5WzOtBqn1erNn0OiKSsgcxoi4tEDhXIkfLeO8PpHQjs5Q/s525/image_2022-09-23_000103889.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="525" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDviwI7JrO-QLQvTpOVA_VJ2hzOsLzsmCTZAb30h3fxcHtp6iESB5pfOXS5jSXRQuw0RO1jEzdxea-M2W9q_k_5N-AXsbDM82nX_r7ftQMb41sdJz-V2whA3Dnri-zrTnykwagoXJA1AK4S5WzOtBqn1erNn0OiKSsgcxoi4tEDhXIkfLeO8PpHQjs5Q/s320/image_2022-09-23_000103889.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(1995)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>I saw him in concert four times between 1998 and 2001. I remember a sense of unreality pervading my first experience. The Marilyn Manson I held in awe was a manifold of reproduced images, logos, and symbols on posters, T-shirts, magazines, Hot Topic stickers, and liner notes; he was a leathery, hypnotic voice embedded in a medley of digitized sound issued from a speaker; he was a practical effect in music videos. Something like an act of faith was required to equate the tall but somehow little man strutting onstage with his godlike media eidolon, despite how similar they looked and sounded. It was a lot easier when you were surrounded by other teenagers dressed in black, all of you amplifying each other's enthusiasm, reaffirming your <i>belief</i> in the power of the event in which you participated. Like a church congregation.</p><p>We needn't get too much into how I got over it. I went through the process of growing up in fits and starts, while Manson's nonsense became increasingly transparent. After <i>Holy Wood</i> came out in 2001, it was hard to deny his shtick had about run its course. I had a genuine crisis of faith, trying to convince myself that <i>Holy Wood</i> really was an excellent record, that Manson hadn't lost the afflatus of his earlier efforts, and certainly hadn't become a petty, coke-addled, burnt-out diva who bullied his bandmates and sycophants after having alienated most of the people who'd facilitated his rise to stardom. I'd staked too much of my identity on the Marilyn Manson myth to just let it go.</p><p>Curiously, the mass process of de-Mansonfication was self-accelerating. Fans started looking at each other, searching for signs of doubt. One person's admission that he or she was no longer buying Mr. Warner's self-generated hype prompted somebody else's. The weakening of belief proliferated like a pathogen. It's funny, but not all that surprising, that a fandom whose members generally claimed to prize individuality and aggressive nonconformity should have its numbers curtailed through a mechanism of herd behavior. Seeing so many other spooky kids relinquishing their Manson swag and defecting to other band fandoms (Slipknot was the most popular choice, I think), one's tendency was to follow. Nobody wanted to be like that last kid still dedicated to collecting and playing with Pogs.</p><p>I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't have more sympathy for celebrities. To sign the paperwork and take the ticket is to become something both more and less than a person. More than one to the extent that the conflation of your entity with the artifacts and fetishes through which you are seen, heard, and exalted makes you omnipresent and, in a limited sense, immortal. Less than human because your adoring public is liable to flushing you down the toilet like a goldfish that's outstayed its welcome the moment you give them an excuse. We generally don't treat so callously those people whom we love, whose presence has enriched our lives. But a celebrity isn't a person: he's a product coded as a person. When we admire him, we see the person; when he gives us displeasure, we avail ourselves of him in his function as the product.</p><p>I find it strange that Manson fully grasped this his pre-washout years. Some of his lyrics express not only ambivalence, but revulsion toward his early experience of fame (I admit that "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUEWmaL4U1s" target="_blank">Mister Superstar</a>" still gives me the chill of frisson), and yet he continued to drive inexorably forward. Cocaine is a hell of a drug, I guess.</p><p>At any rate: A few years ago, my mother admitted to going into my room and reading <i>The Long Hard Road Out of Hell</i> for herself when I was at school, hoping to better understand my devotion to the man on the cover—who was about twenty-nine years old at the time of publication. "Immature" was how she described her impression of him back then. I had to agree.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKp70IEajybyPMRU25ffQmHrBsiQl4XmAYv-422KAj8SCYMZmIPDxuQX0LKJhAvgWqNeAwwOwucIv0x3VUScjnbSLClkOnMmlUze22VwyLeLDd6LE5UTrEIwDOpl4qJjyfXQ3vlKrRk3nqR_dn8mZ4r4vYlMkNdyWpfgyn5qzGDFaJUZxTE9XOQDKiTA/s629/image_2022-09-23_000433269.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="629" data-original-width="514" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKp70IEajybyPMRU25ffQmHrBsiQl4XmAYv-422KAj8SCYMZmIPDxuQX0LKJhAvgWqNeAwwOwucIv0x3VUScjnbSLClkOnMmlUze22VwyLeLDd6LE5UTrEIwDOpl4qJjyfXQ3vlKrRk3nqR_dn8mZ4r4vYlMkNdyWpfgyn5qzGDFaJUZxTE9XOQDKiTA/w270-h331/image_2022-09-23_000433269.png" width="270" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marilyn Manson (2012)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>It is often said that one should never meet his heroes. This is bad advice.</p><p>A better maxim would be: never a make a hero of somebody you don't know. Appreciate them? Fine. Take inspiration from them? Sure. But save your adoration for the people who <i>belong</i> to your life, and fully <i>as</i> people. That way you can be sure they deserve it.</p><p>A product can never love you back. It cannot listen. It can never find something that it admires in <i>you</i>.<br /><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2022/10/celebrity-mythology-machine-part-7.html">PART SEVEN</a></b></p></div></div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-31937320744453233252022-09-16T10:41:00.030-04:002022-10-18T21:53:37.937-04:00Celebrity, Mythology, & The Machine (part 5)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimSlnWoFH0MCaLb7j6bsBtIY8L3hwnqykCfux3LNc_1jlB3CghoiW0RWAVnOfAZmMsoBo7G-gS2AXtgOKsfeKKGXy13hGYy-vEMDn7zs83BK2FyPkw9zETPiuwj2tivnlwh1qBCCDMiu9eIk1Yg6LySJUgw2FueSo4pjgYw2Q5Z9Bzo1ohefVvTThu2w/s1072/image_2022-09-15_233247752.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1072" data-original-width="882" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimSlnWoFH0MCaLb7j6bsBtIY8L3hwnqykCfux3LNc_1jlB3CghoiW0RWAVnOfAZmMsoBo7G-gS2AXtgOKsfeKKGXy13hGYy-vEMDn7zs83BK2FyPkw9zETPiuwj2tivnlwh1qBCCDMiu9eIk1Yg6LySJUgw2FueSo4pjgYw2Q5Z9Bzo1ohefVvTThu2w/w291-h354/image_2022-09-15_233247752.png" width="291" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clara Bow, photographed in 1928</td></tr></tbody></table><p><br /><b>V. EXEGESIS</b></p><p>On the face of it, the mythology of any individual celebrity is a modular life-narrative generated in real time via the instruments of mass media, the labor of professionals, and the unpaid contributions of invested observers who gossip, compile and distribute fan-publications, compose fan art, etc. The circulation of media artifacts and their effects on spectators' behavior (disposing them to consume the products with which a celebrity is associated, follow the celebrity on social media, speak about the celebrity to others, or simply to continue watching and/or listening to the celebrity's television appearance, radio interview, YouTube video, etc.) quickens and sustains the living myth's heartbeat. When the magnitude and rate of circulation decreases, or when spectators become less inclined to engage with content and/or consume products featuring the celebrity, their myth comes into a condition of elanguescence. (Clara Bow, the "It Girl" of the 1920s and 1930s, doesn't inspire much devotion or very many retrospective listicles these days.)</p><p>As we've seen, the overlapping circles of Western Europe's economic, cultural, and political elite formed the ranks of the proto-celebrity beau monde. The press loved them, and a sizable cross-section of the literate public was captivated by them—but their wealth and power had little to do with the mass media. It is the reverse for their successors, the celebrities proper of the electric age.</p><p>The modern celebrity stands aloft on a tautology. Critics of Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and the like once groused that so-and-so was "famous for being famous"—but that has <i>always</i> been the case for anyone who sought to earn a living by offering their name, likeness, and work to the mass media complex. Circulation catalyzes circulation. The person with a speaking role in a major film, who chats with late-night talk show hosts, has their photographs festooned across the magazines and tabloids displayed at the supermarket checkout, who's discussed on daytime television, etc., gets slotted for time in these media because they are seen to be significant, and they are significant because they are (or have been) seen. (They are selected, initially, on the industry expert's appraisal of the value they'll add to a product. By coming into circulation, their likeness enters the domain wherein mythologization becomes possible.)</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>It is worth our while to touch on Roland Barthes' specialized and idiosyncratic definition of "myth," which intersects with McLuhan's remark that the purpose of myth is to boil down a complicated process or situation into a concrete, enduring metaphor. We won't recapitulate Barthes' semiotic description of myth as stacked tiers of signs, signifiers, and signifieds, but it will suffice to say that the gist of his conception is of a language developed to "transform meaning into a form." One of the recurrent examples he cites in his 1957 essay "Myth Today" is the cover photograph of a then-recent issue of the magazine <i>Paris-Match</i>, which depicted a black youth in French military garb giving a salute. Here many of us might say that this is a cut-and-dry instance of propaganda, disseminated to simultaneously dismiss the enduring problems of France's imperial history <i>and</i> to suggest that it all worked out in the end because the final result was more French patriots. Barthes examines the procedure in more granular detail: <p></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: courier;">Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion... Entrusted with 'glossing over' an intentional concept, myth encounters nothing but betrayal in language, for language can only obliterate the concept if it hides it, or unmask it if it formulates it...<b>driven to having either to unveil or to liquidate the concept, it will <i>naturalize</i> it.</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature.</b> We now understand why, <i>in the eyes of the myth-consumer</i>, the intention, the adhomination of the concept can remain manifest without however appearing to have an interest in the matter: <b>what causes mythical speech to be uttered is perfectly explicit, but it is immediately frozen into something natural; it is not read as a motive, but as a reason.</b> If I read the Negro-saluting as symbol pure and simple of imperiality, I must renounce the reality of the picture, it discredits itself in my eyes when it becomes an instrument. Conversely, if I decipher the Negro's salute as an alibi of coloniality, I shatter the myth even more surely by the obviousness of its motivation. <b>But for the myth-reader, the outcome is quite different: everything happens as if the picture <i>naturally</i> conjured up the concept,</b> as if the signifier <i>gave a foundation</i> to the signified: the myth exists from the precise moment when French imperiality achieves the natural state: myth is speech justified in <i>excess</i>.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><p>Note the crucial distinction between "justification" and "naturalization." Every justification contains an apology, an argument for the desirability of a thing after its positives and negatives have been weighed against each other. Naturalization means the <i>preclusion</i> of justification. It prevents the question from being asked, obviating the demand for an answer, apology, or explanation.</p><p>The mythology which accretes around the individual celebrity through the circulation of media artifacts and discourse varies on a case-by-case basis—the Cyndi Lauper narrative is not the Aaliyah narrative is not the Lady Gaga narrative—but a general theme (or, rather, an effect) is the naturalization of their status and the prolificity of their image.</p><p>The celebrity, as a person—the living being whose entity and actions constitute the vital basis of the circulating content—is typically somebody who sings in a recording studio and onstage, pretends to be a fictional character for a camera, plays a sport that is broadcast in real time, and so on. To be sure, he or she tends to be very good at it. For these invaluable services, he or she earn a fabulous income, own multiple houses, enjoy the mobility of a private jet, have people on call (and the social clout) to clean up any messes made by his or her misbehavior, can expect to be intently listened to by the hoi polloi and elite alike whenever he or she chooses to speak out on a given topic, etc. In short, the actor, the singer, and the basketball player accrue a great deal of power on the basis of his simulacrum's place in a mass media pseudo-event, and its provenance is effectively laundered before it ever has the opportunity to be soiled by public examination.¹ We are told (without being told) that the wealth, influence, and the obeisance the celebrity commands is owed to him by all that is just and fair in the world.</p><p>On the one hand, we find a trick of prestidigitation wherein the naturalizing function of Barthes' myth-language conceals the contingent historicity of the media apparatus that pumps the celebrity content through the world's veins. The cynosure of the simulated person in the media spectacle renders transparent the social machinery that delivers it. On the other it it obscures the contingent events by which the celebrity entertainer maneuvered or <i>was maneuvered</i> into their particular station in the manufacture of the spectacular panorama.</p><p>The controlling parents, the family wealth, the prep school, the social capital of a relative or a peer network, the series of lucky breaks, their being at the right place at the right time to meet the right person with the right connections to land the right gig, the army of professionals employed to make them appear brilliant and beautiful—all of the circumstantial advantages and aleatory turns of fortune that made possible the celebrity's ascent are syncopated in an individualistic narrative of inborn gifts and diligent striving.² Not that talent, ambition, or industriousness are irrelevant to achieving success in a viciously competitive field, but the particular form of success story epitomized by the celebrity discounts every variable <i>except</i> <i>for</i> the native virtues of the superior specimen and the old "everything happens for a reason" chestnut.</p><p>In this respect the celebrity mythology acts as the most pervasive vector for the bourgeoisie myth of the equitable meritocracy. The affable, well-regarded joke-teller whom we all know (or feel we know), who makes us laugh and tells us what we want to hear during his weeknight television appearances—well, why <i>shouldn't</i> he earn <a href="https://paywizard.org/salary/vip-check/stephen-colbert" target="_blank">fifty-seven thousand dollars a day</a> looking into a camera and telling the jokes written for him? Doesn't he deserve it? He's so talented and so hardworking and so <i>seen! </i>Got a problem with it? You're just jealous. You don't have his gifts or talent, you didn't make the right decisions, you didn't work hard enough. What are <i>you</i> doing with your life, anyway?</p><p>The system works. The world is just. Everything happens for a reason. The social positions and compensation allotted to Stephen Colbert, Sam Bankman-Fried, and the Amazon delivery driver is each of them a <i>moral</i> outcome. The first two are entitled to their fortunes, their mobility, and their access, while the third deserves to piss in a bottle or else risk missing his quota. Before he decided not to work in television or found a cryptocurrency exchange, he really should have considered the consequences.</p><p>It is wholly understandable that we should <i>admire</i> the feats of the athlete, the musician, the actor, etc.—but the historical aberration that has been naturalized is the contemporary practice of <i>sainting</i> them, paying more attention and attributing more significance to their spectacular content than to any number of <i>immediate</i> people and events. Whatever the effects of celebrity culture's technical architecture on our basic habits of cognition, engagement promotes estrangement by tacitly diminishing the real in the face of the spectacular. No photographer, videographer, nor fawning columnist will ever make your neighbors or coworkers at the office seem as alluring or singularly interesting as Adele or Leonardo Dicaprio. It's only natural that we should hold the celebrity dearer than <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTA-79DBj-A" target="_blank">the scum</a> around us.</p><p>This phenomenon cannot be disjoined from the fictive experience of sharing a personal connection to the mass media eidolon. Both the the contemporary form of the parasocial relationship and its pervasiveness are owed to electric media's sensuousness, the technical voodoo that conjures an illusion of propinquity. We do not feel we are voyeurs, but <i>participants</i>; we feel we are someways <i>sharing </i>our life with the comedian, the K-pop star, the romantic comedy actors, and the supermodel. We spend so much quality time with them; the proofs of their excellence are faultless (tautological) and endlessly abundant (by fiat). Who would we be, what would we even do without them? Why shouldn't they be some of the most important people in our lives? Popular consent to their exaltation is made a foregone conclusion at the pleasure of the arbiters of circulation (one of whom is lately a software algorithm).</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguBRBbFAbnt89dR32W1m7KMuEAv1610GHseZ6m4HB9QgY0128h_1fSZjn6cKYKLuLTqhFprkUfemsEBdBkgttUbSTfNHxRBOcYYhpWQXq_IW5giNamz44B4es1RBrf9as2e2tL853pZUGzvZ10djcKRTA8pF2cPDT8krQrnlpH1WrWXpPEG8Ne-twj8w/s1415/image_2022-09-16_004252136.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1415" data-original-width="1099" height="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguBRBbFAbnt89dR32W1m7KMuEAv1610GHseZ6m4HB9QgY0128h_1fSZjn6cKYKLuLTqhFprkUfemsEBdBkgttUbSTfNHxRBOcYYhpWQXq_IW5giNamz44B4es1RBrf9as2e2tL853pZUGzvZ10djcKRTA8pF2cPDT8krQrnlpH1WrWXpPEG8Ne-twj8w/w309-h397/image_2022-09-16_004252136.png" width="309" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">April 13, 2017</td></tr></tbody></table><p>The media entity requires a medium, and the spectator's engagement with that medium persists long after the pop star goes on an indefinite hiatus, the Instagrammer sets their account to private, or the actor's erratic behavior gets them blacklisted and their apology tour leaves the arbiters of taste unimpressed. Like GM and Apple, the culture industry built its business model around planned obsolescence. The cartel that invests in the person-as-brand has no illusions about the long-term viability of their products; its scouts and analysts tirelessly search for the Next Big Thing, even as it reaps the yield of having delivered the current Big Thing.</p><p>Though the hype machine implicitly and explicitly trumpets every A-lister as a sui generis phenomenon to be loved and cherished on the basis that only they can be who they are and do what they do, not a single one of them is truly indispensable.</p><p>Napoleon discovered himself positioned on the lever that moved the world as an outcome of (and an increment in) the inscrutable operations of history. The entertainment technocrats responsible for, say, placing the actor Chadwick Boseman in a position where he could be popularly regarded as a modern civil rights hero, go about their business with more far more intention and methodological rigor than the undeliberating stochastic processes from which the so-called Great Man is made. The culture industry's role in determining the spirit of the age permits it to <a href="https://youtu.be/pehHOqx7JXg?t=129" target="_blank">select for us</a> the outstanding representative of that age—or representatives, plural, as it never invests in only one candidate. </p><p>If a catastrophic earthquake levelled Seattle in 1989, forestalling the careers of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, etc., some other milieu of musicians from some other region would have filled the vacancy. If Robert Pattinson had flubbed his audition, another young man with an aptitude for handsomely brooding on camera would have starred in <i>Twilight</i> and had his photos pasted up in collages across teenage girls' bedroom walls. Exxon doesn't lapse into paralysis and panic when a well unexpectedly runs dry; neither does the culture industry. Another avatar of the zeitgeist would have been selected, another voice chosen to speak for a generation. (So much for the idea that a media personality is somehow more valuable to society than the teacher, the EMT, the trash collector, or the bus driver on the basis that he or she is simply irreplaceable.)</p><p>The particular product itself is unimportant. What matters is that there <i>is</i> a product, that the conveyor belt never stops running, and that the spectators' habits surrounding the devices in their lives be consistently reinforced.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilAbGoHhIiRmF83PzL8jhxwBWyTcVKivF_f9mVRpOc4MkbOUnfP-ptD7rjX_H1hJbvgV_szomiaQ71e7-MTUM0V5sC7XZi_62apVt0Psv6mEom4id8SOaV99EdJHQxp8whkeYztetYNkoJL3dSydCY2eAftCPl8ngnv39qKh5xv7aaOyMaJarD8IdnEg/s659/image_2022-09-16_005250874.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="659" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilAbGoHhIiRmF83PzL8jhxwBWyTcVKivF_f9mVRpOc4MkbOUnfP-ptD7rjX_H1hJbvgV_szomiaQ71e7-MTUM0V5sC7XZi_62apVt0Psv6mEom4id8SOaV99EdJHQxp8whkeYztetYNkoJL3dSydCY2eAftCPl8ngnv39qKh5xv7aaOyMaJarD8IdnEg/w457-h263/image_2022-09-16_005250874.png" width="457" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Still from Pearl Jam's "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI" target="_blank">Do the Evolution</a>"</td></tr></tbody></table><p>As a <i>whole</i>, the mythology of the celebrity—composed of the entire "pantheon" (however inclusive or exclusive our criteria for membership) and the artifacts which vitalize these spectacular persons by means of their circulation—all hinges on the fundamental dogma of the media entity: the ascription of personhood to the representation, and the spurious understanding of the relation between the spectator and the media entity as one existing between two persons.</p><p>Debord called the spectacle "not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images." In the final analysis, this is true—but the relation between the spectator and the celebrity is refracted through so many layers that it becomes not only indirect, but wholly abstract.</p><p>Typically, what we call a parasocial relationship between a person and a famous figure unaware of their existence is actually the functional relationship between a person and a machine, or several machines.</p><p>I am indebted to <a href="https://damagemag.com/2022/08/24/meet-the-new-math-same-as-the-old-math-a-review-of-justin-joques-revolutionary-mathematics/" target="_blank">a recent article in <i>Damage</i></a> for this wonderful quote from Herbert Marcuse:</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">The machine that is adored is no longer dead matter but becomes something like a human being. And it gives back to man what it possesses: the life of the social apparatus to which it belongs. Human behavior is outfitted with the rationality of the machine process, and this rationality has a definite social content.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>While the phantasmagoria of popular media may explicitly advertise a product, glorify a lifestyle, drill a pop hook into one's ear, cast a particular figure in the starring role of one's masturbation fantasy, etc., the <i>implicit</i> social content consists of the goading imperatives of engagement. We might characterize it as a metronome which guides the subject toward a certain rhythm of life—one whose tempo is set by the update, the airtime, the release calendar, the months of reruns, the prerelease hype and the post-release dissection, and so on. These cadences of engagement harmonize with those of the shift schedule, the news cycle, the holiday season (as a period of intensifying consumption), the annual floods of pumpkin spice, gingerbread, and irish cream products, and all the other resonant counters of the <a href="https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/the-pseudo-cyclical-time-of-non-events" target="_blank">pseudo-cyclical time</a> observed by capitalist society, where production has long since ceased to be commensurate to real human needs, and the interests of an aloof proprietarian class not only inscribe the patterns to which life adheres, but the <i>meaning</i> that is to be found therein—which today finds its most succinct expression in the social media bio, the short statement of self-identity and purpose which typically consists of one's job and a list of consumption habits.</p><p>The celebrity is the human face with which the adored machine confronts us, and the luminous avatar of hegemonic soft power: the kind of power that compels without the sword or truncheon, whose methods of extortion consist of offering and withholding pleasure instead of threatening pain, and possesses the means to organize the social environment such that it conditions us all to make precisely the choices that power the mechanisms of control. To borrow another line from Debord, the celebrity is the evangelist from whose virtual mouth is preached is "the existing order’s uninterrupted discourse about itself, its laudatory monologue." Her personal mythology is a couple of aphoristic verses embedded in the abstruse Nevi'im of advanced capitalism, routinely cited by those who breezily admit they have not parsed the whole book and have not read those lines in their context. <br /><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2022/09/celebrity-mythology-machine-part-6.html">PART SIX</a></b><br /><br /></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">1. I'm less disposed to call a football game a pseudo-event than a Marvel movie, but the social importance given to the former is no less grotesquely outsized than the latter. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">2. Being at the right place at the right time is something we've seen an awful lot since the beginning of the digital revolution. The webcomic <i>Penny Arcade</i> is a good example: as I've said before, it didn't become the biggest comic on the internet (at least for a time) by being especially brilliant, but because it got there <i>first</i>. About a decade after <i>Penny Arcade</i>'s 1998 debut, the supply of webcomics <i>far</i> outstripped demand; one wonders what sort of careers Holkins and Krahulik would have followed had they been born ten or even five years later. We could say the same thing about members of the first wave of popular bloggers or YouTubers.</span></p>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-50337290061797162532022-09-15T01:27:00.007-04:002022-10-18T21:53:48.407-04:00Celebrity, Mythology, & The Machine (part 4)<p>However much the sensory content of electric media will be emphasized going forward, it's worth addressing how print matter embraced and promoted the imagistic "language" of the mass media.</p><p>Let's take for an example the reporting (and advertising) of sartorial fashion, integral to the sphere of celebrity reporting then and now. The following is a passage from the <i>Exeter and Plymouth Gazette</i> of February 28, 1873:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGOhMADVaF62zGvtQftTrJ7wZnc28hYT4agtb-qhzuKXP7Cfm_jqxsUQU1eKCmG8_2ve4lbGzJEbNeiESmQZFGcXFn7B36iqeh3g-DNUw2KGuEeaXVnj-zeXZUZHn6vrv17PNzeB2ru_iXNPetboJPrZ86d9mYR5tQ_KmuzpZRIIhx0j3rDzaots1vzA/s468/image_2022-05-14_173120220.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="468" data-original-width="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGOhMADVaF62zGvtQftTrJ7wZnc28hYT4agtb-qhzuKXP7Cfm_jqxsUQU1eKCmG8_2ve4lbGzJEbNeiESmQZFGcXFn7B36iqeh3g-DNUw2KGuEeaXVnj-zeXZUZHn6vrv17PNzeB2ru_iXNPetboJPrZ86d9mYR5tQ_KmuzpZRIIhx0j3rDzaots1vzA/s16000/image_2022-05-14_173120220.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">words words words</td></tr></tbody></table><p>There are no pictures. You had to use your imagination. Moreover, you had to be <i>in the know. </i>I have no idea what is meant by "plastron," "fraises," or "gilet fichus;" they might as well be chemistry terms. Certainly the nineteenth-century woman reading the piece was much more likely to be familiar with sartorial jargon, but even so, pure print imposes certain qualifications for comprehension whenever it strays from the commonest vernacular.</p><p>While it's not entirely fair to compare the inside content of a small-town newspaper the cover of a magazine with national circulation, it's nevertheless instructive to look ahead to the February 23, 1895 edition of <i>Harper's Bazaar</i>:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJilPTg7kD3_Gw2K4bgVlji35eCF_k7to8JESInZszlQuLyZum234md281ScnymAl5_cEGVBrNED-XA__AFnwOg6fpUOM75Ytm8tebvW4vycvwMeEHddZGi51_1jPmGdEDE19f3cZNRHT9QuKUmSYbCMgMz6Hb4pC6rwGuLUHnWr20SIPAjxCnY5OOQw/s813/image_2022-09-10_164240034.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="813" data-original-width="567" height="444" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJilPTg7kD3_Gw2K4bgVlji35eCF_k7to8JESInZszlQuLyZum234md281ScnymAl5_cEGVBrNED-XA__AFnwOg6fpUOM75Ytm8tebvW4vycvwMeEHddZGi51_1jPmGdEDE19f3cZNRHT9QuKUmSYbCMgMz6Hb4pC6rwGuLUHnWr20SIPAjxCnY5OOQw/w309-h444/image_2022-09-10_164240034.png" width="309" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Paris calling costume from Worth"</td></tr></tbody></table><p>There it is: an artist's representation of the dress and its idealized wearer—and the intimations of a lifestyle.</p><p>Now let's jump forward another four decades to marvel at the cover of <i>Vogue</i> from August 1, 1938:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0_LVDfhv8pIdgDP6b98Acev3ylnySTAahLCXPftePCVEcoFmGmLLJuLF63angOe1rxu8bgf1ChIMVVxQLKnjoSJ5Iy1nJFlqmceA5Po2DO_x1o2Yw8oLxKKLX8UDapM7RjIrtdWKlYs2wYdQY-qPG36gHfjU7XnQpXwVpHkqZ_mnnR7rN8fIsl7qMdw/s867/image_2022-09-10_164451909.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="867" data-original-width="672" height="419" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0_LVDfhv8pIdgDP6b98Acev3ylnySTAahLCXPftePCVEcoFmGmLLJuLF63angOe1rxu8bgf1ChIMVVxQLKnjoSJ5Iy1nJFlqmceA5Po2DO_x1o2Yw8oLxKKLX8UDapM7RjIrtdWKlYs2wYdQY-qPG36gHfjU7XnQpXwVpHkqZ_mnnR7rN8fIsl7qMdw/w324-h419/image_2022-09-10_164451909.png" width="324" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Huh? Great Depression? <i>What</i> depression?<br />I feel fabulous!"</td></tr></tbody></table><div><p>Even though it's divorced from any explicit context, the photo disinvites any questions as to where this is supposed to be and what's supposed to be happening there. Obviously we require no technical description of the model's raiment; the camera reproduces its "objective" likeness. By studying it, we can guess something of its texture, or the way it must go taut about the elbows and knees. The verisimilitude of the model is such that when we imagine her speaking, we might hear something other than our own interior voice. We see, we feel, we know, we believe. When we talk about sensuous as opposed to discursive content, this is what we mean.</p><p><b><br />IV. ENTER THE SENSORIUM </b></p><p>The expansion and diversification of mass media in the first half of the twentieth century altogether supplanted the discursive "virtual reality" of the beau monde with the ensorcelling mythology of the celebrity. The process can be encapsulated as the result of three movements: extension of the mass media's range and its homogenization on a national scale, and the denudation of typographic culture by an emergent paradigm of <i>sensuous </i>content, and the crucible of the free market.</p><p>In terms of its reach, twentieth-century media imposed the culture of the metropolis upon the province. This process was well underway during the second half of the nineteenth century, as railways swiftly and reliably transported a growing number of national-audience publications from the city to the town and country. In the same way, secondary cities were likewise bent into conformity with the metropoles. If you lived in, say, Philadelphia or Saint Louis, the majority of the books you read were printed in London or New York. The birth and rapid growth of the motion picture industry (which entailed the repurposing of local theaters as cinemas) accelerated cultural homogenization, as did recorded music, radio, and television.<br /><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>The multisensory operations of electric media (complemented by the mass reproduction of photography through print) bestowed remote events and entities with the semblance of concreteness. The literate public <i>read</i> and spoke to each other about the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century, and were perhaps provided with a few etchings to stoke their imagination. But the newsreel <i>delivered</i> to 1940s theatergoers the animated likenesses of Hitler, soldiers on the march, and batteries discharging ordinance. The camera exposed the suffering of expropriated farming families of the dust bowl to the readers (lookers-at) of newspapers and magazine. Roosevelt used radio in its intimate, private aspect to bolster the confidence of a nation wracked by economic depression, while Hitler wielded it as a tribal drum, cranking Germany into a revanchist frenzy. Thanks to the television, the site of Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination was simultaneously Dallas <i>and</i> the American living room.<p></p><p>Writing in the early 1960s, and having lived through the ousting of silent film by the "talkie," the golden age of radio, and the television revolution while studying and then teaching literature, Marshall McLuhan declared that the emergence of the electric media paradigm entailed "the total reorganization of our imaginative lives." Anyone who doubted him then was kidding themselves, as must be obvious to any of us today.</p><p>Irrespective of their subtler effects of upon a person's basic patterns of perception and cognition, the speaker and the screen (complemented by photomechanical printing) turned the developed world into a grand practical experiment in hypnotic inception—one in which "the pseudo-events which rush by in spectacular dramatizations have not been lived by those informed of them," as <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm" target="_blank">Guy Debord</a> eloquently and coldly phrased it.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEietNRlJCBrttAmpDczO3t7JmX7Polpfc0N2xcroRnFozA9MPvz2cHvsi8iJqXoFNgAIvXk942LN-E1P37HKNNABEKngBtyQETCIkpFdYoPovAaU3DbK2DACrbf1lCmKCaPGC7PDnDdlew5V9PblVbtFFook4SFFw9kn5HWa76nmJp7H1gIusfcjcXtEg/s927/image_2022-09-10_170033994.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="927" data-original-width="630" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEietNRlJCBrttAmpDczO3t7JmX7Polpfc0N2xcroRnFozA9MPvz2cHvsi8iJqXoFNgAIvXk942LN-E1P37HKNNABEKngBtyQETCIkpFdYoPovAaU3DbK2DACrbf1lCmKCaPGC7PDnDdlew5V9PblVbtFFook4SFFw9kn5HWa76nmJp7H1gIusfcjcXtEg/w293-h432/image_2022-09-10_170033994.png" width="293" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poster for the film <i>Bus Stop</i> (1956)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>When Emma Bovary's voracious appetite for romantic novels motivated her somewhat unrealistic expectations of domestic life, their influence was <i>discursive</i>. If her fantasy of a passionate rendezvous with a dark stranger was "planted" in her by print matter, her own domain of actual experience supplied the private sensations (her lover's face, build, and voice, the furnishings of the villa where they consummate their affair, etc.). Hollywood has since provided the fervid romantic a pseudo-material basis for her dream of the perfect first kiss with Mr. Right: components of particular actors' faces, voices, and gestures, of mises en scène, and perhaps the emotional stirrings of a soundtrack enter into her reverie and perhaps become the benchmark by which she assesses her actual encounters with actual men. Likewise, whereas Don Quixote modelled his conduct after what he'd read in books about adventure and chivalry, the modern male fantasy of power and heroism is likely to be an esemplastic pastiche of media imagery and the sensory "echoes" of events in which he actually participated. As Baudrillard observed, the imaginary comes to determine the real—and the imaginary's potential to do so is multiplied when it confronts us as something actually seen and heard.</p><p>What's the difference between the delusional schizophrenic and the "sane" consumer of electric media circa 1960? One hears the voices of people who are not actually present and witnesses events that have not actually occurred, and is alone in this. The other hears disembodied voices and sees the mirages of false events, but everyone <i>else</i> around him hears and sees them too.</p><p>The speed with which television and film rose to challenge print matter and ultimately eclipse it in terms of cultural significance shouldn't have surprised anyone. On the one hand you have the visual monotony of static, monochrome text; on the other is spectacular light, motion, and sound. Parsing requires more effort than witnessing; by the same token we find it more difficult to look away from a dynamic event than a static object. In any case, we can't choose not to hear a person speaking to us from across the table, a sportscaster narrating a baseball game via the radio on our nightstand, or The Beatles playing for the studio audience of <i>The Ed Sullivan Show</i> on the television across the room. The spectacle of electric media<i> demands</i> our involvement.</p><p>Perhaps there exists an alternate timeline where the evolution of radio, television, film, etc. followed a different course. Picture a world in which the recording and radio broadcast industries were wholly devoted to birdsong, white noise, and arrhythmical, droning vocalise, and where every cinema and television screen is lit up by animated congeries of shapes, accompanied by a soundtrack of hissing and popping sounds. It's absurd—and so is the idea that the majority of electric media's content would consist of anything but simulations of events involving humans.</p>The forms of entertainment devised for the new media found their templates in what was already popular. Silent films imported vaudeville and melodrama wholesale from the stage. Before the radio drama eased into the episodic format which television would borrow from it, its earliest instances were composed, performed, and broadcast live as plays to which audiences could listen as though it were delivered by a wireless <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Théâtrophone">théâtrophone</a>. The early recording industry sold phonographs of musicians performing the sorts of ditties that sold as sheet music. (However grand or groundbreaking, no innovation can truly transcend the sociotechnological moment of its creation.) <p>Given the transnational reach of the entertainment industry (whose radio and filmic wings were initially subsidized by the likes of Edison and Westinghouse) and the mesmerizing power of its modern products, it was only to be expected that the people whose images appeared on screens large and small across the globe, and whose recorded voices were played back through speakers to millions of listening ears, would ascend to a stature dwarfing the heights to which any actor or musician could hope to clamber in any previous epoch. During the twentieth century, the actor and singer achieved the mass recognition which Western culture had previously reserved for Christian saints, Greco-Roman heroes and gods, heads of state memorialized on paper money and metal coinage, and perhaps a select few literary canonical images like Hamlet soliloquizing to the skull in his hand. Centuries passed before Jesus had adoring followers on four continents; Charlie Chaplin pulled it off in just a couple of decades.</p><p>Even in the time of Mrs. Crackenthorpe's <i>Female Tatler</i>, the publishers of gossip had a penchant for dishing about actors and singers—but most usually when<i> </i>they were rumored to be having an affair with some member of the upper classes. When the performing artist became the indispensable ingredient of an enthralling spectacle reproduced in every city and town, the press followed the money. If the editor of a daily tabloid or weekly human-interest magazine with a national readership had to deliberate between publishing a cover story about a garden-variety scandal involving a socialite whose name mattered to nobody living outside New York, or the saucy details of Marilyn Monroe's latest divorce, then that editor was a bona fide idiot who wouldn't have been in business much longer.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SG_MfaNP2nJ72B2zU15ivHRnnB8MP0IkHlgq5M6uZd7ReTBtefNaJgPuUIzj3mG6JCNMRlqzlA9vh_GqFHaTjrdO8-hcVUS61CX3W98VhpoPPSPRMEtY-rzHXnsXZl77jUwbks9sBWEpw8v_khs4f0a0GbLggs2q1BriQA7tfZ5HUWAottNqkwt9YQ/s1055/image_2022-09-10_170503471.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1055" data-original-width="808" height="407" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SG_MfaNP2nJ72B2zU15ivHRnnB8MP0IkHlgq5M6uZd7ReTBtefNaJgPuUIzj3mG6JCNMRlqzlA9vh_GqFHaTjrdO8-hcVUS61CX3W98VhpoPPSPRMEtY-rzHXnsXZl77jUwbks9sBWEpw8v_khs4f0a0GbLggs2q1BriQA7tfZ5HUWAottNqkwt9YQ/w312-h407/image_2022-09-10_170503471.png" width="312" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">September 1955 edition of Hollywood scandal<br />magazine <i>Confidential</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The qualitative difference between the public's experience of the print-era personage and the celebrity of the electric age cannot be overstated. As a creator of content, Charles Dickens was like a remote pen pal whom you've never met in person, but periodically writes you very nice letters. Marilyn Monroe, on the other hand, is somebody you've seen around the neighborhood. In the movie theater, on the sidewalk, in the supermarket, in your living room. You're personally familiar with the way she speaks, how she carries herself, the kinds of clothes she's accustomed to wearing, and so on. Perhaps once or twice she's sung you to sleep. Why then wouldn't you prick your ears when somebody speaks of her? Why wouldn't you be interested in what she's been up to?</p><p>But this is all wrong. You've never seen, heard, spoken to, or been in the bodily presence of the <i>actual</i> human being named Marilyn Monroe. You're only familiar with the machine reproduction, the <i>simulation</i> of Monroe. Where most of planet Earth is concerned—and <i>was</i> concerned during her lifetime—Monroe was content. A pseudo-person. Flat, and yet deeply multitudinous. Larger than life, but something both more and less than alive.</p><p>Edwin booth was a famous actor. Humphrey Bogart was a movie star. Brad Pitt was a superstar.</p><p>What separated Bogart from Booth was the reach of the medium in which he appeared as an actor. Booth's performance was limited to a single stage in a single place on a given day, whereas a Bogart film could be screened several times a day in thousands of cinemas across the world. What separated Pitt from Bogart was the sophistication of the media apparatus delivering Pitt content, filmic or otherwise. And it is the "otherwise" that contains the alchemy by which the recording of an actor projected onto or transmitted through a screen becomes a tissue in the living body of myth.</p><p>It is not only a question of how much time a person spends engaging with celebrity content, the diversity of the media in which that celebrity appears, or the amount of chatter the celebrity generates in the papers, on daytime television, or across a pub table—it's a combination of the three. For the name and the image to become mythological, their media must be multi. The images must be produced and reproduced, viewed in their multiple iterations, and variations of the narrative recited and repeated.</p><p>If, somehow, the only image of Marilyn Monroe to enter circulation was the famous subway grate photograph, her name would be a cultural footnote; she'd have been a fleeting meme, like the Double Rainbow guy or the Ermahgerd girl. But Monroe was routinely glamorized in magazines for over a decade. She appeared in movies and (occasionally) on television and radio. She recorded music. She gave interviews. She was married to other celebrities; the tabloids gossiped about her personal life. And, of course, her name came up in the person-to-person speech of normies. All of these artifacts and events corroborated each other, in spite of their variances, like the four books of the Gospels, or the different treatments of Orestes by Aeschylus, Euripides, and Ovid. The circulation and the multidimensionality of her media image imbued the simulation of Marilyn Monroe with the seeming depth of reality. Her life, consubstantiated with her circulating artifacts, traced a petroglyph across the media landscape; her mythology is the public reading of that cipher, and the control it exerts on people's movements when its contours are in sight.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqeI4nKXbV-yj5sf9EPwMAOUa3d_zG9Uj4IIVRDq0e0LiBXguNQidxLE53e1hy07Tibsd0AQNgQFDutPvyxQ1QNkp5DYa_8OP8l3kkdOmYNojyRrMyXO24Ec3UKa-aFgv7eNqMWVQhR8AtaCRd1DhuC_KO1U2um25Bk0M7yM06514UcQ9cVDUrh-mCFw/s896/image_2022-09-10_171042668.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="646" data-original-width="896" height="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqeI4nKXbV-yj5sf9EPwMAOUa3d_zG9Uj4IIVRDq0e0LiBXguNQidxLE53e1hy07Tibsd0AQNgQFDutPvyxQ1QNkp5DYa_8OP8l3kkdOmYNojyRrMyXO24Ec3UKa-aFgv7eNqMWVQhR8AtaCRd1DhuC_KO1U2um25Bk0M7yM06514UcQ9cVDUrh-mCFw/w469-h338/image_2022-09-10_171042668.png" width="469" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andy Warhol, <i>Marilyn Diptych</i> (1962)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Andy Warhol may have been vacuous, sociopathic, and <i>weird</i>, but he comprehended like nobody else of his time the sea change to our collective imagination of which McLuhan spoke. Perhaps he understood it even more acutely than Adorno, whose disdain for the culture industry prevented him from engaging with it in good faith, constraining him to examine it from the perspective of a bitter outsider. As an enthusiastic viewer of the spectacle, and as a visual artist who was also a profoundly <i>empty</i> son of a bitch, Warhol's praxis was like that of a human art-generating AI, spitting back out the images he'd been given.</p><p>Historically, the circulating image bespoke the power that put it into motion. Religious iconography reproduced across continents, as legible to the Portuguese as to the Russian, attested not only to the truth and grandeur of the Christian religion, but the social capital of its universal church (divided as it was since the eleventh century). The low-relief portrait of the reigning emperor on Roman coins guaranteed the money's value on the basis of imperial organization and military might, and redounded to the supernal prestige of the head of state who bore the likeness that synecdochically stood for that value, that organization, and that might. But the spectacle to which the celebrity belongs artfully camouflages its social function (the exercise of power and control) behind the fait accompli of its own ubiquity.</p><p>What Warhol blithely captures in the <i>Marilyn Diptych</i> is the simulation's prerogative to authenticate itself, to serve as its own point of reference. Monroe was iconic because she was everywhere. She was everywhere because she was iconic.</p>Once again, Debord articulates the tautology better than anyone else: <br /><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than "that which appears is good, that which is good appears." The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance.<br /><br />The basically tautological character of the spectacle flows from the simple fact that its means are simultaneously its ends. It is the sun which never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the world and bathes endlessly in its own glory.</span></blockquote></div><div>Warhol's contribution was to turn the mirror on the spectacle from <i>inside</i> the spectacle, straying not one millimeter from its own universe of discourse. <br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2022/09/mythology-celebrity-machine-part-5.html" target="">PART FIVE</a></b></div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8972120889629675714.post-70529952214921769742022-09-14T00:30:00.005-04:002022-10-18T21:54:11.234-04:00Celebrity, Mythology, & The Machine (part 3)<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSbsr7wz61FD3X_6TUSaGVzHE9tZQNaZN3-O4Ay6t_XdJ35HLqm8v_1kw7j-TnjWIaa3WEf-uhxhkl0Wv3lNp2i_0UIG5LaFwzLjkaSkrGbNYy9WebNanTKDWeKSQIBPOGtThbai21OWu5zDwXny5aFG8UuHxSVkx3eGBdSFUILwBnlsrkJQ7s4uKFTA/s446/image_2022-09-10_162311815.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="446" data-original-width="275" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSbsr7wz61FD3X_6TUSaGVzHE9tZQNaZN3-O4Ay6t_XdJ35HLqm8v_1kw7j-TnjWIaa3WEf-uhxhkl0Wv3lNp2i_0UIG5LaFwzLjkaSkrGbNYy9WebNanTKDWeKSQIBPOGtThbai21OWu5zDwXny5aFG8UuHxSVkx3eGBdSFUILwBnlsrkJQ7s4uKFTA/w265-h430/image_2022-09-10_162311815.png" width="265" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charles Dickens carte-de-visite (ca. 1860–69)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p><b>III. THE MEDIA'S OWN CREATURES</b></p><div><p>The eighteenth-century newspaper scooped up the beau monde as readymade celebrities. Many of high society's denizens would have been happier without the public scrutiny. Probably it was only those people and families who were either trying to climb the social ladder, found themselves in a position of precarity, or feared the airing of a private scandal who <i>truly </i>cared about what the plebians writing for the newspapers had to say about them. </p><p>Despite the newspapers' role in bringing the affairs of the fashionable universe to the public's attention (and stationing themselves as a sort of magic mirror in the fashionable household), the media didn't get into the business of <i>manufacturing</i> its celebrities until the nineteenth century. True, the papers weren't above bringing eccentrics, perverts, and madmen into the textual spotlight to be gawked at by a public that would have otherwise been ignorant of them (then as now, sensationalistic content moved product), and of course coverage was allotted to the scientist, inventor, political activist, philosopher, or businessman who rose to prominence in their respective spheres of activity. But the first modern celebrity was the figure whose sphere of activity was the mass media itself: the <i>literary</i> celebrity, who made his entrance onto the public stage during the same decades that the fashionable intelligence column became a fixture of the English-language newspaper.</p><p>These new sorts of eminences were, like their counterparts on the twentieth century's silver screen and the twenty-first century's black mirror, those best endowed to make themselves a creature of the medium in which they worked, through a combination of ingenuity, talent, restless ambition, and a personal charisma they could weave into the very fibers of their productions.<br /><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Charles Dickens is <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/charles-dickens-and-fame-vs-celebrity/" target="_blank">the example par excellence</a>: the voice of an age, whose prose appealed to both the literati and the merely literate, and whose stature as a living author reached altogether unprecedented heights. He was the first to eclipse Lord Byron—an iconoclast, a legend in his own day, and the forerunner of the artist renowned for his work and infamous for the torrid life he lead. To these two exemplars we might add the Robert Burns, whom in Carlyle's biographical treatment epitomizes the talented outsider ruined by a too-steep ascent to fame; Oscar Wilde, the playwright and journalist with a prescient understanding of the method of cultivating a media persona; Arthur Conan Doyle, who had the luck and misfortune of coming up with the legendary Sherlock Holmes, a character whom audiences adored more than they did his creator; and J. F. Smith, J. Malcolm Rhymer, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and scores of others whose serialized fiction ran in magazines that together sold around two million copies <i>per week—</i>and are all but forgotten today.¹<p></p><p>The rise of the literary celebrity was enabled by advances in the technology of production (both of paper and of print matter), exploding literacy rates, the addition of lithography and photography to the mass media's arsenal, and improvements to transportation. The first two factors extended the reach of the author beyond the coterie of the salon, giving him or her access to the general public (and vice versa). The third permitted the mass audience of inexpensive newspapers, serial magazine, and novels to tie the name of a renowned author to a printed illustration. (Photographs couldn't be reproduced by the printing press until the 1880s, but the camera could provide the template for an etching, while daguerreotypes and cartes-de-visite could be produced in large volumes and sold to fans.) The fourth not only intensified the circulation of print matter, but facilitated the rise of the prototypical celebrity <i>performer</i>, epitomized by the Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, who literally rode the train and steamship to fame on both sides of the Atlantic. And because of fast, inexpensive, and widely distributed print media he could be hyped far and wide as the greatest actor of his generation, even if his audience on a given night was restricted to a single venue's seating capacity.²</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvamublvU9H85mNmI-Gw0-1NvqgC8y7DeNz61I-gDWp2B8PJLlpBxETVlp6hLGOk9v6U5tkPwbfKwm_GncH4C1T35yuOftibJ-di5mdFKbczdL_FEpwHbIaSfMUC5nCKsg49Juzbq3VqkH6evri4rMyDrdFhYvwxHdqmMBj3UgWsNHwjV0BZnlK6zpSA/s446/image_2022-09-10_163023554.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="446" data-original-width="305" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvamublvU9H85mNmI-Gw0-1NvqgC8y7DeNz61I-gDWp2B8PJLlpBxETVlp6hLGOk9v6U5tkPwbfKwm_GncH4C1T35yuOftibJ-di5mdFKbczdL_FEpwHbIaSfMUC5nCKsg49Juzbq3VqkH6evri4rMyDrdFhYvwxHdqmMBj3UgWsNHwjV0BZnlK6zpSA/w270-h395/image_2022-09-10_163023554.png" width="270" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Edwin Booth carte-de-visite<br />(date unknown)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Unlike the members of the beau monde, whom historian Hannah Grieg (author of <i>The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London</i>, which you may recall from last time) urges us not to treat as cleanly analogous to the attendees at a Hollywood awards show afterparty, Dickens and Booth were celebrities in the <i>modern</i> sense. These were not politicians, aristocrats, generals, or captains of industry, but popular <i>entertainers</i> who had amassed a degree of social capital that was once unthinkable for people of their stations. During Dickens' 1867 tour of the United States, the author's manager "had to place guards at the doors to the novelist's hotel rooms to keep away admirers who tried to barge in and demand a handshake or a free ticket to his readings," <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2009/03/did-charles-dickens-1867-trip-to-america-inspire-the-first-stirrings-of-modern-celebrity-culture.html" target="_blank">writes</a> Matthew Pearl. And Booth reportedly kept a stack of his favorite fan-letters that numbered in the hundreds; it's anyone's guess as to how many he tossed out.</p><p>As fiction reached its apogee as a popular artform, publishers of serialized journals sought to deepen and prolong readers' commitment to their product through strategies of interactive engagement. One common tactic was publishing reader comments and questions along with an editor's replies—and its effectiveness at stoking interest, brand loyalty, and a sense of <i>belonging</i> can be attested to by anyone who regularly purchased American superhero comics prior to the late 1990s. One Professor John Plunkett (see footnotes) explains how novel strategies of making readers feel like participants was instrumental to the emergence of modern celebrity culture through the print industry:</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Popular journals encouraged an interactive and intimate relationship with their readers, which needs to be seen as one of the preconditions for a celebrity culture in so far as it inspired readers' emotional and psychological engagement. Recent scholars have similarly emphasized the way that serial publication——through its sustained regularity——made writers and their work part of their readers' everyday, affective lives. Readers literally lived with the novels, whose serial rhythms connected with their own: fiction and everyday life converged. Moreover, as Mark Turner has noted of serial fiction, the impact of 'readers interacting with media at roughly the same time' was to create 'a kind of simultaneity [which] becomes increasingly significant in a collective media culture, and can lead to a form of social bonding with a community of readers all engaged in the same activity.'</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Sounds familiar, doesn't it? But bear in mind that we're still looking at something like the purely <i>discursive</i> "virtual world" described by Sumiao Li (whom you undoubtedly recall from last time), and remember that the experiences that the enjoyments of the avid readers of serialized fiction were enjoyed <i>privately </i>in spite of the public rhythm into which it brought some of their behavior to conformity.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMpZ_xz1XZr_hSsVPtvRvePHcmAKAD9eKdHfxIFE4hI4KXlm6WqImzVQQ55XTucTcF_v-9UIOIsRexOq69l3hBT0t7U3FZo6I_qcov2jifqtebY9CKOsHcZ1SJpFdM_frLZ3p4Ec5k7sXZutmqMwn4HXNORkjqOc-xeXtasdQ8i7ezZT_-F0QQ5dQFDQ/s497/image_2022-09-11_124301701.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="497" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMpZ_xz1XZr_hSsVPtvRvePHcmAKAD9eKdHfxIFE4hI4KXlm6WqImzVQQ55XTucTcF_v-9UIOIsRexOq69l3hBT0t7U3FZo6I_qcov2jifqtebY9CKOsHcZ1SJpFdM_frLZ3p4Ec5k7sXZutmqMwn4HXNORkjqOc-xeXtasdQ8i7ezZT_-F0QQ5dQFDQ/w411-h395/image_2022-09-11_124301701.png" width="411" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sydney Paget, engraving for Arthur Conan Doyle's "The<br />Boscombe Valley Mystery" (1891)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>While the press continued to report on society affairs and lionize certain intellectuals, inventors, businessmen, war heroes, and so on, there is a crucial distinction to be made between the star whose bread and butter is the mass media and the prestigious figure who <i>incidentally</i> finds themselves the subject of media attention. Though we're jumping ahead a bit, the pioneering chemist Marie Curie provides a stellar example.</p><p>As a scientific power couple in age where the nations of Europe more often competed for clout than they drove armies across each other's borders, Pierre and Marie Curie were bound to be featured in the Parisian press—but poor Marie got the worst of it. During a period of nationalistic fervor, she was an immigrant; at a time when it was believed the "natural" role of the woman was to provide moral support to the man and raise his children, she was a mother who spent more time in the laboratory than the nursery. The death of her Pierre by a freak carriage accident in 1906 left her a widow and brought the press vultures to her door. Another brouhaha followed when the press brought to light Curie's affair with the married (but estranged) Paul Langevin in 1911. The scandal reached such a pitch of intensity that it resulted in no fewer than five duels. A journalist was involved in each.</p><p>Curie herself didn't <i>want</i> the attention; she only wished to continue her research. There came a point, however, when she reluctantly submitted to playing the game for the sake of her work. Of Curie's first visit to the United States in 1921, Julie Des Jardins <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/madame-curies-passion-74183598/" target="_blank">writes</a>:</p></div><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">The tour was largely the work of a New York City journalist named Missy Meloney, who had interviewed Curie in 1920 in Paris for the women’s magazine the <i>Delineator</i>, which Meloney edited. Meloney learned that the Curies had never patented the process for purifying radium. As a result, other scientists and U.S. chemical companies were processing radium, then selling it for cancer treatments and military research for $100,000 per gram. Curie was now unable to afford the element she had discovered. Sensing a human-interest story, Meloney created the Marie Curie Radium Fund to raise money to purchase radium for Curie's continuing research.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">American women would be inspired to give to Curie, Meloney figured, only if her image as a scientist——which stereotypically suggested someone dispassionate, even severe——could be softened. So Meloney's articles presented Curie as a benevolent healer, intent on using radium to treat cancer. Meloney also persuaded editor friends at other newspapers and magazines to emphasize the same image. Curie understood that radium might be useful in the clinic, but she had no direct role in using it for medical treatments. Nevertheless, Curie's motivation for discovering radium, according to a headline in the <i>Delineator</i>, was "That Millions Shall Not Die." Writers described her as the "Jeanne D'Arc of the laboratory," with a face of "suffering and patience."<br /></span></blockquote><p>The making of myth, documented. </p><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Curie disapproved of the publicity campaign. In lectures, she reminded her audience that her discovery of radium was the work "of pure science...done for itself" rather than with "</span><span style="font-family: courier;">direct usefulness" in mind.</span>³</blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">And yet Meloney’s efforts succeeded: She raised more than $100,000 on Curie’s behalf within months, enough to buy a gram of radium for the Curie Institute in Paris. Meloney invited Curie to the United States.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier;">Curie, who disliked travel and attention, agreed to come to thank Meloney and those who had contributed to the cause. But, she wrote Meloney, "you know how careful I am to avoid all publicity referring to my name. And how I should be very grateful to arrange for my voyage with the minimum of publicity."<br /><br />Curie sailed...and within hours of disembarking in New York embarked on a whirlwind tour that took her as far west as the Grand Canyon. As it wore on, Curie became exhausted and asked to cancel events, or at least not have to speak at them. She appeared aloof and sometimes refused to shake hands with admirers. She did not appear to be the kindly maternal figure that Meloney had made her out to be. Clearly, Curie's strength and patience were wearing thin.</span></blockquote><div><p>The difference between the incidental celebrity and the media creature was that someone like Curie, a professor at the Sorbonne, didn't <i>need</i> public adulation to go on doing her work.⁴ If that work generated excitement outside of the academy, fine—but as Curie understood it, the success of her career depended on the replicability of what she achieved in the lab, not the number of people who turned out for one of her public appearances or the number of tabloids that put her on the front page. Like the more secure members of the beau monde, or the day's captains of industry, she would have much preferred to have been left alone to do her job.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg7KyQYoV0oFjY8xD56fEZLCaFv0LtT_WRrsbIeK8WUY3rLLhv2y8j-7narIAVBGvTLdigAgLbDeI6kKvFE8b3c0-602wOH6DYq3t8imX3R5Uv4mk-sCMw_sFJ4cNm40fwLiGeFY8n0a2oOl_KhHtfToGNwwFWZj2gBUAiGbfbuVNxiQgWgLdIDwtG3A/s766/image_2022-09-10_163457515.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="766" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg7KyQYoV0oFjY8xD56fEZLCaFv0LtT_WRrsbIeK8WUY3rLLhv2y8j-7narIAVBGvTLdigAgLbDeI6kKvFE8b3c0-602wOH6DYq3t8imX3R5Uv4mk-sCMw_sFJ4cNm40fwLiGeFY8n0a2oOl_KhHtfToGNwwFWZj2gBUAiGbfbuVNxiQgWgLdIDwtG3A/w533-h194/image_2022-09-10_163457515.png" width="533" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marie Curie and press photographers, from <i>Feminia</i> (Feb. 1 1911)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>But the new breed of celebrity author <i>depended</i> on a good relationship with the switch operators in the literary factory farm to do their jobs and maintain their standard of living. Public interest was their bread and butter.</p><p>Looking at the biographies of famous European writers who worked before the nineteenth century, we frequently see a history in the academy, business, politics, the aristocratic salon, etc. Such people wrote novels or poems to entertain themselves, accrue clout, supplement their income, and so on. Skyrocketing literacy rates, reductions in the price of print matter, and the arrival of mass-circulation magazines made it feasible (though not necessarily easy) for a writer of fictions to live entirely from the income of their publications by the mid-nineteenth century. Even if they worked in solitude, they had no choice but to consent to the transmission of their names and images far and wide—and live with the probing attention that was liable to follow. Submitting to mythologization vis-à-vis the printing press and the newsstand was part of the bargain. </p><p>The actor, the musician, and the visual artist weren't quite yet in the same position. While it's true that there were celebrities in each of these fields, they weren't mass media stars in the same sense as Charles Dickens. Their work remained incompatible with the technology of mass reproduction and circulation in the late nineteenth century. Certainly glowing reviews of a stage performance could be read by millions in the press, composing and selling sheet music could be a lucrative business, and engraved facsimiles of paintings could be printed—but the play, the song, and the full-color painting were confined to specific places and times.</p><p>But not for much longer.<br /><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://www.beyondeasy.net/2022/09/mythology-celebrity-machine-part-4.html" target="">PART 4</a></b></div><p><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">1. Names were pulled from John Plunkett's "<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318760730_Celebrity_Culture" target="_blank">Celebrity Culture</a>" (whose specific focus in spite of its general title is implied by its publication in the<i> Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture</i>). Of these three authors, only Mary Elizabeth Braddon's work is reproduced on guternberg.org.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">2. The knowledge that his fame will be forever eclipsed by that of his younger brother John Wilkes probably has poor Edwin spinning in his grave.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">3. In the early twentieth century, radium products <a href="https://www.cnn.com/style/article/radium-girls-radioactive-paint/index.html" target="_blank">were marketed as medical panaceas</a>. Hence the "millions will not die" bit.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">4. At least not in theory, but whether she should be held responsible for failing to patent her discovery or anticipate the avarice of United States businessmen is another conversation.</span></p></div>Patrick Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02410016566636603639noreply@blogger.com0