Some people see that this blog is called “Everything Is Amazing” and get confused, because so much of it is intense criticism and downright hating. Well, a part of that is that I genuinely do think that the world is amazing, and it would be foolish to besmirch it by ignoring the bad things within it¹. But one of the more persistent threads in the negative remarks on this blog is that fandom is shitty.

Drew McWeeny wrote an excellent piece today, after a long increasingly aggressive twitter argument with Harry Knowles, head of Ain’t It Cool News, describing why we can’t simply throw all the blame on the studios for the increasingly derivative and lazy film marketplace we find ourselves in. One of the problems, he notes, is that targeting a nerd audience doesn’t seem to work.

There is a fine line between serving an audience and shamelessly pandering to them, and when the studios decide to go whole-hog and pander without hesitation, and the result is box-office failure after box-office failure, the message seems clear: chasing the fanboys isn’t working. They are unreliable, they are ungrateful, and they aren’t turning out for the “sure things” that have been greenlit specifically for them.

This is one of the reasons I find myself unable to visit Ain’t It Cool News anymore. As much as I like nerd-focused films, it seems like they’re never good enough for the online bastions of nerdery. The problem of course being that there is no such thing as ‘nerd-focused films’ because every nerd has their own idiosyncratic and extreme stance on what should happen to their film. Nerds, like too much of society today, are too self-centred to realize or appreciate the amazing things that happen on their behalf².

When a Captain America movie comes out, they trash it because his helmet doesn’t have wings, or when a Thor movie comes out they trash it because one of the characters is played by a Black man. They ignore the quality of the film, the writing, the directing, the performances, in order to feed their pointless minutiae-driven rants.

There’s no real solution to this. There’s a chance we’ll hit some critical mass and nerds will grow up a little bit and the world of film and television will be able to get back to creating good television regardless of nerd-based fan-service, works that can broaden the minds of all viewers not just satisfy the narrow expectations of the “fans.”

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Footnotes

1. Another perspective here is that it’s amazing how bad some things are. [↩]
2. That doesn’t mean that things can’t improve; they undoubtedly can in almost every aspect of life, but that doesn’t mean things are bad. [↩]

Watching the television bloggers unleash the expected criticism on Rubicon I’m reminded once more that criticism in the television realm still has a long way to go.

A guest-blogger over at Alyssa Rosenberg’s blog wrote about Rubicon echoing the common complaint, that the show is too slow. My issues lie not with her distaste for the pace, but with a tack-on statement that feels very wrong to me:

Rubicon needs some adjustments if it’s going to attract and keep viewers.

I think it’s true that Rubicon will likely draw a meager audience — though the inherent sexiness of conspiracy theories will probably entice a few people who would not otherwise watch a show of its caliber — but I think a better question is, “Is it any good?”

I understand that ratings are what keep shows alive, but I don’t think it’s too much to expect criticism of a show to be based on the merits of the show. Any related punditry about the politics of television renewal is similarly valuable — TV by the Numbers is one of my favourite television blogs — but they are two wholly separate endeavours.

There are certain shows and types of shows that will simply never be a huge success¹. Rubicon is not a common denominator show, and probably wouldn’t get big ratings even if it were the best conspiracy theory show ever made. Critics should be judging it from within that rubric, not aiming to nudge it into another. Movie critics don’t argue that slow cerebral thrillers should have more action sequences, why should television critics?

If you don’t like a certain genre or style or aesthetic, that’s fine. Make that preference clear. If you think a show is moving slowly, say so. Explain how your suggestions would improve the show’s quality. But don’t argue it needs to change in order to increase its ratings.

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Footnotes

1. Exceptions like Lost and The Big Bang Theory, both shows that seem targeted at niches small enough that they have no right to be so successful, are obviously exceptions to the rule. [↩]

I finally got around to watching Kick-Ass and, having had the opportunity to read the comic not long ago, the movie was an enlightening experience¹. Spoilers for the movie and the comic follow.

Tonally, this movie took a lot of the more cynical moments of the comic and softened them. I don’t know if the movie needed to remove all of those little touches, but there are some that probably had to be made. For example, in the comic Big Daddy and Hit Girl’s mob crusade is a total sham; Hit Girl’s mother is not dead, Big Daddy wasn’t a cop or a hit man or anything like that, Big Daddy was an accountant-by-day comic nerd-by-night who used his comic collection to fund his crusade and essentially brainwashed his kid into becoming a ruthless assassin in order to have fun. It’s an interesting deconstruction of the superhero mythos, but a tad depressing and almost anti-comics in sentiment for a comic book movie.

Another thing the movie brightened up was Dave’s romance. In the movie, as in the comic, Dave pretends to be gay to get close to this girl, Katie, who wants a gay best friend. The movie differs broadly here as well. In the comic, Katie is more explicitly using Dave and never demonstrates much interest in him; when he reveals that he’s not gay and in fact is basically in love with her, she beats the shit out of him and then gets her boyfriend to beat more shit out of him.

The movie fleshes Katie out more, she becomes interested in Dave over time expressing regret that he’s gay, and even becomes a comic book fan; when he reveals to her that he’s not gay — he also reveals that he’s Kick-Ass to her, which makes the way she takes it somewhat more realistic, and also heightens the drama during the later action pieces — she’s briefly pissed but quickly warms to him, both emotionally and physically. Basically, they fuck a lot², and though the ease with which she takes his confession doesn’t read as believably as I’d like, the relationship works in the big picture.

Basically, what Matthew Vaughn did when writing the screenplay was extract large chunks of Mark Millar’s misogyny, nihilism, and misanthropy. Obviously, there’s a degree to which this was done to make the movie more marketable, but I think even more than that the plot changes were done because the original comic lacked heart. The movie, much more than the comic, wants to be about more than just being a super-hero because it’s cool. Maybe it should’ve been uncompromising and brutal and accused the audience of being sociopaths for ever dreaming about being a super-hero but that movie almost certainly would’ve sucked.

Beyond the changes that occurred in the general plot, one thing that changed pretty drastically in terms of the way the story was told was the lack of flashbacks. Comic books operate similar to serialized television in most ways, and one aspect in particular is the cliffhanger ending; when a comic ends on a cliffhanger — like, say, Hit Girl and Big Daddy demolishing a bunch of drug dealers and running off into the night — the next issue can be devoted to explaining these new characters, their back story, and why they’re doing what they’re doing. The big reveal of the new amazing character, emerging complete from the shadows, it’s one of the cornerstones of comics and so it’s not surprising that Kick-Ass used it a couple times.

In Kick-Ass, it’s used first to fill in the back story of Hit Girl and Big Daddy³ and then later on to reveal that Red Mist was working with the Mob to set a trap for Hit Girl and Big Daddy. This style is great because it lets certain events come at you unexpectedly; in the film both of these things are integrated into the linear plot⁴ and so they feel slightly deflated. Granted, a good story should stay a good story regardless of any storytelling temporal tricks you plan, but that doesn’t mean those tricks can’t enhance the story.

The compressed story lines required for film are at times a crucible from which a tighter story is extracted, but in the process it’s easy to lose something.

Seeing as I’m here, I’ll write a brief paragraph about the fight scenes in Kick-Ass⁵. Hit Girl killing countless mob goons was a sight to behold, but I think that the best fight scene in the movie, hands down, is the one where Big Daddy destroys that group of goons at the lumber factory and then sets it all on fire. Every movement in that scene feels so visceral, the way Big Daddy trundles relentlessly through the gunfire felt so much more genuine than the highly choreographed (albeit impressive) fights with Hit Girl.

Ultimately, I think the film is stronger than the comic, both because of the changes to the basic plot and in spite of the loss of certain comic book storytelling traits. You should go see it if you haven’t already, though if you’ve read this entire post but haven’t seen the movie, well I kinda fucked that plan up for you, didn’t I?

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Footnotes

1. It was also a very entertaining movie, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to resort to that lame pun everyone seems to be bandying about. And no, the title of this post is not an example of said pun it’s— oh look over there, a squirrel! [↩]
2. And I’m totally willing to admit I giggled with glee when she said she wanted to fuck Kick-Ass and then promptly made up an excuse to go fuck Dave. [↩]
3. Well, the first version of the back story, the ending reveals that the first version was a fiction thought up by Big Daddy. [↩]
4. Aside from a comic book animation sequence that gives a little more history to Big Daddy. [↩]
5. I’m still not going to use that pun, though [↩]

Not long ago, I expressed worry about Chuck’s future now that the will-they/won’t-they romance has been resolved. With one episode down and five to go, I think the writers are on the right path.

So far, at least, the show seems quite content to let Chuck and Sarah just be happy while being spies. And rightly so! It seems odd to me that no show that I can recall aside from the American version of The Office has had the long-term romance solidify and continue telling stories. Emotional connections are perhaps harder to establish with fictional characters when a romance isn’t one of the balls in the air, but conversely, storytelling is not merely the act of introducing sadness to people’s lives.

This isn’t to say that they need to be a perfect couple forever from here on out, but at the very least they have avoided for the time being the trap of the quick and implausible relationship collapse. I can’t wait to see how the rest of this season plays out¹.

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Footnotes

1. Oh, also, the season’s winding down, the ratings are still unremarkable, and the show continues to be one of the best shows on right now. In conclusion… Start Watching Chuck, Dammit! [↩]

Monday’s new episode of Chuck, which originally served as the 13-episode finale before NBC extended the episode order for the season, ended in a rather climactic moment that will forever change the way the show works. I’m not talking about the fact that Chuck finally killed someone. I think that was well played and an inevitable step for Chuck, something that logically had to be the way Chuck’s arc from Intersect 2.0 to full-fledged agent. What I’m talking about was Chuck and Sarah’s happy ending in Paris.

There are a few ways this plays out but here’s the most likely: the show will continue to introduce arbitrary conflicts for their relationship, despite having concretely established their long-simmering love, which results in them defaulting to their on-again/off-again status.

The major conflict they put up for Chuck and Sarah’s love the last few episodes was that Chuck was now a killer and not the man she fell in love with which, admittedly, is a somewhat reasonable conflict¹ but that’s over with now. I’m not saying a different and compelling reason for them to fall out of love couldn’t be concocted by the writers, but I think any long-term relationship drama at this point would be laziness on the part of the writers.

It’s easy for the show to return to its status quo, because that’s what the writers have been doing for years; it’s much harder to take their relationship as a given and move on. I hope this is the path the show follows for the six episode run it has coming up and for the next season if it gets renewed². Will that happen? Probably not, but a man can dream can’t he?

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Footnotes

1. Though not nearly as much as the show would have you believe, seeing as Sarah was supposedly falling for Shaw as her love for Chuck wavered and Shaw is a ruthless killer when he needs to be; he even shot himself! [↩]
2. fingers crossed [↩]

One of the strengths of JM Straczynski having planned the five year story of Babylon 5 was that he laid lots of interesting nuggets of foreshadowing into the earlier seasons. Plot devices used in one-off episodes in the early episodes could play a huge part in culminating events years later. It works so well because you likely won’t notice those hints the first time through, and when you return to the show for a second viewing, the relationships and significance of the events lets the foreshadowing impact you with even more force.

But with Dollhouse, every episode this season has me coming back to Epitaph One and finding ways it weakens this season. The remote wipe foreshadowing would have been more powerful if on first viewing this wipe was an innocuous plot device. It still has a power in this form, but it seems at this point a necessary event. There’s a certainty to it. We can’t not have foreshadowing. It feels mechanical now. Admittedly, it was mechanical with shows like Lost and Babylon 5 by virtue of their pre-planned stories, but that mechanism was masked.

Still, even without that masking, the foreshadowing packs a punch: Topher developing the remote wipe technology — though, to be pedantic, this remote wipe technology seems the same as the form used by Alpha last season which, as I stated in my initial review of Epitaph One, only worked on Dolls as the Dollification process was considerably more complex than your standard imprint — ultimately ends the world and breaks his mind. But I still don’t feel it as much as I think I should, because of that mechanic necessity. I get the feeling Epitaph One is going to be a thorn in my side the entire season (or whatever else airs of this season before Fox kills it for atrociously bad ratings, though it’s a good sign that this week’s episode recovered from last week’s all-time ratings low for the show).

I tend to focus on arc discussions in these reviews, but aside from that incredibly oblique unspoken reference to Topher’s future tragedy this episode was virtually entirely self-contained. The only additional ongoing idea was Echo’s ability to repeat catch phrases her clients and/or imprints always seem to have handy. Does every person in the Dollhouse universe have a unique identifiable catch phrase or something? It’s getting a little conspicuous at this point. Perhaps a future essay on the show can explore that avenue.

So that leaves us with a very interesting, but also very self-enclosed, one-off episode. The opening sequence was one of the more effectively chilling the show has managed to pull off, though the psycho-paralyser getting hit by a car seemed like an obvious end to that scene, I was hoping for something more inventive. That said, the events following that were all great. We got a chance to see Ballard use his FBI training, something he rarely used even when he was an FBI agent and reminds us that he’s more than just a weird pseudo-pervert. Echo’s B-plot professorial misconduct fantasy was interesting in a morbid sort of way, which I suppose is the way you should enjoy most Dollhouse episodes seeing as the protagonists of the show are glorified human traffickers. And the main storyline crossed with the B story nicely both on a story level and thematically.

And, once again, Enver Gjokaj cements himself as the most versatile actor in the cast, which is saying something given how talented this cast is. Every actor has had one or two outstanding moments, but Enver keeps delivering like no other. As creepy as he was as the serial doll maker — an interesting role for the antagonist in an episode that foreshadows the wireless doll making technology in the coming apocalypse — when he switched into Kiki he completely transformed. Odd name aside, that guy deserves more than anyone on this show a breakout career once Dollhouse comes to an end.

People have been worrying about Dollhouse’s fate quite a bit recently because of the terrible ratings, and some are wondering if the season shouldn’t have started with more stand-alone expository episodes, but looking at the season so far, it’s been doing stand-alone episodes, and they’ve done it better than they did during the first season’s early block of episodes but they’re not being hindered in the way other shows are by a blind adherence to strict episodic storytelling. It’s not afraid to let some moments of the episode impact the future. It should be braver in this respect, I think, with much more serialization and investment in the long running characters, but I feel like it will get there if given the time. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be given the time. I think both the network and the writers are to blame in this respect; the network, for trying to simplify an inherently complex intellectually rich story, and the writers for accepting the task of trying to oversimplify the show rather than fighting with the network.

That said, this season has been very good so far but what little long-term stories they’ve built in these first three episodes has been insufficient to me. They tried the best of both worlds last year and got dwindling ratings as a result. At this point, the show should be taking advantage of the second season pickup and just going wild with all the crazy five-year-plan things Joss Whedon has imagined. When the show got a second season pickup, I didn’t really expect a third. The more I look at it, the more it seems like Fox simply didn’t kill off Dollhouse after the first season so they wouldn’t burn bridges with Joss Whedon or his fanatic followers. So with the likelihood of a third season increasingly dire, the show shoud just go for broke. Let’s hope it tries that in the coming weeks.

I don’t like talking about abortion, because I really don’t think I have any say in the matter. I think that women make the ultimate decision because it affects them the most. All I really think about it is that women deserve that choice.

That said, I think sometimes people take offense too easily on the subject. Case in point, Feministing’s lambasting of ABC’s new — and already basically cancelled — sci-fi drama Defying Gravity. Defying Gravity is set in a near future where abortions are illegal and one of the main characters, in the flashbacks to five years earlier, gets pregnant accidentally and has to decide whether or not to get an underground abortion.

They attacked the show viciously and then Defying Gravity’s show-runner, James Parriott, responded to the critics directly discussing the themes of the show and even spoiling some future plot points to explain to his audience that the show is about bigger questions than abortion.

I personally think they didn’t handle the abortion stuff very well, but not because the woman who had the abortion hesitated and debated with her close friend over the issue. I support choice, but that doesn’t mean I think abortion should be handled glibly. One commenter disagrees:

I really appreciate Mr. Parriott taking the time to respond. However, I really hate the fact that even pro-choicers seem to have conceded that abortion is necessarily an awful, tragic, agonizing experience. Sure, for some women it is a gut-wrenching decision, but for many women it is not a particularly difficult or traumatic decision.

I guess that’s my problem with Parriott’s description here. Why shouldn’t women ever be shown making an “glib, easy, and insensitive” decision to have an abortion? Why do women always have to be portrayed as damaged and guilt-ridden over their abortion? Certainly that is some women’s experience and it is a valid one, but when it is the only way we see abortion played out it just reinforces the idea that abortion is a horrible, awful thing, which I strongly disagree with.

I don’t think Defying Gravity dealt with abortion in that way at all. The abortion story plays out in flashbacks from five years earlier than the main storyline. The character was an astronaut-in-training five years ago who would’ve not been in the program if she’d kept the kid. But in the main storyline she’s in the program. She either had an abortion or a miscarriage. Ultimately, she has the abortion because she wants to go to space. She puts her career ahead of her uterus. She’s not emotionally damaged because of the abortion, but she also didn’t commit to it with the ease of a colonic which, quite frankly, seems like a rational response; a fetus might not be a child, but it has a hell of a better chance of being one that a tumescent appendix.

In fact, the original post discussed a very similar situation (to my eyes) that they approved of:

The only TV show I can recall watching that even had a character obtain an abortion was Third Watch, in which a cop who has a recovering alcoholic husband, two kids and financial woes decides to terminate her pregnancy. I remember liking it because it was matter-of-fact, and the character makes a decision she knows is best for her family, and isn’t punished after the fact for it.

I personally think anyone who watched the early episodes of Defying Gravity and sees a show fighting against abortion doesn’t understand what science fiction is. Or really even basic fiction. Establishing a world where abortion is illegal and then having a character struggle with the decision to have one is not endorsing the anti-abortion stance, it’s storytelling 101.

What is the point of a television show having a women have an abortion as though it were a non-event? What’s the dramatic point to it? Conflict is at the heart of all stories, and having a women get an abortion with no real discussion about not doing it and no real emotional consequences is quite possibly the stupidest “plot development” a show could ever do.

“What is it with abortion and television?” the initial Feministing post asks. Abortion remains one of the few watchwords television tends to avoid. Why? Ultimately, it seems like anything you do with abortions on television will be attacked by one of the sides of the issue. You can’t have it be a glib non-event in the woman’s life both for dramatic reasons and because the pro-lifers would attack the show for “endorsing” abortion. You can’t make it a dramatic traumatic psychologically damaging event, because the pro-choice people criticise it, even if it’s the woman’s choice to ultimately abort. You can’t make it a simple act emotionally with severe physical ramifications because it will be seen as demonizing abortion.

Both sides of the argument are unsatisifed with any middle ground, leaving most writers with no ground on which to stand. So they avoid the story entirely, to avoid undue criticism. It’s a terrible state of affairs, that probably won’t change anytime soon. But nothing I, or anybody along the spectrum of opinions on this subject, will really have an effect; we’re all just screaming into a void hoping to hear an echo.

There’s been a lot of backlash¹ over the way vampires are being handled in new stories, but the criticism I’ve read seems to suffer from a lack of imagination if anything.

Vampires were, I suppose, a horror tale in the beginning, and then when Bram Stoker created Dracula they became a symbol for seduction and sex. But they were still scary.

But, so the critics say, beginning with Buffy the Vampire Slayer² we’ve had a slow pussification of vampires. They are no longer ravenous beasts who view humans as nothing more than a slow moving meal, who use their overwhelming sexual charisma as a mere tool to entice humans into their arms (and fangs).

I understand that to a degree, especially in light of Twilight³, but I respectfully disagree. Vampires were made to evolve along this path.

Zombies, werewolves, and vampires are the holy trinity of supernatural horror. Zombies are mindless horror, and any expansion of zombies beyond that is likely to be seen by connoisseurs as no longer being zombies. Werewolves are generally seen as a Jekyll/Hyde scenario with the werewolf half being uncontrollable so any shift away from that changes the definition of werewolf. But vampires are at their basest level undead creatures of the night who drink blood for sustenance. You can make a harrowing tale based around the premise of that creature, or you can tell a story of addiction, or a story of human empathy, or a story about the power of free will over base desires.

Basically, there’s much more wiggle room for what’s acceptable for a vampire story by virtue of their base properties. There’s nothing inherently primal and horrifying about vampires, it just so happens that those were the tales told most frequently until recent history.

So, when people make fun of Bill Compton of True Blood for being a “wet blanket” or some similar term because he desires to live as human a life as is possible as a vampire they’re missing the point. Vampires are homogeneous but not in the way everyone thinks. They’re not universally unfeeling unsympathetic sociopaths. Even looking at their source material can show you that.

Humans are not all the same. And vampires are made from humans. Some, when given eternal life and superhuman power, will forget their humanity and become a darker creature something akin to what we imagine as the prototypical vampire; others may shrink at the very thought of being a creature they previously imagined as an affront to God and may very well consider suicide; and many more will see their new powers not as an excuse to behave inhumanely but as a curse they must reject to retain their humanity.

The other supernatural beasts we’re familiar with don’t have this breadth. Zombies become mindless seekers of brains⁴, and werewolves become a creature who is a regular human most of the time but transforms to an uncontrollable monster during a full moon. Vampires don’t follow either of these paths and so they have a much broader palette from which their personalities can be painted.

So Bill Compton being a self-hating vampire isn’t a failing of True Blood, but rather it’s a sign that people are willing to be more complex with vampires in stories. Much like the wise stoic Native American, and the Magic Negro faded away with time replaced by more natural characters, the monstrous vampire stereotype has found itself a mere permutation in a panoply of perspectives⁵. And this isn’t a bad thing.

But with this in mind, we have to accept that a global shift from one persona to another in vampires would be a weakening of the whole. If everyone began to write all vampires as effeminate waifs afraid of human contact, that would be a terrible fate for vampire lore. But if those original sexual seductive monsters are not supplanted but supported by these new unexplored aspects of vampirism, I can hardly see that as a bad thing, for vampires or for storytelling.

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Footnotes

1. I should probably be less lazy and find links to the numerous “Vampires are being made lame” articles and blog posts and essays I’ve read over the last few months, but seeing as you’re reading this endnote that clearly didn’t happen [↩]
2. Again, maybe there were pussy vampires before then, Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire comes to mind though I don’t know enough of the details of that novel to include it as a canonical example pussy vampires [↩]
3. which has vampires that twinkle rather than smolder when doused with sunlight [↩]
4. Well, not really. The brains thing is sort of a stereotype that everyone knows but for which there’s remarkably little backing in pop culture instances of zombies. [↩]
5. Sometimes, I think I like alliteration too much [↩]