Thor

[intertribal]

This was entertaining, much more so than most superhero or pseudo-superhero movies.  It's not particularly subversive, and the humor is kind of slapstick, but oh well.  The bad guys (to the extent that there even are bad guys...) are all aliens, so at least there's no demonization of human cultures going on.  The parts that take place on Earth are way more fun than the parts that take place on, uh, Thor's home planet.  Overall, alternated between funny and campy!dramatic, but in a very non-annoying way - and we all know how easy it is to annoy me.

I thought they actually did a really nice job with the everyday folk in this one - Natalie Portman's character was very likable and relatable and cute (and everything about Thor was filtered through her perspective, which was awesome, because it almost felt more like he was the love interest, not her - which is really fucking rare in action movies, to allow women to show desire - usually it's just like, Exasperated Love Interest Suddenly Becomes Willing To Make Out With Hero, How Did That Happen? Don't Ask), with her main adjective probably being "clever."  Her assistant, Darcy - the political science student - was the comic relief, and was a riot.  Then their beleaguered scientist mentor dude was Stellan Skarsgard, and he did a good job; I generally like Skarsgard anyway.  It all takes place in a very desertified New Mexico.

The aliens - Thor's people, and their enemies the Frost Giants - are a little headscratchy.  They have a nice-looking planet, sure, with the cosmos as their sky and a long psychedelic crystal highway that leads out to the rainbow bifrost bridge - kind of like something off a sketchy "space art" web site.  And their attire reminded more of Saint Seiya than anything else, did anybody watch that show?  Disturbing anime, that.  Anyway, they're all completely identical to humans aside from their ridiculous armor, which was played for some laughs when they eventually came to Earth.  The Frost Giants are corpse-gray with red eyes and live in a desolate ice world.  Character development in this "realm," as Thor would say, was a little weak, but I think is a good example of what I was saying the other day - heroic heroes are more interesting than antiheroes. 

Thor comes straight out of Hero Mold, you see.  He is a total stupid dumbfuck when he first becomes an adult, but his flaws are hero flaws - wants to go after the enemy and teach them a lesson, doesn't want to wait for diplomacy, must defend honor, blah blah blah - a lot of sound and fury and prideful bombast, but he doesn't angst or consider switching sides or even behave all that reprehensibly.  There was one part where I thought he might suffer A Very Painful Lesson (TM) because he's smashing all these Frost Giants with his whack-a-mole hammer while miles away his friends are about to get eaten by a gigantic ice Balrog/Troll, but no, he sees that they're in danger and saves them.  He has some character defects, but they're heroic defects.  And he becomes much less of a dumbfuck as the movie progresses.  But thank God, you know, thank God that he wasn't "I'm just a loser and I'm sad about my average life but holy shit look I have superpowers now I am uber cool woohoo."  I am so done with that kind of superhero.  With Thor, at least we've moved beyond the standard "what does this power mean?" conversations, because you know, Thor knows he has power.  He's been groomed to be a leader all his life.  So instead of "you too can be a leader" claptrap you can actually concentrate on what good leadership is (not that this movie is very deep, but eh).  And if that means that fewer boys in the audience can "relate" to Thor, too damn bad for them.  Captain America looks right up their alley.

Loki, his brother, the "bad guy," is a whole bucket of crazy.  He's kind of sympathetic, and he's certainly Thor's shadow-self, and he doesn't seem to be motivated by Unrepenting Evil or whatever, but neither his motives nor his personality are consistent.  I don't mean that he develops as a character like Thor does - he's just wildly inconsistent.  I accept that he's keeping his true motives and plan to himself, but towards the end I kept going like "Loki, why are you doing that?  I thought that's what you wanted!" and "Loki, what the fuck?"  Unlike Thor, you never really figure out what Loki believes or values - we get that he values himself, yeah, but he seems to have literally no opinions or belief system beyond that - which is just as bad as the villain that is evil Just Because.  

But, oh well.  The movie ultimately comes down not on the side of genocide, which for an action blockbuster, is pretty good.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

usually it's just like, Exasperated Love Interest Suddenly Becomes Willing To Make Out With Hero, How Did That Happen? Don't Ask --LOL! I like this summary of this trope.

instead of "you too can be a leader" claptrap you can actually concentrate on what good leadership is (not that this movie is very deep, but eh). --Definitely a move in the right direction.

The movie ultimately comes down not on the side of genocide, which for an action blockbuster, is pretty good. --I had to laugh. I mean, it's Kafka -esque when not coming down on the side of genocide has to be pointed out as a plus but I guess that's the world we live in. Oh Kafka, if you only knew.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is, but sometimes I feel like I'm living in an alternate universe with an alternate set of morals when I'm watching an action blockbuster, y'know? Like, "okay... I would totally not be okay with this happening in real life but here it's a good... thing?"

The genocide thing was partially inspired by reading about Battlestar Galactica fans whining about why, why, why it shouldn't be okay to just destroy every Cylon in existence with this computer virus thing, seeing as how the Cylons (a) destroyed most of humanity and (b) don't have civilians, or something. I get that the revenge inclination would be high in this scenario, but I admired the creators for implying genocide is not okay no matter what the other side has done. And from the fans it was basically like, "why can't I have my genocide?" It was just gross. Gross, gross, gross.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Were the fans really like that?

Man.

I totally thought that BSG did a good job (or is this just me?? I tend to identify with villains...) of showing that the cylons were people-equivalents. They are living, thinking beings. You can't genocide them. Just because they did it doesn't make it okay to do it back.

... I'm not sure how much I think you should get rid of an entire species (or other category of being), period, whether it's sentient or not.

The fact that they're "machines" holds no water with me. If things are self-aware and can make their own decisions, then they meet my criteria for intelligent life.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, these fans. On TV Tropes. Which kind of turned me off of TV Tropes, what I was reading of what the "tropers" really thought about various shows I watched.

Yeah, I was pretty much on the Cylons' side from the get-go. I was like... humans created slave race. Slave race rebelled. I'm... gonna sympathize with the slave race here? (Although yes, there was a "slight case of overbombing" on the Cylons' part as well) The humans were all so belligerent and nasty, for the most part - by the end I basically judged the human characters based on how sympathetic they were to the Cylons, NGL. Worked out pretty well for me, although this meant I never liked Roslin, who I often considered to be almost maniacally immoral (stealing other people's babies so that you can steal the baby blood, how is this okay?) but was still supposed to be a heroine. But there are tons of BSG fans who are really, really anti-Cylon, even though the show's whole heavy-handed point was that the whole thing was an analogy for a meaningless clash of civilizations and really the Cylons are our friends. I guess fans can feel free to disagree...

I agree. That's why I support environmental causes, really. It's just like, damn, that whole species, gone. Although who knows how many species of bacteria and stuff get wiped out and no one cares. It creeps me out to think about extinction, though, I'll be honest.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Haha, me too about judging characters based on their reactions to the Cylons.

re: extinction, yeah. I remember being really brokenhearted when I found out about the passenger pigeon--where it's not even the case of a creature with really specific environmental needs that gets pushed out almost accidentally (though that's bad too) but where the thing was FLOURISHING and then we wiped it out :-(

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Oh, god, that reminds me, tangentially: I was watching a River Monsters episode about the alligator gar, which used to be all over North America - particularly in the South, though - and then started getting blamed for these attacks on people - plus they're "trash fish," because they eat more valuable fish (as we define valuable). So Texas (of course) starts a gar extermination program where they go down rivers like electrocuting gar and everything else, and even now you get people shooting gar, using just barbaric methods to kill them in mass numbers. And now the gar is like, endangered, and the dude on River Monsters concludes at the end that gar aren't even aggressive toward people and it was probably alligators that had attacked those people. Poor alligator gar.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

:-(

Well, people like killing things, I guess. See my current entry: my dad was completely happy to kill seals when sanctioned (and rewarded).

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I will say that it's something I find really, really hard to understand, killing wild animals. I didn't grow up around hunting (or even fishing) at all, though. Killing livestock feels more palatable just because it's like, killing for food, food animals are food animals (whether or not I'm just making myself feel better, who knows).

[cafenowhere.livejournal.com]

"...everything about Thor was filtered through her perspective, which was awesome, because it almost felt more like he was the love interest, not her..."

A female gaze? Verrry interesting. I keep seeing male viewers (straight and not) comment on Chris Hemworth's supposed good looks.

I'm surprised, and a little chagrined, that Thor and company are presented as aliens.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

There is a lot of female gaze in this movie, I felt, at least relatively speaking. Thor is the only one who's ever sexually objectified - there are two human women that never are but clearly find him attractive, and one warrior alien woman who wears battle-appropriate-armor and is also never objectified. Not that any of these three would ever be considered homely in any world, but they were also always fully dressed in sweaters or armor, as the case may be. It was refreshing. Portman's character was definitely supposed to be the audience stand-in, not Hemsworth.

Well, it's based on the comics, not the mythology. As Darcy the political science student says, "Primitive cultures like the Vikings could have worshiped them as gods!"

[cafenowhere.livejournal.com]

Refreshing, indeed! And now I'm even more interested by the male viewers' casual assessment of Thor's/Hemsworth's hotness.

"it's based on the comics"

Oh, I did not know that. Duh. TBH, I find Hemsworth so unappealing that I never looked closely enough at the posters and advertising to register the comic book origins.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that is interesting, haha. I've read some male reviewers saying "well, this is a movie the girls will go see because Hemsworth is hot," which was why my friend's roommates all wanted to go.

I thought he was pretty okay myself, and much more so when he became less of an arrogant dumbfuck and treated Portman's character, Jane, with respect and kindness. Although he reminded me more of a buffed up Jax Teller from Sons of Anarchy than anything else.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

To be charitable, "Loki, what the fuck?" is usually a pretty good question, in the Norse God-niverse. Even for Loki.;)

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I told my friend afterwards when we were discussing Loki's insanity. Isn't he the one that ends up with all those weird ass "kids"? Hel and Fenrir and them all?

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

A lot of Loki's actions come out of sheer perversity, which I certainly understand, since that's also much of Chess Pargeter's motivation: You can't control me! You can't tell which way I'll jump! I'll do what I want, even when I don't actually want to, and it'll work out JUST as badly for me! Case in point--when Loki joined the Aesir (as a blood-brother to Odin rather than his adopted son, and as a result of his own choice, in the original myth), they gave him an Aesir wife, Sigynn. Sigynn was beautiful, loyal (she's the one who holds a bowl to keep snake-venom from dripping on his face, once the gods get tired of his sorry ass and imprison him under a mountain) and an all-around nice chick, but Loki never had kids with her, possibly because he never had sex with her. Instead, he went back to Jotunheim and hooked up with the ogress Angrboda, by whom he had Hel, Fenris and the Midgard Serpent, putting everybody three more steps down the road to Ragnarok. Just 'cause.

My favourite Loki line from Marvel still has to be: "I am the fire that burn! And WHY does the fire burn?...I know not, but I am he."

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think Loki is way more angst-driven in the movie Thor. He really seems to want Odin's love and approval, for one, and is less "trickster" than just "the quiet one."

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Trickster = chaos, not funny fun fun. Most Hollywood types have difficulty with this truth, except when talking about the Joker.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, good point. I think it's not just Hollywood though, it's in the way "tricksters" are explained to children (I want to say nowadays particularly). I mean, when I think trickster I think... imp, or gremlin, and even those creatures have become somewhat sanitized, I think - they'll play tricks on you but they're not really mean, you just have to find a way to appease them. Just like fairies = happy sparkly magic time, not "oh God help us all" time. I don't know, this is just a theory on my part.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Well, that's not to say Loki can't be amusing. I personally find him pretty witty, most of the time. But yes, essentially offputting.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

But also, if they're doing the "Loki was adopted and didn't know it" thing, then that's understandable. It'd be weird enough for him that he looks so unlike the rest of the Aesir physically, without adding his inclinations to magic, shapeshifting and lying in on top. I'd think finding out he's a jotun would be really freeing, eventually.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I guess it did free him, in the long run, and it looks like he'll be even more of a straightforward villain in The Avengers. I mean, I felt bad for Loki when he found out he was "adopted" (or as he saw it, stolen from his homeland to be used as a puppet of diplomacy), and I thought he was going to actually conspire to help the frost giants, but then... no. Still all about Odin. I'll grant that he's supposed to be an agent of chaos and all, but it came off as less chaotic and more like the moviemakers just what to do with him.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Oh no, wait a minute: He DID have kids with Sigynn, in one version of the myth. And the other gods killed one of his sons in order to make unbreakable sinew bonds to tie him down with. I'm hoping the other one ran off to live with Angrboda after that, personally, but I doubt it.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Ew, like here, I'll tie you down with your own kid's muscle? That sounds vaguely familiar though. Yeesh.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

The Aesir take breaking vows/their word pretty seriously, so Loki's Father of Lies persona really pisses them off. Google Tyr, and find out how he lost his hand.;)

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I love that illustration by John Bauer.

[charlesatan.livejournal.com]

Well, Saint Seiya did have this entire Norse mythology arc in the anime... :) (of course I'll respond to the one anime reference...)

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Did it? I must have missed that part. I was watching as a 5-year-old, it just made a great impression on me - what I remember was the endless journey down some road and all of the warriors having to fight and die one-by-one along this road.

(and hey, I'm glad somebody does!)

[charlesatan.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fupmtb-PlOg&feature=player_embedded

[charlesatan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they were going up these stairs, with twelve (Zodiac) temples to go through, and had to do so in a few hours.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Why does Thor matter? I mean, why should anyone really evaluate the movie and and deem it acceptable or unacceptable? I think the audience matters more. If there's a shift in what's popular, that's important. But the movie isn't so important in itself. Unless it's really great and like, changes how you see things, because that's something that isn't just playing to what the audience already feels and believes and enjoys. But I don't think most movies do that, and if they do, I wouldn't have much to say but "See this."


Why do you think it's better to have a hero than an antihero? I can see saying they're stereotypical and intellectually barren, but I can't really see saying that for one and not the other. I know you say you can "concentrate on what good leadership is," but I just...don't see it.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

No, it's not great - I don't think most movies change how you see things either. Part of the reason I review movies that aren't great and view-changing is because I think it's interesting to look at what Hollywood puts out with the intent of getting as many viewers as possible (as opposed to a prestige movie). And, because the trends in how SF/F/H gets translated to movies are interesting to me.

And the other reason is I don't put movies or books in either a "doesn't matter at all" category or a "this changed my views about life" category. There's a lot of in-between for me, and if I see something that's somewhat relevant to themes that I write about, but not necessarily revolutionary, I'll still make note of it - even if it's totally the opposite of what I would do, it still gets me thinking of how I would do it differently. And finally, because there are people on my f-list who also enjoy junk food movies and might care.

I don't mean better in the sense of innately superior or more correct - I mean I'm more interested in what people and thus stories do with heroes than antiheroes. The way I've seen antiheroes done usually makes a point of their being an individual separated from and in defiance of the status quo or the approval of their people, usually because they're mercenaries or whatever, but yet they're still "cool." I just don't know what to do with that as a trope, and I haven't read any that are any good. They strike me as a lot of style over substance, I guess, though I'm sure there are exceptions. I almost think there's more room for analysis and experimentation with the hero trope, maybe precisely because it's so rigid - there are no rules really in creating an antihero, so as symbols they feel kind of meaningless. Heroes and their cults matter to the people whose worlds they exist in, and know they matter. It's like, why legitimacy in politics is interesting to me - how people decide what's okay, who to follow, and what debt the leader has to the people that follow them. Plus, of course, the lesser heroes: soldiers. They don't even get followed, so how does that relationship work? My vocab here is probably all wrong, btw.

The concentrate on good leadership thing was actually more referencing starting at a later point in the mythology than the origin point, not on heroism vs. antiheroism.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

True, marketing is one angle, but what does it say about the actual people?

I almost added a comment after I wrote this to say that I neglected to consider that thinking through things critically can be valuable in a 'deciding what you yourself think' sort of way. Or as brain exercise. I mean, I long ago decided, taking Hum 110, that the point of the class wasn't to decide what the books meant, or to contextualize them and understand how they came out of history/culture, or to understand the author's message, or whatever. It was just to think about the same issues that the author (influenced by the history and the culture) was saying something about--whether it was history or fiction or whatever. And perhaps enjoy the stories. And as it was a freshman course, to learn more about how to use history to inform a reading or use another text to view history, and write about it.

So...does writing movie reviews do that for you? I mean, you say it gets you thinking about how you would write things differently. That sounds kind of a step removed from deciding what you think about things, but maybe not.

I just got the sense that because you found it more interesting, then you thought it was more correct to write them that way. I mean, personally, I find heroes boring, so maybe I'm just not getting this. And, well, antiheroes are cool (not that they're always cool--I don't think they are--but as a protagonist you've got to be at least a little empathetic toward them) in a way that's only cool to the audience and might not actually be cool to them were they actually part of the antihero's world and not privy to his/her point of view. What do you mean by there not being rules for an antihero, but rules for a hero? Isn't one just a hero people don't approve of, and one a hero people do approve of? I guess I see what you're saying in talking about legitimacy, but that's the creepy power of leaders that tends to make them uninteresting to me. The only kind of legitimacy I'm really interested in seeing exerted is legitimacy based on honesty, respect, love, and dedication. I won't pretend that's not personal, but then, is your attachment to other kinds of power really impersonal? I dunno. Maybe I fail as a viewer/reader here, but I guess sometimes I can suspend my pessimism enough to watch some hero I can believe in because he's been made into some ideal, melodramatic world. But if I have to consider it more seriously or pick up something more serious in the first place, it's like...the fact that a 'hero' can get everyone to trust them says to me that something is wrong with the 'hero,' and I don't really get over that.

But I dunno, maybe I'm making things up.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, that's hard to say. I guess that's why there's value in looking at... other reviewers' reviews? I think comments like cafenowhere's above are interesting to know. I think that for a lot of sf/f movies most of what can be gleaned has to do with relatability (LJ doesn't think that's a word) of characters and the expectation/desire for a familiar story trajectory - I mean, that's something I noticed about myself in watching this movie, how much I expected certain things to happen in a certain way, and when they didn't, I actually felt like, "well, that's weird." Or how I felt Loki's character to be unconvincing and inconsistent - how much of that was just my reaction to not seeing the kind of villain I expected from a summer blockbuster?

The one thing I always look for in modern action movies is the ultimate bad guy's nationality and position vis-a-vis the good guys, because I always find it encouraging when the bad guys are not stereotypical foreign boogeymen types, but I have no idea whether the popularity of even these non-stereotypical-bad-guy movies indicates that audiences don't want stereotypical foreign boogeymen. Judging by the popularity of movies like Taken, it probably doesn't mean anything.

So...does writing movie reviews do that for you? I mean, you say it gets you thinking about how you would write things differently. That sounds kind of a step removed from deciding what you think about things, but maybe not.

Well, what I think about things pretty much determines how I would write things differently, so I'd say yeah. I would add, however, that that's also why I see the movie in the first place, not just why I would write a review. The review sort of sums up my reaction to the movie, but it doesn't usually spell out my thoughts as a writer, specifically.

First off, none of this is impersonal to me, at all. It's very personal - I was just trying to explain why heroes are more interesting to me than antiheroes, but even that stuff is all personal preference.

What I mean by antiheroes not having rules is that nothing they do is really a violation of their role, because they don't have to answer to anyone. That doesn't mean they may not have a personal code to live by, of course, and usually they do, but as far as social norms, it tends to be sort of anything-goes. But here, I may be thinking of a particular sort of lead character that is popular in "gritty fantasy" that I have no interest in - I think I'm better off talking about the hero type that I do write about instead of criticizing something that I'm not sure encompasses what other people would consider an antihero. Because usually "antihero" to me means "asshole that people look up to," and that's not a very well-thought-out or fair perspective.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying in the rest of your comment starting with The only kind of legitimacy I'm really interested in seeing exerted is legitimacy based on honesty, respect, love, and dedication. I mean, I tend to think heroism and hero cults are destructive and deceptive, which may be something I should have said earlier. A long time ago I decided that the point of what's now Junction Rally, as an exercise, was seeing what would happen to these archetypes if they were put into the "real world" and forced to actually play the hand they're dealt. But within that, it's what happens to the "paladin" that I'm most intrigued by.

This isn't something particularly novel in and of itself - I think the recent enthusiasm for "dark, gritty fantasy" comes out of a similar place, a desire for fantasy fiction that isn't full of stereotypes, but yet is still sort of... in dialogue with the stereotypes. And has more profanity, apparently. But I think my approach and emphasis is markedly different. I'm more sentimental, among many other things :P

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Well, that's hard to say. I guess that's why there's value in looking at... other reviewers' reviews?

...market research? cultural anthropology? I dunno, I just figure you've got to study the actual people at some point and not just what movies they're watching to figure out anything terribly concrete there.

Well, what I think about things pretty much determines how I would write things differently, so I'd say yeah.

But the ultimate goal is to write something that doesn't just show what you think but rather makes the reader think, no? That's what I mean about a step removed. Otherwise it just seems like reacting and deciding what you think is like deciding this movie's target audience and how you would differently construct your own target audience.


First off, none of this is impersonal to me, at all. It's very personal - I was just trying to explain why heroes are more interesting to me than antiheroes, but even that stuff is all personal preference.

By personal, I mean personal like or dislike of hero-types (not whether or not they're intellectually interesting). Actual attraction or disinterest, like in real life (e.g. to war heroes, or sports 'heroes', or other kinds of leaders people look up to). I don't mean 'personal' as in 'we all have our own subjective opinions.' Not sure if that's what you mean.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying in the rest of your comment starting with The only kind of legitimacy I'm really interested in seeing exerted is legitimacy based on honesty, respect, love, and dedication.

I'm just explaining why I'm personally put-off by (most) heroes people approve of. And then I make an exception for my own sort of suspension of disbelief about certain idealistic worlds in which idealistic heroes make sense. But I recognize that in the real world they don't make sense, and in more serious works, I don't really like heroes. But I also think it's possible to have 'real legitimacy'--say, a leader who honestly cares about people and honestly wants to improve the world and honestly dedicates his life to that endeavor out of sheer love and drive and probably insanity. Not that such people are perfect, either, or have no problems in their personal lives, and so on. But I think it's possible, if very, very rare. And I wouldn't mind hearing about such people, sometimes.

But the typical hero is just such an outright fraud that I have no interest in them. I just feel this profound apathy about it, like it makes me feel that not only the movie is meaningless, but its creation means that my life and the world at large are meaningless. It decreases the nobility of mankind, or something. I have a feeling that even if I saw it presented in a critical light, I wouldn't come away feeling any more hopeful, or impassioned, or interested in living.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

But who knows, right, most work nowadays is critical. The hipsters have made an art of it. Criticism is a guaranteed way to feel good about yourself without having to have any positive ideas of your own. So maybe I'd feel good too.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's a fair assessment of my novel at all, and it actually really sucks if that's all you think I'm trying to do in my writing. I hope I'm just not explaining myself well. There are "things" I criticize, in the sense that Heart of Darkness is a criticism of colonialism, but it's not like the whole thing is an exercise in snark, and I think that I certainly do present ideas (and ideals) of my own. I have always tried to do that, regardless of whether the execution or the ideas are up to par. I'm not sure to what extent a novel can even be purely criticism - are hipsters producing critical novels of some kind? I don't know what that would look like (James Franco's stuff?), but I can't imagine it would have much of a soul. Even your typical grimdark fantasy that's a critical response to traditional heroic fantasy is saying something besides criticism, even if it may not be intentional.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Dude, I have no idea what you're doing in your novel. I'm just talking about reviews, not even all that much about yours in particular.

But I do think that I mean something a good deal more, and a good deal more difficult, than "something besides criticism." Which is partly why I use the word 'positive'--as in actual, positive ideals, actual morals, actual transcendence that hasn't just become trite and cliche and unthinking. It's difficult for me to create something genuinely new in that department myself at this point, but it's something I strive for.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, you were saying that not even a movie that looked at it critically would be anything inspirational or whatever, and then you say that about critical work, and this after I say that my novel is critical of certain tropes or whatever it is I said. That's why I responded that way.

Yeah, for sure I don't think every novel achieves what you're talking about. I'm just saying that I don't think it's possible for a novel to be all response, no creation - it's still putting forth something, and that something might be totally trite and unthinking, and a good deal of what's created is exactly that, but something is still being produced. It might not transcend a factory level of "production," but... I guess you could debate what's more useful, putting forth something trite and cliched or being critical of something someone else has put out.

This is a line of argument that often goes along with fiction and criticism in the LJ community - writers are always going "instead of criticizing my work, why don't you write something yourself."

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Uhh. I was just talking about what would interest me or not about heroes, but okay, I guess I see the connection. And well, I can't really control it if you think what you're doing fits what I say I don't like. I wouldn't know if it fits, though, so I'm just talking about heroes and not your novel.

I do think criticism has a use, don't get me wrong. And I enjoy some criticism. I just think...it's a lot easier to be against something than for something, and to attract like-minded people that way, and to distinguish oneself as different and special that way.

I'm not trying to say everybody should write something themselves, or that no one should criticize. But seriously, like, we've got a whole academy united in the publishing potential of criticism. We've got newspapers of criticism. We've got atheism and sexual revolution and anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-gun, anti-mainstream... We think everything is going downhill--the economy, the culture, the education system, politics... But who are we and what are we for?

It gets to a point where even the novelty and seeming individuality of a critical voice just begins to sound like all the rest.

Shit, I'm late.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Maybe I started talking about something else in that comment (the trend of grimdark fantasy, and what I'm doing in the context of that trend) and you weren't responding to it, and I assumed that you were. I don't think that what I'm doing fits with what you don't like - not in the respect of it being hipster criticism, anyway, although I don't know about the "hero" thing.

You mean who are we as Americans or who are we as people? And I get what you're saying, but I don't think that's true everywhere - in sf/f/h, for example, criticism is generally frowned upon as elitist and useless - though that doesn't mean there isn't dispute over what sf/f/h is "supposed" to be, and I suspect that would always be true. I get that it's easier to be against something than for something, especially in politics, and maybe that's indicative of a certain cultural depression or something - negative internal thought processes and the like.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I see. Well, I'm glad we sorted that out. I'm just really exhausted, and I'm kind of plodding along a train of thought.

I'm not really saying it right, I don't think. Especially because it's not criticism, per se. Like I said, I still think criticism can be good/useful, on the one hand, and on the other, not everything I'm trying to encapsulate really fits the descriptor 'criticism.' It's neither necessary nor sufficient. :P Really, I'm just copying DFW subconsciously. And Nietzsche. Unrelatedly. And they were both quite good critics, right, but they also say stuff like this that I posted about before:

"It's actually not true that our literary culture is nihilistic, at least not in the radical sense of Turgenev's Bazarov. For there are certain tendencies we believe are bad, qualities we hate and fear. Among these are sentimentality, naïveté, archaism, fanaticism. It would probably be better to call our own art's culture now one of congenital skepticism. Our intelligentsia30 distrust strong belief, open conviction. Material passion is one thing, but ideological passion disgusts us on some deep level."

...

"So he--we, fiction writers--won't (can't) dare try to use serious art to advance ideologies.^31 The project would be like Menard's Quixote. People would either laugh or be embarrassed for us. Given this (and it is a given), who is to blame for the unseriousness of our serious fiction? The culture, the laughers?"

...

"31 We will, of course, without hesitation use art to parody, ridicule, debunk, or criticize ideologies--but this is very different."


I guess I'm picking at the criticizing ideologies part, when what's at issue is the deep skepticism an apathy part? Something like that.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

*and

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

So I guess it's hard for me to see heroes and their legitimacy as a model of much except for strong belief, open conviction, moral ideals and so on. And so I see criticizing them as kind of another statement of how that's something we should distrust, or mock, or hate. Which is sort of already the state of a good deal of culture, this attitude of skepticism. On the other hand, most positive portrayals of heroes are this kind of blind "naïveté" and "fanaticism" that isn't interesting, either. So I just don't know what to do with heroes. The subject puts me off. Unless it's going to show me some "ideology" really worth believing in.

But like, I'm not talking about anything specific. It's possible someone could turn that concept into something I would find interesting. But what I'm describing, I probably wouldn't.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm not trying to figure out "anything concrete"? It's not like this is something I'm studying intensely, for God's sake. And you can say that I'm just wasting my time, sure, I suppose I waste my time with a lot of things. I'm okay with that. It's just recreation for me, recreation whose subject matter is generally related to themes I write about.

Yeah, that is what I mean.

I wish there was some example that we could talk about so I would know what kinds of movies you mean that make you feel like your life and the world at large are meaningless, like something we've both seen or whatever.

So basically in a less realistic, less "serious," more idealistic world, it's okay because then we're dealing with ideals - but as soon as it becomes more realistic, it doesn't work because heroes don't work in the real world? Because that's an interesting sort of split you've got there. Seriously, I would love to hear examples of the two different kinds of movies here.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Not saying you have to study it intensely. Reviews are just something I've never 'gotten', have never much held my interest recreationally or otherwise, and I'm trying to explain why, and/or get why it's so interesting to you.

I dunno, man, pretty much everything lately makes me feel like my life and the world at large are meaningless. You could probably pick anything. Okay, okay, serious answer... seriously, I have a hard time finding deep, artistic meaning in movies. They tend to make me feel more sentimental, and I tend to appreciate them more if they simply offer me a world at odds with my own (at least so it seems lately), such that it reminds me that there is more to life than work and food and rest. Again, ending with me feeling burnt out. Think normal. Er...examples, right. Maybe this would be better when I'm awake. Requires too much thought, sorry.

As for the latter thing...I mean I consciously think of them as junk food movies or whatever, but for the moment I am immersed in them, I can buy the idealistic world. Like some comic book movie, like, I dunno, Sin City, or Batman, or whatever. Maybe. Or something equally fantastical, though sometimes comic-like stuff can be more 'real' or comment on real society more than an idealized portrait of real life. So I dunno. I'm not much good for examples right now. I'm about to get my 3 hrs of sleep, then back to work.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I guess I've always liked writing movie reviews, although I don't like reviewing books so much, because usually it's either just "this is a good book, read this" or "this is what I have to say about a famous work" like LOTR. I think what really got me into it was the film class I took in Melbourne, because it was part of what we had to do for class was "respond" to movies. To some extent I think it is an exercise in narcissism - like, yes, I'm sure the world so cares what I think about Popular Movie X. But I actually spend a lot of zone-out time during movies thinking about my own stuff, so I feel like the juxtaposition to "how I would do it" is always there. I don't know if I can say much more than that.