maggie2 | Batman, Batman -- How I do Love my Batmans

Batman, Batman -- How I do Love my Batmans

Batman was my first true television love. Back when I was seven, I just loved Batman, Robin, and their battle with all those diabolical villains. When I was older, I realized that Batman was a spoof and I still loved it. Great that it could work for a literal-minded seven year old. Great that it could amuse her when she got older. Adam West and Burt Ward linger in my heart with the warmest affection.

I loved Tim Burton's Batman with Michael Keaton. Mostly because batman was back and I am and always will be pro-batman girl. I liked the serious tone, along with the cartoonish tone from the original show. I'm not sure they worked together very well, though. I loved that first Batman movie a lot, but more as a really cool failure than as a spectacular success. The sequels just got worse from there.

I really like the new Batman with Christian Bale. Oddly, I've only seen the first one once. It's a bit long and takes itself too seriously. But I like Dark Knight a lot. It makes you think a bit. It's definitely got some of that essential darkness that the TV show didn't have and that Burton couldn't quite blend with the cartoon sensibility..

Folks, these are three very different approaches to the source material which is batman. If you want to take one of them and canonize it and say the other two don't measure up, that's your perogative. But I'd like to be free to like all the batmans. I don't want to live in a world where embracing Christian Bale means I have to renounce Adam West. I want to live in a world that celebrates them both and which recognizes that the source material for batman is just that rich that it works well as serious brooding drama and as spoofy cheese.

Batman and Robin is a bad movie because it doesn't have the zany cheese of the series, or the weird combo that Burton tried. It's not a fun movie, or a serious movie or any kind of good movie. So of course, it's worse that Dark Knight. But NOT because it fails to be properly serious. Batman the series is NOT worse than Dark Knight. It's just different. Difference is good.

To the argument in question, season 8 might well be an abject failure -- but at least let it be a failure of Joss to do justice to his own schtick, not a failure to do something he isn't even trying to do. And please don't tell me that for any given set of ideas there is One True Way. (Or less snarkily, any subject worth doing well is worth doing in multiple tones. Literature is a conversation, not a dictatorship).

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I remember when season 7 was about to air, some fans got into their heads that Joss was ripping off Lovecraft and that the Elder Gods would be making an appearance. So that fan assumption went astonishingly well.

As for the current round of accusations, I'm not seeing it. To me Buffy season 8 is on a bigger scale with Joss solely at the helm. And with that comes change from what has gone before. It's not some grand attempt to duplicate a particular comic book that has caught some fan's eye.

Wait. Batman was a spoof? I took it totally seriously.

Maybe you should write a book about all the foibles of fandom! It's reassuring in a weird way that this sort of thing is old news. I just find it all rather perplexing.

Me too! I was pretty old before I cottoned on to the possibility that it wasn't serious drama.

I can't actually say much about the Batman and Robin movie because I fell asleep during it! :)

I don't think I even went to see it because the reviews were so bad, and because whichever sequel came before it was already pretty disappointing.

I've seen Adam West talking, and he discussed a little bit how the show gradually (gradually = more in production stage, I think) became the parody it was. Adam West really pushed for it. He also indicated that Burt Ward (who was from "serious" Westerns--he was in The Searchers!) wasn't comfortable with it at first. As a kid, I used to make fun of the Batman when it was on in reruns, and took it as proof that 60's TV was bad (entertaining, but bad). It took me until I grew older to realize that, hold on, it was deliberately funny. Great stuff.

Among other things, I think the problem with season eight conversations is that it used to be at least somewhat clear what Joss was trying to do, at least on the surface level. Twilight, the arc, in particular, is bat-feces insane. Is Joss doing parody, homage, both, neither, some new form of writing hitherto unimagined? Writing erotica or a doomed romance novel or a deliberate effort to tear down Bangel in his fans eyes or, or, or....

Aycheb said shortly after 34 came out in a comment to me that the internet hadn't yet decided whether 34 was too porny or not porny enough, and now there's an argument over whether it's too much like Promethea or not enough like it, or, etc. Because it's so difficult to work out what he was trying to do, it's natural to speculate. I think it's even reasonable to make guesses. I'm not really convinced though that any of the guesses are right.

Of course, Simon points out that this has happened before; and I think that many fans were also not just offended but baffled by later seasons. (I found a contemporaneous review site, and the person seemed bright and open-minded but absolutely had no clue how to parse the Trio-as-villains, Spuffy, or Hell's Bells.) On TWOP they didn't understand that the Hellmouth scenes in "The Zeppo" were satire. It's nothing new, but Twilight is so much weirder than anything that came before that things are probably more intense....

Hm, I like composite and derivative art, it takes an old story and breathes new life into it. That's the way I feel at least, when I casually like something.

I'm at best a casual Batman fan, I like what Frank Miller did with it and consequently like the movies that were influenced by his take on Batman, while I find a lot of other things about the francise dispensable or so bad it gets good again.

Thing is when I get fannish about something derivatives often feel like they are "traitors" to the original work.

As kid I felt like that about musketeer movies, I had read the book at an early age and nearly all movies made butchered the material in my mind, they left out the good parts and invented silly new ones I wasn't interested in.

S8 is to me no part of Buffy, it's a follow up made by different people and I judge it as a new work that works with source materials I love. Buffy for one and the comic book medium.
I get the same vibe I got for the musketeer movies. It doesn't do justice to Buffy the tv show. The comparison to Promethea (or Kabuki, or Watchmen, or Fables, or 20th century boys) does not so much illustrate that Joss tried borrow from one of them too much, but more how you can tell similar stories (by accident or by intention) in a much more interesting way in the comic medium.

I literally hurt every time, someone blames the badness in S8 on it being a comic, like those are inherently unable to do better, that's why I think it's important to compare S8 not only to Buffy, but also to other comics with similar motives.

I agree with you in general in the sense that I think derivative are is important and interesting , but I disagree that there are no differences in quality. I think S8 should be out there, same as tons of not so good fanfic stories are out there, but I will judge them as individual pieces of art not indiscriminately put them on the same stage, because they work with the same source material.

I very much agree that it's not clear what Joss is trying to do. Twilight just is baffling. People can say it's bad writing because it's utterly baffling, and all I can reply is that I'm going to hang on to see if it's still baffling after Last Gleaming. It's the next step that I don't get -- slapping on some interpretation and declaring that it fails to live up to whatever that interpretation should be living up to. You'd think that the fact that it entirely fails to be that would constitute evidence that whatever Joss is trying to do, it's not that.

Anyway, sometimes a mood develops where people start making what I regard to be unfair complaints about whatever is the target of a generally-agreed on ire. I usually bristle when I think that is happening (not that complaints are made, just that some of the complaints start to be unfair, alongside all the perfectly fair ones). The problem is that the people making the complaints obviously think they are being fair and don't much like hearing me say they aren't. So I should learn to just step out of the way when that happens.

I'm glad you got to a place where you could enjoy Batman!

I'm trying to tread lightly here, because I keep getting in trouble for trying to explain myself.

I totally get your point that the problem with season 8 isn't the medium, and it makes sense to point to examples of comics that you like as an answer to those arguments. I have always thought your comparisons were clearly of that nature, and fairly made.

I remain on the fence about whether season 8 is a worthy follow up to the show. As I just said above, I agree with Max's observation that Twilight is baffling -- and until I figure out what Joss really is doing here I won't have any opinion one way or the other. But I also can see why people would just feel fed up and not willing to wait around to see whether Last Gleaming will make sense of it all. I can say I'm hanging on, but I don't think that means all people need to hang on. Twilight is asking a lot of folks -- and that comes after Retreat, which comes after us waiting around for 3 years for this story to get told. Really, I do get why people have bailed.

I just don't think season 8 has the same motives as anything Moore is trying to do, and I therefore regard it as unfair to say that season 8 should be compared to Moore's work, using Moore as the standard. And like I just told Max, when I see a criticism that I regard as unfair, I usually will say I think it's unfair. It's fair to ask whether season 8 lives up to Buffy, fair to ask if it's moving or connecting, just not fair to ask whether it lives up to some whole other artistic vision. (At least that's how it registers with my fairness meter, which obviously is not the same one many of you have.) To go back to the comparison that started this mess, I think it's fair to say that Batman and Robin is a bad movie. Unfair to say it should be Dark Knight... especially since one would logically also have to say that Batman the TV show is bad because it's not Dark Knight, and Batman is great, when taken on its own terms for what it's trying to be. Whether season 8 ends up being more like Batman and Robin or more like Batman the TV show remains to be seen.

Edited 2010-07-14 06:15 (UTC)

I think literature is often a chain of new interpretations of often old and similar motives. Take the story of king Arthur that was told over and over in so many different ways. I think retelling a story is a very valid literally cause that transforms a motive and often gives it new sense (not always unfortunately) and not just when it's the same story but also when it's just a certain trope.

Sometimes a new interpretation is brilliant sometimes it only makes you long for the original (The mists of Avalon, for King Arthur).

I agree with you that we can't fully judge S8 yet, because we don't know the conclusion it's coming too. But to my mind it is fair to asses the things we already have on the plate (and some might decide on it, that they'll leave the restaurant before dessert). Such things would obviously be the art and the pacing, but also individual old motives that the story used. For example the mysterious villain that is an old aquaintance of the hero. It's of course an age old motive and there are several modern interpretations of it; 20th century boys and Fables use it too. I think it's fair to compare these modern interpretations on their suspense, pacing and emotional ressonance.

I don't think Joss has even read those books and while he has read Promethea and might have wanted to pay homage to it, don't think he wanted to tell the same story. He does use motives from it though and I think it's fair to compare the two interpretations.

I agree that some of the mentioned Promethea motives are not fully retold on S8 yet, we're still missing some pieces that make it hard to compare. There are similarities, like the heroine being the one who brings about apocalypse, but while on Promethea the apocalypse genuinly is a step in evolution and a positive event, it doesn't seem to be in Buffy.

In S8 it's either a very rotten apple or really a spectacular failure to sell a positive apocalypse.

So in my mind, some of the comparison is premature and will turn out to be so (for example I'm be hard pressed to find any similarities between Batsu and Grace/Stace), some is fair, because it doesn't look like anything will be added to it (for example the emotional resonance of the gateway opening sex or the way to do exposition (letting Giles babble about sentient universes and writing a poem that's an issue long and leads you through history using tarot motives)).

I don't really want to speculate on Joss intentionally chosing motives from Promethea or just fishing from the same pond of collective storytelling, but they do have pulled out some very similar fish, even if I suspect some of Josses might turn out to be red herings.

I'm sitting on another fence here, because I think some shared motives bear comparison very well and some don't really fit like you say.

I wanted to add something on a more general note too, namely that comparative literary criticism is a conversation too. I don't really see the unfair in comparing the way similar motives are used in different stories. I love to do that, when I'm fascinated with a motive, for example I think both Buffy and Ellen Kushner's Privilege of the sword have very interesting takes on empowerment coming from an outside source and championship for women and I love to compare them, also because I feel Kushner provides some missing pieces that Joss neglected in his version.

I see where some of the arguments that were made give you the notion that apples are compared with pears here, but I think that's not true for all of them, so it makes more sense to argue those that don't really fit instead of dismissing them all.

I agree that some of the mentioned Promethea motives are not fully retold on S8 yet, we're still missing some pieces that make it hard to compare. There are similarities, like the heroine being the one who brings about apocalypse, but while on Promethea the apocalypse genuinly is a step in evolution and a positive event, it doesn't seem to be in Buffy.

Exactly, and I'd bet real money that it's not supposed to be. Twilight isn't a homage to Promethea or the esoteric philosophies Alan Moore proselytises in it. It's a parody, a rebuke, a passionate counter-argument. So much of the Promethea apolgism on LJ focuses on how the sex scenes and the universe expo are better done and more poetically expressed than in Twilight. Of course they are. The hippy tantric philosophy, the idea that Sophie having sex with Jack (Alan Moore's dirty old man self insert) represents a world changing pathway to enlightenment is central to the message Moore is trying to sell (and he sells it very well, I stand by my Leni Reifenstahl comparison if only because Moore would hate it so much). In Twilight it's basically filler. In Twilight the key emotional beats are a) when Buffy, despairing at having brought nothing but destruction to her girls, gives in to Angel's destiny pleading at the end of #33 and b) when she rips a hole in Daffy Duck world rejecting it wholesale to go help her friends back on the 'lower' plane. The space sex wasn't an end in itself but a means to convince the audience that Buffy really had chosen Twilight and it worked. All those complaints that she was no longer a hero, all the slut shaming? People were convinced even as they hated it. Obviously for some the hate was a point of no return (to the story) and the moment of her rediscovering her "me" came too late. It worked for me but then for me the Adam West way is the only way to make Batman's story of one man and his manpain anything resembling palatable. As ever YMMV.

Literature is a conversation, not a dictatorship

I'll take a framed 2'x3' lithograph of this phrase to hang on my wall, please.

I have a highly different interpretation of Promethea from you, because I don't really see it as actual philosophy but more as literary philosophy. Instead of applying esoteric patterns to reality, it applies them to storytelling. It doesn't try to sell a universal truth but a universal dream, which is why it did not come off as esoteric crap to me.

And I don't think S8 is a rebuke or a counter argument either. I described that I recognize some motives from Promethea and think they were done more artistically there, the central motive about a step in evolution and so on is the one were I'm inclined to agree with you though, that Joss version of this is very different. But a rebuke? I'm not really sure, because what motive is there to rebuke?

Buffy doesn't want her new world and created it out of dersperation, the people in Promethea break free from old bonds. In Buffy everyone is left behind in Promethea the apocalypse changes the whole world and doesn't leave it as an after birth.

So, while I'm fairly sure Joss is doing something different from Promethea here, I don't think he's subverting it either.

I guess the pacing also plays a very important role. We found out that Angel is Twilight in January. Five months later we've heard his explanation - which was very baffling and contradicted practically everything we knew about his character. Now we have to wait another four months to find out is there will be/won't be a twist that may reveal a real big bad. In any case we face two pretty frustrating options:

-- somebody drove Angel crazy so he isn't responsible for what he did, and we're back at square A

-- he really doesn't care about the fate of the world as long as he and Buffy can have sex in paradise.

If it was a TV show, there would be a week between the episodes. We'd get the resolution and we could discuss the entire season's failure or success. Now we have too much time to spec, to rant, to construct crazy theories, to compare s8 to other comics etc.

Even as a philosophy of literature it fails. Central to Moore's thinking is that the wallpaper pattern connections between different esoteric traditions are significant, that they tell us something fundamental about how the human brain is wired other than that it's wired to see patterns whether they're there or not.

Motive = why he dun it. Motif = trope, repeated element. I'm assuming you've been talking about the latter.

My point largely is that Moore does tantric sex and ending the imperfect old world for the higher plane of storytelling as reality more artistically than Joss because he *wants* it look irresistible where Joss wants quite the opposite. Sure what he does want stands independently from anything Moore has to say. Buffy turning down the paradise where she would be warm and loved and 'knew' her friends were OK? Where she was done? Where she could finally just give in? Where (to quote Spike) the fear and uncertainty stops. It's a temptation that's been there ever since Restless and one she's never been able to face head on, it's always been duty more than desire holding her back, tying her to life. Now she gets to choose. It is nevertheless a choice that if looked at with reference to Sophie's choice completely repudiates it and in that sense subverts it and all the stories from Promethea to The Last Battle where the end of the world is to be celebrated as the dawn of a rapturous (Rapture- ous) new era.

This I agree with -- though to be fair, we weren't supposed to find out about Angel in January. Still, we've got this long pause after a crazy arc that has baffled most folks -- especially about Angel, a character a lot of people care about. It's like we're three-quarters of the way through Enemies and then on pause for three months, with a bunch of people going WTF.

I could do a needlepoint of it for you!

Aycheb has pretty much argued my case for me (and more ably since she's actually read Promethea). I had thought you meant motive and not motif. So my reply changes a bit. They may well have common motifs, but my argument all along has been that motifs do not, in any way shape or form, demand similar treatment or invite comparison by a standard. The motif fits the motives of the author, and its the motives that dictate how things should be done. As Aycheb points out (and what I've been trying to say all along), Joss patently does not have the same motives in storytelling as does Moore, and that's why his style and method is different.

Whether he succeeds or fails at doing whatever it is he's trying to do remains an open question -- though I can see why a lot of people would want to conclude now that it's a failure. It's just not a failure because it's not done like Moore, and it's unfair to say it's a failure because it's not done like Moore. That's all I have been trying to say.

I agree that it is a conversation, too. And that's why I think it should be held to the standard of reasonableness.

A comparison of the way motifs are used in different works, in the sense of talking about how the motif fits into the motive of the author is a line of conversation well-worth pursuing. See Aycheb's posts as an example of doing exactly that. She's identifying how the motifs fit in very different ways into the themes the author is exploring and using that to explain why the styles are different. You can still prefer Moore's story and his style. I just don't think it's fair to criticize Whedon's style because it doesn't match the story Moore is telling with the motif. Whedon is telling a different story with a different purpose and with a correspondingly different sensibility. I hope that makes sense.

Edited 2010-07-14 13:40 (UTC)

I very much like all your comments in this thread. I'd like to frame the last one.

I'm replying here because I hadn't seen the connection between Buffy choosing to go back here and her huge despair at being forced back in season 6. It's obvious once you say it, and I like that it picks up something that had bugged me about season 6 -- namely Buffy's sense that everyone was OK. I've always thought that was a flag that 'heaven' wasn't an unproblematic paradise -- and I like the development of that theme here.

Heh. I don't have anything much to add to this conversation but my dirty little secret is that I have never watched an episode of any other Star Trek than the Original Series, out of loyalty.

I think I come to fandom from an entirely different perspective now though. I am much more invested in Buffy than Star Trek but I am able to enjoy au fan fiction, and many novels for what they are.

The comic, not so much. I stopped reading it fairly early on, but I wish the space fucking issue didn't exist. It embarrasses my over-invested self. Not in a prudish way but in a Buffyverse isn't as deep and wonderful as I have been saying way. Hurts.

Ah...I'm reluctant to even wander into this mess because...you know my non-thoughts on the comics. I don't like to try to discuss them since I don't read them.

But I'm seeing a logic mishap with some of these complaints about S8 that's been bothering me. I figure you'd be the most sympathetic to it. :)

Cause...people are saying that S8 is derivative of Source X (though what Source X is seems to vary). Then, S8 is judged on that basis and found to be a failure.

If the latter is true, then wouldn't it be easier to conclude that S8 isn't derivative of Source X and is, instead, doing its own thing (perhaps with a few Buffy-style homages)? Or is the premise of S8 being derivative a hard and settled fact that can't be adjusted?

It just seems that the end result (The conclusion that S8 is a failure) is the primary starting place, and so arguments to prove it are often based on some shaky logic that just doesn't hold up.

I mean, take Normal Again, which uses a pretty standard sci-fi premise (It's all in the character's head!). Let's say some classic sci-fi story used that prior to Buffy used that trope and let's call it Source A. It would be awkward to see criticism of NA on the basis that it's derivative of Source A, but it does so poorly, therefore the episode sucks. If that's the conclusion, wouldn't it be better to attempt to view and judge the episode based on its own merits? Or is the derivation of Source A that set in stone?

Ah, I probably shouldn't even wade into this. But I've done stupider things during my time in fandom.

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Batman, Batman -- How I do Love my Batmans

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