Batman, Batman -- How I do Love my Batmans

[maggie2]

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).

Comments

[simonf.livejournal.com]

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.

[owenthurman.livejournal.com]

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

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

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

[local-max.livejournal.com]

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....

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

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.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Literature is a conversation, not a dictatorship

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

[moscow-watcher.livejournal.com]

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.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

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.

[next_to_normal]

My Batman story:

It probably won't surprise you that Nolan's Batman is the only one I've ever liked. To be fair, I've never read the comics, so I'm probably missing a lot of iterations, but Adam West never did it for me. I found it boring and too silly. I didn't bother with the 90s movies because they looked awful. When I was in middle school (around when Batman and Robin came out), one of my friends was really into Batman, probably in no small part due to George Clooney, but it was this whole thing with her. We all had to have superhero code names and stuff, and I never understood what the big deal was. I wasn't really into superhero stories at all (again, having never read comics), though I did watch Lois and Clark.

It wasn't until I saw Batman Begins that I went, "OH. Now I see why everyone loves Batman so much." It finally clicked. It's the only version that's ever worked for me (though after this I may give the Burton movies a try).

It's a lot like my experience with Doctor Who, actually. I mean, I liked the first four seasons well enough, but I didn't really see what the big deal was, and I wondered if maybe I was missing something by not having seen Old Who. And then I watched the fifth season, and it just clicked. I got why everyone loved it so much.