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

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I will agree with you if Last Gleaming reveals that all that exposition was meant to be anything other than mumbo-jumbo claptrap. But it played well as mumbo-jumbo claptrap, so I'm holding out space for it to be meant as that. Giles said nobody knows, and it read like, in fact, nobody knows. We're told in the text that Willow is guessing, Angel is guessing and Giles is guessing. So I think it's possible that they really are just guessing.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

But even if it is a mumbo jumbo claptrap I don't think it played well as such, because it's to silly for that.

A dispute between worldviews becomes interesting when both are argued well, but if one needs to be argued this lamely for the other one to succeed (whatever joss has in mind there)it becomes painfull to watch.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Well, we can't have this conversation properly until we see how it all fits together. I'm pointing to one possible space where it works just fine -- and that's if the point is to draw the audience into the same massive confusion confronting the characters.

I think it has the potential to work just fine as commentary about the absence of any greater meaning and our tendency to fill in the blanks with whatever mumbo jumbo suits us. Willow sees epic romance mumbo jumbo. Angel sees "we earned this" mumbo jumbo. Giles sees bizarre this is the balance Watcher type mumbo jumbo. Joss isn't articulating one world view against another. He's articulating a stance against world views. See, e.g. the Daffy Duck cartoon. 'We just make it up ourselves'.

I'm still agnostic about how it works qua story, and I need to find out what 'really' is going on with the universe Buffy inhabits; the narrative confusion is frustrating as heck with such a long gap between issues -- there are lots of ways it could not work. But I think there are lots of cool ways that it could work. Max's point about how lame Zeppo reads if you miss that the hell mouth scenes are satire obtains. It *might* be something like that. It's too soon for definitive pronouncements that it is supposed to be X and Joss fails (utterly) at making it X... especially when X is what some other guy was trying to do.

It is indisputable that Twilight was bizarre and it booted a lot of people out of the story. I'm willing to wait and see, but I think Joss handed out masses of rope for people who wanted to hang season 8 in effigy. But I'm sorry, I think the arguments about Promethea are every but as not valid as an argument that the Batman TV show fails because it's not dark and brooding like Dark Knight. I think deciding ex ante that there's one way to read a story and then to decide whether the story does or does not make sense given that one reading is an unproductive way of approaching things, because I'd think the more natural conclusion is that since the story doesn't work if read in way X is that way X is not the way to read the story. There may be no good way to read season 8 -- but the argument that one particular way fails isn't particularly illuminating.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Hm, I see your point but I can't quite suspend my disbelief that far. Angel, Willow and Giles views don't really seem to contradict itself, so I'm more leaning towards thinking the reader is meant to go with it at the very least as a red hering.

And the whole thing is too much on center stage to be similar satire as the Zeppo Hellmouth scenes. If this is satire the whole thing becomes solely a parody of itself and that would be a sad ending for Buffy.

What I can see is it being something akin to Jasmin land but that too was indeffinitely better done.

Like I said, for me at least it's not like Joss wants to do the exact same thing Moore does, or that he should be doing that, but more that some aspects of S8 are takes on similar motifs and they fail to intrigue.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Like I just said, I think the solid argument is "season 8 fails to intrigue". The promethea comparison just raises the spectre that Joss should be doing what Moore is doing, and that's not fair and I don't even think that's what you want to argue at the end of the day.

I wouldn't call my proposed meaning 'satire'. I'd say we're swooshed up in events like the characters and nobody knows what's going on. And we in the audience certainly do not know what's going on. Retconning Willow one short issue after she makes her pronouncement about what is going on strikes me as a big sign that nobody is to be seen as the reliable spokesman for the author about what is happening. We can argue about whether that's the effect Joss is aiming at, or whether it's an effect he should be aiming at. But I'm just not willing to say -- prior to Joss's exposition in Last Gleaming -- that I know now that Twilight just fails. Enemies would have failed spectacularly if we left off the last act. I'm agnostic about whether this will pull together or not. I can see why you are betting on 'not'. I just can't go that last step with you of betting myself. I'm too busy rooting for the story to want to place bets.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Might be that we're both caught arguing causes that are not really our own here. Mine certainly isn't to say Joss should copy Moore, but I do violently object to the "best of all possible comics idea", of which in turn you are actually no defender.

I think comparison to Promethea is usefull in arguments where people say, S8 is as good as comics get, because no it just isn't, there are a ton of counterexamples. And in thatI feel confident,because no finish in the world can make up for those 35 issues that came before.

I'm not willing to let the chance go completely that the finish will breath in some life and meaning into the story, but I'm not willing to make up excuses for it either.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

And yay, we are at one on all of this -- or at least close enough for me to start my happy camping.