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]

There's a difference between asking about why authors have different takes on a given trope or motif, and using one author's use of the motif as a standard by which to measure the other author. The first is the conversation. The second is the dictatorship. The conversation can even lead to judgments, but they'll be of a more sophisticated sort taking into account the differing aims and so on. Again Aycheb is my model on this. She's showing what the conversation is. You are free to say you think Moore has the better part of the argument. I just think it's unfair to say that Joss fails because he didn't just say what Moore said. That refuses the conversation altogether.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Ok, having this discussion with me is probably a pointless replacement, but I don't think that to say that was actually Emmie's intention, to my mind she put up some comparative points up for discussion, not setting Moore as the absolute standard.

And I don't see the point of Aycheb's argument, because the gist of it seems to be "Meh, Moore uses esoteric motifs in his story, therefor he must be an idiot", which seems a very lacking analysis to me that doesn't allow for much conversation.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

The general 'this is how it should be done' tone of the post and the supportive comments is using Moore as a standard. Eilowyn's analogy definitely wants to use Moore as a standard.

But I'm happy to agree with you that a conversaton about the two works could potentially be productive, so long as the aim is not to say that Joss fails at being Moore. I don't think you are reading Aycheb's stance quite right, but I'll let you two converse about that. I haven't read Promethea so I can't have a substantive conversation about it. If we agree on the general point that Moore is not the measure by which Joss succeeds or fails, I walk away a happy camper.