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preserving-ferretbrain · 6 years ago

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No Exit from Fantasyland

by Alasdair Czyrnyj

Monday, 22 February 2010Alasdair tries to come to grips with the Fencer Trilogy~

Before I begin, I have a confession. Up until a few years ago, I had never read anything of that great amorphous genre of fantasy. It was a matter of bad timing, really. I spent most of the pre-teenage years most sensible people spend reading children's fantasy reading Star Trek tie-ins, and the years after that saw me shifting through classic science fiction and history in rapid succession. By the time I started to get serious about revisiting fantasy I'd hit university, meaning that my choice of fantasy has tended to fall in line with my other literary interests. When people talk of fantasy, my mind hearkens to the glacial machinescapes of Ian R. MacLeod, the Marxist surrealism of China Miéville, the savage deconstructions of Michael Swanwick, the humanist comedy of Terry Pratchett, even the bureaucratic terror of Franz Kafka.

And K. J. Parker.

K. J. Parker is something of an odd duck. She's been writing for over a decade now, though she's only gained any recognition in the last couple of years. Her output tends to be fairly modest; normally a new book a year, with no short stories or other external writing. We don't even know who she is; "K. J. Parker" is a pseudonym, and about the only things anyone knows about her is that she's a woman, she hails from a farming family in Vermont, she likes history and skilled trades, and she's married to a solicitor in southern England.

So, what it is about Parker's work that merits serious critical attention? What would compel me, a reader who normally avoids trilogies like grim death, to work my way through her entire bibliography in the space of a year?

In short, it is because she writes fantasy the way no one else does. And it is

horrifying

Here, I'll explain what I mean.

Colours in the Steel, or How to Besiege a Late-Medieval Metropolis in One Easy Lesson

Parker's first work, the Fencer Trilogy, has something of a misleading format. While there are three books that describe the journey of a particular group of characters, it doesn't really

read

as a trilogy. Each book is set in a completely different location from its predecessors, and each is separated from the previous book by an interval of several years. The books also ignore the classic conventions of genre by redefining the relationship the characters have with their world. Rather than commanding their narratives and acting as the centers of the universe, the characters of the

Fencer

books are forever bound to the material and economic forces that drive their world, where success is determined by a comprehension of these forces which, due to human nature, can never be total.

To understand this world, we are given the mopey (if initially sympathetic) character of Bardas Loredan, ex-farmer, ex-soldier, fencer, bowyer, and occasional general as a guide. We meet Bardas in

Colours in the Steel

(1998), working as duelist at law (a profession, surprisingly enough, that Parker renders as plausible, or at least as logically illogical) in the Constantinople-flavored Triple City of Perimadeia. Like all great cities, Perimadeia has its enemies, chief among them Temrai, leader of the plainspeople whom Perimadeia has traditionally dealt with through the time-honored strategy of butcher-and-bolt. A modernizer in the style of Peter the Great, Temrai has traveled incognito to Perimadeia to school himself in the construction of heavy machinery, so that his people may devise the weapons they need to bring down the Triple City once and for all.

While this sounds like a fairly generic setup for a fantasy novel, Parker's prose gives the story a unique bent. While most authors would bring their worlds to life through architectural tours and history lessons, Parker builds her world with machinery. Through all three books, great care is lavished on the step-by-step forging and assembly of material goods. In the course of reading the

Fencer

books, a reader will learn how to forge a sword, how a water wheel works, how to assemble a trebuchet, how to assemble a bow, and how to subject armor to destructive testing. While this would normally read as mere authorial self-indulgence, it is a credit to Parker that these passages serve to drive the story. After reading page after page of construction, the reader begins to reinterpret the story appropriately, reading the plot not as a simple clash of personalities, but as a conflict between great, grinding forces made up of millions of people, animated by a single goal, and fueled by the prosaic things we take for granted in our world. Rather than magic or the feudal privilege, Parker's world operates by economics, political struggle, logistics, and, ultimately, by conflict. While Perimadeian culture is kept somewhat murky, by watching how its inhabitants use and interpret their machines, we see how Perimadeia operates and how its citizens interpret the world.

This is not to say that there is no magic in the books. Indeed, one of the main plotlines of the trilogy concerns the operation of magic. Early on in

Colours,

a young woman approaches Patriarch Alexius, the chief lecturer at Perimadeia's magical college, asking that he place a curse on Bardas Loredan to punish him for his role in "murdering" her uncle during a duel. After applying the curse, Alexius spends the rest of the story trying to undo it, revealing a hidden truth about magic:

no one knows how it works

. Despite studying it for decades, Alexius does not understand anything about its operation, as he freely admits. Even Parker's description is hard to puzzle out; it appears to operate on a sort of system of universal balance dubbed "The Principle," and it can be used to alter key decisions through precognitive visions, though it's never made clear if the visions are prophecies or simply hallucinations. Oh, and they might be manipulated by someone none of the characters know about.

The book builds slowly for the first half, with Bardas drifting from job to job, Alexius trying to figure out just what he did, and Temrai transforming his nation into a mechanically-competent band of semi-settled tribespeople. At the halfway mark, Temrai's people approach the gates of Perimadeia, and a great siege begins. The depiction of the siege is one of the high points of the novel, and one of the areas where Parker's writing shines. The whole enterprise is gloriously messy. There's uncomprehending denial on the part of the Perimadeians, skirmishes that devolve into rugby scrums, artillery duels that don't accomplish much, illogical politics, and even a decent secret weapon. Despite his dislike of the military life, Bardas is conscripted into the defense of Perimadeia, managing to fight the plainspeople to a draw.

At this point, the book explodes.

Throughout the book, there are references to an unnamed bald, bearded figure who seems to have a hand in every major development of the book, acting as an advisor to Temrai and haunting Alexius' visions. In the final hundred pages of the book, a name is finally put to the face: Gorgas Loredan, estranged brother to Bardas. However, as he explains to Alexius in a somewhat out-of-place monologue, his motives are simple. It turns out that years ago, he, Bardas, and the rest of their family were all living on the farm off on the island of Mesoge. However, after an unfortunate incident in which Gorgas pimped out his older sister to two visiting noblemen, only to kill them, his sister (failed), his father, and Bardas (failed again) when the latter two caught them in the act, Gorgas fled home, while Bardas left later to join the Perimadeian army. However, what's past is prologue, and all he wants to do is reconcile with his brother.

Then he opens the gates of the city.

It's shocking. It's totally unexpected. It seems like Parker is cheating. At yet, as the city falls and the cast flees, it doesn't seem like a cheat. Perhaps there's more going on than meets the eye. Maybe the next book will have some answers.

The Belly of the Bow, or Bank Vs. University: Blood on the Ledger

The Belly of the Bow

(1999) opens, there is a bit of a shock. Two years have passed between books. The action has shifted to the environs of the late city of Perimadeia, specifically to the island of Scona, the peninsula of Shastel, and an island-based trading community know as "the Island." Fortunately, most of the characters from the first book have escaped the fall of their city to make new lives for themselves.

Once again, war dominates the novel, but it is a rather odd type of war. The cause, it seems, is philanthropy. Some time ago, a great charity and center of learning based with the august title of "The Grand Foundation of Charity and Contemplation" started a homestead program in Shastel that, due to a misunderstanding of basic economics, ended up creating a peninsula of indentured peasants. After a civil war or two, the Foundation became a regional political player, only to be undercut by a new bank on the island of Scona, which buys out tenant farmers and offers loans at less ruinous interest rates. However, since this is the days before the World Trade Organization, the two groups are forced to resolve their differences in the only civilized way: by cross-border raids against recalcitrant debtors.

The bank, incidentally, is named the Loredan Bank, after its founder, Director Niessa Loredan, and with sergeant-at-arms Gorgas Loreadan handling the management of the day-to-day bloodshed.

While

Belly of the Bow

departs from the setting of the previous book, it uses the opportunity to examine the dynamics of the Loredan family. In a genre that has gleefully abused the concept of rape for the purposes of titillation or for ill-advised stabs at profundity, Niessa Loredan is a welcome change of pace. In the years after her experience (and her hounding out of the family at the hands of Bardas and her other brothers), Niessa has remolded herself into a vicious utilitarian, focused solely on securing her bank's future. It is through Niessa that magic makes a return to the story, becoming in her hands an instrument in which the will can directly manipulate the future, with no consequences worth considering. (Alexius is conscripted by Niessa into this precognitive war effort, with the result being a sort of magical war between the two polities that may or may not be affecting the actual war.) Overall, while a functional human being, Niessa still endures her past, neither capable nor all that interested in escaping it.

Bardas, meanwhile, continues to wander. He spends most of the book setting himself up as a bowyer (i.e. Guy Who Makes The Bows Archers Use) in a secluded hut on Scona, quietly pretending that his livelihood isn't dependent on his siblings' charity. After that illusion proves impossible to sustain, he escapes and returns to the family farm in the Mesoge, to the two brothers who never left. What follows is a rather heartrending sequence, as the three attack each other with waves of mutual recrimination and deflected self-loathing. In the end, Bardas is spirited back to Scona, a man with no home.

The real driving force in

The Belly of the Bow

however, is Gorgas. In the initial pages, Gorgas appears as having truly reformed, becoming a beloved general and a family man to boot. However, there is something off about his character. Gorgas routinely moves heaven and earth for Niessa and Bardas, despite the indifference of the former and the outright hostility of the latter, while remaining curiously detached from his own family. Indeed, as the book progresses, Gorgas becomes a terrifying figure, not so much for his actions but for his outlook on the world. For Gorgas, the entire point of his life is to make restitution for his crime and reunite his family. Unfortunately, that's the only purpose to his life. For Gorgas, opening the city gates for an enemy army or assassinating complete strangers or riling an island into a futile rebellion is justified, for it is always the Loredans against the world. What's past is in the past, but family is forever, even if the family no longer exists.

As the Loredan family disintegrates, the greater gears of war and money grind on. The war between Scona and Shastel continues. Scona wins a great victory against a Shastel raiding party, dooming itself to eventual defeat at the hands of the Foundation. Scona is invaded. Battles repeat themselves. Meanwhile, Bardas discovers Gorgas' role in the fall of Perimadeia and his twin motivations (wipe out the Loredan Bank's bad debts, and get Bardas back with the family), and proceeds to do something so horrific that it will forever destroy Gorgas' love for him. It doesn't work. The book closes as the first did, with the main cast fleeing the fall of Scona across the waves.

The Proof House, or Things Are Smashed Apart

Just as the appearance of Gorgas drastically altered the end of

Colours in the Steel

, so too does

The Proof House

(2000) drastically alter the course of the

Fencer

story with the introduction of the Empire. This great polity was never mentioned in the previous two books, apparently being landlocked out of sight and out of mind. However, with the fall of the city of Ap'Escatoy (a joyful accident care of Bardas Loredan, working the saps for three years since the end of the last book), the Empire now has a western coastline.

In many ways,

The Proof House

is the grimmest of the three books. The tale it tells is one of imperial conquest and consolidation. In the previous book, much care was lavished on the depiction of the various societies that inhabit the waters around Perimadeia: the bibliophile factionalists of Shastel, the easy-going disorder of Scona, the frivolous horse-trading Islanders, even the backwater dullards of the Mesoge. However, in

The Proof House

, it's suddenly revealed that this great, varied world exist in a space no bigger than the Aegean, and that it is all fated to be consumed by a great foreign power, not out of malice, but just because imperial expansion is what they do, and that's that.

This process of absorption and assimilation is illuminated through two main plotlines. After spending his new promotion at useless assignment at an imperial proof-house (a place where plate armor is made and tested to destruction), Bardas is given honorary command over an Imperial army sent to drive Temrai's semi-settled people out of the old Perimadeian hinterland. After the Imperial commander is killed, Bardas takes command, returning, for a while, to the one place where his skills were put to constructive use. The second plot thread concerns the fate of the Island at the hands of the Empire. The whole affair starts out as a sort of comedy, with the merchants of the Island essentially selling the Empire a fleet, never realizing that the Empire might decide to not give them back. Events soon spiral out of control, and comedy fades to annexation, rebellion, incompetence, and death.

As the center fails, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. In the early chapters, many of the characters are in magic-based communication with Alexius whom, it is quickly revealed, died between books. Figures seen in the dreamscape grow increasingly blurred, claiming to be students from the future watching a critical turning point in the past. Eventually it appears that the voices are none other than the voice of the Principle itself, which is not so much a force of magic as a metaphysical avatar of entropy itself. As for Gorgas, free of Niessa's control and set up as king of the Mesoge, the time has come to reunite the Loredan clan by every means necessary. By the end of the book, cities have been stormed, beloved secondary characters have been drawn and quartered, the future is nothing but boots on human faces, and Bardas Loredan has, in essence, been condemned to hell.

So, What Is It?

One of the main problems any reader will have the

Fencer

trilogy in trying to fit it into some sort of rubric from which it can be judged. Using the Romantic framework of classic fantasy is out of the question, and "dark" fantasy is more of a marketing contrivance than a useful critical tool. In her 2008 work

Rhetorics of Fantasy

, Farah Mendlesohn described the trilogy as an "immersive fantasy," a fantasy story that (to vastly oversimplify), is set in a coherent self-contained world within which the characters inhabit and critique. For the longest time, I had tended to think of these books (and Parker's work as a whole) as materialist fantasies; stories not set in our world but which obey all of its physical and sociological parameters. All these terms are helpful in describing the

Fencer

books, but they don't really tell the whole story.

In the end, perhaps the best way to look at the

Fencer

trilogy, and K. J. Parker's work as a whole, is as absurdist fantasy. To crudely simplify something I cribbed from Wikipedia, absurdism is a branch of existentialism which holds that the universe does not hold any fundamental meaning pertaining to the individual, though individuals can construct their own meanings if they so choose. For the characters in the

Fencer

trilogy, life is deeply absurd. Their world is one bound by great impersonal material forces with individuals can only influence intermittently, assuming they even recognize what those forces and when those critical turning points occur. There are no deities, literal or otherwise; aside from the plainspeople, the peoples of the

Fencer

books are overwhelming atheistic. Furthermore, because the world is bound by material systems of infinite number and complexity, there is no safe haven. Everyone's action affects someone else, with the end result being that the vast majority of mankind is nothing but grist for the mill of history. Even when decisions are made, they are often made by people who are under the grip of some illogical idea, or who simply don't understand the implications of their choices. This point is driven home in the second book, where an argument over a reprisal against Scona swells from a small reprisal raid to an invasion on the scale of Operation Barbarossa all so one faction of the Shastel elite can one-up the other. It's hilarious and horrible at the same time.

The

Fencer

Trilogy does not make sense. Intentionally. And that is why it is brilliant.

Is It Worth It?

Compared to Parker's later books, the

Fencer

trilogy is very much a first work. While the description is evocative, the sudden twists are suitably shocking, and the jokes are funny (Yes, there are jokes. Can't have an absurdist novel without a good joke or two.), the books do have a uneven feel to them, as if too many ideas are being assembled into a framework that can't quite hold them. While the characters are interesting and sympathetic, at times they seem to be reduced to mere viewpoints, rather than being individuals caught in the grip of great external forces. There is also far more "down time" than in Parker's other books, with scenes just designed to just worldbuild rather than worldbuild and drive the story. In the end, while I would recommend it, I would suggest that newcomers to Parker start with the later

Engineer

Trilogy, which covers many of the same themes with a far more efficient mechanism.

Also, after you finish the

Fencer

Trilogy, you may feel the need to drown yourself in a nearby lake. This is normal. Just wait a few hours and it will pass.

Oh, and:

Fantasy Rape Watch

Women raped: 1 Women mind-raped: 1, maybe Number of women who suffer from their experiences: 1 (it's hard to tell just what happened with that second one. 'Course, that's probably the point.)

Themes:

Fantasy Rape Watch

Books

Sci-fi / Fantasy

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~Comments (

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)

Arthur B

at 17:28 on 2010-02-22This review is awesome, but I'm wondering whether Parker's philosophy is as unique in fantasy as you imply. The

Vlad Taltos

series by Steve Brust has always had a good line in the sort of materialism/absurdism and social/economic critique you talk about here. There's some bits of Erikson's Malazan series which seem informed by a "no meaning but what we impose ourselves" philosophy, and Jack Vance's books are almost all characterised by peculiar social constructs, raw economics and greed, and the necessity of people to find their own way in a world that doesn't make sense to them.

I will be looking into the

Engineer

trilogy though, if you feel it's genuinely better than the

Fencer

books. Does it need much knowledge of the earlier series to fully appreciate?

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Andy G

at 20:43 on 2010-02-22Dare I also mention Ursula le Guin again? ;)

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Arthur B

at 23:01 on 2010-02-22LeGuin is always worth a mention...

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Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 00:02 on 2010-02-23Well, as I said Arthur, I'm still feeling my way around the fantasy genre (hell, I read literary criticism, for cripes sake), so my idea of "generic fantasy" is still a collection of broad stereotypes I've picked up from people bitching on the Internet. Still, I would say that Parker has a gift for taking those elements you mentioned above and making them as these great, terrible things that will consume all in the end.

As for which books to start, I'm biased towards the

Engineer

books because they're the ones I started with, and they're the ones I had the easiest time trying to figure out (Having a decent amount of sustained online criticism helped a bit too). Fortunately, all of her trilogies and her recent singletons are set in completely seperate worlds, so there's no risk of missing anything wherever you start.

Still, I would recommed waiting before you get to her

Scavenger

books. They're one of those trilogies you have to read twice just to figure out what the heck was going on.

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Wardog

at 09:18 on 2010-02-23I read The Colours in the Steel and quite liked it ... but I had really trouble shifting from that to The Belly of the Bow. I think it was more a question of my expectations than the books though - this article inspires me to revisit and re-evaluate.

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Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 21:06 on 2010-08-08Random K. J. Parker news!

If there's anyone out there who wants to sample her writing, she recently did a short story for Subterranean Press' seasonal magazine, which they have thoughtfully posted on their website.

http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/summer-2010/fiction-amor-vincit-omnia-by-k-j-parker/

She's also got another short story out in a sword and sorcery anthology,

of all things

, and

a new book

coming out next winter.

#Ferretbrain #Alasdair Czyrnyj #Fencer Trilogy #K. J. Parker #Fantasy Rape Watch

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talmidimblogging · 7 years ago

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Surviving the Wolfhound Century, Part I — One Last Sketch @onelastsketch Lost in Leningrad I read Peter Higgins’s Wolfhound Century after a strong recommendation from fellow blogger Alasdair Czyrnyj.

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preserving-ferretbrain · 6 years ago

Text

Attacking Avatar

by Alasdair Czyrnyj

Friday, 29 January 2010

Listen up, and Alasdair will tell you all a story about a little guy that lives in a blue world~

Before I begin, I would like to apologize for that joke in the subtitle. Sometimes you just can't help yourself.

At this point in time, there seems to be a certain futility in writing a response to

Avatar

. Most of the mainstream critical response has been overwhelmingly positive, while the more negative responses have extracted, elaborated, and spun out so much of the film's problems with scripting, plotting, racism, gender, politics, the environment, elementary science, and basic logic that it is hard to imagine what new ground could be covered. It might seem more rational to throw in the towel, accept

Avatar

as the renaissance in filmmaking the newspapers proclaim it to be, and let it sink out of sight and out of mind.

Of course, if I were one of those rational people, this article would not exist. Perhaps there is a certain spirit of opposition that animates this piece, an inner compulsion to take a stand against a mendacious force that so many have accepted uncritically. Maybe it's a need to strike back after having been bullied by a story that does not deserve the accolades it has received. In the end, this article may be a call by a small, imperfect man for some intellectual honesty, for filmmakers to respect their audiences and make an effort to discuss the world in all its irreducible complexity.

Or maybe I just hate mechs. Who can say?

Fundamental Flaws and the Fundamentals of Storytelling

While the objections to

Avatar

have taken a wide variety of critical approaches, there is a single source from which all the complaints spring. The fundamental problem with

Avatar

is that its ideas are deeply and patronizingly simple. While people have made unkind comparisons to

Dances With Wolves

and

Ferngully

, in actuality the film takes its cues from an unreconstructed back-to-nature idyll that's been floating around in Western culture since the heyday of Romanticism. While such stories can be entertaining and deeply satisfying if done correctly, the story of

Avatar

is constructed in such a minimalist fashion that any potential suspense is precluded. If you've ever read a book, rented a movie, or watched an after-school special where the protagonist gets away from the noise and grime of the city and learns to appreciate the beauty of the great outdoors, then you have already seen

Avatar

. There are no twists, no untelegraphed turns, no inversions or deconstructions, no attempts to play with the well-worn tropes or reassemble them into something provocative. In

Avatar

, what you see is what you get and no more.

This desire to maintain the austere "universal appeal" of the film also leads to the reduction of its characters into ciphers. As is typical in these types of stories, the entire narrative revolves around the journey of the protagonist, in this case Jake Sully, from skepticism to holistic communion with nature. Unfortunately, the dramatic potential of Jake's journey has hampered by Cameron's decision to make him a doorknob. Jake's position in the story is essentially reactive; rather than discovering and learning for himself, his job in the movie is to move from place to place on Pandora, be given wisdom by others like so much Halloween candy, and perform the occasional heroic gesture to cement his standing as a positive role model. Perhaps because the character of Jake Sully was intended to act as an "avatar" for the audience to explore the VFX paradise of Pandora, he does not really have enough of a presence as a character to stand out against the background. (I admit that I have not seen

Terminator: Salvation

, so I do not know if this is a weakness on the part of Sam Worthington or of the script.) For all that the film delves into his inner workings, he might as well have been spontaneously generated in a tank en route to Pandora.

As for the rest of the cast, most confirm to broad archetypes, with only a few enjoyable standouts. Far and away the most successful is Sigourney Weaver's portrayal of the hard-bitten xenobiologist-anthropologist in charge of the avatar project. She is genuinely delightful to watch, combining an intellectual admiration of the Na'vi with a wearied irritation at the vagarities of the colonial government. Giovanni Ribisi's corporate attaché, with his love of mini-putt and his belabored racial slurs, comes across as more of an irritant than a credible antagonist. The strangest case of all may be Colonel Quatrich, a stock hyper-militarist antagonist who, through the strange alchemy of Cameron's script and actor Stephen Lang's charisma, instead becomes the awesomest, most manliest man in all of mandom. In all honesty, it's hard not to love a character who can hold his breath for fifteen minutes, is impervious to fire, and whose mech is armed with a giant switchblade. (After watching Lang's performance, it's not hard to imagine that Quadrich's presence of Pandora is the result of a binding UN resolution on America designed to "give the other countries a fighting chance.")

Despite these flourishes, all the characters are still bound tightly to the idyll plot, and as such do not have much opportunity to grow outside its requirements. It is a constriction that becomes all the more noticeable as the film progresses, to the point where it seems that every contrivance and inconsistency is solely designed to fulfill the master plan. Of course Jake is an "unenlightened" marine who has a twin exobiologist brother who died with a ready-to-run alien body. Of course Jake has no family, friends, wife, girlfriend, cat, coffee shop, book club, or DVD collection back on Earth to divide his loyalties. Of course the corporate observers and mercenaries are evil, shortsighted, and stupid. Of course the unobtanium is under the Na'vi tree-town.

Of course

Racism, or Attend To My Spiritual Longings, Smurfycat!

Let us make no bones about it:

Avatar

is a racist film. It is a necessary corollary of the idyll plot; whenever the wanderer encounters people who live in the idealized state of nature, it is their purpose to educate the wanderer in some deeper truth about the operation of the world. With skillful hands, this type of narrative can avoid the trap of depicting pantomime indigenous people whose sole reason for existing is to educate wayward Romantics.

Avatar

, suffice to say, fumbles early, and fumbles hard.

Despite all the time, money, effects, and research lavished upon them, the Na'vi still come across as curiously unformed, beings that embody a sort of generically photogenic Neolithic society. While they certainly have enough of a cultural style as expressed by their gear (their costume, their tools, their weapons, and so on), it is fairly hard for a viewer to interpret the world from a Na'vi viewpoint, beyond using the crudest of clichés about naturalist animism. To the untrained viewer, there is nothing to separate the Na'vi from, say, the native American cast of Disney's

Pocahontas

. Indeed, in the film's climax, where Jake travels the width and breadth of the unnamed continent to rally all the tribes of Na'vi against the humans, the various Na'vi tribes only seem to differ in costume, an idea that is blatantly laughable to any serious student of anthropology.

Of course, this mutual unintelligibility of cultures may have been part of Cameron's point. After all, the centerpiece of Na'vi culture and society, the Tree of Souls, involves a biological act that humans cannot experience, though that raises questions about the film's seeming disinterest in exploring the human-Na'vi conflict as a struggle between separate species rather than a allegorical clash of human races. However, even this generous interpretation breaks down in further dissection in the presentation of both the Na'vi and Pandora.

After the glamour of Pandora's visuals has worn off, and Jake Sully begins to take his journey to understand the mysteries of the Na'vi, it becomes clear that Pandora is, in essence, a giant amusement park. There's lizard-horses to break in, pterodactyls to bond with, trees and vines to swing around on, bows and arrows to play with, and all sorts of funny plants, floating mountains, and glowy spores to gawk at and poke. Never mind that most of this rests only dubiously with the laws of science as we understand it, and often in their complete violation. Even smaller principles are ignored; the Na'vi seem to be able to live in such harmony with nature that their town-tree can support hundreds of individuals without having them resort to stripping the forest for food and firewood to support their town. Pandora cannot be understood in and of itself because

Pandora cannot exist in our universe

, other than as a fantasy game-world for jaded materialists.

As for the Na'vi, they seem that most curious of societies: a subsistence hunter-gatherer society whose culture is entirely palatable to an early 21st century Western audience. The Na'vi do not expose unwanted children to the elements, nor do they burn people alive in wicker men to commemorate the solstice. They don't sink struggling criminals into peat bogs or have them trampled to death in sacks. Despite having a sort of mild warrior culture, the Na'vi do not even engage in brutalizing initiation rituals into adulthood or ritualized scarring or the mass sacrifice of prisoners of war. This is not to say that the Na'vi should have been portrayed as Ignoble Savages, but rather that these omissions show that, rather than illuminating the full complexity of the pre-urban culture of the Na'vi, they and their world are only intended to be Consolations, places where American heroes can go to escape the corruptions of modernity and be reborn as innocent alien children, pure and simple as nature intended. Perhaps the truth of this can be found in the basic anatomy of the Na'vi; despite living on an alien planet dominated by hexapods, the proportions of the Na'vi are a race of tall, striped blue humanoids that walk and talk like humans do and are pretty to look at to boot.

Before leaving this topic, a brief word should be given to the avatar program itself, the process by which human minds are piggybacked into purpose-grown human-Na'vi bodies for the purpose of better interacting with the local Na'vi population. While most commenting on the film as cited

The Matrix

and its sequels as inspirations for this system, there is another, more recent film that provides a closer model. In the Hollywood/war film satire

Tropic Thunder

, white actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) undergoes a complex surgical procedure designed to give him the physical features of an African-American in an effort to "get inside" the mind of his character, Sgt. Lincoln Osiris. The key difference, however, is that while Jake Sully's journey from human to Na'vi is rendered as a heroic quest back to nature, Lazarus' attempts at "understanding blackness" are mocked as the delusions of a narcissistic method actor who only succeeds in parroting the "badass black sergeant" archetype endemic to American war cinema since WWII. It may be of note that Lazarus/Osiris is also far more enjoyable character than Jake Sully.

Colonialism, or It Takes Two To Despoil

The "corruptions of modernity" illuminates another great weakness of

Avatar

: its depiction of a colonial relationship. Most of the reviews of

Avatar

have made much of its ties to the broader story to the American expansion to the West in the 19th century, so much so that

Dances with Smurfs

has become the accepted alternate title online. However, there are fundamental differences between that mode of colonization and the one presented in

Avatar

: on Pandora, there are no human settlers. Beyond the avatar program, neither the humans nor the Na'vi show any interest in each other, and mostly seem to avoid one another whenever possible. The human colonists stay within the boundaries of their own small settlement, relying on imported technology, building materials, and food as much as possible, while focusing all their energies on mining unobtanium and mapping Pandora.

This model, then, is not the model of the American frontier; it is the model of the final wave of European resource-extraction-based colonization in Africa at the end of the 19th century, and of contemporary practices by American corporations throughout Latin America. While this is an exceeding vicious colonial system that certainly should be criticized, it is also something of a cop-out on the part of Cameron. By reducing the human expansion on Pandora to this (exceedingly simplified interpretation of) this mode of colonization, it neatly sidesteps all manner of issues regarding the relationships between colonizer and colonized, the multiple worldviews each group develops as it interacts with an outside culture, and the way the two groups react and adapt to one another.

Avatar

deals with these issues in the classical Gordian fashion. The mode of colonization the humans use, as mentioned above, is useful in precluding dicussions of the sort of tangled issues of cohabitation that would arise in a North-American-style colonization by expanding immigrant settlements or a British-India-type colonization by a foreign trading company that becomes a freelance government as local authority decays. There is no trade relationship on Pandora to speak of: the humans make some half-hearted attempts to entice the natives with an English-language school and roads, while the Na'vi are seemingly "uninterested in anything humanity could give them," or so Jake Sully exposits in a video log. It appears that the Na'vi are even uninterested in the most basic products of Earth's industry, including such staples as grain, woven cloth, refined metals, or cheap flintlock guns, the goods that served as the bread-and-butter of European traders in Africa and beyond for centuries. As for the social dimensions of colonization, they are never mentioned. Pandora is so utopian, it seems, that there are no socially disadvantaged Na'vi that would see the arrival of humans as an opportunity to achieve a kind of success Na'vi society denied them. Nor are there any Na'vi leaders who are genuinely impressed by human achievement and who seek to uncover its secrets so that they may be combined with Na'vi ideas to improve their own societies. The Na'vi, it would seem, view all outsiders as fundamentally worthless, as an opportunistic pathogen to be avoided or driven off. In a telling detail, the Na'vi formally refer to themselves as "the People," a phrase with many unfortunate implications to modern minds; if the Na'vi are "the People," then there must be a group of "Not People" who can be safely attacked/mutilated/eaten without undue comment.

The Root of the Problem, or Talk to Me Like an Adult Dammit!

While the above points could be elaborated

ad infinitum

by themselves they give a fairly clear explanation as to why

Avatar

is so deeply unsatisfying. Every time the film has a chance to explore an issue in depth, it is ignored in favor of undemanding analogies and monochrome morality plays of soulless industrialists against free-spirited space furries, all in the interests of maintaining a clichéd plot that has been deconstructed, critiqued, and found wanting in a hundred different monographs and a hundred different books. Perhaps the most galling thing is that all this was something Cameron

should have been aware of

, leaving one of two possibilities. Either he simply was not aware of the flaws in his plot, or he was aware but chose to ignore the problems and press on anyway. Given how

Avatar

has been praised for its "messages" by the mainstream press, choosing the second scenario would make Cameron guilty of serious intellectual dishonesty.

It is dishonest because, at the end of the day,

Avatar

is just a fantasy. The natural idyll was only ever a creation of the mind, never fluorescing into being outside of a pair of covers or a canvas. People chose to industrialize because they wanted lots of cheap goods and the distant possibility of a job where you don't have to break your back farming for fifty years, but can get an education and spend your time writing or making movies. We've been doing this for about two centuries now, and most of us would rather it was made less wasteful, dirty, and dangerous than give it up entirely. You can't stab modernity in the chest with a spear, and to claim otherwise is to indulge in a fantasy that helps no one, and distracts people from trying to find a way through the recursive puzzle-box that is our planet. We cannot fight, so we must adopt, adapt, and improve.

In closing, I would recommend that everyone watch

Princess Mononoke

. After reading this, you'll be glad you did.

Links to the Opinions of Wiser Men

Given the high profile and structural flaws of

Avatar

, it has prompted a few intellectually stimulating and gleefully vidictive essays online. The following sample represents my favorites of the bunch.

Over at Locus magazine

, Gary Westfahl gives a brief review that discusses some of

Avatar's

SFnal ancestors.

At CHUD.com, there's a

piece

comparing

Avatar

to its progeniter, a treatment Cameron wrote back in the '90s entitled

Project 880

, which lends some credence to the "intellectual dishonesty" theory.

The upper-middle-brow literary blog

The Valve

comes at

Avatar

from several directions at once, with articles dicussing how the film

shifts genres

about halfway through and inadvertantly shoots its political message in the foot, how Jake Sully embodies

the worst aspects of the American psyche

, and a piece that

says what I managed to say

in less than a thousand words. (One of

The Valve's

main contributors also gets in a good point on his own blog about

the seemier side

of the Pandoran

genocidal omnimind

memory trees.

Finally, Adam Roberts

gives you the business

in one sentence.Themes:

TV & Movies

Sci-fi / Fantasy

Minority Warrior

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~Comments (

go to latest

)

Arthur B

at 12:26 on 2010-01-29

Pandora cannot be understood in and of itself because Pandora cannot exist in our universe, other than as a fantasy game-world for jaded materialists.

This speaks to an issue I was having with Avatar that I was having trouble enunciating. Avatar and its ilk don't just say "industrialised life is stinky, living naturally is much better". It doesn't just compare a cynical view with industrialised life with a horribly sanitised version of a still vaguely recognisable "natural" lifestyle. It tries to compare industrialised society with a "natural" lifestyle which not only doesn't exist, but

couldn't possibly exist

. Of

course

modern, urbanised living isn't going to hold up well to that. It doesn't hold up well to Toytown or Narnia or Heaven either. But making the comparison between industrialised society and Pandora is just as stupid as complaining that the taps in your bathtub don't dispense champagne and chocolate ice cream.

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Viorica

at 17:36 on 2010-01-29Personally, my favourite summing-up of the movie is

this

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Melissa G.

at 18:17 on 2010-01-29

In closing, I would recommend that everyone watch Princess Mononoke.

Yes, exactly! As I was reading about Avatar, all I could think was, "Wow, Princess Mononoke pwns your ass, Avatar." Mononoke handles the progression vs. nature predicament in a far more complex and satisfying way and remains my favorite Miyazaki movie to this day.

Secondly, is it seriously called "unobtanium"? To my ears, it sounds extremely close to "unobtainable", which I find stupid rather than clever. I kind of giggled and then shook my head disapprovingly.

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Rami

at 18:35 on 2010-01-29

Secondly, is it seriously called "unobtanium"

I think it's a completedly straight-faced attempt at lampshading

this

and

this

. Not done very well, IMO.

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Arthur B

at 18:58 on 2010-01-29The unobtanium thing keeps making me scratch my head. What were they thinking? It's almost as though the thing was originally written as a comedy, and they forgot to take that out in the script revisions.

(Actually, that sounds awfully plausible to me. I kind of suspect that for James Cameron

Avatar

is basically an excuse to do some technological dick-waving, and he just got some hacks to cobble together a story which could make the best use of the technology involved. Maybe the "technology is evil" undercurrent is a backlash from the scriptwriters against Cameron phoning them up at 3AM and saying "oh, we've developed this new bit of CGI which will do X, Y, and Z, could you do a rewrite to give us a chance to show it off?")

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Dan H

at 13:55 on 2010-01-30Perhaps I'm just slow, but I've only just realised how staggeringly ironic it is that this film about how awesome it would be to cast off our technological shackles and get back to nature was made with the most advanced computer technology available to mankind.

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Arthur B

at 14:00 on 2010-01-30Moreover, the film is about this wonder-tech that lets a human being look exactly like a Na'vi... and it's filmed using this wonder-tech that lets a human being look exactly like a Na'vi.

It's navel-gazing with a multimillion dollar budget. It's almost as though it's not meant to be a commercial film at all, just an advert for the tech, only it's turned out to be so expensive to make they need to release it to cinemas to make their money back.

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http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 12:04 on 2010-01-31RedLetterMedia, the guy who did the 70-minute Phantom Menace review, has done a two-part

Avatar review

And I hear there's talk about a sequel? D:

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Andy G

at 14:27 on 2010-01-31

RedLetterMedia, the guy who did the 70-minute Phantom Menace review, has done a two-part Avatar review.

Even more exciting is that he's apparently working on an Attack of the Clones review :D

I'm not sure I entirely agree with his criticism of Avatar's portrayal of the military though - I don't think Iraq or Afghanistan really show that the military have learned a great deal of cultural sensitivity or the like ...

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http://nykinora.livejournal.com/

at 04:26 on 2010-02-01Hmmm. I liked that this article pointed out that what occurs on Pandora is closer to extraction-based mercantilism rather than colonisation and the messy relationships that the latter entails. Yet the film attempts to naively comment on imperialism and colonialism, often confusing the two. It also stands to reason that the Na'vi would have no interest in trade or goods seeing that they're living an edenic existence where nature provides all, they apparently have absolutely no impact on their environment and aren't even in competition with other species, other groups of Na'vi or even each other for resources. Also agree that one of the necessary conditions of colonialism is that there are existing factions and fissures in a society (class, gender, tribal afiliation, conflict with other groups, politics and power-play etc.) that can be exploited. But we get none of that in "Avatar".

I've already watched "Princess Mononoke" and it goes without saying that it is a far superior, more thoughtful film, even though it elicited hostile reactions in the U.S. for being overly earnest, preachy, pro-environmentalist etc. Go figure.

Some of the links were very useful. (The Acephalous link, and the Valve links are generally good. Joseph Kugelmann is on the money, and I completely agreed with Aaron Bady that Jake Sully is just another macho James T. Kirk in Star Trek '09, or another lamentable Harry Potter type - innately 'heroic', deeply solipsistic, childish and utterly entitled as the universe bends, warps and shifts in order to confirm the overwhelming importance of their existence and their unimpeachable rightness in all that they do - no matter how self-absorbed, damaging or downright stupid. But I digress...) Also agree that the film repeats some of Le Guin's mistakes in "A Word for World is Forest" without the more positive things from that novel.

But I actually couldn't stand the Westfahl article and or the RedletterMedia video link (the latter of which was provided by a poster in the comments thread to be fair.)

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Frank

at 06:27 on 2010-02-01

I completely agreed with Aaron Bady that Jake Sully is just another macho James T. Kirk in Star Trek '09

To be fair, Kirk's macho is full of awesome while Sully's is full of douchebaggery.

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http://nykinora.livejournal.com/

at 07:35 on 2010-02-01Awesome? Different strokes etc. A douche is douche by any other name. (I drew the Kirk/Potter comparison to Sully, but Bady describes an irritating heroic archetype that all these and many other heroes fit into. Kirk is only marginally more tolerable than Sully because he spends most of the movie being beaten - heck, even Spock smacks him down - so that the audience doesn't spend its time secretly wanting to punch him in the face themselves - not when the narrative is doing it for them.)

It's worn, it's tired and it's played out. I'm just sick of watching movies or reading books where white guys who have nothing more to recommend them than a ridiculous dose of insular self-rightousness, brainlessness and of course a 'heroic' allergy to thinking or planning somehow manage to get people to actually listen to them, and worse even obey them. How does this work and more importantly why? It's not loveable, or charming or 'awesome' -it's perplexing when it isn't downright predictable and boring.

The only conclusion that I can draw is that they're leaders because the authorial voice says so, and the narrative logic is then forced into improbable contortions to accomodate this. If these stories had any genuine narrative logic at all nobody would even follow these characters across the room.

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Liam King

at 12:40 on 2010-02-02Being new I feel somewhat apprehensive about displaying an opinion so directly opposed to the general consensus. However, I am not ashamed to admit that I really liked Avatar.

I am aware that the themes it deals with are juvenile, unoriginal and misguided, that the story is naive, idealistic and patronising. And as the dude from RedLetterMedia explained, it's skilfully crafted to manipulate audiences.

I personally don't think that's such a bad thing. I mean, sure, people don't like to feel that they're being manipulated. But isn't that the point of fictional entertainment? To manipulate you into feeling for characters who are complete fabrications?

I for one did not go to see Avatar for a lecture on colonialism or natural spiritualism (or whatever). I'm not sure who exactly did. I went to see a good show. It may seem incredibly shallow of me, but occasionally I have other motives to see a film than moral pondering.

And a good show it is. It has great acting, a great score, a decent script (say what you will), and brilliant visuals. It restored my faith in 3D.

Sure it manipulates us into caring about rather bland, stereotypical characters, but 1.9 billion dollars testifies that it did it pretty well.

Plus I love the ekrans. I so want one.

Actually, this reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine, about how the movie should have ended after 105 minutes. I reckoned that after the tree is destroyed, and he's pulled out of his little matrix booth, and he repeats his line from the start and it all goes black, the film should have finished. It would have tied off a three act story, with an ending in which the protagonist gets what he wanted at the beginning but utterly fails at everything he has come to want, yadda yadda, plus the big corporation wins and gets to destroy the pathetic resistance, which mirrors real life. And it would have been a more manageable length.

My friend disagreed, reminding me that the disgusting public want endings that are happy, not thought provoking, and that Avatar was made to flash and dazzle, not to enlighten. He's right. 1.9 billion dollars have gone towards proving his point.

But then, James Cameron in his interviews goes on about the themes and issues of Avatar like it's some philosophical thesis, so maybe we're both giving him too much credit... I don't know. But I'm determined to maintain my enjoyment of the film, whatever its arrogant director might think.

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Arthur B

at 13:12 on 2010-02-02I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to enjoy something as pure entertainment. But at the same time, I think it's difficult to actually do that if you find the story being presented directly offensive. It is going to be far easier for some viewers to overlook the more dubious elements of

Avatar

than others.

The example I like to bring out in these discussions is Robert E Howard. At their best, the

Conan

stories are absolutely wonderful. But at the same time it would be dishonest of me not to acknowledge that Howard was, by any measure, an enormous racist, and that his philosophy of racial conflict rears its head time and time again in his stories.

I can just about deal with it if I stick to the better stories and skip over the nastier ones. But it would be impolite of me to expect everyone else to do the same, and to pretend that the problems with the texts

just aren't there

for the sake of just sitting back and enjoying the ride doesn't seem right to me.

Avatar

is pure entertainment, then I shouldn't

have

to deliberately turn my analytical mind off in order to enjoy it; I should be able to sit through the thing without cringing, wincing, or getting seriously pissed off at points. We should

all

be able to do that. And if there are elements to

Avatar

which are genuinely problematic I don't think it's wise to simply overlook them for the sake of enjoyment. I used to want to be able to do that, but various discussions in the past on FB have convinced me that that's not an admirable attitude.

It's not that I criticise every frame of every movie I see these days. But my inner critic has become a light sleeper. If there's nothing to wake the little fellow up, all's good. But once he's roused, he doesn't hit "snooze" and go back to bed.

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Rami

at 13:13 on 2010-02-02

But then, James Cameron in his interviews goes on about the themes and issues of Avatar like it's some philosophical thesis, so maybe we're both giving him too much credit

I think anyone who gives Cameron (and not his special-effects supervisor) credit for Avatar and its success is completely missing the point ;-)

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Frank

at 05:52 on 2010-02-03

It's worn, it's tired and it's played out.

Yes, having white males save the day are all those things, but when done right (Star Trek 09) it's fun! But like Avatar it's not Oscar worthy (wtgdf, Academy!) While ST09 was fun, I recognize its suck with regards to the female characters. But the Macho of Kirk worked, probably because of being beaten which of course makes him more human.

Then why do you watch/read them?

@Liam: I agree with Arthur. And would like to add that I think it's socially valuable for partakers of entertainment, particularly for those who are of the dominant culture (white-male in the US), to recognize how non white-males (men of color and women of any color) are portrayed within that entertainment especially when the protagonist is a white-male. Doing so, I naively hope, will bring cultures/races/genders/orientations/abilities closer together by dialoging with 'the other' and questioning ourselves.

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Arthur B

at 08:22 on 2010-02-03

Yes, having white males save the day are all those things, but when done right (Star Trek 09) it's fun!

But would it really be less fun if the protagonist were not white, or not male?

FWIW, I think Star Trek '09 is a special case. Given that it was a direct homage to the original series it was pretty much bound by the structure of said series. If Kirk

hadn't

taken the lead and saved the day but left it up to someone else we'd all be complaining that the film radically departed from the formula it was trying to recapture.

Avatar

has no prior canon that it's bound by, so I don't think you can point to casting decisions made in ST09 to justify Cameron's decisions.

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Liam King

at 10:55 on 2010-02-03I think anyone who gives Cameron (and not his special-effects supervisor) credit for Avatar and its success is completely missing the point

Absolutely. I think that Cameron made a half arsed story, and because he was so rich and famous, thousands of people came to work for him and did the best job in the history of Hollywood. The only problem was, it was a half arsed story to begin with. The actors, the score writer/(s?), the conceptual designers, and, as you say, the special effects team, all combined to make a fantastic film, that I guess couldn't carry Cameron's story.

As for the offensive undertones, I don't pretend to be a minority warrior but I must admit I was rather annoyed at the ridiculous stereotypes bandied about, especially after hearing James Cameron wanking about its provocative themes and values.

As for the more subtle colonial issues (which nykinora explained), they didn't really bother me as much. The film isn't an allegory, just a rip-off of a dozen other movies with references to history that give audiences the impression that it is deeper than it is.

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Guy

at 12:15 on 2010-02-03

I'm just sick of watching movies or reading books where white guys who have nothing more to recommend them than a ridiculous dose of insular self-rightousness, brainlessness and of course a 'heroic' allergy to thinking or planning somehow manage to get people to actually listen to them, and worse even obey them. How does this work and more importantly why? It's not loveable, or charming or 'awesome' -it's perplexing when it isn't downright predictable and boring.

I think it might have something to do with wish-fulfillment fantasies and audience identification. A lot of people have fantasies in which they shout their indignant bit of self-righteousness over the top of the people around them, and then (unlike in real life) everyone acknowledges that they're awesome and right and falls in behind them. As for the heroic allergy to planning... I think it's an adolescent power-fantasy, to be able to just leap in and, with a bit of quick and clean violence, solve the problems that everyone else wastes time trying to solve with analysis.

I remember seeing some kind of "making of" thing about the film LA Confidential, and some dude was explaining that they were worried that audiences wouldn't be able to relate to the Guy Pearce character. Naturally there'd be no such problem with the Russell Crowe character, but they would have to really work hard to bring the audience around to Guy Pearce. And I was thinking, OK, does everyone really naturally gravitate toward the violent, amoral thug? And what makes Pearce so hard to identify with? Maybe I've got a bit a lower boundary for identification with someone named Guy than most people do, but it struck me as bizarre that they were so worried that Pearce wouldn't be as identifiable as Crowe, despite the fact that... to me at least he came across as seriously unpleasant and unlikeable. But he fits the right mold, I suppose.

Anyway, yeah, I think partly it's to do with the fact that so many films are revenge fantasies or omnipotence fantasies, and our avatar is typically a white dude with poor impulse control, and it sort of lays down tracks in our brains to just assume that that makes them "the goodies".

In a sense, I don't have a problem with that. I mean, people can fantasize about whatever they want. I'd much rather have people live out there fantasies of omnipotence in the cinema than in the workplace. But... the problem is... trying to overlay another kind of story onto those fantasies, and making those fantasies a vehicle for carrying a contrary kind of message to your audience. Cameron does something similar in Terminator 2, but I think it works there because he's doing a kind of inversion and examination of the way violence in films typically solves problems. But... hmm, yeah, here, not so much.

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Melissa G.

at 14:48 on 2010-02-03

to pretend that the problems with the texts just aren't there for the sake of just sitting back and enjoying the ride doesn't seem right to me.

I just want to say thank you for saying this, Arthur! This is what I try to get people to understand ALL THE TIME when I'm having feminist arguments with comics/game fans. It's okay to like/enjoy something despite its problems, but just acknowledge that the problems exist and that they are in fact problems. (/mini rant)

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http://webcomcon.blogspot.com/

at 15:11 on 2010-02-03One thing I sometimes do to enhance my enjoyment of films is to try to deliberately ignore their messages. Like, all messages, not just the ostensible and overt ones. I mostly experienced it with District 9: I refused to view it as actually saying anything in particular ABOUT apartheid, because at this point there's not much a film can say about it other than "it was pretty bad." So, rather, I viewed it as using apartheid as more-or-less scene-setting, an instantly recognizable historical framework to contextualize the events of the film itself.

The film isn't an allegory, just a rip-off of a dozen other movies with references to history that give audiences the impression that it is deeper than it is.

Similarly!

Of course, this doesn't take into account the fact that films have much more to say than just the overt messages of the director, and it's perverse to deliberately ignore the messages of any communication in favor of some preferential reading that you like. I could waffle about and say that I'm not denying that they exist, but I'm choosing to temporarily bracket for my enjoyment of the movie...bah. Nonsense.

Personally, I thought that Pandora was entertaining enough that the complete blandness of the plot and character arcs didn't ruin the movie for me. It probably makes me a special effects junkie, or a colossal James Cameron fanboy, or something like that. (I am a colossal James Cameron fanboy, although I couldn't honestly say that Avatar is one of my five or so favorite films of his, which places I think only Piranha II and Titanic beneath it.)

It makes me wonder if a movie is going to come out that I can actually appreciate, even after I subject it to careful analysis for its social content. My suspicion is: Probably not for a while, considering the problems in society that will necessarily be expressed (even if not overtly) in any film produced in that society. Mitigating factors include foreign films and deliberately socially progressive films, but since I'm incredibly parochial and lazy I'm just going to wring my hands about Hollywood blockbusters and not consider actual alternatives.

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Arthur B

at 15:24 on 2010-02-03@Melissa: It's probably something that you (or perhaps other FB commenters) have in fact got me to understand through discussions on here.

Part of the reason that I wrote that response to Liam is that I do, in fact, recognise that sort of response in myself. It

frustrating when your ability to enjoy something on a purely innocent level is disrupted by someone pointing out the unsavoury aspects of it. The trick is to understand that the blame lies with the emperor, not the person pointing out his nudity.

Of course, sometimes there'll be criticisms of a film which have no effect on the way I approach it one way or the other - normally because the criticisms are based on ideals that I just don't share. The

CAPAlert

guy marks down films if they don't present a religious viewpoint that he agrees with. For him, this is a great moral evil. I just couldn't give a crap one way or another. Likewise, I could see someone with radically different political views from my own not agreeing with my take on

300

because they just don't agree that the things I'm pointing out

are

problems - to them, they'd be

features

. I can't analyse a film or a book or a game from the point of view of absolutely everyone who might encounter the thing, and I can't expect anyone else to. But I

can

try my best not to blind myself to things which, based on the principles I claim to adhere to, are in fact deeply wrong.

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Sister Magpie

at 15:55 on 2010-02-03A word about Kirk. I've seen the original series but don't feel like I know it well enough to argue it, but isn't he originally a captain who is actually good at his job? I mean, he still has the arrogance and swagger, but I thought his backstory was that he was a good student who rose up through the ranks the same way anyone would. Is he associated with not planning? A daring attitude with a willingness to take risks, yes, but I don't remember him being presented as being admirably ignorant as the article described Jake Sully.

Maybe I've got a bit a lower boundary for identification with someone named Guy than most people do, but it struck me as bizarre that they were so worried that Pearce wouldn't be as identifiable as Crowe, despite the fact that... to me at least he came across as seriously unpleasant and unlikeable. But he fits the right mold, I suppose.

Wow, that's interesting. That's one of my favorite movies and I know they've talked about how really none of the characters are very likable, but that is an interesting comparison. I suspect for the same reasons that Pearce's character is far more disliked in the movie than Crowe's or Spacey's is. He's uptight and openly ambitious--and "book smart" as people keep reminding him. At some points he's put down for doing the right thing (knowing the difference between silence and integrity), at other times he sees the right thing as a way to leverage his own career. I'm not surprised they'd expect people to relate more to Crowe's character's simple black and white view of the world. Pearce's "smarts" is actually a liability. (Spacey's characters is also smart but doesn't seem to value it.)

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Melissa G.

at 17:50 on 2010-02-03

I do, in fact, recognise that sort of response in myself. It is frustrating when your ability to enjoy something on a purely innocent level is disrupted by someone pointing out the unsavoury aspects of it.

I think there's a little of this response in everybody. :-) I certainly do it too. I read and love the Ultimate X-Men comic line even though the female costume choices have me rolling my eyes much of the time. But I just kind of tell myself that the strengths outweigh the flaws, and that no one ever gets it totally right. The important distinction to make I think is that a critic should not fault someone for liking something they don't like but rather be trying to explain why it was offensive or unlikable for them in particular. Which opens a dialogue and helps to promote understanding and all those good things.

I also understand your point of how what is a problem for some people might not be a problem to others. I would just point out that "I don't think it's a problem because we have different religious views" is more defensible than "I don't think it's a problem because women are hot so who cares if they're objectified. It's all in good fun". Which seems to be what I come across....

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Viorica

at 17:51 on 2010-02-03I think the difference between Kirk (the '09 version, not the TOS one) and Sully is that Kirk is actually allowed to grow over the course of the film. He fails, he fights, and he changes as a result of his experiences. But Sully never does. Aside from deciding that the Na'vi way of life is awesome, he's never allowed to fail. To have him do so would destroy the self-insertion wish-fulfillment that the movie's going for.

#Ferretbrain #Alasdair Czyrnyj #Avatar #James Cameron #Minority Warrior

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preserving-ferretbrain · 6 years ago

Text

The Best Post-Soviet Noir Superhero Comic Ever!

by Alasdair Czyrnyj

Monday, 19 April 2010

Alasdair gushes about The Winter Men.~

I don't believe in superheroes. Let's get that straight right from the start. I have no problem conceptualizing a costumed vigilante or a human with supernatural powers; such things have been a staple of popular culture for generations now, and to reject them out of hand nowadays is absurd. My problem starts once you take those characters and imagine them as figures of omnipotence, as people who are always in command, always know the score, and always win in the end, and expect your audience to take them seriously.

I suppose this problem largely stems from the fact that the first superhero comic I seriously read was

Watchmen

. Say what you will about it, but to me it remains the best example of what happens when you take pulp archetypes, characters traditionally in command of their environments, and place them in the intractable, fractal-edged mess that is the real world. Existential despair is the mildest outcome; mass murder is not outside the realm of possibility. It's the reason why the two big mainstream comic universes are these weird places that have superficial similarities to our own, but swarming with Nazi scientists, psychotic CEOs, aliens, and alternate universes. It gives the superheroes something to fight that can be defeated and doesn't leave the bad taste of moral unease afterward.

Of course, rejecting the standard interpretation of superheroes has been old hat for nigh-on two decades. Of course, stories that go against the grain have their own particular problems. Most of the time, these stories just amp up the sex and ultraviolence while leaving various core aspects of superherodom (superheroes are beholden to nothing and no one, you can solve the world with your fists) unquestioned. (Case in point:

The Boys

.) There are a few good examinations, of course; from what I've heard of it, Alan Moore's run on

Miracleman

is a pretty good depiction of the superhero as a figure of terror and of the uncomfortable compromises that would be required to "save" the world, and Kurt Busiek's

Astro City

manages to rearrange and rethink well-worn tropes to create some genuinely moving stories.

Sometimes, though, reshuffling is not enough. To truly rethink the concept of the superhero, you need to leave the American heartland of superheroes altogether and travel somewhere else. To a place which has very different ideas about power and its limits. To a place that would interpret all-powerful humans far differently than European or American society would, and would have the technology and competence to enforce its interpretations.

To travel, in other words, to Russia.

This is the premise of

The Winter Men

, the barely-released critically acclaimed Wildstorm miniseries by Brett Lewis and artist Jean Paul Leon. It had one hell of a publication history; it first appeared way back in August 2005 advertising an eight-issue run, only to finally finish on its sixth issue in February 2009. It's a damned shame that this series received such shoddy treatment from Wildstorm, especially since

The Winter Men

is one of the best superhero series out there.

The story is set in Russia in late 2001, near the end of the twilight period between the collapse of the Russian banking industry in 1998 and the emergence of Putin's "sovereign democracy." In the opening pages, we are introduced to Kris Kalenov, our guide to this world, as is roused from the snowbank where he spent sleeping off the previous night's boozy activities. A former spetznaz, now a militiaman by title and poet by aspiration, his actual day job consists of managing disputes at the behest of Moscow's mayor between the various interests (business, foreign, domestic, civil, and otherwise) that inhabit the city. An encounter with an old army buddy lands him a dead-end case about an abducted girl who had just received a liver transplant from an unknown source. In short order, hints are dropped that other factors are interested in the fate of that little girl, and her connection to the recent seismic shifts in the balance of criminal power in Moscow. Veiled references are made to something called "winter," a word Kalenov is intimately familiar with and which the CIA (ostensibly in Moscow to assist the Russian authorities with the upheavals in the underworld) is nosing around in, despite their pig-ignorance of Russia in general. At the same time, old friends of Kalenov, ex-spetznaz buddies who also have a connection with "winter," begin to reappear in Kalenov's life too fast to be chalked up to mere coincidence. While Kalenov finds the girl in first few issues, it only serves to further deepen the mystery in Moscow, as well as ask questions about what, exactly, became of the Soviet superhero program, in particular one hero known only as The Hammer of the Revolution, a Captain America-type figure that disappeared decades ago under unclear circumstances.

I won't go any farther into the plot, simply because there's a lot of it to unpack and theorize about. Instead, I will withhold most spoilers and briefly explain what makes this comic great.

First of all,

The Winter Men

may be the Russianest comic I have ever read. The care to detail is obvious even in the basic technical details. Lewis' dialogue, by some minor miracle, manages to beautifully capture the odd cadences and subtle elaboration of Russian-translated English without drifting into Boris Badenov-type kludges or, God help us, Jonathan Safran Foer-type literary schmaltz. I don't know enough to judge whether all the slang is correct or not, but it reads far better that the efforts of most writers.

Additionally, the violence in the comic has a appropriate understatement. While modern American comics love their visceral blood and mutilation,

The Winter Men

takes a more restrained approach, with the occasional high-octane gun battle counterbalanced by the dull brutishness of two drunk friends brawling, or by simply implying violence between panels. While it may seem like a dodge, it actually fits in very well with the milieu. After all, in a society like post-communist Russia, where violence is often the easiest way to do things (or, more likely, the only method anyone has any patience for), pain and death are dealt out so often that the mind (and the comic) just tunes it out and relativizes it into utilitarian indifference.

The real achievement, however, is in Lewis' depiction of Russian society. As someone who spent most of his undergraduate career plowing through 20th century Russo-Soviet history, the one thing that has grown to irritate me more than anything is the way most Westerners think Russian society works. The implicit assumption is that Russian society is a pyramid, with a tsar/gensek/president at the top, a hierarchy supporting him, all of which oppresses a servile population, with all of society neatly divided into rulers and victims. The truth, one which Lewis faithfully portrays and weaves into the greater tapestry of the series, is that Russia is a series of networks, of people organized into cabals to defend certain interests (be they organized crime, soft drink distribution, city government, or what have you), all forever fighting and securing their own power bases, forever living in fear that someone more powerful will come after them. This is nothing new, of course; you can find something similar while reading Gogol, and that model pretty much sums up the state of the Soviet Union after Stalin died. In the end, much of the series, consists of Kalenov learning to read and navigate the various circles of official and unofficial Russian power, to understand the ultimate purpose of the upheavals.

Of course, some people like some networks better than others. There is a sort of dull nostalgia running through the book for the Soviet Union, though it is more wistful than motivational. Everyone knows the USSR will never come back, but there is a sort of vague sadness among the characters for that weird socialist empire, a sense of "it was not good, but it was ours, and now it's gone." Even Kalenov himself, never a socialist, comes across as a man who, unlike his army friends, never found himself a role he could play in the Yeltsinite world to replace his previous role as a spetznaz.

This finally brings us down to the big question: what about the Soviet superheroes? What about them? The answer which slowly emerges from snatches of conversation and the occasion infodump, is the height of irony and a slap in the face to most other so-called "realistic" superhero comics. In the Soviet Union of

The Winter Men

, superheroes were

irrelevant

. The great majority of them appeared as military projects in the later stages of the Soviet Union, consisting of either men flying around in big, clunky Iron Man suits (in a neat little nod to DC comics' continuity, the suits bear a close resemblance to the Rockets Red suits that serve as fodder for the JLA to smack around) or people with genetically modified organs. While some old propaganda early in the comic shows Soviet supermen tearing their way through the American hordes, their actual purpose is to counter the super-people being developed by another faction of the Soviet military-industrial complex, while those supermen that do serve in combat tend to die ingloriously. And the end of the day, despite being the only country on the planet with superpeople, there is little difference between the fictional Russia and the real one. Even the plot of the comic only deals with the metahuman aspect fleetingly for most of its run.

I won't say much about the ending save that it will almost certainly bring back memories of

Watchmen

. However, Lewis cleverly riffs on Moore's work rather than lifting it wholesale, with the end result feeling like a bizarre version of

Watchmen

set decades after the original where everyone save one very particular character is gone, and the battle is between a meticulous autocrat that dwells in a realm of pure decision and a child of the original heroes, fighting for reasons he doesn't bother to consciously understand. At the end of the day, there's no real closure, but as Kalenov himself says, "this is a Russian story."

The Winter Men

is not a flawless diamond. The noir storytelling does tend to get a little too convoluted for its own good, with revelations losing their impact because you don't recognize a certain background character from a previous book. The publishing history really hurts the narrative, with the third and final installments clearly reading like Lewis had to cram too much in at the last minute in order to tell his story.

Still, Lewis can be forgiven his compromises. There is much to love in

The Winter Men

, from the bombastic wordplay, to the clever composition of the panels, to the characters that breathe their native land, to superheroes that are as alien to us as the East is from the West. And to one, little line, near the end of the book, whispered by one dying man to another, that may be the only fitting epitaph to the Soviet experience any writer has come up with yet.

Read it. Now.Themes:

Sci-fi / Fantasy

Comics

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~Comments (

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Arthur B

at 09:40 on 2010-04-19Is there a trade paperback compilation of this? I can't abide buying individual issues of comics.

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Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 17:03 on 2010-04-19Yep, it finally came out at the beginning of this year.

Here you go.

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Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 17:18 on 2010-04-24Oh, and fun fact: about a day after this was posted, I got an email message from Brett Lewis, the creator of

The Winter Men

asking to friend me on Facebook.

And, yes, I know that this is the year 2010, when stuff like this doesn't mean any sort of deeper connection has been made. But one the other hand...

BRETT LEWIS READ MY REVIEW! AND HE LIKED IT! AND IT'S MY BIRTHDAY! YAAAAAY!!!!!

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http://fightsandtights.blogspot.com/

at 01:44 on 2010-04-25Great review, Alasdair, I'll definitely have to check this out. Jena Paul Leon is a big selling point for me; he did some awesome work on the Black Widow: Deadly Origin mini that was recently released by Marvel, and he really seems to portray Soviet-era Russia quite well. Certainly adding this to my wishlist...

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Wardog

at 11:32 on 2010-04-25Belated birthday grats :) YAAAAAY!

I have to admit, when authors inadvertantly stumble across my reviews I always over-think and second guess myself into a pit of angst.

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Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 17:10 on 2010-04-26

I have to admit, when authors inadvertantly stumble across my reviews I always over-think and second guess myself into a pit of angst.

I usually prefer to dive into that pit of angst before I start writing, when I read all the other reviews other people have written and wonder how the hell I can match the insights of all those clever and smart people whoe are better than me in every way and

isuckisuckisuck

Then I write the whole thing in a three-hour frenzy a week later.

#Ferretbrain #Alasdair Czyrnyj #The Winter Men #Superhero

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