COMPRESSING CONCRESCENCE PT. 2

 ...just as quantum particles would be of no relevance to human Will as discrete particles, narratological particles only assume significance in the form of “molecules.” These molecular assemblages I relate to the idea of “tropes.”-- STALKING TWO PERFECT TERMS.

I wrote COMPRESSING CONCRESCENCE partly because I knew I was about to re-screen and evaluate the Zach Snyder WATCHMEN after having re-read the Moore-Gibbons source novel. I wanted to forge a methodology regarding how an adaptation of a work generates its own "molecular assemblages" in response to those of the original work. 

I imagine that other narratologists have made the same attempt, at least amid the capacious ranks of film theorists. But as I've commented elsewhere on this blog, many modern analysts tend to speak of the meaning of the work in purely intellectual terms, because educational systems taught many if not all of them to use an intellectual approach in assessing what I term "vertical values." I've followed Jung in separating these values into a didactic potentiality, which is focused on proving a work-oriented theoretical point, and a mythopoeic potentiality, which allows a playful flow between symbolic representations, just to see what comes of their interactions. 

In FORMAL AND INFORMAL EXCELLENCE PT. 2, I put forth three works that contrasted in terms of those potentialities-- one wherein the didactic was functionally the only value, one wherein the mythopoeic was the only value, and one in which the didactic and mythopoeic intertwined. But even in the last of the three, I stressed that in "Origin of the Silver Surfer" the mythopoeic potentiality predominated over the didactic one:

 So "Origin's" vertical values include a blend of formal-didactic and informal-mythopoeic postulates, though in this case I find that the mythopoeic postulate predominates.

I addressed a similar dichotomy in my 2015 review of the Moore-Gibbons WATCHMEN. I started out saying--

I said here that I planned to comment upon Alan Moore's tendency to let his didactic tendencies overwhelm his symbolic discourse. However, when I did the same with Dave Sim and Steve Ditko, I first gave examples of works in which they managed to keep their didacticism under control. So I'll do the same with respect to Alan Moore.

 In my conclusion I admitted that WATCHMEN possessed strong didactic tendencies--

Moore, as a modernist author, wants to use his art as a bully pulpit, to warn others of the limitations of their real lives. That's why it's so ironic that he should be assailed for "rapey comics," since he's clearly calling attention to rape's moral consequences. 

But I also concluded that WATCHMEN was dominated by a multi-level symbolic discourse, exemplified in part by Moore's use of syzygy-patterns throughout the art and text. So, even though Alan Moore would abominate any work of his being placed on the same level as a Stan Lee work, WATCHMEN and the Surfer origin are both excellent works dominated by the mythopoeic potentiality.

Now, in the first part of COMPRESSING CONCRESCENCE, I gave an example of a secondary work that adapted a mythopoeically complex primary work. I allowed that Rider Haggard's novel SHE was of such complexity that no feature film of standard length could adapt Haggard's interwoven tropes. All adaptations of SHE have to compress the novel into a cinematic narrative, but the 1925 movie was able to choose a "molecular assemblage" from the novel that conveyed at least some of the symbolic discourse of Haggard.

Zach Snyder's WATCHMEN probably intended to do so with respect to the original graphic novel. However, most of Snyder's renderings of Moore's symbolic representations, be they syzygies or other abstractions, are extremely mediocre. So I ended up grading the movie as only "fair" in mythicity because I felt that it ended up stressing all the didactic and political tropes from Moore's script, all of which boil down to "Nasty Conservatives Ruin Everything For All Humanity." This may be why Snyder adumbrates Rorschach's origin story. I mentioned in the review that Moore's portrait of Rorschach is a mixed one, but the one in the WATCHMEN movie is not. Snyder captures none of the Nietzschean ambiguities of the chapter "The Abyss Gazes Also," which might disprove the view of at least one critic who judged Snyder a disciple of Nietzsche.

So in my view Snyder did the exact opposite in his WATCHMEN adaptation than did the writer (and maybe the two directors) of the 1925 SHE. When Snyder compressed the WATCHMEN graphic novel, he gave prominence to all the didactic narrative tropes, minimizing whatever the presence of the mythopoeic ones. The closest he got to myth was in his reworking of the story's conclusion, in that Snyder jettisoned Moore's "alien menace" concept and made Doctor Manhattan the great enemy against whom the world unites. But there weren't enough reinforcing tropes to give that myth-kernel any deep resonance, and so the WATCHMEN movie feels as preachy as one of the preachier Moore stories. 

Now, all of the above assumes the situation that the primary work is superior in some discourse to the adaptation. The opposite is also possible. But that would require further discussion in a separate essay.

PROTO CROSSOVERS AND SUCH PT. 2

 As a result of my refinements in Part 1 of this series, I'm overturning some of the conclusions I made in COSMIC ALIGNMENT PART 2:

Marvel's Inhumans debuted in a 1965 issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, and the Black Panther appeared in the comic in the following year. It practically goes without saying that Lee and Kirby intended for both the Panther and the Inhumans to appear in serials at some point, but neither did for some time, and so for all of those appearances they register as Subs. In a special FF issue dated November 1967, both the Inhumans and the Black Panther crossed over with the Fantastic Four in fighting Psycho-Man. The Black Panther would not get a regular berth for another year, when he became a regular member of the Avengers in 1968, so within the compass of that story, he remained a Sub type. However, the special placed a more immediate push to see if readers wanted an Inhumans series, since in an issue of THOR, also dated November 1967, the denizens of Attilan received their first feature, albeit only a backup strip. So the FF ANNUAL would be a High-Stature crossover because the Inhumans had just become Primes around the time when the issue came out, while the equally enjoyable Panther had to wait another year for Prime status. 

This section is not incorrect with respect to the Black Panther and the Inhumans being Subs within the cosmos of the Prime stars, the Fantastic Four. However, the overall intent of the essay was to state that the debut stories of the new heroes did not count as crossovers because it took considerable time for any of them to get their own features. However, now I would consider that the debuts of both characters would count as "proto-crossovers," and so would any other stories produced before the "future Prime stars" got their own berths. 

Such a "proto-crossover" appears in a Captain America continuity from late 1967 through early 1968 (though all of the issues were dated1968). But Marvel did not wait to see whether or not the issues teaming up Cap with the Black Panther sold well, for the storyline culminated with the star-spangled crusader recommending the Panther for admission to The Avengers. The admission took place about a month or two later in AVENGERS #52, and this comprised the African prince's first role as a Prime in any series.

Now, all these "retroactive proto-crossovers" raise a question: if the debut of Black Panther in FANTASTIC FOUR is a proto-crossover, is the same true of an ADAPTATION of that story, such as the one that appears in an episode of the 1994-96 FANTASTIC FOUR animated series. But my answer to this question is NO. For one thing, within the corpus of existing episodes in this series, the Black Panther never had the chance to ascend to Prime status, so he's just a Sub within the series, in contrast to the comic book universe from which he comes.

Now, had the MCU adapted the FF continuity for a full-fledged FANTASTIC FOUR movie, and then spun BLACK PANTHER off into his own series, THAT would have made the hypothetical FF film a proto-crossover. CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR was the MCU movie that launched the company's version of the Panther, but it's not a straight adaptation, but a new story, and is therefore governed by a different set of rules. The MCU always had the intent to spin the Panther off into his own film, and since CIVIL WAR sets up the storyline for the 2018 BLACK PANTHER, I don't deem CIVIL WAR to be a proto-crossover, just a Full Crossover in which the MCU Panther is a strong template deviation of the one in the comic books.

However, when one is dealing with "strong template deviations" rather than the weak type seen in a direct adaptation, it isn't strictly necessary for a character to get his own feature. Nick Fury is a Prime star within Marvel comic books, though his career in the comics has probably put him most often into the role of a Sub support-character rather than that of a Prime. To date the MCU has produced a strong template deviation of Fury, and there are no indications that he's EVER going to be anything to the MCU but a Prime demoted to the level of a Sub. Yet thanks to his comic-book career Nick Fury has enough stature that even his first appearance in the 2008 IRON MAN qualifies as a Full Crossover. 

"SNAP BACK" VS. "LOST CHANCE"

I posted this today on CHFB:

________________

I recently came across a link to a Gail Simone twitter-thread that addresses some of the comments on this thread (about the BIRDS OF PREY film).

Simone, as some here will know, is famous for being one of the most celebrated BIRDS OF PREY scripters. Her twitter defends the right of the filmmakers to go "off model," saying in part:

I believe the truly great characters are elastic. You can pull them and bend them, you can stretch them. The great ones snap back. We all know what their core is. They snap back.

Now, the fact that Simone liked the film, and doesn't feel offended by the filmmakers' changes, doesn't in itself make me feel obliged to like the film. For all we know, she may have been as offended as any of us by other films in which comics characters got changed about.

In some ways, the "snap back" theory-- which I''ll attribute to Simone even though I'm sure others have voiced similar things--  is the inverse of the old "lost chance" theory. Back in the sixties, hardcore comics fans resented the Batman live-action show, because it traduced the more serious stories in the comic book. To these fans, the Batman TV show was a lost chance to show the fans' favored character in a good light, to explain to outsiders why they the fans found the character appealing and not merely "kid stuff."

The eventual fate of Batman, of course, would seem to validate Simone's "snap back" theory.  Probably no non-fans in the sixties were enthralled enough with the show to start buying Batman comics. Yet both the Bat-mania that briefly captivated an adult audience and subsequent re-runs of the sixties show, gave Batman a lot more media-currency than he'd ever had before. In the seventies comic-book Batman "snapped back" to a level of quality far beyond those of the mid-sixties "New Look" stories. It's even arguable that some comics-creators brought back "Dark Gothic Batman" as a reaction against the TV show's version, which I'm tempted to call "Candyland Batman." Tim Burton's 1989 BATMAN capitalized on this mode, and some publicity at the time even speculated about whether or not a "serious Batman" could prosper after the example of the sixties teleseries.

All of this doesn't mean that there are no situations in which a bad version of a concept or series poisons the well. The box-office failure of 1997's BATMAN AND ROBIN certainly kept the Big Bat off the live-action screen for a time, though it didn't hurt the character so much that he couldn't recover from the debacle, either in comics or in other media. On the other hand, for some characters there really was just one shot at success, and a mediocre adaptation can undermine future potential-- as witness the ancillary results of 1986's HOWARD THE DUCK.

I don't think total fidelity to the original comics is necessarily a solution, either. For me, all arguments regarding the role of fidelity boil down to one formula:

"There are good changes, and there are bad changes."

As to what makes one change good and another bad-- that can only measured through the lens of subjective perception.

MANDARIN DUCKED

Though I haven't seen IRON MAN 3 yet, I recently responded to an online comment on the general theme of "why did the adaptors bother to use the name of the Mandarin if they weren't going to keep anything else about the character?"  As usual, though I'm aware of some of the immediate contingent circumstances (e.g., Chinese investors and audiences), my response takes a more generalizing approach.

_________________________

Though I can't claim to have any direct knowledge of Hollywood thinking, I'm going to say that this is not a phenomenon not confined to comic-book adaptations. I think a lot of Hollywood adaptors have or come to have an adversarial relationship with the material adapted. In both the films KISS ME DEADLY and MODESTY BLAISE, the adaptors use assorted bits from the novels adapted, but play with those bits to suit their desires, often to pursue themes opposed to the original authors. That's why Frank Miller's SPIRIT doesn't resemble Eisner's SPIRIT. Miller didn't want to make a respectful Eisner movie; he wanted to make a Frank Miller movie.

Why even keep those bits if they're going to change them entirely? I think the adaptors are under some pressure to have SOMETHING that resembles the property the company buys. I have no idea who in the chain of command said, "Let's use the Mandarin in IM3," but once it was sent down, the adaptors were stuck with it. In this case the exigencies of political correctness probably informed the changes in the character, rather than personal preference as it seems to have been with DEADLY and BLAISE. But the principle is the same.

ADAPTATION, ULTIMATELY

"Socrates: In like manner, I want you to tell me what part of justice is piety or holiness, that I may be able to tell Meletus not to do me injustice, or indict me for impiety, as I am now adequately instructed by you in the nature of piety or holiness, and their opposites.

Euthyphro: Piety or holiness, Socrates, appears to me to be that part of justice which attends to the gods, as there is the other part of justice which attends to men."-- Plato's EUTHYPHRO, trans. Benjamin Jowett.

In the above section Socrates, who as he says is about to be tried for impiety in an Athens court, attemtps to get alleged religious expert Euthyprho to define impiety for him. As in most other Socratic dialogues the poor chump Euthyphro is outmatched from the first, but though he isn't able to parse his argument finely enough for Socrates' liking, in the section above he does come close to formulating a sound answer regarding the ways that "justice" can encompass both duties to the gods and duties to men. The formulation carries a significant resonance with Jesus' famous "render unto Caesar" pronouncement from Mark 12:17, even if in that dialogue it's the religious guy rather than the skeptic who wins the argument.

One of Charles Reeces' responses on the comments-thread to SHADOWS AND FOGGY NOTIONS PART 2 brought up a concept that I've always thought seemed partial and poorly conceived: that of "commodification." I asserted that I thought that I thought that what Marxists call "commodification" was better seen as a wider process I term "adaptation," by which I mean the sum total of all actions taken by artists-- or those making artistic works available to any audiences-- that in any way alter or slant the works to make them acceptable to those audiences.

Reece brings up an example of what he calls commodification, but as I told him, I found it suspect, and so won't consider it here. I think I have a substitute example with which he should logically agree, though, since it concerns an injustice done in the name of conservative interests. This example is the story of how representatives of DC Comics squelched an attempt to create the company's first black superhero in TEEN TITANS #20.

The story's told in great detail here, and of course various interviews have come out in the fan press in which no one named seems to want to take the heat for the decision to de-blackify the character of "Joshua." Here's Len Wein's summation of the controversy:



"At the last minute Carmine got gun-shy and was afraid that we wouldn't be able to sell the book in the South and that all these terrible things would happen. So he just pulled the issue and said, 'Nope, we're not going to do it.' This was less than a week before the book was supposed to ship to the printer."

Now, I don't see how any Marxist in his right mind would not consider this an act of reducing a work to what Reece calls a "homogenous substance." Whether Infantino's actions were exactly what Wein said they were is not my concern here: I wasn't there. But someone made it necessary that a character intended to be a black man was made into a Caucasian, and that person was probably motivated by fears of economic retaliation by buyers in the southern United States.

Marxist rhetoric is replete with many, many examples of such hypothetical commodification, a few as worthwhile as the one above, though most are drivel, like Theodor Adorno's ravings against Donald Duck.

However, let us flashforward to 1993, and a different medium. Much racial rhetoric has gone down the pike, and now the company of Walt Disney-- not exactly a stranger to questions of racial impropriety-- puts out a film version of Mark Twain's HUCKLEBERRY FINN, directed by Stephen Sommers.

There was of course no question that the novel's major black character would be played by a black actor, one Courtney B. Vance. No replacements by a Caucasian pinch-hitter here. But how does Vance play the character?

Does he play the runaway slave Jim with the same authentic "Negro" dialect given him by author Mark Twain?

HELL NO he does not. There's not a "massa" or "whuffo" to be heard in the Sommers adaptation of the Twain novel, which is also illustrative of a different type of "adaptational" process. Just as Carmine Infantino may have feared reprisals if he published a black superhero in 1969, in 1993 Walt Disney most likely feared another sort of economic reprisals if they came out with a film with a black man talking in dialectic, no matter how accurate to the times that dialectic would have been.

So my question to Euthyphro Reece is as follows:

Is the latter example also commodification?

Or is it not a greater part of a process of adaptation to a hypothetical audience, even as service to the gods is a portion of the category of just actions?