SEXUAL DIMORPHISM BLUES, AGAIN PT. 2

 "Oh, God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market place!"-- Beatrice lamenting the limitations of her not very muscular gender, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.                                                                                                                                                                                                     "No one wants to be born a woman."-- Dave Sim, long before anyone knew what trans ideology was.                                                                                                                                                                       Obviously, Shakespeare's audience did not think that Beatrice really wanted to be a man, just because she fantasized about becoming one so that she could go toe-to-toe with Claudio-- who, admittedly, is something of an asshole. But since she knows she can't change her sex, she's okay with using her sexual favors to motivate Benedick into assaulting the target of Beatrice's wrath. As for Dave Sim's infamous statement-- which may have been made with an eye to being provocative-- it goes without saying that some men do wish they had been born women, whether or not one credits the diagnoses of gender dysphoria as an illness. In fact, some statistics suggest that trans women outnumber trans men two-to-one.                                                                   

I've no use for the ideology-based pseudoscience of imagining endless genetic blueprints for whatever gender-combinations can be imagined.  I consider it more logical to see even the syndromic desires to be the opposite sex to exist in a continuum that includes non-syndromic fantasies about possessing the characteristics of the sex opposite to one's birth-sex. Even the syndromic compulsions share much of the "grass is greener on the other side" mentality. I don't agree with the sexual determinism of conservative thought, but neither do I agree with the liberals' falsehood that biology can be (or should be) entirely circumvented.                                                                 

Fiction, as I've said many times, is a world where anyone can indulge any number of fantasies as to the true nature of the world, and those that challenge an alleged "status quo" are not perforce more imaginative than those that do not. For example, Dave Sim made many snide remarks (with which I have disagreed) about the fantasy of the heroic female because he thought the archetype ran contrary to "real life," even within the context of his own independent fantasy-world-- which was, of course, responsive to his own fantasies. But most of the ultraliberal feminists (which includes male feminists like Kevin Feige) wanted more female heroes not out of a deep passion for the archetype and all its possible permutations. but for an artistically barren concept of ideological representation. In my mind at least, there's no doubt that Sim is an artist and Feige is just a lucky hack, possibly one whose greatest accomplishments were entirely collaborative in nature.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    That'll teach me to bring up Dave Sim here; I totally got off the subject of the dimorphism blues. Maybe I'll make it there in Part 3.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

RESSENTIMENT OF THE NERDS PT. 2

 I'm reviving this essay-title after having not used it in roughly thirteen years, because Nietzsche's idea of ressentiment seems so appropriate to these times. Here's what Big Friedrich said in "On the Genealogy of Morals:"

“While the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself (gennaios 'of noble descent' underlines the nuance 'upright' and probably also 'naïve'), the man of ressentiment is neither upright nor naive nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul squints; his spirit loves hiding places, secret paths and back doors, everything covert entices him as his world, his security, his refreshment; he understands how to keep silent, how not to forget, how to wait, how to be provisionally self-deprecating and humble."

And here's what modern nerd Kevin Feige said in an egotistical comparison between himself and Stan Lee:

In July 2021 he detailed to Rotten Tomatoes, “Representation is important across the board. And the comics has charted…charts the path in almost all ways for what we do in the MCU and in the comics there are many LGBTQ characters and we want to showcase that on the screen as well. We want to bring those characters to life on the screen.”

“We also, as Stan Lee used to say, Marvel represents the world outside your window. And outside of our window, there are all different types of people in all different types of places with all different types of preferences and we want that reflect in the MCU and in our fictional world as it is in our real world,” he continued.

Feige then stated, “So it is of utmost importance that when people go in and see one of our films or log on to Disney+ and watch one of our series that it represents the true world outside their window when it comes to the types of people portraying the heroes and the characters.”

To say the least, I doubt that Lee shared Feige's concept of representational realism. Lee may well have made a few statements about realistic depiction of certain aspects of life, but he was first and foremost a fantasist. Not even in the sixties could anyone have said with certainty how much Lee expoused liberal causes out of personal conviction, and how much he was influenced by a will to appeal to liberal readers. Maybe even Lee himself could not have said with certainty. But even though he must have made the conscious decision to increase Marvel's diversity-- almost exclusively in terms of more Black characters, ranging from superheroes to support-characters-- Lee never forgot that he was crafting fantasies for kids. He was never a preacher of political ideology, and in many of his stories with political content, he would come off to ideologues as being (to borrow Nietzsche's term) "naive." But any naivete on his part would have informed by a concomitant "upright" belief in telling good if simple stories.

Feige has none of this noble nature. He pretends to be the humble servant of liberalism, showing "the true world outside [one's] window," but he shows his covert egotism in his advocacy of a particular political agenda. I'm surprised that he doesn't default to his avowed passion for generating scads of new heroines. Given that in the US there's usually a 50-50 distribution of males and females in the populace, it would fairly logical to state that if half of the population is female, there should be more heroines in the MCU. But because he wants to make himself look even more the staunch Progressive, his first reference to diversity is to "LGBTQ characters." This effectively destroys his point, for only in tenderloin districts can one look out one's window and see people sporting overt signifiers of their sexual preferences. 

Feige represents the most extreme representation of nerd ressentiment: the idea that he's being open and honest about things when in truth his true ideal is manipulation. Nothing shows this better than the covert dishonesty at the heart of the MS. MARVEL series, in which the series misrepresents the history of the Partition just to bag on Evil White Colonials. Of course, Feige, lacking any of the creativity of Stan Lee, could never have originated any of the icons he so casually trashes for his political ends. Maybe his very lack of creativity is the thing that makes him popular with his fans?

THE DIFFICULTY OF WHAT'S FASCINATING

I subjected most of my essays on crossovers to a spot-reading and came to a conclusion: I don't think I've spent enough time on why people can and do become fascinated-- if not to the extent that I do-- with the way different characters and concepts intertwine.

Looking back on my OUROBOROS DREAMS essay THE LOGIC AND APPEAL OF CROSSOVERS,

 I provided this observation:

... the overlapping of distinct storylines would seem to intensify the degree of mental effort an audience-member must exert in order to participate in the crossover's intersecting universes.  For instance, when Rider Haggard takes a character who exists in a moderately realistic universe, i.e., Allan Quatermain, and causes him to encounter a character whose nature is overtly supernatural, Haggard must find some way to treat both characters with integrity, even though the ground rules of their universes are in conflict.

And then, slightly afterward:

 It's something of a given in literary criticism to state that audiences, literary or sub-literary, maintain interest in fictional characters by identifying with them.  This commonplace observation is not so much wrong as overly simple. As I am what has been called a "myth-critic," I assert that the process of identification comes about as a reader (or viewer) realizes what kind of role the character plays in the story, and what that fictional role means to the reader. This does not mean "identification" in the simple-minded sense of "I want to be like this person," for identification can take place with any number of villains (the Joker, Freddy Krueger), monsters (Godzilla) or even mysterious locales (the subterranean domain of Jules Verne's "Center of the Earth.")  It is more properly an appreciation of what I will call the "mana" appropriate to the character or concept's role in the story. 

This essay was written in April 2014, a good five years before I refined my analysis on the two primary types of reader-identification, in INVESTMENT VS. FASCINATION. These two categories described in more precise terms the dichotomous ways in which readers "identified" with fictional figures. The way of investment was one of sympathy toward one or more figures, loosely sharing their joys or sorrows. The way of fascination was one of seeking to understand the ways of one or more figures who were more antipathetic in nature. The latter type of figures, which would include all of the examples given in the second citation above, might be fairly called by the Sartrean term of "the other," though this phrase only holds value in a comparative sense. What I called "mana" in the 2014 essay I would probably now reference as "the totality of correlations and/or contemplations that make this or that character resonant," drawing somewhat on Frye's idea of myth as "a treasure-trove of literary tropes."

The appeal of crossovers would also seem to line up more with the process of fascination than with investment. With investment one takes the "short view," identifying with the struggles of Spider-Man or Stephen Daedalus or whoever. But as soon as one brings together characters who are part of a larger design-- even if it's just Batman fighting The Flash's enemy The Weather Wizard-- then one is taking something of the "long view" that allows the reader to understand what makes a Joker or a Godzilla tick, for all that one doesn't really especially sympathize with them. 

So much for the reader's response to crossovers. But how do professional writers use pre-established concepts to craft stories? The writers implicitly want the readers to be fascinated-- that's what puts food on the table-- but all writers don't approach crossover-materials the same way.

Every original character or concept provides a template for later creators to either follow closely or to depart from as needed. Readers of serial concepts often perceive how much or how little a given author can accurately reproduce the desired aspects of a particular favored feature. In some cases, even a creator of such a concept may change his creative stance for personal or exigent reasons. BATMAN co-creator Bill Finger collaborated on some of the early stories, with all their delirious Gothic imagery, but he probably ended up authoring far more of the gimmicky "Candyland Batman" stories. 

My loose categories of the template deviations have been thus far the "weak deviation," "the strong deviation," and "the total deviation."

 "Total deviation" applies to figures who may copy some visual or designative aspect of a character, but who actually have no substantial connection with the template. So far I've included in this category characters who impersonate famous figures (or are constructed for that purpose), parodies, and doppelgangers who strongly reference famous figures.

"The weak deviation" is the one where, in theory, the storyteller shares the devoted reader's fascination with the involved continuity of a character, or of the continuities of an ensemble of characters, and does his best to keep everything "on-model," to borrow the animation phrase.

"The strong deviation," however, is the one in which the narrative's creator feels a great deal of freedom to riff on the original template-- and that's where the fans of a given franchise usually come out with knives drawn. I've produced my share of jeremiads on this subject, such as my ruminations on the dramatic shortcomings of Kevin Feige. Nevertheless, I part company with those critics and podcasters who automatically dislike every alternative take on a given template. I admit that it's more common for an alternative take to be bad than to be good, but it does happen. One high-profile version is the Grant Morrison version of DOOM PATROL, which I examined somewhat in the 2011 essay CHIEF CONCERNS. 

From one standpoint, a crossover-production with a great deal of fidelity to established continuity, like the Busiek-Perez JUSTICE LEAGUE/AVENGERS, ought to sustain the readers' fascination with all those involved story-threads. Morrison's strategy with DOOM PATROL-- which had nominal crossover-aspects in certain issues-- was to maintain some minor continuity-aspects while seeking to fascinate readers with Morrison's erudite reading of culture and aesthetics. Morrison's take was successful enough that a number of later creators attempted to follow his lead rather than emulating the older incarnations (though I imagine John Byrne's tenure, which I did not read, was the exception).

Interestingly, on occasion Morrison shows some of the same "political correctness" for which I've faulted Kevin Feige. However, Morrison does have other interests beyond superficial politics. Thus even a scene like the one above-- in which two Silver Age super-villains confess "the love that dare not speak its name"-- has an appealing absurdity. So Morrison, unlike Feige, that makes me, for one, curious about the "new DOOM PATROL universe" Morrison creates, "strong deviation" though it may be, because it's not simply preaching at me.

DON’T GIVE A FEIGE

 

Upon completing my viewing of the FALCON AND WINTER SOLDIER streaming series, I’m moved to comment on some of the parallels between Kevin Feige, founder of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Stan Lee, the founder of Marvel Comics in its crucial sixties incarnation.

Stan Lee, like his mostly middle-aged colleagues at Sixties Marvel, certainly had no idea that their company would someday become a major influence on the course of American pop culture. Certainly, there could have been no thoughts of a coherent “universe” as such; early on, there would have been nothing more than the attempt to cross-promote Marvel’s various titles through the act of guest-starring appearances. That said, once the idea of an interacting universe caught the attention of the fans, Lee certainly did much to promote the idea, sometimes with minor effects, like having the Avengers consult Paste-Pot Pete on the subject of glue removal. The overall effect was playful, since comics were dominantly aimed at children.

Yet Lee made some cautious responses to fans who wanted to expatiate on heavy subjects like politics and philosophy. The ruminations of the earth-imprisoned Silver Surfer were never deep, but Lee knew how to dramatize the tone of the character’s forlorn exile from the heavens. As for politics, in the late sixties the editor apparently realized that America’s youth was trending toward liberalism. Thus he largely dumped the anti-Communist rhetoric of the early sixties—even though such rhetoric contributed to one of the better FANTASTIC FOUR stories—and he attempted, with mixed results, to write stories about hot-button issues like student protests, the Vietnam war and the Black Experience.

In one interview, Kevin Feige claims to have been far more of a film-nut than a comics-nut. Most of his professional efforts appeared in films that were “superhero-like” in some way, and unlike many pros who only dabbled in superhero films for sake of career advancement—Christopher Nolan for example—Feige seems to have intuited that he could make superheroes his specialty long before the launch of the first MCU film in 2008.

Still, when he produced IRON MAN, Feige would have known that the continuity game had proven very profitable for Marvel Comics. He would also have known that the 1980s had given birth to a new method of cross-promoting properties: the “crossover event,” sometimes involving the linked plotlines of five or six ongoing features, sometimes encompassing developments in all of a company’s titles. The first few MCU films were poised to build to a “regular crossover” insofar as the heroes of THOR, IRON MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA and INCREDIBLE HULK would coalesce into THE AVENGERS. Managing such a crossover situation within the medium of theatrical film was arguably more involved than doing so at a comics-company. But Feige took things even farther. Starting with the second THOR film, Feige introduced the potential for a “crossover event”—one that would involve all the franchises under his control-- and he did so by drawing loosely upon one of the first such events from Marvel Comics: Jim Starlin’s “Infinity Gems” narratives.

Within the context of comics aimed largely at kids, Stan Lee was stronger at philosophy—at least insofar as he could convey philosophy through characterization—than he was at politics. Feige took the opposite course. Though he didn’t signal his full political agenda in the earliest films, over time the success of the MCU allowed him to indulge in considerable Leftist constructions—not least with the dissolution of SHIELD, whose spy-games had been of inestimable service to the Marvel Comics superheroes. But his philosophical scope never progressed beyond politically informed platitudes, and his interpretations of such Marvel favorites as Thor, Ant Man, Wasp, Black Panther and Spider-Man show a disinterest in strong characterization and a tendency to drift into inane comedy.

In conclusion, although Stan Lee and Kevin Feige both found new ways to make superheroes appealing to mass audiences beyond the sphere of kids, they diverged sharply in their strategies. Stan Lee did so by opening up the dramatic potential of superheroes, giving them all different voices and orientations. Initially Feige showed some skill with superhero dramatics in IRON MAN, which he might have learned from observing the way Sam Raimi transferred the saga of Peter Parker into his superior take on SPIDER-MAN. But over time Feige came to emulate Lee less than Jim Shooter, the Marvel editor-in-chief who launched the first “crossover events” at the company. Thus in the AVENGERS film-series a promising emotional arc, such as the romantic interaction of the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, is conveyed through by ham-fisted exposition, because the script requires far more emphasis on forcing lumps of event-oriented plot-action down the throats of the viewers. I frankly cannot guess how Feige will further monetize Marvel characters for fun and profit in the next ten years. However, it's worth remembering that Stan Lee's "golden years" petered out in the space of a little over ten years-- and he was much more creative than Feige on the latter's best day.