Yeah, I'm going there

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I've seen a couple posts now regarding Season 8 and Promethea and how they might be related. I'm not in any way qualified to talk about this, since I've never read Promethea, and my interest in Season 8 vanished long ago. But when has that stopped me from talking? lol

Anyway, the thing that got me thinking was eilowyn's comparison to Batman. The short version is this:

Season 8 : Promethea :: Batman and Robin : The Dark Knight

And it seemed like the criticism of that comparison is, "Batman and Robin wasn't meant to be serious, so you can't criticize it by saying, 'It's not serious enough.'" And that's where I started thinking (always dangerous, I know).

I think maybe the point isn't to say that Batman and Robin would've been better if it were more serious. I think it's to say that the source material (the story of Batman) is more suited to a serious, gritty tone than a cheesy, tongue-in-cheek one. And that's why The Dark Knight works better as a movie - because the storytelling matches the story.

I get that Batman and Robin wasn't meant to be serious, and that's exactly what's wrong with it. It's taking a serious story and telling it in an incompatible tone. The cheesiness undercuts the inherently tragic nature of Batman, which makes it neither a compelling drama nor a comedic romp. You can't make it better simply by cutting out the jokes. You have to tell a totally different story.

And that's the argument being made about Season 8, I think. It's not the appropriate tone for the source material. The bubblegum art doesn't fit the style of the TV series, the sentient Universe explanation doesn't fit the mythology of the TV series, the over-the-top space fucking doesn't fit the tone of the TV series, etc. And people are citing Promethea as an example of a similar story where they got those things right. The storytelling (art, mythology, tone, etc.) is suited to the story that Alan Moore is trying to tell (I'm assuming - like I said, I haven't actually read it). I think for a lot of people, Season 8's storytelling doesn't match the story of Buffy that we watched for seven years.

I don't think eilowyn or angearia are saying "Batman and Robin should be more like The Dark Knight." Batman and Robin was simply the wrong story to tell with that material. Season 8 is the wrong story to tell with this material. The take away I get isn't, "Season 8 should be more like Promethea!" but rather, "Season 8 should be more like Buffy... and a good way to do that is to examine how a really good comic with some notable similarities (Promethea) synthesizes the elements of its own story, and apply those techniques to the Buffyverse."

Redundant Disclaimer is Redundant: All art is subjective. That means that other people might think Season 8 is totally cut from the same cloth as the TV series. That doesn't mean the people who see a problem are wrong. It suggests that they latched onto different elements of the show, which may or may not have been carried over to the comics.

Now, y'all go ahead and argue. :) Except I don't really have enough knowledge to go deeper than that, and I'll be at class most of tonight anyway, so the arguing thing isn't likely to go anywhere, lol.

Comments

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

In all internet seriousness, I agree with beer_good_foamy that Bats has been all over the map in terms of how he's been presented. The "Bat Shark Repellent" (and, really, that wacky awesomeness of that entire movie) is a fond memory. Burton's formula was a mixed bag, selecting bits and pieces that were funny and dark/scary. There were certain things I liked about Nicholson's Joker that I felt were missing in Ledger's (and vice versa), but they were both valid takes on that character, who is about as old as Batman himself.

It's worth noting that while Buffy is a very young character, she has also been depicted in more than one way. I thought Swanson's Buffy was very, very different than Gellar's, for example. So it doesn't surprise me that when presented in a third medium, there would again be marked differences in the way she was presented. If there's an animation or a reboot, we'll see yet more mutations. That's just what happens with beloved characters when the mass culture sinks its fangs it them. It's natural.

Think about fan-fic. Aren't all of our Buffy's slightly different?

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Yeah, I get that. The thing is, people have different ideas about what's essential to a character or a story, and the many versions of it will hit a person as "good" or "bad" depending on whether the interpretation includes the things that person thinks are important.

To use a different example, Maggie and Emmie found the Angel comics to be disappointing because they weren't polysemic. That's a quality they look for in Whedonverse stories, and After the Fall didn't have it. Other people thought After the Fall was just dandy, because they were there for the character relationships or the epic battles or even just because they thought NFA needed a resolution. Now, people might argue that there IS deeper meaning in ATF that Maggie and Emmie are just missing, but they can't tell them they're not allowed to criticize it on that level. Saying, "But it's not SUPPOSED to be polysemic" isn't going to make them enjoy it any more, because that's what they wanted out of the story and they didn't get it.

For a lot of people, season 8 is lacking something essential. And all of this discussion is just trying to identify and explain what that "something" is. It doesn't invalidate the opinions of people who think season 8 fulfills their Buffy needs - but it's clear they have different priorities.

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

For a lot of people, season 8 is lacking something essential. And all of this discussion is just trying to identify and explain what that "something" is.

Hrrmm. For some reason I don't think we'll be able to come up with a universal answer for that. I'm sure there are many different"somethings", just as fans of the show seemed to enjoy it on many different levels. You used that great, juicy word "polysemic" and that's a bingo: multiple meanings and contradictory signifiers slathered on top of one another are going to produce different "somethings" in our heads.

For me, the comic left me flat fairly quickly, but I think for different reasons than some other fans had. For instance, one thing that took me out of it right away was their clusmy handling of "The Girl In Question." I smelled a cop-out right away. Even if they decided that they just HAD to go that route, there were far Jossier ways to go about it (The Buffybot, for instance, would have allowed an opportunity to capture the funny, kitschy aspects of the show while paying homage to the source material).

Skimming over the formation of this new Multi-Slayer reality in general also felt hamhanded to me. The 7th season of the show offered plenty of juicy unresolved "pinches" hanging, and after the first few issues I sensed that they were content to just leave them hanging permanently and start from scratch. In other words seemed like the "Season 8" thing was more a brand name for a reboot. Which, okay, but I couldn't get into it. For me the show was about the winding journeys of its various characters, and the comics seemed like they abrubtly stopped the car, picked a new destination, and made a hard left turn.

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For some reason I don't think we'll be able to come up with a universal answer for that. I'm sure there are many different"somethings", just as fans of the show seemed to enjoy it on many different levels.

I don't think anyone's trying to come up with a universal answer. Hell, most people have multiple answers just for themselves, let alone trying to figure out why anyone else doesn't like it.

That's the thing I don't get - the way that personal opinions get turned into universal statements that everyone in fandom is obligated to agree with. No one's saying that.

[lostboy-lj.livejournal.com]

That's the thing I don't get - the way that personal opinions get turned into universal statements that everyone in fandom is obligated to agree with.

BECAUSE THIS IS TEH INTERNET AND IT IS SERIOUS BUSINESS!

Well, anyway, you said you wanted discussion and that's what I think is happening here.

Frankly, there isn't much agreement about the show, either. How many people I've run afoul of that think Xander was supposed to be representative of a "racist" I swear I do not know. Hundreds? So, okay, that's how they experienced it. I don't have to think that's valid (I don't) or pretend it's valid for the sake of argument (I don't do that either). To me, opinons like these hold the same amount of water for me as people who don't think we landed on the moon. I just ignore it and keep on keepin' on.