Tag Archives: Joy Delyria

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Captain America

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cap_america037

 

“Dear Reporter,

I am 29 years old. 

Some of my friends tell me Captain America doesn’t matter, because he’s just a comic book character.  Please tell me the truth; is there a Captain America?

Virginia”

Yes, Virginia, there is a Captain America.  If you look in history books, you may not see him, but what does that prove?  The most important figures of history are not written and recorded with facts and figures to support them.  Captain America exists as surely as this country exists, and this country could not exist as such without his righteousness and courage.  He exists as certainly as compassion and respect for fellow men, and we know that these qualities abound and give our land its highest grace and virtue.

Not believe in Captain America!  We have always believed in Captain America; only think how different the world would be if we did not believe in him.  How could we have won the second World War without Captain America’s fortitude and bravery?  He would lay down his life in order to uphold liberty and justice.  He believed in these things even though he could not see them—how can we then not believe in him?  Men have died because they believed in truth and the pursuit of happiness—because they believed in Captain America.

Do you think that men would go to war for purple mountains, or fruited plains, or even gasoline?  You may think these things are real, but if you took these things away, you would still have bigotry and exploitation, avarice and hatred, just as you would still have love and honor.  Are they real?  Ah, Virginia, in this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

Of course Captain America exists.  Without Captain America, we would never have had the courage to hold fast to our convictions!  We also would never have had the hubris.

Without Captain America to sanctify our actions, we never would have believed that we know best.  Without Captain America’s super-strength to support us, we never would have believed that we would win.  Because we believe in freedom, we have sought to impose our version of freedom, even if it makes people less free.  We have sought to impose our versions of justice and fair play, when it is not just and not fair.

Virginia, your little friends are wrong.  Your little friends have seen little men do horrible, atrocious things, and therefore the believe that Captain America must not exist because he did not stop him.  Your little friends have seen our country act not out of justice, but out of fear.  They have seen us act not out of compassion, but out of pride.  They have seen us abuse power and trample the already downtrodden, but what your little friends don’t know is that we have done so because we believe in Captain America.

In the sixties, plenty of people didn’t believe in Captain America.  Some thought others took the name; other people thought he was sleeping in ice; others thought he was dead, and some believed that he never existed, just like your little friends.  There was a reason Captain America slept: we didn’t believe in him anymore.  I don’t think anyone stopped believing in what he stood for, but we began to doubt the fact of this super hero, because we realized he was just a man.

We realized he was just a man, because he has a face.  Even if you have never seen this face in person, you know what it looks like: fair, blue-eyed, blond.  Captain America is tall and white, heterosexual and Christain, male and middle class, and we know that he exists because that is not what America looks like.  That is what a man looks like, just one man.

We have not been honest with other nations; our leaders have not been honest with us, and we have not been honest with ourselves, because for so long, we didn’t face the fact that Captain America was real—and just a man.  Because Captain America exists, he can lie and cheat and kill just like the rest of us—and he did.  Captain America is a killer; at times, Captain America has been a war-monger.  Captain America told us his enemies were evil, and we believed in him just as we believed in evil.  Captain America, among other things, can lie.

You may have written me today because recently Captain America seems more alive than ever.  Maybe your little friends are wondering, “Is it the same Captain America?”  This is where your little friends might be onto something.

Let me tell you about a friend of mine, Virginia.  His name is Steve Rogers.  Steve woke up one day, and found out the world had gone on without him, and it had changed.  Steve believes in all those things that Captain America did: freedom, justice, compassion, honesty, but he doesn’t know how to act on them anymore.  The world is not as simple as it once was.  It is no longer acceptable to help one person by punching another in the face, and the worst part is—maybe it never was.

What does Steve Rogers do in such a world?  How does he help people now?  How does Steve Rogers go to a third world country and say, “I want to help you,” without being Captain America, the man who caused so many problems in the first place?  How does Steve Rogers extend a hand of peace, without those former foes remembering that that hand once punched them in the face?  I know that Steve Rogers exists because he has asked me these questions.  Maybe you have too, Virginia.

Captain America exists.  Maybe he has changed, or maybe we look at him differently now.  Perhaps this is why your little friends think he isn’t real.  Maybe Steve Rogers thinks Captain America isn’t real either.  Maybe for all of us, just like for him, the important part isn’t the dreams we have, but what the world looks like when we wake up.

____________
The illustration for this post is by editor Noah Berlatsky’s 9-year-old son.
 

Utilitarian Review 9/14/12

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The Wire: Now a Victorian Novel Near You

Longtime blog readers probably remember Joy DeLyria and Sean Michael Robinson’s post reimagining the Wire as a Victorian novel. Well, it’s now a book available on Amazon. Congrats to them both! (And you can read my interview with them at the Atlantic here.)

On its release, Laura Miller at Salon published an interesting piece about the Wire’s relationship to Victorian literature. I’ve reproduced my brief comment below:

Hey Laura. I like a lot of your insights in this review…but the odd thing is, most of them are also insights expressed in the book you’re reviewing. Sean and Joy spend a lot of time talking about how the Wire is *not* like Dickens, and they reference many of your points. That is, they talk about how the Wire wasn’t popular, how it’s pacing if very different form Dickens, how it treats character differently, etc. It even talks about how the visuals affect the storytelling…and suggests that, for example, illustrations at the time for readers were much more important than they are now in our reprinting/rereading.

Again, I don’t think you’re wrong. But it does seem to me that anyone who is interested in the issues raised by this essay would probably also like the book, which explores most of them in greater depth.

TCJ Gets Into Hatefest

Tim Hodler at tcj.com has some interesting thoughts about Suat’s EC comics takedown. (Part of Tim’s contractual obligations as TCJ editor include periodically expressing disdain for HU comments threads, so I was pleased to see him get the chance to do his duty. All in the spirit of hatefest, of course! UPDATE: Tim actually removed the comment about the comments from the post, which is why you won’t see it if you go over there.)

It’s interesting that Tim says he would have “happily published” Suat’s article today if it had been submitted to him. I don’t have any reason to doubt him…but at the same time, it does rather highlight the fact that Suat’s piece would I think be at least somewhat out of place at tcj.com as it seems to have developed under Tim’s tenure (and Dan Nadel’s.) I certainly haven’t read everything published at TCJ over their run, but…has there been any contrarian reassesment of any canonical or semi-canonical figures since they’ve taken the reins? My impression (not changed by Tim’s defense of EC) is that the magazine under their editorship is fairly comfortable with the comics canon, and sees its mission more as appreciation and advocacy of the greats, rather than as pushing alternate narratives.

On HU

…and finally we’ve got this week’s posts.

Our hatefest is still in full swing, and you can check out our index of posts here.

Featured Archive Post: Tom Crippen provides an archive of the work of Robert Binks.

Derik Baman on Dragonlance and the evil ochre jelly of nostalgia.

Steven Grant, on searching for bad comics and finding interesting ones.

Kim Thompson on Spirou and Fantasio, caricature, and racism (or the lack thereof.)

Jason Thompson on why Craig Thompson’s Habibi, Natsume Ono, and Osama Tezuka are all overrated.

Jason Overby presents every Johnny Ryan parody ever.

Ng Suat tong on why EC Comics aren’t so great (and R. Fiore debates him.)

Steven Grant on the crappification of comics, and why it’s still a good industry to work in for many folks.

Mahendra Singh destroys Western Civilization.

Richard Cook on how the X-Men Onslaught crossover cured him of superhero comics.

Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Atlantic I reviewed the documentary “After Porn Ends”, about what porn stars do after they leave the industry.

At the Center for Digital Ethics, of all places, I discuss the ethics of allowing anonymous comments online.

At the Chicago Reader I report on the Seminary Co-op bookstore moving its digs.

Also at the Reader I urge folks to buy Lilli Carre’s upcoming book.

And finally at the Reader I tell people to go to the upcoming Afterimage show, which looks at connections between Imagists and current Chicago artists like Paul Nudd, Edra Soto, Lilli Carre, and more.

At Splice Today I talk about rewatching Raiders of the Lost Ark with my son and discovering that it is terrible.

At Splice I argue that the Chicago teachers should have struck a long time ago.

At Splice I review Immolation’s Dawn of Possession and compare death metal to Gerard Manley Hopkins.

At Splice I talk about how the campaign has shown us what Romney is made of.
Other Links

James Romberger interviews Gary Panter.

Robert Stanley Martin with a brutal review of Drive.

Thomas Frank on Obama squandering his first term.

This Week’s Reading

I finished Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Poems, which were sort of disappointing; read Ralph Ellison’s amazing book of essays Shadow and Act, read a few Gerard Manley Hopkins poems, started rereading Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and started From the Closet to the Altar by Michael Klarman for a review.

To Make A Long Story . . . Long

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People like long stories.  More than that, they seem to like stories that last a long time.

They also like short stories, and stories that take a short time, but people like massively long stories so much that sometimes they make the short stories into longer stories, which keep going, and going, and sequelling and sequelling, and rebooting and rebooting, and fanfictioning and publishing fanfictioning, ad infinitum.

As the rebooting and fanfictioning testify, it’s not necessarily the plots that people want to continue endlessly—or perhaps plots just aren’t sustainable over decades (centuries, in some cases) being discrete units, usually.  It’s the characters people want to live with, and the universes people want to live in.  They don’t just want to find out what happens next.  They want it to last.

Over time we have developed many, many ways in which to extend the life of universes and characters.  Those stories that are created with the intent to be lengthy, however, usually come in three main forms: the episodic narrative, the serial narrative, and—well, for lack of a better term—the episodic serial.

First, let’s get some definitions out of the way.  When talking about television, we use “episodic narrative” to refer to those programs in which entire plots are contained within an episode, and we use “serial narrative” to refer to those programs in which plots are comprised by multiple episodes, seasons, or the entire series.  Episodic narratives include I Love Lucy and M*A*S*H; serial narratives include The Wire and Deadwood. The main differentiation is continuity; you don’t have to see previous episodes of I Love Lucy to understand the plot of an episode; to fully understand an episode of The Wire, you need to see at least several episodes—and, for complete understanding, the entire series.

<“Episodic serial” refers to an amalgamation of the two; episodic serials may contain an A plot that is wrapped up by the end of the episode, with elements referring to the B plot, which lasts as long as the season or series.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a good example; some episodes contain the so-called “Monsters of the Week,” which are defeated by the episode’s end, but often bear some connection to the “Big Bad”—the villain Our Heroes spend the season fighting.  This means that you can watch an episode of Buffy and understand most of what is going on, but you wouldn’t get the whole picture unless you watch a whole season.

Although these days these terms are generally used to refer to television, we have always had all three forms throughout the history of narrative—though rather than three distinct forms, there has usually been a spectrum between serial and episodic.  Different societies and the media used to convey narrative have often favored one end of the spectrum or the other, often shifting fluidly from one end to the other and back again over time.  These shifts, rather than marked by changes in preferences or changing ideas regarding the quality of either form, seem mostly marked by the two factors that shift everything: money and technology.

Oral tradition contained all three forms, but the most prevalent fall on the episodic end of the spectrum.  This is most likely due to ease of memory.  Episodic narratives keep a constant universe and characters (and sometimes tone), but do not require memory of plot.  While serial narratives were (and are) common in oral tradition, it seems less likely that there were as many.  You can still add to an oral serial narrative, which is the beauty of it—you can make it last as long as you want.  However, you have to juggle lots of threads, if you want to write the next episode of The Iliad.  The next myth in which Zeus Gets Laid Again, not so much.  Without the technology of movable print, the narrative form that was easiest to recreate from memory was the one that was most common.

Movable type, invented in China in the eleventh century C.E., made works easier to reproduce, but it was still a pain.  As a result, many of the texts written after movable type and before the printing press are still episodic.  For both those using labor-intensive movable type, and those copying—rewriting, passing around, copying again, dictating, and rewriting again—works initially produced by hand, an episodic text would feel more manageable.  You don’t need every segment to make the story “work,” you could just distribute the segments you preferred, depending on your agenda, or only copy down the ones you thought worthwhile.  Again, it all comes down to ease.  In this case, it’s not that episodic narratives are easy to memorize, but they’re easier to produce.

With Gutenburg’s invention of the printing press, it was possible to get a long narrative, in its entirety, into someone’s hands with relative ease.  And thus marks a strange kind of bubble in the serial-episodic spectrum—because this is a strange kind of bubble in the history of Making Stories Last (A Long Time).

Works before the printing press, from The Iliad to The Canterbury Tales, were all stories produced and distributed over time.  Many of them could be added to—either by readers or the original authors.  The Tale of Genji, written over three hundred years before Canterbury Tales, and argued by some to be the first novel, was written by installments as the author distributed the stories at court; The Canterbury Tales were likely distributed a tale at a time.

While post-printing press romances or epics like Le Morte d’Arthur and two centuries later, Paradise Lost, are a lot more episodic than modern novels—or indeed, Enlightenment era novels—they were still published as single volumes.  Within, they were split into “books,” but they could all be read at once (if that’s even possible).  The intent was that they be sold at once.

So, while it can be argued that these works fall somewhere on the spectrum between serial and episodic, the works themselves mark a departure in the amount of time the consumer spends in the universe and with the characters.  A consumer may spend just as long inside the work, if she desires to do so; it certainly can be argued that these works are just as lengthy as many narratives produced before.  However, the consumer is not forced, as she once was, to wait (aka Make It Last).

The bubble burst with the invention of the steam press at the beginning of the nineteenth century.  The steam press allowed for quicker, cheaper printing, and the invention marked the newspaper boom.  Before this time, the printing press had certainly allowed for a democratization of knowledge, just like all our textbooks say.  Still, a book was a relatively large expenditure—and not the most practical one, as compared to say, a loaf of bread.  And in the past fifty years or so before the steam press, publishers were thinking up the genius scheme to “divide books for publication”—making one book three times as expensive, by splitting it into three volumes.

Newspapers, however, were cheap, and people who couldn’t afford books could often afford newspapers for a narrative fix.  Thereby, newspapers allowed for a revival of a time honored tradition: making you wait for your stories.  It began with episodic stories, probably due to the uncertainty in the early days of the newspaper boom—would this newspaper last?  Would people pick it up, and try a new one the next day, or would it earn a loyal following?  Could a serial narrative really work in this format?

Dickens’ first novel, The Pickwick Papers, isn’t actually really a novel.  It’s a series of shorts about a group of characters, set in a particular universe.  When it proved to be popular, publishers decided they could make money off of it by compiling the stories and selling them as a book.  Probably a three volume set.

As Dickens and episodic narrative-constructing contemporaries gained in popularity, and some newspapers stabilized, the serial form took a firmer hold in the Victorian era.  Most scholars mark a turning point between Dickens’ episodically structured novels and his serially structured ones; the serially structured ones still have distinct installments, but they also have tighter plots that depend on continuity to drive the plot forward.  Many of the most famous Victorian novels were written in installments, for which the Victorian audience had to wait.  Only later were these novels bound and sold in volume form.

By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the serial novel was going out of fashion.  One reason may have been continued improvements to presses, which allowed novels to be cheaper and cheaper.  Perhaps publishers realized they could sell more novels by producing works in one of volume and just demanding that they be shorter (Henry James didn’t listen).  Perhaps people decided following a story in a newspaper was too difficult—and yet, while the evolution of modern novels spelled the end of serial novels, it didn’t spell the end of Making It Last.

Newspapers, after all, were still in production, and concurrently with the growth of the single volume novel we know and love today, came the rise of comic strips.  Comics had always existed, of course, in various forms; some scholars would argue they existed before the written word.  However, the nineteenth century newspaper boom caused the comic to take great leaps in terms of both commentary and story-telling, and by the turn of the century, we had the antecedents to what we know today as the Sunday funnies.  Eventually—sort of like Dickens’ stories—strips were combined into books and sold as volumes.

As the serial novel started dying out and comic books started rising up, another medium that is engineered to Make It Last was on the rise—radio.  Radio had both episodic and serial forms, and episodic serial forms, but when we traded it for television, narrative went mostly episodic.

The first television shows were televised plays, but once the technology evolved, and a lot of the middle class and up had them in their homes, people were getting Lassie, Leave It To Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show.  Continuity on these shows would have been impractical, because unlike a newspaper, people couldn’t just pick it up and put it down.  No one was going to stop their day every day at five to watch a program on television, producers thought, so most consumers couldn’t “follow along.”

Then, instead of television shows being produced live, they were recorded, and there could be reruns, and then reruns began to show in syndication.  This made a little more continuity possible, because people could catch up with stories in reruns during hiatuses—or even enjoy the show the whole way through after its initial run on television, even if producers weren’t exactly writing to that possibility.

Next came the VCR, and suddenly people could tape things off television.  We start getting shows like The X-Files and later, Buffy—no longer episodic.  Serial episodic.

With the invention of the DVD, though, there’s another paradigm shift.  Suddenly, it’s possible to do an eighty episode show on HBO that is just as reliant—some would argue more so—on continuity as some of Dickens’ later works.  These suckers basically almost work like eighty hour movies, because you can go buy the whole set for fifty bucks—and isn’t that kind of just like Guttenburg; before, things are doled out in these small pieces, and then whammo—I can get all of The Wire and I can buy Paradise Lost right off the shelves.

Of course, there are a lot more threads to this, because there are a lot more media than books and television, and a lot of things going on in those media in particular.  Why the serial narrative torch was mostly carried by comic books, and was completely dropped by serial novels, for a large part of the twentieth century is a mystery.  While—since their emergence—comic books have always dwelt on a myriad of subject matter, it’s also a mystery as to why the superhero genre became so popular in the United States, when it was less so, for instance, in Japan.  There are no doubt cultural reasons, as well as coincidences of timing and circumstance—and, as always—technology and money.

While comic books have always been popular in the United States, in Japan, manga emerged as a prevalent media outlet.  From that emerged anime, which was making serial narrative a long time before HBO.  As for American television, there have also been soap operas longer than there has been shows like The Wire, and soaps are for more reliant on serial structure.  The reason for soaps probably has to do with audience.  The target audience was a group that could be in the same time, same place every day, so they evolved on a different arc than much of the rest of narrative television.

Though shifts in preferences along the serial-episodic narrative spectrum seem motivated by money and technology, the undercurrent to all of it could be something deeper (or it could be the same thing, really).  It’s all about Making It Last versus Getting It Now.

With Gutenburg’s invention, humans all seemed pretty happy with Getting It Now, and yet the first thing they did with the steam press was Make It Last.  This was motivated by money, as I described—people who could not afford novels could afford newspapers.  And yet, many people who could afford novels were reading serial installments in the papers—and then going to the extra extravagance of buying the book after it was all done.

These days, we watch the whole show as it airs and then go buy it on DVD.  Maybe we do this because serial installments and daily programming are just the way it’s done.  The first thing we did with television, after all, was Make It Last, but again, as I said, that seemed to be motivated by marketing decisions, and what technology made possible.  After all, I, for one, don’t prefer watching television week to week.  I would always just rather watch a whole show on DVD; I’m a Get It Now sort of person.

However, the Victorian style serial novel died out.  Our novels became lean, and along with Hemingway, quite mean (in the sense of lacking excess; Hemingway is only sometimes unkind).  Now that it is so easy to get a longer story on DVD, does that mean our television shows will become leaner—more like novels, or like movies?

The internet is our newest technology, and what are people doing with it, but writing Facebook and Twitter novels?  Oh, sure, people are doing all sort of things with it—they’re serially blogging, and breaking things up into installments so that they’re easier to read day to day, and Twitter novels don’t seem to have much at all to do with money or how to rope in a consumer to buy a higher volume of products.  They seem to be about wanting to spread things out, Make It Last.

After all, despite the economic reasons behind Making It Last for the consumer, there are plenty of narrative points in its favor.  Victorian novels are famous for their length and wandering pace, but their method of distribution made it possible to lay out a hundred different threads.  With each installment, these threads could slowly be picked one at a time, or put down, tied together with another thread, or unraveled a bit at a time (or dropped completely, as sometimes happens).

There seems to be no room for that, in many modern novels.  There is very little room for people sitting around talking; there is very little room for mutants sitting in the mansion talking about how life sucks.  There is very little room for Xander to go on his own adventure while Buffy, Willow, and Giles try to save the world, thanks.  There may be room, in a blogged novel, to do these things.  (I’m still not sure about Twitter, though.  There doesn’t seem to be room for anything.  Even this parenthetical is probably too long.)

Of course, there’s no way to draw any absolute, causal conclusions about the kind of narrative people want.  They want all kinds; when they Get It Now, they want to Make It Last.  When they get episodic, they want serial.  All of these different elements are in such a mish-mash of what is possible with current media, that in the end, it always seems to me that writers and creators are always going to find a way to do something different with it.

And publishers and producers are always going to find a way to make money off it.

On the Evils of Speculative Fiction

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On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, et al.

Here’s the problem with fiction. In fiction, there is evil. “It’s actual, like cement” (Philip K Dick, The Man In The High Castle).

Take Lord of the Rings. The premise of the trilogy is that ring is evil. Galadriel could try to use it for good; so could Boromir; it would corrupt them. The end. Sauron is irrevocably corrupted. There is nothing redeemable about him; there is no good left in him. The ring is evil and will inevitably turn you evil; there’s no question in the readers’ mind that it should be destroyed.

You can’t ever have that in real life. There is nothing that can turn you irrevocably evil, and no person who is pure evil. You can posit that there are sociopaths who don’t have . . . whatever you want to call it: a moral compass, human empathy, remorse, a soul.  For the sake of argument, let us refer to the “soul,” with the understanding that it may not be a physical or even a mystical property. We may be simply referring to an idea that we impose upon our biological impulses and evolutionary development, an abstract that is an aspect of the larger abstract we call our consciousness or sapience, which allows society as we know it to exist.

“Evil” generally refers to those which lack this quality—“evil” people lack a conscience, compassion, or the ability to buy into the contract of human society.  But even if those people exist, we can never say for certain who is one.  Those who believe in the death penalty may say, “this person deserves to die,” and almost all of us may agree, “that person cannot function in society,” but none of us can actually look inside another human being and see if that thing, the soul, exists—not in the least because we don’t know what that thing is.

In fiction, however, you begin with a premise, and the reader assumes the premise is true for the universe of that story. The author can start with the premise that there is God, which means God exists in that universe. The author (not necessarily the narrator, who can’t always be trusted) can tell us there is evil, and there is. It is a fact of that universe, the way the existence of magic is a fact of Harry Potter’s world, the way vampires are a fact of Buffy’s, the way hobbits are a fact of Middle Earth.

 

This used to be what interested me about speculative fiction; it could be black and white.  Lord of the Rings was not meant to be ambiguous. It is meant as an exploration of archetypes, of the heroic saga, of myth and religion. The premise that evil exists is a very simple and common basis for millions of stories.

And although it will never be like that in the real world, maybe that oh-so-clear delineation will help us make distinctions in real life. Maybe we can use stories like Lord of the Rings, where the evil is recognizable, to more easily see it in our real lives. Maybe we can use that story to understand that power can corrupt, that even the best of intentions can go awry. Maybe when we feel temptation towards a thing we are more likely to stop and consider whether there is evil in it.

I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for this reason.

I was in college and I had a horrible time there. I had few friends and I was very lonely, and I couldn’t read what I wanted because I had to read for class, and all of it was this Madam Bovary bullshit (sorry, Bovary fans) where everyone was morally reprehensible and I just hated everyone.  The world then seemed gray, and what I really wanted was Lord of the Rings or Star Wars—black and white. Or even Independence Day. What I really wanted was to feel comfortable hating something, vampires or aliens or what have you, something I didn’t have to question.

Hello, Buffy. I remember thinking the first few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer—the first time you see a vamp’s face go bumpy, the first time Giles said that the person inside was dead when you became a vampire, the first time Buffy explained vampires were just demons—that this was exactly what I needed.

The premise of Buffy… in the beginning is that vampires are evil. It’s a fact of the universe, like the evil of the ring is of Lord of the Rings, like superpowers are in superhero comics, like vampires exist. It’s black and white. Good and evil. Old fashioned ass kicking.

And then morally gray stepped onto the scene.

Angel provides the morally gray, where not everyone who is a vampire is evil and should be killed. Angel proves that vampires aren’t just demons, with no vestige left of the human that inhabited the body. Angel proves that vampires are the evil in us all.

Angel asks the question of who we are and what we are capable of. Angel is the temptation toward evil, and also the love and hope that holds us from the brink of it. Angel plays the role of both Gollum and Frodo.  (Except he’s taller.  And wears a swirly coat.)

And yet, as with Lord of the Rings, black and white can be pretty firmly delineated when it comes to Angel—or at least, Joss Whedon, the writers, to some extent the text would like us to believe that. Angel has a “soul.” That’s why he’s different from other vampires. The other vampires are still evil and should be killed—no moral conundrum there.

We, the viewers, are familiar with the word “soul”, and so immediately define “soul” as compassion, conscience, what it takes to be functional in society, etc—however we have defined that word in the past.  As for how the soul is defined by the show, the only working definition we are given is “power of choice.”

Once Angel loses his soul, the implication is that he is incapable of behaving any other way than evil, or that he is capable but does not desire it. When Angel does have the soul, he still has the same evil impulses, but he desires to be a better man, and is capable of behaving as one. Therefore, the one definable thing that has been taken away from him is the desire or ability to act differently—the ability to choose.

Therefore, according to the premise of this universe, the soul includes the mechanism by which we choose. Vampires cannot choose to behave as they would if they did have that thing—the soul. And without that thing, they are evil. It is morally acceptable, even necessary, for Buffy to slay them. It’s the premise of the story. The show has given us what appears to be black and white to work with.

Enter Spike.

At the end of season six, Spike goes to Africa and earns his soul back.  Later, the show suggests that he did not choose to get a soul, that he thought he was getting a chip in his brain removed when he went to Africa. The text does allow for the possibility of this, and in doing so, the text is allowing for a vindication of Buffy, Angel, and the fact of black and white.

I.e., if Spike doesn’t choose to get his soul back, we accept the premise that was given to us by the creators of this universe: vampires cannot choose. Angelus cannot choose to be a good man, which exonerates Angel for Angelus’s (soulless Angel’s) behavior. We can also exonerate Buffy for slaying all those vampires.

But if Spike did choose to get his soul back, the metaphysics of this universe are actually different than we have been led to believe. If Spike can make the choice to earn his soul, then the definition of soul is not choice. It means any vampire can choose.

Yes, Spike had special circumstances. Yes, Spike’s a special guy. He’s a unique and beautiful snowflake and his love for Buffy is epic and pure. Maybe he’s the only vampire in the history of ever who would ever choose to earn his soul. But the point is, if Spike chose, then the premise of the universe does not include the fact that a vampire can’t choose. And if a vampire can choose, he can have a soul. And if he has a soul, he’s not evil—by the laws of this universe.

Where this really gets ambiguous is Buffy. If Spike did choose his soul, then the viewer doesn’t know what vampires are capable of either, or why they are the way they are. There is not metaphysical fact given by the premise of the show about what a vampire really is, what a soul really means, what a vampire is capable of. Because those facts are not given to use by the authors of this universe, we know no more about vampires in this universe than we do about human beings in our own. How, then, are vampires different than human beings?  Does this make Buffy a murderer?  What do we with vampires?  Is slayage the only option?
What I would have appreciated from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is those questions being asked.

I’m not condemning Buffy Summers. Vampires rape murder pillage kill and eat the babies, and those are evil things. And for the most part, vampires are not Spike; they will not choose to earn back their souls. Also, they need blood to live.  This, uh, is how they are different than human beings, and personally I have no idea whether murder would be a better answer than letting serial killer terrorists run amok. What I want is not for the show to tell us Buffy is wrong, but for that question to be asked.

The show does ask plenty of times if Buffy is wrong, but it’s never about slaying vampires. The problem is that the evil of vampires was the premise, remember? The story isn’t really about the villains, except for the exceptions that prove the rule.

Instead, this story was supposed to be a story about humanity, humanity struggling in the face of adversity, an undefeatable foe: evil. Lord of the Rings is not about whether the ring should be destroyed; the readers know, and Frodo knows: it must be destroyed. What the story is about is about how difficult it can be to do the things we know must be done; how much we long to give in. Doubt lies not in the duty itself, but in our ability to carry out the duty.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, slaying is supposed to be the same way. We’re never supposed to doubt that someone must slay. We are only meant to empathize that the call of slaying must lie with her, the sacrifices she must make in order to do it.

That’s why the writers/creators made Spike’s “choice” ambiguous. They did not want to deal with the consequences of changing the entire premise of the show. They did not want to go back and question every single thing Buffy had ever done, every vampire that died at her hands. They did not want to go through the trouble of really defining “soul”, or tear down everything they had built with Angel. They didn’t want to sully their black and white.

Who would? That would be a lot of work.

Battlestar Galactica, that’s who. Maybe the creators planned from the beginning to make us question whether the destruction of Cylons is actually murder. If they did, they didn’t quite let the viewers in on it from the beginning. (Even though the Cylons, er, “had a plan.”)

The premise for the show in the beginning, despite the Cylons’ pretensions to godliness, is that the robots are evil. This makes sense instinctively, because instinctively we feel that robots are soulless. When we talk about “soul” we’re talking about humanity. Even if we think of it as biological fact, as I do when I say that it’s an idea applied to biological and evolutionary impulses—well, robots aren’t biologic, and didn’t evolve. Robots don’t have souls. Robots are evil. It’s a fact.

Boomer, of course, is the initial exception; she is a Cylon, a robot, but she isn’t like the rest. All the other robots killed all the rest of humanity, but Boomer wasn’t a part of that. She doesn’t know she’s a robot; she feels like a human. That makes her different.

If this seems like twisted reasoning, it is. It’s also fairly typical. The recipe for your awesome Good Versus Evil fiction is to have a Big Bad, and then a Big Bad’s Henchman or Turncoat who provides the morally gray. Gollum, Darth Vader, Snape and/or Draco, Angel.  I could go on, but really I’m working with the broadest of broad references, here.

We recognize the truths Gollum and Angel gives us—evil is not in just some entity completely outside ourselves. It is within us all. Luke could become Anakin, if he did not resist at the crucial moment. Frodo can become Gollum; Harry can become Voldemort, and we could all be Boomer. What we must do is use our “soul” to resist the force of evil.

But over the course of the series, Battlestar Galactica becomes less and less about resistance, and more and more about understanding the Cylons. The Cylons almost destroying the human race, then hunting them down, then enslaving them in order to live peaceably with them, then sequestering themselves away from them, then returning to work together to find an Earth we can live on in peace is very much how more than one race of humans has behaved in the past.

And somewhere along the line, we have to ask that question again: what separates us from them? We assume at the beginning of the series that humans have a soul and the robots don’t, but as the pieces unfold, it becomes clear that nothing is so clear. We still don’t know what a soul is; we don’t know how to say who has one. We don’t know what evil is, or if it exists. The creators of this universe does not make evil the premise of this universe—or, actually, they did, and tore it down, revealing that absolutist constructs are part of the problem.

What juxtaposing these two shows against each other does for me is show something lots of mainstream speculative fiction does—even somewhat laudable fantasy, such as Buffy—versus what almost no mainstream speculative fiction does—except Battlestar Galactica, and other key exceptions.  A lot of mainstream speculative fiction these days is constructing morally absolute circumstances, waving a hazy hand that suggests there might be morally gray somewhere, and in the end, the bad guys die, the good guys win, the end.

Of course, I am using the term “mainstream” loosely.  The most popular show on television is still (I think?) American Idol—which, I suppose, one can argue broaches all kinds of questions about morality and evil, but frankly I’m not equipped to approach such questions.  And speculative fiction has always had a very large corner on addressing questions about moral absolutism and relativism, the definition of humanity, the composition of the soul and the quality of mercy—and the very best of speculative fiction does so very well.

However, it is impossible to deny that even just the last decade or so has seen a remarkable increase in popularity of speculative fiction, which is noticeable in particular on television and the big screen.  As a fan of speculative fiction myself, I’m pretty happy about this, but find myself considerably disappointed by the handling of questions that are so often central to speculative fiction.

We could talk now about the moral obligation of art, but I do think a purpose is served through beauty. Beauty can make as much a difference in someone’s life as asking them to question can. Sometimes, beauty itself is purpose enough; asking beauty to serve any other purpose than to be beautiful misses the one truth we know for certain above all in this existence. We don’t know why we’re here, or what we should do, but we know this truth, and it is both heart-rending and full of joy: we are.

The model of good versus evil in literature isn’t wrong. It seems that there is a tradition in literature, of which the Christian Bible is just one element, of this good versus evil, black and white, Joseph Campbell’s heroic journey. Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are purposeful reflections on this tradition, explorations of an essential story which resonates deeply within us all, or said story would not have survived so long. Exploring this tradition and continuing to riff on it is vital, I think.

But I also think it is vital to question this tradition, and to find out with what inside us it resonates. There are stories which use the binary model and then break it, and we need those stories too.

Of course, there are plenty of stories that don’t even reference that model. All modern literature has gone morally gray. Hello Madam Bovary; where have you been?  Post-modern literature is even more bleak than modern, and no doubt contemporary literature is even more bleak than when I was reading Flaubert. But I think there’s something to be said for stories that set up the binary and then proceed to tear it down, especially now, because of the preponderance of the binary—not just in literature, but in current thinking, politically and culturally.

We all long for some form of escape, from time to time, and for some of us that means absolutism, or worlds where evil is actual, like cement.  There are some very loud voices saying, “No, you have it all wrong!” to those who would apply such absolutism to our world.  At times it can be more effective—both in literature and real life—to say, instead of, “That world does not exist”—

“We live in your world full of cement.  We walk upon it; we live within it; we eat it; we breathe it.  I understand it as you do, and yet, of a yellow evening, walking down the street, there’s a strange taste in my mouth—it tastes like dust.  I eat dust.  I live dust; I walk on dust, and look down to find that the cement is a fine powder, and I have breathed it in, and so have you.  And then I look around me, and see that the world of cement doesn’t exist at all.”

It never did.

I, Reboot

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Most of us can generally agree that the treatment of women in fiction of the 1960s or earlier was by no means sublime.  Consider Lieutenant Uhura, of Star Trek, The Original Series, a Communications Officer aboard the bridge of the starship Enterprise.  Traipsing about the bridge in a short, short skirt, she contributed to the exploration of space by answering the phone and relaying messages.  Consider Barbara Gordon of the Batman comics, a part-time librarian in a skin-tight costume, who carried most of her arsenal in a handy batpurse.

 

It would be a mistake to consider these narratives, however, without the context of their time period.  While they might be offensive to some today, these female characters are progressive for their time in terms of what roles women play.  Uhura was hugely significant, because she was an officer who had a job that involved more technology and know-how than making coffee; Barbara Gordon was one of the first female action heroes who acted on her own.

 

It’s relatively easy to compare social values of the sixties and of the current decade, and conclude that the position of women has significantly changed.  What remains unclear is whether current treatment of women in fiction has improved proportionately.  Reboots, meanwhile, provide the unique opportunity to directly compare the treatment of those values in narrative while taking into account the context of changed social environment.  By taking the same story and telling it in two different time periods, one can easily juxtapose the treatment of values against said time periods.

 

Obviously, reboots often neglect to take advantage of these opportunities, recapitulating the social environment of the past instead of offering commentary on it, or updating it to reflect modern times.  Perhaps this is one reason why the recent boom in reboots, reimaginings, sequels, etc, is seen as stale and unimaginative.  In these reboots, the position of women relative to “current” society is exactly the same as it was fifty years ago.

 

However, there are some reboots in which the changed role of women in the narrative is not merely a recapitulation, but actually seems to be a regression.  That is, not only has the treatment of women in narrative not improved proportionately to the changed role of women in society; some of these reboots would seem significantly behind their source texts even in the sixties.  Christopher Nolan’s Batman reboot, J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, and to some extent Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who sequels and Sherlock Holmes re-imaging in some respects make female characters of the sixties sometimes look damn good.

 

Certainly, it is questionable to suit up hot girls in latex and show off their bodies as they fight crime, and certainly it is objectionable that a gal in a short skirt is a glorified secretary on a show about the future.  The reboots in question remove all that pseudo-feminism by portraying ladies as love interests and lawyers, while men retain their careers of kicking ass and fighting crime with superpowers.  The reboots remove those icky questions of motivation—in which girls only act because they’re daughters/mothers/lovers or because some guy tells them to—by simply removing female agency altogether.  In some of them—instead of females being somewhat questionable representations of the feminist progressive movement—females barely exist at all.

 

Nolan’s Batman reboot is perhaps the most radical repositioning of the female in narrative relative to its source text.  Although Batman’s early forms can be read as male-centric, there is no denying the place of Barbara Gordon as Batgirl in the overall Batman narrative.  Plenty of iterations of Batman, however, do not include Barbara, just as several do not include Robin.  Barbara’s exclusion in these iterations can be seen less as a commentary on her position in the narrative, and rather as subjection to the extreme complexity of the overall Batman story.  There are enough supplemental characters that it is difficult to include them all in any single retelling.

 

However, Nolan’s rendition is particularly interesting due to the heavy emphasis on men, particularly the relationships between fathers and sons.  Martha Wayne, Bruce Wayne’s mother, appears in several scenes, but has no lines.  Her impact on Bruce (and the film) is negligible in comparison to Thomas Wayne, Bruce’s father.  While the role is small, Thomas Wayne colors Batman Begins, establishing the father figure trope and demanding that it be filled in that character’s absence.  Thomas is of course replaced by R’as al Ghul, and when Bruce returns to Gotham, father figures are filled by Alfred, Jim Gordon, and Lucius Fox, with varying degrees of reproof and complicity.  Never is there the suggestion that any of R’as al Ghul’s daughters could possibly show up to ruin the neat pattern-making of prodigal sons and disapproving fathers, because the one significant woman in these films is Rachel Dawes.

 

As a feisty lawyer-type, Rachel Dawes not only suggests that women can have careers, but that they may have an active position in the plot, able to help Batman put away the criminals he catches.  While some might argue that this is progressive, this statement is little different than what Superman suggested even in the 1940s.  In short, Dawes is a rehash of characters such as Lois Lane, Vicky Vale, or oh, even say April O’Neil.  The only new social commentary is in Dawes’ profession as a lawyer, rather than a reporter, which suggests that women can take on still more varied careers, but still, this hardly seems as progressive as Barbara Gordon insofar as the role of women in today’s society.  After all, Barbara Gordon became a vigilante independent of Batman; there is no suggestion whatsoever that Dawes could possibly sustain her own narrative.

 

Nolan’s reboot more directly fails in regard to feminism in The Dark Knight, when Dawes dies.  This is Dawes’ most significant action; it is the crux that instigates all further action.  Her death causes Two-Face to emerge, and Batman to realize that his hopes of legitimate justice are inherently flawed.

 

The idea that a woman’s single greatest strength is self-sacrifice is a common trope in narrative.  It seems to fit in nicely with the idea that a woman’s only strength lies in the help, support, and nurturing of menfolk.  Giving of self is a strength many women do have, and take pleasure in actively offering; however, this is not their only possible form of action.  Self-sacrifice is often portrayed as the ultimate nurturing action (see The Giving Tree) and thus the ultimate strength (see Sucker Punch); a female sacrifices all of her agency so that others may have it.

 

The Dark Knight, however, presents a much less active role; in The Dark Knight, it is not active self-sacrifice but rather passive death that forms the crux of all the rest of the action.  In fact, it is the very passivity of the death that motivates Harvey Dent.  She didn’t have a choice; it was all due to chance: the death of a perfect innocent.  Her earlier fumblings towards agency are thus redeemed; any specters of latex or objectified ass-kicking are thus removed.  In the context of the film, of course, it is a perfect tragedy.  In the context of this male-centric universe, juxtaposed the Batman narrative of the 1960s, however, it is—well.  Still a tragedy.

 

The complete eradication of Barbara Gordon occurs during the climax of the arc of Jim Gordon, police commissioner and traditionally, the father of Barbara Gordon.  Towards the end of The Dark Knight, Two-Face threatens the person Jim “loves most.”  Jim says, “Don’t hurt my family,” and Two-Face reiterates he will only harm the person Jim, “loves most.”  Two-Face chooses not Jim’s wife or daughter, but Jim’s son.  In spotlighting Gordon’s son—however briefly—at the expense of wife or daughter, the film narrowly avoids reference to any possible suggestion of Barbara Gordon and that whole feminist problem that she presents.

 

Canonically, Jim Gordon does have a son (or two), but his daughter Barbara has always been far more important to the Batman narrative.  It’s true that this scene attempts to parallel Rachel Dawes and James Gordon Jr, thus demonstrating that not only females, but children also, may passively die to instigate action.  However, I really admire the manly resistance to even throw fans a bone in this scene by refusing to allow Jim’s daughter—who is present—a name or any lines.  Doing so makes it impossible for fans to draw parallels between Barbara Gordon and Rachel Dawes, which might have resulted in the disastrous suggestion that girls are not bright shining forces of integrity, but may be morally questionable also.

 

Abrams’ recent Star Trek does not manage to avoid these issues quite so neatly.  The role of Uhura is significantly expanded in the reboot, as opposed to The Original Series, which gives us more time to question the treatment of female identity.  Disappointingly, said expansion is due not to an expansion of Uhura’s role on the Enterprise, but rather to her new position as a love interest.  Furthermore, in the source text, Captain Kirk’s various relationships with women showcases the show’s unwillingness to consummate the homoerotic overtones, and yet Kirk’s relationships never seem as serious or integral as the friendship between Kirk and Spock.  By providing the apparently sustained relationship between Uhura and Spock, the reboot further paints over the problematic issue of homosexuality.  The position of women aside, the reboot certainly reads as more heteronormative than The Original Series.

 

Uhura in The Original Series is never really treated as a love interest.  In one episode she falls for a man, in several, she has somewhat flirtatious conversations with Spock.  In another, Kirk kisses her, but the scene is appropriately problematized, because “aliens made them do it.”  Perhaps Uhura is never treated as a love interest due to her race, or perhaps she was never deemed important enough to “deserve” a romantic relationship.  However, she was a regular, important part of the crew and the show not because of any relationships she had, but because of her career, and that was significant at the time the show aired.

 

In some ways, it’s understandable that Uhura in the reboot is a love interest.  There are very few mainstream action and adventure narratives that don’t involve the central protagonists in some sort of romantic plot—though it is interesting to note that the ones that manage to avoid it tend to center around two male protagonists, complete with homoerotic overtones (see House, BBC’s Sherlock, Supernatural, and oh, anything without girls).  So maybe we can blame mainstream culture for its insistence on sexual overtones, without directly citing lack of feminist concern or insight for Uhura’s position.

 

After all, Uhura may not get to fight Nero, pilot a ship into a black hole, or participate in the climax of the film at all, but she does get to translate a Romulan message, which is somewhat pivotal to earlier action.  We also get to see a portrayal of determination, strength, and ambition when she demands that Spock change the roster so that she can go aboard the Enterprise.  The strength of this scene is somewhat negated by the fact that she uses her relationship with Spock in order to get ahead; however, it is possible that Spock did not initially place her on the Enterprise in order to protect her.  Thus Uhura’s demand is an insistence on not being treated like a delicate flower.

 

Overall, whether the role of the reboot Uhura is an improvement in terms of feminism on original Uhura is somewhat murky, both objectively and considering the context of the time periods.  Her position would be more clear if they had sacrificed her in a passive manner, as Nolan did with Rachel Dawes, and as Abrams does with Spock’s mother.  The death of Amanda Grayson, Spock’s mother, motivates Spock’s actions and furthers the plot; while it is a small point, the passive death of Nero’s wife also furthers the plot.  Nero, the villain, is a Romulan whose wife died when the star of Romulus went supernova; he is out to kill Spock for revenge.  Thus the central antagonist and one of the central protagonists act in response to women who were not seen to act themselves.

 

Kirk, meanwhile, is motivated by the death of his father.  His father, moreover, actively sacrificed himself to save his wife and child.  We have no idea what happened to Kirk’s mother, because after giving birth to him, she is no longer important to the narrative.  We also have no idea what happened to Number One, the woman who is canonically (according to The Original Series) second in command to Captain Pike.  She does not exist in the reboot.  One may assume that the alternate universe created by Nero’s intrusion on the timeline resulted not only in Kirk’s blue eyes, but the eradication of Number One.  This deletion conveniently removes concerns we may have had in The Original Series about her lack of a first name or Pike’s somewhat dismissive treatment of her in canon.  Without her existence, we need not be concerned with women in positions of leadership in Starfleet at all; there is nothing to cause us to question it or wonder.

 

Instead, there is Gaila: the green girl Kirk sleeps with in order to get codes to reprogram the Kobayshi Maru.  Considering her skin color, she is most likely an Orion, which—according to canon—is a kind of sex slave.  That she is in Starfleet at all is both progressive and problematic, similar to the original Uhura—or Tasha Yar, in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

 

Tasha Yar is the Chief Security Officer who spent her youth on the streets, avoiding “rape gangs.”  She is the 1990s commentary on the treatment of women, perhaps a reproach to The Original Series, which rarely showed women who could fight or wear pants.  Yar’s troubled past may have been an attempt to highlight her strengths as a warrior and survivor, but it fed into an unfortunate trope that women must overcome slavery, rape, or similar to be as tough as men.

 

Fortunately for the show, The Next Generation managed to eliminate the problem of portraying a warrior female with an icky past when the actress who played Yar demanded a larger part.  The show was left with females who portrayed their strengths through more nurturing functions (counseling and doctoring)—again, an important form of action, but not the only one of which a female is capable.  But because it was the main form of action for women on the show, The Next Generation in some ways seems a lot less progressive than its counterpart, The Orginal Series.

 

Gaila’s own history, however, is never addressed, as opposed to Tasha Yar’s.  Furthermore Kirk has sex with her in order to use her, thereby bringing all those issues that never achieved their full ick-capacity with Tasha Yar right up to the fore with Gaila.  The new Uhura receives a first name, which is more than the original Uhura or Number One ever got, though there is some question too as to whether those characters lacking a first name was somewhat progressive in its own way.  Gaila doesn’t have a name at all in the reboot; “Gaila” comes from a deleted scene.

 

Many other reboots besides these seem to not only lack progressive statements in comparison to modern times, but also in comparison to their previous iterations.  The new Doctor Who is not quite a reboot, since it takes previous canon into account, but it does provide the same sort of reflection on the previous series.

 

The central companions to the Doctor—all female—in the new Who kick a whole lot of ass, but I cannot help but notice that the first two, Rose and Martha, are both in love with the Doctor and seem to believe he can do little wrong.  While there is absolutely nothing wrong with being in love, the distinct power imbalance between the Doctor and, well, everyone else of his acquaintance, suggests that these infatuations are somewhat problematic.  The show, however, doesn’t problematize the power imbalance, only the fact that the Doctor apparently has feelings for Rose, but cannot be with her, and apparently doesn’t really have romantic feelings for Martha.

 

The next companion, Donna, is not in love with the Doctor, and seems positioned to critique his hubris and many, many questionable actions.  However, by the end of her arc she trusts the Doctor without reservation, and seems behind even his morally ambiguous behavior.  This, too, seems to highlight the power imbalance without asking any questions about it.

 

Donna’s arc ends powerfully; she essentially saves the world—but this she can only do by becoming the Doctor himself.  Because even the Doctor realizes the danger there being two of him prevents, he erases Donna’s memory completely, returning her to her former life as though he had never entered it.  This is particularly disturbing because Donna had very little motivation or agency before she met the Doctor; through her adventures with him, she found her strengths and gained some measure of power, even if it was only by means of the Doctor.  By leaving her with no memory of her experiences, Donna once again lacks confidence, and possibly continues the existence she later herself saw as shiftless and meaningless.

 

The Doctor’s most recent companion also begins in a similarly male-influenced, passive manner: as a little girl, Amy Pond meets the Doctor, and she’s obsessed with him ever since.  For two seasons, there is little to no reflection on the fact that Amy’s early beliefs and desires are influenced, even manipulated by a very powerful male authority; her later actions are all predicated upon the Doctor creating a strong impression on her as a child.

 

However, the most recent season expands the role of another female character, River Song, who—while somewhat problematic in her own right—is at last a female who at last can challenge the Doctor in terms of knowledge and power.  The recent season also problematizes Amy’s early relationship with the Doctor—which, for the sake of girls prevailed upon at an early age by male authority figures, is well.  Nice.

 

Hopefully Moffat’s next installment on BBC’s Sherlock will progress similarly.  Sherlock, unlike Doctor Who or Star Trek, is not a reboot of a 1960s narrative, but a reimagining of a late nineteeth century narrative; thus it is no surprise that women do not play large or progressive roles in the stories.  It’s that very lack that makes me wonder at the sudden boom in reboots, reimaginings, and retellings—after all, historical accuracy is not only a convenient, but sometimes a perfectly valid excuse for sexism.

 

Sherlock, however, is a modernized reinvention of Doyle’s stories.  Admittedly, the space for females in the structure of the narrative itself, not just the Victorian time period, is somewhat confining; there has never been a large cast in these stories.  We know characters like Moriarty, Mycroft, and Irene Adler well because so many variations on the stories exist, but canonically, they do not appear very often.  Irene Adler appears only once—though we may applaud reboots for her use and reuse as an attempt to bring a strong female into the narrative.  But if one remains close to canon, there are only two central heroes, John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, and sometimes a third, somewhat lesser protagonist, Inspector Lestrade.

 

However, there is absolutely no reason the issue could not have been addressed in a modern adaptation by merely changing the sex of one of the characters.  Lestrade could have been a girl; there is no reason, canonically or thematically, that Lestrade has to be a man.  One might argue that Moriarity and Mycroft must remain men, as they serve as mirrors to Sherlock, though there seems very little reason why—in a modern context—a woman can’t serve as a parallel character to a man.  Lastly, there is no reason Sherlock cannot be a girl.

 

Sherlock Holmes is a quintessentially male character, but it is not due to sexuality, or physical strength, or other qualities that society tell us are overtly masculine.  Instead, he is masculine due to his phenomenal intelligence and social ineptitude with other people.  There is absolutely no evidence or rationale behind the idea that these traits are inherently masculine, and yet there are few, if any, characters in most of literary or media western canon which are as overwhelmingly intelligent and cerebrally inaccessible as Sherlock Holmes, who are also women.

 

The one reboot I will mention in conclusion is, of course, Battlestar Galactica, which does change the sex of one of the original characters, and reimagines other roles with females to fulfill them.  The reimagined Starbuck is singular not only because she is played by a woman, but because she retains many of the “masculine” characteristics so central to the original character.  She smokes, she gambles, she gets in brawls.  She is not, however, merely a male character with breasts, some of her plots and concerns are considered by society feminine, and other plots and concerns could only happen to a woman.

 

That is not to say that the entirety of Starbuck’s arcs are shining examples of everything a female character should be in narrative.  On the contrary, some of her characterization—like latex and batpurses in the sixties—is a reflection of the deficiencies of our modern times: the not yet perfectly equal role of women in today’s society.  And yet, like Batgirl and the original Uhura were in the sixties, I would say the reboot Starbuck is progressive for her time.  Her role is to ask the questions; we provide the answers.

 

I’m actually not a huge fan of Batgirl.  And I really, really enjoy Nolan’s reboot of Batman, as problematic as it is.  When considering these narratives, however, it’s important to look beyond the diegesis to the context of the time period, and ask questions regarding the situation of social values within the world of the story.  It’s important to do so in the case of reboots and reimaginings in particular, because it is so easy to neglect context not only in favor of the diegesis, but in favor of a context that is valid only to the source text, not the reimagining.  If these retellings do not themselves push boundaries, we are in danger not only of said boundaries remaining in place, but actually backsliding into the positions they so comfortably held decades ago.

The Greatest Fandom Ever Sold

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You’re probably familiar with it, even if you’ve never heard the word for it.  “Fandom” refers to the subculture of people who are fans of any topic.  Being a fan is more than simply liking something, and usually more than a hobby. Fans devote considerable time and energy to their fandoms, sometimes even creating works based on it.  While people can be fans of anything from baseball to crochet, some of the most involved fandoms are the fandoms surrounding fictional works, particularly science fiction and fantasy.  No doubt you’ve encountered at least one of these fandoms: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Bible.

In some sense, these fandoms have always been with us.  Before the internet, fandoms were widely dispersed networks of people who communicated by means of mail and conventions—meetings for fans to gather and discuss their favorite fictional works.  The first science fiction convention was held in the 1930s, and modern science fiction and fantasy fandom evolved from that.  Another milestone was the 1970s, sometimes called the “New Wave”, when large amounts of people became interested in science fiction and fantasy.  One of the most popular fandoms—and the fandom that influenced so much of what came after—is another thing that you’re probably familiar with: the Bible.

Between 1967 and 1969, three books were published, called the Torah (Teaching, or the Five Books of Moses), the Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings).  These three books together formed one book—a fantasy novel about the history of the world and a group of people in it.  The book is traditionally called the Tanakh.1

 While a small group of people became highly invested in the Tanakh, publishers did not feel that they were selling enough copies.  It went out of print after three years.  Usually, that’s the end of the story: a book is published, a show is made; people like it for a while, and then it’s forgotten.  But fans of the Tanakh were extremely loyal.  They lobbied for republication of the book, and when that failed, they took matters into their own hands.  For decades, they held conventions and produced fanzines—collections of fan works published in bound form, and sent to fans with subscriptions.  Fan works included art and fan fiction, stories based on the characters and situations in the original novel.

While the public seemed generally aware that Tanakh fans existed, the fandom was largely ignored.  Sometimes there was an outside interest in the conventions and fanzines; outsiders periodically commentated on the inexplicable nature of Tanakh fandom.  Sometimes there was even ostracism, or outright condemnation: Tanakh fans were criticized for taking the book so seriously—particularly since Tanakh was very different from mainstream literature.

As a result, Tanakh fandom remained small, but loyal.  Though marginalized, it became highly organized; fans created their own traditions and jargon, building on the original text even as they celebrated it.  Tanakh fandom laid the foundation for much of fandom as we know it, but the biggest way it has influenced not only fandom, but modern culture, is the spin-offs.

In 1987, there were enough Tanakh fans and enough lingering interest to justify the creation of a new series set in the universe of the original series, called the Testaments.  The Testaments are two books, generally called the Old and New.  The Old Testament is basically a “reboot” of the original series (à la Moore’s Battlestar Galactica in 2004, or Moffat’s recent Sherlock), while the New Testament is a sequel.  The sequel incorporates references to favorite characters, including God and Satan, while introducing a next generation.  At the center of the next generation is a character called Jesus Christ.

The Testaments were a huge best-seller.  Many fans of the Tanakh became fans of the Testaments as well, and many new fans were introduced to the universe through the updated works.  Even people who aren’t “fans” in the obsessive sense of the word enjoy the Testaments.  Furthermore, even people who have never read The Testaments or even actively dislike them, generally have a little knowledge of the universe.  Basically, they were the Harry Potter of the late 1980s; the Testaments have been adapted into several feature length films, and have become integral to modern pop culture.

Fans of the Testaments are more often fans of the New Testament than they are of the Old Testament, though the re-imagining of the original text is highly respected.  Christ, however, was the main draw for many fans, and Christ-based fandom remains one of the strongest and most active fandoms today.  While a large population has read and enjoy the New Testament, and a large percentage of that would call themselves fans, there is a small, extremely active contingent of Christ fans who almost make rabid look tame.

In the last decade, these fans have received more attention than ever before.  For a long time, fandom was peripheral enough that not only was it easily ignored, but it was difficult to observe.  With the advent of modern media, particularly the internet, it has become possible to view fandom without being a part of fandom.  The past fifteen years have seen a plethora of documentaries, articles, and scholarly work on these fandoms, while the fandoms themselves have grown, becoming highly organized and active.

Due to this, much of the practices that otherwise would not have been exposed to the public are now common knowledge.  Documentaries such as Christies2, released in 1997, detail the behavior of active Christ fans.  Some fans saw Christies as exploitive, but most agree that Christies treated the subject fairly.  From the outside, many of the actions of Christ fans may seem strange or aberrant, but to those in the fandom, such actions are natural expressions of their love of a text.

One of the most common forms of said expression is the fannish gathering.  Gatherings don’t always have to be conventions; it can be as simple as a couple of fans getting together to watch a television show or discuss a book.  Although there is not an episode airing weekly to watch, weekly gatherings are a staple of Bible fandom, as they were in Buffy the Vampire Slayer when the show was airing.  Instead of watching television, however, Bible fans come together to discuss the book, read passages, and even sing songs and play games–as fans do at Harry Potter parties.

Different fans participate in fandom in different ways, but for many, it’s the feeling of community that is as important as the text that draws them together.  There would probably be Bible fans in a vacuum, but it’s definitely the case that sharing ideas and associating with like-minded people not only brings the fans who participate pleasure, but sustains the fandom itself.  Some fans do not consider those who do not participate in gatherings active members of the fandom.

One of the largest types of fannish gatherings is the convention.  Conventions are held year round by various branches of fandom, but the biggest ones recur annually at roughly the same date each year.  While conventions are traditionally hosted at one venue, Bible fan conventions have become so large that they are held all over the world in many different places.  Large numbers of fans turn out for these events.  Some are highly devoted, and some are just people who enjoy the text and want to be a part of something.  For some people, it is much like a holiday.

One thing you may see at a convention or fannish gathering is something called filk.  Filk is music based on a fandom.  Much like fan fiction, filk uses characters and themes from the stories, and weaves it into something new.  While new filk songs are being written and performed all the time, some are so traditional that any Christ fan you ask knows the words.

Another thing you might see at a fannish gathering is cosplay, which often goes hand in hand with LARP.  Cosplay is a portmanteau of “costume play,” and refers to people who dress up according to a particular fandom.  While traditionally, people dressed up as characters they like, more often in Bible fandom people will dress in garb merely inspired by the universe.  You may have even seen someone in cosplay; one traditional costume is a black suit with a white collar.  Some people take cosplay to the extreme and remain in costume at almost all times.

LARP stands for live-action roleplay.  In roleplay, like cosplay, people can “be” certain characters they like, not just by dressing like them, but by acting how they think they would act.  While people can discuss how they think characters might act, they can also act it out, using props and sets made to look like things and places from the fandom text–thus the term, “live action”.

LARPing was not always a part of Bible fandom.  In the early days, dressing up and acting out parts was restricted to something called morality plays.  Morality plays could be performed at fannish gatherings and conventions.  Most fans are no longer interested in that type of performance, although the performance of the birth of everyone’s favorite character, Jesus Christ, is a tradition at some conventions.

For some fans, however, LARPing is essential to the fandom.  A central scene in the New Testament is when Jesus Christ eats his last supper, and tells his friends that the bread and wine is actually his flesh and blood.  Some Christ fans act this out almost religiously; they have stand-ins for Christ offer them wine (or juice) and crackers to represent the bread and wine, and eat it at least once a week.  While many people outside of fandom—and many fans within the fandom as well—consider this behavior extreme, the fans who practice this tradition see it as an essential part of being a fan.

A central aspect to some fandoms is what was called “the Game” in Sherlock Holmes fandom.  Some fans believe Sherlock Holmes was a real person.  More often, fans are aware that Sherlock Holmes was an invention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but they are still interested in thinking of Holmes as having existed.  To this effect, they try to gather as many “facts” as they can about Holmes’ actual life.  Using Doyle’s texts, they pull details about when Holmes solved which cases, when he was born, and when he died.

While many Christ fans know the events of the Testaments to be fictional, they still think of Jesus as a real man.  Although most Christ fans are not as concerned as say, Holmes fans about getting dates, etc correct, a central part of LARP—and the Christ fandom as a whole—is the “reality” of Christ.

Another thing you will see in fandom is the “Big Name Fan,” or BNFs.  BNFs are fans who are well known in the fandom for one reason or another, whether it is for holding gatherings, writing copious quantities of fanfic, or perhaps even having some influence on the industry that owns the copyright on the text.  While not every fan is familiar with a particular BNF, enough people have heard of them that they are considered by some to hold a lofty position in fandom.  Some are even considered to hold a certain amount of power, as though they have some influence over fannish interpretation of the text.

The BNF in some circles of Christ fandom is a man known by the handle “Holy Father”, AKA the Pope.  Other circles of Christ fandom decry the Pope.  Others don’t understand why he’s famous, and never read his meta3 on the Testaments.  But there are some who regard the Pope as an authority in the fandom, feeling that only his interpretations are correct.

This and other disagreements between fans can lead to something called fandom wank.  While “wank” was initially a term used in fandom to refer to works and comments that were self-congratulatory and aggrandizing, these days the term can also to refer to various kerfuffles that happen in fandom.  It may seem strange, or even silly, that disagreements about a book can lead to such heated debate and sometimes even downright nasty verbal abuse, but many fans take fandom seriously.  Wank can occur over anything from disagreements about the details of Christ’s “real” life, to differences of interpretation, to lack of respect for BNFs, fanfiction, and—as is most common in Bible fandom—disputes over canon.

The success of the Testaments inspired a slew of other spin-offs, including new re-imaginings, such as the Qur’an in 1993 and the Book of Mormon in 2009.  There have also been an abundance of unauthorized sequels, and many, many fanfics, some published, some only famous online.  One of the most divisive issues in Bible fandom is which of these text is “official”, and which is merely an interpretation—in other words, which texts are canon.

The term “canon” is derived from religion; it has been used for centuries to refer to the Star Trek works which are considered scripture.  (For instance, The Original Series and Next Generation are canon; Spock, Messiah! is not.)  The first use in a fannish context was in reference to Sherlock Holmes; works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were considered canon, while pastiches by other authors were not.

In fandom, “canon” refers to the material accepted as “official” by the fandom.  This leads to wank because fans disagree as to who may dictate what is canon.  Certainly publishing companies may claim such and such a work to be canon, but some fans prefer to decide their own canon.  Disagreement over canon has even resulted in factions who refuse to communicate, or allow each other at each others’ conventions.

Perhaps obviously, fans take their fandoms seriously–sometimes too seriously.  In some ways, fans take their love of fiction to an extreme level, giving it much of the same importance they might give to real world issues.  If fiction were so formative as some fans make it out to be, surely we would not be fighting wars in the Middle East between Kirk lovers and Picard worshippers.  People would be able to marry whomever they wished, and mothers would always be free to make choices about their lives and health, if fairytales and fantasy were really an essential component to people’s lives.

In the scheme of things, it’s difficult to feel that a little fictional story about gods and monsters is important.  And yet, a fan would say that  those things which are blatantly untrue–the fable, the farce, the fantasy–have the power to give us perspective.  Whether that perspective would bring reality sharply into focus, or whether it would instead continue to obscure the truth in the chaos that is reality depends on the nature of the canon and the fandom.  A fan would say that fiction, fantasy, falsehood–the blatant fabrication of the fairytale–has a profound influence on some people’s lives and their perception of the world.  It is often said that fiction can be an escape, but a fan would say that  fiction is also a framework by which some form themselves and their thought, at times more comprehensible than our insane reality.

Bible fans make this claim, many believing whole-heartedly that the themes and morals of the book are relevant.  Some even claim that the Bible could teach us a thing or two about what our society could become, explaining that the Bible has underlying messages about peace and love of fellow men.  That the Bible may influence how people live may seem ridiculous to us, and yet many Bible fans, despite the unusual extent of their obsession, are often well-intentioned, thoughtful people.  By taking to heart what’s in the text, they try to live better lives.

The sense of community offered by fandom has also changed lives.  Extremely different people from all walks of life come together due to a common interest, and some fans have even united in order to work at charity events, or raise money for areas torn apart by natural disaster.  Many people are less lonely due to their participation in fandom; fandom gives them a family, and makes them feel loved.

While fandom may seem strange, even irrational, it is only human.  In some ways, a fan’s need for fiction is more comprehensible than another man’s attempt to explain the ugliness of our world using only fact.  Perhaps, in light of this, it is story-telling that is man’s greatest endeavor, and his most powerful weapon.

*

1(Tanakh is an acronym of the three books.  Acronyms are a common shorthand of most fandoms; Lord of the Rings fans call Lord of the Rings LOTR; Harry Potter fans HP, etc.  While the comparison between the Tanakh and Lord of the Rings is obvious, the sequence of LOTR’s three books forms a linear narrative.  The Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim are far less sequential.  However, just like LOTR, the Tanakh is considered one book as a whole, though the Torah is by far the favorite among fans.)

 

2(N.B. Some Christ fans do not enjoy the word “Christies”, feeling that it is derogatory and dismissive of the text, or that it lumps them in with fans whose behavior is extreme.  They prefer the term “Christers” or “Christians.”  In this essay, the term “Christ fans” has been used exclusively in order to avoid offense.)

 

3“Meta,” the pretext which means “on” or “about”, is used in fandom to refer to thoughts and interpretations of the text.  Meta can be discussed or recorded, and often appears in the form of essays, or in the case of the Pope, edicts.

 


Bewitching: Metaphor Made Literal

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Those of us who have made a commitment to popular culture are inevitably faced with a choice—to take a bit of entertainment at its face value, ignoring or discarding the aspects we find problematic, or to reimagine, rework or otherwise engage with the raw material to make it relevant to ourselves and our experiences. English-language comic book or television fans from virtually any time other than the past decade or so will be well-acquainted with this conundrum.

Bewitched, that sixties stalwart of witchery and sexual politics, is no exception to this dilemma. For those not in the know, the show is a 1964 situation-comedy about a witch of almost boundless power that willingly submits to life as a mortal to please her new husband. I’ve recently been rewatching the first season with Joy DeLyria, whose not-so-favorable appraisal of the show is heavy in omission and metaphor. And there’s plenty of metaphorical territory to be mined– Samantha’s inherited magical powers and other-ness could conceivably be stand-ins for a whole host of perceived problems; perhaps Samantha is Jewish, or Catholic, or is a Communist, or possesses an advanced degree, or some other similarly distancing and disturbing fact that must be hidden from the neighbors. But to look at the show’s premise metaphorically is to deny the deliciousness of the high-concept conceit itself—the delight of the metaphor made literal.

As Joy suggests, Bewitched is so thorough in its concept that invoking magical powers is hardly needed to suggest Samantha’s superiority to Darrin. She is literally, demonstrably, smarter, more attractive, more worldly and experienced, and even more creative than her bumbling, ineffectual husband, who, we are told, is a successful creative man at a fairly successful ad agency. (The evidence on the ground, however, is weak—some anemically rendered, under-realized concept sketches for campaigns that Pete Campbell himself would laugh out of a meeting room).

Samantha’s mother Endora effectively extends this argument for womanly superiority. Like her daughter, Endora is witty, intelligent, broadly skilled, and almost painfully attractive. Unlike her daughter, though, Endora is self-actualized, having taken her skills and self-assurance and tempered them in the crucible of independence. Endora does as she pleases, how and when she pleases, and with whom she pleases, for as long as it should please her. It’s this fierce, dangerous unpredictability that makes her a threat to the ineffectual Darrin, and to the social structure in which her daughter has chosen to play, if only for a little while.

And although it does so in a hesitant way, episodes of the show are not above teasing out some of the implications of the premise, including the radical concept that two beings with such powers and such long lives might look upon human beings in the way that humans do dogs — as animals that we have aligned ourselves with, are capable of having regard and even affection for, but will never truly see as equals. The show implies in several episodes that Endora is at least several millenia old, and that Samantha is already several hundred years old herself. Her husband, this man who desires normalcy so strongly that he will deny his wife her true self and the full realization of her abilities, and will even deny himself the luxury and power her skills might bring them, will himself age, quickly, gracelessly, a time-lapse photo, a blurry imitation of life compared to the richness of experience and pleasure that awaits Samantha. How can she possibly love this may-fly, this transitory creature, this animal that says so much and thinks so little? The only conclusion that is possible, a conclusion only occasionally made explicit in the show, is that Samantha is playing at being a human, not the way that a little boy and girl might play house with aprons and plastic food and furniture, rehearsing their future worlds, but the way an Olympic athlete might sit in on a pickup game of basketball, or an acclaimed novelist might pen some ad copy for her church potluck. And if Daren lives until he’s eighty, well, what’s fifty years to someone that will live for millennia? Samantha can be patient with all of Darrin’s whims, with his insecurities and his need to control every aspect of her action, because it’s part of the game of being human.

It is at this extreme that a metaphorical take on the show necessarily breaks down. Samantha might evoke the plight of intelligent, capable women of the early sixties and the lengths they had to go to conceal their true selves from their husbands, and cultures, but she’ll never literally be that woman. Samantha is ultimately safe from censure, from the consequences of the culture around her, even safe from physical harm, because of her magical powers.

At this point a different kind of literalist than myself might invoke intention. “The show’s not on their side!” this contrarian might insist. “Listen to the laugh track. Endora’s supposed to be funny, not right. She’s a caricature of the nightmare mother-in-law.” And while I’d have to concede that, yes, the presentation of the show can be problematic, I would argue that what a show seems to be saying through its laugh track, through its cinematography, is not necessarily the only thing it is saying. Some of this (mostly unrealized) potential for nuance is due to the writing, which can be quite sympathetic to the characters, but a great deal of it seems to rest on, and perhaps be inspired by, the outstanding performances of Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha and the remarkable Agnes Moorehead, who positively sparkles as the noctiluminescent Endora. It doesn’t matter how you cut your footage or mix your laugh track– in a scene between Darrin and Endora, Darrin will forever be the bloodless, schlubby husband, Endora the preening, confident cat, a goddess in a world of garbage.

The Mad Men comparison is natural due primarily to Bewitched‘s setting and Darrin’s job as an ad man—the comparison is also instructive. It would be interesting to see what the unflinching eye of Mad Men would make of Darrin and Samantha’s relationship, what other consequences could be teased out of Samantha’s forfeiture of her powers. What would a merger of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Price and McMann and Tate look like? How would Don Draper react to Samantha? His physical reaction is self-evident, but in addition to his much-remarked interest in the female form, he has a track record of recognition of the unrecognized, an ability to ferret out the abilities of others, and, when it is in his own interests to do so, help those others develop those abilities. But what would he make of a woman truly more than his equal, not only blessed with intelligence and insight and grace, but magical powers as well?

As for Samantha’s reaction to Don, I have no doubt she would have little interest in him, just as she shows little interest in her mother’s offers of setting her up with “some nice warlock”. Don is, after all, not unlike the warlocks we see on the show, in his arrogance, his swagger. It’s the arrogance that comes with true, unchallenged superiority, with having won every battle for a very long time; of being a god among the mortals.

No, Samantha would be content to do as she’s always done since she began to play in the sandbox of the flesh and blood—she would continue to love and care for her controlling, but doting husband, to play by his rules, in letter if not in spirit, for as long as he lives, caring for and condescending to him until he dies, at which point she can return once more to her mother, to her freedom, the world of the unbound.