Too Fond of Books

Linguistic issues:

* "gets under my skin" seems like an idiom that Crane wouldn't know.

* Smart. Phone. :D

* In-ter-net. If he had said interblag, I would have died.

Plot issues: ( Spoilers! )

When I was a kid, I read differently than I do now. I loved narratives with immediacy; I didn't care for lengthy background and details (at least, I didn't think I did.) The best reading experiences that come to my mind were the ones I had during the summer, or on long car trips when there was nothing else to do but read, and no one was about to suggest a better activity. And it was at those times that I craved stories that were exciting in a particular way, that made me feel like I was standing next to the main characters or had so many things happening that I couldn't wait to turn the page. This action didn't always have to be Indiana Jones-style death trap/escape from Nazi's; in fact, I really enjoyed plots where there was a great deal of mundane action. (The Ramona books, for example, are a wonderful illustration of this: things happen at lickety-split speed, but they're simple, everyday activities and problems which I could easily relate to.) But the movie-style action-packed narratives were great, too. I pored over Choose Your Own Adventure books, and I read the Hardy Boys novels pretty exhaustively, even though I realized they were basically the same thing over and over again. In these stories, things happened one-after-another, crazy-action-pace, but it was OK, because the characters were so good, and the pacing never ran into overly confusing territory.

But the King of Narratives Where Lots of Stuff Happens But Not Too Fast and It's OK Anyway Because We're The Good Guys (or, NWLSHBNTFIOABWTGG for not so short) were the Tintin books, which I adored beyond measure. And I am pleased to say (by a very roundabout way of introduction) that the Tintin movie captures the spirit of NWLSHBNTFIOBWTGG in all of its summer-reading glory, and in 3D movie format. Lots of stuff happens! (Model ships! Betrayals! Comedy! High Seas Adventure! Opera! Funny Animals! Chase Sequences!) But not too fast! (At no point in the movie did I feel like I was exhausted or wrung out, and the kids around me certainly didn't feel this way, either.) And it's OK anyway, because we're the good guys! (The script writers wisely chose to keep Tintin a relative paladin/cypher, and that makes his actions both heroic and accessible.) The CG didn't bother me like I thought it would and the characters looked like they'd just stepped off a page of Herge's wonderful illustrations. In fact, I was so trying to compare all the characters and backgrounds with my memory of the original books that I almost forgot I was watching a live-action movie of them. Much of the dialogue is lifted verbatim from the books, and I am incredibly pleased to report that Captain Haddock gets to say "billions of blue blistering barnacles!" more than several times. I should also add that the opening credits are intricately beautiful and relentlessly witty, and pay homage to the spirit of the Herge originals. Hell, the whole movie is a loving homage to Herge, and I'm fairly sure that he would be very pleased with the outcome.

In a similar category of "Lots of Things Arbitrarily Happen At Once", Marjane Satrapi's book The Sigh is a lovely fairy-tale style story about a Prince of a mysterious country, and the woman he falls for, whose courage and ingenuity grow in leaps and bounds throughout the tale, despite arbitrary and somewhat confusing limitations on the part of the world that it occupies. Satrapi's accompanying artwork lends drama and weight to the work. It's nice to see her working in color after Persepolis. Reading this story reminded me of the sick days I spent in bed going through the volume after volume of illustrated Grimm's and Andersen's fairy tales.

And then, on the far more serious side, and from a country that could probably use a bit of escapism because, well, YIKES doesn't even start to cover it, there's Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh, by Anne Elizabeth Moore, about her mission to educate young women there about the art of making 'zines. Moore's story, which reads a little like the unpublished and more personal half of a women's studies doctoral thesis, lays out the stark realities and challenges that she was confronted with, like the fact that most of the parents of the girls she teaches are too afraid or scarred to discuss what happened to them and their families during the Khmer Rouge, or the issue that the girls she teaches are very concerned with a particular kind of femininity, one which doesn't necessarily include 'zines, or Moore's style of working and teaching. But Moore doesn't lose sight of what she's trying to do, and if depression bothered her, it certainly doesn't appear to have slowed her down. This zine and the ones her students produced are a passionate argument why democratic media should exist, and what form it may need to take, even if it seems rudimentary and slow. I especially liked the excerpts in the back from her students' 'zines. This book isn't one kid!me would have enjoyed (there's some pretty appalling details from survivors) but it's a book that adult!me enjoys for separate reasons. A lot of things happen in it. A few of them are action-packed crazy, but most of them are everyday life events, some of which I can easily relate to (Moore's explanation to her ESL students of why Playboy magazine is a double-edged sword for American women is a thing of honest, truthful beauty). But reading this, I found myself turning pages quickly, wanting to know what happened next and how Moore would deal with it. In some ways, this was the best of all possible worlds: reading like a kid (need to know! exciting! righteously good!) and reading like an adult (need to know! remind myself to understand this part of the world better!).

~~~

To those who are only reading my public entries: Thanks for sticking around and bearing with me through January. It's been a rocky start to 2012 and my on-going resolution to do four public entries a month got stymied by work-related deadlines, and then by the world's most annoying error message, "Bad unicode input." I was finally able to get this thing to post after cutting and pasting individual paragraphs. :p Anyway, more from now on!

There is an excellent essay by Laura Hudson here that is specifically about the new DC comics relaunch and its gender issues, but really can be taken as a comment on comics fandom as a whole. It's awesome, and I really don't have much to add to it, except for the fact that the pages and panels from 'Catwoman' that Hudson uses could just have easily been from any other superheroine title and the analysis would still be just as on point and valid.

In any case, the issues with the depiction of women are one of the reasons that I often hold back on saying what I'm fan of. Since "nerd" is undergoing a sort of semi-cool Renaissance, I can usually mention my love for "Doctor Who," the works of Jim Butcher, or any of the Harry Potter books and movies without fear of reprisal. But one word about comic books and people start getting that judgmental aura of "I thought you were smarter than that" or giving me these expressions of utter bewilderment, usually followed by the question, "why?" And I must admit that I answer that question myself every damn time I step into any comic book shop. It does help that my local comic supplier, Comickaze, is run by an excellent staff of knowledgeable guys who have never once made me feel uncomfortable or weird. But in other places, at other stores, I have felt the distinctly unpleasant feeling of Difference, (or Otherness, in academic parlance). Seeing a wallpapering of posters of female comic book characters in bikinis, with bodies that are completely impossible in every sense of the word, is a depressing experience. Why keep reading books by an industry that largely imagines women to be merely men with breasts? Why bother looking at titles that depict women as objects to be sexed up, used up, and thrown away? Am I just indulging some kind of nerd-specific masochism?

Every time I start asking these questions, or see too many women in bikinis, I close my eyes and think of all the awesome women I know or know about who are involved in the comics industry, or in the independent fringes. I think of psychoe and ashears's amazing artwork and how one day, I'm going to say "I liked them before they were cool" in an annoying hipster voice. I think of cartoonists and writers like Kate Beaton, Moto Hagio, Natasha Allegri, Tracy Butler, Gail Simone, CLAMP, Momochi Reiko, Hope Larson, Naoko Takeuchi, Yuko Shimizu, and many, many others, too numerous to list here. I remember all the amazing female characters who I've read and loved, like Storm and Kitty Pride, Francine Peters, Rose (from Bone), Faiza Hussein, Lizzie Hexam, Elissa Megan Powers and Ninjette, Nico and Gert and Princess Powerful (from Runaways), and all the characters whose stories I haven't read yet. But mostly, I think about opportunities.

Comic books as a medium are an amazing opportunity for artists and writers to tell stories in a unique and powerful manner. And I have hope that this industry will come to its senses, even if it has to go through a horrifically prolonged birth process to do so. (Although I will admit the DC Relaunch is one hell of a contraction.) There's more than enough opportunity to go around to keep the industry afloat. Why not fix the sexism problem? Imagine twice the money. Imagine the marriage of idealism and commerce. Imagine a day when no reader has to ask the question "why?" when she or he steps into a comic book store.

In Movies:

Fright Night: Just the right amount of scary! (Not enough of Mr. Tennant looking hot, but that's just my opinion.) And I admit that I can see why people swoon over Colin Farrell, because when his character wasn't being a creepy jerk, he sure was easy on the eyes. There was some good fighting in this, too, and I mean that in the best possible way of a RPG character with very few stats in those areas doing the best he could and thinking outside of the box. And, courtesy of Marti Noxon, I'm sure, there was one extremely funny and well-timed Buffy joke that made me squee quietly. This is good fun, with a few in-your-face scares, but nothing so horrible that it will ruin your dreams or make you regret you saw it. (Although I suppose people who have no tolerance for gore need not apply--there was some, but nothing approaching my squick level.) This is the kind of summer movie that I like: fun, even silly in parts (Mr. Tennant's stage production as Vegas magician Peter Vincent is thing of cheeseball beauty), just a little bit of creepiness and a lot of suspense that adds up to a well-told story.

In Books:

The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield: Speaking of creepy in parts, this is the kind of ghost story I love, and Setterfield knows exactly how to parcel it out, piece by mysterious piece. I'm only halfway through, and cannot wait to finish. (Although that will mean the book is over, which will be sad. Also, duh.) I also love that I'm having a very hard time placing the main plot's era. I assume post-WWII, but it really could be anytime after about 1800, and that keeps changing my impression of the characters. Nonetheless, I like the continual guessing, and I love the book references, and I love... hell, I just love this book. I sincerely hope others do as well so that we can talk about it when I'm done!

On TV:

Doctor Who: The Rather Crazily Titled, "Let's Kill Hitler": ( Spoilers! )