sin city - postscript on heroes and antiheroes

postscript to thoughts on heroes and antiheroes:

just got back from watching Robert "From Dusk Till Dawn" Roduiguez's take on Sin City. I remembered first coming across Frank Miller's graphic novels when I was in secondary school.

I remembered skimming through the cannibal sequence at 15 and finding it gruesome enough for me to try and blank it out from my head. I like his eye for black-and-white ink art but well...let's say watching the movie reminded me again of why I blanked out so much of his plots in the first place.

Much as I admired his linework, I could never bring myself to buy a copy of Sin CIty to keep. I just never pictured myself re-reading his stuff again and again. I do own Miller's Batman classic The Dark Knight Returns - that was great story-telling. If you loved Batman Begins, much of it was inspired by that and Miller's other Batman classic, Year One.

Back to Sin CIty and why I don't own a copy: It's not so much the over-the-top sex and violence thing but more because I found the whole macho-man-rescuing-tough-oversexed-dames thing a little trite after a while. His villains were the stuff of stereotypes at heart - the crooked politician, the sanctimonious hypocritical religious figures. His antiheroes and antiheroines were always these bizarre cariacatures, living a caricature of a life. It was like he deliberately pushed the mark of film noir to its extremes, just to see how ridiculous he could get. His anti heroes and antiheroines are a smudge away from absolute villainy.

Miller was my first encounter with graphic novellists that "push the boundaries" through flagrant depictions of sexuality and over-the-top violence. Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison and to a certain extent early Neil Gaiman did it too. In the comics world, these writers and artists are regarded as a heroes for doing so. Their works are hailed as "brave" and "cutting edge".

I would rather heap those accolades on graphic novellists like Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman or Craig Thompson frankly. Sacco's graphic novels drawn directly from the battlegrounds of Palestine, Bosnia and Afghanistan are brave in every sense. Not only do they boldly speak what no politician dares to speak about, they are documented straight from the mouths of the victims - all information collected at great mortal risk by Sacco himself.

Thompson and Spiegelman's bravery is of a different sort. Thompson's Blankets and Spiegelman's Maus are autobiographies - attempts to courageously capture their most fragile and painful memories in pen and ink for others to connect with.

Sin City is a movie that deserves to be watched solely for being the most successful translation of graphic art to screen to date. The use of lines, angles,shadow and light was truly watershed-stuff in the 80s. But as for the rest of the movie, it's hardly cutting edge or brave stuff. There are one or two inspired moments of dark humour but overall, I think even Miller would admit hat he himself has written far better stories.

Holding Out for a Hero

surrealkitty
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

The blogosphere is ablaze with debate over the actions of two of their most high profile bloggerati.

At a recent convention, a controversial female blogger bared her breasts in public to take photos with another popular male blogger. 2 other popular female bloggers, XX and MS took offence, wrote about it, and subsequently faced a slew of ugly condemnations. Basically, people were going on about how cool and brave the flasher was and "who are you to judge any way, you **** "

what struck me was what XX wrote:
"... Flashing your breasts wouldn't make you a unique, or as so many idiots described, BRAVE (I find it so ludicrous I almost cried. In the past, bravery is when you fight dragons. Nowadays, you just flash a boob and you are so F***ING brave) person..."

Sad but true. It's really telling what deeds get associated with bravery and heroism in our modern culture.
Many kids i teach today have no clue who Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Sun Yet Sen, Doctors Without Borders are.

We have forgotten to teach children that courage and heroism is sometimes founded upon quiet, dignified decisions of integrity, responsibility and righteousness.

Small decisions made by simple people can turn the whole world around as demonstrated by all the above examples. Small, simple decisions made with the right values have the power to generate tangible solutions the world needs.

We cannot allow heroism to be primarily associated with bigness, fortune, daredevilishness, glitz and grand gestures. There are kids who think Hitler, Stalin and Mao as a heroes because they were "cool" and "powerful".

This is not a far stretch for a culture that champions anyone who simply "dares to be different" and "pushes the boundaries of society" - never you mind whether "different" is in itself a good thing, or whether certain boundaries in society are worth keeping.

What is true heroism then? Dr Michael Pucci in his essay "Heroes and Anti-Heroes" put it better than I could:

".....But everyone knows superpowers alone do not make the hero. Any comic book kid will tell you that superpowers can also make a villain. I have never heard a better expression of this error of thought than a line from the young Lex Luthor in the Superman series, Smallville. "I don't want to do good things," he says, "I want to do great things." That subtle tradeoff of goodness for greatness is the slippery slope......

....What we need are more small heroes who do good. We forget that it doesn't take much to be a hero these days. Just doing the right thing, makes you shine like a light in the dark and bite like salt on the tongue. Just being faithful to your spouse, to your word in your dealings, makes you stand out more than a man in a stretch suit and cape.

And forget power. It requires no more superpowers than that of a humble hotel owner to carve a bright ray of hope in the wicked darkness of genocide. The hero of the events captured in the film "Hotel Rwanda" was most shocked by the fact that everyone all over the country was not doing the same thing he was, harboring people in anyway they could against the slaughter. His heroism was to him very ordinary, and so it should be. "

(the rest of the article about heroism
can be found in http://www.vantagepoint.com.sg/crossroads.html)