There's probably an excellent point to be made for segregating one's fandom from the politics of the artist responsible for the work. Sin City is aesthetically beautiful. Put politely, Frank Miller seems like an uniformed jerk.
Protesters = Rapists? Thank you for your contribution to the discussion. My only hope is he was drunk when he posted this.
(By the by, David Brin gives an excellent response, here. On that basis of this post alone I need to buy more of his work.)
But how does one go about reconciling the art against the artist? Should we? If it turns out tomorrow that Mignola kicks little puppies in his sleep do I dump all all his Hellboy comics? (Or worse, his Lankhmar works?)
In college, I recall watching a White Zombie video and telling Spackle it was aesthetically beautiful. (Actually, I probably just told him it was cool, but he knew what I meant.)
He came back asking if I knew what the heck the video was about; neither of us knew. Spackle's next question: If the video was promoting Fascism, would it still be great?
At the time, I told him, "yes." The visual content was beautiful. Any "undelivered" content was irrelevant.
Now I'm not so sure.
//H
4 comments:
Yeah, I do have to say I was already pretty disinclined to make any purchase decisions that put money in Miller's pocket, but he just keeps going for the gold.
It's funny that I was just having a conversation with Ms Bartmoss about Liberals inability to draw defined lines of acceptable social behavior where as Conservatives have no problem doing this and use it to their benefit to gather people into action.
(Related I think Brin is one of the more astute cultural critics, but probably doesn't get anywhere near the attention he deserves since he's "just a sci-fi writer". He's had some other great stuff on Star Wars as well.)
"It's funny that I was just having a conversation with Ms Bartmoss about Liberals inability to draw defined lines of acceptable social behavior ..."
This could also be cast as a strength. The ability to perceive nuances ultimately makes us better humans. Machines do binary; we should strive for better.
But yeah, when trying to sway the masses, binary lends itself to simpler messages.
//H
Heh. We should link the blog to your profile and just write posts back and forth.
//H
I wonder if I'm smart (motivated) enough to subscribe to the replies on your blog. Currently I have a web site (www.ssdpress.org/feed) that watches for new posts to your blog (and others) and then repeats them and send a tweet to a stream that I follow. So when you post a new post there's a good chance I'll see it. (Set that up when I was in Ohio and had more time. ;) )
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