Graham (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tao_) wrote,@ 2007-04-15 15:17:00 |
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Comics vs everyone
As I said previously, I love comics. I'm still pissed off about a 'Late Night Review' with Mark Lawson where Tom Paulin casually trashed Chris Ware's beautiful, multi-multi-layered 'Jimmy Corrigan'. (Speaking to Miranda Sawyer some time afterwards, who was present and had the good sense not to pass judgement and the decency to look uncomfortable throughout, she told me that the panel received the 380-page book half an hour before they went on air). Lawson began the segment by asking the panel a question along the lines of "So...can this be considered literature?".
Pretty arrogant, don't you think?
What brought all this to my mind was reading the first two chapters of Fun Home. Those two chapters alone have already made it my favourite thing since my last favourite thing. and reading it, I was reminded of what Alan Moore said in a recent interview about how, when critics want to denigrate something in a film, they use the term 'comic-book' (as in "The film's comic-book dialogue...").
Moore pointed out that whenever Hollywood gets the notion of turning one of his graphic novels into a film, they spend a lot of man-hours dumbing the fuckers down. The comic League of Gentlemen is brilliantly clever and hugely entertaining. The film is a piece of shit. And while Moore's comics cost very little to produce, the resulting films burn up money like a drunk lord in a casino . Deciding to make a film like 'League' is sort of like saying " Let's take 78 million bucks to a forest, shit on it and then set it on fire."
Hollywood will NEVER make a film out of a comic book that has the political fire of Brian Wood's 'DMZ', or the melancholy and complexity of Alison Bechdel's 'Fun Home'. No, if a film is to be made out of a comic book, then the name you're most likely to hear is Frank Miller ('Sin City'...what a fart in the face that was). So which is the worthier medium?
I think I know how Mark Lawson would answer that question. So when when he or any one of his fellow artistic gatekeepers has the gall to ask whether someone like Chris Ware can be considered an artist, I think there's only one appropriate response:
"Yes. Fuck you. Next."
As I said previously, I love comics. I'm still pissed off about a 'Late Night Review' with Mark Lawson where Tom Paulin casually trashed Chris Ware's beautiful, multi-multi-layered 'Jimmy Corrigan'. (Speaking to Miranda Sawyer some time afterwards, who was present and had the good sense not to pass judgement and the decency to look uncomfortable throughout, she told me that the panel received the 380-page book half an hour before they went on air). Lawson began the segment by asking the panel a question along the lines of "So...can this be considered literature?".
Pretty arrogant, don't you think?
What brought all this to my mind was reading the first two chapters of Fun Home. Those two chapters alone have already made it my favourite thing since my last favourite thing. and reading it, I was reminded of what Alan Moore said in a recent interview about how, when critics want to denigrate something in a film, they use the term 'comic-book' (as in "The film's comic-book dialogue...").
Moore pointed out that whenever Hollywood gets the notion of turning one of his graphic novels into a film, they spend a lot of man-hours dumbing the fuckers down. The comic League of Gentlemen is brilliantly clever and hugely entertaining. The film is a piece of shit. And while Moore's comics cost very little to produce, the resulting films burn up money like a drunk lord in a casino . Deciding to make a film like 'League' is sort of like saying " Let's take 78 million bucks to a forest, shit on it and then set it on fire."
Hollywood will NEVER make a film out of a comic book that has the political fire of Brian Wood's 'DMZ', or the melancholy and complexity of Alison Bechdel's 'Fun Home'. No, if a film is to be made out of a comic book, then the name you're most likely to hear is Frank Miller ('Sin City'...what a fart in the face that was). So which is the worthier medium?
I think I know how Mark Lawson would answer that question. So when when he or any one of his fellow artistic gatekeepers has the gall to ask whether someone like Chris Ware can be considered an artist, I think there's only one appropriate response:
"Yes. Fuck you. Next."
