Noun Used As A Verb, Film At Eleven

[handful_ofdust]

Re yuki-onna, talking about how the ending of Watchmen doesn't work for her because she's been "Neuromancered"...WTF does that even mean, exactly? I read Neuromancer, but about a million years ago, and it occurs to me that perhaps it was exactly as not-so-impressive to me, in the end, as Watchmen was to her. But seriously: There's something "innate" in a received-wisdom sense that I'm supposed to be getting from the reference about how best to end a book, right? And...I'm just not gettin' it, sorry.

I should probably be asking her, I suppose, rather than the universe at large. But I get the feeling I'd just get slapped for being dumb, and I'm not all too into that right now.

Comments

[readingthedark.livejournal.com]

I skimmed it too. Cat's bright but reading her noticing everything everyone else noticed two decades ago without being aware of the past, etc...

But I just looked back at her post and read it more carefully and that was her point, even if she hadn't fully meant to prove it that way.

In context, for her reading Neuromancer or The Watchman decades after their original impact, she saw a lot of techniques and themes that are so commonplace that they're not that interesting...but she's aware that these works are why those techniques and themes became so popular. (In other words, if you've read a dozen clones and then see the original, it can look like it's cribbing from everything else since you've grown accustomed to the things that originally made it great.)

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

No, definitely; I get that. Used to teach film history, so I've seen it a hundred times before--the syndrome where you show them something like The Godfather and they go: Man, what a rip-off. But...what do the ending of Neuromancer and the ending of Watchmen have to do with each other at all, aside from maybe Manhattan going off saying "I think I'll create some [life]" being a bit like Wintermute going off to chase alien AI tail? Or is it that Pauley possibly being still "alive" in the ultraweb is better than Rorschach being "kept alive" by his own writings? Or...what?

[readingthedark.livejournal.com]

To me, that's all she was saying, that her subjective and personal reading experience of the two may have been hampered by the rip-offs. (I almost mentioned The Godfather in my original comment.)

The fact that she mentioned Neuromancer going into the riff on The Watchman, just to me, wasn't actually an attempt to connect the endings of the two.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Ah. Okay. Thanks.;)

[sovay]

Used to teach film history, so I've seen it a hundred times before--the syndrome where you show them something like The Godfather and they go: Man, what a rip-off.

It's still not a reaction that makes sense to me; I find that really amazing art, whether visual or cinematic or literary, does not lose its effectiveness even after it's become a cultural cornerstore and been imitated, quoted, homaged into infinity: otherwise no one would ever bother to watch Casablanca anymore.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, this. And Shakespeare, what-have-you. Mythology's mythology--the only thing which differs is execution, and when both coincide, that simply does not go out of style.

Then again, we're also talking about people who didn't want to watch Koyaanisqatsi because of "all the '80s hair", and people who said, when I said: "But of course, you've all seen Silence of the Lambs, replied: "But that's really OLD!"

[sovay]

and people who said, when I said: "But of course, you've all seen Silence of the Lambs, replied: "But that's really OLD!"

*headdesk*

Man. Learn cuneiform. Complain to me then.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Exactly!;)

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

reading her noticing everything everyone else noticed two decades ago without being aware of the past, etc...

gotta remember that unlike us (and certain other folks involved in this discussion [kicks Sonya]) that back when Watchmen came out, Cat was in, what, second grade?

I don't know about the way the rest of the world comes to this sort of thing, but any real sense of historicity in what I read I didn't come to until a few years ago at best, and I turned 40 last year. When I was 30, the only way I could really distinguish between "old" and "really old" in something published before 1968 was the big turning point around 1930 when plot became more important than description in commercial fiction. I still struggle with it, at times (I had to pause for a few minutes to remember whether Watchmen or Neuromancer came first when I first read that).

So yeah, on that part of it, I give her a pass. Been there, done that. It's just that there are few people around, and fewer by the day, who are ancient enough to discuss books of that age with me who were actually there...

(I note that I am making an assumption about your age, which I find, upon reflection, I have always made. Apologies, if necessary.)

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm definitely that old! So old I can remember what it was like waiting for Watchmen #6 to arrive after reading Watchmen #5. And how great it felt when it did arrive, mainly because it managed to convince me that while yes, this was a world where small children were fed to dogs and already-unstable men went irretrievably insane after final crushing moral betrayals, this was also at least a world where people who've always loved each other in a haphazard way could reunite over their shared fetishization of the accoutrements of crimefighting...and baby, when you don't have much else to cling to (aside from a raft made from lashed-together corpses), that's okay with me.;)

[sovay]

unlike us (and certain other folks involved in this discussion [kicks Sonya]) that back when Watchmen came out, Cat was in, what, second grade?

I think Cat may be older than I am. I was born in 1981.

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

Yes, she just turned 30, if memory serves. (Or 29. I'm gonna get beat if it's 29, I know I am...)

My wife was born in 1981! Which actually makes you three years older than I thought you were.

...or have we really known each other that long? My god.

[sovay]

...or have we really known each other that long? My god.

I've got comments from you from 2005.

[readingthedark.livejournal.com]

Hi,

I'm 37. The only quibble
(if it really is a quibble, what I meant to be talking about is why I, personally, happened to read Cat's post a bit faster than I read most of her posts)
is because I worked in comic book stores as The Watchman came out and it's considered established knowledge that it took forever, came in erratic dribs and drabs and the rumor was always that Moore asked for an extra issue or two to tidy things up and they didn't let him have it so he threw the ending together as best he could.

Since I, personally, take that as a given, the sentiments in the post happened not to be as compelling to me so I skimmed it on the first pass (and then read it twice more to try to see if dots were actually connecting the plots of the two works.

The presumption that I'd heard these thoughts before (and again, it wasn't merely my seething jealousy that I am now old an irrelevant (teasing) as much as it is that the info is readily available) and my own petty desires for an even greater understanding of why Moore is one of the few creators who consistently blows my doors off led to my sensing that this particular post wasn't going to advance my personal scholarship much.

[Interestingly, I agree with Cat on most of her points, I just wanted more on Moore. I also feel that rape has become shorthand in a way that renders it reductivist, but would posit that it was daring back then, an attempt to demyth the underwear perverts.]

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

Dunno. I loathed Neuromancer; it's one of the books that turned me off science fiction forevermore, really (or at least until I find someone who actually writes the stuff once again where characters overcomes the technogeekery).

There's something "innate" in a received-wisdom sense that I'm supposed to be getting from the reference about how best to end a book, right?

I don't think so, but then, as noted above, I may well be (probably am) bringing my own baggage to the table. As we all do, natch.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I always sort of hand-waved the technobabble as a form of magic, which helped me get to the characters quicker--and yeah, they're a bit Frank Miller, but they're there. Still, to each their own, which should probably be the default refrain of this post.;)

[sovay]

(or at least until I find someone who actually writes the stuff once again where characters overcomes the technogeekery).

How do you classify writers like Le Guin? Or does she register for you as science fantasy, since the feasibility of the technology is not the point?

I recommend Caitlín R. Kiernan on general principle, but I would be curious to see how you react to her short novel The Dry Salvages (2004) and her newest collection A Is for Alien (2009), which are her forays into science fiction and in my opinion very successful ones. There is not a lot of technogeekery in them.

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

There is not a lot of technogeekery in them.

Which is why I can read both LeGuin and Kiernan with no problem. (Though I must say I've barely scratched the LeGuinian surface, twenty years after first picking up The Dispossessed.) My review of The Dry Salvages can't be TOO far down the pile on Amazon.

Still, though, in each case, I much prefer their fantasy. My favorite LeGuin book will likely always be Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, my favorite Kiernan Candles for Elizabeth...

[sovay]

My favorite LeGuin book will likely always be Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, my favorite Kiernan Candles for Elizabeth...

Okay, the obvious question: why those?

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I love The Dry Salvages, personally. But that may be because it reads somewhat like an attempt to make a version of Event Horizon which actually works.

[sovay]

But that may be because it reads somewhat like an attempt to make a version of Event Horizon which actually works.

I shall not now see Event Horizon . . .

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

It's been called Hellraiser in space, somewhat unfairly. And somewhat not.