Die by the Pen: Readers, Not Fans
Every Wednesday, Jared Gniewek discusses what feeds his fires as an author of comics, screenplays and radio dramas.
My esteemed co-contributor, Kevin Gillespie, filled in ably for me as I was stumbling about the back roads of England a few weeks back. And in his entry to the SAC blog, he wrote about something that I agree whole heartedly with. The use of the words “nerd” and “geek” bother him. I have to say that I’m in that camp (despite the title of my article last week) and would go even further in saying that the term “fan” is offensive to me as well.
With the release of this Watchmen movie last week, I am reminded of how the film companies want to make sure they make the “fans happy” while making their adaptations of comic stories. I hate this idea. It reeks of marketing nonsense. You see, I figure the average filmgoer (you know—the real money, not the paltry buying power that keeps pamphlet comics in print) is about a half a percent more likely to go see a movie if it has the “fans” endorsement. I’d rather see the endorsement of people who, y’know, study film and how it works and why. Screw the “fans” – make a good movie and let ‘em cry in their popcorn if Blue Devil’s trident is missing its crystal. They can then go home and read good comics. That used to be the response to crappy comic adaptations. They can never take away the comics experience from the reader.
In any case, I’ve never thought of myself as a “fan” of Watchmen. I’ve read it about twenty times and studied it over and over again, looking for the synapses between the icons of the characters and the visual motifs used to reflect the action. I’ve studied the scene transitions and why they work. Why head trauma is used in some sequences or the proliferation of violence to hands in others.
My copy is really cool because it’s the late-eighties book club edition on flat paper, not those garish overpriced glossy copies that blind you when you try to read them in a well-lit room. I love the book. I find new connections to draw from it every time I look at it. It is truly a well that runs deep to the very nature of what it is to be human in a chaotic gargantuan world. It also was designed as a comic book to be flipped back and forth through as the story unfolds and more and more details come to life. It wasn’t designed as a narrative as much as an integrating of a reader into becoming complicit in so much of what happens. There’s a strong sense when reading that the only reason that events are unfolding is because you are reading them happening, sort of a Schrödinger’s Cat of comics.
Who are these “fans” the film is courting? Or that any of these comic book adaptations are courting?
The connotation of the word “fan” would be that it is non-discriminating. Sports fans understand that a true fan stays with the team through its winning and losing seasons. No matter how bad the team sucks this year, a true fan remains loyal to the team. This makes perfect sense for the enjoyment of sports. By the logic of sports, a true fan of Batman would have to accept and purchase a ticket to any Batman movie, no matter how hideous. And some people do. But are these the fans they are trying to court? Do they desire the ones that will pay good money to watch any pile of dog excrement that features their favorite characters? If so, what’s the point? There aren’t really enough comics readers to bother with them as a marketing group. They are used more of as a representational group.
“You see these guys? They KNOW BATMAN! They know what works and what doesn’t, they read all those stupid books so that you, the real consumer, doesn’t have to bother with them. If THEY say we got Batman right, then goddammit, we got it RIGHT.”
So the whims of fan culture, which really amounts to who is loudest on a message board, dictates somewhat how a movie turns out. Then the makers of the film can claim fan support. This, in turn, is used to sell the movie to the real customers. The whole thing is stupid, aimless puffery and marketing.
I’m not a Mark Twain “fan” and I’m not a Hitchcock “fan.” I’m not a Black Sabbath “fan” and I’m not a Bukowski “fan”. I’m not a “fan” of folklore or fairy tales, no sir! I most certainly am not a comic “fan”. But you wanna know what I believe I am?
I am a reader, a student, a writer… an explorer. All things are worthy of scrutiny, and to continue to propagate this image of comics readers as people willing to accept sub-par material, just because we are blinded by some sense of loyalty to an intellectual property, will only make us look foolish time and time again. We, as readers, need to stop serving as marketing tools and begin to ask ourselves what it is about the MEDIUM of comics that serves us. Why do we return to these characters and stories over and over? Why do we hunt for new ways to tell stories with words and pictures? What is it that drives us as appreciators of comic storytelling? I guarantee you it is not the hope that they will make kick-ass movies of our favorite books.
Jared Gniewek works in the music industry as a back line technician, performer, and promoter. He is also a freelance writer whose work can be seen in the recent re-launch of Tales from the Crypt and heard on The Dark Sense, an audio anthology of the macabre for which he is also the story editor — http://www.earstage.com/darksense.htm.
Hey Jared!
Nice to see you’ve infiltrated the internet. I have a little quip though–I’ve read the graphic novel, my husband Mike has read it many many times (we also have an old edition printed on read comic book paper, not that new glossy crap–a 1987 Book Club edition so we may have the same copy!). We haven’t gone to see a movie in a long time and we both heard the horrendous reviews–but we went to see it anyway expecting to laugh or at least get to form our own opinion. And we liked it! Now, the director is awful of course, and that 300 style slow-down-speed-up action is infuriating–the music was terrible and maybe stereotypical at best. But the film is amazingly faithful for such a complex comic (although I missed the interdimensional death squid at the end also, with some of Rorschach’s story also missing as well as the little boy and his pirate comics). I don’t like Doctor Manhattan’s overwhelming nudity either, but in general I think it is one of the better attempts at a film adaptation of a comic that I’ve seen (and that is saying something). Jackie Earle Haley’s interpretation of Rorschach is spot-on and his voice is exactly how I imagined it. Clearly I have a love/hate relationship with the film, and the graphic novel is infinately better–but I think that overall it was good. Although most of the audience had no idea what was going on, said “huh” a lot, and laughed at completely innapropriate times–I think someone who has read and appreciated The Watchman should give it a chance and allow themselves to form their own opinion. Though I do know that Alan Moore abhors it, like every other film version of his comics (albeit most were terrible).
Just my two cents (or a lot more!),
Cousin Maggie
I actually liked the movie too, by the way. I liked it for its rare mix of camp and horror elements. I feel Zach Snyder owes a great debt to John Waters somehow…I’m gonna have to think more on this.