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Underground > Comic Books >

The filth: carriers, parapersonnas, anti-persons

01:39 / 13.02.03

Three possible definitions (which can get better):

carrier: a human body that sustains a mobile identity (we do not know about the original personality in the body)

parapersonna: a temporal identity superimposed on an agent to give him some normal time/experience on the world

antiperson/anti-being: any being that goes against the social status quo, that threatens to de-stabilize the social system.

OK, we have seen that some of the agents of the Filth put the wigs on when they "go to work", we know that they use carriers, we know that Slade's having a "parapersonna crash".

How do we know which is the original personality? (we had seen a similar problem with Boy on the Invisibles).
How do we know that Slade is the real personality and Feely is the mask? couldn't it be the other way around? The wigs are part of the disguise, no?

We know that Spartacus also uses carriers, that he was once on the other side. He chose to become an anti-person. And we also saw that an artificially evoolved social order was considered "anti-being", different, and exterminated.

Who is the good guy here?
Aren't most of us anti-persons?

Gee, gotta go and find a new carrier.

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02:57 / 13.02.03

Why does Hughes remind me so much of John A'Dreams?...

Well, if Slade is the negative King Mob as seen in Black Science 2, and don't forget John A'Dreams did everything better then KM, just like Hughes was better then everything then Slade was...

And John joined the other side to reach enlightenment...

And Hughes quit the Hand to become an anti-person...

h'mm...

yawn - thing's buddy

07:10 / 13.02.03

Hughes is a 'public school bastard' too, just like J.Dreams.

'Nobody does it better..........'

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12:35 / 13.02.03

That's what I forgot to mention.

Of course, imo John had much better fashion sense then Hughes.

yawn - thing's buddy

13:03 / 13.02.03

I'm not so reluctant to draw parallels between the Filth and the Invisibles despite TGM himself and others here claiming the book should be considered on its own merits.

It's so obviously the jobby after the 3 course dinner AKA The Invisibles.

Off topic - I began to wonder if the Filth was conceived in that unholy room where Mob finds himself in Black Science 2. The pathetic, failed Mob (as drawn by Chris Weston) who has 'given up' and can't remeber how long he'd been stuck in the mess that he monotone life has become.

GM pushed himself deep into the Black Church with that story arc and perhaps he began to 'see' the world from their point of view.

The Filth being his diary of what he saw there.

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02:42 / 14.02.03

While I appreciate the idea of "The Filth" being taken on it's own merits, at the same time I just can't resist drawing parallels between it and The Invisibles, and there are some obvious ones, like the one you (yawn) mentioned about how Tex's mansion was like a negative version of De sade's one in The Invisibles, or something along those lines...

Our Lady of The Two Towers

13:34 / 14.02.03

Well, I'm sure that GM is aware that Tex or Spartacus' worldview is very much the flip-side to De Sade, in the Invisibles he's great because the reader is encouraged to believe that he will be the dominant partner in any Sadean relationship, 'The Filth' is from the abused point of view.

yawn - thing's buddy

14:16 / 14.02.03

Sypha - it wasn't me who drew the parallels between De Sades mansion and Tex's fuck-stead was it?

At least not online anyway.

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14:29 / 14.02.03

I could of sworn it was you, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

15:55 / 14.02.03

How do we know which is the original personality?

Who says there has to be an "original personality"? The "me" with my grandparents and the "me" with my mates are completely different--which is the real one?

16:06 / 14.02.03

My thoughts exactly, Tommy. Maybe the whole point is that everyone's personality is, at least to an extent, a construct of affectations—that there is no intrinsic, inborn personality. We all have masks we put on in different situations—that's a recurrent theme in Grant's work, though the metaphors change: Crazy Jane's MPD, The Invisibles with its MeMes, Marvel Boy's Plex.

And The Filth? We Are All Made Of Multicolored Goo.