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Underground > Comic Books >

Grant Morrison & Real Life Mutants

Matthew Fluxington

18:18 / 27.05.03

I thought that you'd all get a kick out of this brief sidebar article from the newest issue of SPIN (July 2003, Thom Yorke cover).

GETTING INTO THEIR GENES
Are These Suspicious Celebrities Secretly Mutants Too?

"Every day I look in the mirror, I'm forced to concede that mutants are real," says comic book author Grant Morrison (The Invisibles, The Filth). He should know: Each month he chronicles the adventures of Marvel Comics' genetic misfits in New X-Men. "Back home in Glasgow," he adds, "we have mutants on every street corner with the ability to drink more than ordinary humans." Appropriately, Morrison was hungover when we asked him to evaluate the mutant potential of these equally freakish luminaries. - ANDY GREENWALD

Justin Timberlake
"Definitely a pure mutation - and he's trying to push his powers in a more evil direction. I think they inject all of those Disney kids, like Britney, with something when they're young. One minute, they're singing about mice, and the next, they're riding motorcycles and fisting each other."

Stephen Hawking
"He's in the larval stage of his mutation. I have a feeling that one day he'll shed that body, the prosthetic wheels. The husk will split open and a glowing energy life-form will emerge, one with the power to control entire worlds."

Kylie Minogue
"Tricky, but she's more of an android, like on Star Trek. They look perfect, but they've got strange plastic skin, and if you scratch them, a clear liquid flows out. She can be used for good or evil - like the bomb."

Yao Ming
"Classic mutant. They always come from other countries, they're always exotic, and he's gone straight to basketball, the one place where he won't look too suspicious. I wonder when they'll start testing for the mutant gene in all sports?"

Michael Jackson
"I think Michael Jackson wants desperately to be a mutant and can afford to get suspiciously close. Martin Bashir is more of a creepy character - I imagine that he's like the Toad, that he has the power to eat flies at a distance of 15 feet away and can bounce off the walls."

Simon Cowell
"Oh, now we're into the realm of demonology. What we need is for Yao Ming to put on a costume and fight people like this before they take over the world."

----

Ha! Michael Jackson is totally a U-Man!

18:39 / 27.05.03

He's got Martin Bashir dialled. In fact, that would make a great punishment: Rob a bank, get a half-hour interview with Bashir, assault: hour long interview, murder: 2-part prime time special.

As for Michael Jackson - Crab Boy is seriously pissed since you stole his face..

19:00 / 27.05.03

Umm...who is Martin Bashir?

And we all know Grant M. has written much more about Kylie over on his website....

Is Simon Cowell the critic/judge from American Idol?

Thanks, Flux, great article!

Nietzsch E. Coyote

19:43 / 27.05.03

Martin Bashir: guy who interviewed Michael Jackson.

The Natural Way

08:32 / 28.05.03

Side note: I LOVE Hunterwolf! He's guaranteed to turn up with a who? what? why? when?

11:04 / 28.05.03

Whats the fuzz with Kylie Minogue? She an actress?

11:13 / 28.05.03

Never mind, Just found out.

13:16 / 28.05.03

Hey man, just using Barbelith for my edu-macation.

Plus, when I hear "Bashir," I think of the dude from Deep Space Nine.

I know the Am. Idol dude only as "Simon", so his last name could be Cowell for all I know. I don't follow the show.

At least I knew who Kylie Bloody Minoque was :P

16:18 / 28.05.03

Hey everyone,

This is Andy -- the guy that wrote the GM piece for Spin. I'm glad you dug it -- it was a *blast* to do and I'm only disappointed that so much of it was cut for space considerations (apparently also for political considerations -- the other candidates for "demonolgy" were Tony Blair and Donald Rumsfeld). I've got a fantastic, full interview with Grant about X-Men and beyond that I'm hoping to write up and publish somewhere or other sometime soon. The highlight: when he and Kristan talk about seeing the Hollywood premiere of "Irreversible" and being so incensed that they put an actual curse on the director.

Anyway, keep up the good discussion and thanks for letting me lurk . . .

A.

16:42 / 28.05.03

maybe you could write it up and publish it here...
ok, no money, but the sheer pleasure of it...
I won't curse you if you don't.

18:07 / 29.05.03

Hello Mr. Vertigo/Andy -- thanks for posting here! Cool to see that you read this site.

So when oh when can we read the Grant M. full length X-Men & other topics interview????

And when did this "Irreversible" come out -- recently, right? Who's in it?

They cursed the director just cause they thought it sucked, no other reason than that? Or did it offend them in some more specific way?

19:40 / 29.05.03

It does feature an extremely graphic depiction of a rape scene: 9 minutes, in real time, one locked camera on the woman as it happens. The director, Gaspar Noe, claimed that although this traumatised audiences, such traumatising was necessary to get across 'the full horror' of being raped. This raises several questions:

1) Are we so numb as a culture that people have to shock us into realising that rape is bad?

2) What gives Gaspar Noe any authority to speak about the full horror of being raped? Has he been raped? Tori Amos' Me and a Gun is a fairly uncomfortable listen, but at least it comes from a position of real (female) experience. How does Noe think his position as a male film director gives him the authority to depict the violation of a woman by a man in such a way?

3) Isn't it, really, just a total artistic cop-out? 'I had to put a nine-minute long single camera rape scene in to show the horror'. Would the horror have been diminished in a seven-minute shot? With two cameras?

[/threadrot]

05:16 / 30.05.03

I would really like to find out what Grant found so offensive about the movie, enough to put a curse on the director. In doing research for the Filth he saw movies by Max Hardcore who's at least as bad, if not a million times worse. Curse him.

Noe's choice to cast Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci may have been an ill advised one, but I hardly saw anything in the movie which would warrant the reaction Grant seems to have had.

Bring on this interview!

07:42 / 30.05.03

I'm curious too, but how come most directors (and anime and hentai) who want to make artistic statements about rape and other sexual degradation usually have it happening to women? Where are the *guys* being raped by tentacle monsters? Dammit, I want a Hothead Paisan animated series! It would make me squirm a little, but it would make many more people squirm a LOT!

15:25 / 30.05.03

How does Noe think his position as a male film director gives him the authority to depict the violation of a woman by a man in such a way?

What, you mean like the way the non-anally violated film director Quentin Tarantino depicted male rape in Pulp Fiction?

I agree. Clearly these directors are responsible for a fictional narrative which involves people acting which is, of course, outrageous and should be stopped immediately.

The Natural Way

15:34 / 30.05.03

Because the world divides so neatly into "fiction" and "non fiction"....

Bjaques: I think it has something to do with commenting on pre-existing narratives. Women in film are often violated in fun, sexy ways - perhaps directors like Noe are interested in reversing that trend. Perhaps they want to underline how grotesque the pleasure we get from this stuff actually is. Y'know, that kind of thing. Very simple, really.

17:20 / 30.05.03

To careen painfully off-topic for another moment - The beardless (but most certainly fat) Roger Ebert had a review of the film that I found interesting. It's my contribution to the Society of People Discussing Movies They Largely Haven't Seen (I haven't seen it either, I know some of you have).

He spends some time analyzing why he believes the filmmaker made some of the choices he made and the effect that has - the film is told in reverse, beginning with a brutal beating and murder of the (supposed) rapist, moving backward into the reaction, then into the rape itself, and the final third of the film is apparently Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel enjoying a party and tender, and then/previously intimate time together at home - essentially reversing or greatly twisting the effect many of these events have in an on-screen story.

It's an interesting read, if only as a counter-point to the thick-fingered chest-jabbing of Third-Person-Cinema-Outrage.

Oh! So back on topic! That, Morrisson, I tell ya, what showman! That Yao Ping! What a tall bastard! Spectacular!

Seriously, though, celebrities are largely mutants, I don't see how they could not be transmogrified in such a way if they weren't already. Big Top Publicity, Big Top Drama. I watched that Martin Bashir/Michael Jackson interview, and it was startling how de-humanized both men seemed to be by the end of it (though Jackson, I suppose, had a head-start). I recall one of the most affecting moments for me being watching Michael Jackson climb a tree and just sit up there while Bashir tried to catch up. It was weird, and sad,and surreal. [cliche] I can't help but feel much of the time that most humans can't help but mutate savagely in a celebrity environment, if they weren't already that way to begin with - what reality even has a chance to slip through? [/cliche]

How about us throwing in some other Celebrity Mutants:

Christian Bale - Amazing Lip-Puckering/Cheek-Sucking Action!

David Hasslehoff - Piercing, Hunky FUCKING MIND CONTROL GAZE!

Ben Affleck - Ass for a face!

17:50 / 30.05.03

Jennifer Lopez - no force on Earth can move her butt!

I haven't seen Irreversible either - and therefore Clearly Do Not Know What I'm Talking About - but what got me about all the publicity was this 'ooh! A rape scene! What a brave artistic decision! Sacre bleu!' Which it very well may be, but I still think the fact that we need to be shocked into understanding how horrible rape is is [cliche from hell] a damning indictment of our society [/cliche from hell, begin ultimate threadrot]

Incidentally, how many 'damning indictments' has our society received by this point? I figure we must have had a fair few. Does that mean we're all going to Hell, collectively? They'll need to build an extension. Hmmm - 'When there is no more room in Hell for a bit, the dead will, for a limited time only, walk the earth. Hell apologises for any inconvenience caused. Estimated completion date of Hell 2 - July 2008.' [/ultimate threadrot]

Max Hardcore versus Gaspar Noe? Aha, well at least Hardcore doesn't claim his films are art, does he? (or does he? He seems like the kind of Total Prick on Steroids who would make a QVQA movie and claim it was art...)

As to Quentin Tarantino never being buggered, don't be so sure. It's not something he likes to talk about, but I was there. Me and Samuel L Jackson. That's what happens to white guys who say 'nigger' a little too often...

Important legal bit: the above statement is in no way intended to be true, and therefore should not constitute grounds for a libel suit from Tarantino Enterprises Inc, even if he still needs some more money to finish Kill Bill, nor by The Samuel L Jackson World Domination Machine, which is presumed to have a sense of humour about these things anyway. For purposes of any libel suit resulting, the entity known as 'velvetvandal' is really called Damien Johnson, aged 21, and lives in Luton with his mum and three border collies, all of whom are called 'Sigismund'. /Important legal bit.