I've a bit of catch-up to do.
On Greg's Evil Double:
Koala cube: Who is the evil Feeley? Is he just a self-rationalisation for nice Feeley's life going shit? If so, what's the significance of Comrade 9 shooting the wrong one later?
eeoam: Why does Greg's double possess such antipathy towards Tony?
cube Again: This makes me wonder about the theory that somehow Greg makes it all up when he's dying. That doesn't fit. Having the evil Greg as a part of his personality that takes over when he fugues into the Hand does. Either that or it is all real. Then again, the calendars could be wrong.
Greg actually answers this question himself (sort of), in his suicide letter.
"They say I killed Tony with neglect and came up with The Hand as an excuse for being an alcoholic pervert deep inside. I couldn't stand it if that were true... I'd be so ashamed of myself..."
Evil Greg is sort of the excuse he comes up with for letting Tony die, one of his inventions to explain all the negative shit he's done. As far as the timeframe of it all, as I said before, he mixes his Life With The Hand with what are definitely 'real' events in his life. I could be wrong about him completely coming up with everything right then at that moment of suicide, though - the 'delusion' of the Hand may have been a far more longstanding invention for coping with the reality of his life - but I stand by the idea that he 'retcons' most of the last year of his life at that moment there on the floor.
"But if Ned is the injectable personality, WHY do they spend twelve issues trying to persuade a bloke with a faulty implant that he's the only one that can be Ned Slade."
Sunny D commented on this, but bear in mind that much of what Hand members do in the story is specific rationalization for Bad Things in Greg's life. They're invented excuses for real circumstances. A huge host of human delusions revolve around disassociating ideas/behaviors, so people can distance themselves from their own lives/things that really bother them - if you were Greg, wouldn't you be willing to believe that your real life was fake? A schism develops there, though, which I think brings rise to a lot of the conflict in the story - Greg wanting to both flee and cling to his real life, and Tony's the reason he keeps coming back to 'Greg Feely' - if it weren't for Tony he'd have stayed 'Ned Slade' - they point this out numerous times. That's why that 'We have love' bit at the end is important - the memory of and love for Tony kept bringing him back to real life.
I think part of the point Grant's making with the particular ideas about para-personas is that specific life-maladies have specific Emotional/Spiritual Immune Responses - the para-personas are the immune responses, that's why they're at the chemist/pharmacy - para-personas are ways humans have to alter their self-image to cope with existential terror.
I'm not sure what's odd or confusing about the idea that Secret Original can hear Mrs. Twine's concerns about Greg being a pedophile. It's just a scene transition, really.
Our Lady:
"Is the Greg/Max Thunderstorm conspiracy perhaps the first time the Filth are being attacked by normal people who know of their existence? Employing a dodgy metaphor, the Filth are antibodies for the human germ, and the Max/Greg conspiracy are the supervirus that needs extreme measures, which is why the Filth takes them in, to study and use them to create better antibodies, only Greg is a wilier supervirus than they give him credit for? Explains why they put up with Greg, trying to load Ned into him to neutralise him, loading Spartacus into Max does seem rather odd though. I see it as The Filth at this point being compromised by the Greg virus, so like the nastier diseases it's attacking itself rather than the true source of the virus, Greg."
If The Hand/Filth were the primary thing in the story, I would agree with this on some level, but I think you have to see The Hand as entirely constructed for Greg's emotional/mental benefit - even if he doesn't realize it or agree with it. I don't have anything in response to the Spartacus Hughes turnabout near the end, though, except to show that Greg is now beginning to revolt against his own fantasy, tearing down the house he built. I really have no idea what Spartacus Hughes signifies in the grander scheme, though, or if Maxwell Shatt and all their alleged co-conspirators are actually anyone Greg knows/knew or not - but I've been thinking on it.
eeoam:
"I might actually be able to accept this but for one simply reason – this telling phenomenon isn't unique to the Filth - [it's Morrison's style]."
To a point, I agree here, but Morrison has a particular way of using it that is very at home in comics - I don't think it's unintentional, it's definitely a stylistic choice. It's effect is easily debatable.
"We need to know why it's difficult [to interpret]. Is it that it requires a higher level of maturity on the part of the reader? Or is it just that the writer's on an ego trip and so is making things far more oblique than they need to be? Or perhaps the writer is not skilled enough to communicate his ideas effectively?"
I don't understand why we need to told why we have to work harder to get at the heart of the story's meaning - generally, one has to. I don't think Grant Morrison's work is oblique because he's an egomanic or unskilled - I think he puts it down in the way that it is in his head, and trusts his audience to work it out.
"What bothers me at the moment is that we're almost halfway through the story and it's still not clear a) what the protagonist's problem is and b)what flaw in his character is preventing him from solving it. Without this it's difficult to care about what is occurring beyond the spectacle of it all."
I remember feeling this way after the Tex Porneau/Anders Klimakks issues came out. Reading it whole it doesn't feel that way, though. The mental 'In' and 'Out' points of absorption & reader trust are more obvious.
"As someone mentioned earlier only Greg/Ned is really deserving of the designation of 'character' at this point and he was barely present here."
I totally object to this. I think it's preposterous. With the exception, perhaps, of Miami, the characters are very well represented, albeit in shorthand. Morrison often writes in an extremely compressed fashion - the pieces are there, you just have to look for them. Who is underdeveloped?
"...they managed to make an interesting character out of him. Shame the same cannot be said of Anders."
I love Anders Klimakks. He narrates half the fifth issue, and his narration comes back in at the end of issue six. He's one of the more attended-to characters in the series. Go back & read all his dialogue, I feel like his personality is extremely well-defined.
"Consequently the events that take place aren't infused with a deeper meaning that can be discerned. They're just there for the sake of it. I mean what the hell is the point of having gigantic sperm flying around attacking women other than some kind of cheeky amusement value? The story should use Greg's struggles to construct a lens whereby we can see that there is method to this madness, even as we laugh at the absurdity of it all. That's what a good story does. And that's the kind of story this should be. Shouldn't it?"
Um, how about the killer sperm are the negative emotional impact of pornography given form, the ugliest things about it - the size-fixation, the misogyny, the power-fantasy aspects, - overcoming and running riot? Tex Porneau spells it out plain as day. I think these two issues give the most thematic exposition of any of them, really. Here:
"The existentialists faltered on the brink of the gaping void. Nausea, that's what those limp-dick intellectuals felt. They were afraid of the big black pit, scared of losing their teeny-weeny dicklets in the assole of being!"
Fuck or be fucked. Size does matter. It's all cum and blood in the end. These are all terrible fears about sex that are very easily felt or related to. The experience with The Hand is Greg dealing with the Abyss of existence, the dark, uncharted territory of being. It's him conquering his fears, imagining himself as a Prime Operative in a Super-Secret Organization putting down all the shit that terrifies him in Real Life. The Pornomancer arc is NOT saying Porno is Bad anymore than it's saying Sex is Bad - it's just part of what the series is about - Everything Bad about Everything Good and all the way down the list.
Art has as many and as few rules as life. A story should be a narrative, that is, a sequence of events. I think that's as far as a definition can reliably go. I feel like you're trying to put far too rigid a box around a story like this - Morrison writes stories that are not easily discernable or definable, and I'd go so far as to say 'The Filth' is one of his least of both thus far.
“But what exactly did the sperm do to Tex, given that he didn't have womb to be fertilised to death?”
I think the term 'fertilized to death' is just the characters being cheeky. It's quite obvious from the art that all they do is run people through at insane speeds. I imagine Tex was crushed.
"[Morrison] has a reputation for being controversial and he does not disappoint here, for he has a character speak in accent. This is something that many writers are instructed to avoid. I remember that this one was one of the things that really annoyed me the first time I read the Filth. I will however save my tirade on this subject for a future post."
That’s ridiculous to me. So is it bad because he was or wasn't instructed to do it? Again, art has as many or as few rules as life - Should Morrison more regularly consult his Strunk & White?
I love the Pornomancer arc. I think it's immensely solid, and easily the most thematically accessible issues of The Filth. It may not seem obvious what it's pointing to yet (it wasn't to me), but I find myself going back to these two issues a great deal in trying to divine the meaning of the whole thing.
On the end of issue 6, the fact that Greg's been keeping souvenirs from his encounters is what first clicked me into the idea that each Villain Encounter represents a separate capital-F Fear (the pornos, the I-Life, etc.), and how Greg is silently, on some level learning to cope with his perception of each. It also makes clear reference to the idea that he may be imagining everything to rationalize his own poor behavior:
"It's the other man, isn't it? Has he been drinking, Tony?"
"Has he been neglecting you while I've been having advenures?"
"What if I wasn't having adventures after all? What if it's just mold in the fishbowl because... because I let the fish die... Oh Tony, God help me, what have I been doing?"
I had a few other ideas to munch on, but this post is way too long already. Munch later. |
