| |
|
I think Our Lady of the Flamingoes is absolutely on the money in terms of how “left wing” the acts of the bad guys in New X-Men are.
And this...
“I don't quite see how bringing back Magneto is a sign of right-wingness, unless you're trying to make some connection between political Conservatism and the conservative nature of men-in-tights comics.”
...is a damned fine point! I only wish I hadn’t been too busy wailing and screaming to think of it…
Anyway, it seems to me that this quote, from Morrison’s Animal Man run, is screamingly relevant to the overall themes of New X-Men:
“It’s funny; some say that the superheroes are the next stage in human evolution, yet every time we meet, all we seem to do is fight one another. If that’s the future, it doesn’t look too bright to me.”
In Morrison’s New X-Men mutants are not yet the status quo, but they will be in the future. They represent potential for new ideas and ways of living in the world. The main villain in the series, Sublime, attempts to drag this potential down into a violent, conflict based oppositional set-up that will self-perpetuate until the end of time, stunting real progress as it does so. In a world where the Republican Government of America has spent the last couple of years trying to convince the world that it is blowing the fuck out of people in a progressive and humanitarian way, attempting to set up a black and white conflict between The Land Of The Free and The Axis Of Evil in the process, I can’t think of any message that could possibly be further from much of what currently constitutes the politics of the right.
“Here we go. This reminds me of the people who write crap stories and then go, "But that's the point. My crap story is meant to be a 'comment' on other people's crap stories." I have just never bought that. If you want to show up people who do crap, don't copy them, do better than them!
If you want to 'comment' on other people's lack of imagination, be imaginative yourself!”
Well, I’d agree with you that writing a crap story and then claiming that the whole point of the story is that it’s crap doesn’t do anything to change the fact that it’s a crap story, but that’s not what I feel Morrison has done here, nor was it what I argued that he had done.
For one thing I certainly don’t think that the Planet X arc is a “crap” story, and I feel no need to excuse it of anything. You may disagree with me here, but as a wise man once said, that’s just, like, your opinion man. Furthermore I think that a large part of its strength derives from the ways in which it plays both with and against the conventions of the genre and franchise that it is a part of. This isn’t the same as going through the motions in a blank listless fashion and then trying to pass it off as being a profound statement. Rather it is a very smart and natural approach to writing material of this nature that amps up and examines the subtext of previous stories (the good ones and the bad ones) and in doing so provides a “new” look at the mechanics of these narratives. I feel that the way that this story plays out is crushingly relevant to the current world climate and highly imaginative to boot (see my above comments on the overall themes of his run for details), and this impression is only strengthened by the way that Morrison tied the events in this arc into the even bigger arc that threads through his run as a whole.
But anyway, this is a thread about The Filth rather than New X-Men, so lets move on for now shall we?
Excellent.
I really don’t think that the Filth is pro Status Q, and it’s certainly not a fucking paean to it in any case. The methods of the Hand are less extreme than those of the anti-people they battle? Sometimes. But remember, they fight violent hardcore porn with violent hardcore porn, kill the fuck out of the new life form on the Libertania, and are generally fairly brutal and horrible in their dealings with anti-people and people in general. I’d say that they’re pretty clearly supposed to be hugely unappealing, as is Status Q in general.
“Showing the shit and ignoring the gold is a big gaping whole in this thesis, is all I'm saying..”
Again, I think you’re wrong here – the whole point of the Filth is that the view it provides on the world is pretty hopeless and misanthropic. Furthermore, despite what you say,there is some gold here. And where does it originate from? Our “hero” Greg/Ned of course! And what is Greg/Ned but a walking synthesis – he’s both an anti person and a Hand agent, US and THEM combined in one man. One of the key themes of the Invisibles (and of New X-Men for that matter) is that of moving beyond reductive US vs THEM/THEM vs US conflicts, yes? Well I’d argue that the same thing is going on in The Filth, though obviously the perspective we get on these ideas is totally different here than it is in either of those texts. What’s the key to The Filth? Love. Compassion. A little bit of TLC. That’s what seems to be crucial to any real progress in the GM worldview right now, and quite frankly I’m all for it! As I’ve said before, this isn’t a hugely optimistic series, but there is change here on a scale that is both small and large (Greg inoculates the world and is inoculated by the world at the same time). The fact that the series reaches this place despite its aforementioned bleak worldview is essential to its effect, in my opinion, and furthermore, I’d go as far as to say that rather than being a thesis with a gap in it, The Filth actually plugs a gap in some of Morrison’s previous imaginings.
Let me explain.
Towards the end of the series, Miami comes out with the following line:
“The system is perfect, Ned. It has to be; it’s all there is.”
This quote isn’t comforting, and it’s not meant to be. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that it’s one of the most chilling lines that Morrison has ever written. What it does do is to point to one of the scary ramifications of viewing the world as being a part of a self-ordering system heading towards some sort of higher goal (a la The Invisibles): if the system, with it’s battle between order and chaos, has a purpose then in what way does this make it any better when your existence feels like hell? A line from New X-Men comes to mind here: “Why do there always have to be people like you?” The Filth struggles with this, trying to find something to cling onto amongst the conflict both internal and external (the lines between these two states are very blurry in this book, as has already been noted). “What am I supposed to do with this?”, Greg asks, and it’s a damned good question. We all have moments where everything looks hopeless and vicious and unsettling, or at least threatens to; The Filth is all about these moments, and I think it’s also very much about what keeps us going through such times, something that I think is very much worth exploring in fiction. |
|
|
