Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Comic Books >

Schizophrenics can't process metaphor

Page: 1 2(3)4 5

20:51 / 21.09.04

Off-topic, it'd be interesting, perhaps elsewhere, to attempt to quantify some of these terms: "book-learning", "business-sense", "common-sense", etc.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:25 / 21.09.04

Of course he did, this whole thing came about because he works for for a presently thick, stupid, messed up fucking company that won't do him the small favour of dropping the profit obsession JUST ONE TIME for someone who's helped put them where they are now.

And paid him for it, Bunky. And paid him for it. That's how jobs work.

Besides, it's rather unkind of you to think Morrison would be upset with any decision not to publish Seaguy 2 as a vanity project. I think the guy deserves a bit more respect than that. In fact, if I were Grant Morrison and I read that, I would be pretty pissed off with you. Morrison's complaint is not, it seems, with DC for not publishing Seaguy 2, but with comic readers for not getting (in either sense) Seaguy 1...

21:34 / 21.09.04

Besides, it's rather unkind of you to think Morrison would be upset with any decision not to publish Seaguy 2 as a vanity project. I think the guy deserves a bit more respect than that. In fact, if I were Grant Morrison and I read that, I would be pretty pissed off with you.

I don't give a fuck if he read this and was pissed at me because i didn't mean it like that at all, it would be him reading my post and taking it the wrong way, like you have.

What i meant was that to them it isn't as important so it doesn't matter. Apparently they want him to be working on something bigger.

They should let him do his own thing, i think he's earned the right to be able to do that. When he started writing it, i bet he put a lot more into it than he thought he was going to do originally.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:36 / 21.09.04

The thing I get most of all from these bits of interview is that GM, being a normal bloke, is a little disappointed that people, as far as he could tell, didn't understand something he'd written.
Also, being a normal bloke, he sometimes talks like a nob and uses words he doesn't understand.

22:48 / 21.09.04

man, I kind of regret having opened this topic.

nobody needs to think Grant is a translucid alien/angel being from the 5th dimension that came down in human form to enlighten us. and nobody needs to agree that he's not only a very good communicator but one of the best writers still producing today.

but have some of you being treated badly by him in person? I love this forum, 'm aware of Grant's "interview persona" and also think any work is subject to criticism.

but sometimes you can just smell here almost the same stench of hategasm found in typical comic book message boards, only a bit dressed as a fine fragrance...

01:53 / 22.09.04

It's been funny and pretty sad at the same time i think. I bet if Grant has read this he's been fluctuating between shock, pity, and hysterics.

miss wonderstarr

06:30 / 22.09.04

If he goes into despair at a couple of reviews, I'm afraid this thread may have led him to do something "very silly"

glad I didn't make any really cruel comments here

06:44 / 22.09.04

Grant was so upset at this thread he couldn't stop crying through sex last night.

06:53 / 22.09.04

I haven't read the Arthur interview but all I can say is, that you don't need to read fifteen textbooks to really get Morrison's work.

The stuff I was hearing about the Filth before reading it made me think twice about buying it but I bought it anyway because it was Grant. I loved the comic, not without it's flaws and there were some exceptional times where I felt he could've told a story with more emotional resonance I accepted it as one more book from one of my favourite writers and enjoyed it.

I'm not sure I "get" the Filth as much as someone who's far more well read than me but I know what the book was about and followed the whole thing without scratching my head.

I sympathise with some negative criticism but not all, The Filth was definitely fascinating and worthy of study, it could've been a better story but I'm not nitpicking too much.

Seaguy was grand stuff. I loved it, there was a sense of incomplete and rushed in some places but Grant's stories are rarely flawless. And then what is flawless anyway.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:28 / 22.09.04

Also, being a normal bloke, he sometimes talks like a nob and uses words he doesn't understand.

BURN THE HATER!

Hector, you're adorable, but. The issue here is, as far as I and many others are concerned, that Morrison, regardless of his ability as a writer, has shown the sort of insensitivity and ignorance that many Barbeloids rush to defend him for, in case he ever comes round their house and wants to play swingball. There's nothing personal in that observation. There is something personal in wanting to play swingball with George Morrison. Do you have a swingball set? Thought so.

Jackie F: Once more. George is not upset about Vertigo, on the strength of this passage. He is upset that comic book readers are not making the effort, by reading other texts, that would allow them to appreciate his work. DC have done everything they could - they published Seaguy, after all, and are now releasing a TPB even in the face of disappointing sales. I think we're all disappointed that Seaguy 2 is in peril, and most of us would like at least to have the opportunity to decide whether to buy Seaguy 2.

No, Morrison is angry with comic book readers without a grounding in mediaeval literature. He is angry at *you*, Jack Frost. Morrison thinks that you have let him down.

Now, read this copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth and we'll say no more about it.

yawn - thing's buddy

10:10 / 22.09.04

fuckin schizoid.

13:36 / 22.09.04

Dude, I think he'd be a bit hurt by that suggestion. Nick Hornby's a normal bloke, or at least he wants to be anyway, ( if there's a point to his material then that's probably it, ) and good old * apples and pears * Tony Parsons has pretty much cornered the market these days in the novel as narrated by an uninteresting cab driver, sub-genre, but not George, for heaven's sake.

13:39 / 22.09.04

The above with ref to

He's a normal bloke

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:52 / 22.09.04

I think I move in the wrong circles.

15:18 / 22.09.04

As evidenced by your love of Lexx...

16:44 / 22.09.04

I wondered about the legitimacy of the Questing Beast in literature also --- maybe it was mostly horses back then (the faithful steeds of the questing heroes)? Pegasus, etc.? The little clockwork owl in CLASH OF THE TITANS? Donkey in SHREK?

Maybe this corresponds to the animal familiars of witches/warlocks...? Can we name some Questing Beasts in heroic literature through the ages?

miss wonderstarr

17:31 / 22.09.04

Chewbacca?

ONLY NICE THINGS

17:49 / 22.09.04

The questing beast isn't a beast that quests. It is a specific beast, so called because its belly makes the sound of dogs barking as if hunting(questing). This is rather why it is pretty clear that Morrison is relying on his readers knowing less about Arthurian literature than he does... unless he means Xoo, or the beetle, or... hmm. Nothing leaps out at you.

19:40 / 22.09.04

On the 'schizophrenic' diagnosis - the idea that the shift from modernism to postmodernism can be metaphorized as a shift from neurosis (or 'the Oedipal') to schizophrenia as a mode of subjectivity is one of those pop-cultural-theory things, I think, which has been circulating long enough to bear little resemblance either to a psychiatric definition or, probably, to its origins in cultural theory. A Deleuzean would probably be able to help you out on this a bit more, but one of the ways I'm aware that 'schizophrenia' has been taken up as a structure for thinking about language processing, cultural transmission, etc, is in Avital Ronell's splendid The Telephone Book, which does wonderful things with language and philosophy but probably not much for the diagnosis and treatment of mental... [flails, looking at Ganesh] illnesses? disorders?

Anyway. Just wanted to make the point that George is not doing bad psychiatry, he is doing sloppy or just vaguely-referenced cultural studies. (But, again, we really need a Deleuzean here.)

19:56 / 22.09.04

Except that he's using "schizophrenia" in the shittypoppsych sense. This is suggested by his use of concrete thinking ("unable to process metaphor") as a diagnostic symptom, as evidence - and further bolstered by the fact that he's previously used autism ("Asperger's Syndrome") interchangeably within the same soundbite. And it is a soundbite.

21:31 / 22.09.04

Well they're nearly all questing for something aren't they, Haus? I mean:

* She-Beard for a worthy man and warrior to best/dominate her
* Xoo is questing for, er, Xoo
* Seaguy and Chubby [being part of Seaguy] are questing for Adventure!

22:14 / 22.09.04

I think perhaps the problem with people not "getting" his work is that sometimes you think there's more to get than there actually is. I was really amazed, in the end, at the thematic simplicity of the Filth. ("What do you do with shit? You spread it on your flowers." 13 issues boiled down into a proverb-y riddle.) But then I thought there was no way it could be that simple, and that I must have missed an essential hidden complexity. And a lot of people probably felt the same way because he's Grant Morrison, and admits himself that he has that reputation.

So what about a pen name? Wouldn't that be an interesting experiment? You could even go high and magickal about it, saying he's taking on a new fiction/authorsuit or what-have-you. Nevertheless, it'd be interesting to see what the fans and critics think when they can't write a book off with "Oh, that's just Grant Morrison."

Downside: marketplace probably couldn't support a new "unknown" writer pen-name who would want to take on big ambitious projects anyway.

23:10 / 22.09.04

Right... and I probably wouldn't buy it if I didn't know it was Grant writing it.

Didn't he try to do Filth anonymously? Hmm...

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:49 / 23.09.04

Well they're nearly all questing for something aren't they, Haus? I mean:

* She-Beard for a worthy man and warrior to best/dominate her
* Xoo is questing for, er, Xoo
* Seaguy and Chubby [being part of Seaguy] are questing for Adventure!

Yes, Triplets. However, as I just said, the questing beast is not a beast that quests. Morrison is trying to sound clever, appears not to be entirely clear on what the phrase "the questing beast" means, but has always gotten away with misusing it because he has never tried to do this in the company of somebody who *does*. See also schizophrenia. He at least can say that he didn't have somebody a few posts up on a messageboard telling him what the questing beast was.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:17 / 23.09.04

Here we go:

so the beast went to the well and drank, and the noise was in the beast’s belly like unto the questing of thirty couple hounds

Xoo is the only possibility, really, because the questing beast is chimaeric - it is often represented as made up of the body parts of many different animals.

Very broadly, I think what he might be trying to say is:

Seaguy was in some ways inspired by my understanding of mediaevel literature, which is taken from T.H. White's The Once and Future King and the works of Joseph Campbell. In The Once and Future King, Pellinore is a bumbling knight hunting the Questing Beast, which illustrates the sort of pointless, adventure-for-the-sake-of-adventure that Seaguy is looking for - a knightly pursuit, if you like, with no meaning other than being a knightly pursuit. The beast exists to be hunted, and Pellinore exists to hunt it. DO you see?

Alternatively, one could suggest that the questing beast was somehow created by Seaguy's incestuous desire for his sister, She-Beard, which drove him onto a pointless hunt, as the questing beast is said to have been the product of a devil, who coupled with a woman fuelled by incestuous desire for her brother, and was encountered by Arthur shortly after his incestuous encounter with Morgause/Morgane. But that would be a bit shit.

08:58 / 23.09.04

XOO does look a bit like a giant pink nob, though...

yawn - thing's buddy

11:59 / 23.09.04

fawt it was juss shpunk.

likwid informayshun n that.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

12:09 / 23.09.04

To slide off topic slightly, Grant complaining about his readers has nothing on Anne Rice (about a quarter of the way down the page).

We return you to your regularly scheduled topic...

12:28 / 23.09.04

fawt it was juss shpunk.

Thinking of the giant rearing 'Cameron's willy' XOO, obviously.

miss wonderstarr

13:13 / 23.09.04

On the 'schizophrenic' diagnosis - the idea that the shift from modernism to postmodernism can be metaphorized as a shift from neurosis (or 'the Oedipal') to schizophrenia as a mode of subjectivity is one of those pop-cultural-theory things, I think, which has been circulating long enough to bear little resemblance either to a psychiatric definition or, probably, to its origins in cultural theory. A Deleuzean would probably be able to help you out on this a bit more, but one of the ways I'm aware that 'schizophrenia' has been taken up as a structure for thinking about language processing, cultural transmission, etc, is in Avital Ronell's splendid The Telephone Book, which does wonderful things with language and philosophy but probably not much for the diagnosis and treatment of mental... [flails, looking at Ganesh] illnesses? disorders?

I am fairly familiar with the use of "schizophrenia" as a cult-studs not psychiatric word, in the work of Baudrillard... which yes, does tie in with your diagnosis about postmodernism. I don't know if Baudrillard borrowed this usage from Deleuze. I suspect Morrison isn't especially au fait with either. But then, he is a science fiction author, not an academic, and what he does, he does better than an academic would.

13:37 / 23.09.04

Yes. He's like Wolverine in that respect.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:48 / 23.09.04

Except in this case what he is doing is applying symptoms to medical conditions, and doing it rather worse than a doctor would. And that's before we even get into mediaeval lit...

The moral of the story is, presumably, that unless you are either an extremely uncritical or delusionally devoted reader, reading interviews by professional comics writers is likely to be about as useful as reading comics written by professional interviewees. At best, you will find out something of interest about the milieu in which they operate, at worst you'll discover that they don't really know what they're talking about.

15:32 / 23.09.04

To be honest, how is Grant being upset that more readers aren't of a mind to dig his stuff different than, say, indie films which are brilliant but don't make much money cause the mainstream audience doesn't 'get' them, music that's terrific but challenges the listener and isn't just pre-packaged corporate crap and therefore stays 'indie', etc.? Why do really intelligent films not become huge profit-making machines like the shitty 'Independence Day'? Why is George Bush President and embraced by 50% of the electorate in this country, and why does 50% of the country think he's a terrific President? Why will GWB likely get re-elected? Why is Hillary Duff a pop star?

Or, as someone posted wayy earlier in this thread, why did HUSH sell so well? Cause it had hot creators, esp. Jim Lee penciling it. And it appealed to the most mainstream 'kewl' factor.

This happens in every medium. The more intelligent, challenging stuff doesn't get embraced by the mainstream cause the mainstream doesn't like to be challenged. And therefore the indie-mentality stuff doesn't make as much money as mainstream stuff. Grant is far from alone in this phenomenon.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:47 / 23.09.04

To be honest, how is Grant being upset that more readers aren't of a mind to dig his stuff different than, say, indie films which are brilliant but don't make much money cause the mainstream audience doesn't 'get' them, music that's terrific but challenges the listener and isn't just pre-packaged corporate crap and therefore stays 'indie', etc.?

Well, "Grant being upset" is an emotional condition, everything else you list is a statement of sales levels.

Meanwhile, back at the thread. Schizophrenia. Mediaeval literature. Questing beasts. Are you following any of this, Finderwolf? Only I'm getting this feeling that the swingball contingent are actually reading a whole different thread...

miss wonderstarr

16:06 / 23.09.04

Except in this case what he is doing is applying symptoms to medical conditions, and doing it rather worse than a doctor would.

But that's what Baudrillard and for all I know Deleuze did, too. However, Baudrillard wrote about the four phases of the image better than a doctor would. There is arguably a cultural studies meaning of "schizophrenia" that doesn't have to relate precisely to the medical one.

To be fair, I don't know if it can be said that Morrison was really using either correctly. Perhaps he was either going for the tabloid meaning of schizophrenia or a half-understood medical meaning; again, I could have made all his comments about literal interpretation of metaphor based solely on my reading of Dog in the Night-Time.

However we are all learning interesting and new things on this thread aren't we? I am anyway. Thanks Grant for sparking off a great discussion without even meaning to! <3 heart for grant

Page: 1 2(3)4 5