When I say "Englishness", yes, I'm partly talking about Constantine's rumpled fatalism but also the more literal stuff that roots the character, for me, in Thatcher/Reagan era Britain: the slightly-naff red-double-decker-bus Londony touches; the satirical juxtaposing of 'greed is good' City yuppies and demons; the sense of the underground (New Age types in caravans) being threatened by sinister, often Government-aligned agencies (references to the Battle of the Beanfield, etc.), creepy conspiracy theory Christianity. For me, Delano's version of the character conjures up a relatively specific 'feel' of time and place, and I think a lot is lost by shifting him to an anonymised noir context.
The same thing would happen if one took Tintin or Nikolai Dante and transposed them to modern-day Hollywood America. Shorn of specific cultural context, the characters become (more) generic and, to me, much less interesting. |
