Katara and Korra: Passing the Torch

OK SO.

I’m writing right now, it’s late, I don’t have time for a full post explaining why Avatar: Legend of Korra is balls-out awesome, plus and also we’re only two episodes in, and I’d love to have a bit more plot-arc under my belt before I attempt such blogging.

BUT.

The second Katara came on screen in episode one? I started crying – a pattern which repeated itself through each of her appearances. And it’s not like I’m someone who never cries at stories or shows or movies, because IMAGINARY CHARACTERS GET ALL MY FEELS, but there was a weight, an enormous sense of complexity to the feelings just a glimpse of Katara provoked in me – a reaction I hadn’t expected, and which, if I had, I would have assumed could be brought on just as handily by all the gifs and screenshots I’ve been seeing since the first ep leaked (which it wasn’t).

And the difference wasn’t in hearing her talk (though that was part of it) or watching her interact with Korra and Tenzin and her grandchildren (though that was part of it, too) or even seeing her crop up in narrative context rather than abstractly on tumblr (though that strikes nearer the mark).

It was being hit – viscerally, powerfully – by the sense of her as a person, as someone whose youth and formative years I knew by heart, who had lived through the long, rich narrative of her own adventures and survived to become a woman, a waterbending master, a mentor, a mother, a grandmother and a widow, and yet who was giving way gracefully to the new generation: a human grace note in someone else’s story. And even though Korra knew who Katara was and understood the significance of the role she’d played in shaping her world, it was somehow me, the invisible viewer, who had the greater claim on her kinship; because for me – for us – the years of her life had passed in a blink, and in her smile and humour we saw the echoes and strength of a girl that Korra could never know.

And it brought me to tears, because this is the thing that stories do that the real world never can: they show us first-hand the passage of generations, how young men and women grow old and change, and in so doing remind us of all the things in history we can never truly see. Because even though I know my grandmother is an extraordinary woman – that she defied her Irish Catholic family to marry my English Protestant grandfather; that when her husband turned anti-Japanese after the deaths of his friends in WWII, she defied his hurt and taught English to Japanese refugees; that she worked as a gemologist, cutting and polishing precious stones, and learned to paint, and raised two children, and wept when her daughter was able to attain the university education she could never have, and who just before my wedding became a widow – I cannot, not matter how great my empathy, reach into the past and watch the days of her youth unfold. I can glimpse it in photographs; I can search for it in her stories; I can imagine it through her actions.

But I cannot live it the way I can live the fictional growth of a fictional girl who is reaching the end of her beautiful, fictional life. And so I cry, because just for a moment – when I look at age and remember youth – I can almost touch the wealth and the depth of my grandmother’s hidden life.

She turns ninety this month; she was born in 1922. Not long ago, I called and spoke to her on the phone, and when the question of her age came up, she laughed – baffled, wistful, wry – and said, ‘It sounds so old! But I don’t feel any different.’

Ninety years old. And inside her, a girl of five, a girl of fifteen – an endless parade of every girl and every woman she’s ever been. I love my grandmother dearly, and yet I will never know her youth as fully as I know Katara’s, because that’s what stories do: they make magic and turn our hearts inside out, so that just for an instant, reality bends and lets us glimpse what would otherwise vanish forever.

Normative Sexism: Geek Edition

Responding to my post on default narrative sexism, commenter Kevin Veale reported the following incident:

It also reminds me, sadly, of a thread yesterday where an RPG author posted a question about how to shift cultural dynamics about gender in an RPG setting. The thread then proceeded to implode with a bunch of bullshit where people were citing other examples where authors had tried that as “bullshit” because “They’re doing unrealistic stuff purely to create a bizarro world where it’d be cool if women were cavalry,” rather than the listed intent of said author to create a different gender dynamic.

Being both a geek and a ladyperson, this phenomenon is one I’ve encountered many times before, and always felt frustrated by – so much so that I’ve decided to upgrade my response from comment to post.

The sort of incident mentioned above is sadly common in geek culture – a blind and subtle species of sexism-as-normative wherein any attempt to reverse established gender dynamics is written off as a nothing more than cheap attempt at novelty by virtue of the fact that the audience either didn’t expect it or doesn’t see the utility of it. Back when I first started playing D&D in highschool, I remember the pleasant feeling of shock and surprise when, on opening the handbook, I found that all the pronouns used to describe the hypothetical players and characters were female ones. When, seconds later, I remarked on this fact out loud, my then-boyfriend instantly expressed his irritation at it, saying something along the lines of, ‘They’re only doing it to seem cool and politically correct.’ And being sixteen, I instantly found myself agreeing with him: partly because he was my boyfriend (alas!) but mostly because it genuinely did look weird – by which I mean, of course, that I’d never seen it done before. And because I had no grounding in feminism at that point, and even though it had made me feel validated and welcomed as a girl geek just moments earlier, I took up his stance both then and for quite a while afterwards: that switching up the gender pronouns was just an arbitrary, pointless thing people sometimes did to look hip. Whereas, of course, the point was right there in my initial reaction: to make girls like me feel happier playing D&D, and – though it failed with my group of friends – perhaps to make male players more thoughtful and less judgmental when it came to women in general.

As far as I can tell, straight male geeks in particular tend to adopt this position – that is, Random Girls = Bad – for any of three main reasons:

1. Geek culture is so overwhelmingly dominated by images of hyper-sexualised women (anime, maquettes, comics, video games) that even though female characters are frequently shown to excel in traditionally masculine roles across all such media – as mechanics, hackers, warriors, engineers, gunsmiths, leaders and pilots, for instance – their visual, physical sexiness (and, frequently, costuming) is designed to signal that these attributes, rather than being markers of competence and equality, are instead intended as, essentially, masturbatory aids on par with their physical assets: the fantasy of hot women made even hotter by their (to the audience) unrealistic-yet-droolworthy possession of masculine skills. This is why fanservice, unrealistic bodies, ridiculous costuming and wildly impossible poses are so very, very frustrating to female geeks and feminists: because ninety-nine times out of a hundred, their sole utility and relevance is on the level of sexual exploitation. And though most straight male fans are self-aware enough to realise such bodies are meant as unrealistic fantasies, many still have a disturbing tendency to take the logic further, concluding that if women with ridiculous bodies and costumes are unrealistic – and if, given this fact, it’s similarly improbable that women who look, dress and act like that would actually go about their jobs that way in the real world – then logically, real women must not belong in those professions, because the idea that they might do is itself part of the fantasy.

2. Having realised that the depiction of women in games, comics, collectibles and anime is meant as part of a tailor-made fantasy, many straight male geeks, somewhat unsurprisingly, have become aware of something else: that as said fantasy has been explicitly created for and subsequently targeted, marketed and sold to them, there must be someone out there whose goal is to exploit – and subsequently profit from – their sexual desires. Rather than undertake an intellectual exploration of the relationship between sex, gender and advertising in a capitalist system, however, a disappointing number of these geeks make a different and altogether more prejudicial leap: that the presence of women in an otherwise male-dominated environment can be directly correlated with the efforts of corporations to take their money. Their willingness to pay for the product in this equation, whether pre-existing or not, is immaterial: women, and particularly sexy women, have become a red-flag event. Any attempt to insert women into a setting previously devoid of them must therefore come under immediate suspicion. Women are a cash-gathering exercise, the go-to weapon in some cynical marketeer’s arsenal to help Company A more readily collect the hard-earned monies of geeks everywhere; booth babes being a case in point. After all, straight male geeks are very aware of their own negative sexual stereotyping: the fact that they may conform to it at times doesn’t make it any less offensive when it’s being used to exploit them – and the fact that it is used exploitatively is why the sexy female character problem exists to begin with.

But that doesn’t excuse their knee-jerk reaction to and blaming of women themselves: sexism and the system are at fault, not women as entities. And yet, the niggling suspicion of straight male geeks that girls are just there to take their money ends up tarnishing not only legitimate, unsexualised instances of female characterisation, but the efforts of actual geek girls to be taken seriously. All girl gamer group? Yeah, they’re just a novelty act – we’re only meant to like them ‘coz they’re pretty. Girls reading comics or playing video games? Hot, but they’re probably just doing it so boys will like them. Girl geeks in costumes? Total attention whores – they just want men to throw money at them. The same thing happens in music circles, too, among other places. All girl rock band? Fuckable pop-moppet posers – they only got signed ‘coz they look good on a poster. And on, and on, and on.

3. Genuine incomprehension. This is the kindest blindness – a benevolent sexism found in straight male geeks who have nothing against women, per se; it’s just that, all unaware of their own privilege, they’ve never had to think about sexism or exploitation or anything like that, so if the issue comes up offhand, they’re unlikely to see the utility in trying to make women more visible, or to change the way they’re depicted – and if there’s no utility, why do it? After all, women have the vote now, right? And equal opportunities and laws and stuff? And it’s not like anyone’s forcing them to play video games or read comics or watch anime or whatever, so why is it our problem if they don’t like how it works?

Depending on the personality of the geek in question, any conversation after this point can go one of several ways. The most positive, assuming both that you have the time and inclination to explain sexism in geek culture from first principles and that your interlocutor is willing to listen, is that they realise the problem exists and see the utility of female inclusion. The most negative will devolve into angry defenses of the status quo along the lines of the points raised above, with (if you’re very unlucky) a side-order of genuine misogyny thrown in. I mention this because, while the first two points follow fairly specific trains of thought, the reasons for ignorance are wide-ranging; as are potential reactions to the prospect of enlightenment.  Nobody likes to be told they’ve been complicit in something they might otherwise hold in contempt, and particularly not when you tie that complicity to the things they love most, no matter how significant the connection is.

And this, really, is the crux of the problem. Thanks to several decades’ worth of abuse and mockery from the mainstream, geeks as a culture are used to seeing themselves – ourselves – as underdogs. This creates a false sense of certainty that, being outcasts together, we can’t possibly be discounting, belittling or abusing anyone, let alone other outcasts, in the way that we ourselves have been discounted, belittled, abused. Which premise rests squarely on the demonstrably false assurance that people never become what is done to them; that no victims ever become perpetrators. And as I have said again and again, intentionality only takes you so far, and it isn’t very. Intend all you want to be a responsible driver – but if you run someone over by accident, they’ll still be just as dead.

The Shattering

To say this year has involved reading lots of awesome books is an understatement. Seriously, it’s getting to the point where the cumulative impact of reading successively brilliant novels is radically upgrading my concepts of narrative, storytelling, character, world-building and language on an almost daily basis. The ironically twinfold upshots of this are that:

(a) I’ve had more viable, full-fledged ideas in the past six months than the past six years, but

(b) have grown steadily too intimidated by other people’s talents to work on them.

This is a species of problem, in that I haven’t written anything more strenuous than outlines, poetry, email and blogs for nigh on four months, but also a good problem, in that reading so many jaw-dropping stories is proving roughly equivalent to tripling the size of your car’s fuel tank while simultaneously filling it with delicious, premium petrols. I’ve always worked to a peaks-and-valleys schema when it comes to writing – on when I’m on, off when I’m off – and with each book devoured, I’m once more nudging closer to that brain-full, word-hungry state of ecstatic madness that inevitably precipitates a writing binge. To which I say: woo!

But until then, I’m going to keep reading – and, occasionally, talking about what I’ve read. Which brings me to one of the many awesome books to have crossed my paths in recent months: Karen Healey’s The Shattering.

Seventeen-year-old Keri likes to plan for every possibility. She knows what to do if you break an arm, or get caught in an earthquake or fire. But she wasn’t prepared for her brother’s suicide, and his death has left her shattered with grief. When her childhood friend Janna tells her it was murder, not suicide, Keri wants to believe her. After all, Janna’s brother died under similar circumstances years ago, and Janna insists a visiting tourist, Sione, who also lost a brother to apparent suicide that year, has helped her find some answers.

As the three dig deeper, disturbing facts begin to pile up: one boy killed every year; all older brothers; all had spent New Year’s Eve in the idyllic town of Summerton. But when their search for the serial killer takes an unexpected turn, suspicion is cast on those they trust the most.

As secrets shatter around them, can they save the next victim? Or will they become victims themselves?

– summary from Goodreads

Full disclosure: Karen and I are friends. However! This does not make her writing any less awesome, nor my awe of it any less genuine. I thought her first book, Guardian of the Dead, was wonderful, but The Shattering absolutely blew it – and me – away.

Here is the thing about protagonists: they are characters, which is to say participants in a linear narrative, which translates, by and large – although not without notable and significant exception – to good guys. Particularly in YA, protagonists are, more often than not, meant to be sympathetic and likeable. Pause your thought-chain, though, because I’m not taking this where you think I am. Healey’s trio of protagonists – Keri, Sione and Janna – are both of these things, though in markedly different ways (which is closer to what I’m getting at, but wait).

Because here is the thing about people: they are human, which is to say complicated, which translates, by and large – although not without notable and significant exception – to being flawed. Unless we’re completely oblivious or narcissistic, we can all acknowledge our own imperfections; but acknowledging the truth isn’t quite the same as believing it. Whenever called upon to provide a bio, there’s a reason my default self-description starts with the phrase bipedal mammal with delusions of immortality – which is, simply, that even though I know I’ll die one day (hopefully in bed, aged 109, surrounded by heaving piles of my published works and the occasional loving family member) a part of me can’t quite believe it. Or at least, I can’t believe it all the time, or else I’d end up completely depressed and paranoid. And the same thing goes for flaws, too: because even though I can acknowledge their existence on a factual, intellectual level, it’s only comparatively rarely (or during moments of deep self-consciousness) that I can perceive them as a whole. This condition is not particular to me, and what it means is that, moment to moment, human self-perception tends to skew towards believing ourselves to be kinder, better versions of the people we actually are.

And here, finally, is the thing about authors: we are people, too. Which is to say that, when we sit down to write sympathetic characters, we have a tendency to forget their flaws in much the same way that we mentally block awareness of our own. This doesn’t mean the default state of authorhood is to write perfect characters – far from it. But we do, however, have a tendency to neatly align the emergence of flaws with plot-points rather than writing them in as constant facets of a protagonist’s personality; and while there are certainly times when doing so falls under the purview of the Law of Conservation of Detail, this isn’t always the case. Specifically: if we want a character to be sympathetic and likeable, then it’s easy to shy away from giving them flaws that aren’t addressed or overcome as part of the narrative proper. This is not unrealistic characterisation per se, because most readers immersed in a protagonist’s thought processes find it similarly easy to extend their heroes and heroines the same flaw-obscuring courtesies they habitually extend themselves. Most of the time, in fact, we pick  up a book with an eye to liking the main character, because the vast bulk stories we’ve grown up with have taught us that this is what we’re meant to do (which is a different issue in and of itself). We identify with and view as normative such flaw-free and unobnoxious characters because, unless we’re in the habit of actively critiquing our own behaviour, that’s who we think we are, too. And while the practise doesn’t actually constitute bad writing – or at least, not by itself – it does lead to characters who are, perhaps, a little thinner and a little more idealised than actual humans, in much the same way that their destinies are more cathartic and their luck more strongly abetted by the presence of plot armour.

Karen Healey, however, does not do this – which is why The Shattering’s Keri, Sione and Janna are among the most concrete, fully-fledged characters I have ever encountered.

It’s more than just their flaws, of course. I can picture all three easily – faces, bodies, expressions, movement. I can hear their speech patterns in the dialogue, the different intonations and word-choice setting them all apart. I can even hear their accents, which I’d swear is unprecedented, and I can see the setting of Summerton like a place I’ve actually visited: the light, the sounds, the houses. The prose style contrives to be simultaneously clean and crisp, yet evocative and lush; the plot is simple, but expertly orchestrated, with not a single misplaced or unnecessary emphasis. The action is gripping, the magic and danger both menacing and believable – but it’s the humanity, the sheer strength and purpose of the characters, that makes it an absolute winner. With the chapter framework alternately cutting between Keri’s first-person recollections and respective third-person insights into Janna and Sione – an excruciatingly difficult balance to pull off competently, let alone well – both structure and voice ought to be bland at best and messy at worst. Instead, each character is whole and distinct, their interweaving outlooks made complementary even as they differ.

As in Guardian of the Dead, Healey has created a realistically diverse cast: Keri is mixed-race, Maori and pakeha; Sione is Samoan, and Janna is a white New Zealander. For lazy, unthinking writers, this would be deemed a sufficient means of distinguishing the protagonists all by itself, because regardless of race issues, there’s a strong cultural tendency among modern storytellers to delineate different characters more by colour and appearance  than by native characterisation, the logic seemingly being that if the audience can picture the heroes as looking dissimilar, then there’s less need for their personalities to actually be dissimilar. At its worst, this practice swiftly devolves to appalling tokenism and stereotyping; at its best, a character’s racial/cultural identity is effectively portrayed as their only identity. Even for well-meaning creators, this can be a hard stumbling block to overcome – but not for Healey. Her characters are real, functioning people, and while their respective heritages certainly inform who they are, these aspects are only and always part of a larger whole.

Which brings me back to flawedness: because the other thing about human beings is that, despite our best intentions and protestations of equality, we are still all products of the cultures which create us – their negative aspects as well as the positive. Which is why Keri thinks of her brother’s girlfriend as a white bitch, and why Janna treads on people’s feelings, and why Sione’s shyness manifests as inattention as often as it does endearing silence; and why Keri is cold-blooded, and Janna selfish, and Sione jealous – and why none of this stops them from being sympathetic and likeable, because all of a sudden, whenever a character we’re attached to thinks something mean or dismisses a friend or behaves badly, we’re forced to confront the fact that we do those things, too, and perhaps more often than we realise, and that this only stops us from being good people if we make no effort to change. It’s a rare book that can bring on such epiphanies without being preachy and while simultaneously letting both protagonists and reader orchestrate their individual redemptions, but The Shattering does so beautifully.

This is a book with heart, conscience and consequences. Superbly written, brilliantly characterised and perfectly paced, it’s something everyone should read. Whatever Healey produces next, she’s certainly set the bar high.

SeaChange

Once upon a time in the 90s, there was a critically acclaimed Australian TV series called SeaChange, which ended at the height of its popularity for the pure and simple reason that the creator wanted it to. Take a moment to appreciate how rarely, if ever, that happens in modern television, and you might begin to understand the scope of how awesome a show this was. After just three seasons, Deb Cox and Andrew Knight – the creators of what was, at the time, the highest rated program on Australian TV – turned down offers from every major commercial network to fund new episodes of SeaChange and declared instead that it was done. They’d closed everything out the way they wanted; the characters were in a good place, and even though they could have made a lot of money by extending the show, they opted not to milk the cashcow at the expense of running a good thing into the ground. Internets, nobody does this, and it’s really, really stupid. The otherwise universal fate of good shows is either to keep on plugging away, season after season, until they start to turn bad enough that they lose their funding, or else be prematurely cancelled by idiots. Nobody ever quits while they’re ahead, because the idea of discontinuing a popular story for the sake of artistic integrity is not how TV works.

But somehow, somewhen, Cox and Knight put their respective feet down and let things end. Three seasons of awesome, with an ending that closed out everything that needed to be closed out, left open what needed to be left open, and was utterly true to both the characters and the narrative ethos.

I watched SeaChange when it first aired, between the ages of 12 and 15, and have rewatched it multiple times since then. The premise is simple: Laura Gibson, a high-flying corporate lawyer and mother of two, has her whole world come crashing down in a single ill-fated day which culminates in her husband, Jack – who has just been revealed to be having an affair with her sister, Trudi – being publicly arrested for fraud. Utterly bereft, Laura remembers the last place her family was happy: a small town called Pearl Bay, where they spent their last good holiday before her career took off. Leaping at the chance to become the new magistrate for Pearl Bay, Laura promptly relocates – along with her teenage children, Miranda and Rupert – and instantly becomes embroiled in the various feuds, friendships and eccentricities that make up small town life, with the cases she rules on as magistrate providing a constant source of moral dilemmas and tragedies.

Main Female Characters 

Laura Gibson: Neurotic, stressed and out of her depth, Laura spends much of the show learning how to slow down and reconnect with people – particularly her children, but also the people she meets in town. She has two romances over the course of three seasons: one with Diver Dan, a local man with surprising depths, and one with Max Connors, a former journalist who returns home to Pearl Bay for personal reasons. Laura is sharply drawn, inviting sympathy even as she makes you want to strangle her, but always in a realistic way. For all the mistakes she’s made that have adversely affected her nearest and dearest, she’s honestly trying to atone for them, and in many ways is revealed to have been her own biggest victim.

Meredith Monahan: Laura’s first friend in Pearl Bay, Meredith is an older woman who runs the local pub. Possessed of a perfect memory for names, dates and faces, Meredith is sharply intelligent, a left-leaning town matriarch struggling to counterbalance the influence of the right-leaning mayor, Bob Jelly. Though usually rational, fair and compassionate, and always a fierce defender of the underdog, Meredith has a prickly streak, too, and is prone to letting her own stubborn biases get in the way of her judgement. She has spent the majority of her adult life in an adulterous relationship with the previous magistrate, Harold, who lives with her despite still being technically married to someone else.

Heather Jelly: Wife of Mayor Bob Jelly, Heather is, on the surface, the perfect housewife. Devoted to her husband, home and teenage children as well as being a prominent participant in local ladies’ groups, her seeming bubbleheadness conceals a brighter, more passionate person than anyone, especially Bob, gives her credit for. Over the course of the series, she steadily changes from being a passive to an active participant in her own life, slowly confronting the various ways in which Bob takes her for granted, discovering her own personality, and asserting herself outside the home.

Miranda Gibson: Laura’s eldest child, Miranda initially protests the move to Pearl Bay, but soon begins to settle in. Finding an unexpected best friend in Bob Jelly’s son, Craig, she struggles with her parents’ separation while coming into her own as a teenager, clashing with Laura over her hippyish leanings, but ultimately becoming much closer to her mother in the process. When Max arrives, she talks him into starting a local paper – the Pearl Bay Oyster – as part of her quest to become a journalist. She is spirited, sometimes reactionary, loyal, an activist and creative.

Carmen Blake: Meredith’s wayward niece, Carmen is a free-spirited hippy who shows up pregnant to an unknown man and settles into town life in preparation for her daughter’s birth. Prone to straying a little on the wrong side of the law, Carmen is sharp, stubborn, opinionated, spiritual, outspoken and fiercely independent.

Karen Miller: A dedicated police sergeant, Karen wants nothing more than to marry her long-time fiance, Angus, and settle into motherhood. Though enthusiastic, driven and a little naive, Karen is also deeply traditional, occasionally judgmental, possessive and insensitive. Her development over the course of the series is both touching and believable: though she never wavers in her affection for Angus, she also goes on something of a journey of self-discovery, finally exploring the world outside Pearl Bay and, consequently, coming to see it differently on her return.

Phrani Gupta: A local businesswoman, Phrani is scrupulously honest, unfailingly cheerful, and fierce in the defense of the people she loves, though sometimes prone to anger and defensiveness. As the series develops, she comes to have a closer relationship with Kevin, the owner of the caravan park, with the complicated reasons behind her relocation from India eventually being revealed to hinge on domestic troubles. Like Meredith and Heather, Phrani plays an active role in town politics, and often clashes with Bob.

Main Male Characters

Daniel ‘Diver Dan’ Della Bosca: Dan is Laura’s first love interest in Pearl Bay, a widely-traveled man who runs the school ferry and lives above his cafe, which is housed in a boatshed. Adventurous, unconventional and wryly humorous, Dan takes it upon himself to try and calm Laura down, infuriating her almost as much as she infuriates him in the process. Though seemingly cool and collected, he’s had a lot of hard knocks in his life, something which occasionally shows in his quickfire temper. Dan has little tolerance for the rules of ordinary society, and tends to live much as he pleases. He is chaos to Laura’s order, but cares a lot more deeply about most things than he lets on.

Bob Jelly: Mayor of Pearl Bay, Bob is also a real estate mogul and all-round genial patriarch. Though neither as intelligent nor as dignified as he thinks he is, Bob is bluff, corrupt, politically incorrect and prone to massive obliviousness when it comes to his wife, Heather. Bob develops hugely over the course of the series: challenged by the success and failure of various schemes, the implications of Laura’s arrival and Heather’s self-assertion, he slowly changes into a (slightly) better man. For all his faults, he’s a sympathetic character, and not without redeeming qualities, the most important being that, when it really matters, he tries. An equal source of comedy, outrage and pathos, Bob is frequently an antagonist, but never – crucially – a straw man.

Max Connors: A former foreign correspondent, Max returns home to Pearl Bay as a damaged man, his defensiveness and seemingly cheerful sarcasm masking the pain of recent loss. Unable to put his investigative instincts to rest, he amuses himself by hunting down Bob’s various corruptions and bringing them to light, and expresses his attraction to Laura via the adult equivalent of ceaselessly tugging on her pigtails. Max also has a tense, often destructive relationship with Carmen: the two share an inquisitive, journalistic bent and both have suffered trauma, but Max has no patience for Carmen’s spirituality, and the pair are as often at each other’s throats as not. Max is contrary, loyal, empathetic, stubborn, curious and a prankster, and delights in every opportunity to circumvent authority.

Harold Fitzwalter: Meredith’s paramour and the ex-magistrate of Pearl Bay, Harold is also a recovering alcoholic. Now representing clients in his old court, he struggles with getting older, with sobriety, with family and with life. He loves Meredith dearly, and as the two of them deal together with the new resurgence of old secrets, he begins to recover his passion.

Rupert Gibson: Laura’s younger child, Rupert has been the most challenged by their move to Pearl Bay. He misses his father, and is constantly scheming for ways to get his parents back together. Finding a best friend in Trevor, the son of Kevin the caravan owner, Rupert’s various observations about life, his academic struggles and his various shenanigans often end up causing Laura no end of trouble, but as the series develops, he starts to come into himself and not only accept, but embrace his new life, though never losing faith in his father.

Angus Kabiri: The court clerk and Karen’s paramour, Angus is a quiet young man of set routines and (very well hidden) depths. Kind and compassionate but nervous of committing himself fully to Karen, Angus exists in a state of anxiety about what he wants to do, the sort of man he should be, and where his life is headed. His greatest passion is surfing, and he is often at a loss as to how express his feelings to Karen. Good-hearted, occasionally vague and prone to evasion, Angus’s constant worries nonetheless give him a strangely existential bent, while his occasional passionate outbursts on court matters are a strong counterbalance to Laura’s usual deference to procedure.

Graham Grey: The local police sergeant, Grey is a frequently mistrusted authority figure more often allied with Laura than the rest of the town and still considered an outsider by many, both because of his job in court and because he’s still looked upon as a new arrival. He feels this isolation keenly, and walks the difficult line of trying to fit into a town whose citizens he must simultaneously police. His home life is complicated, and though he sometimes clashes with Max, the two are on friendly terms. Grey is also given the unenviable task of mentoring Karen, whose enthusiasm for policework often expresses itself in inconvenient ways.

Kevin Findlay: The owner of the caravan park and father of Trevor, Rupert’s best friend, Kev is sweet and hard-working, but far from being the sharpest knife in the block. For this reason, he is frequently manipulated into being Bob’s dupe in town matters, and though Phrani defends him fiercely, he is often the accidental cause of more problems than might otherwise be the case. Despite his difficult childhood, Kevin is kind, thoughtful in his own way, and as the series develops, he becomes increasingly confident in standing up for both himself and others, even when this means crossing Bob.

Jack Gibson: For all his faults, Jack is never a straw man. Trying to rebuild his relationship with Laura and his children, he presents as both a weak and sympathetic figure: weak, in terms of his business failures, jealousy of Laura’s success and ongoing relationship with Trudi; sympathetic, in that he was and remains and excellent, devoted father, one who tries to mend his mistakes even as he keeps making them. Though sometimes acrimonious, Jack’s relationship with Laura slowly improves over the course of the show, though not without pitfalls on both their parts.

There are other supporting regulars with smaller parts – notably Craig and Jules Jelly, plus local blokes Griff and Simmo – as well as other, more important characters who only appear in a handful of episodes, but despite its size, the cast is universally well-developed. Across all three seasons, everyone grows and changes: relationships form, fall apart, develop and start again, friendships mutate and evolve, secrets are revealed, and challenges are surmounted. There is tension, drama, humour and tragedy, with just a touch of the improbable thrown in (Pearl Bay itself is prone to a surprising number of improbable weather phenomena, ensuring that the bridge to the mainland always ends up broken). It is, in short, an incredible show, and one which defined both my teenage years and my sense of narrative in multiple significant ways.

What really sells SeaChange is the characterisation. The cast is dominated by strong women, all of them exploring love and relationships in different ways, but none of them perfect; and by the same token, even the antagonists are given fair shrift, with no straw man characters and development for all. There’s a decidedly left-leaning bent to the narratives: every episode passes the Bechdel test and there’s an undeniably feminist flavour to the proceedings, but never at the expense of demonising the more traditional characters, all of whom are shown sympathetically. Like the population of Pearl Bay itself, SeaChange walks the line between extreme local conservatism and extreme far-leftism, with hippies like Carmen taking the same gentle mocking as right-wingers like Bob. There’s an amazing sense of strength and community to the show, and despite the number of heavy issues touched on in various episodes – corruption, homophobia, domestic violence, euthanasia, freedom of choice, freedom of speech, prejudice, sexuality and suicide being just a few – the writers never preach to the audience, leaving the ultimate decision up to the individual viewer. Dark moments are leavened with humour, and there’s an endearing self-awareness to the occasional moments of absurdity.

SeaChange is an amazing show, but one which few people are likely to have heard of outside of Australia. If you can lay hands on a copy, I highly recommend doing so.

Mary Sue Reviews

In the past few days, Zoe Marriott, Sarah Rees-Brennan, Holly Black and Cora Buhlert have all written awesome posts about the problem of reviewers dismissing female characters who aren’t to their tastes as being Mary Sues, with added discussion of what the term actually means, why male characters and/or authors aren’t held to similar standards, and the awesomeness of ladies. All of them have made excellent points. Zoe Marriott begins by saying:

When I read reviews, I see the term Mary-Sue used to mean:

1. A female character who is too perfect
2. A female character who kicks too much butt
3. A female character who gets her way too easily
4. A female character who is too powerful
5. A female character who has too many flaws
6. A female character who has the wrong flaws
7. A female character who has no flaws
8. A female character who is annoying or obnoxious
9. A female character who is one dimensional or badly written
10. A female character who is too passive or boring

This is, quite obviously, a contradictory list, as Marriott is at pains to point out:

Take another look at the list of complaints against so-called Mary-Sues and you will see one thing all of them have in common.

‘A female character.’

What many (though not all!) of the people merrily throwing this phrase around actually mean when they say ‘Mary-Sue’ is: ‘Female character I don’t like’.

That’s it. That’s all.

Following on from this, Holly Black expands on the dangers of using the phrase beyond outside its original context:

The problem with using this term outside of fanfiction is simple: the world of a novel has always configured around main characters. They are at its center and, often, they are the best at stuff. Kirk is, for example, is the best with romancing the green-skinned ladies. He’s also the best at leading. Spock is the best at being smart. Scotty is the best at keeping the Enterprise from being blown to pieces by the actions of both Kirk and Spock. Their skills are important and it’s unlikely that anyone is going to come along and be better at those things than they are.

So when a book is about a girl who is the best at something and about the boys (and/or girls) that love her and how she defeats the bad guy, well, that’s because she’s the protagonist. It is good and right that she be at the center of the story.

For example, I have seen complaints that the protagonist always wins the love of the main male character. What’s problematic about that is, well, of course she does, because if she’s the protagonist then whoever she loves becomes the main male character by virtue of his connection to the protagonist.

Sarah Rees-Brennan makes a hugely important distinction between female characters who are realistically self-deprecating and those who aren’t allowed to like themselves, saying:

I am not saying that all girls in books or real life should never be insecure. I know I’m insecure about a bunch of things! And I have loved an insecure fictional lady many times…

I just don’t want to read about fictional girls who can’t think they’re awesome. I don’t like reading about those characters and I don’t like the mindset that produces them. The fictional girls I’m talking about aren’t meant to be depressed (I’d like to see more actually-depressed characters in literature: they can be heroes too)–they’re meant to seem normal, and likable.

I do not want to read about girls who think they’re worthless. I do not want to write about girls who think they’re worthless. I do not think I’m worthless.

Nobody has to like a girl, fictional or otherwise. But words like ‘annoying’ or ‘Mary Sue’ are both used as shorthand for ‘girl I want to dismiss.’ We’ve all read about characters who seemed overly perfect, or who had flaws the narrative wouldn’t admit were flaws, and those characters are irritating. But I’ve seen just as many fictional boys like that as fictional girls (with the caveat that boys tend to get more pagetime, so they get more explored) and those boys don’t get seen in the same way. As I was saying on twitter a couple days ago, I want characters to be flawed and awesome: I want them to be flawesome.

Finally, Cora Buhlert makes an important point about the hugely exclusionary tests designed to expose the flaws of Mary Sue characters:

The term “Mary Sue” has become completely overused of late. Partly this may be due to the various Mary Sue litmus tests that are available online and according to which pretty much every character is a Mary Sue. I just did the test for a female character in a realist novel of mine and even that character, with no magical powers whatsoever, scored 40 points. That’s not to say that such tests aren’t useful, within reason. But plenty of traits listed as Mary Sue symptoms in these tests are perfectly legitimate, as long as they don’t all occur at once.

Take a moment to click through to the test in question and eye a few of the questions. What quickly becomes apparent is that, as per Marriott’s list, correlation and causation have been deeply confused in the issue of Sueness to such a degree that many people now mistake – well, I was going to say the symptoms for the cause, but given the scope of the test, that metaphor doesn’t really work. Calling a character Mary Sue in the current climate on the basis of their having a traumatic background, an interesting name and an affinity with animals is equivalent to calling an old woman with a wart on her nose, a knowledge of herbs and a black cat a witch in the context of actual witch-burning. By which I mean: people are so terrified of accidentally countenancing the presence of a Mary Sue that they’ve started trying to identify them by sight, with predictably bad results.

The term Mary Sue began in fanfic, which is all about personal participation in other people’s narratives. It’s an awesome way to learn the ropes, make friends, test ideas, participate in fandom and generally have a good time, but self-insertion is more or less the point: not because all original fanfic characters are avatars for their authors, but because the whole point of fanfic is using your own ideas in someone else’s world. Extending this argument to original fiction is therefore inherently problematic, not least when reviewers and Sue-tests alike start sneering that such-and-such an author only did X because they thought it was cool, so obviously it’s a case of self-insertion. And it’s like, what? Did you honestly expect me to sit down and pour my heart into something I didn’t think was awesome? Writing stories we think are cool is sort of what authors do. We think, ‘Time-travelling lady space pirates? Hell yes!’ –  and then we go and do it. You might have different tastes, which is fine! But let’s be very clear on the matter: writers don’t insert themselves into stories. Stories insert themselves into us.

But the most damaging aspect of reviewers calling original characters Mary Sues is the fact that, precisely because of this lingering self-insertion argument, it only ever happens to female writers. By way of example, compare the description of George R. R. Martin’s Daenerys Targaryen –  a silver-haired, purple-eyed, impossibly beautiful teenage queen born in exile with three dragon companions, legions of suitors, an abusive childhood and a prophetic destiny – with the contents of any Mary Sue checklist you care to name, and she’ll probably register at close to 100%. But what sort of critic is going to imply that George R. R. Martin, a straight man in his sixties, must secretly want to be a thirteen-year-old girl? A fairy unhinged one, is the answer, and even though Google can probably turn up a couple of examples to prove me wrong, the point is that all this dialogue about Sues tends to center on YA and UF novels – stories which, as Buhlert notes, are written predominantly by women.

But wait, I hear you cry, that’s not a fair comparison! Daenerys isn’t Martin’s only character. She’s one protagonist among many. Well, and I suppose that female authors only write about women? That they feel no connection to their male characters, and that no matter how large the cast, it’s only ever the leading lady who matters? (Anyone who answered yes, go to your room.) This is the other problem with calling Mary Sue on original works: it’s a scenario in which the author has created every single character. This is wildly distinct from the traditional fanfic setup which birthed the term, in which a single, original protagonist would be catapulted into an existing narrative. In those instances, that single character literally becomes the extension and embodiment of the writer’s will – a whole different kettle of fish to creating a cast from scratch. To quote Holly Black again:

The Mary Sue warps the story; the female protagonist is the story.

Which means that, if we want to play the Mary Sue card constructively – if we want it not to be sexist, applicable just as equally to the works of male authors as female, with Gary Stu put into equal usage – then we need to consider the trope for what it really is: the ultimate example of poor characterisation. Gama Stues – as I’m now going to call them, in the spirit of equality – do not grow. They come to their roles as static, perfect characters, capable of angst and internal monologues but without ever actually changing. Regardless of the genre trappings – because neither do I want to assume that Stues are solely the products of SFF – they are, contextually, so beautiful or desirable that everyone falls in love with them at the slightest provocation; a description which, as Cora Buhlert points out, is textbook James Bond. Their skillsets are deeply convenient to the plot, which by itself makes perfect sense, but are distinguished in this regard by being either so broad as to verge on the ridiculous, acquired with an ease that’s wildly disproportionate to their difficulty, or unreasonably inexplicable given the character’s origins.

They are, in short, badly written – but bad writing is a manifold thing, expressible in near-infinite variations. Tropes employed badly by one author might prove successful for another; the same is true of literary styles. And while I appreciate the tendency for particular characters to drive us up the wall, particularly when we detect similar themes emerging across multiple stories, pinning a label on just the women – let alone one that’s been hastily appropriated from a different context – does not constitute intelligent critical analysis. If you feel justified in disliking a certain story, then show your working. Don’t just say that someone is a Stue – tell us why.

It really is that simple.

Defining Fantasies

Ever since I made a conscious decision to start reading more widely, I’ve found that my definitions of genre have been shifting. To lapse briefly into metaphor, my earliest reading habits were like a stream of water that gradually wore a riverbed in the earth; but as I became more rigid in these choices, forcing myself to stick to what was known rather than breaking new ground, the flow of water lessened, confined to a muddy rut. The decision to read new things was like a drought breaking: since then, the river has been in spate, surpassing all previous limits. Which is actually a longer sort of metaphor than I’d intended, but the point is this: that the more I read across various genres, the harder it is to view them as being wholly separate, unconnected entities.

Right now, I’m fascinated by the crossover between mainstream literary novels and SFF. Several times recently, I’ve picked out popular fiction works and been surprised to discover their reliance on magic and SF elements. Which, don’t get me wrong, is a wonderful thing. But it makes me wonder: why are these books classed as fiction, when their content is clearly fantastic? I feel like we’re missing an important taxonomy here, one that might seriously help ease the debate about Literary Fiction vs Genre – the categorical equivalent of a Missing Link. Having read The Tiger’s Wife and Chocolat in quick succession, for instance, it strikes me that in both cases, the presence of magic is simultaneously incidental and integral: incidental, in that neither story is interested in expounding on how and why it actually works; yet integral, because the emotional crux of both narratives hinges on its ability to touch ordinary lives, thereby transforming the characters and generating the plot. The same is equally true of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, both by Audrey Niffenegger, and Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, two of which books, in addition to Chocolat, have been turned into movies. In each of these stories, a real-world plot with a deep investment in the emotional lives of its characters has been facilitated by a fantastic premise, respectively a deathless man, a chocolate-making witch, a genetic time traveler, a persistent ghost and a girl who narrates her previous life from heaven – and yet, they’re not quite SFF, either.

What makes such stories different? Why is Erick Setiawan’s Of Bees and Mist, despite its openly fantastic blurb, shelved with fiction, while Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, despite its similar themes of family, loneliness and love, put in with SFF? What about Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus: A Novel, which has all the conventions and impossible whimsy of a fairy tale? Were YA genre novels consistently separated from their fictional fellows, one suspects that This Is Shyness by Leanne Hall would pose a similar problem to would-be pigeonholers. And yet, the more I consider such books collectively, the more it feels like they’re all of a kind – neither fiction nor SFF, but something distinct and beautiful by itself. Whatever we might term this hypothetical section of the bookshop, it wouldn’t lack for content. Taking the incidental/integral balance described above and rendering it in language more familiar to SFF discussions, what distinguishes these books from other genre titles is their disinterest in worldbuilding. By which I mean: creating a secondary, hidden layer to the everyday world – or, as in the case of Yu’s work, speculating about a not-too-distant future – is less important than the emotional development these scenarios afford. (I’m being particularly tentative about Yu’s inclusion on this list, not just because his work is shelved in SFF, but because it’s the only novel mentioned here not set in the current Real World. Nonetheless, I think it fits.) What separates them from straight fiction is the inclusion of unreality.

Despite their SFF elements, these novels are concerned almost wholly with traversing internal, emotional landscapes – the magic is there to facilitate these journeys, but stops short of being a journey in itself. This is not a bad thing, the way it might be for a poorly written genre novel, because the story is meant to stop short. Asking questions to which deeper worldbuilding might provide an answer – Why does Vianne have magic? Where does the deathless man come from? What makes Wolfboy howl? – would only detract from the rhythms of the narrative proper.  Magic here is at its purest form, resulting from the perennial what if of human imagination and leading to stories which are essentially folkloric in nature. Just as a child reading Rapunzel has no need to ask how a princess’s tears can cure blindness, so does an adult reading Of Bees and Mist have no need to wonder why Meridia’s childhood home is full of sentient fog. Asking is not the point; the people – and their situations – are.

Am I on the right track, here? If so, what might we call this nameless story-genre? If not, why? Do you agree or disagree with the books I’ve mentioned? Do you have some recommendations of your own? Come on, internets – inquiring minds must know!

Colour Blinds

Consider the following thought process:

1. People who look different are easier to tell apart than people who look the same.

2. Audiences are better able to distinguish between characters who are described or shown to be physically dissimilar to one another.

3. Physical dissimilarity in such instances is often established through differences in hair, skin and eye colour.

4. People of Caucasian descent have a wider range of natural hair and eye colours than people of other races.

5. Narrative tokenism is a natural consequence of physical dissimilarity being used to create visually distinct characters.

6. Creating a visually diverse cast of characters is not the same thing as creating a racially diverse cast of characters.

All stories exist within a tradition of storytelling. Unavoidably, that tradition is both connected to and influenced by external culture. We live now – and have done for some time – in a multicultural society, a fact which is in absolutely no danger of changing. I don’t know what first sparked the notion that diversity was best expressed by the image of one male and one female of every ethnicity all standing together like the denizens of a transnational Noah’s Ark, unless it’s Walt Disney’s fault, but for whatever reason, and while I acknowledge that there’s an undeniable egalitarianism to this approach, the symmetry of it seems to have become an unquestioned narrative trope.

This is not a good thing, for two main reasons. Firstly, as described above, it leads to tokenism. An important clarification, before we go any further: this is neither the only cause of tokenism, nor is it the most common. But particularly in visual media, it is easy to conflate visual dissimilarity among characters with racial diversity, and in a context of Caucasian dominance, this cannot help but lead to instances of the human hair colour quartet – blonde, brunette, red and black – being used to represent diversity, with non-white characters frequently fulfilling the black-haired quotient. Secondly, and as a direct result of this, it leads to a situation where casts are considered to be diverse if they contain one or two non-white characters, and where an equal distribution of different ethnicities therefore becomes seen as the moral ideal.

On the surface, this latter consequence might not seem particularly problematic – certainly, there are worse ideals to have – and yet it is still polluted by the dual contaminants of aesthetic balance and white privilege. After all, ensuring that a range of ethnicities be represented in roughly the same ratios is not the same thing as ensuring that the main characters are drawn randomly from that pool, and despite the best intentions of such diversity, there’s still an underlying assumption in our society that at least two such characters must always be white. This creates an extremely problematic working model of racial diversity within narrative: one where the only constant is the presence of white characters who, despite an equal opportunities orbit of POC colleagues, are still more likely to be the protagonists than not.

What got me thinking on all of this is the extent to which visual diversity as a means of distinguishing characters is a particularly common ploy in book serials and TV shows aimed at preadolescents. Back when I was nine or so – a burgeoning tween, at any rate – it seemed that everywhere I turned, characters in books and on TV were being set apart from each other on the basis of colour association. Some of these were more genuine attempts at diversity than others. The five main characters of Capitan Planet, for instance, were all from different parts of the world, belonging to entirely different cultures and ethnicities; additionally, each character was given command over a particular element, which was in turn associated with a specific colour. Thus, Kwame was African with earth magic (green); Wheeler was North American with fire magic (red); Linka was Eastern European with wind magic (purple); Gi was Asian with water magic (blue) and Ma-Ti was South American with heart magic (yellow). A much less tactful example is the Power Rangers franchise, where each Ranger was literally described in terms of colour. In the original series, this meant that the white male characters were the Red, Blue and Green Rangers, respectively; the white female character was Pink Ranger; the black male ranger was Black Ranger; and the Asian female character was Yellow Ranger, none of which is particularly encouraging.

Emily Rodda’s Teen Power Inc series sat somewhere between these two examples, diversity-wise. Of the six main characters, four were white – mousy blonde Tom, light blonde Richelle, brunette Liz, and redhead Elmo – with two non-white characters then fulfilling the black-haired quotient: Nick was Greek and Sunny was Chinese. Insofar as every character narrated an equal number of books, it was an egalitarian system, but in terms of creating a visually diverse cast, it still felt as though the ratios were chosen on the basis of differing hair colour. Other series, such as the W.I.T.C.H comics and just about any fairy– or princess-based serial aimed at ten-year-old girls, will follow a similar pattern, though the latter examples are much more obsessed with Caucasian visual diversity than the former. Take a flip through the character sketches for just about any cartoon or anime, and you’ll witness a similar phenomenon: regardless of the racial diversity of the casts, many shows will deliberately create a unique colour scheme for each character, the better to set them apart – and if the fantasy aspects of a given story can be subtly expressed with the help of such visual cues, then so much the better.

And speaking of SFF, take a moment to consider the racial makeup of successive Star Trek crews, or the desired character balance of a typical Dungeons & Dragons party. Perhaps I’m stretching the metaphor too far, but it nonetheless strikes me as a relevant that in both these instances, imaginary humanoid races – be they Vulcans, Cardassians and Klingons or orcs, gnomes and elves – are usually deployed on something of a ‘one of each’ basis. The starship Enterprise might well be a shining beacon of diversity, particularly given the era in which it was created, but in each successive franchise, the pattern was always for more human crew-members than alien, with the latter characters made special and distinctive by the fact that nobody else in the main cast shared their heritage. Similarly, the foundation of any successful D&D campaign is a balanced party, in terms of race as well as skill. You don’t want everyone to play an orc anymore than you want everyone to play a halfling,and as those sentiments extend to novels, too, the typical makeup of myriad Tolkien-derivative quest fantasies, such as Terry Brooks’s Shanara novels or the massive Dragonlance series, therefore depends on an even mix of character backgrounds: the archetypal motley crew.

So here, ultimately, is my question: why is the single most common expression of diversity in narrative contingent upon creating casts of characters whose individuality is defined by their collective difference? Why, unless those characters are white – or, in fantastic instances, human – is there an unspoken law against writing a cast where multiple characters share the same racial, ethnic or religious background? Why is it necessary that POC characters go constantly two by two, one male and one female, in narratives where the majority of characters are white? Does it have something to do with the fact that our childhood stories are saturated with the logic of colour association, or are those narratives a subconscious simplex of tokenism in the adult world? I am not saying that colour association in children’s stories is an inherently vicious idea, nor am I arguing that ‘one of each’ narratives fail at genuine diversity. But it strikes me that if notions of visual dissimilarity, cultural symmetry and aesthetic balance are continuing to fuel the logic used to create casts of characters, then we might not be approaching the issue with as open a mind as we should be. Sadly, the real world is neither perfectly symmetrical nor innately egalitarian, and if our best efforts to display it as such still persist in conflating white privilege with realistic diversity, then the problem is more pervasive than we think.

Watchmen

Warning: Spoilers ahoy!

As is always the case when someone takes a cult story and makes it into a film, there’s going to be problems. All creative endeavours are open to dislike, but beloved masterpieces are trickier still. It’s not just about fidelity: it’s about emphasis, interpretation. One Watchmen review described this phenomenon thusly: that “every adaptation must be some kind of betrayal.” It’s a poignant observation, and one which applies equally to the act of criticism. More than at any other time, reviewing such a film declares our own biases, our own view of the original narrative, and lays the issue open to yet more disagreement, emotive or otherwise. I’ve come quite late to the Watchmen party – just in time to ensure that my husband, too, had read it before today’s screening – but even so, my attachment to the story is considerable. I went in feeling sceptical, but lightly optimistic. I hated 300, director Zack Snyder’s other big comics-originating blockbuster, with a fiery vengeance, but for reasons of plot as much as for the ludicrous stylisation. Then again, Sin City (by 300‘s Frank Miller) and V for Vendetta (by Watchmen’s Alan Moore) are two of my favourite narratives ever. In other words, I was ready to be persuaded.

The opening scene of Watchmen – the murder of Edward Blake, the Comedian – made me angry. Being a long-time connoisseur of trashy action flicks, I’m hardly averse to either gore or gratuitously choreographed fightscenes, but this one left a sour taste. Apart from Dr Manhattan and, to a vastly lesser extent, Ozymandias, none of the watchmen are anywhere near approaching superhuman. Rather, they’re a squad of Batman-men: fit, fast, experienced and well-trained, but physically human. More importantly, Watchmen itself is a dark and gritty tale which, despite several violent protagonists, never makes violence seem cool. Combine these two facts, and Snyder’s lengthy, stylised combat betrays a profound misunderstanding of the source material, not just in the opening scene, but throughout the film.

It’s worth mentioning that Watchmen closely follows the arc of the graphic novel: precious few scenes are displaced from their original order, while a vast majority of the dialouge comes straight from Moore. The casting, effects and costuming, too, are brilliant: Billy Cruddup is excellent as the otherworldly Dr Manhattan,while Jackie Earle Haley’s Rorschach is chillingly superb. Nonetheless, for every moment of narrative satisfaction – Archimedes, Mars, the journal – there is another of jarring dislocation. The bizarre, overlong sex-scene between Dan and Sally is one such offence; the introduction of the energy crisis plotline is another. The most awful moment, however, comes as a giant Dr Manhattan stalks the fields of Vietnam, exploding VietCong to the thunderous chords of Ride of the Valkyries, at which point the desire to strangle Zack Snyder and demand to know why anyone, even the man who made 300, would think that Good Morning, Vietnam! was an appropriate point of reference. If a single scene could be said to epitomise the failings of Watchmen, then this is it.

Even so, it still came as a shock to reach the end and realise that, despite their by-and-large adherence to Moore’s work, the writers had taken it upon themselves to change the ending. I don’t mean millions of people didn’t die: I mean there was no psychic blast from a giant, dead, genetically-modified abomination of science. Rather, Ozymandias simply harnessed the power of Dr Manhattan and disintegrated citizens in cities around the world. From a distance, perhaps, this might seem neater, more personal, but up close, it robs us of the dead. It mutes the horror of cataclysm into something clinical, devoid of corpses, and instead of the world realistically banding together against the threat of creatures from another dimension, they unrealistically band together against a single American who, up until that point, had been publicly vaunted as both patriot and weapon. The psychology simply doesn’t hold: crazy and mad-science though the monster was, its purported origins ensued that no world power could be blamed for spawning it, while the choice of America-as-target humbled not only that government, but all who’d previously fought against them. Following the logic of Snyder’s version, given that multiple nations were attacked by (they believed) an essentially rogue American weapon, it seems decidedly counter-intuitive that they sue for peace rather than place blame. After all, Moore’s Watchmen is nothing if not a study in human nature. Take away his understanding of people, and you rob the story of its soul. 

Which, ultimately, is the film’s real problem. It looks, speaks and sometimes moves like Watchmen, but with every misstep, the realisation grows that some other, vastly less subtle intelligence is steering: even Rorschach’s name, phoenetically spelled in the book as raw shark, is mispronounced as raw shack. Great adaptors understand the betrayal of their actions, such that, rather than merely echoing form, they build on substance. Their changes respect the heart of the story, acknowledging that appearances, no matter how important, are still secondary. Snyder, by contrast, effects his changes clumsily, keeping the veneer at the expense of structural integrity. In this sense, his dedication to replicating Moore feels less like tribute and more like an acknowledgement that his own interpretation isn’t strong enough to stand alone. Scenes run long, slow and awkward in the transition between mediums, introducing cameo characters whose roles, though apparent to those of us who’ve read the comic, would doubtless confuse and frustrate a novice audience. As in recent adaptations of other books, notably the Harry Potter series, a not inconsiderable number of scenes in Watchmen count on the pre-existing knowledge of the viewer, rather than striving to be self-contained.

In a way, the absence of the Black Freighter Tales is symbolic of the film’s failure. Although this subplot – a comic within a comic – was always going to be extraordinarily difficult to reference cinematically, it perfectly mirrors the twisted actions of Adrian Veidt, showing us the rotten underbelly of Moore’s 1985 and epitomising the dark, uncertain morality of the minutemen. There’s moments of real enjoyment in Snyder’s work, and the length, despite the peg-legged gait of certain scenes, does not seem unduly, even though it nears the three hour mark. As a superhero film – an action film – it works, and many people will doubtless enjoy it on that level.  Certainly, there is no crime in doing so. But as a replication of Moore’s ethos, it fails. Like Dr Manhattan, the body is there, but the spirit is missing, evident only in occasional, haunting echoes. And for me, that says it all.

The Problem of M. Night Shyamalan

There are two types of people in the cinema-going world: those who like M. Night Shyamalan films, and those who don’t. It’s not an issue on which there’s much, if any, middle ground. With the possible exception of The Sixth Sense, his films, while mainstream releases, have a tendency to polarise in the manner of arthouse flicks: either they’re revelations, or rot.

I used to be one of the unenlightened. Watching Signs on the big screen, I snorted with laughter. The Village left me irritable – what the hell kind of ending was that, anyway? I’d been frightened out of my young life when Haley Joel Osment confessed to seeing dead people, but at that point, I didn’t even realise the films were by the same guy. Had friends not taken me in hand, my opinion might never have changed, but after The Village, they sat me down and asked, in exacting tones, exactly why I was disappointed.

After twenty-odd minutes of flustered debating, we hit upon the crux of my frustrations, viz: the film had been marketed as horror. Although the first half of the narrative fit this pattern, the character relations, plot twist and conclusion took an entirely different turn, which lead me to believe that the whole was a botched attempt. So, my friends asked. Was the problem with the film, or just with what you thought it was meant to be?

I opened my mouth, closed it again, and thought back. I’d gone in expecting to see a horror film, and so had watched for narrative markers appropriate to the genre. They’d been there early on, but then vanished entirely, which left the possibility that I’d been actively misinterpreting the film, imposing my own assumptions on how it should work, and judging it wanting. It was a strange realisation, but the more I considered it, the more it made sense. Hadn’t I thought the same thing about Signs? It was as if I – and, for that matter, Hollywood – had been looking for The Sixth Sense in every subsequent Shyamalan film, when they weren’t really horror at all.

With Lady in the Water, I made a conscious effort to ignore the marketing and test my hypothesis: to watch with no expectations and an open mind. Might I see something I’d missed before?

I could, and did. Near the end, I realised what should’ve been obvious all along: Shyamalan’s films are always about people. The pseudo-horror setting is simply his preferred vehicle for storytelling, a background mechanism designed to threaten, not the audience, but his characters. Thus menaced, the point of their reaction isn’t fright, but inter-development: how they draw together, and how they mend. Because healing, faith and self-acceptance are big themes in Shyamalan’s work. In both The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, supernaturally gifted protagonists come to terms with their powers, not in order to save the world, but to help the people in it. Quietly and with inner strength, the heroes of Signs and Lady in the Water regain their faith, two broken widowers made whole. And in The Village, a community of emotionally scarred people are forced to confront their injuries by the actions of three who are physically wounded: a dying man, a blind girl and her mad brother.

The subtlety of Shyamalan films simultaneously acts as their blessing and curse. Early scenes deliberately set up the false horror that, inevitably, constitutes their sales pitch, but the plots become introverted. It is as if the film is a train travelling towards a junction: the audience expects to travel one way, and instead is taken another. What we protest is a percieved error – turn back, turn back! – when, in fact, our course was planned from the outset.

Except for The Sixth Sense, which he didn’t produce, and Wide Awake, which he neither produced nor appeared in, Shyamalan has, at 37, written, produced, directed and appeared in all his films. Given the excellent characterisation, scripting, cinematography and production values, it’s hard not to be impressed. But more impressive still are the moments of beauty and revelation which characterise his work: the idea that even though we are all flawed, we can fix ourselves.