Up to What I've Been...

Yet another reason why it's okay to end on a preposition...

This post is just some more pop culture quick-takes, rather than a thoughtful, developed argument (as if I ever post those anyway). When you see the topics for tonight's post though, the fragmentary, stream-of-consciousness approach acutally follows a certain decorum. As I tell the kiddies, it's all about matching form and content...

First up: G.I. Joe Resolute Microseries.
Holey-freaking-moley. The script by Warren Ellis (better known to me as the writer of the excellent Planetary comic book series) did for the G.I.Joe franchise what the original Clone Wars micro-series did for Star Wars...only more so. Perhaps it's the product of an population suffering from mass attention deficit disorder, but these dark, gritty, and brief mini-episodes seem to offer better entertainment than their full-grown movie siblings. I have very little doubt that most geeks are going to wish Ellis's cartoon were released on the big screen in place of the live-action G.I.Joe silliness that is being offered this summer.

My only moderately significant complaint about the Resolute mini-series is that I'm not entirely sure that Ellis succeeded in tying together the episodes thematically. I don't think he had to for the project to be successful (the Clone Wars micro-series certainly didn't connect its parts as well as it could), but the weakest part of the micro-series might have been that it was a lot of plot with very little over-arching meaning. I'm not sure I could tell you what the series was "about" beyond being cool. And cool it was.

I thought it could have also used a touch more of the wry humor that Ellis sported in his Planetary series, especially in the face of over-the-top dramatic conflicts. There was some humor there -- especially in the Roadblock/Gung-ho duo, but most of the episodes took themselves rather seriously (Snake-eyes/Stormshadow rivalry borders on melodramatic).

What these micro-series do best, however, is capture the way a fan imagines their beloved franchises. For instance, even the complaint I lobbied about plot at the expense of meaning seems a typical fan-daydream. Look, I spend much more time thinking about the synthetically-produced advertising mythologies of my childhood than a grown man really should, but this more often than not revolves around fantasizing what would be cool to see those old characters do rather than how to bring newer, richer meaning to those characters. Micro-series are great at delivering satisfying depictions of those otherwise empty fantasies. How many times has a geek said, "Wouldn't be cool if Snake-eyes did X, Y, or Z?" They probably often had Snake-eyes do X, Y, and Z in their backyard when they were six-year's old and just want a validation of their imagination's coolness. They aren't worried so much about what it means on a philosophical level because it's play.

Micro-series are a form of play.

Or like moving doodles.

I've seen other people applaud the way the Resolute series incorporated deaths...lots of them...and sometimes with surprisingly marquis characters (no spoilers!). If you never watched the original 80s G.I.Joe cartoon, death was always removed from the theater of war. It's something of a geek cliche to point out that even the nameless bad guys in G.I.Joe could always be seen making it out of exploding helicopters and floating down to earth in a parachute. They don't have that luxury in the 21st Century rewrite. But I think Ellis was doing more than just commenting on the old cartoon.

He was a kid at play...with someone else's very expensive toys...and I think he couldn't resist the urge to break some of them (I've also argued this point about Neil Gaiman and Beowulf...).

I don't think Ellis did this vindictively. After all, by now everyone who watches these kinds of shows knows that whatever happens this year will be completely ignored and rewritten in the next iteration. So why not go ahead and break some toys now? Hasbro will just rebuild them next year under a different tagline. (Consider there was G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero; G.I.Joe Extreme; G.I.Joe Valor vs. Venom; G.I.Joe Sigma Six...and now Resolute...each version had rewrites of the same characters with virtually no "canonical" continuity. And that's not even counting the now countless variant continuities of the comic books. It's kind of like what happens when you finally get around to reading Chronicles in the OT, or the Gospel of John after having read the Synoptic Gospels. It's the same, but not the same.)

Anyway, it's worth watching the whole thing...even if you end up watching the individual pieces on Youtube.

Next up: Tolkien's Sigurd and Gudrun.

Christopher Tolkien's latest foray into his father's desk drawers produced this adaptation/translation of the Old Norse verse Volsung Saga -- which shares source material with both Tolkien's Middle-earth and Wagner's Ring Cycle. (It's also, therefore, a version of the events in the Nibelunglied.) For anyone who thinks Wagner inspired Tolkien, this will put such thoughts to rest. Tolkien was inspired by what inspired Wagner...not by Wagner.

If I ever teach a course on the Ring Cycle (and I have no idea why I would, since I don't know squat about opera), this book would be on the list. Most of the book is actually J.R.R. Tolkien's lecture notes on Scandinavian literature and mythology. It's interesting, but not exactly beach reading.

I don't really recommend Sigurd and Gudrun if you just enjoy Tolkien's fantasy. This is more for the people who read Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or Pearl or who have a thing for reading alliterative verse. You'll find no elves and orcs here...although you will still meet a dwarf.

It's also a bit difficult at parts to get through the primary material -- the poems themselves -- largely because Christopher Tolkien has opted to present us with a clear text, burying the explanatory notes in the introductions and end commentary. This means that unless you have read the notes before reading the poem, you are often left having no clue what is going on, especially in the early parts. You can't just scan to a footnote at the bottom of the page and keep moving.

Tolkien's notes also observe the effect of being somewhat disoriented by the narrative. He explains that Old Norse poems (songs, really) were not interested in constructing a linear narrative to show the development of a character. Rather, these poems are more interested in stringing together a series of "moments" for which an audience would have a powerful emotional response...mostly because they already knew the narrative context for the scene.

Now that I've just typed that previous sentence, it occurs to me that these Norse poems are actually the medieval equivalent of a micro-series. Both genres take a kind of guerilla-warfare approach to narrative -- they jump in just long enough to let you experience something (greatness? coolness?) -- and then jump back out of the narrative to race ahead to the next good part. Both also rely heavily on a kind of dramatic irony -- mostly through an assumed (and possibly vast) knowledge base that fans...er...listeners would bring with them to the performance. If you aren't getting Sigurd and Gudrun (and I will admit I often wasn't), it's because you don't already know the story (and knowing is half the battle). You would be missing all types of inside-references and conflicts.

Much of the material in Sigurd and Gudrun plays out like it could have been written by Ellis for a Vikings: Resolute micro-series with the fragmentary glimpses of political intrigues, violence, rivalries, and heroism. There are scenes in the Gudrun poem in particular, when Atli the Hun tries to "persuade" Gunnar and Hogni to reveal the location of Sigurd's gold that pretty much burn themselves into your imagination. I don't want to spoil the experience of those images though, if you haven't heard the tale before. (How often do you have to avoid giving spoilers to a millenium-old tale?)

Comments

[Akh Ari]

That was a fun post.

Thanks for the heads-up about Sigurd and Gudrun. Norse mythology was an important part of my childhood. A Tolkien translation is of interest to me!

[Peter Terp]

Thanks!
You know, there is supposed to be a Tolkien translation of Beowulf floating around somewhere, but it hasn't seen print yet (as far as I know). I think one Michael Drout is supposed to be working on it.