Wednesday, October 13, 2004
MORRISON REVISITED
Dave Fiore wants to know why I consider Grant Morrison a misanthrope, referring to this post of mine, in which I said that Morrison "really does seem to hold humanity in contempt" (Sep. 22, if permalinks don't work).
First of all, as I said at the time, this was just my reaction to a superficial reading of the first few chapters of The Filth, not a judgement of Morrison as a whole. What triggered this reaction, I think, was basically two things. The first was the repulsion to human bodies I thought these chapters reflected. The impression I got was that Morrison was in fact portraying humans as bags of filth, meat puppets to be smashed for one's amusement. It may well be that Morrison was merely ostensibly adopting this position in order to discredit it by the end of the book; I wouldn't know. The second was the absence of any trace of human decency, aside from the old man at the start (who is just an artificial persona, as I understand it). Again, this may very well not continue throughout the book.
I have just one thing to say on the question of misanthropy in Morrison's work in general. In those parts of New X-Men and The Invisibles that I read, Morrison seemed to divide humanity into the "cool" and the "uncool." And while this isn't misanthropic per se, it does come dangerously close in my opinion to holding the uncool in contempt. This may be just a side effect of Morrison's own frantic efforts to be cool, though. And again, I didn't finish either New X-Men or The Invisibles, so I may be completely wrong about them both. As I say, I'm just trying to explain why I reacted the way I did, not to claim that my reaction was justified.
Dave Fiore wants to know why I consider Grant Morrison a misanthrope, referring to this post of mine, in which I said that Morrison "really does seem to hold humanity in contempt" (Sep. 22, if permalinks don't work).
First of all, as I said at the time, this was just my reaction to a superficial reading of the first few chapters of The Filth, not a judgement of Morrison as a whole. What triggered this reaction, I think, was basically two things. The first was the repulsion to human bodies I thought these chapters reflected. The impression I got was that Morrison was in fact portraying humans as bags of filth, meat puppets to be smashed for one's amusement. It may well be that Morrison was merely ostensibly adopting this position in order to discredit it by the end of the book; I wouldn't know. The second was the absence of any trace of human decency, aside from the old man at the start (who is just an artificial persona, as I understand it). Again, this may very well not continue throughout the book.
I have just one thing to say on the question of misanthropy in Morrison's work in general. In those parts of New X-Men and The Invisibles that I read, Morrison seemed to divide humanity into the "cool" and the "uncool." And while this isn't misanthropic per se, it does come dangerously close in my opinion to holding the uncool in contempt. This may be just a side effect of Morrison's own frantic efforts to be cool, though. And again, I didn't finish either New X-Men or The Invisibles, so I may be completely wrong about them both. As I say, I'm just trying to explain why I reacted the way I did, not to claim that my reaction was justified.
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