THE UNIQUENESS OF '66 BATMAN

Just a forum-post to clarify some of the unique factors of the TV show, responding in part to a claim that the program went downhill because of the number of episodes required in the second season.

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I guess we are at loggerheads on the episode thing. In terms of sheer quantity, going from a half-season for a show with about thirty half-hour episodes to a full season of 60 should not have been any bigger deal than an hour-long show with a half-season of, say, 15 episodes suddenly getting a full season order of, say, 30 episodes. 

HOWEVER, I do concede that with BATMAN, even the producers were to an extent making things up as they went along. Doing two episodes of BATMAN a week was in my outsider's opinion far more difficult than doing a weekly hour of even a good western like, say, RAWHIDE. The rules on how to do westerns had been well established long before RAWHIDE. Everyone involved in making the series would have grown with westerns, both juvenile and adult, and everyone would have known what a good western needed.

BATMAN was almost sui generis for television. ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN followed various tropes of comic book stories, but I don't think that show consistently represented the comic book of the early fifties. Some episodes roughly captured the feel of some comic stories, but the low budget meant that overall SUPERMAN couldn't really be that much like SUPERMAN the comic. Similar factors also limited other low budget adaptations like SHEENA and cheap original cartoons like COURAGEOUS CAT.

But BATMAN actually had a high budget (though some accounts claim that the showrunners acted like they had to pinch every penny). The makers could actually make the Caped Crusader as way out as the source material. But most adults had at best a friendly contempt for comic books of all genres. Hence Dozier came up with his two-pronged approach: render the comics tropes as accurately as possible to please the kids but seek to please the adults with ironic humor. Yet that balance was hard to sustain, and as we've discussed, in the end a lot of raconteurs defaulted to zaniness rather than distanced camp. 

 

AUTHENTICATING ARTIFICE PT. 2

 In Part 1 of this essay-series, I noted that a lot of film critics have ample ways of authenticating the major developments both in general film history and with respect to particular film genres. When a cineaste like Martin Scorsese talks about a genre like film noir, he can draw upon a wealth of critical writings about the most important exemplars of the genre, and about the overall history of the genre's development. 

In Part 1 I also pointed out that comics-fans have over time generated both general histories of the comic book medium and of the particular genre of the superhero in comics. Yet none of these histories has any impact on the development of superheroes in the film medium, any more than a history of noir books would impact on noir films. And in essence, there is no strong developmental history of superheroes on the big screen, not even when one shows how that history intertwines with the history of superheroes on the small screen.

If one uses the term "superhero" only in its more restricted sense of "the costumed crusader," then in American cinema the genre starts in silent cinema with 1920's MARK OF ZORRO. But that film, and its 1940 remake, were one of a very small number of feature films spotlighting costumed crusaders prior to the 1950s. The main source of costumed crusader cinema were the serials, which also began in the silent era, but which did not make substantial adaptation of superhero (and superhero-adjacent) properties until the late 1930s, the beginning of the so-called "Golden Age of Serials." Zorro put in an appearance in the serial format in 1937's ZORRO RIDES AGAIN. while 1938 saw the cinematic debut of two other prose-derived superheroes, the Spider and the Lone Ranger. Many "superhero-adjacent" comic strips also were filmed around the same time, particularly those of FLASH GORDON and BUCK ROGERS. Finally, in response to the burgeoning popularity of costumed heroes in comic books, ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL in 1941 provided the first adaptation of a particular comic book superhero. Comic book superheroes continued to be adapted until the studios quit making serials in 1956, resulting in a list of adaptations that includes Spy Smasher (1942), Batman (1943), Captain America (1944), The Vigilante (1947), and Superman (1948). Serials never indulged in the gory violence seen in many Golden Age superhero comics, but they shared the same basic aesthetic: action, action, and more action.

Serials, which made their money from kids regularly going to the movies to see the latest serial-chapter, were doomed as soon as television began offering serial-style entertainment for free. Yet television in that decade, and through the early 1960s, paid the superhero almost no attention, even as juvenile entertainment. Though five space-opera teleserials showed up during the first decade of television's ascension, only three costumed crusader shows appeared-- THE LONE RANGER (1949-57), THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN (1952-58) and ZORRO (1957-59)-- and the first two of those were indebted to earlier radio serials, even using some of the same scripts. Slightly later, Disney produced in 1963 a three-part limited teleseries, THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH.

The same basic dynamic informed the genre of animated theatrical shorts, which appeared alongside theatrical feature films. In the "golden age of cinema," two costumed-crusader cartoon-series predominated, resulting in seventeen SUPERMAN episodes and eighty-one MIGHTY MOUSE episodes. TV's competition with the movies meant the eventual doom of cinematic cartoon shorts and the rise of TV cartoons. On the small screen Mighty Mouse arguably gained a greater following than he ever had on the big screen, enjoying a long run as repackaged Saturday morning fare in the form of 1955's MIGHTY MOUSE PLAYHOUSE.

There had been a very tiny number of costumed-crusader feature films in the 1940s, such as three SHADOW B-films from Columbia. But in the 1950s and early 1960s, there were only a smattering of mostly forgotten "masked swashbuckler" B-flicks and two LONE RANGER feature films, the latter issued by the same production company that made the TV show. 

The upshot of all these changes was that even though the Silver Age of Comics had brought new life to the superhero genre in the late 1950s, neither the big screen nor the small screen evinced any strong interest in the genre-- until 1966.

Was '66 BATMAN influenced first by a producer reading a BATMAN comic book, or by Hugh Hefner screening the old Bat-serials for a laugh, or by Pop Art usages of comic book art? Primacy does not really matter. But although "camp Batman" was opposed to the "straight" content of the more streamlined BATMAN comics of the Silver Age, the 1966 show was the first film/TV serial that successfully communicated the appeal of a superhero who continually battled a horde of repeating adversaries. Indeed, one could argue Silver Age Bat-comics began emphasizing the hero's colorful rogues a lot more than Golden Age Bat-comics ever had, and so the 1966 show was very much in tune with that sea-change.

 Later that same year, Hanna-Barbera's cartoon studio jumped into the costumed crusader business with galaxy-protecting superhero SPACE GHOST. The same company would present six other such TV cartoons, among them an adaptation of FANTASTIC FOUR, before concerned parents campaigned against this fancied increase in Saturday morning violence.

But neither the large screen nor the small screen did much else with the superheroes for the remainder of the decade. However, one could posit that most of the superheroes of the 1970s were in the same mold as BATMAN and SPACE GHOST, and at least some of the Silver Age comics: colorful, fairly intelligent adventures with light humor and none of the gory violence seen in Golden Age funnies. This aesthetic embraced not only moderately successful 1970s teleserials like WONDER WOMAN and INCREDIBLE HULK, but also misfires like the 1975 feature-film DOC SAVAGE. Roughly the same Silver Age aesthetic stayed in place for the four live-action SUPERMAN films and the considerably less noteworthy super-films of the eighties, such as LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER and MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. During this "late Silver Age" of film and TV, I tend to find most of the costumed crusaders from cartoon-land to be nugatory, with the possible exceptions of 1983's HE-MAN and 1987's TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES.

Now, one might say that cinema started exploiting the grittier nature of the comic-book Bronze Age with Tim Burton's first two BATMAN films in 1989 and 1992, and maybe even with the 1989 PUNISHER and the 1990 DARKMAN. However, if elements of the comic book Silver Age only appeared in very rough fashion in American comic books of the 1970s through the 1990s, such elements continued to appear alongside the edgier fare in movies and TV shows of the nineties. Thus the other two BATMAN films of the 1990s sought to hearken back to 1966 BATMAN, albeit in a very clumsy manner. Similarly, the hallmark superhero cartoon of the nineties, BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES, emulates the tight plotting of Silver Age Bat-comics and, unlike the first two Burton Bat-films, eschews the transgressive violence found in Frank Miller's signature Bronze Age DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. The live-action TURTLES films followed the lead of the eighties cartoon, choosing light humor over blood and guts.

As I see it, even in 2023 we remain in a sort of "superhero soup" in cinema and TV, constantly mixing together either the sunny Silver Age motifs (the MCU's ANT MAN) or the dark and transgressive tropes of the Bronze Age (ZACK SNYDER'S JUSTICE LEAGUE). It's like modern superhero movies and TV can't decide if they want to follow the lead of Stan Lee or of Alan Moore. 

In one respect, modern costumed-crusader films and TV shows have allied themselves with the comic-book "Iron Age." In PATIENT ZERO PONDERINGS, I hypothesized that the 2009 "diversity hire" of the MS MARVEL creator marked the beginnings of hyper-politicized comic books. MCU films would not substantially begin following this storytelling model until roughly 2015, but to date the studio has not deviated significantly from said model. I don't know what it would take, in any of these media, to re-orient storytelling priorities enough to produce a "New Age" not entirely beholden to any of the others, but I suspect something's got to change eventually, even if its the extinction of the superhero genre in all its variegated forms.

RESPECTING THE SECOND MASTER PT. 2

 At the end of my previous half-a-review of John Lyden's FILM AS RELIGION, I wrote:

Similarly, in a section devoted to anthropologist Clifford Geertz-- the scholar with whom Lyden most strongly agrees, albeit one I've not yet explored-- Lyden strongly rejects the tendency toward "sociological reductionism" seen in scholars like Malinowski and Levi-Strauss. Lyden follows Geertz in affirming "that myths unite the ideal and the real, a notion of how things could be with a pragmatic understanding of how they are." The pairing Lyden calls "the ideal and the real" is in essence identical with what I called above "the objective and subjective worlds." Because Lyden is attempting to see ways in which the enactment of tribal myth-rituals mirrors the much later development of cinematic enjoyment, I'm not surprised that he's aligning himself with the model that best supports that analogue-- and at this point in reading the book, I have no reason to oppose that comparison. I'm reasonably certain that, given his nodding acquaintance with Campbell, Lyden will not validate myth-and-religion according to my notion of "epistemological patterns." But I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a view of the subject that I can respect.

I've now finished the 2003 book, and I can appreciate that its author kept true to his objective, rather making contradictory claims, as did the authors to which I compared him earlier. I strongly disagree with his methodology, but I respect that he stuck to his conceptual guns.

As noted earlier, I approve of Lyden's attempt to steer clear of the reefs of reductionism. Though he provides cogent analyses of an assortment of various religious critical attitudes, such as Paul Tillich and Rudolf Otto, Clifford Geertz is his main guide, though he does tip his hat toward one of the anthropologist's precursors in Chapter 2:

In distinguishing art from religion, [Geertz} accepts Susanne Langer's view that art deals with illusion and appearance, imagining how the world could be, whereas religion claims to represent the world as it really is. But religion also imagines how the world might be, and as Geertz's own theory indicates, religion links together what "is" and what "ought" to be in its ritual structure.

This idea of religion binding "is" and "ought" within a ritual structure is Lyden's sole justification for seeing a wide variety of commercial films as "religious." What Lyden oversimplifies is that when the "is" and "ought" dichotomy appears in actual religious narratives, it's usually to  illustrate a contrast between the phenomenal world that everyone experiences and the noumenal world which underlies the "illusion and appearance" of ordinary life. Lyden eradicates this core aspect of religious narrative so that he can bring under his scrutiny all sorts of films in which some "illusion vs. truth" dichotomy exists. Thus a film like 1989's WHEN HARRY MET SALLY falls within the compass of Lyden's idea of ritualized entertainment, because its narrative opposes one narrative illusion-- a world in which Harry and Sally don't realize their essential rightness for one another-- with a narrative truth, one in which they find one another. 

I notice that though Lyden mentions Susanne Langer to gloss Geertz's theory, Langer's nowhere to be found in the book's bibliography. Had Lyden read Langer, he might have gained some appreciation for the ways in which mythic and religious symbolism can be used to form narratives that are fundamentally distinct from those which are largely about conflicts in the naturalistic world. As I have not read Geertz as yet, it may be that he too is a little too cavalier with the "is/ought" dichotomy.

I don't particularly like downgrading Lyden, whereas I took some pleasure in identifying the foolish fallacies of the authors of the SACRED TIME book. I admire that he's trying to value fiction not for its supposed representations of literal truth, as has been the case with the majority of literary criticism since the days of Classic Greece. Rather, Lyden appreciates that fiction can be used to describe situations that do not exist, and may not ever exist, as a way of considering all possibilities. In this his position resembles mine as I've expressed it in essays like AND THE HALF-TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE.

But good intentions are not the only measure of a critical work, and once again, I'll point out that an author like Jung-- whom Lyden rejects-- has been instrumental in pointing out that the human psyche has "many mansions," so to speak. A film like WHEN HARRY MET SALLY has nothing to do with the symbolic correlations one finds in mythic and religious discourse, but it's perfectly valid within the sphere of the dramatic potentiality. Because Lyden tries to extend his definition of religious ritual narrative far beyond its scope, his reviews of various films, whether possessed of mythic content or not, have a bland, all-cats-are-grey sound to them.

It is amusing, though, that a modern scholar champions just the sort of non-mimetic possibilities that used to throw earlier generations into hissy-fits, as one sees with a "critic" like Frederic Wertham, who was so married to representational reality that he picked at a SUPERBOY story because its representation of George Washington at Valley Forge wasn't the way the real history of things went.

RESPECTING THE SECOND MASTER

The title of this essay functions as a companion piece to SHORTCHANGING THE SECOND MASTER, my largely negative review of the 1998 book STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE AND SACRED TIME. In my review I faulted the book's authors for having reeled out a "Cook's tour" of prominent views on the analysis of archaic and modern myth, and for having claimed that theirs was a "pluralist" vision, only to turn around and deluge the reader with nothing but Far Left interpretations of the TREK franchise. The authors claimed that they were going to "serve two masters" by appreciating the arguments of both those who criticized mythic content in fiction and and those who "venerated" it, but they were really only serving one of two putative masters and shortchanging the other.

John C. Lyden's 2003 FILM AND RELIGION follows a similar course to DEEP SPACE insofar as the author sets up his critical rationale by comparing and contrasting a wide variety of critical views on the interwoven topics of myth and religion. As of this writing I've only read the first three chapters of Lyden's book, and I have two more to go that are focused purely on his methodology, before even getting to his specific analyses of different films-- some of which are well-known metaphenomenal works, while others would seem to be remote from the average conception of myth-and-religion, such as WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.

Lyden's estimations of various myth-and-religion scholars are, perhaps inevitably, a mixed bag for me. In my 2019 essay AND THE HALF-TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE, I criticized Jung for too often reducing mythological stories to purely psychological projections, and Lyden holds the same opinion. Yet whereas I found it possible to use certain insights by Joseph Campbell to correct Jung's error, Lyden makes it clear that he has no use for Campbell at all, dismissing the author largely because he finds Campbell's concept of "the monomyth" too restrictive. In truth, I have no more investment in that particular conception than did Lyden-- it's one of Campbell's weakest ideas-- but it's clear from Lyden's bibliography that he only read three of Campbell's later works, which doesn't give him much authority to analyze Campbell accurately.

Overall, though, Lydon seems to be broadly fair even to writers with whom he disagrees. I confess that I like the fact that he opposes the very thing I disliked in the DEEP SPACE book: the tendency to confuse sociological purpose with poetic creativity. In MYTHS OF PLEASURE AND PATTERNS  I wrote:

I won’t repeat in detail my conviction that mythology depends upon the evocation of epistemological patterns. But I will add that for tribal humans, these patterns would be the essence of poetry; the fusion of the objective and subjective worlds in which those humans lived. Stories that relate that the sun is really a boat traversing the sky, or that the world was made from the bones of a giant, don’t serve any scientific purpose, nor at base do they serve the purpose of Malinowski’s functionalism (to which Meletinsky seems strongly allied). While myth-stories may eventually be used to support a given culture’s social order, no teller of tales thinks to himself, “Hmm, I think I’ll make up a story about that ball of light in the sky so that this generation and those that follow will have a sense of societal unity.” Nor would any audience listen to such stories for any reason save that imaginative sojourns give them pleasure. One of those pleasures includes the listeners imagining that the mysterious non-human world is at least tinged with human sentiments and priorities—and that may be the base origin of all of the tropes of art and religion, which may precede those stories we moderns would term “myths.”

Similarly, in a section devoted to anthropologist Clifford Geertz-- the scholar with whom Lyden most strongly agrees, albeit one I've not yet explored-- Lyden strongly rejects the tendency toward "sociological reductionism" seen in scholars like Malinowski and Levi-Strauss. Lyden follows Geertz in affirming "that myths unite the ideal and the real, a notion of how things could be with a pragmatic understanding of how they are." The pairing Lyden calls "the ideal and the real" is in essence identical with what I called above "the objective and subjective worlds." Because Lyden is attempting to see ways in which the enactment of tribal myth-rituals mirrors the much later development of cinematic enjoyment, I'm not surprised that he's aligning himself with the model that best supports that analogue-- and at this point in reading the book, I have no reason to oppose that comparison. I'm reasonably certain that, given his nodding acquaintance with Campbell, Lyden will not validate myth-and-religion according to my notion of "epistemological patterns." But I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a view of the subject that I can respect.

 

COSMIC ALIGNMENT PT. 2

I made this statement in the first essay wherein I discussed the concept of alignment:

In CROSSOVERS PT. 3,  I reviewed the way in which two villains, Mister Hyde and the Cobra, had debuted in the THOR feature but were recycled into that of DAREDEVIL. The two super-crooks never became firmly attached to the latter feature either, and they subsequently drifted into such venues as SPIDER-MAN and CAPTAIN AMERICA. Since the two evildoers never became strongly associated with any single feature, I would still tend to view them as Thor-villains who bring about a charisma-crossover every time they venture into a new character-cosmos.

But the more I thought about it, the less necessary it seemed to align such all-purpose villains as Hyde and the Cobra with any particular hero-cosmos, be it that of Thor, Daredevil or Captain America. The continuity-nut in me is driven to note that the Cobra probably ended up battling Captain America more than anyone else, due to a large quantity of stories where he took charge of the "Serpent Society."

 Yet, because of the nature of the Marvel Universe, wherein editor Stan Lee broadened the parameters of inter-company crossovers beyond any previous comics-company. it's possible for a figure like Cobra or Hyde to have what I like to call "floating alignment." They are never identified with any single cosmos, in the way the Riddler, my example from CROSSOVERS PT. 5, is always aligned with Batman. 

Ironically, though, the earliest major example of a floating alignment appeared not at Marvel but at Silver Age DC Comics. After the original Doctor Light debuted as a foe of the Justice League, it became a running schtick that afterward the florescent felon went around challenging individual members of the League, managing to log in appearances in three of Julie Schwartz's 1960s superhero features: the Atom, the Flash and Green Lantern.  

Of similar relevance is the alignment of new protagonists when they appear within the corpus of established features. If a given new character appears within an established feature and then graduates to his or her own feature within a very short period of time, then it's a High Stature crossover, in which the protagonist(s) of the established feature cross over with a new character thrust into the position of a series-star. For instance, the TV-character of "Maude" debuted on two episodes of ALL IN THE FAMILY before she got her own series. She would have been a Sub in the 1971 episode, but since the second episode, aired in 1972, spawned the regular series about four months later, I would judge that she was a Prime in the 1972 crossover. 

(ADDENDUM: Changed my mind since writing this: now both "Maude" debuts are examples of proto-crossovers.)

Of course, dozens of characters may debut with the author's hope of creating a "spin-off" serial feature, and many never go beyond "Sub" status. One example was the 1985 Atomic Knight, a revamping of an earlier Silver Age feature, but despite a handful of guest-starring appearances, DC never gave this polished paladin a shot at a feature, and as far as I know he went back into Sub Limbo thereafter. 

Others can be much delayed. Marvel's Inhumans debuted in a 1965 issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, and the Black Panther appeared in the comic in the following year. It practically goes without saying that Lee and Kirby intended for both the Panther and the Inhumans to appear in serials at some point, but neither did for some time, and so for all of those appearances they register as Subs. In a special FF issue dated November 1967, both the Inhumans and the Black Panther crossed over with the Fantastic Four in fighting Psycho-Man. The Black Panther would not get a regular berth for another year, when he became a regular member of the Avengers in 1968, so within the compass of that story, he remained a Sub type. However, the special placed a more immediate push to see if readers wanted an Inhumans series, since in an issue of THOR, also dated November 1967, the denizens of Attilan received their first feature, albeit only a backup strip. So the FF ANNUAL would be a High-Stature crossover because the Inhumans had just become Primes around the time when the issue came out, while the equally enjoyable Panther had to wait another year for Prime status. 

Now, I reiterate that although all of these examples have dealt with ongoing serials, crossovers of varying types also appear in more limited forms, and the alignment of characters may be judged qualitatively rather than quantitatively.

Take the character of Nancy Callahan from Frank Miller's SIN CITY. She makes a very small debut as a support-character in the first graphic novel, THE HARD GOODBYE. with no hint that she's going to be important later.

She is still a Sub when she shows up in THAT YELLOW BASTARD,  but she's integral to the story of the Prime character John Hartigan, who protects her from a maniac while falling into age-inappropriate love with her. Her importance in this story trumps any of her other, more minor appearances, so she becomes a Sub aligned with the cosmos of John Hartigan.

To date Frank Miller has not created a sequel to BASTARD in comics-form, but he did write one for live-action film in SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR.  In this story, which I should note does not really line up with the continuity of HARD GOODBYE, Nancy decides to train herself in archery to gain vengeance on the man she holds responsible for the death of John Hartigan, and she also persuades the muscular Marv to join her in her quest. Given that Miller seems to have dropped all interest in further installments of SIN CITY, this was probably his final word on the character, as she becomes a Prime by reason of taking on the same level of superordinate presence as Marv. Thus in this story-- one of several in the anthology-film-- we have another High-Stature crossover, between Marv and Nancy. even though there will probably be no further appearances for either character. The alignment of Nancy-to-John is in fact reversed, for within the DAME tale, Hartigan becomes a subsidiary character in Nancy's story, in that Hartigan appears as an almost impotent ghost who simply observes the exploits of his beloved and her rough-hewn accomplice. 

SHORTCHANGING THE SECOND MASTER

In this essay I noted that I was currently re-reading Wagner and Lundeen's analysis of the STAR TREK franchise, DEEP SPACE AND SACRED TIME. I also noted that I felt a little reluctant to blog further about it, though I only referred to the "chimera" of rebutting points made in a book published over twenty years ago. It's a little different when a critic breaks down an earlier work that still has a following, like Ursula Le Guin's THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT, which I assailed in this essay and the two subsequent posts. Even if I had a larger following, would all that many fans, be it of STAR TREK specifically or of metaphenomenal criticism generally, even care about what Wagner and Lundeen said about "Star Trek in the American Mythos?"

However, one interesting aspect of the authors is their attempt to "serve two masters," as per the Matthew 6:24 quote. In HALF-TRUTHS AND CONUNDRUMS PART 2 I attempted to give the authors the benefit of the doubt because they claimed that they were pursuing the course of pluralism, even if they do not do so in the same ways I do. But now that I'm about halfway through the book, I think that the authors' claim to appreciate different paths was just them talking out of both sides of their mouths.

Wagner and Lundeen's claim to pluralism appears in the first chapter, following a generalized history of the many intellectual and academic interpretations of myth. In the concluding section, entitled "Plural Vision," Wagner and Lundeen write:

It is possible, when writing about myth, to be so driven toward a preconceived goal that one may select only the material that fits the chosen approach or stretch and whittle it until it does fit. Those who read myth in order to interrogate its hegemonic messages, are likely to write about such subjects as gender, race, ethnicity... [while] those inclined toward the veneration of myth are more likely to focus on heroism, self-transcendence, the achievement of inner wholeness and illumination...

Now that I've read more of the book, it's quite evident that there's a reason why Wagner and Lundeen first listed the critical, reductive analysis of "hegemonic messages," and gave short shrift to the view, expressed by such authorities as Jung and Frye, that myth has its own integral logic that cannot be reduced to materialistic explanations. Though I intend to keep reading, in the first six chapters I've found nothing to justify the book's title. DEEP SPACE AND SACRED TIME. The title sounds like a response to one of mythographer Mircea Eliade's more "transcendental" books on mythology, such as THE MYTH OF THE ETERNAL RETURN or THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE. But Eliade is only cited three times in the index, just like Carl Jung-- which indicates that the authors were just bullshitting about their supposed respect for the non-reductive views of myth.

Since this is just a blogpost, I'll confine myself to one example of the authors' reductive proclivities. Chapter 5, subtitled "Gender in the STAR TREK Cosmos," concludes with a section with the bumptious title "Tinfoil Bikinis and Political Correctness." The authors assert that in the fourth season of STAR TREK VOYAGER, the producers introduced the svelte character "Seven of Nine" to add sex appeal to the series, with the clear implication that for the show's past three seasons not that many fans. hetero or otherwise, were enthralled with the existing female cast-members. Wagner and Lundeen paraphrase a quote by Berman from a 1997 article in which he made some comment about the show having become too "politically correct." The bias of the authors toward the feminist agenda is clearly shown by their response:

If "political correctness" means a sensitivity to feminism and other left-liberal political views, it is probably too simplistic to blame it for the decline of the "sexy" STAR TREK female.

Wagner and Lundeen then veer off any actual estimation of the "correctness" accusation by accusing the Original Series-- the souce of the "tinfoil bikinis"-- of focusing on "women as the sole object of the sexual gaze, with men doing all the gazing." This is not sustainable, not least because Mister Spock managed to attract a sizeable female fandom-- but he did so as men usually do in the real world, through his actions rather than through the use of makeup and attire. One need not be a Jungian essentialist to notice that hetero men and women have different orientations with respect to the opposite sex, and one cannot glibly downgrade any of the TREKs if they reflect that basic experiential truth. In fact, the "sexual gazes" directed at Seven of Nine's smoking body in her skin-tight attire apparently included a number of lesbians, since during the run of VOAYGER, a petition was circulated to declare Seven as having a lesbian relationship with the ship's female captain, as reported in this Wikipedia article.

I've often made fun of overly politicized critics, such as Noah Berlatsky, who blathered about my myth-critical approach without the slightest understanding of the issues involved. But at least he only served one master, unlike the hypocritical authors of this not-so-deep analysis.

ADDENDUM 12-15-21: I considered devoting a separate post to  the remainder of this book now that I've finished it, but I found it such a mixed bag that I don't think it's worth it. There are some okay insights here and there, but in large point this is a "proto-woke" work, continuously complaining about the STAR TREK franchise's lack of proper intersectionality. Even after admitting that the shows are all television programs that must use human actors for the majority of their players, the authors STILL fault the shows for being too anthropocentric, and so they are guilty of a fundamental dishonesty, throwing out valid reasons for production procedures and then dismissing those reasons out of hand. 

Though there have been Far Left studies with inventive points of view, Wagner and Lundeen are largely derivative and unoriginal in their analyses. The only puzzling aspect of their work is that I don't know why they stuck the phrase "sacred time" in their title. They correctly attribute the phrase to Mircea Eliade, and even quote the context correctly. But given that the authors are mildly hostile toward the claims of any religious hegemonies-- as was, BTW, Gene Roddenberry-- it's clear that they aren't the least bit concerned with the philosophical aspects of Eliade's idea. Maybe in some fashion they viewed Eliade's concept of a originary time before time itself started as some sort of "modernism," which they incorrectly associate with cultural traditionalism. But if so, they failed to make that association clear, and so their whole project shortchanges their readers as well as their "two masters."

NOTES TOWARD A MORE EXTENSIVE BAT-ANALYSIS

So I ask myself the question: given that I’ve become keen on the idea of sussing out how many, if any, episodes of the 1966 BATMAN teleseries (hereafter BATMAN ’66) qualify for myth-status, I must ask myself if there’s any special approach I should use.

Whenever I’ve reviewed individual episodes or story-arcs within the open-ended DC BATMAN comic-series, it’s been possible to deal with each discretely. However, a closed series—one which, as I noted earlier, simply came to an arbitrary end upon cancellation—is somewhat different. When teleserials last no more than three years, they usually keep roughly the same roster of producers and creative talents. It’s not impossible for such a series to change its creative priorities in some radical way, as can be seen in the differences between the first and second seasons of BUCK ROGERS IN THE 2TH CENTURY. But on the whole, the episodes of a short-run show tend to cohere a little better than those of a long-running comics series.

Another complication is the distinction between a “one-tier” approach and a “two-tier” approach. Without altering my position about dominant mythoi—that every serial concept is dominated primarily by one mythos—it’s obvious that some serials are more overtly devoted to one mythos, while others may seek to “sample” from other mythoi to “switch things up.”

For the most part, every generation of BATMAN comics offers its readers the invigorating elements of adventure, with only minor references to modes of drama, comedy, or irony. This would be a one-tier approach.

BATMAN ’66, however, explicitly sought a “two-tier” approach according to the public statements of producer William Dozier, offering invigorating thrills to the kids in the audience, while giving the adults campy, ironic asides about the absurdity of the events depicted. I’ve repeated my reasons for viewing ’66 as dominated by the mythos of adventure various times, so I won’t repeat those reasons here.

Now, in my essay FANTASIES OFINNNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE, I made a direct comparison to two “two-tiered” concepts: that of BATMAN ’66, an “adventure-irony,” and that of Wally Wood’s WIZARD KING duology, an “irony-adventure.” In the essay, which focuses primarily on my reasons for pronouncing WIZARD KING an irony, I attempted to show how the invigorating elements of normative fantasy-adventures—LORD OF THE RINGS, PRINCE VALIANT—proved secondary to Wood’s concentration upon motifs of doom and deception. Yet, it must be admitted that although Wood’s version of a fantasy-scape can’t be taken at face value, his mortificative ironies are not nearly as harsh and discordant as those found in the most severe "one-tier” irony, such as the Mills/O’Neill MARSHAL LAW. The story’s reluctant hero (and viewpoint character) is not especially appreciative of the strange beauties he encounters. But the reader sees what Odkin does not—the wonder in winged boats floating across the sky, or mammoth earth-ogres coming to life after eons. Thus there is a sense that the fantasies of innocence exist to comment on the fantasies of experience, even if the latter get the primary emphasis.

Any analytical approach to BATMAN ’66 would have to be note how the episodes play off the two mythoi constantly, even though the emphasis goes in the opposite direction. To illustrate, here’s a brief cross-comparison.

Very few actual Batman comics-stories were adapted to the teleseries, but a telling exception is 1952’s “The Joker’s Utility Belt.” In every way the original comic is a thoroughgoing adventure-story, with no elements of drama, irony or even comedy to distract from the tale’s focus: yet another duel between Batman and the Joker. As the title implies, the villain’s main ploy is that of biting the hero’s style, as the Crown Prince of Crime begins wearing a belt full of useful gizmos, albeit all patterned upon jokey conceits, like sneezing powder and a hand buzzer. Naturally, the Joker puts Batman and Robin through their paces—literally, on a conveyor belt leading to a furnace—until the heroes turn the tables and consign the villain to durance vile once again.

Dozier and his staff adapted this story to the fifth and sixth episodes of the teleseries’ first season, which were respectively entitled “The Joker is Wild/Batman is Riled.” Not many comics-stories were adapted at all, but “Joker is Wild” is amazingly close to the original model, particularly in comparison to the Riddler-story that was used for the season’s first and second episodes. The TV-script doesn’t use nearly as many campy asides as did the average first-season episode, but the most significant departure appears at the end of the sixth episode. Batman has defeated the Joker’s minions, including a beautiful gang-moll named Queenie (not present in the 1952 comic-tale). As the sober-sided crusader prepares to take the malefactors in, Queenie tries to see if she can negotiate some leniency via her tempting body. Batman’s response—calling the gang-moll a “poor, deluded creature”—is out of character for the comic-book hero, but totally appropriate for the campy series. Having Batman sound a bit like a priggish defender of moral virtue does not in any way diminish his heroic accomplishments, those of figuring out the Joker’s plot and defeating his forces. But it’s a transparent signal to the adult audience, that the Cowled Crusader is first and foremost a hero for children who don’t know anything about the temptations of sex.

Now, pointing out the particular usages of either adventurous or ironic elements does not in itself constitute the value of “mythicity.”Mythicity is, as I’ve written before, not equivalent with artifice. The literary devices of artifice are the primary vehicles through which mythicity is expressed, but the "driver" of each vehicle is only mythic in nature if he’s communicating not just the bare facts of his artificial existence, but also the manifold joys of epistemological reflection. How many such “drivers” I will find in BATMAN ’66 is at this point an open question even to me.

DARN CLEVER, THOSE ULTRALIBERALS

                     

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro probably overstated the case when he claimed (and I paraphrase) that most or all of Hollywood had become obsessed with liberal concerns. Nevertheless, the rise of the so-called Progressives on the political scene has had an unmistakable impact, one mirrored in not a few fictional narratives. There’s no knowing whether the proponents of the narratives sincerely believe that their messages can change the world, or whether they’re chasing the latest trend to grab the attention of an increasingly fragmented mass audience. But the purveyors of Progressive fiction have for the most part been marked by a unique tone of strident righteousness, a determination to lecture rather than to persuade, much in common with such political types as Cory Booker and Rashida Tlaib.

Ultraliberal concoctions like THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI and the BLACK LIGHTNING teleseries are a long way from the earnest humanist works produced by Classic Liberals like Rod Serling and William Gaines. The latter worthies never doubted that American culture was seriously beset by demons like racism and rampant consumerism, and they were passionate to save America’s metaphorical soul.
But for ultraliberals and Progressives, that soul is not worth saving. In an earlier essay I pointed out how a couple of penny-ante ultraliberals touted their TV show by describing America’s history of slavery with the happy term “foundational.” This is a fancy way of restating an old Catholic formula: the newborn infant is guilty of original sin, and the only way to compel good behavior is to wash out—or maybe beat out—the devils.

However, the downside of condescending lectures is that few people like to be lectured, and that leads to counter-reactions. Some reactions are from unalloyed conservatives like Shapiro, and Hollywood is likely to ignore such protests.  However, producers are not nearly as likely to overlook box-office failures like 2018’s GHOSTBUSTERS and 2016's BIRTH OF A NATION. In the last few years Youtube has become rife with reviewers who continually protest the spread of Progressive hectoring, ranging from amateur film reviewers like the Critical Drinker to professional comics-artists like Ethan Van Sciver. Whenever a Progressive film or comic book fails to win an audience, such pundits exult that they have, at very least, discerned a meaningful counter-reaction against the politicizing of entertainment.

Of course, sometimes politicizing does make money, and Hollywood never forgets anything that makes money. Additionally, such raconteurs are also masters of camoflague, and some of them may seek to propound their beliefs more by implication than by righteous rants.

Case in point: a new 2020 NBC broadcast series, LINCOLN RHYME: HUNT FOR THE BONE COLLECTOR. The opening episodes of the series follow the general template of the 1999 Denzel Washington vehicle THE BONE COLLECTOR, showing the attempts of Rhyme and his team of profilers in their hunt for the elusive serial killer of the title. However, given that LINCOLN is a series, Rhyme’s team also has to go after other psycho-killers as well.

Episode two, broadcast on 1-17-20, hurled the Rhyme team against a serial murderer known as “the Wrath of God” because he terminates victims, whom he considers morally deficient in some way, with methods patterned on Greek mythological stories. Judgmental serial killers are nothing new in the crime and horror genres, of course, and the program doesn’t spend much time justifying the Wrath’s peculiar myth-happy psychology. But the script does seem unique in finding an additional scapegoat for the killer’s crimes.

The Rhyme team is unable to stop the Wrath from committing myth-murders in the show’s first half hour, but one of the killings supplies a clue, and that clue leads them to a local college. It seems that a female Classics professor, name of Antoni, is not only teaching mythology in that college as a guest lecturer, she’s also taught such classes in all of the cities where the Wrath operated. This association is enough for two of Rhyme’s detectives to seek Antoni out. The audience doesn’t find out exactly what Antoni teaches, since the detectives show up as her class ends, so the audience only hears Antoni describing some of the deaths of sinning mortals in Greek myths. The detectives, anxious to make a bust, act in a confrontational manner with Antoni, but since they have no actual evidence, she ignores their threats and takes her leave. Afterward, one detective says to the other, “Did you see how angry she was?” The script does not actually show Antoni being angry, only mildly annoyed, which suggests that the writer wants to set her character up for a fall.

In the last quarter-hour the team tracks down the Wrath and captures him while preventing one of his ritual murders. The Wrath’s reason for crafting his myth-deaths is not expanded upon, while his identity, an ordinary-looking middle-aged white guy, is also underplayed. This leads to Antoni’s second and last scene, which I argue is what the scriptwriter really wanted to portray. The detectives return to the college and arrest Antoni, claiming that they went through the Wrath’s effects and found a journal that implicates Antoni in the crimes. Case closed.

The unjustified remark about Antoni's "anger" proves interesting, since in modern times there’s a lot of very justifiable concern about murders arising from anger, particularly from spree-killers like the white supremacist Dylan Roof. However, it often seems like Progressives don’t care about murderers when they don’t conform to the model of  “the angry white male.” One sees an example of this attitude in Rashida Tlaib’s attack on the New Jersey supermarket killers, an attack she deleted when she found out that they were not white.

The episode does not make race an issue. However, the script’s insistence that the mythology professor MUST be implicated in the serial killer’s crimes strikes me as peculiar, given that the same script does not really justify this implication, aside from one detective’s remark. In the real world mythology and mythology professors usually have nothing to do with serial murder. However, one prominent celebrity professor, clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, has been (incorrectly) labeled an alt-Right apologist by many Progressives. Peterson does not teach or lecture exclusively about mythology or even about the literature of Classical Greece, though such subjects have appeared in his online lectures. But purely because Peterson questions the beliefs of the Far Left, he’s often labeled not only as alt-Right, but as an intellectual who appeals to “angry white men.”

Whether or not readers agree with my interpretation of this single episode, I predict that Hollywood scriptwriters will continue to propound ultraliberal scenarios. But in the near future, some may be a little less strident, and a little more sneaky, than was the case earlier. 

QUICK THOUGHTS ON INHUMANS PREMIERE

I write this essay the day after a two-hour INHUMANS "film" premiered on ABC-TV. This broadcast premiere follows what has been described as a "disaster," when the same two hours debuted exclusively on IMAX theatre-screens.

I had no high hopes for this franchise. In my review of the 1998 Jenkins/Lee graphic novel, I commented that the characters had failed to enjoy success in comic books partly because they were "static." Of course, the history of the comics-characters doesn't speak to their potential as a franchise in other media-- look at ANT-MAN, a marked failure in the medium of his birth but an adequate performer in his cinematic makeover. But, prior to the debut of the INHUMANS show, Marvel Television attempted to boost the appeal of the franchise by interweaving a very vague version of the Lee-Kirby concept in with the story-lines of their currently-running teleseries AGENTS OF SHIELD. I found these Inhumans-Shield stories witless and tedious, but that was no surprise, since SHIELD had been witless and tedious even before it started trying to build up the Inhumans. Clearly ABC-TV was forcing one modestly popular franchise to attempt supporting a completely unknown entity. It's been suggested that one reason for this strategy was that, seeing how 20th-Century Fox had profited from their cinematic rights to the X-Men, Marvel Entertainment wanted a new set of "merry mutates" over which it had exclusive control.

However, the SHIELD show did not adapt the classical "Royal Family" or any support-characters from various versions of the comics-franchise. Thus, the ABC pilot was free to build upon those characters with no reference to anything that had happened on the SHIELD show. That show merely alluded to the comics' idea of the "terrigen mists" through which the Inhuman citizens of Attilan mutate themselves in new, often fantastic, sometimes super-powered forms. Thus the two-hour film introduces audiences to the Royal Family who have always been the stars of the INHUMANS franchise-- Attilan's monarch Black Bolt and his super-powered cousins, Gorgon, Karnak, Medusa, Triton, and Crystal. The pilot also introduces the family's pet Lockjaw, a colossal canine with a penchant for teleportation, and Black Bolt's scheming brother Maximus.

I won't review the two-hour film, in part because it's a continued story that may not be resolved until the last of the show's eight episodes. I can to some extent understand why anyone who splurged to see the film in IMAX would feel cheated, for in terms of production, it's just another TV-movie. Sets and FX are more expensive than they would be for a commonplace SF-themed teleseries, but they can't compare with the outlay for Real Hollywood Features. If you're looking for big-budget eye-candy, the INHUMANS two-parter is not for you.

Still, I'm amazed that anyone would call this "jaw droppingly awful television." The characters are not precisely the same as their comics-templates, but that may be a plus, since the Royal Family has sometimes come off like a bunch of royal bores. Scott Buck is credited as the "showrunner," which presumably means that INHUMANS is written by a team of scripters. But Buck or someone has devoutly researched the original comics-series, with good effect to the dramatic arcs for the show's seven main characters (eight if you count the dog). One of the better moments, in which Evil Maximus shears away Medusa's formidable tresses, is taken from the Jenkins-Lee graphic novel. Not every arc is equally entertaining. But if there's even one good arc-- such as the complex relationship between Black Bolt, his wife Medusa, and Maximus, who desires his brother's wife-- that's one more good arc than AGENTS OF SHIELD has.

I've encountered some complaints about the quality of the FX. I admit I can see some flaws-- especially with the animation of Medusa's prehensile locks-- but it's not that much worse than most of the FX on television. Slightly flawed CGI doesn't bother me. I grew up seeing most of the TV-aliens sport zippers in their backs.

I might dislike a lot of the behind-the-scenes deal-making, but the dubious machinations of the SHIELD-INHUMANS crossovers certainly didn't make SHIELD any worse than it already was. The debut for the show proper has some decent character moments and some interesting plot-developments. (Lockjaw uses his teleport-power to dump Black Bolt in the middle of a New York street. Howcum???)

I've seen many, many TV-debuts weaker and less appealing than THE INHUMANS. It's rumored that it will never get any more episodes due to the IMAX failure, which proves that whoever engineered that idea was a complete idiot. But it doesn't prove that Scott Buck's INHUMANS deserves to be dumped on in egregious fashion-- particularly when AGENTS OF SHIELD is a much deserving target.

ROYSTERING IN THE CLOISTER

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary-- John Milton, AREOPAGITICA (1644)

Back in November I wrote Noah Berlatsky that as long as he and his fellow travelers continued to be "addicted to victimage," they would continue to provide grist for my critical mill.

I was perhaps giving the HUddites too much credit, since for the past couple of months I've found whatever posts I've scanned to be both timorous and tedious. Ng Suat Tong's essay on Frazetta, which brought about my ban from the HU comment-threads, was poorly researched and badly reasoned. But at least the essay's intemperate foolishness grabbed my attention. Unlike a lot of the HU dreck, it afforded me a "trial by what is contrary."

The other week I scanned through the last two months. I had avoided two of the posts that had a lot of comments, one relating to the coming BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN movie, and one on James Bond,because I felt that I could pretty much predict all the ultraliberal, over-ideological sentiments that I would find there. The fact that the superheroes still attract the most energy at HU, as opposed to lofty noodlings about artistic perspective, speaks volumes.

So I was bored with the current cant, but I wanted to deliver on my earlier promise. I wandered through HU's topic list and checked out the "Batman TV Show" topic that has afforded me some good material ion past. Somehow this led me to a 2014 post by Chris Gavaler, TV SUPERHEROINES OF MY LOVELORN YOUTH.

The essay's trip down memory lane is unremarkable enough, and I wouldn't have called attention to it-- particularly not with the high-faluting Milton quote in mind-- had I not chanced upon a couple of remarks by Gavaler in the comment-thread. I'll preface my remarks by noting that I've no particular animus toward Gavaler as I have toward some HUddites. It's his lack of philosophical acuity I'm criticizing; not his personal life.

The first one once more sings that old familiar song of victimage. Imagine Ronstadt warbling "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" as you read:

A part of me flinches though at my own categorizing of women as sexy, non-sexy, etc. Although I experience myself as inevitably straight, I do wonder what would have happened if my culture hadn’t been through images of scantily-clad women at me as a child. 

In this song we hear the strains of the staunch Adornite. One's sexuality is not under one's own aegis; it's yet another aspect of the soul being ruled by that horrible Culture Industry (my words, obviously). By my lights this attitude is comparable to Milton's metaphor of "slinking out of the race." The implication seems to be that "TV and Hollywood," linked by Gavaler in the preceding sentence, are doing something morally culpable by playing up to male heterosexual desire. There's not even the usual demand for balance-- that it would be OK to depict hetero desire as long as there's total equity (whatever that might look like) for whatever marginalized sexual orientations the ideologue may choose to validate. Based on what Gavaler writes here, TV's portrayal of sexy women is A Bad Thing in itself.

But what amazes me about this passage is that Gavaler feels guilty about having indulged in the "categorizing of women as sexy, non-sexy, etc." This isn't just slinking out of a particular race; it's opting out of the human race.

One may argue that adolescents, flush with fresh hormones, can become consumed with sexual fantasies, which may or may not have unpleasant consequences. But there's no sentient human being who doesn't practice some form of "categorizing." For that matter, a sizable quantity of nonhuman creatures practice a form of categorization called "sexual selection." Humans cannot know if the aesthetic priorities of the female fiddler crab, and why she chooses one male crab over another. But even if nonhuman creatures *may* be thinking more about survival potential than pure sexiness-- though of course no one can know that either-- the result is the same. Crab A gets his ashes hauled and Crab B does not.

Suppose that somehow Evil Hollywood had never managed to sink its hooks into the American psyche as it did. Suppose that some Marxist regime enforced the standards that the HUddites claim to desire, so that at the very least there was equity in all representations of heterosexuality, homosexuality, and whatever else gets the inside track. This still would not mean (pause for change to shouting all caps)--

THIS STILL WOULD NOT MEAN THAT THE CATEGORIES OF "SEXY" AND "NON-SEXY" WOULD CEASE TO EXIST!

Not having been a homosexual, I cannot speak for that marginalized faction. However, I strongly suspect that they too prefer to sleep with bedmates that they find to be sexy, and that they avoid the "non-sexy" except when they're (so to speak) hard up.

But I suspect that Gavaler doesn't really want to place all sexual desire in question: only male hetero desire, as is indicated by a question he addresses to a poster who fails to respond further:

Are all these women just items of exchange in superheroes’ homosocial universe? 

So what Gavaler is really distancing himself from is not the whole of sexual selection, but from being implicated in the "homosocial universe" of Hollywood, which is just academic-speak for "the old boys' club."

Nothing I could write would alter the writer's notion that this is a virtuous stance. I can argue, though, that it is a "fugitive and cloistered virtue," Milton's essay was concerned with a somewhat different form of censorious attitude, but he keenly saw that the censor harbored the deluded idea that he might promote a beneficial "innocence," but that said censor would instead bring about "impurity." This brings to mind my earlier comment that the ideologues' dominant attitude is pre-lapsarian in nature. They look back at the abuses of history-- though always with one eye closed-- and want to wish them away, rather than considering that there is something in humankind that can only be brought out only through contention. Milton spoke of "purity," while Nietzsche, in many ways Milton's opposite, spoke of the virtue of "courage over fear."  Yet both of them were at base protesting against people who tried to opt out of struggle because of a mistaken desire for safety and innocence. In the terms I've adopted from Fukuyama, this is characteristic of the *isothymic* attitude:

*Isothymia* can manifest as Nelson Mandela going to jail for years to promote equal standards for Black Africans, but it can also manifest in "men without chests," endlessly prating about "equity" regardless of any other considerations.

Nietzsche feared the rise of the "Ultimate Men," defined by mediocrity. "Men without chests" was his metaphor. I, having been born in a more graphic era, tend to think of the Ultimate Men as being without something else-- and given the subject, I shouldn't even need to say what the "something" is.

ULTRALIBERAL LYNCH LAW

The only pleasant thing about ultraliberal lynchings, as compared to ultraconservative lynchings, is that the former are generally content with killing nothing more than reputations. (Here is an example of one from 2013, albeit one better known to the general public.)

Of course, if you're in a financial league with Joss Whedon, you can afford to ignore the Internet's hanging-judges and their sycophantic juries. Going by Whedon's own remarks, he's been attacked many times by all sorts of  nutbars, presumably ultraconservatives as much as ultraliberals. However, in recent months the comics-related blogosphere generally-- and the Hooded Utilitarian particularly-- have conceived a new fascination for finding ways to take superficial pot-shots at Whedon. In all likelihood this "meme," as I choose to call it, has come about because of Whedon's alleged marginalization of the Black Widow character in AGE OF ULTRON, which I discussed somewhat in CURSE OF THE BLACK WHEDON-TWEETS.

One of the more ludicrous volleys appeared in April: Noah Berlatsky's BE WHITE OR EXPLODE. Given that the essay is two months old, I suppose it's "old news"-- though maybe not quite as old as writing an essay on a single episode of a television series; an episode that debuted a little short of two years ago, on 9-24-13.

In keeping with his standard practice, NB does not analyze the whole episode; only the part of it that he considers ideologically retrograde. The interested reader can wade through it if he pleases, but it boils down to the fact that (a) the show starts out with a working-class black guy performing an act of heroism, (2) NB's thunderstruck realization that the black guy is not the show's hero, but a "schlubby plot point." and (3) NB's criticism of the show for not spotlighting enough people of color.

I consider this muddled argument a "lynching" because hanging-judge Berlatsky conveniently ignores any evidence that might conflict with his prosecution of the show's producers for the crime of not being ideologically advanced. He's particularly annoyed that the episode's one black character is shown as being out of control (hence, ready to 'explode") while the mostly white guys are controlled and in control. (The presence of an Asian female in the SHIELD team is supposedly nullified by the allegation that she's a stereotype, which, even if it were true, would be pretty much impossible to demonstrate in one episode.)

I'm not a fan of AGENTS OF SHIELD (henceforth AOS), for reasons I won't explore here. Nevertheless, it's clear that the show isn't going to get a fair hearing in any court that watches only one episode-- or a court that automatically condemns said show for not having enough POC in one episode to suit the judge. It's significant that even after a correspondent informed Judge Berlatsky that one of the regular, apparently Caucasian characters was actually biracial, he simply inserted that datum into the essay as written but declined to let that fact cause him to reverse his judgment. AOS showed a character named Mike Peterson, who happened to be black, getting pacified with a tranquilizer gun, so therefore this escapist teleseries can be implicated into all the real-world narratives about criminalizing black men (Trayvon Martin is mentioned twice).. Never mind that Peterson, as written, could have been as readily played by a white actor as by a black one. Never mind that the first season's episodes quickly established that Peterson was the only one of several persons who received the destructive super-power treatment. Never mind that SHIELD is responsible for Peterson living through the experience, and that any moral umbrage regarding Peterson's destructive actions is clearly not directed at him acts but at the fiends who experimented on him-- at least some of whom were also white.  AOS is automatically guilty by association-- even though it's an association that's only in the judge's mind, that might read something like, "any disempowering portrait of a black character= automatic racism.".

In addition to considering only one episode as proof of retrograde racial tendencies, this judge also threw out of court any evidence that might have mitigated the verdict. Evidently NB decided that parallels with Trayvon Martin were the only reason that Whedon's team would have had for casting a black actor, one J. August Richards (formerly a regular on Whedon's ANGEL teleseries) as Peterson. The fact that the Peterson character was based on a Marvel character of color was not explored by His Dishonor, because such a consideration would have impeded the all-important "rush to judgment."

While I don't have any more experience than NB in the actual production of AOS, I offer for those interested my take on how this episode of alleged bigotry probably came into being:

______________


AOS WRITER 1: OK, we've decided we're going to have one guy, Peterson, survive the Project Centipede experiment. SHIELD will save Peterson, and their investigation will bring them into conflict with the architects of the project. Are we gonna make the survivor a one-shot, or bring him back?

AOS WRITER 2: Let's make him a reference to one of the Marvel characters we have the rights to adapt. We may work into later stories or not, but using one of the old familiar characters is good for keeping the attention of the hardcore Marvel fans.

AOS WRITER 3: OK, let's do that. Who do we have rights to use? Moon Knight... Two-Gun Kid... Doctor Droom-- jeez, who bought this package?

AOS WRITER 2: Hey, we got Deathlok. He works, 'cause he was already the subject of an evil experiment. Let's make Peterson our version of Deathlok.

AOS WRITER 1: That works, and for a bonus to Whedon's Buffy fans, we could cast one of the Buffyverse actors in the role. What's Boreanaz doing these days?

AOS WRITER 2: Are you crazy, man? You can't have even an off-brand Deathlok played by a white guy. Original Deathlok is black!

AOS WRITER 1: He is? I read the seventies Deathlok; I thought he was a white guy whose skin turned grey.

AOS WRITER 3: No, man, it was kind of buried, but that version was black, too.  Number Two is right. If you have one of Marvel's black super-guys played by a white guy, the bloggers will bury us in shit.

AOS WRITER 1: All right, already; we'll get a black actor to play off-brand Deathlok-- and then, everybody will be happy---

_______________________

(Fortunately the three writers were spared execution by hanging-judge Berlatsky, thanks to the appeals-court, presided over by Judge Phillips, who voided the lower court's verdict as insubstantial and not based in the rudiments of good literary criticism.)