If Popular Art Sucks for the Next Decade, Should We Blame Obama?
By Ned Resnikoff - Nov 17th, 2008 at 10:58 amBack at his home blog, Daniel touched on something that’s been on my mind recently. Good, iconic popular fiction, like the most recent incarnations of Batman, James Bond, and Battlestar Galactica, are all reflections of the world in which we’ve spent the past eight years. And with all three of those examples, the creators have taken a series that used to be inherently ridiculous and, well, really, really bad, and stripped it back to the essentials. All three of these series became leaner, darker, and much more brutal, and the reason for that seems to have had a lot to do with the dark, cynical mood of the Bush years
Just compare Daniel Craig’s Bond to the Pierce Brosnan’s Clinton-era Bond. The Clinton years, for all of their economic prosperity and relative peacefulness, made for some damn shitty espionage fiction. Without real-world fears to exploit, we instead got thrust into this Saturday morning cartoon-caliber world of ridiculous gadgets, ice palaces, and characters who make Sarah Palin’s foreign policy views look nuanced.
On the other hand, Craig’s Bond (at least in Casino Royale; I haven’t seen Quantum of Solace yet) lives in a world of moral ambiguity. The protagonists’ rough edges haven’t been sanded away, the gadgets are at least semi-plausible, and the Bond girl is more than just an aesthetically pleasing piece of scenery. It may be an unpardonable act of heresy to say this, but Casino Royale is the only Bond movie I’ve ever seen that, instead of just being a good Bond movie, was a good movie on its own merits.
And now Daniel thinks that this new, darker Bond has already outlasted his relevance. Without having seen Quantum of Solace, I have a hard time arguing otherwise. Of course, Obama isn’t president yet, but it’s impossible for me to imagine an international climate as hostile toward his administration as it has been toward the Bush administration. We’re still going to be mired in a pretty bad recession for the next few years no matter what, but the national mood seems to have brightened a little bit. The paranoia and distrust of the Bush years has started to transform into a feeling of… well, to borrow something I saw on a lawn sign, a feeling of Hope (TM).
Which is great and all, but these warm fuzzy feelings don’t make for a particularly good Bond or Batman. I think it’s fair to say that quality, paranoid popular art is going to take a dive for the next decade or so.
It goes without saying that, if forced to choose between some really terrible superhero movies and four more years of Bush, I would pick the former. But I want to have my Hope cake and eat it in a morally ambiguous fashion too, dammit.
Cross-posted at my home blog.
I’d be hesitant to predict the demise of good comics this early. Some of the best comics written, for example Frank Miller’s Sin City and 300 and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, both emerged during the Clinton years.
Good writing can draw from a lot more than just contemporary events and worldview. Don’t think Batman has to hang up the cape just yet.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:39 amI’m not saying good comics are dead, per se, just that we’ve had a pretty good run for the past few years that’s probably approaching its end.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:47 amHow did comics suddenly encompass all of pop art? Secondly, what about the works of Chris Ware or Daniel Clowes? Or are we only talking about the fantastical when we talk about comics?
November 17th, 2008 at 2:59 pmDaniel Clowes isn’t exactly mainstream, and I’m not just talking about comics here. Instead, I’m trying to talk about good, mainstream, middle-brow entertainment. It’s a sort of fuzzily-defined grouping, so there’s a lot of room for argument over what qualifies and what doesn’t.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:03 pmAnd I focused in on comics as it simply happens to be the aspect of pop art I’m most familiar with (and within that I only read the more fantastical stuff).
November 17th, 2008 at 3:30 pm