The Faceless Enemy

Since fiction has existed, hordes of incompetent foes have assailed heroes. These foes are a literary device which, at first, encourages audiences to fear villains by making them seem formidable. Then the foes get blown away and the secondary literary function is achieved: the hero looks very tough indeed. When these foes appear in a visual setting, such as theatre, comics, film or video games, these foes often have their faces shrouded or hidden. It's a tradition that I'd like to examine.

The Faceless Enemy has a long history. The earliest example I can remember with any clarity is the ninja. The famous shinobi shōzoku outfit that we all know, the all-black costume with the facemask, puffy pants and two-toed shoes, was very likely never used by actual ninja. Rather, it was a symbolic stage-convention of Japanese theatre that would allow audiences to easily identify a character as a ninja. It's a cool-looking costume that sticks in the viewer's mind. No wonder that it resonated over hundreds of years in Japanese culture and was copied by North American filmmakers in the 1970's. Many heroes have donned the awesome ninja garb, but when enemies do so, they are frequently very bad at their jobs.

Of course, the most famous Faceless Enemy these days is the Imperial Stormtrooper. For over thirty-five years, the Stormtrooper has been a pop-culture icon. However, we must not forget that the Imperial Stormtrooper was a dream inspired in George Lucas' mind by the Faceless Enemies that Flash Gordon and other cheapo-serial heroes fought in the early days of cinema.

In the world of video games, you will be playing an exeptional game if you AREN'T killing Faceless Enemies. From the masked-enemies of Borderlands to the shrouded reapers of Infamous to the balaclava-terrorists of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, they are the industry standard. The reason for this is that it's just easier to program a certain number of enemies for the player to murder and if they don't have faces, it's less likely that the player will say, "Hey, didn't I kill that guy already?"

You get it. They're everywhere. But why? What is it about Faceless Enemies that we seem to like so much? Why do we like seeing them getting killed? It seems to make no intellectual sense. As a writer I am told over and over to fully-flesh my antagonists, yet fiction is rife with cartoon baddies Wilhelm-screaming and falling off roofs.

The enemy who has his face hidden is an enemy who has been dehumanized. Humans have instinctive reactions to seeing each other's faces. When the face is shrouded, those instincts are deadened.

This has two major effects. Fistly, for audiences, we cease to identify with the enemy. It just won't do for viewers to sympathetically exclaim, "Han Solo, you brute! That poor Stormtrooper! Did you think about his family when you blasted him?" This allows heroes to plow through hundreds of faceless foes, letting audiences worry only about the protagonist's peril.

The second major effect is a by-product of the first. When we have our sympathetic reactions to death impaired, it affects censors like the MPAA and the ESRB less. Dead Stormtroopers make for PG-ratings in theatres, at worst Teen ratings in video games. By putting a mask on your baddies, you are making your story available to millions of bloodthirsty children.

Okay, so that explains why creators select the Faceless Enemy. But why do audiences find them compelling? I've mentioned that the mask dehumanizes them, but with dehumanization also comes fear. The mask represents mystery and fear of the unknown. The emotions of a Faceless Enemy cannot be read except by body language, making their thoughts a mystery as well. With the identity hidden, the Faceless Enemy becomes a menacing stranger. Menacing strangers are a powerful human fear, as evidenced by the amount of media attention random murders, child-snatchers and serial killers receive. Lastly, when the Faceless Enemy serves a political entity such as an empire or terrorist group, he becomes a symbol of powerful conformity that has obliterated his identity, quietly whispering to the viewer, "This could happen to you, too."

In short, as a literary device, Faceless Enemies can inspire terror in the human heart. By including them as followers of your antagonist, (who should remain fully-fleshed), they significantly enhance his/her fear factor. Are you still worried about allowing poorly-fleshed characters into your work of fiction? Remember that the way to be a bore is to say everything. Unless that gas-masked Nazi is going to play a significant role in your plot, we don't want to know about him. We don't even want to know that his name is Hauptfeldwebel Helmut von Pickelhube. Just let your protagonist murder him and move on with the plot.

Believe it or not, this diatribe has real-life application. In his book, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman showcases the innate human resistance to killing other humans. Apparently, before the Korean war, only about 15% of soldiers actively tried to shoot their enemies. The rest helped wounded comerades, reloaded weapons, cowered in fear, ran around shouting like idiots or fired their weapons over the enemys' heads. Generals like Carl von Clausewitz were confounded as to why, when a Prussian infantry formation fired a musket volley at a barn, all the shots hit, whereas when the same formation fired at an advancing line of tightly-packed infantry, only one or two enemies dropped. The closer you get to your enemy, the harder it is to overcome the urge not to kill him. A pilot can easily fire a torpedo at a battleship and sink it, killing who-knows-how-many soldiers, but the same man may freeze and be unable to bayonet one enemy in close-combat.

Modern training and drilling techniques have been introduced to overcome the resistance to kill. It also helps to have a superior officer yelling at you to kill. The American military also makes extensive use explosives and snipers, which kill at a distance rather than forcing up-close confrontation.

But by far the most time-honoured tradition of getting soldiers to kill is the art of dehumanization. From the made-up stories of the barbarious Hun mutilating innocent Belgians in World War I to the bullshit story about Iraqis tossing babies out of incubators, governments have been using real and fake propeganda to encourage soldiers to kill. If a soldier can view the enemy as degenerate subhumans, he/she can pull the trigger with more ease.

So here's the point of all this. Many special forces, SWAT teams and guerillas purposefully hide or cover their faces when they go into combat. Sometimes it's a balaclava meant to hide the wearer's identity. Sometimes it's facepaint to assist camouflage. Sometimes it's infrared goggles. Sometimes it's a gas mask to protect against airborne toxins.

Considering what Dave Grossman has to say and how audiences react to fictional Faceless Enemies, it might be worth examining the wisdom of hiding the face. Camouflage, anonymity, night vision and protection from chemicals have their uses. But by hiding the face, these soldiers and police are dehumanizing themselves and becoming more attractive targets. In situations where the enemy has no modern military training, this is especially important. An untrained fighter is more likely to shoot a menacing mask than a real person with a human face.

If this is something that soldiers and commanders consider before they enter combat, that's good. I'm glad to hear it. But otherwise, it's something to think about. Obviously there will be other tactical considerations in any engagement, but if I were a soldier (and I'm not), I'd think twice about putting on that balaclava.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

Watchmen: The Graphic Novel, the Movie and Adaptation

When Watchmen was released in 1986 it changed comic books forever. At the time, comics were viewed as a children's medium. Watchmen is for adults. Written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons, it is introspective and intelligent. It made the industry and audiences take notice. Post-Watchmen, the terms “graphic novel” and “sequential art” came into common use.

For many years DC comics had been searching for the right director, the right screenplay and the right concept to make Watchmen into a movie. As the 20-oughts came to a close they found their director: Zack Snyder, who had previously directed an adaptation of another graphic novel, 300. In 300, Snyder framed and filmed shots to recreate still images from the comic, so great was is zeal for faithfulness.

When Watchmen was released in 2009, similar attention to detail and love was paid to each frame. It can rightly be called a faithful adaptation. Yet it is still different. Certain elements of Watchmen the comic book were impossible to translate to the screen and others were ignored. New ideas and images were added.

With this post I will examine the differences between the two Watchmen media as far as plot, structure and backstory are concerned. Cosmetic differences will be ignored. Screenwriters and storytellers, pay attention! This post is specifically for you! With these insights, perhaps we can gain some understanding of how a graphic novel ought or ought not to be adapted to the screen.

Author's note: This post is not for people who have seen neither the movie nor read the graphic novel as it is rife with ***SPOILERS*** The insights listed here are only based on outsider's observations and may not represent the actual views of the creators. In other words, it could all be total bullshit. I guess you'll just have to take that chance. Read on.


The Tales of the Black Freighter sequences which punctuate the graphic novel are absent. In the comic, a young black kid reads Tales of the Black Freighter comics while a nearby white news vendor chatters about world events and his views thereon. Their two worlds are disjointed: the kid reads his dark pirate comic, the narration balloons and panels of which are interspersed with events in real life. He seems to pay no heed to the babbling news vendor.

The Black Freighter comic itself is a reflection of the views of many of the Watchmen's characters: that the world is a dark, unhappy joke. A sailor travels through a hellish ocean with corpses as his raft to save his family from the pirate ship that slaughtered his crew, only to beat his wife and commit murder in his resulting madness. “How had I reached this appalling position, with love, only love, as my guide?” laments the narrator.

Finally, as the kid's comic ends in tragedy, the news vendor himself laments upon how unconnected are his fellow humans and asks the kid what he's doing there. The kid says he has no place better to be. When Ozymandias' disaster descends upon New York, the news vendor and the kid clutch each other in terror, their last fearful embrace becoming the connection they lacked in life.

The mood, if not the message of the Black Freighter infects Watchmen, but was neglected for the film. The reasons why are obvious. The sequences, as important as they are, do not advance the main plot, nor do they serve as backstory. Most adaptation requires cutting and editing in pre-and-post production, and it makes sense that The Black Freighter had to go. The comic reader and the news vendor are there at the end, getting blown-up, but that is as much homage to the Black Freighter as could be spared. Zack Snyder must have found this omission painful because he lent his talents to the production of The Black Freighter as a separate entity from his Watchmen movie. A link can be found to the animated short here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdVDztzynjU

Next, Watchmen contains several sections which were originally included at the end of issues which are newspaper clippings, Rorschach's psych profile, and quotes from “Under the Hood”, a book by the original Nite Owl, amongst others. These sections serve as valuable backstory in the comic book, exposing the events and intentions of the costumed heroes of days past.

Film is a visual medium, but it ain't that kinda visual. Showing too many words onscreen would be death by boredom and showing all that backstory would make for a nine-hour movie. Instead, the Watchmen movie attempts to convey to the audience as much meaning and backstory as possible through imagery, particularly in the opening credits. It is a poor substitute for the sheer amount of information in the graphic novel, but it is the best that film can do without boring the audience.

Also serving little plot in the graphic novel are the sequences that take place in the New Frontiersman's newsroom. Once again, while serving as flavour for the universe of Watchmen, little happens there. The only event of note to the main plot is the discovery of Rorschach's journal in the crank file at the end. This event, and this New Frontiersman event only, is shown in the film.

What was changed in the film? And what was new material? Watchmen the movie was a labour of love for its crew. They could not resist adding their own touches to the final canvas.

The Watchmen film includes many more aspects of life in this alternate 80's than the comic. For one thing, there is far more President Richard Nixon. Where Nixon has two scenes in the comic, he and his distracting false nose have at least four in the movie.

The film also contains more 80's nostalgia. At the beginning, the Comedian watches the McLaughlin Group on television, for instance. Interestingly, 80's nostalgia wins over the comic's backstory in some cases, such as the automobiles. In the comic, Dr. Manhattan has allowed for the mass production of electric cars and airships by his ability to create lithium in vast amounts. In the movie, while airships are seen flying about, the automobiles appear to be standard gas-powered models available in the 80s.

One of the most noticeable additions is the amount of violence. It has been over twenty years since the publication of Watchmen. At the time, comic books were criticized for the amount of violence therein. However, since then, the action-loving public has developed a bloodlust that is difficult to slake. The bloody 90's have made their mark on film. As a result, Watchmen the film is filled with gore and fighting, not that the comic lacks, but just more of it.

Examples? The Comedian's death is protracted and involves the flinging of knives and a smashed hand. Instead of being escorted off government property, the Silk Spectre II instead attacks a government agent, slams his head into a sink and escapes. The assassination attempt on Adrian Veidt in the comic results in the shooting in the chest of Veidt's secretary. In the film, while she doesn't die, she does get shot through the leg and loses two fingers, while an old plutocrat is shot in the chest and head. When Roschach is framed for the murder of Moloch and jumps out a second-story window to escape, instead of landing painfully on some garbage cans and being quickly subdued by police, he rolls and keeps fighting, landing eleven ninja-like blows before he is pacified.

Another way in which the movie is “amped-up” is that time is truncated. While the motif of a ticking clock is powerful in the graphic novel, the clock is ticking faster in the movie. The novel contains a scene where Richard Nixon discusses the escalating nuclear threat with his advisors. The scene ends with Nixon saying, “I think we'll give it a week, gentlemen, before bringing out our big guns. After that, humanity is in the hands of a higher authority than mine. Let's just hope he's on our side.” In the film, Nixon delivers the same speech, but says, “Dr. Manhattan has two days. After that, humanity is in the hands of a higher authority than mine. Let's just hope he's on our side.” In theory, the film's creators hoped to add more tension to the story by making time even shorter.

I leave the biggest change for last: the nature of Ozymandias' plot to prevent nuclear catastrophe. The novel's story has him kidnapping intellectuals and genetically engineering a monstrosity. This monstrosity is huge and has the cloned brain of a powerful psychic. Using teleportation technology imperfectly crafted from Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias transports the creature into the middle of New York, where the teleportation process kills it. In its death throes, it lashes out psychically, killing millions. Amongst the images it telegraphs into people's brains are hints of an alternate dimension. Believing that the world is under inter-dimensional attack, the forces of earth unite to stop a common foe.

Ozymandias' plot differs in the film. There, he uses Dr. Manhattan's power to create what the world believes is a limitless energy source. Instead, he uses its power to launch terrorist attacks in metropoli around the world. The attacks bear Dr. Manhattan's energy signature, and the world, believing he is responsible, unites against him.

What could possibly be the reason for changing the nature of Ozymandias's plot? I have two theories, both of which could be true. The first is that the film's plot is simpler. The comic's plot requires a lot of explanation and, frankly, it would confuse a lot of moviegoers. Film once again earns its reputation for dumbing-down the plot.

But, secondly, the film's plot is slightly more compelling than the comic's. When Dr. Manhattan realizes that Ozymandias has killed millions to save billions, he must not only accept the greater good, but he also must overlook the fact that he is being demonized by a deluded world. The fact that he doesn't care about being the world's boogeyman is very revealing of his character. This revelation about his character, while it is based on events which don't happen in the original story, is true to the novel.

O ye screenwriters and storytellers who have stayed with me to the end of this post, what have we learned about adaptation? If you know anything about writing Hollywood movies, probably nothing you didn't already learn elsewhere. When you go to adapt a novel, graphic or otherwise, for the big screen, keep these guidelines in mind:

1. Eliminate plot threads that don't influence your main characters.
2. Don't bore your audience with too much exposition.
3. If you are writing something historical from the living past, play on nostalgia.
4. Add more violence.
5. Add a ticking clock. If there already is a ticking clock, set it forward.
6. Make it simpler.
7. You can always make your characters more involved in the plot.

Does that sound formulaic? Maybe cynical? Maybe like it's capable of destroying great works of literature by turning them into screen-trash? There's some merit in those criticisms.

I believe in good writing, not necessarily Hollywood writing. The Watchmen graphic novel is sublime. It's film adaptation is one of the more faithful that I've seen, and it's very entertaining. But it didn't move me. I am truly at a loss to describe why. I don't think it's because it became more Hollywood-ized, either. As often happens with adaptations, something was lost in the medium transfer.

However, if you do your job as a writer well, changing the medium of a story from page to screen can make a masterpiece. It was watching The Fellowship of the Ring that inspired me to become a writer. The Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice (the 1995 version), Master and Commander and Rosemary's Baby are among my favourite screen productions. Some productions, like the Sharpe series, are actually better on screen than the page. When I read anything I am always adapting it for screen in my mind and considering what scenes will work and which won't. Adaptation can be very rewarding for audiences and lead them to reading the original source material. That's a good thing. If some dude decides to read Watchmen because he saw some lady's fingers getting blown off, I'd say the movie has achieved a noble goal.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

The Disaster that is Art, Part II

In my last Disastrous Art post, I explored the reasons why artists, musicians, actors, writers and craftspeople in North America are forced to choose between their art and survival. In this post, I wish to examine the very idea of art itself and how Art is deepening the divide between itself and its audience. I am not talking about the generous, broad definition of art which can be defined as "human expression". I'm also not talking about indigenous art that collectors fawn over because they want to make themselves look worldly. I'm talking about Art.


It goes by many names. Fine art, high art, literature, art-music, classical music, or just Art with a capital "A". It is difficult to define, but some people define it by what it isn't. It isn't pop-art. It isn't genre-fiction. It isn't popular music. That would be fine, except "pop-art," "genre-fiction," and "popular music" are all terms equally difficult to define. At best, Art can be defined as human expression which is "better" than others.

Why is this definition important? Because many institutions place high value on Art. For example, within my own experience, Grain Magazine publishes "engaging, surprising, eclectic, and challenging writing and art" according to their website, which is code for "we're not looking for genre-fiction". The Saskatoon Symphony differentiates between its main concerts in which it plays "classical" music from established masters and new Canadian composers, and its "Pop Series", in which it plays film music by John Williams and ABBA. When I applied for arts funding from the Saskatchewan government, I was advised that if my project was "popular" in nature, I should apply to the extra-governmental Saskfilm for funding.

I see Art-exaltation in people around me, particularly those with a university education in an artistic field. People who work in artistic fields have much of their self-esteem tied into Art, and many feel that they are better than other artists because they practice true Art instead of vulgar entertainment and commercialism. I too have a Bachelor of Arts degree and for a long time I believed in Art. I believed that some art was better than others, that some human expression should be written-off as "entertainment". It was the cause of much snobbery, haughtiness and pooh-poohing on my part. However, since I graduated I have been tormented with the suspicion, then the conviction, that the concept of Art is total bullshit.


I believe that Art is a holdover from less democratic times. Hundreds of years ago, nobles needed a way to make their form of entertainment seem superior to the entertainment of their smelly, toothless subjects. As a noble, the myth of superior breeding had to be upheld. Not only was a noble born better than his subjects, everything he did and appreciated was better. This was essential to his survival, because appearing unworthy of leadership could lead to his head on a pike. Thus was born the concept of entertainment that was better, smarter and elevating. With the growth of the middle-class in the 19th Century, the new moneyed class desired to imitate the nobles. So they bore the noble concept of Art, showing themselves to be cleverer and more refined than those who had less money. While the nobles and their courts have vanished, the concept of Art has lingered among the wealthy, intellectuals and professionals. In our society, it is permissible for people well-versed in Art to hold themselves in superiority over people who do not.

I have said that people believe Art is "better". So what does "better" mean? Firstly, it means a higher degree of skill on the part of the artist. Skill comes with hours of practice at the art form, to a point where technical mastery is achieved. I have no objection to this, although it's worth noting that technical mastery does not equal art. A potter can create a functional plate with mastery, but it does not become art until he uses the medium for expression with glaze and decoration.

Secondly, in the past, Art was distinct because it sought to "elevate" the audience. Elevation is the result of "the sublime", a strange concept based in grandeur, bigness, beauty and proximity to God. An elevated individual is brought into the throes of ecstasy by the Art in question. However, with the decline of religion in Western Society, so has the idea of the sublime fallen. Now, many would submit, Art is achieved by breaking boundaries and expectations. Art must be new, intellectually stimulating and challenging.

Lastly, and most importantly, Art is only for certain people. Many people mask this intent by saying that Art should not be "commercial" or "out to make money". However, what they mean is that Art should not appeal to the vulgar masses. How else does one make lots of money, but by appealing to lots of people? The intended audience of Art must be connoisseurs of art: other artists, intellectuals, scholars, critics and collectors.

So, Art is masterful, challenging human expression that is meant for smart people. Well, my friends, there is no imperial scale that judges the skill of an artist, nor the intellectual value, nor the IQ of the intended audience. That means that Art is subjective. SUBJECTIVE. Because it is subjective, "Art" is a completely useless term with which to judge human expression.

Everybody has varying levels of different types of intelligence and different amounts of experience with entertainment. One man's Art is, to others, either vulgar or incomprehensible. To some, a Fellini film is Art, while most Americans wouldn't understand it. For others, Fellini is vulgar merely because he is a filmmaker.


Another example: when I was ten years old, I watched the legendary wrestling match between Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. Professional Wrestling is a form of entertainment of the most vulgar kind. No Art could possibly result from such spectacle. But there they were, two men feigning rage, pain and exaltation. Kinda like actors. There they were, using their bodies to express emotion. Kinda like dancers. When Hulk Hogan triumphed and held the title belt above his head, exhausted and elated, my ten-year-old mind was moved. I felt the ecstacy of victory, the thrill of hard-won triumph. I had never seen anything like it before and my developing mind was touched with the sublime. Yes, I was just a dumb kid. But to me, a WWF match was elevating. At the same age, I would have found a Mozart symphony boring.

What I am trying to say is that it is incorrect to declare any entertainment as "better" than another. Art and entertainment are the same thing. Each individual has opinions and a less harmful way of expressing them is to say "I like this" or "I don't like this".


Harmful? Yes. I say this to all who are reading who believe that Art is better than entertainment and have their egos wrapped in this fallacy: others can detect it. They see that because you know your Art, you think you are better than them on some level. It leeks through your personality and effects your behaviour. It makes people feel small. It makes them hate you. It perpetuates the view that artists are snobby and self-absorbed. It is one of the reasons why Stephen Harper declared that ordinary Canadians don't care about art.

I normally wouldn't mind that people believe in the existence of Art. It is, after all, only an opinion. However, from what I've experienced, art snobs populate high places: universities, arts funding boards, galleries, newspapers, scholarship committees, and friends-of societies. They pass judgment on other people's projects, using the bullshit-definition of Art as a standard. They indoctrinate young artists with a belief that is false and offensive. While film has just started to become recognized as an Art form, film composers are still ostracized by their peers. Sequential art and Video Games are ignored or mocked.

A gaping crevasse yawns between high-artists and the rest of the world. Ordinary folks resent artists for their snobbery and artists resent the hordes of philistines who marginalize them. This is unbelievable. Isn't art supposed to be about communication and expression? Shouldn't people trained to communicate be the best-understood people on the planet?

Artists, we must take the first step, because the rest of the world won't. We must get off our high-horses and stop being so damned smug about ourselves. We have to recognize that our worldview is not the only correct one. We have to respect the tastes of others and not take it personally if they would rather watch CSI. Lastly, and most importantly, we must remember that there are six billion people out there hungering to be entertained; if we can do that, they will love us.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

The Disaster that is Art

I'm sure this will be a long post. Grab your coffee and sit back for an epic.

In 1981 Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers released his album, "Northwest Passage". The title track was a hit and became a cornerstone of Canadian culture. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has admitted his own love for the song, saying that Northwest Passage is the closest thing Canada has to an unofficial national anthem.

And this is where things get hypocritical. In the last election, Stephen Harper, whilst on the campaign trail and defending his government's $45 million dollar cut to arts funding, said that (paraphrased) ordinary Canadians don't care about arts funding.

The hypocrisy? Stan Rogers was a Canada Council funding recipient. I think it's fair to say that without the Canada Council, the CBC and other forms of government arts patronage, Northwest Passage might never have happened. In short, Harper likes Canadian culture but doesn't want to pay for it. I would be more angry about his comments, but I'm not necessarily sure that he's wrong when he says that ordinary Canadians don't care about arts funding.

This blog post is not about my Prime Minister's hypocrisy. It is about what is wrong with art, music, writing, film and stage today in its execution, funding and the public's understanding of it. It's about why ordinary folks don't care. It's about how artists either starve or work jobs to which they are not suited and undervalued. It's about how our educational system and artists themselves are deepening the divide between art and its audience. It's about the cultural black hole that is being filled by American values. In short, the arts are in the toilet and nobody wants to fish them out.

An uncomfortable truth about artists is that they need patrons. When an artist begins the slow process of building his or her career, practicing their craft, building contacts and reputations and expanding their portfolio, only the very lucky make any money. Those that do make money do not make a living wage. Therein lies the problem. People like living. Generally, if given the choice between following a dream and survival, people choose the latter option.

Artists in this situation therefore must squander their talents and waste their lives working unskilled jobs. For many artists, this secondary career becomes their only career. Some get tired of never earning money with their art. Others are forced into their non-artistic job to afford housing or children.

Patronage feeds artists. It lets them use their talents. It lets them quit those jobs they never wanted to work anyway, providing employment for other people who also need feeding.

Many businesspeople and politicians don't seem to understand this. When viewed through the lens of the free market economics, it makes no sense to support the arts. To the economy, starving artists are starving because they are creating product with no demand. They deserve their fate. Why waste money on something nobody wants?

It's a disconnect from reality. The longer artists practice their craft, the greater the demand for their product. If they can't feed themselves and produce their art at the beginning of their careers, they will never create demand.

About 500 years ago in Italy, the greatest revolution in the history of art occurred. It was the Renaissance and its power was fueled by patronage. Obscenely wealthy noble families, such as the famous de Medicis, kept artists in business with their favours and commissions. They competed with each other to see who could patronize the most beautiful art. It was a societal priority. I could go on and on about the Renaissance, but to attempt to do so within the confines of a single paragraph would be a terrifying injustice.

Well, them days is gone. Yes, our society has obscenely rich people. Yes, many of those people are patrons of the arts. However, it's fair to say that art is no longer a societal priority. Our societal priority, and I challenge anybody to contradict me, is sports.

Don't believe me? We just spent $8 billion dollars for a two-week party in Vancouver called the Olympics. For that amount of money, Canada could have paid more than 100,000 artists full-time minimum wage to practice their craft for three years. Want more proof? Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a city of 200,000 people can barely keep its Symphony orchestra afloat. By contrast, late 18th-Century Bonn, a city of 10,000 people, had two orchestras and produced Ludwig van Beethoven. Canada produces top-notch NHL players, not musical genius.

Where art is to be found, it's quick and dirty. As Capitalism has entrenched itself in North American society, it just doesn't make sense to produce anything that lasts or is of high quality when you can cut corners. Open the newspaper and look for illustrations. Chances are, you'll see quickly-drawn, highly-abstracted first-drafts drawn in ink. Take it from me, the newspapers of yesteryear put love and effort into their drawings. How is it that the primitive, sub-humans of medieval Europe managed to erect towering, beautiful cathedrals and castles with their low population and lack of machine tools? Because to them, the art of their construction had value. Today with our ballooning population and marvelous technology, there is no reason to make a beautiful, stone WalMart with gargoyles and ornate carvings that is meant to stand for a thousand years. It's just cheaper and easier to barf out tin boxes by the hundred with concrete floors and unfinished ceilings.

Shouldn't we be ashamed that tiny villages full of toothless, smelly, gruel-eating apes who believed in werewolves could make prettier buildings than us? Nope. Nobody cares.

However, there is one branch of art that our society truly treasures: film and television. It is the divine art of the modern age, combining visual art, film, music, writing and crafting into one marvelous spectacle that we take for granted. For Canadians, most film is an abstraction. It shows up on our screens from very far away, created by people we don't know, and often it is free. Unlike other art, film and television is big business and is profitable. It replaces our need for art on a local level by beaming in easy entertainment. Why go out to a concert when you don't have to leave the couch and be entertained for free?

It's all too easy to forget that this multi-billion dollar industry is the result of the efforts of many tiny little artists who had to claw their way to success. It's also a little scary to think about how many Canadians are working in Hollywood and New York because they couldn't make their film careers work in Canada.

Canada used to have a film industry in the 1980's. Not just a coastal-temperate area that American companies could film TV episodes for cheap. Not just an annual film festival in Toronto that American celebrities attend to look pretty. I'm talking an actual industry. Funding was high. Tax breaks allowed random companies to produce a movie in Canada just to save money at tax time. Compared to Hollywood, yes, it was chintzy. Yes, most of the movies that were made in this period were low-budget horror flicks of dubious quality. But Canadian artists were working. In Canada. It all stopped when governments cut their film incentives and funding. Now this place is a howling wasteland for film, dependent upon the low-value of the Canadian dollar for survival. Pathetic.

It's not just the amount of arts funding that is at issue here. It is the method of distribution. It's an old problem. English author Samuel Johnson, for instance, refers to a patron as, "one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help". Simply put, our system of government arts patronage gives the lion's share of money to people who have already established their careers.

I understand the thought-process that goes into it. Why waste money on an unproven artist? What makes an artist? If we start handing money out to nobodies who call themselves artists, surely fakers and layabouts will emerge to take advantage of our generosity. However, it is undeniable fact that starving, unknown artists, the people who need the money most, are being denied funding and offered a pittance when others are receiving large amounts of money they don't need. What's the point?

But you know, it's not just clueless politicians, bureaucrats and apathetic citizens that are causing all this misery in the art community. In many ways, the artists and educators that teach it are bringing it upon themselves. The sad fact is that art education is in horrible shambles.

I took art classes every year in high school. Not once was I taught to render on paper or in clay that most basic of artistic expressions, the human form. I had to buy a book called, "How to Draw Super Heroes and Heroines" to learn its value. I also took Creative Writing courses throughout high school and University, yet nowhere was I taught classical story structure: I had to learn that from screenwriting books after University. The education system taught me English but not how to use it to influence the hearts of humans. Similarly, I took a music degree in University and between my Theory classes and my Orchestration classes, I learned the bare bones of music composition, yet a basic element was denied me. No instructor was willing to tell me the meaning of those chords to the human ear and their emotional effect on "ordinary folks".

Unbelievable. Artists are being trained without the basic tools that will make them successful. I've been submitting short stories to a mutual review site lately and almost nobody knows anything about classical story structure and are shocked when I let them in on what seems to be this huge secret! Why is this happening? As you might have guessed, I have a theory.

You see, in the last century, the "modern" era began, followed by the difficult-to-define "post-modern" era. In these eras, guided by odd notions about "progress" as applied to art, artists started trying to be different than each other. They came up with genres that were at first reactions against the rigid forms and styles of the previous centuries, and then tried to invent new languages and modes of understanding. Abstract art, twelve-tone scales and nonsense versions of English were produced. The score of one piece of music, for instance, contained no musical notes: merely the phrase, "Crawl inside the vagina of a living whale." Some performance artist took snapshots of his self-inflicted castration. Recently, some students were arrested for skinning a cat alive and calling it art.

Honestly, is it any wonder that there is little demand for this product? As the artists of the modern eras invented their new languages, they left their audiences behind. Stuck on traditional ideas of art, "ordinary folks" paid for new artistic forms that weren't quite so radical: Hollywood movies, graphic novels, jazz and rock music. All these forms were ones that did not completely shun the lessons of the past.

Meanwhile, the lame-duck grade schools were at work. Somewhere along the way, it became "uncool" to constrain kids with artistic rules. It was during this era that the "personal essay" became the highest form of pubescent writing. In art rooms, children were encouraged to "do their own thing".

The post-modern high-art snobs who are entrenched in universities and the hippie grade-school educators are very different but they seem to have one thing in common: they don't believe in creative limitation. They expect that artists young and old should do their own thing and create their own artistic language from scratch.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with creative limitation, here it is. Apparently, the human brain finds it easier to be creative if it has a set of rules to work with or against. By removing the lessons of the past from curriculae, the education system has made being creative actually more difficult for students.

Some people may be reading this and thinking that I'm an artistic conservative. I'm not. If you like post-modern art, it's not my place to criticize you. It's not my place to say what I like is better than what you like. My point is that by leaving important information out of the curriculum, Canadian artists are being denied a critical part of their education which will help them connect with their audience. Wouldn't it be better to teach students the rules of their art as society understands them, then give them the choice later whether they wish to transcend them?

Rest assured, friends, art is not as mysterious as some persons would have you believe. Part of it is craft and can be learned. Many of my teachers in the past had me thinking that creativity is this elusive thing that descends upon you like luck, cannot be controlled, that certain persons are born with. That's partly true, some people have more talent than others. But all art involves learning how to use a tool and using your brain in conjunction with it. It takes practice and it takes proper training. Why would we send our poor artists alone into the world without that training?

So here we are. Ordinary folks don't care about art and those of us that do can't define it. For most people it's a mystery. People love music but have no idea how it's created. Abstract art hangs on gallery walls that is valued either for the artist's reputation, the overlong explanations that justify them, or their shock value. Post-modern music rattles in crumbling concert halls, played by under-funded orchestras, tolerated by audience members who when asked what they thought of it are obligated to say, "It was interesting". American television beams into our homes, each reality TV show slowly crowding Northwest Passage from our collective memory. New schools are being constructed without music rooms. If Mozart was alive today, he might just be serving you coffee.

So what the fuck are you going to do about it? Do you even care?

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

Review of Civil War: A Marvel Comics Event

Wolverine: So tradin' liberty for safety's what's passin' for "sensible" these days? 'Cause I seemed to think the motto of America -- and I'm Canadian, so that might be why I'm confused -- used to be, "Give me liberty or Give me Death".
Maria Hill, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Are all Canadians this judgmental?
Wolverine: When it comes to America, pretty much.

Marvel Comics is known for its flawed heroes, the moral ambiguity of its stories and its dark settings. Amongst its darkest settings in recent memory is its Civil War series, Marvel's comment on the erosion of civil liberties in America. I have now read ten of the Civil War graphic novels and feel I can offer some thoughts.



Like all things wrong with the modern world, it starts with a reality TV show. The New Warriors and their leader Speedball are having trouble finding supervillains to fight on national television. Desperate for ratings, they attack a group of fugitive villains that are out of their league. Amongst the fugitives is Nitro, a man with the ability to cause explosions around him, who promptly asplodes the New Warriors and half of Stamford, Connecticut in the process. 612 people, including 60 children are killed.

As always happens when kids get killed, everybody overreacts. Congress passes the Superhero Registration Act, requiring all super-powered heroes to register their identities with the government, undergo training and become Federal Marshals. All those who refuse to register will be imprisioned. Leading the charge is Tony Stark (Iron Man), who sees the need to enforce accountability amongst a group of people who are essentially vigilantes with the ability to kill hundreds of people. Interestingly, the Registration Act's greatest foe is Captain America. You see, he grew up before World War II and is attached to an America which no longer exists. He sees the Act as yet another step toward an American police state and rallies unregistered heroes around him. The pro-and-anti-reg heroes resolve their differences the only way know how: shooting each other and killing innocent people in the crossfire.

The message of Civil War is the perfect comic-book product of the George Bush era: Which do you value more, security or liberty? America's prison population swells. Heroes put their loved ones in danger when the government unmasks their secret identities. The government uses villains to arrest "the good guys". Heroes are held as "unregistered combatants" in "undisclosed locations" in North America. All of this is done with the willing participation of the citizens and representatives of the United States.

Along the way, all the heroes torture themselves. The Pro-registration heroes suffer from the guilt of locking their former friends in jail and the severity of measures which must be taken to maintain order. The Anti-registration heroes, outnumbered and hunted, find themselves assaulting police officers, destroying property and hurting bystanders. Everybody believes what they are doing is right but everybody also questions if what they are doing is right.

Such are the moral complexities of Civil War, and Marvel Comics continues its reputation for cerebral writing. However, Marvel also has another reputation, one that it shares with other comic publishers: comics can be kinda dumb. The Civil War series is very large and has room for both reputations. The quality of each volume varies significantly in both writing in art. Here is a quick guideline for what are must-reads and things to avoid. This list is not all-inclusive as I haven't been able to get a hold of all the titles. If you don't see a volume listed here, it's because it was either mediocre/okay or I haven't read it.

READ: Civil War. Author: Mark Millar. Illustrator: Steve McNiven.

This volume presents the basic events of the Civil War as Iron Man and Captain America trade insults and blows. It has all the major themes of the series, all the necessary action. Yet, something is missing. The book has too many heroes to concentrate properly on their trials, too many climactic events to show. Overall, it felt rushed. As well, the art can be confusing during some fight scenes. Overall, it's a mediocre volume. Unfortunately, it also essential to read if you want to understand what's happening in other volumes. I suggest you read it, prepare to be a bit underwhelmed and enjoy it when you can, then move onto better volumes.
3 of our former friends locked in the Negative Zone Prison out of 5

READ: Civil War Frontline, Volumes 1 & 2. Writer: Paul Jenkins. Various illustrators.

Frontline is essentially a more in-depth examination of the Civil War, providing the detail that is missing from the main volume. It is told from the perspective of three people: Ben Urich, a reporter from conservative fish-wrap The Daily Bugle, Sally Floyd, a reporter from liberal rag The Alternative, and Robby Baldwin, aka Speedball, the hero who survives the Stamford explosion only to become the most hated man in America. The two reporters learn more about the new world order as they grow closer while Speedball deals with his guilt for his involvement at Stamford. I have nothing bad to say about these books. They are perfect in their own way. They have all the moral ambiguity I love, but perhaps not as much fighting as comic readers would expect. I rarely cry while reading, but I actually found myself becoming bleary-eyed at a few moments, something unheard of while I've read graphic novels. There is a third book in the series which I am trying to get a hold of, but honestly, the story wraps up nicely in these first two volumes.
4 1/2 attempted assassinations out of 5

AVOID: Fantastic Four Civil War. Buncha writers and artists.

The Fantastic Four are riven when Mr Fantastic follows his utilitarian, pro-registration agenda at the expense of the morals of his wife, Invisible Woman. This volume starts okay and has an amusing digression when The Thing moves to France and has a refreshingly old-fashioned adventure helping his new French friends foil a dastardly plot to undermine Paris. However, the story soon meanders and finally halts in an unwarranted Fantastic Four 45th Anniversary Special. 45th? Really? What is that, the corrugated chip-board anniversary? If the 45th anniversary means the Fantastic Four are going to ruin a decent graphic novel, what are they going to do on the 50th? Invade classic works of literature and ruin them? In any case, the anniversary special contains lots of in-jokes, pointless shatterings of the fourth wall and yet another lame appearance by Stan Lee. Stew-pid.
1 times clobberin' out of 5

READ: Wolverine Civil War. Writer: Marc Guggenheim. Artist: Humberto Ramos.

In the aftermath of Stamford, Wolverine sets out on a lonely quest to find Nitro, the villain who killed 612 people. As he relentlessly tracks Nitro, he pisses off S.H.I.E.L.D., the Atlanteans, corporate America and even his fellow X-Men. The writer apparently wrote a few episodes of television's C.S.I. and it shows. Normally, C.S.I. zippy one-liners piss me off, but when they're coming out of Wolverine's mouth, they're hilarious. Wolverine rampages around, making enemies, maiming people, occasionally getting the shit kicked out of him but always returning to brutally right wrongs. The art is over-the-top, cartoony and yet gritty, enhancing the fun atmosphere of the book. It's great.
4 1/2 sneaky back-attacks out of 5

AVOID: Ms. Marvel Civil War. Writer: Brian Reed.

Just so you know, most of this volume concerns events that don't have anything to do with the Civil War. There's a story that starts promisingly with single mom Arachne running from the government while trying to fetch her child so they can flee to Canada. It has promise, but abruptly stops when another version of Ms. Marvel appears from a parallel dimension and they fight. Then some other thing happens with some stuff happens and... I dunno. It was kinda stupid. Maybe it has merit on its own, but for Chrissake don't cram a bunch of material into a book called "Civil War" that has nothing to do with the Civil War. Cheap assholes.
1 fight that could have been avoided if everybody just talked to each other out of 5

That's about it. The Marvel Civil War is rewarding and profound if you look in the right places and get through the mediocre opening volume. The best parts of this series were worth the slog through the disappointing parts. If you decide to investigate this series, I hope these reviews will be helpful. I'll devote a little more time in the future to some of the volumes that I missed, but for now I'm hungering for some books with fewer pictures.

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