why can't spiderman love gwen stacey and still beat down the green goblin?
why can't wolverine be an x-man and fuck mariko on the side?
why can't buffy find a stable boyfriend?
why can't superman and lois just do it ?
why can't dawson fuck joey and not have badness ensue?
why can't spies have a long-time girlfriend while still being all espionagey?
why can't cowboys have wives and still shoot other guys up and such?
why can't soaps have stable couples, why can't heroes be in love?
why oh WHY have people drawn a line between the personal and worldly worlds?
i don't know
and i'm fucking a tired of people saying 'you can't be in love and save the world"
because you can; they're just making up excuses to not try, to be 'comfortable', to be 'happy'----this is all part of some lame-ass western value of happiness, which i don't understand
i want all my emotions equally, sadness, anger, jealousy, rage, love, giddiness, stressed, bored, antsy, happy, in love, anti-love, bitter, disillusioned, naive
i refuse to choose just one as a goal
to respond to my question:
because it's not interesting
modern stories never end well because you can't make money off a happy couple who works to save the world---there's no sex appeal, not nearly enough violence-focus, no torid passion, no possibility for perpetual sequels
in short, real meaning, good choices, etc. make for little profit----or so people seem to think
my favorite shows are the ones where people do make good choices as well as bad ones, where people are flawed yet able to be sane and live their lives
eg. buffy can't be with angel because she chooses not to---she could fuck him and perpetually re-ensoul him but it's just too much drama for a girl to deal with---plus he was her high school sweetie---who in their right mind really wants to fuck one person over their entire life? (or, better stated, who wants to be in a relationship with someone who knew them when they were a fuckbag of hormones?)
in terms of most of my other examples, i think it's just a matter of inconceivability---there are no famous examples of couples that last, of people who can save the world and be in love, of passion and love that are intertwined with the desire to do good
which i think is ridiculous, mostly becuase that is in fact my own desire
although i love a good 'i love you but i've chosen darkness/activism/the world' story just as well as anyone, probly more
i'm just sick of all the sappy, bad endings---if you're going to tell a story like this, you have to think of the ramifications
without any examples of people who can do both, people will continue to think they can't do both
but with a dependency on profit, these stories will never be told
guess it's bout time we all did something about that, eh?
by which i'm implying that we should struggle in our own livves to realize that love for the world and for other people is not mutually exclusive
in fact, i would argue they are intimate----i love my sister because she made me mor e aware of the world---i like my friends cuz they pop my bubble; i stop seeing the world my way and start seeing the world as we together see it
so fuck you, people who think they cannot do both
buffy didn't stick with her boytoys cuz they were just that, boytoys; she wasn't ready
spiderman was a douche to let gwen stacey die, and it was probly just a way of making mary jane more central to the story, fucking writers
wolverine had to lose mariko to be more tragic, which i think is lame, but probly chris claremont thought was rockin
superman and lois are ginormous tools, but they have in fact stuck together for a pretty long time
dawson's creek was shit in your mouth, shit in your mouth
spies are penuses (why else do they have so many guns?) and thus cannot allow for vaginas not to be penetrated----either that or they are uncontrollable women who must be tamed by their own use of a phallus--their power is thus reined as they depend upon male power structures
ditto cowboys, and eighties heroes for the most part
soaps and heroes? they're fucked, mostly cuz the writers don't actually care about the characters--when they do, they might do a decent job (see astonishing x-men, alan moore, jamie delano, etc)
more generally, i think people just want to live their lives----their lives being determined by the race for more crap, more experiences with fucking, more ex-lovers---everyone needs to have MORE MORE MORE of everything
hello capitalism in modern america, hello overconsumption
and you can't keep fucking around once you find something that means the world to you, particularly a way of seeing the world that actually makes sense in terms of loving people and living up to your responsibilities to the world
once you know what the world is, what loving someone really means, you can't just think of them as commodities
and thus the story-telling that depends upon commodification runs into a roadblock---with solid characters, the characters themselves unsettle the narrative--they tell you to stop reading their story, stop buying the books, because there is a place for you in the WORLD where you can be happy being sad, angry, and bored
where someone can hold you, you can hold someone, and you can both fight to make the world better than it is, fight to make the world stronger and more capable of healing than it is
Bienvenue
The moon shines down upon an open field, while you walk on the bare, crumbling cement of the path. The trees are welcoming but dark, and the night feels no place to wander.
About Me
- Jaro
- My name is Jeremy, and I create, research, and teach comics and graphic narratives (and their overlap with anthropology, ethnography, media, communication, etc.). I am also a textile artists, and I am often up for doing work freelance/by commission -- ask me and see. And now, a poem: watching stars collide, i breathe a sigh of wonder; life so short, yet so long
4 comments:
thanks for that. i like that it reinforces everything that people like to throw away. that's ... nice. =) and i think i might copy it.
Hey Jono. This poem speaks to that, I think... the poet was a revolutionary in pre-independence India, who wrote poetry while imprisoned for conspiring in a coup.
Don’t Ask Me for That Love Again
Faiz Ahmad Faiz
Translation By Agha Shahid Ali
That which then was ours, my love,
don't ask me for that love again.
The world then was gold, burnished with light --
and only because of you. That's what I had believed.
How could one weep for sorrows other than yours?
How could one have any sorrow but the one you gave?
So what were these protests, these rumors of injustice?
A glimpse of your face was evidence of springtime.
The sky, wherever I looked, was nothing but your eyes.
If You'd fall into my arms, Fate would be helpless.
All this I'd thought, all this I'd believed.
But there were other sorrows, comforts other than love.
The rich had cast their spell on history:
dark centuries had been embroidered on brocades and silks.
Bitter threads began to unravel before me
as I went into alleys and in open markets
saw bodies plastered with ash, bathed in blood.
I saw them sold and bought, again and again.
This too deserves attention. I can't help but look back
when I return from those alleys --what should one do?
And you still are so ravishing --what should I do?
There are other sorrows in this world,
comforts other than love.
Don't ask me, my love, for that love again.
______
still, b, i think even that great poem stops too short
i think people and culture more generally have for far too long
we just say, oh well can't balance that equation!
but it's not an equation
the words are only indexing ideas and life----they shouldn't become them
love and justice/activism are not independent---i think you get that, and the poem was just a cool way someone else thought bout it
but it still pisses me off that he didn't say something like
'i wish i could give you that love again but i'm incapable of doing so'
because we should not be expected to be dichotomies
oh, i'm ranting, but this issue really upsets me!
i love my friends and family but i'm not willing to compromise my goals for helping others/the planet
and people have always been like, oh well you'll have to
but i never have
because i work HARD at it
(also because i learn more and more what effects i as a human being have upon the world)
it's a hard process, and i think it's bout time we all started living it
allowing our goals to adjust, our selves to adapt, to the world that we love with the people we love in it
Good post -- approaches something that really has worked itself so deeply into the traditional way of telling stories that it's become like some kind of natural law.
It's capitalist reality -- the hardest worker has the least connection with the fruits of his alienated labor. The warnings to give to institutions instead of the people you would like to help, how every product we purchase is made piecemeal in a million different places around the world, etc.
It's tempting to see the hero character as bypassing the alienating structures of by-the-book law enforcement to go directly to the people, but every time we see him do this he has to alienate himself from those closest to him, so that even his achievements threaten to become totally abstract, in many cases revealing themselves to have been abstract from the beginning, that the hero resisted working through ordinary social structures because of their incompetence/corruption, not their alienating effects. This is why heroes 'need' sidekicks -- people who have also decided to separate themselves from society and intimacy with 'normals', but to a lesser degree.
I'm unable to discount this trope as quickly as you are, though -- for your kind of hero to work, a majority of people have to be one, unless you're ok with the effects of your efforts being negligible. Everyone a 'hero' is of course the goal of any reasonable social justice-type movement, but I think it remains to be seen if it can be achieved through its preferred methods alone.
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