On superhero TV
Mar. 7th, 2013 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have been trying to get to sleep for two hours and ended up in my head talking to TV execs about an Avengers TV series which they had made a pilot for and were totally messing up. They'd cast me as a 25 year old skinny person who made eye contact, it was horrible. ... my insomniac ramblings, they quickly become epic rants on cultural studies topics such as representations of disability in heroic fiction, even when my mary sue self could be spending those hours daydreaming on being awesome kick arse Avenger dating the whole team except Thor.
ANYway, I don't think the whole internet would be interested in much of that.
But we're going to have a SHIELD TV series, which will be kin to an Avengers series but distinctly different, so it's interesting to me at least to wonder: what will be the central question to explore in such a show?
Highlander was romantic talmudic discussion with swords, and it had questions like how long do you keep a promise or when should you keep a secret, but the question it had to answer every week was when, if ever, is it right to kill. Amanda's spin off should have been about when, if ever, is it right to steal. And if Methos got his own show then we'd be watching Death, the nightmare that kept them awake at night. "When mothers warned their children that the monster would get them, that monster was me." So his question is when, if ever, is it right to be the monster.
And that's a question close to the hearts of some Avengers too. But only as individuals. As a team, what's their question?
This is a collection of people who are individually as powerful as armies, and collectively can defend the whole planet. So the planet is hoping they stick to defence. But it isn't exactly that simple.
Once upon a time we had Kings, and stories of kings are about how that epic family drama that felt like it was the end of the world can in fact become the end of nations. If the kids aren't happy about who gets the silver in the will, with a monarchy, you can end up with blood soaked battlefields about it. But with democracies it's supposed to be more about the will of the people, large collective actions. Individual personalities and the accompanying personal dramas are supposed to get damped out by the checks and balances of a large system. Impersonal is alienating, but it's also, in some respects, safer. (Maybe. There's an argument there too.) But the thing with the Avengers is, it's back to monarchy, only this time it's because each and all they are enough of an army to soak that battlefield alone. If they have a bad day, if their epic bad breakup becomes everyone's problem, how does the world cope? And what can anyone do about it anyways? What would even be reasonable?
So the Avengers are huge amounts of power being concentrated in just a few private hands. When, if ever, is that a good idea?
And what can you do if it's a bad one?
SHIELD though, that has a different core. They're back to being anonymous impersonal bureaucratic organisations. I guess that's a place to explore how much personal can get all amplified all over that, how the handful of people can have their emotional dramas get tangled up into large scale events. Feels like the end of the world and oops it is. But there's other stuff. Like, panoptic surveillance from a shadowy organisation. Who watches the watchers? Why hand them all the observational power? What powers to disappear or to forgive people is it right for them to have? Black Widow is awesome and saved the world, but someone decided she shouldn't be locked up for crimes; who gets to do that? When is it right to do? Is there a system that decides on points who should get shot and who should be hired to do the shooting? Is it just someone (Clint) decided she was too pretty to shoot? Personal getting all over the decision process? How and why?
And the likely answers to all this ... it depends who is making it, but it tends to come down on the side of power fantasy. If we're with the Avengers then they're telling SHIELD where to stick it and going against orders to save the world, because that's the power fantasy, tell your boss and the impersonal systems where to go and just get things done without the red tape. If we're with SHIELD then they'll have that oversight organisation who turn out to be making the bad decisions that SHIELD buck against. The Avengers Initiative being the choice of a small group of people who still believe in heroes, that puts the chosen few in a particular relation to the systems. Tony Stark keeping hold of his armour after politicians (voted in democratically, having a pretty good point) try and take it away for the country to use, that says yaay Tony and rich people can fix problems if the government doesn't take their assets away. It could just as easily be a story about the government department that confiscates the mad scientist's super weapons and retasks them for national use. And, oh look, we have Torchwood, or possibly maybe future SHIELD. What will the significant difference be between Tony keeping his stuff and whatever enemy of the week loses theirs? That'll be making a statement about heroism and power and the relationship of capitalism and democracy and assorted forms of power.
The show that I would make would maybe not so much be the show that's likely to happen.
But there's interesting opportunities for asking who are the good guys and what their relation to structures of power is or should be.
I'd kind of like to be a better writer so I could answer such questions in the form of kick arse fiction, but at best for that I would require much practice.
Fanfic answers such questions while galloping past them looking at the pretty white guys shagging. I mean, not so often does fanfic get stuck in on questions other than will they won't they, but somewhere in the background is an implied answer. And sometimes it makes me tad bit uncomfortable, reading happy snuggly romantic fiction about an assassin and the guy who aims him at (exactly what kind of) enemies.
... mostly though I just like the epic trust oasis effect and carry on reading until the Happily Ever After.
Or, in this case, I go back to trying to get to sleep.
... is possibly slight bit metaphoric right there...
ANYway, I don't think the whole internet would be interested in much of that.
But we're going to have a SHIELD TV series, which will be kin to an Avengers series but distinctly different, so it's interesting to me at least to wonder: what will be the central question to explore in such a show?
Highlander was romantic talmudic discussion with swords, and it had questions like how long do you keep a promise or when should you keep a secret, but the question it had to answer every week was when, if ever, is it right to kill. Amanda's spin off should have been about when, if ever, is it right to steal. And if Methos got his own show then we'd be watching Death, the nightmare that kept them awake at night. "When mothers warned their children that the monster would get them, that monster was me." So his question is when, if ever, is it right to be the monster.
And that's a question close to the hearts of some Avengers too. But only as individuals. As a team, what's their question?
This is a collection of people who are individually as powerful as armies, and collectively can defend the whole planet. So the planet is hoping they stick to defence. But it isn't exactly that simple.
Once upon a time we had Kings, and stories of kings are about how that epic family drama that felt like it was the end of the world can in fact become the end of nations. If the kids aren't happy about who gets the silver in the will, with a monarchy, you can end up with blood soaked battlefields about it. But with democracies it's supposed to be more about the will of the people, large collective actions. Individual personalities and the accompanying personal dramas are supposed to get damped out by the checks and balances of a large system. Impersonal is alienating, but it's also, in some respects, safer. (Maybe. There's an argument there too.) But the thing with the Avengers is, it's back to monarchy, only this time it's because each and all they are enough of an army to soak that battlefield alone. If they have a bad day, if their epic bad breakup becomes everyone's problem, how does the world cope? And what can anyone do about it anyways? What would even be reasonable?
So the Avengers are huge amounts of power being concentrated in just a few private hands. When, if ever, is that a good idea?
And what can you do if it's a bad one?
SHIELD though, that has a different core. They're back to being anonymous impersonal bureaucratic organisations. I guess that's a place to explore how much personal can get all amplified all over that, how the handful of people can have their emotional dramas get tangled up into large scale events. Feels like the end of the world and oops it is. But there's other stuff. Like, panoptic surveillance from a shadowy organisation. Who watches the watchers? Why hand them all the observational power? What powers to disappear or to forgive people is it right for them to have? Black Widow is awesome and saved the world, but someone decided she shouldn't be locked up for crimes; who gets to do that? When is it right to do? Is there a system that decides on points who should get shot and who should be hired to do the shooting? Is it just someone (Clint) decided she was too pretty to shoot? Personal getting all over the decision process? How and why?
And the likely answers to all this ... it depends who is making it, but it tends to come down on the side of power fantasy. If we're with the Avengers then they're telling SHIELD where to stick it and going against orders to save the world, because that's the power fantasy, tell your boss and the impersonal systems where to go and just get things done without the red tape. If we're with SHIELD then they'll have that oversight organisation who turn out to be making the bad decisions that SHIELD buck against. The Avengers Initiative being the choice of a small group of people who still believe in heroes, that puts the chosen few in a particular relation to the systems. Tony Stark keeping hold of his armour after politicians (voted in democratically, having a pretty good point) try and take it away for the country to use, that says yaay Tony and rich people can fix problems if the government doesn't take their assets away. It could just as easily be a story about the government department that confiscates the mad scientist's super weapons and retasks them for national use. And, oh look, we have Torchwood, or possibly maybe future SHIELD. What will the significant difference be between Tony keeping his stuff and whatever enemy of the week loses theirs? That'll be making a statement about heroism and power and the relationship of capitalism and democracy and assorted forms of power.
The show that I would make would maybe not so much be the show that's likely to happen.
But there's interesting opportunities for asking who are the good guys and what their relation to structures of power is or should be.
I'd kind of like to be a better writer so I could answer such questions in the form of kick arse fiction, but at best for that I would require much practice.
Fanfic answers such questions while galloping past them looking at the pretty white guys shagging. I mean, not so often does fanfic get stuck in on questions other than will they won't they, but somewhere in the background is an implied answer. And sometimes it makes me tad bit uncomfortable, reading happy snuggly romantic fiction about an assassin and the guy who aims him at (exactly what kind of) enemies.
... mostly though I just like the epic trust oasis effect and carry on reading until the Happily Ever After.
Or, in this case, I go back to trying to get to sleep.
... is possibly slight bit metaphoric right there...
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Date: 2013-03-08 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-03-08 12:30 pm (UTC)