My WATCHMEN experience (no spoilers)

In a word, it was predictable.

Not the movie. The situations surrounding the movie.

I pretty much called everything that happened within the 24 hours following my viewing of the film.

Firstly, as soon as my group took their seats in the theater, in walked a mother and father with their two boys, who, by my estimation, were somewhere between the ages of seven and nine. Called it.

About an hour into the movie, said family got up and walked out. Called it. This is what happens when parents aren't freaking parents anymore. Check the daggum rating. Rated R for "strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language". Morons. The thing is, those are the kinds of people who go to the ticket office and complain because "if I had known I wouldn't have taken my kids to see it." Uneducated, uninformed, ignorant.

Which leads me to my basic premise of things surrounding Watchmen, and many other films of similar nature. To so many people, Watchmen is "just another superhero movie". Likening Watchmen to an ordinary run of the mill comic book or superhero movie is the same as likening The Simpsons or South Park to Looney Toons, and subsequently plopping your kids down in front of the tv, expecting them to get the same thing out of both. Watchmen is a mature film, just like The Simpsons is a cartoon for mature audiences. They are not, and cannot, and should not be viewed on the same level.

But I expected things to be like this, because of the stigma that is attached to comic books, superhero films, and those who enjoy them. Apparently these are only for immature people, dorky people, thirty-something white men who still live in their parents basements. (This is utterly false, and I have written about it in a previous post, entitled "In Defense of Comics").

This makes me irritated, because the entire point of Watchmen is that they're NOT superheroes. They are normal people who happen to be masked vigilantes. They have real life problems. They're real people, and it looks at how they're unusual activities affect their lives and their minds and their relationships. Only one character in the story really has extra-normal abilities, and that is Dr. Manhatten. That's the point of his character: He disconnects from humanity because of his powers. It's brilliant commentary on the "superhero".

Moving on to more things that I predicted.

When Dr. Manhatten came on screen, I heard half the theater giggling like little schoolgirls. Seriously? Apparently America is still in the third grade. Called it.

The day after I saw it, I talked to another of my friends who also saw it (not with me, with a separate group). This friend, whom I love dearly, belongs to the Talledega Nights/Superbad crowd to which I have referred previously on this blog. He said, "I saw the Watchmen yesterday, the movie was the dumbest, most retarded thing I've ever seen, don't you think?" Already knowing what answer I would receive, I asked him why. "Because I didn't understand it!" I then asked him to explain which one was the dumb, retarded one, the movie or himself. It seems to me that if you don't understand something, it is YOU that is dumb, not the object in question. But this reason has been given to me again and again for why a movie is bad. A person's lack of understanding or ability to comprehend something measures more that person then it measures whatever they are viewing.

The funny thing is that my friend expected me to agree with him. He was surprised that I didn't.

But perhaps the award for quote of the night goes to the unseen gentlemen whom I overheard in the bathroom immediately following the film. "You know why that movie was interesting? Because it had so many ideas in it. It was almost like....almost like a book."

I then started banging my head against the wall.

Not really. I mean, at least he picked up on the depth of the film, which is more than my friend did, and more than most people will do. Maybe it's just me, but I don't know how people don't know that Watchmen is based on a graphic novel. You have to live under a rock. Not only was there a lot of controversy surrounding the film, but it says on the daggum trailers, "based on the acclaimed graphic novel". And unless I am mistaken, I believe it said it at the beginning of the film. I could be wrong, I don't exactly remember.

Not to be tangential, but another thing that I called was the reaction I got when I was explaining to a group of people who asked me about the movie that it was based on a graphic novel. They asked me, "Isn't it based on a comic book?" I wussed out and instead of saying, "No, it's not a comic book. It's a graphic novel", I said "Sort of." I THEN explained the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel. Then there was a chorus of "you're such a dork!", "Oh my gosh, hahaha", "It's the same thing! You Geek!" etc.

Yes, I'M the dork for knowing what I'm talking about, for actually being informed.

I won't go into the differences between a comic book and a graphic novel. But suffice it to say, they're not the same thing. I know this because this is my field. I'm a writer. Plus I'm not an idiot.

I digress.

Finally, to the point. What did I think of Watchmen?

It stayed very true to the source material. The ideas. The characters. The violence and sexuality. All of that was in the graphic novel. And it all made it to the screen intact, for better or worse. I think some of the violence and sex was a little overboard, but the graphic novel didn't shy away from that stuff either.

But perhaps the main reason I say that it stayed true to the source material was that I walked away from the movie with largely the same feeling I had when I finished the graphic novel: conflicted. This solidifies my personal definition of Watchmen, both novel and film, as something that is not so much something to be either liked or disliked, as much as it is something to think about. It is thought provoking to the extreme, and not something you easily forget. This is precisely why people are reacting the way they are to the film.

People don't want to think. People don't want to use their brains. Anything that is challenging they label as "dumb" (when it is THEMSELVES that are dumb), and they sit around until the next Will Ferrell or Seth Rogen movie comes out.

I've probably beaten that horse to death. So I'll wrap this up.

Two best things about the movie? Jackie Earle Haley WAS Rorschach. Aside from Heath Ledger as the Joker, that was the single most amazing performance of a pre-existing fictional character I think I've seen.

Also, at the end of the movie, when there is a certain shot of a certain object and a certain song by a certain band kicks in: FREAK YES.

The truth will out.


-a.

I Enjoy To Read A Lot (Andrew J. Clark, circa 1991)

I spent the day cleaning out my old bedroom, and as I expected, it turned into a sweeping walk down memory lane. I knew this would happen. So let me tell you, if you find yourself on the verge of cleaning out your room, follow this simple rule: Steel yourself. There is a certain degree of mercilessness that must go along with going through things from your past, particularly your childhood. If you're like me, you want to hold onto a lot of things that you really have no need for and will likely never put to use again. Part of you just likes to know that it's there, that you still have it, even if you don't think about it for years at a time. But I approached this day with the purpose of getting rid of things of this nature, and it was as difficult as I thought it would be.

It was bittersweet going through my childhood for what probably will be the last time. On one hand, it was really cool to go through the stuff and see what I was doing, the kinds of things I saved, and generally just re-living a lot of those years. But at the same time, it was hard because I knew I had to let go of most of the stuff and move on. "Putting away the childish things..." and all that. Even though I put them away awhile ago. I just didn't get rid of them.

I decided to save only those things that meant the most and encapsulated those times of my life. It was great to be a kid for a day and lose myself in the icons of my youth: Old issues of "The Dino Times", the dinosaur newspaper for which my grandmother bought me a subscription when I was five, a plethora of Star Wars action figures, old sketchbooks with probably the worst-drawn pictures known to man, scribblings of stories I wrote when I was in the seventh grade, and some old poster that I had to make for a school project, on which I had to tell my class about myself, and upon which I wrote under a picture of a book, "I enjoy to read a lot". Hence the title of this blog. I know I was only about 7 or 8 when I wrote it, but still, should I have really sounded like a Korean exchange student at that age? Something to ponder.

My room still has much to go through, in preparation for my move back to Ohio in a few months (another thing I'm not sure I want to think about right now), and it will likely take at least another full day to get everything cleared and gone through.

I was thinking, as I was hauling three huge garbage bags full of my childhood to the street for the garbage man to come pick up and tote away to oblivion in the morning, things were a lot simpler back then. Sure I had to be a man and go to school every day, but when I got home, it was time for LEGOs, AND STAR WARS action figures, and JURASSIC PARK, and BASEBALL CARDS, and COMIC BOOKS, and just general coolness. I had no worries. I remember running around in the backyard for hours and hours pretending I was fighting the Terminator. Everything was so clear back then.

Of course that was before the two things that haunt men the most came into my life to screw everything up: Money and women. Both necessary. Both impossibly difficult.

I think mankind would be a whole lot better off if everyone just reverted back to playing with dinosaurs and fighting the Terminator in our backyards.

In Defense of Comics

When certain people discover that I read comic books, I get a variety of responses, such as: "So, what do you mean, like, Charlie Brown and Garfield?" Yes, this was actually said to me. Another of my favorite responses comes when I talk about "Superhero" movies. I get the scrunched-up-face-smirk/grimace look followed by "Isn't that a comic book movie? Those movies are SO dumb." I find it amusing that these responses usually come from one of two sources: First, girls who wear FAR too much makeup, and second, those who belong to the Talledega Nights/Superbad/Anchorman crowd. Yeah, COMIC BOOK movies are dumb...riiiiiiight. Anymore, I won't even mention the fact that I wouldn't mind expanding my writing career to include comic books or graphic novels. I'm not embarrassed. I just don't want to deal with the headache.

I must admit, some of these responses are justified. Hollywood was not always good at bringing comic books to life on the silver screen. Sometimes it's still not very good at it. (The Fantastic Four movies, the 3rd Spiderman movie, The Hulk, the list goes on). Still, I find that when people call something stupid it is usually because they didn't understand it, or they have absolutely no experience with it. This is true when it comes to comic books. I'm curious to know how many people that think comic books and their cinema-counterparts are stupid have actually ever READ a comic book. My first guess would be, not too many. Or at least, they've never read the RIGHT ones.

It amazes me in this age of mixed-media and freedom of artistic exploration that comic books are still seen as the black-sheep of the literature family. When comic book writers are shunned from academic circles, confined to "Children's Literature" at book fairs, and consistenly overlooked for the most prestigious awards. I ask you, why are comic books not considered a legitimate storytelling medium? Why are they different from any other method of storytelling?

Let me ask this: Can a painting tell a story? Can a photograph? One has only to look at any number of paintings and works of art to know that images are perfectly capable of telling a story. The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The Adoration of the Name of God. The School of Athens. American Gothic. If one but takes the time to look and look DEEPER, these are incredibly telling images.

And there is no need to ask if books, songs or poems tell stories. Even if it is just a simple passage of dialogue. Dialogue was the traditional method of learning and teaching among the ancients (something I believe would benefit the modern generations greatly, were it revived in education institutions). Plato and Socrates, two of the most influential thinkers in history spread their ideas solely through dialogue.

So if images can tell a story, and words obviously tell a story, then why is the combination of images and words suddenly cast out among the bastard children of literature? Why does this combination nullify literary, philosophical, or cultural significance? Why is a comic any less capable then a folk singer strumming a guitar, a mural on a wall, or a poem in some dusty volume? If anything, this combination of words and images should only increase its potency and potential to expand and inspire the imagination.

But beyond that, certain people scoff at the idea of superheroes, and I honestly have no idea why (Besides the idea of grown men running around in tights...I will cede that battle). What it comes down to, no matter what the media, is the story. Does the story draw me in? Does it inspire me? Does it make me feel that all too rare sensation of a very real possibility of epic things happening within the world?

The Greeks had their legendary heroes. The Romans had their gods. The Britons had Arthur and his knights. The Celts had the Fae. Literally every culture from every period built around themselves a unique set of myths and legends that inspired them, encouraged them, awed them, and ultimately spoke to the inner parts of their hearts and invited them to look at the triumph of what is best in humanity.

So here's my point: Comic books are American Mythology.

What is Superman and his Kryptonite if not a reflection of great Achilles and his heel? What is Batman and Gotham except the mythical struggle of one or a few men battling to defend their city and their home, just as Hector and Paris?

Virgil had his Aeneas.

Homer had his Achilles and his Hector and his Odysseus.

We have Superman. We have Batman.

We need them.

We need these stories, because they reflect the best of us, and the worst of us. These archetypes are essential for us to explore the meaning of what exactly we are, and what we are capable of being.

America has succeeded in creating its own personal mythology.

It's time it was embraced.