(no subject)
The Many Lives of the Batman, eds. Roberta E. Pearson & William Uricchio: This book of essays, devoid of images because DC Comics didn't think the volume was consistent with its image of the Batman, is a lot about media cross-subsidization and the economics of blockbuster films, and a bit about the various forms in which the Batman has appeared up to and including the 1989 movie and the graphic novels Batman: Year One and The Killing Joke. Interviews with Dennis O'Neil, who was in charge of the comic for DC for many years, and with Frank Miller, are the highlights of the book. Miller says of the Dark Knight, "he'd be much healthier if he were gay," though I imagine Te would disagree. Camille Bacon-Smith with Tyrone Yarborough contributes what I feel was a pointless entry about different audiences' response to the movie, with no real analysis, while Henry Jenkins & Lynn Spiegel offer a curiously unengaging essay about peoples' memories of the 1960s camp TV series. The theoretical stuff about memory is somewhat interesting, but there's not much there Batman-specific.
The final essay, by the editors, was the best analysis of the Batman, discussing among other things Batman and Bruce Wayne's relationships to property rights and class. According to them, property is the McGuffin; villains steal to fight Batman (or to have pretty cat-related items, in some cases), not to get rich. Batman's origin is, of course, in a property crime turned violent - those pearls, at the center of the origin story - and the editors emphasize the irony that the necklace was a tiny part of the Waynes' overall wealth, which is what enables Batman to deploy all his wonderful toys. If you don't have a Fortress of Solitude, you need a big inheritance. JLU fans may be tickled to discover that the 1960s Batman, when he confronted Tallulah Bankhead as the Black Widow, was forced to sing to break free of her spell; he chose "I'm Just a Little Buttercup." And I now want to write a story about this Frederic Wertham quote:
[C]hildren ... have been nourished (or rather poisoned) by the endless repetition of Superman stories. How can they respect the hard-working mother, father or teacher who is so pedestrian, trying to teach common rules of conduct, wanting you to keep your feet on the ground and unable even figuratively speaking to fly through the air? Psychologically Superman undermines the authority and dignity of the ordinary man and woman in the minds of children.
I can just see Wertham on some Metropolis talk show.
Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors: Young Augusten's mother, separated from his father, depressed and drinking, falls into the orbit of a therapist a lot crazier than she is. Augusten ends up living at the therapist's filthy house, with his variously crazed flock of children, with no supervision; the attention that does get paid to him is all devoted to encouraging him to express his inner being, except for the attention from the gay guy ten years older than he is. Augusten's experiences as recounted in this memoir are always horrifying, sometimes sad and sometimes almost inspiring, given that he somehow survived, though not without a lot of damage.
David F. D'Alessandro with Michelle Owens, Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand: Unlike most of the folks who write (or in this case, probably, dictate parts of and take credit for) business books of this ilk, D'Alessandro isn't a consultant. He's the CEO of John Hancock, and if nothing else that gives him some war stories to tell. Though the book doesn't make this clear, it's most helpful on the topic of sports sponsorship, explaining when and why a company would want to help out a particular sport, and suggesting ways to get better value from, say, being the official financial services provider of the Olympics.
Will Brooker, Teach Yourself Cultural Studies: This slender volume, from the author of the enjoyable Batman Unmasked, is pretty straightforward: a guide to cultural studies, from Matthew Arnold to Henry Jenkins and beyond. He summarizes one or two of each figure's major works, briefly discusses problems with the approach at issue, and explains the links each has with other people whose work shows up in the book. If you wanted an introduction to the field, if bricolage and flaneur and hegemony are words you'd like to know more about, then this is probably a relatively painless way to go about it. If, on the other hand, you can already connect each of those three terms with a particular theorist, or (more likely?) you don't want to, you probably don't need this book.
Meryl Cohn, "Do What I Say": Ms. Behavior's Guide to Gay & Lesbian Etiquette: I have a fondness for etiquette books, especially specialized ones, so I picked this up. Unfortunately, despite the title, there's very little about manners here, and lots about relationships and Lesbian Bed Death. The arch tone might be funny in a column once a week, but speaking of yourself in the third person and avoiding contractions doesn't make you Ms. Manners.
Robert Kurson, Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II: Deep-sea wreck divers are adventure junkies, men who think that they can only be men if they're doing what no one else can do and, ideally, risking their lives. To them, a man is defined by what he does when he's in danger and could turn away from that danger, but only at the cost of not testing himself (and, maybe, not helping out a buddy or not finding out some new information). These guys are fun to read about, but I'm not sure they're the best model for men, and I'm damn sure they aren't the kind of guys who can sustain a civilization. Kurson is infatuated with their manhood, and he tells exciting tales of diving, mainly concentrated on a downed German sub found just off the coast of New Jersey. The divers found it, but no one could tell them which sub it was; there was no record of a U-boat being sunk in such a location. As they investigated, they discovered that written history was not, as they'd always been taught, a list of things that actually happened, but a series of interpretations based on evidence of greater and lesser quality. The clash of experience versus expertise, as the men defy what the sub historians think and prove the identity of their sub through life-threatening and occasionally life-taking dives, is the other theme of the book, alongside that of manhood through adventure. This isn't much of a work of WWII history, though there are a few chapters about what life was like for the men of a U-boat and about the particular men who died on this one. Mostly the interest comes from the diving, which is a peculiar hobby, one that requires many, many toys. One nice thing about the book is that the spoilery photos are reserved until the end. Because it makes printing easier, lots of history books plunk photos in the middle of the book so that you meet people you won't be reading about until later, which disrupts the narrative flow, but in this case, with the identity of the sub such an important part of the story, the publisher sacrificed convenience of binding for the sake of narrative.
The final essay, by the editors, was the best analysis of the Batman, discussing among other things Batman and Bruce Wayne's relationships to property rights and class. According to them, property is the McGuffin; villains steal to fight Batman (or to have pretty cat-related items, in some cases), not to get rich. Batman's origin is, of course, in a property crime turned violent - those pearls, at the center of the origin story - and the editors emphasize the irony that the necklace was a tiny part of the Waynes' overall wealth, which is what enables Batman to deploy all his wonderful toys. If you don't have a Fortress of Solitude, you need a big inheritance. JLU fans may be tickled to discover that the 1960s Batman, when he confronted Tallulah Bankhead as the Black Widow, was forced to sing to break free of her spell; he chose "I'm Just a Little Buttercup." And I now want to write a story about this Frederic Wertham quote:
[C]hildren ... have been nourished (or rather poisoned) by the endless repetition of Superman stories. How can they respect the hard-working mother, father or teacher who is so pedestrian, trying to teach common rules of conduct, wanting you to keep your feet on the ground and unable even figuratively speaking to fly through the air? Psychologically Superman undermines the authority and dignity of the ordinary man and woman in the minds of children.
I can just see Wertham on some Metropolis talk show.
Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors: Young Augusten's mother, separated from his father, depressed and drinking, falls into the orbit of a therapist a lot crazier than she is. Augusten ends up living at the therapist's filthy house, with his variously crazed flock of children, with no supervision; the attention that does get paid to him is all devoted to encouraging him to express his inner being, except for the attention from the gay guy ten years older than he is. Augusten's experiences as recounted in this memoir are always horrifying, sometimes sad and sometimes almost inspiring, given that he somehow survived, though not without a lot of damage.
David F. D'Alessandro with Michelle Owens, Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand: Unlike most of the folks who write (or in this case, probably, dictate parts of and take credit for) business books of this ilk, D'Alessandro isn't a consultant. He's the CEO of John Hancock, and if nothing else that gives him some war stories to tell. Though the book doesn't make this clear, it's most helpful on the topic of sports sponsorship, explaining when and why a company would want to help out a particular sport, and suggesting ways to get better value from, say, being the official financial services provider of the Olympics.
Will Brooker, Teach Yourself Cultural Studies: This slender volume, from the author of the enjoyable Batman Unmasked, is pretty straightforward: a guide to cultural studies, from Matthew Arnold to Henry Jenkins and beyond. He summarizes one or two of each figure's major works, briefly discusses problems with the approach at issue, and explains the links each has with other people whose work shows up in the book. If you wanted an introduction to the field, if bricolage and flaneur and hegemony are words you'd like to know more about, then this is probably a relatively painless way to go about it. If, on the other hand, you can already connect each of those three terms with a particular theorist, or (more likely?) you don't want to, you probably don't need this book.
Meryl Cohn, "Do What I Say": Ms. Behavior's Guide to Gay & Lesbian Etiquette: I have a fondness for etiquette books, especially specialized ones, so I picked this up. Unfortunately, despite the title, there's very little about manners here, and lots about relationships and Lesbian Bed Death. The arch tone might be funny in a column once a week, but speaking of yourself in the third person and avoiding contractions doesn't make you Ms. Manners.
Robert Kurson, Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II: Deep-sea wreck divers are adventure junkies, men who think that they can only be men if they're doing what no one else can do and, ideally, risking their lives. To them, a man is defined by what he does when he's in danger and could turn away from that danger, but only at the cost of not testing himself (and, maybe, not helping out a buddy or not finding out some new information). These guys are fun to read about, but I'm not sure they're the best model for men, and I'm damn sure they aren't the kind of guys who can sustain a civilization. Kurson is infatuated with their manhood, and he tells exciting tales of diving, mainly concentrated on a downed German sub found just off the coast of New Jersey. The divers found it, but no one could tell them which sub it was; there was no record of a U-boat being sunk in such a location. As they investigated, they discovered that written history was not, as they'd always been taught, a list of things that actually happened, but a series of interpretations based on evidence of greater and lesser quality. The clash of experience versus expertise, as the men defy what the sub historians think and prove the identity of their sub through life-threatening and occasionally life-taking dives, is the other theme of the book, alongside that of manhood through adventure. This isn't much of a work of WWII history, though there are a few chapters about what life was like for the men of a U-boat and about the particular men who died on this one. Mostly the interest comes from the diving, which is a peculiar hobby, one that requires many, many toys. One nice thing about the book is that the spoilery photos are reserved until the end. Because it makes printing easier, lots of history books plunk photos in the middle of the book so that you meet people you won't be reading about until later, which disrupts the narrative flow, but in this case, with the identity of the sub such an important part of the story, the publisher sacrificed convenience of binding for the sake of narrative.