All That Jazz

Том Янг - самый тертый из тертых калачей, когда дело доходит до анализа работ Гранта Моррисона. Поэтому его рецензии я всегда жду, будучи уверенным, что обязательно открою для себо что-то новое.

Ему за сорок, он профессор колледжа, преподающий литературу. Естественно, он зануда. Но я тоже зануда, так что мне жутко интересно читать его многокилометровые тексты. В этот раз он превзошел себя, написав необъятную рецензию на все семь выпусков Final Crisis, включая два номера Batman и Superman Beyond 3D. Сильным духом и/или интеллектуалам рекомендую ознакомиться, но на всякий случай процитирую ключевые фрагменты:

"... Wolfman seemed to have ignored the work of other DC writers who were

his contemporaries and who had effectively corrected the bad science or

pseudo-science of the Golden and Silver Ages of DC’s history. The

quality of writing had become significantly important to me over the

years--perhaps because of my own career path--and Wolfman’s work was

found wanting.

I was even more critical three years ago when Infinite Crisis

was published. Like Wolfman, Geoff Johns displayed a bad ear for dialog

and an inability to incorporate accurate science or plausible

pseudo-science into his story. Of course, to a large extent all Johns

did was continue the errors that Wolfman had committed in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Johns’s work was a sequel not only in content but also in form.

Additionally, Johns’s Infinite Crisis

was filled with errors in internal logic, making it far worse than

Wolfman’s efforts from 20 years earlier--particularly since Wolfman was

writing for a younger demographic (in general) than Johns was writing

for. Fortunately, I can direct none of those complaints toward

Morrison’s Final Crisis:

• Morrison has a keen ear for dialog.
• He has enough knowledge about contemporary scientific theories to either

  incorporate them outright or create from them plausible pseudo-science

  for his stories.

• Unless an apparent contradiction is

  actually a preconceived plot point in the story, he seldom has errors

  in internal logic in any of his stories.

Thus, of the three “Crisis Events,” Morrison’s is clearly the best in terms of technical craft. Of the three, it’s my favorite because it was the best in terms

of dialog, plausible pseudo-science, and internal logic..."

"... Aside from Superman Beyond (and the two-part Batman story to some extent), Final Crisis

was not as overtly Postmodern in its aesthetics as other Morrison works

have been. Nevertheless, the seventh issue ends up working “perfectly”

as the conclusion of a Postmodern story--though Postmodern aesthetics

actually appears imperfect, or “flawed,” from a Modern or Aristotelian

perspective, which is actually the point of much of Final Crisis (more on that later in this long-winded review/critique).

A Postmodern aesthetic doesn't mean that "anything goes" or that

"everything is art." It does, however, mean that an alternative type of

order and an alternative type of "coherence" exists within works of

Postmodern art--and that is how Final Crisis must actually be viewed.

Works of art do not need to adhere to architectonic structures in the way

they're composed or organized--but they do need to follow some sort of

non-Aristotelian logic that can be discerned through close examination

of the work. So what was the organizational structure here?

Viewed in its entirety (including Morrison’s tangential chapters), Final Crisis is an improvisational jazz narrative..."

"... The heart of Final Crisis is not Darkseid’s attempt to enslave

humanity and create “Apokolips on Earth (that is just the framework

plot around which Morrison has constructed his jazz

composition--similar to how a jazz musician will construct an

improvisational composition around a musical standard, such as Charlie

Parker composing “Koko” based on the chords of Ray Noble’s jazz

standard “Cherokee,” or Parker’s variations on Johnny Mercer and David

Raskin’s “Laura,” or jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan’s reworking of Led

Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”).

Nor is the heart of Final Crisis Mandrakk’s nihilistic attempt to end all creation by being that which

dwells at the end of all stories (though that factors into it).

Nor is it the breaking down of the barriers (the branes) between universes

in the multiverse (though that also factors into it, and is related to

Mandrakk’s threat of multiversal nihilism as well as to the plot of

Darkseid’s Fall from the higher dimensional plane in which the New Gods

dwelled).

Instead, the actual heart of Final Crisis is

the efficacy of art, which is fueled by “the magical power of symbols

to structure our perceptions of reality.” In particular, because of

Morrison’s profession as a writer, it is the efficacy of stories..."

"... Nearly two and a half years ago I ended a review of Morrison’s Batman #655-57 with this paragraph that seems appropriate to include here as well:

Of course, I don’t expect those who want an architectonic plot structure

to suddenly embrace Morrison’s decidedly Postmodern structure. Such

readers are a bit like the layperson who asked Louis Armstrong what

jazz is. Armstrong supposedly replied, "If you have to ask the

question, you ain’t never gonna understand the answer."

I took a lot of heat on the message boards for that concluding

paragraph--not surprisingly it was from people who didn’t like those

issues of Batman. Nevertheless, I hold to that statement.

There are various aesthetics around which works of art are constructed. The

way to approach any work of art is to try to understand the aesthetic

principles that informed it and then judge it against those standards,

not against the standards of an aesthetic that didn’t inform it. It’s

pretty basic, but art isn’t always approached in that manner.

It’s ludicrous to criticize jazz for not complying with the aesthetics of

classical music, or to criticize Jackson Pollock’s action paintings for

not complying with the aesthetics of Flemish Baroque painting, or to

criticize Beat literature for not complying with the aesthetics of

Victorian literature. Yet, I know people who approach works of art that

way--colleagues in university English departments, in fact. They are

the poorer for their closed-minded adherence to one set of aesthetic

principles being superior to others..."

Как говорится, what he said. ^^