I had been despairing of fandom recently - or, more accurately, despairing of my place within it. It's not fandom's fault. Things moved to Tumblr a long time ago, and I don't begrudge people for whom Tumblr works, who like it as a blogging platform. I use it myself, but I dislike it. Conversations move too quickly for one to be engaged in them, bouncing back and forth like tennis balls between reblogs. I miss the days when my flist was filled with post after post of lengthy meta.

And just when I was despairing, the internet delivered. Not one, but three absolutely fantastic, in-depth posts on three very different texts!



Nick Mamatas writes about True Blood as a Marxist parable:

Class politics is nothing new to vampire fiction. From Dracula on, the vampire has often represented the old and dying aristocracy of Europe. Violent and powerful, these symbols of older pre-capitalist regimes weren’t put down by fearful peasants but defeated by modern men of ability and reason. In the classic novels and stories, middle class heroes were the traditional enemy of the vampire. However, as the political power of the aristocracy receded into history, vampire aristocrats lost their lands and peasant herds and joined the modern ruling and middle classes. Lestat was just another immigrant who made good by becoming a vulgar rock star, and the vampires of the new urban fantasy novels have more in common with Sex and the City’s Mr. Big than they do with the royal Vlad the Impaler. Vampires are the new middle class—powerful but also trapped between the demands supernatural world on one hand and the mass of workaday humanity on the other.

Abigail Nussbaum criticises the final Nolan Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, for the impoverished dishonesty of its vision. (A view with which I heartily agree, having spent the past few days debating with my friend N exactly what Nolan is trying to say in these films.):

Far from toning down The Dark Knight's message, then, The Dark Knight Rises takes it to even further extremes. This isn't simply Batman having the moral authority to act as judge and jury on Gotham's criminals. This is Batman--and Bruce Wayne--as John Galt, the mysterious, reclusive, omni-competent, super-rich industrialist who is the only hope for the future. The Dark Knight Rises extends Batman's authority past crime, into technological progress, and even into social welfare--when Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Officer Blake, a Batman believer who is one of the first to uncover signs of the film's villain, starts his investigation by following up the murder of a homeless teen, he learns that the boy was kicked out of his group home because the cash-strapped Wayne Foundation has stopped funding it. In other words, it's not just the police that needs to be augmented by a caped crusader, but every level of government that must be replaced by private enterprise and private philanthropy. And when that private benefactor is mocked, derided, hobbled in his efforts to keep his community safe and even hunted down for those efforts--why, then he will retreat from his obligations, and the result will be disaster.

I knew there was a reason why those films irritated me so much.

Finally, ravenya03 has a brilliant cri de coeur of a post about the failings of The Legend of Korra:

The idea of benders versus non-benders is a conflict that could only ever be told in this particular world. Harry Potter deals with Fantastic Racism through the wizarding world’s prejudice against Muggles and Half-Bloods, and the X-Men explore the tension that arises from a new faction of super-powered individuals in a world where they are the underrepresented minority – but this was something rather different. And ultimately, nothing was done with it. There is still a huge mass of people out there who aren’t happy with the way they’re treated, and who have clearly demonstrated that they’re prepared to take decisive action in order to secure their rights. It’s not simply a matter of raising difficult questions and giving ambiguous answers – the fact is that no attempt whatsoever is made to answer those questions or resolve the issue in any way. I guess we’re just meant to assume that non-benders disbanded and went back to their homes after Amon was outed as a bender. We’re given no indication of the situation after the climactic scene; we never learn if the imposed curfew was lifted, whether Korra plans to restore bending abilities to dangerous criminals, whether Amon’s followers disbanded – basically, nothing that answers the question: “what happens next?” Unfortunately, the argument that Amon represented dies along with him, and we are simply meant to suppose that the anti-bending faction disappeared when their leader was revealed as a fraud (though surely this would only exacerbate matters).



What wonderful, wonderful, rich reviews and essays! I wish fandom could be like this every day!