shameless plug
Okay, recently Jim has started a blog of his own (yay Jim!) Anyway he posted today in response to an email from a friend and as a way of shamelessly plugging his blog I will post part of my response here!
In reference to the death of imagination...
"This is a bit of a bitter and jaded argument. In so much as I agree with being angry at the Bats thing saying that there is no more imagination is unfair in the extreme. Imagination is "the mental creation of an idea or thought representative of a quality of uniqueness". As such it is NOT an entirely unique thought (if there even is such a thing on the grander scale). Take mythology for example - the story of Cinderella has been told in references to different cultures all over the world - before many of these cultures had any contact with one another. Why? If these cultures had met with eachother we would say that one culture had just adapted the story from the other (still imaginative in its own right), but that's not what happened. Perhaps we should look at the bigger picture of humanity. The stories we tell, no matter how fantastical, our stories of our experiences, of our lives, of what we perceive and observe. That's why so many myths hold similar themes and even plots and characters. Because despite the fact that you live in a different place or even time the human story is in so many ways the same. So perhaps there are no NEW stories, but there is still imagination, without that we would stop telling the story. Take Gregory Maguire for example, he's made a career out of the retelling of stories from a different perspective - Confessions of An Ugly Stepsiter, Mirror Mirror, Wicked..., and all these stories can offer us is a different perspective. In comics look towards Neil Gaimen and Bill Willingham - they both rely heavily on stories that have been told before to guide them as they tell us the stories from their perspective. It's not about the originality of a story because you will always find something else like it... it's about how it's told. It's about whether or not the story tells us."
Yay, shameless plugging :)
In reference to the death of imagination...
"This is a bit of a bitter and jaded argument. In so much as I agree with being angry at the Bats thing saying that there is no more imagination is unfair in the extreme. Imagination is "the mental creation of an idea or thought representative of a quality of uniqueness". As such it is NOT an entirely unique thought (if there even is such a thing on the grander scale). Take mythology for example - the story of Cinderella has been told in references to different cultures all over the world - before many of these cultures had any contact with one another. Why? If these cultures had met with eachother we would say that one culture had just adapted the story from the other (still imaginative in its own right), but that's not what happened. Perhaps we should look at the bigger picture of humanity. The stories we tell, no matter how fantastical, our stories of our experiences, of our lives, of what we perceive and observe. That's why so many myths hold similar themes and even plots and characters. Because despite the fact that you live in a different place or even time the human story is in so many ways the same. So perhaps there are no NEW stories, but there is still imagination, without that we would stop telling the story. Take Gregory Maguire for example, he's made a career out of the retelling of stories from a different perspective - Confessions of An Ugly Stepsiter, Mirror Mirror, Wicked..., and all these stories can offer us is a different perspective. In comics look towards Neil Gaimen and Bill Willingham - they both rely heavily on stories that have been told before to guide them as they tell us the stories from their perspective. It's not about the originality of a story because you will always find something else like it... it's about how it's told. It's about whether or not the story tells us."
Yay, shameless plugging :)
posted by Gwen at 8:52 PM
2 Comments:
I have never bought into that "there are only really 7 different stories" crap. Imagination is a wonderful thing and something we don't cultivate in our country's youth anymore. Now we're paying the price. TV, movies and comics are a wasteland as far as new ideas are concerned. Sure, here and there a few gems will appear, but less and less. People keep saying that everything has already been done. That's a lie. Look at all the interesting villains Slott created for Batman in Living Hell when everybody said all the good ideas had been taken. Look at the work Kirkman is doing on Invincible. Started off generically enough but transformed into something brilliant. Look at what Bruce Timm did with his animated DCU. So many new twists that DC stole much of it for thier comic books.
There are plenty of new stories to tell. As the world changes, new ideas emerge. But lately all we get is the same old same old wrapped in prettier paper. Worn out, tired ideas foist upon us one more time. So spark up that gray matter and come up with a new hero or villain and tell us a new tale.
THANKS FOR THE PLUG!!!
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