prankster36 (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} prankster36) wrote, |
We-eell, I have to admit that I'm kind of a fan of stuff like Silver Age Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane. Not in the "this is brilliant literature" sense, but...
Well, it's a bit complicated, and requires me to take all this way too seriously to explain. My mindset is this: there are two kinds of stories, the authorially directed and the Jungian sort of mythology. Most "high" literature, of course, is carefully crafted by an author and reflects his or her own specific sensibilities, biases, ideology, and so on; in its purest form, it says exactly what the artist wants it to say, period. At the other end of the scale, we have myths and legends, passed down to us for millennia, with no single author, shaped and smoothed out by thousands or even millions of storytellers over the years. These come as close as possible to the idea of a "collective" story, reflecting something dwelling within our communal mindset.
Of course, most stories aren't pure examples of one or the other; even with a single storyteller, a story may reflect some unconscious aspect of their psyche that they didn't intend, for instance. With a lot of comics before Stan and Jack came along (and, in this case, even afterwards) there wasn't as much of an "authorial stamp" on the stories--they were group efforts, the writers and artists regulated to anonymity as much as possible, subsumed by a "house style". Combine that with the fact that no one took them too seriously, and you have a pretty good approximation of the kind of subconscious mythology I mentioned earlier.
Which means, of course, a lot of it is bizarre crap. But it's COMPELLING bizarre crap, and bizarre crap that resonates with us decades later. To look at it another way: those Silver Age Superman stories might seem childish or, as you say, insignificant, but they were rich in imagination. They threw out concepts so wildly that some of them were bound to stick; the good ones lingered and were developed into something more and more interesting over the years. Look at Alan Moore's "Supreme", for instance, or Grant Morrison's current run on All-Star Superman. Both of those are great books that go back and find meaning, retroactively, in the silver age silliness.
I think one of the reasons comics are such a rich medium is that they had decades of this kind of "careless mythology" for later, more sophisticated writers to build on. The Greek myths have a similar childishness to them, in their earliest form at least, but the later Greek playwrights and poets built on them and developed them into works of great meaning and resonance. I think that's similar to what's happening in comics right now. Lord knows, Superman is going to be around in humanity's collective consciousness long after we're all dust.
Well, it's a bit complicated, and requires me to take all this way too seriously to explain. My mindset is this: there are two kinds of stories, the authorially directed and the Jungian sort of mythology. Most "high" literature, of course, is carefully crafted by an author and reflects his or her own specific sensibilities, biases, ideology, and so on; in its purest form, it says exactly what the artist wants it to say, period. At the other end of the scale, we have myths and legends, passed down to us for millennia, with no single author, shaped and smoothed out by thousands or even millions of storytellers over the years. These come as close as possible to the idea of a "collective" story, reflecting something dwelling within our communal mindset.
Of course, most stories aren't pure examples of one or the other; even with a single storyteller, a story may reflect some unconscious aspect of their psyche that they didn't intend, for instance. With a lot of comics before Stan and Jack came along (and, in this case, even afterwards) there wasn't as much of an "authorial stamp" on the stories--they were group efforts, the writers and artists regulated to anonymity as much as possible, subsumed by a "house style". Combine that with the fact that no one took them too seriously, and you have a pretty good approximation of the kind of subconscious mythology I mentioned earlier.
Which means, of course, a lot of it is bizarre crap. But it's COMPELLING bizarre crap, and bizarre crap that resonates with us decades later. To look at it another way: those Silver Age Superman stories might seem childish or, as you say, insignificant, but they were rich in imagination. They threw out concepts so wildly that some of them were bound to stick; the good ones lingered and were developed into something more and more interesting over the years. Look at Alan Moore's "Supreme", for instance, or Grant Morrison's current run on All-Star Superman. Both of those are great books that go back and find meaning, retroactively, in the silver age silliness.
I think one of the reasons comics are such a rich medium is that they had decades of this kind of "careless mythology" for later, more sophisticated writers to build on. The Greek myths have a similar childishness to them, in their earliest form at least, but the later Greek playwrights and poets built on them and developed them into works of great meaning and resonance. I think that's similar to what's happening in comics right now. Lord knows, Superman is going to be around in humanity's collective consciousness long after we're all dust.
