Maybe the greatest moment in television history.
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Crisis on Infinite Earths #4
Rereading some classic event comics for a couple things. Was really struck by this page from Issue 4 of Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez. The layout has such a great sense of movement, carried through the descending panels of Pariah, the character cursed to watch universe after universe die (and you thought we had it bad).
Meanwhile to his left and right we see Earths 1 and 2 being more and more devoured by anti-matter (which is never not disturbing), while the heroes of those worlds look on. Their powerlessness is demonstrated both in their posture – recoiling in shock – and the relatively tiny panel sizes they inhabit. This is a page that is telling you all is lost.
(These early issues often give the destruction its maximum possible punch by depicting it through
a series of slowly worsening panels. They’re
like a How To book for depicting a process dramatically in comics.)
The Tragic Thing
Ad Astra director James Gray, profiled in The New Yorker:
“He used to memorize the worst paragraphs of his reviews—the criticism stoked some inner furnace that drove him to become a Great Man. Now he didn’t look at the stuff. He had found a new creative lodestar in the time he spent with his wife and kids. As the brass rings had fallen away, however, he hadn’t lost his drive to make beautiful movies, to touch an audience, because—why? Gray had puzzled over that, until he decided that the answer was, quite simply, that he cared. Caring for other people was the essential human privilege, he now believed. Caring was what both artists and audiences put into an exquisite work. The tragic thing, he decided, wasn’t caring about something no one else seemed to appreciate; the tragic thing was when you stopped caring, got too cynical, grew afraid to let yourself be seen to care and be cared for. “The key is to get more personal, not less,” Gray told me.
Shazam and the Power of Childhood Trauma
While I realize Avengers is pretty much the only thing super hero trending right now, last week I had the chance to finally see Shazam – a movie I had almost no confidence in, as I just couldn’t quite crack the idea.
But I was really surprised at the quality of Henry Gayden’s script, particularly in the way it creates such a strong (and painful) parallel between Billy Batson/Shazam and his nemesis Doctor Sivana. Both Billy and Sivana faced terrible experiences of rejection as children. And that experience motivated Sivana to find a way back to the Rock of Eternity and the O.G. Shazam, who declared him unworthy, to seek revenge first on him and then on his family, which was pretty much just as awful to him.
Meanwhile, Billy’s response was to hunt for the mother that abandoned him, which pretty much everyone around him said was um, maybe not the best idea, given that she basically left him wandering around a carnival at age what, 7? But when he finally finds her, there’s this incredible moment where instead of asking what happened or why she abandoned him – At a carnival? Really Mom? Are clowns not already scary enough? – he instead apologizes. “You know I wasn’t trying to run away,” he tells her, in this plaintive insistent way that suggests he really has spent his whole life worrying about what he’s put his mother through.
It’s devastating and also such a great insight into what we do with childhood trauma, the way that the sheer mystery of it – Why didn’t anyone ever want to play with me? Why did my father always yell at me? Why did that teacher always mock me? – causes us to fill in the blanks by blaming ourselves. Their responses make no sense, e.g. parents do not leave children at carnivals, therefore it must be our fault.
It’s understated in the film, we get just that one line and we move on, but that’s all that we need. Or at least me, anyway.
Please, talk amongst yourselves.
Maybe there’s something in there about the difference between a hero and a villain in stories, too. A villain takes trauma, blames it on others but ultimately needs to learn to accept the horrors of his past.
A hero takes trauma, blames it on themselves and ultimately needs to learn it wasn’t right and it wasn’t their fault.
Great Scene: The Station Agent
This morning as part of research for a project I was re-watching The Station Agent (w/d Tom McCarthy, 2003). It has so many strong, unusually quiet moments in it.
And I came upon this little moment where protagonist Fin (Peter Dinklage) is approached by a little girl. I just love the course of the dialogue; it feels so true to the way children act and think.
Cleo walks up as Fin inspects the underside of a train car.
Cleo: Hey what are you doing?
Fin: I’m searching the trucks for the company name.
Cleo: Well these are trains not trucks.
Fin: The wheels on the trains are called the trucks.
Cleo: What grade are you in?
Fin: I’m finished with school.
Cleo: Are you a midget?
Fin: No.
Cleo: Where do you live?
Fin: In the depot.
Cleo: My name’s Cleo.
Fin: My name’s Fin.
Cleo: Bye.
Cleo runs off.
You gotta love a scene that ends with a child randomly running off.