The Replaceable Parts of the Newspaper
Philip Kennicott’s argument that the problem with Watchmen-the-movie is that Watchmen-the-book is actually bad—”pretentious” and “the dialogue stinks”—is interesting, albeit wrongheaded. The movie may or may not be bad, I’ll tell you when I see it, but the book is definitely good.
That said, the really interesting thing about his argument, in the context of some recent discussions, is that it appears in The Washington Post written by a “Washington Post staff writer.” As newspapers vanish, there’s some stuff that it’s not clear we can replace. But I think we can be very confident that if the internet can provide anything, it’s arguments about the merits of comic books and their movie adaptations. And I think it’s somewhat strange to see news organizations holding on to this kind of professionally-produced content at the same time as they’re offering buyouts to people who do the kind of reporting that it’s not clear blogs can replace.
59 Responses to “The Replaceable Parts of the Newspaper”
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March 5th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
CNBC is still doing business news, poor fools. Such a waste. Then again, there’s been so much consolidation and interlocking of directorates that I’m not sure we’re dealing with people who know how to analyze a market and compete in it. They settled for oligopolizing their business and now they can’t understand why it’s not making money.
The milk comes out here, right? Damn thing’s busted!
March 5th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Is it true they’re changing the ending? I hope so – I thought Ozymandias’ big plot made no sense whatever. But a very interesting book regardless.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
But I think we can be very confident that if the internet can provide anything, it’s arguments about the merits of comic books and their movie adaptations.
I always like this kind of understatement.
And I think it’s somewhat strange to see news organizations holding on to this kind of professionally-produced content at the same time as they’re offering buyouts to people who do the kind of reporting that it’s not clear blogs can replace.
Strange from a “greater good” perspective, maybe, but movie tickets are inexpensive – maybe even free for the reviewers – especially compared to investigative reporting. Travel expenses, libel insurance, fact-checking… If you assume for the sake of argument that having an exclusive staff writer working on news or movie reviews is equally valuable, then it’s not strange at all to go with the one that costs less.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Wait a second. Has Jon Stewart started the process of turning CNBC into the punchline of a joke?
Is CNBC becoming a watchword for a mocking expression of doubt?
Liberal A: So do you really think Bin Laden has been cornered in Pakistan?
Liberal B: Yeah right. And CNBC produces real economic news.
Liberals A & B: Ha ha ha chuckle chuckle chuckle
If so, that would be really cool. Let’s make it so.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
But I think we can be very confident that if the internet can provide anything, it’s arguments about the merits of comic books and their movie adaptations.
Arguments aplenty— yes. Engaging, well-written arguments that rise above worshipful fwapping (e.g.: “An engrossing, full embrace of the superhero form. Original, psychologically and intellectually rich and, more frequently than not, profoundly disturbing”)—maybe.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Guess which parts people actually want to read, Yglesias.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Kennicott’s readers are dismantling him, over there. Quite a hoot to read.
I’m glad someone is watching the watchwords.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I’m not sure why the holding on to entertainment reporters is so surprising. After all, those sections of the paper work as a kind of advertising for the news sections. People like fluff, they will be newspapers to get fluff. And having bought newspapers for fluff they will read some of the news articles there as well.
This is most directly true of the comics section. But it is true of cultural criticism and entertainment fluff pieces as well.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Guess which parts people actually want to read, Yglesias.
I don’t know, Tim. Which parts? I assume you’ve got all the answers.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
My brief take on the book: a passionate takedown of super-hero comic books and everything about them.
My impression of the book’s market: fans of super-hero comics.
My take on the people who claim to love both Watchmen and un-iconoclastic super-hero comics: comfused.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
As far as I know, the Cleveland Plain Dealer may be the only major traditional paper that actually has a real-live comic book critic, in the form of Mike Sangiacomo. His comics criticism can be found here. And he’s pretty good.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Matt has said some interesting things about newspapers’ business model but this is not one of them. Newspapers do not exists to provide news any more than TV stations exist to provide quality programing — they exist to sell ads. You need an entertainment section so that you can sell ad space to entertainment companies. This requires some content in order to get people to actually open that section of the paper. Hence the movie reviews. The news wires sell news, Bloomberg sells news, but newspapers sell ad space and provide just enough content to get some people to willingly expose themselves to the ads.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
As for the actual Kennicott article, he does come off as the kind of pretentious would-be intellectual who proves his credentials by what he turns his nose up. (Taking the Lord of the Rings as an example of an obviously failed movie adaptation seems somewhat bizarre). But he does get right the general strengths and weaknesses of the Watchman series (or graphic novel if one prefers, but I read it as a 12 issue maxiseries). The Watchmen was great despite the dialogue and plot. And Kennicott even captures most of what was great about it.
Unfortunately his clearly thinking that over the top criticism reflects positively on himself makes his analysis useless for trying to figure out whether the movie is a success on balance.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Sam Penrose,
Why is it confused to both enjoy an artform and to recognize and enjoy criticism of its excesses?
March 5th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
“Why is it confused to both enjoy an artform and to recognize and enjoy criticism of its excesses?”
I think super-hero fans were by and large able to do that, and the ones that couldn’t never bothered to read WATCHMEN. Unfortunately, the response of other comic creators to the series seemed to be a feeling of contempt and shame for traditional super-hero comics. But instead of inspiring them to abandon super-hero comics, they set about making the books more in line with WATCHMEN’s sensibilities.
Mike
March 5th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Stupid old media! If this was the New Media he wouldn’t be some lowly staff writer but an editor! Sure the jobs the same but the title, well that’s all that matters.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Sam Penrise,
This I don’t get. Isn’t that like saying a baseball fan can’t like Jim Bouton’s Ball Four?
March 5th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
It’s also a lot easier to write a passable entertainment article than a hard news article. I mean, you write a bad review of Watchmen and the worst that happens is that you get 1000 page views. There’s a big difference between good, intellectually engaging film criticism and bad “Hated it!/Loved it!” film criticism. But either way the review isn’t not going to be wrong in the way that a story about the budget, or zoning, or local crime can just be empirically wrong.
I notice the Post bought out all of its old (read: expensive) film critics and now we have film reviews written by young (read: cheap) staffers. It’s a relatively low-risk way for the Post to cut costs.
I also notice the Post entertainment sections are starting to resemble my high-school yearbook – “here’s a story about the reporter’s friends disguised as a slice-of-life piece!” – but that’s a topic for another day.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Well, the best superhero stories are generally anti-superhero, just as the best war novels are generally anti-war. The Dark Knight Returns, for instance, makes it pretty damn clear that Batman and The Joker feed on each other, need each other for the thrills that no other aspect of life can offer.
Watchmen? Absolutely the most amazing takedown of the very idea of “heroes” that I can remember reading. Really thinking about this story, grokking its implications, was probably for me a significant step in growing up.
If someone wants to get snippy about the book, well, hey, it _is_ a super-hero comic. It’s a genre piece, and it has to live within the conventions of the genre even as it deconstructs them. I won’t say that the writing is pure Shakespeare, but lines like “good men like my father and President Truman,” “American love is like Coke in green glass bottles–they don’t make it any more,” and “You know–that’s something else I wasn’t sure would work,” (I’m writing from memory) are pretty damn awesome by any reasonable standard.
Unless your position is that super-hero stories are incapable of being literature by definition (in which case, tell me about the Iliad, wiseguy), I don’t see how you can deny Watchmen standing as a significant work of art.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Lon/MBunge/Andrew: to reiterate, my impression from a casual reading of WM was that Moore portrayed 60’s/70’s superhero comics as unredeemable, which is not at all the same as having excesses in need of critique.
It’s possible I’d rethink this view on a more careful reading, and it’s possible you and others disagree regardless. But cognitive dissonance on the part of WM fans remains my working theory.
Andrew: FWIW, I think there’s some cognitive dissonance in Ball Four fans who are still baseball fans as well (I’m in this part of the Venn diagram myself), though not nearly as much as with WM and comics fans.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Watchmen? Absolutely the most amazing takedown of the very idea of “heroes” that I can remember reading. Really thinking about this story, grokking its implications, was probably for me a significant step in growing up.
Note to readers: please revise my sample at #5 of “worshipful fwapping” with the above-quoted passage.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Craig: there’s no contradiction: I think WM is much better than the stuff it’s attacking (which I grew up loving, BTW).
Dark Knight the Frank Miller 4-parter is my favorite comic ever: a better comic than WM and a lesser moral work (for the same reason: Miller lacks the courage of the moral insights that Moore shares with him, which means that Miller can still write awesome unironic stuff like Superman’s feat in the desert). Haven’t seen the movie, but I have to disagree with you (and most sophisticated comics fans) WRT the hero-villain symbiosis stuff: it’s been done for centuries, and much better, in the literary canon. See e.g. Wm. Shakespeare, collected works of.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
James,
Yep a, “takedown” of something is the same as a “full embrace” of it. Hell of a critical mind on those shoulders.
Hugs,
Craig
March 5th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Brendan:
I always thought that the significance of Ozymandias’ plot was that the world of the imagination of the printed word/image physically manifests into the “real world.” Literally, comic book art kills New York. Which is an interesting concept.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
You can start any time you’re ready.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Some of the responses to Kennicott’s review are pretty (unintentionally) funny:
————
This is such a small review from a small man with a small mind. Yes, it is full of comic book clichés, because it is a comment on our true nature through the graphic novel milieu. You are the worst kind of critic. The movie was not made for you and Snyder’s ability to translate from one medium to another is nothing short of astounding.
————-
And then you have the temerity to continue later in your review with idiotic attacks on Tolkien’s writing.
There comes a point when a writer becomes so successful and so widely admired that ad hominem attacks on his or her work make the reviewer sound like a complete idiot. Tolkein is in that particular pantheon.
There are people who can criticize great writers or artists and get away with it. Salvador Dali often ranted about his hatred for the work of Corbusier, but Dali made great art so I can take him seriously. But petty complaints about the work of 2 giants in their fields, Tolkien and Moore, from someone who has created no great work of art of his own, can only be laughed at and dismissed.
———————-
Turgid? Tolkein was a turgid writer? Clearly, you skipped out on your literature classes. Tolkein’s style of writing was genius and appropriate to the content. You are an idiot.
—————–
And isn’t it fitting for a deconstruction of the comic book genre to work within its own form? Isn’t that what Ulysses did?
——————–
March 5th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
People like reading about the arts, so why wouldn’t newspapers keep writing about them? As it is, the Post is one of only a handful of papers left who employ real tv/movie/music/theater critics anyway. Sure, I could get the same thing on blogs, but here’s the thing about bloggers: they suck, as a general rule. These are people who write for free — if they were any good, they’d find somebody to pay them for it.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
“to reiterate, my impression from a casual reading of WM was that Moore portrayed 60’s/70’s superhero comics as unredeemable, which is not at all the same as having excesses in need of critique.”
Uh, wow. I’m not sure it’s possible to get a worse take on what Moore was actually doing. What Moore later did with 1963 at Image pretty much makes clear that it’s not the super-hero comics of the 60s or 70s that draw his ire. It was…
1. The creative stranglehold Moore felt super-heroes had and have on American comics.
2. The very concept of heroism.
Let me guess, you’ve never been a fan of super-hero comics in the first place?
Mike
March 5th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Also, a newspaper that only had hard news stories and never had articles about movies and such would be very boring to read.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I’ve never understood the weird, cross-handed grip Veidt uses to swing the ashtray. I’ve even tried doing it, and it feels all wrong. What’s up with that?
March 5th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Was that line followed by: “Damn straight, Mac. That dame is trouble!”
Sorry, that line is not awesome, by any standard other than kitsch.
Still, carry on. I have no dog in the comic book wars. I was a bit too old for the comic book revival (being of comic book reading age in the late 60’s and early 70’s when most comic books were still under a type of a Hays Code and when the art work sucked), so I never developed a taste.
Still, I find it sad when self-appointed cultural mandarins dismiss comic books and genre-related literature out of hand. (I’m looking at you, Anthony Lane.)
March 5th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
>people who do the kind of reporting that it’s not clear blogs can replace.
I have a still[!]-ongoing U.S. Attorney scandal and an ex-Senator in the form of George Allen to offer to counter this point.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Kennicott is certainly free to dislike Watchmen, but I also found his criticism of the original graphic novel wrong-headed. Veidt’s plot is described as “an ordinary, race-against-the-doomsday-clock tale of pugilistic heroes and arch-villains.” I don’t even begin to understand this description. It’s certainly not original to Moore, but the plot has some cleverness and it does raise question of whether goals achieved at any cost can still be moral.
But Kennicott accuses Watchmen of “alluding to its own profundity,” of being “incredibly pretentious,” indulging in “intellectual name-dropping,” offering cliché dialogue. He suggests the novel primarily appeals to fanboys and pompous critics. He says the book is “unreadable,” with a “tedious plot” and “cardboard characters.”
Huh? What the hell book has he been reading?
Plus, he describes the pirate comic as “an unrelated comic within a comic,” adding a bit of randomness, which suggests he never understood the way Moore used this element. I’ve always admired the brilliance of the Tales of the Black Freighter, but I guess it went over Kennicott’s head.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
You’re the internet, and you didn’t provide an argument. You just said, ‘the book is definitely good’.
Fail.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
While I understand the point that Sam Penrose is trying to make, if he is correct this also means that if I love Unforgiven, a passionate takedown of Westerns, and a classic Western like Stagecoach, then I must also experience cognitive dissonance.
And there have been other deconstructionist comics since Watchmen (see here), and I don’t think their intent is to also destroy the superhero genre.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Brenden, Yes. they changed it somewhat. Unfortunately, not in a way that makes any more sense.
I thought the ending of the book made some degree of sense. What else could Ozymandias have done that would have had people saying ‘it must be aliens’. A bomb, or something like it, would lead to speculation about terrestrial origins no matter how technologically advanced it appeared. It would be conceivable that a crazed, hyper-intelligent millionaire could have done that. Creating a giant, psychic squid and then teleporting it into NYC? That’s the sort of thing that would make everyone automatically think ‘aliens’.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
It’s weird to argue that newspapers should cut their entertainment sections, when I’d imagine those are still quite profitable in ad revenue generated (hard to place a full page ad for your movie on Craigslist). The guy who wrote the piece that MY is complaining about probably makes approximately $40k a year.
Bill Kristol, George Will, Tom Friedman etc get paid MILLIONS to write their equally worthless columns. And unlike the entertainment section, there are no advertisers trying to subsidize the op-ed page. While there’s little need for articles on the merits of comic-book-movie adaptations to be covered in newspapers, there’s equally little need for political opinion mongering to be covered in newspapers! And unlike comic-book-movie-adaptation coverage, the opinion pages are huge net loss to the papers economically!
It’s easy to point out unpopular (in the blogosphere) columnists like Friedman and Kristol to make this point, but let me be clear: Struggling newspapers shouldn’t pay a premium for ANY columnists, including awesome ones like Paul Krugman They add no value to the newspaper, and the overall quality of thought displayed is roughly equivalent to what’s found on a high-quality blog like HuffPo at a fraction of the cost.
In short: Don’t fire the underpaid staff writers, fire the overpaid, celebrity columnists
March 5th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
On the other hand, would blogs, even the most moronic, like LGF, have given us such a fine economic analysis as the infamous ABC News “if I make more than $250,000 my income after taxes will go down” piece?
Every time some main steam media affiliated entity goes on about the amateurishness of blogs, they need to be reminded of this proud moment in their history. What makes it tragic, of course, is that it’s hardly isolated.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
The idea that “Watchmen” is pretensious with bad dialogue is objectively preposterous.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
I will say that I find Kennicott’s implication that the biggest problem with the Lord of the Rings movies was that they had too much “reverence for the original” to be very amusing.
(I liked the LOTR movies, but Jackson certainly didn’t have too many qualms about departing from the original when necessary. And sometimes when it wasn’t.)
March 5th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
PopView: yes, and I think if you watch Eastwood’s work in particular (notably the progression of the Dirty Harry series), you can see his later work as asserting that his earlier work (and by extension, classic Westerns which foster an uncomplicated admiration of heroic violence) was completely wrong about the morality of violence. In short: I do believe that Unforgiven is saying the classic Western is a lie. (I haven’t seen Stagecoach itself.)
March 5th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Just to clarify my comment above.
“Very amusing” is my reaction to Kennicott’s implication that the LOTR movies had too much “reverence for the original”.
March 5th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Apologies if this shows up twice.
Just clarifying my comment above.
“Very amusing” is how I feel about Kennicott’s implication that the LOTR movies had too much “reverence for the original”.
March 5th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
MBunge: I spent most of my allowance on super hero comics in the late 1970’s. WRT “the very concept of heroism”: I think if we dug into specifically what you meant by that we’d find a lot of overlap w/ what I’m referring to as super-heroism.
See also recent Salon interview w/ Moore, in which he makes comments that I think support each of our views to an extent.
Once again: not presenting myself as a WM expert.
March 5th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
“MBunge: I spent most of my allowance on super hero comics in the late 1970’s.”
That could explain a lot. There was some interesting stuff being done in the 70s with lesser books like MASTER OF KUNG-FU or THE DEFENDERS, but I’ve always seen that as largely a fallow period between the rebirth of the 60s and the re-energization of the 80s.
Mike
March 5th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
That “Tales of the Black Freighter” side-story is an example of why I think the book is pretty overrated. I found it to be about 50% grotesque/50% tedious, and add essentially nothing.
On the other hand, using a secondary story with implicit parallels to the main story is a literary device. Thus, by using a literary device, the comic book becomes literature, and therefore must represent some sort of cultural milestone, right? Wrong.
March 5th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
I dont usually comment, but after reading through so much info i had to say thanks
March 5th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Creating a giant, psychic squid and then teleporting it into NYC? That’s the sort of thing that would make everyone automatically think ‘aliens’.
Except, y’know, biologists, who would note all the similarities to actual squids, and then start examining the remains, and discover that it not only has the same biochemistry and cellular structure as Earth life (with mitochondria, even!), but its DNA proved it was related to Earth squids. Alien origin would be ruled out within days, even with 80s tech (which would probably mean no DNA sequencing, but having all the same biochemistry and cellular organelles would be pretty damn strong all on its own). In order for it not to have detectable kinship with Earth life it would have to *actually not be related to Earth life*, i.e. you’d have to create a completely new form of life from scratch, something that would be quite a challenge even for Dr. M.
In that respect, it was an idiot plot. A modified Earth life form is going to be detectable as such as soon as qualified people start examining the remains, which will be immediately. If you only wanted to start a war, that might be ok; a war could get started in less time than it takes for the experts to finish their analysis. But if you want your alien to *stop* a war, people have to go on believing it. Bad enough that some people think everything including the weather is a Communist plot – once it turns out to have originated on Earth, people will be *sure* it’s somebody’s plot. (Which it was, of course.)
Destroying the remains wouldn’t help either – even if you have no idea what actually happened, the fact that it hit New York proves it was aimed at New York, which makes people immediately as “who wants to destroy New York?”, and in that world, the obvious answer is the Russians. So it’s a mysterious Russian superweapon by default even before anyone finds a scrap of evidence of what the weapon actually is.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Except, y’know, biologists, who would note all the similarities to actual squids, and then start examining the remains, and discover that it not only has the same biochemistry and cellular structure as Earth life (with mitochondria, even!), but its DNA proved it was related to Earth squids. Alien origin would be ruled out within days, even with 80s tech
I’m reading Chris’s objections to Watchmen’s plot out loud to myself in the voice of the Comic Book Guy.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:02 am
The guy thinks LotR was an artistic failure despite winning 17 Oscars. Clearly he’s working out some serious issues with his relationship to geek-culture, and deserves our pity as well as our contempt.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:20 am
Except they’d probably end up hiring the world’s smartest man to run the analysis. Problem solved.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:53 am
The superhero genre peaked with the various incarnatations of Super Friends. The episodes featuring the Wonder Twins are the very pinnacle.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:39 am
daveNYC: Cute, but even then, do you really think he’s smart enough to fool the whole team of scientists working under him?
Either Moore didn’t think about what it would take to really convince scientists that a lifeform was alien, or Moore intended for Veidt not to have thought about it; the latter seems oddly inconsistent with Veidt’s characterization and all the deceit he *does* pull off.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
The guy did call himself Ozymandias, which implies a certain level of unwarranted self-confidence, doesn’t it? To me I’ve always read the conclusion of Watchmen as indicating that Veidt won’t get away with it; that he’s let the fact that he’s the smartest man on earth delude himself into thinking he can solve all the world’s problems with a grand scheme.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
This isn’t intended as a cop-out, just an observation: excerpting Moore’s dialogue and retyping it out of the context of the balloons and art panels, then declaring it either good or bad, is a lot like Steve Allen reading Little Richard lyrics as poetry on the Tonight Show, or deciding that a Broadway show sucks based entirely on a listen to the cast recording CD. Comic book dialogue isn’t intended as prose, and can’t be held to the same standard. This isn’t to say that it shouldn’t be held to any standard–but the failure to acknowledge how words and pictures are created to work together in comics isn’t a failure of the words or the pictures, it’s a failure of the critic.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
some of you are really, really, really, missing the point.
The ending was an obsequious irony. Ozymandias is confronting a cold war that is getting ever hotter, with his conclusion that nuke war was inevitable. So what does he do? He makes his own “nuke” weapon. He didn’t really solve anything–he just assumed control of doomsday. It’s an indictment of pragmatism and realpolitik and what would really happen if genuinely empowered people got involved in society. You’re supposed to contrast Ozymandias’s motivations with Dr Manhattan’s, and compare it with the id-crazy of redneck Rorshah.
Not go hareing off after squid…
March 11th, 2009 at 10:36 am
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