And Rosebud was his sled? What a gyp!

[seriousfic]

So the latest non-news is that the WB may be making a Sandman TV series and that Eric Kripke may be involved. Naturally, feminists are upset, since Kripke might not be able to get across the raw equality of a story in which the hero sends his lover to hell for a thousand years for rejecting him, with the narrative then focusing on how sad it is when she rejects him afterward.



I get that at the time it came out, it was revolutionary, and it still does hold up very well today, but if it came out next month, Girlwonder.org would be beating it like a rented mule.

More important, to me at any rate, is that I think with Supernatural, Kripke pulled off one of the greatest long-form narratives in modern television. I know even the SPN fans don't agree with me on that, but I've kept my expectations realistic... it's a show on the CW with middling ratings, you're not going to get to see an army of demons laying waste to New York... and it's been damn good television. Female characters aside, it's one of the most consistently entertaining genre shows out there, and even if it rarely achieves the heights of Lost or BSG, those are shows that people enjoyed because they were writing checks their asses couldn't cash. I mean, would you really enjoy BSG so much now, knowing that the point of the Opera House is that Hera's going to randomly wander off for about two seconds, or that the Big Mega Ultra Secret Super Final Cylon is Tigh's drunk wife?

So for me anyway, all Kripke can do is make me care. If he fucks up, at least I get to enjoy a bunch of delicious, delicious tears.

Comments

[pendown.livejournal.com]

Being fair to Gaiman, the narrative is explicit on two points. Firstly that Dream is a fucked up mess. Secondly that she could have walked out of hell at any point if she'd realised she could and wanted to. (Not that I understand how that was meant to work with all the demons in the way - but that's afterlife logic.)

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I think Dream is pretty much treated as Mr. Awesome in the narrative. Just about every woman in canon wants him, there's a huge to-do about his funeral, and his killer (although she had pretty much every reason in the world to act as she acted) is threatened and decried by everyone in the text, including her accomplice and her own son.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

He is the anthropomorphic personification of stories: you could read that as how everyone does hate stories from time to time,but in the end, really does like them, and would care about them and their loss.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

That's kind of a cop-out, don't you think? If it were the case, then the ending should be telling better stories, not turning a blind eye to the flaws of the old stories.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

So maybe that's what getting the new personification of stories is? The series is definitely problematic, but I think this works nicely as subtext.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

But the first thing he does is chew out his mother for having a nervous breakdown. If your interpretation was right, he would treat her with the kindness and respect that the old Dream didn't show her.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

You haven't discussed Sandman (or a lot of Gaiman's works) with that many feminists who have come across it in the last few years, have you?

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I know it's refreshing to have a comic with women who aren't dressed in superheroic Hooters uniforms, but to me at any rate, it wasn't all that. I mean, the transgendered woman who dies for a cisgendered woman? After she's unable to use female magic because she wasn't born a woman?

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Which are only a few of the things most women I've encountered who've read it have criticized it for.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I think I'm mixed up. You're saying I've misrepresented feminist fans as not criticizing Sandman enough?