Well, you just lost half your audience except for the invective, which I think everyone could understand.
Well, I have to remember the little people. The
non-English majors--however detestable they might be.
I knew what Morrison was going to do before I even opened the book. I obviously didn't know the context, but I could tell it was going to be a permutation of the meta-fictional concept. He loves playing these little games because he thinks it makes him seem out-of-the-box. He also believes that it's possible to hijack human consciousness for the purpose of reshaping reality.
Dedroidify- If you actually do what they say, things happen. Things occur, exactly as described. And we can all do it.
So I decided to put this to use in the comic book I was doing, this thing called The Invisibles. And the idea was to kind of get all this down on paper, and somehow look at it. Not to accept it as reality, but to accept it as purely:
“This is part of human experience. It’s a part of human experience that has been described to us for thousands and thousands of years – but for the last two hundred has been hidden and made occult. For some reason that we don’t understand – but it seems to have something to do with the industrial revolution and corporate culture.”
So these things happen. Magic works. And I found out when I was doing the comic that you could actually make magic happen by writing things, and changing the operating system of the universe. It works, and I’m here to tell you to try it when you go home tonight. Because it fucking works.
And what happens if we all do it? If everyone in this room decides to take control of reality? I’m talking about reality; I’m talking about quantum physics; I’m talking about taking control of things from the quantum level up, from the molecular level up – and it works. This magic works...
...What we’re really dealing with here is, as I say, some kind of operating system that can be hacked, using words. Words seem to be the binding agent of this.. thing. Whatever it is.
If I had to put his brand of idiocy to a label, it would be neo-deconstructionist mysticism.
As for non-linearity and other Morrisonisms: I find nothing principally wrong with a character or entire story that calls into question the concept of linear continuity. The problem is how Morrison feels empowered to express the idea with his typically overindulgent, self-obsessed attitude that asserts some kind of enlightenment, which is immediately belied by an ambiguous and esoteric narrative that follows dull subject matter. That being said, I don't have a problem with Morrison being an idiot. I think he should be free to be an idiot--even though its absolutely malignant to the people who read him (just look at Animalman and his lunacy. Although I haven't talked to him in forever). I just don't want his brand of the bizarrely abstract to permeate the realms of characters I care about. If I had actually stuck with DC through his run on Batman in the last decade, for instance, I would have had a nervous breakdown.
If it weren't for the fact that he got ahold of The Question solely so he could eliminate his objectivist precepts and replace them with something as diametrically opposed to Ayn Rand and Steve Ditko as Spiral Dynamics, I wouldn't even have bothered catching a glimpse of this train wreck. I wasn't kidding when I said his writing puts me to sleep. And the fact that he is unable to write accurately a protagonist character with whom his own personality is incompatible further demonstrates that he lacks the same grace held by Alan Moore when it comes to approaching characters not his own. All he's doing is using The Question and, by extension, Rorschach's charisma as a vehicle for his adopted pet theories.
O'neil and Rucka have done enough damage without Morrison sticking his oar into the discussion of how one could possibly fuck up this character to nth degree.
Watchmen was fundamentally all about chaos theory (as you know) and this seemed to me to be an inoffensive dovetail.
It's not that I think it's inappropriate. I just caught them all so damn easily. He played his entire hand before anyone could place a bet. Now he's going to spend the next half dozen issues explaining exactly what chaos theory, Spiral Dynamics, et al is when it's really not all that relevant to me. I might as well just wait till the last issue and read it for the conclusion.
But look at you! You're offended!
*shrug*
It's Morrison. I mean, he's Scottish for fuck's sake.
