[rant]

I sat in on a church women's book club tonight. It gets weirder.

My mother was actually the one who invited me, because I suggested the book that she picked for them to read this month: Watchmen. That's right, I told a bunch of church ladies to read Watchmen and then discuss it over tea and crumpets. I was invited, along with a couple of my close friends, to serve as kind of a "panel of experts" about the book.

I think Ma Iggy was just worried that all the women would HATE the book, and she wanted me around so I could defend it.

The violence seemed to be a concern. The sexual content was absolutely no problem. Many women reported being "disturbed" by various plotlines -- particularly the Black Freighter side plot. Not surprising. I'm a jaded '90s kid, and even I was disturbed by that story.

One woman (who I've always respected as an elder) absolutely refused to read the book. She simply could not bring herself to take a "comic book" seriously. That pisses me off so much, and I'll tell you why.

When film was first invented, people went to see movies about such wild and fascinating topics as: riding a train, workers leaving a factory, watching a soccer game, or looking into a telescope. These movies were showed in dinky little theaters called "nickelodeons". Film was about as un-artistic during these times as you could imagine, and they appealed to the lowest common denominator.

Then narrative films came along. Birth of a Nation signaled the birth of a potential new art form... and the greatest of these early films came from slapstick comedians like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Finally, the advent of sound -- followed quickly by the advent of color -- and suddenly movies like The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind were hitting theaters.

But if Mrs. Ho-hum had been around back then, she would have REFUSED to see any of these great movies -- because her mind would have been stuck in the "nickelodeon" era, and she'd still believe the stereotypes -- that films were only made for kids and poor people to watch.

It's people like her, who don't take chances and stay safely in their comfort zone, that have stifled creativity and invention ever since people began to create and invent in the first place. It's people like her who starve artists and hold back the evolution of art itself. It's people like her who make it profitable for Hollywood to continue putting out remakes and sequels. Why do you think the same ten plug-and-play screenplays are rereleased every year, and they ALWAYS make a profit? It's people like her who buy the ticket every single time, because they're too afraid to broaden their horizons, too afraid to step outside that bubble of comfort.

Why take a comic book seriously? Well, maybe because it's one of the best books of the 20th century -- full of political allegories, religious debate, philosophical angst and meticulously crafted melodrama -- and it's so dense that you could read it thirty times straight, and still discover something new every time. Maybe because it's the most well-structured graphic novel in human history. Maybe because it could only be effective in comic-book form: in fact, it's the rare kind of work that embodies and defines its own medium.

Maybe because it elevates its medium to the level of true art.

Or maybe I'm just a fan boy. But maybe there's something to it, after all.

I'll tell you right now: I don't want those kind of people watching my movies. I want to stretch the limits of "what's been done". I'm strapping myself into a starship and heading for outer space, and I certainly don't need the extra drag on the wings. Keep an open mind, or keep away.

But I digress.

Most of the group seemed to appreciate having read the book -- because it was so unlike what they usually read. A few of them LOVED it. We had philosophical discussions about all kinds of Watchmen-related topics until the final bell sounded.

What's the point of my story? None. I just wanted to write another update so you people would quit complaining that I never update this blog.

[/rant]