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With pleasure. First up, a historical note. "Shut up, (name)" has its origins in Barbelith with the eternally rewarding "Shut up, Gaiman". This was inspired by Gaiman's imagining of what a mooted remake of Winnie the Pooh, in which Christopher Robin was to be replaced by an African-American girl, might be like. His pastiche is still seen around these parts as a high watermark in near-parodic phoning it in unmatched outside David Caruso in CSI:Miami. Since then, "Shut up, (name)" has generallly been used as a response to enterprises undertaken in the expectation that a fundamentally uncritical fanbase will not only lap it up but then make apreciative tummy-stroking gestures. Playing to the base, essentially, whether knowingly or not.
So, this is pretty obvious base-playing. This is where the "hatred" you cite is quite interesting - because the assumption that a dissenting viewpoint could only be inspired by hatred would only make sense if the only noble emotion one could feel for this book is love, a part of a broader love for its creator much like the love one feels for the child of a dear friend.
This is not a critical approach. It is an uncritical approach, which does Warren Ellis no favours, as it assumes that as a writer he is a performing seal-cum-handjob rather than somebody who might actually be expected to produce interesting or challenging work. This swingballer's critique steadfastly refuses to develop the critical tools to approach a text, in case knowledge might sully the pure love one feels for the writer. Happens a lot with comic books.
So, for example, a child of four would be able to see that the paragraph:
I was new there, back then. All tingly with the notion of being a private detective in the big city. I was twenty-five, still all full of having been the child prodigy at the local desk of the main Pinkerton office in Chicago since I was twenty. But I was going to fly solo, do something less corporate and more real, make a difference in lives.
Is poor prose. Note the repetition of the otiose "all". Note then the clunky and awkward construction "full of having been". Note further the unnatural phrasing of "make a difference in lives". Note also the way this inserteed backstory sits in the text like dropped blancmange on a kitchen floor. Why, one might ask, is the narrator telling us this? What is the justification? Why is McGill giving an imaginary friend an overview of his career right now?
It looks to me like a piece that needed an editor, but has not really been gone over very firmly, and has probably not been so on the assumption that it will sell regardless to a small but dedicated group of, for want of a better word, fans, who will actively resist critical reading, by themselves or others, and instead will clap their hands in delight whenever the familiar marks are hit. A politician with a poo-related vice - clap clap. A conspiracy theory - clap clap. Some grown-up swears - clap clap. Dildos - a flock of strange birds struggles to fly free of their constraining wrists.
It's a shame, really, because I can absolutely understand Eliis' apparent frustration at, ultimately, not getting the kind of critical appreciation he may feel he deserves - and, oddly, I think his better comics work deserves much more and much more able critical attention than they receive.
So, in this case "Shut up, Ellis" can be read as "Oh, dear. Ellis is in the comfort zone, and is probably going to get a lot of unfortunate reinforcement to remain there".
Mark.E - It's published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins in the US, which is ultimately owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. |
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