 Draw no conclusions about my religious leanings, this is about literature...
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Jun. 22nd, 2009 @ 12:22 pm 
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I'm reading Lucifer.
On the one hand, I like some aspects of it - the story is interesting, and has some strengths, and some of the characters are good.
On the other hand, it's essentially a spinoff of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and it has glaring deficits relative to its progenitor.
For a start, Gaiman's conception of the varied, intersecting, interlocking mythologies was really very cool. It didn't privilege one over others - there were places of strength, and weakness, and only the Endless were, well, endless in their reach, within their own domains - but even the Endless obeyed certain rules.
Where Lucifer carries this on: there are areas where Lucifer himself is powerless, areas where he is strong, and in many places his strength is in guile rather than sheer force.
Where Lucifer seriously fails: in this, somehow, the God of the Covenant, the Judeo-Christian God, is the creator of absolutely everything, and is greater than all other gods. Which isn't how it worked, in Sandman - God had power in his own domains, though he only made contact through angels, but there were areas where his rule was not.
I find this less awesome, as a pan-mythological construct. (And it weakens the stories, but then, the reason I loved Sandman was more the pan-mythological construct than individual storylines.)
Secondly, on a level more of ideological critique than literary, it seriously fails on issues of subtle racism and sexism and heterosexism. Sexisms first, it's quicker and easier:
Sandman had strong themes of female power, as something deep but a little subversive, in recognition of patriarchal suppression thereof. In Lucifer power is expressed only by sheer force, and the variation between powerful entities is in the way they choose to use their power. There is no subtlety and there's no real variation in sources of the greatest power - the most powerful entities are all descendents of Yahweh - Lucifer, Michael, and [spoiler]. Even in cases where, no, seriously, the Endless would be taking an interest in this... and the Endless are still part of the canon, not least because several of them have made appearances.
It bugs me, because the Endless are not something you can leave out, and some of the things that have happened/are happening midway through the series, where I'm up to, are things that I just can't see Destiny or Death letting happen.
Which means that what we're dealing with is an inability to handle a system of power structures that isn't as patriarchal as the Judaic (because really, Christianity has no part in Lucifer) tradition that Lucifer is being written from, despite the fact that Gaiman, in Sandman, made use of some much better Talmudic learning to draw more complex things even from that. Sandman included the story of Adam's three wives, for example. (But Sandman could handle the concept of something being both myth and truth.)
Abrahamic religion doesn't have to be heavily sexist. (In Christianity's case, I blame Paul. For a lot of things.)
As for the heterosexism: in Sandman, if you were gay, it was an aspect of your character. It might be relevant to the plot, it might not. The characters who had possibly the happiest ending of everyone were lesbians.
In Lucifer, if you're queer, you're in trouble. Even if you're basically straight but have queer tendencies, you're in trouble - but you might not die horribly.
And then we get to race. Oh, boy, do we get to race.
First of all, you have the simple part: the Western, Judeo-Christian metanarrative of the universe is now the dominant one, where in Sandman other systems of faith had equal value, and older mythologies mattered. Which meant that sometimes the important characters in a given story were dark-skinned people who'd never heard of the Judeo-Christian god. In Lucifer, there's an awful preponderance of white people - except for the half-Navajo woman Lucifer needs at one point, except she knows nothing of the traditional faith of her people, Lucifer is just using her for her bloodline.
And something about a fair-haired, fair-skinned man explaining her people's beliefs to her kinda skeeves me, even if he is the Morningstar. That fact made me withhold judgement on Skeevy Race Issues until I read some more, but no, the rest of the series doesn't actually make up for it.
Also, in Sandman, angels were less ethnically white than this - they were pale, yes, but for the angels of the Silver City it was a kind of white-and-silver motif that seemed to me intended not to look that human. Lucifer himself was gold of skin and hair, but that was kind of a similar thing - dark colours don't work for the Lightbringer. Whereas in Lucifer, the angels are all white men. (Up to and including it being specified that Lucifer and Mazikeen were supposedly "rutting", despite the fact that he has no genitalia. Way to reinforce a masculine paradigm.) Gabriel has dark hair.
Meanwhile, Pharamond makes an appearance - Pharamond, who runs to travel, and who was generally presented in Sandman as being Middle Eastern in appearance. It was hinted that he was once a Babylonian god. His skin was brown.
In Lucifer, he has mysteriously become a white guy who looks vaguely tan if the light hits from the right angle.
Meanwhile, the only pantheon I can think offhand to make a significant appearance is some Japanese-seeming gods - who are deceitful, treacherous assholes, willing to throw away principles of honour that are supposedly important to them for really quite petty reasons. Whereas a couple of Viking gods make an appearance and are totes awesome, you understand.
Apart from how racially skeevy this is, it's just shitty writing, because, no. Gods don't have the option of abandoning their principles like that, because that which they represent, that which their believers ascribe to them, defines them. A Japanese god who has lived by the traditional Japanese code of honour will not be capable of renouncing their ties to something, and saying something like: "The dishonor is mine. I embrace it." It does not work like that. A god of a tradition that takes "death before dishonour" literally can not, by the rules of the Sandman canon, act with deliberate and conscious dishonour.
All in all, it's less than I expected.
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| From: | ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) willow |
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June 22nd, 2009 04:25 pm (UTC) |
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*scratches Lucifer off the list of comics to catch up on*
Cause yeah, I was all about the pan-mythology of Sandman and the DC Geek character connectiveness.
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| From: | sami |
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June 22nd, 2009 04:41 pm (UTC) |
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Same. That was most of my love for it, I think - a lot of the individual stories didn't grab me that much.
Lucifer really, REALLY falls down on that. I read through to the end, because, well, the comics were right there and I'd read that far... the ending really, seriously, profoundly fails.
If it had been a comic in its own universe, it would have been reasonably good in terms of storyline, although the increasingly white, increasingly male angels bugged me a lot. (Except somehow, towards the end, Uriel became the Token Black Angel.) But it pretty much abandons any pretense of real relevance for any power other than Yahweh (and his creations), which... no.
Seriously, in Lucifer, apparently a random fallen angel can create an artifact that is more powerful than Destiny of the Endless.
DESTINY. OF THE ENDLESS.
And Fenris is the embodiment of destruction, and there are entities with more power over a madman than Delirium has, and the universe can be unmade without, apparently, the Endless being able to intervene.
Hell, an archangel can have a power that overrules Death of the Endless.
It's all just so very wrong on SO MANY levels.
I actually sort of liked Lucifer, if only because it was the first series I'd seen that didn't vilify Lucifer. And gave him his own protagonist arc.
But after your post, I can see where the author/writer has been going, and I already dislike the [spoilery] girl person, because it just... doesn't seem to make sense. Much.
(the centaur girl story was. I dunno. It made me very very sad and rubbed me up an odd way that I wasn't SURE about. I liked that it didn't end happy, but I didn't like it for some reason. I still don't know why.)
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| From: | sami |
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June 22nd, 2009 04:43 pm (UTC) |
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It doesn't have the completeness it should have, to be a proper story. Stories have rules. The thing about Sandman was that, as a story about stories, it knew that. Gaiman is a hundred times the writer this guy is, for real.
I've seen other things that don't vilify Lucifer, generally better-written ones. ;) Sadly I can't think of any titles offhand outside of his role in Sandman.
well, I never seemed to be able to obtain all the comics from the library, so I never did get to read it all. But it increasingly got 'what? wut? What happened?" near the end. :|
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| From: | sami |
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June 22nd, 2009 04:52 pm (UTC) |
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*cough* pirate bay *cough*
>.>
you can download it? >.>
<.<
Meh, I don't think I want it THAT much to take up computer space.
>.>
*makes mental note*
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| From: | sami |
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June 22nd, 2009 05:49 pm (UTC) |
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*nods*
But it's worth noting that pirates know where to find MANY things that are useful.
I MEAN UH NO WHO MENTIOND DOWNLOADING WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT
Indeed, lots of useful things...
THAT IS, PIRATES ARE EVIL AND BAD AND NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT WHERE YOU CAN GET FREE STUFFS. NATCH.
4chan's /rs/ board is a fount of shiney, shiney things.
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| From: | sami |
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June 22nd, 2009 09:54 pm (UTC) |
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... but it's 4chan...
Also, the Pirate Bay has a *political party*. ;)
I have this vague sense that E. Bear's Promethean Age books don't, but I could never get into her writing on a fannish/emotional level (other than in Shadow Unit), and now, obviously, I'm hesitant to rec her because I kind of doubt her books do much better on the race front than Lucifer does (I never made it past about the initial three chapters of the first Promethean Age book because I got bored and gave it back to the library. I understand there are some problems with it, though).
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