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One of these days I'm gonna figure out how to write short reviews, but it's not today. This post concerns the book, not the movie. I have yet to see the film but from what I've read the two are so drastically different that if you've only seen the movie and want to read the book you should be advised to avoid spoilers (and vice versa). But there are no big spoilers here.
I have been noticing and resenting the common attitude among media consumers that one of the biggest crimes a story can commit is "taking itself too seriously." I can hardly claim not to have ever said this, but I think it's a lazy way to dismiss the quality of something. This type of preference I'm sure partly makes The Avengers the most popular of the Marvel films because it can't go three minutes without trying to make us laugh (at least it succeeds very well at doing so), but it makes me feel increasingly like I'm trying to watch a movie in a classroom where there's always that one guy who can't let a dramatic moment go without making some crack about it.
Don't get me wrong: Finding unexpected or unintentional humor in something is a great thing. I've had readers of my own writing say they were amused in places where I hadn't really intended it to be funny, but it didn't bother me that people came away with something I didn't put into it. It's the implication that certain topics or genres don't merit much drama that has a feel of laughing at the material rather than with it. It projects one's own inability to be invested in the story (because of its failures or their own preferences or a low amount of sympathy for fictional people or for whatever reason) as this unacceptability for anything to be unusual without automatically being comical. What I would rather people be praising about stories that "don't take themselves too seriously" is instead that they manage some levity without compromising our compassion for the characters. There are some humorous moments in Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter and it flirts well with the expectations we bring to a vampire story, but the first thing you need to know is that it's not a parody. It is Abe Lincoln's heroic and tragic life, played straight, with vampires on the side. And I don't want to build it up, dammit, but I was not prepared for good it is.
( Judge us not equally, Abraham. We may all deserve hell, but some of us deserve it sooner than others. )
I have been noticing and resenting the common attitude among media consumers that one of the biggest crimes a story can commit is "taking itself too seriously." I can hardly claim not to have ever said this, but I think it's a lazy way to dismiss the quality of something. This type of preference I'm sure partly makes The Avengers the most popular of the Marvel films because it can't go three minutes without trying to make us laugh (at least it succeeds very well at doing so), but it makes me feel increasingly like I'm trying to watch a movie in a classroom where there's always that one guy who can't let a dramatic moment go without making some crack about it.
Don't get me wrong: Finding unexpected or unintentional humor in something is a great thing. I've had readers of my own writing say they were amused in places where I hadn't really intended it to be funny, but it didn't bother me that people came away with something I didn't put into it. It's the implication that certain topics or genres don't merit much drama that has a feel of laughing at the material rather than with it. It projects one's own inability to be invested in the story (because of its failures or their own preferences or a low amount of sympathy for fictional people or for whatever reason) as this unacceptability for anything to be unusual without automatically being comical. What I would rather people be praising about stories that "don't take themselves too seriously" is instead that they manage some levity without compromising our compassion for the characters. There are some humorous moments in Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter and it flirts well with the expectations we bring to a vampire story, but the first thing you need to know is that it's not a parody. It is Abe Lincoln's heroic and tragic life, played straight, with vampires on the side. And I don't want to build it up, dammit, but I was not prepared for good it is.
( Judge us not equally, Abraham. We may all deserve hell, but some of us deserve it sooner than others. )
