Matt Fraction posted this on Tumblr yesterday on the subject of Fargo, the 1996 Coen Brothers movie about a kidnapping in Minnesota, and the subsequent investigation by a heavily-pregnant police sheriff Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand). He (quite rightly, in my opinion) defends the film and the filmmakers from the charges of being ‘arch’ and ‘mocking’. In reaction, here are some thoughts of my own.

(If you haven’t seen Fargo, go see it, because the following piece – like Matt Fraction’s – contains spoilers. And also because it’s a really good film that everyone should see.)

Formally, the film works in the same way as an episode of Columbo, i.e. it is one of those police procedurals in which we, the audience, see every detail of the crime, and know ‘whodunnit’ before the detective, and get to watch the detective figure it out. But whereas Columbo is a classical detective in other respects – he’s near-supernaturally insightful, always one jump ahead – Marge Gunderson is hardly a detective at all. Or rather, she’s a detective in a way that is far more like real life. She’s never one jump ahead. She amasses evidence and she follows it. She doesn’t display any leaps of insight. She doesn’t really deduce anything. There is a famous bit where she corrects another officer’s mistake (the “I’m not sure I agree with you 100% on your police work there Lou” bit) but it isn’t played to emphasize her special abilities. On the contrary, it emphasizes her basic competence over the routine incompetence of one of her colleagues. In other respects, she doesn’t distinguish herself. At first, she makes nothing of Jerry Lundergaard’s attempts to fabricate licence plates, despite being left alone with – and noticing – the pad on which he’s doing it. And why should she? She has no context that would make any reasonable person see it was significant. The usual leap of imagination of the detective is a contrivance. It’s actually the writer feeding insights to the detective at strategic moments in order to make the plot work. She sees the framed photo of Mrs Lundergaard in Jerry’s office and there is no standard cop-eureka moment when, as she stares at the photo, she suddenly puts things together. Why should there be? She doesn’t know Mrs Lundergaard is missing yet. She catches Grimsrud not because she tracks him down but because she happens to drive past his hideout and recognise the ‘tan Ciera’ parked outside.

The film resolutely resists depicting Marge as special in any way. She isn’t particularly clever, insightful, glamorous or charismatic. Indeed, by conventional standards (by which I mean standard conventional depictions, which the movie flouts and undermines) she looks the opposite of all these things. Extraordinarily unextraordinary, she is simply competent at her job, fond of her husband, polite to her colleagues, etc. Moreover, she is vulnerable to the frailties of the flesh in ways that we real people know full well (even if we don’t all know what it’s like to be pregnant) but to which movie people routinely display superhuman indifference.…

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You know the drill, I’m sure. Digital codes redeemable at this url for the first person to try them.

Chew #54

A twenty-page fridging as this book continues its long march towards an ending that should have come at least fourteen issues ago.

Saga #33

Another “oh, right, those guys” issue for me, although it reintroduced its characters well enough to actually be followable, which is nice. I’m firmly out of love with this book, though, and honestly considering dropping it and waiting for it to all be over and go on some eventual big Comixology sale. It occurs to me that it’s basically become A Song of Ice and Fire with all the attendant problems – too many characters who are spread out over too many settings, and switching among them in single point-of-view chapters that feel like they take too long. Ah well. Loved the “writer gets first byline” gag though.

All-New All-Different Avengers #4

There’s a cute “political correctness” gag here, but for the most part the “all-different” part of this title is an increasingly bleak joke. This is ruthless traditionalism with a diverse cast. Fair enough, and probably something that should exist, but hard to get excited about. Al Ewing’s been doing the same vibe with a much bolder and fresher tone for years now. I do like Thor’s characterization, but ironically the final cliffhanger, in which Iron Man wonders if she’s “really who she claims to be,” is really one that only would have worked during the interminable “who is the new Thor” plot. Instead the answer to “why is she acting like she’s not immortal” is straightforward, even if it’s the first time she’s actually seemed like an interesting character.

Digital code: THM8ZFRF8513

Black Magick #4

This picks up, with the cop book/occult thriller balance feeling well-struck. It still feels more style than substance, and I’m hoping things settle in the arc-ender (presumably before it takes a break so Nicola Scott can catch up, as she’s not a monthly artist). On the whole this remains a bit of a disappointment to me – not least because I remember years ago when Rucka said he was waiting for Nicola Scott to be free to do another book of Queen and Country, so it’s especially frustrating to see them not quite clicking into high gear on a great premise instead of that. But I’m holding out hope.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #3

This continues to fall slightly short of outright sparkling, and there’s something a little depressing about seeing Ms. Marvel reverse engineered into a formula, even if it is well-executed. But this is probably the best issue yet, and it’s starting to become clear how this is going to work as an ongoing book. The first half is a bit weak – the fight scene is muddy and hard to follow, depending on a “everyone’s chasing the ball that gets tossed around” sequence in a space that isn’t visually clear enough to support that.…

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As the science fiction community mutters “I thought MidAmericon said nominations would open in early January” with baited breath, I note that certain fascist pricks have begun to ramp up their performative chortling. So I figured “why not write a mildly trolling open letter to someone else entirely?”

Ms. Paulk et al:

I note with some bemusement your efforts to reform the Sad Puppies movement from its oft-criticized 2015 form, stripping away its overtly conservative trappings, widening it to a ten-item recommendation list, et cetera. By and large, I have to admit, these seem like, if not strictly speaking good things, at least less bad things. So thank you for your efforts to be less odious than your predecessors. It’s genuinely appreciated. That said, there’s one rather large issue that you don’t seem to have addressed, and that I’d like to raise.

Simply put, why are you doing this?

I mean, I see your nominal explanation on the site – to increase Hugo participation. And while I think your assessment of the field is rubbish (science fiction, at least as a literary genre, that being the primary focus of the Hugos, is in no way “a field loved by millions,” and five thousand voters is absolutely massive given the current state of the publishing industry – and not just SF/F publishing), sure, I guess that’s a reasonable motivation. What’s rather less clear to me is why on Earth you’re adopting a brand that’s primarily known for its previous decision to actively ally with a fascist bully to do so.

Yes, I’m talking about Vox Day, who you so eloquently dismiss as “not our circus, not our monkey” and suggest that people “talk to him about whatever problem you have with him.” But, well, I have talked to him about many of the problems I have with him, and anyway, my problem here isn’t with him, it’s with the Sad Puppies movement that you’re actively positioning yourself as the direct successor to and that movement’s past relationship with an abusive, bullying troll motivated primarily by his passionate vanity and even more passionate hatred for women, ethnic minorities, and LGBT people.

Because let’s be very clear here: in both 2014 and 2015, your predecessors in running Sad Puppies made an active and conscious decision to ally with Vox Day. Indeed, that’s pretty much what your movement is best known for at this point – getting spectacularly hijacked by him last year such that you didn’t actually have a meaningful impact on the vote because his sidecar movement outperformed yours such that anyone who hadn’t looked closely at the precise nature of the fan politics mistook your movement ofr his. That’s your best-known accomplishment: allying with a sadistic troll who proved better at your own game than you were.

Now, of course, you’re not wrong in your basic sense that the sadistic troll’s moment has passed. Vox’s main talent in life is that he can marshall around five hundred people. Of course, given that Vox is steeped in GamerGate tactics, this means five hundred accounts, not five hundred actual flesh and blood people who might plausibly show up at MidAmericon II and affect any business that actually takes place at the con.…

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The Radio Times is reporting the not particularly suprising news that Series 10 of Doctor Who will kick off with a 2016 Christmas special and then run in 2017 and be Steven Moffat’s final series, and that Chris Chibnall will be taking over for Series 11 in 2018.

My immediate reaction is roughly that Chibnall is neither my first nor last choice, and that whatever my reservations, it’s hard to seriously argue that he’s not earned his shot. I can’t honestly say he’s written a story I consider great, or even very good, but in every case the flaws are generally ones of slight sloppiness – the sort of thing that could be worked out over another draft or two. Which is to say that I think he can be good, even if I’m not sure he’s going to be. Certainly I can’t think of anyone who’s inherited as strong a stable of writers as he’s going to be getting. So while I can’t imagine the next era of Doctor Who will be one I love as much as I’ve loved the past six years, well, that’s how loving an era of Doctor Who works.

Anyway, here’s your open thread. May the Captchas be kind to you.…

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When I cover it in Last War in Albion, I am inevitably going to have to suggest that Phonogram was a magical ritual to murder David Bowie. Part of this will be a straightforward and well-reasoned technical argument based on The Immaterial Girl’s meticulously rendered and devastatingly well-structured invocation of Michael Jackson’s death, and another part will be the fact that Bowie’s cancer diagnosis would have come right around when WicDiv #1 hit, with Lucifer’s death literally coming ten days after the debut of “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)” (“Sue, the clinic called /The x-ray’s fine / I brought you home,” although for the purposes of Phonogram the lyric you’d want is “Sue, I found your note / That you wrote last night / It can’t be right / You went with him”), and of course a big part is just going to be a big influence-based dig through the primary source material in a slightly self-parodic attempt to factually evaluate Gillen’s claims about Kenickie.

But that’s the content, which is entirely different from the reason I’m going to do this ridiculous but necessary thing, which is simply that in issue #2 of The Immaterial Girl Gillen says, and I quote, that he was “never a fan” of Placebo and that he “trolled their fanbase outrageously back in my evil days” before demonstrating that he’s referring to the present day by calling their debut their best album. And, look, I’m sorry, but there’s a girl named Mink I was trying to impress one year in college who’d sold half her personality to the devil for power (or something like that), and who introduced me to both Placebo and Bowie, and there are loyalties that never die, so Kickstarter backer or no, this does not stand. (Mink went on to marry the lead singer of a goth band, of course.)

Anyway, Meds is their best album, but let’s talk about their cover of “Running Up That Hill,” because it’s brilliant and deserved its overexposure, and also will probably annoy him more. The trick, of course, is that it’s a stupidly audacious choice of songs. Of course you can’t fucking improve on “Running Up That Hill.” It’s “Running Up That Hill.” It is literally the most perfect thing ever recorded. That’s the point. Placebo’s version of it is a desecration. It’s a staggeringly reverential desecration – a point demonstrated by the nine minute live cut, which fades in the ethereal synth line for a decadent minute and four seconds of anticipation before finally dropping the hook before building to a screaming crescendo in which Molko is audibly hurling himself at the very limits of his gender and sexuality, smashing himself bloody upon a prison whose walls are horribly and awfully more than flesh. (Note the addition of “God” before “tell me we both matter,” which slides in almost inadvertently, as though Molko could not stop himself from praying.)

But it’s a desecration never the less. It has to be.…

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