grendelkhan (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} grendelkhan) wrote,@ 2005-02-12 23:00:00 |
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in which i overanalyze 'the sandman' and exclaim, "i can't believe it's not yahweh!"
Well, having downloaded a copy of "Season of Mists", book four of The Sandman, because I couldn't find the right edition at Borders and damn it, I wanted to know what happens next, I have some answers to my questions.
As of issue 22: Okay, "Lucifer" has been referred to as more powerful than Dream. (Matthew the Raven asks Dream: "[Lucifer is] more powerful than you?" "Oh yes, by far.") Further, it's said that Dream is in a sense not indestructible, that his essence can be destroyed, and another incarnation will appear. So that changes things a bit, I suppose. But it's said that there's a "Creator", the implicit offscreen Judeo-Christian Yahweh, though his name's tastefully not given. (Pfah! Preacher did better than tacitly accept Christianity as a backdrop!) And what's this lip-service paid to inconceivably weird aliens that still are subject to the same Endless forces?
But no, we get the standard "Christianity with the numbers filed down" explanation. Once upon a time, there was a place that was not a place. It had many names: Avernus, Gehenna, Tartarus, Hades, Abaddon, Sheol... It was an inferno of pain and flame and ice, where every nightmare had long since come true. Okay, so, unlike gods, Hell is pretty much as endless as Dream is. So that means it exists across all cultures and all species. (If we had separate hells for all mutually incompatible sapients, we can't have the human one be overly powerful, and we can't have that many near-omniscient devils skittering about. Thus, there's one Hell, one Lucifer, as there's one Dream.)
So, what's his explanation? That the Christians magically got it right and imagined the reality of Hell, of Lucifer, of the offscreen "I Can't Believe It's Not Yahweh!"? Of Cain, of Abel, of... well, I could go on. But for someone who goes to great lengths to show the Endless perceived differently by Martians, by cats, it's kind of disappointing that he cribs his mythology from Christianity while pretending that it's universal. And how, oh how did we get from "the gods themselves die" to some offscreen "Creator" greater than any of the Endless? And if it's a Christian hell, why aren't all the gays roasting in it, hmm? It bespeaks a certain intellectual laziness on Gaiman's part that he slaps together old Christian imagery with the morality of a modern liberal.
None of what I mentioned yesterday is bothering me terribly much. It's just nitpicking, and I'm not entirely sure that there's a better way of doing it. But when Dream says "Since the beginning---He was the Creator's finest creation [...] Saving only his Creator, he is, perhaps, the most powerful being there is..." about Lucifer, I was very, very disappointed. I was even more disappointed when Lucifer said that Cain would not be harmed because he was "under the protection of one far greater than the Lord of Dreams", and started quoting the Bible.
Though it was ever so slightly redeemed when it was implied that only the evil portion of folks end up there, not the unbelievers, as shown in the bible. It really is a modern-liberal version of Hell, sort of like the one we saw in The Frighteners. Martians are not addressed. (I do not say this lightly; J'onn J'onzz saw Dream as "Lord L'Zoril". So where do bad Martians go when they die? Bad cats? Cats who don't believe in Jesus?)
Perhaps the Companion I scored will explain. Perhaps I will write Neil Gaiman a letter, and ask him why, oh why he did this?
Damn. I sound like such a scrooge. I'm enjoying it immensely, you know. This is what happens when I think too damn much. Here, I'll mention something nifty. There are seven Endless. Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire and now Despair and Delirium (plus a missing, unnamed 'brother'). Destiny, Dream and the unknown seventh manifest as male to human eyes, Death, Despair and Delirium as female. And the seventh? Well, Desire's kinda androgynous. I thought the symmetry was clever.
As of issue 23: Oh. Hell is self-inflicted by societal guilt. So... the self-hating Catholic who stubs his toe and says "Jesus fuck!", then has a heart attack before he can make it to Confession... he's in hell. But the batshit-loco serial murderer who knows he's just freeing those poor children from their dirty, dirty bodies, he's heaven-bound.
But these are border cases, pathological cases. Having heaven and hell be self-inflicted makes as much sense as anything, and it's the only conceivable way for them to be as permanent as the Endless. (Though is this, or its unseen heavenly mirror, really where Death brings people? Where do atheists go? Animals? We've seen that Dream appears to cats; why not Death?) And there's still that pesky problem of the singular Creator. Why state that gods and beliefs are subject to human forgetting, then place the Judeo-Christian god above that? (And he is the J-C god, what with Cain and Abel, and Lucifer.) Why make him ten billion years old, when there were none to believe in him? Pfah.
As of issue 24: Ah, other gods start appearing. I'll wait until I've read the whole thing to sort it out. (But isn't Thor's teensy hammer just the cutest?)
As of the end: Well, I suppose he's pulled it off. This whole mess has been a stream-of-consciousness rant which may not make sense even to me in twenty-four hours. And y'know what? The author's pulled it off to my satisfaction. It stands up to the degree of scrutiny I wish to apply, and as a damn-fine-yarn, it's touched me deeply. So I'm copping out and pretending that it's all been properly and consistently explained, because I'm tired of picking it apart and trying to make it stand up to serious examination.
Well, having downloaded a copy of "Season of Mists", book four of The Sandman, because I couldn't find the right edition at Borders and damn it, I wanted to know what happens next, I have some answers to my questions.
As of issue 22: Okay, "Lucifer" has been referred to as more powerful than Dream. (Matthew the Raven asks Dream: "[Lucifer is] more powerful than you?" "Oh yes, by far.") Further, it's said that Dream is in a sense not indestructible, that his essence can be destroyed, and another incarnation will appear. So that changes things a bit, I suppose. But it's said that there's a "Creator", the implicit offscreen Judeo-Christian Yahweh, though his name's tastefully not given. (Pfah! Preacher did better than tacitly accept Christianity as a backdrop!) And what's this lip-service paid to inconceivably weird aliens that still are subject to the same Endless forces?
But no, we get the standard "Christianity with the numbers filed down" explanation. Once upon a time, there was a place that was not a place. It had many names: Avernus, Gehenna, Tartarus, Hades, Abaddon, Sheol... It was an inferno of pain and flame and ice, where every nightmare had long since come true. Okay, so, unlike gods, Hell is pretty much as endless as Dream is. So that means it exists across all cultures and all species. (If we had separate hells for all mutually incompatible sapients, we can't have the human one be overly powerful, and we can't have that many near-omniscient devils skittering about. Thus, there's one Hell, one Lucifer, as there's one Dream.)
So, what's his explanation? That the Christians magically got it right and imagined the reality of Hell, of Lucifer, of the offscreen "I Can't Believe It's Not Yahweh!"? Of Cain, of Abel, of... well, I could go on. But for someone who goes to great lengths to show the Endless perceived differently by Martians, by cats, it's kind of disappointing that he cribs his mythology from Christianity while pretending that it's universal. And how, oh how did we get from "the gods themselves die" to some offscreen "Creator" greater than any of the Endless? And if it's a Christian hell, why aren't all the gays roasting in it, hmm? It bespeaks a certain intellectual laziness on Gaiman's part that he slaps together old Christian imagery with the morality of a modern liberal.
None of what I mentioned yesterday is bothering me terribly much. It's just nitpicking, and I'm not entirely sure that there's a better way of doing it. But when Dream says "Since the beginning---He was the Creator's finest creation [...] Saving only his Creator, he is, perhaps, the most powerful being there is..." about Lucifer, I was very, very disappointed. I was even more disappointed when Lucifer said that Cain would not be harmed because he was "under the protection of one far greater than the Lord of Dreams", and started quoting the Bible.
Though it was ever so slightly redeemed when it was implied that only the evil portion of folks end up there, not the unbelievers, as shown in the bible. It really is a modern-liberal version of Hell, sort of like the one we saw in The Frighteners. Martians are not addressed. (I do not say this lightly; J'onn J'onzz saw Dream as "Lord L'Zoril". So where do bad Martians go when they die? Bad cats? Cats who don't believe in Jesus?)
Perhaps the Companion I scored will explain. Perhaps I will write Neil Gaiman a letter, and ask him why, oh why he did this?
Damn. I sound like such a scrooge. I'm enjoying it immensely, you know. This is what happens when I think too damn much. Here, I'll mention something nifty. There are seven Endless. Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire and now Despair and Delirium (plus a missing, unnamed 'brother'). Destiny, Dream and the unknown seventh manifest as male to human eyes, Death, Despair and Delirium as female. And the seventh? Well, Desire's kinda androgynous. I thought the symmetry was clever.
As of issue 23: Oh. Hell is self-inflicted by societal guilt. So... the self-hating Catholic who stubs his toe and says "Jesus fuck!", then has a heart attack before he can make it to Confession... he's in hell. But the batshit-loco serial murderer who knows he's just freeing those poor children from their dirty, dirty bodies, he's heaven-bound.
But these are border cases, pathological cases. Having heaven and hell be self-inflicted makes as much sense as anything, and it's the only conceivable way for them to be as permanent as the Endless. (Though is this, or its unseen heavenly mirror, really where Death brings people? Where do atheists go? Animals? We've seen that Dream appears to cats; why not Death?) And there's still that pesky problem of the singular Creator. Why state that gods and beliefs are subject to human forgetting, then place the Judeo-Christian god above that? (And he is the J-C god, what with Cain and Abel, and Lucifer.) Why make him ten billion years old, when there were none to believe in him? Pfah.
As of issue 24: Ah, other gods start appearing. I'll wait until I've read the whole thing to sort it out. (But isn't Thor's teensy hammer just the cutest?)
As of the end: Well, I suppose he's pulled it off. This whole mess has been a stream-of-consciousness rant which may not make sense even to me in twenty-four hours. And y'know what? The author's pulled it off to my satisfaction. It stands up to the degree of scrutiny I wish to apply, and as a damn-fine-yarn, it's touched me deeply. So I'm copping out and pretending that it's all been properly and consistently explained, because I'm tired of picking it apart and trying to make it stand up to serious examination.
