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Jan. 20th, 2009 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI didn't plan to be logging this particular book on this particular day, but sometimes things work out like that. So - this is probably going to be somewhat mixed up with my feelings about today (i.e., OVERWHELMING JOY. Does it really need to be said?), and also a little bit with the great cultural appropriation debates that have been going on all over LJ, and not so much full of objectivity on the book itself.
(But hey, if you wanted reviewerly objectivity, you so would not be reading these posts.)
If things repeat themselves as tragedy and farce, then Minister Faust's From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain is a lot like Watchmen done as a farce, a satiric deconstruction of the superhero genre. And, like most well-done satire, it's funny until it starts to hurt.
The book is written in the format of a psychological book by a therapist who is treating six big-name superheroes, most of which turn out to be huge or appalling (and I have issues with some of them; I do not love the treatment of the female characters, and I am getting very sick of "I'm screwed up because career women make terrible mothers!") And then there's "X-Man", considered the most problematic one of the six because of his tendency to point out social injustices and racism within the superhero-dominated society, which in Dr. Brain's terms becomes RNPN - "Racialized Narcissism Projection Neurosis" - an unfortunate psychological condition that needs to be treated.
It's a dead-on parody of psychobabble self-help books. But, more importantly, it's a dead-on parody of how easy it is to shove things that we don't want to think about under the rug. To blame problems on the problem-oriented lenses of the person who's pointing them out.
When I read this book on vacation, I remember thinking that Dr. Brain and several of the other characters were blind almost to the point of being straw men, that it didn't need to be quite so broadly drawn. A week later, I have absolutely changed my mind about that, because - let's face it - some of the ugliest posts that have gone up over the past week have been awful to the point of satire.
But on the other hand, Dr. Brain is spot on in a lot of places, but it's also a very bleak book. It's a comedy without much hope. And though sometimes - often - I'm also blinded by rosy privileged goggles, and things are a lot worse than I think they are, I can't believe in a lack of hope. Not today.
(But hey, if you wanted reviewerly objectivity, you so would not be reading these posts.)
If things repeat themselves as tragedy and farce, then Minister Faust's From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain is a lot like Watchmen done as a farce, a satiric deconstruction of the superhero genre. And, like most well-done satire, it's funny until it starts to hurt.
The book is written in the format of a psychological book by a therapist who is treating six big-name superheroes, most of which turn out to be huge or appalling (and I have issues with some of them; I do not love the treatment of the female characters, and I am getting very sick of "I'm screwed up because career women make terrible mothers!") And then there's "X-Man", considered the most problematic one of the six because of his tendency to point out social injustices and racism within the superhero-dominated society, which in Dr. Brain's terms becomes RNPN - "Racialized Narcissism Projection Neurosis" - an unfortunate psychological condition that needs to be treated.
It's a dead-on parody of psychobabble self-help books. But, more importantly, it's a dead-on parody of how easy it is to shove things that we don't want to think about under the rug. To blame problems on the problem-oriented lenses of the person who's pointing them out.
When I read this book on vacation, I remember thinking that Dr. Brain and several of the other characters were blind almost to the point of being straw men, that it didn't need to be quite so broadly drawn. A week later, I have absolutely changed my mind about that, because - let's face it - some of the ugliest posts that have gone up over the past week have been awful to the point of satire.
But on the other hand, Dr. Brain is spot on in a lot of places, but it's also a very bleak book. It's a comedy without much hope. And though sometimes - often - I'm also blinded by rosy privileged goggles, and things are a lot worse than I think they are, I can't believe in a lack of hope. Not today.
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Date: 2009-01-20 06:36 pm (UTC)Today's the wrong day for discussing it, I think, but I'd like to at some point. Right now, though, I'm just bouncing in my seat and trying not to fly apart at the seams from squee.
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Date: 2009-01-20 06:41 pm (UTC)