I liked the Sandman show BETTER?
Dec. 1st, 2022 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeRogan: Vaaaaaaxpooooosting!
Our roommates have been watching the Sandman show. Normally I wander in and out at best while they watch stuff, but Sandman has drawn me in. Which is crazy, because: I don't like the Sandman comic. I like the show better, WAY better, and that NEVER HAPPENS. Why?
So a while back, I went to the library, grabbed the volume the show was on, and compared and contrasted. And not only did I realize why I liked the show better, I realized why I have so much trouble connecting to Gaiman's work!
I have read a lot of Gaiman, trying to make myself like him. He is a beloved author, and I didn't get why I didn't like him. I've read most of Sandman, all of American Gods, Neverwhere, Good Omens, Coraline, Graveyard Book, and at least one of his books of short stories, and the only one I really liked was Graveyard Book... and it is the exception that proves the rule.
See, in most of those books, none of Gaiman's characters really seem to connect or care about each other. In Sandman the comic, Rose Walker gets sent to find her little brother, but she doesn't really remember him or seem that motivated. She's just doing it because Mom and Grandma told her to--and she doesn't seem to care that much about THEM either. She just notes how weird the situation is, and seems uncomfortable with her mother's emotional reaction to being reunited with her long-lost mother.
In the show, Rose DOES remember her brother. SHE is the one searching of her own volition, because her mother died never able to find him, and her great-grandmother doesn't know of the boy's existence till Rose tells her. Rose is very motivated and very worried.
In the comic, little brother Jed's head is holding runaway dreamfolk: Brute and Glob, who are using him exclusively as a hideout. They do not care about Jed except as a flesh bunker, and they barely interact. Jed is being horrendously abused at home, but Brute and Glob don't care; when it's clear the Sandman is tracking them down, one of them suggests killing Jed and wearing him as a skinsuit! They do not care. The Sandman doesn't care, except about his runaway nightmares. Even Jed's own dreams have nothing to do with him! It's stuff like that that made me feel dirty inside, reading Sandman. This kid is surrounded by people, and none of them seem to give a shit about what's happening to him. Even the narrative mostly treats him as a MacGuffin, the thing people want to make the plot go.
In the show, Brute and Glob don't exist. Instead, there is Gault. She too is a runaway nightmare, hiding out in Jed's dreamworld, but with one major distance: she cares about what is happening to him. She tries to make his dreamworld a comforting, healing place for him, to the best of her ability, and when the Sandman comes for her, she pleads that Jed needs someone, something to help him survive this. She doesn't want to be a nightmare anymore, now that she has seen the power she has for good. The Sandman still banishes her, but at the end, he rethinks his decision and remakes her as a good dream.
In the comic, Lyta is just a passive sleepwalker. She too lives in Jed's dreamworld and supposedly loves her dead dream husband, but again, she barely interacts with either. She doesn't seem to feel or care about much of anything, until the Sandman banishes her dead husband: then she erupts in grief. She doesn't seem aware of Jed at all, and despite being very strongly themed with motherhood (she's been pregnant for years in the dreamworld), she never acts in that capacity to Jed. In the show, though, Lyta very obviously cares about her husband. She's not in a daze; she's spending every moment with him that she can, and she's clearly aware that he is dead and these are dreams. She also acts very much a friend/big sister to Rose. (In the show, she's been relocated to being with Rose in the waking world. She's not in Jed's head at all.)
Reading the comic again made me realize that it felt like following a bunch of disconnected, disaffected people who didn't care about much. It was very Gen X, which makes sense. But that was a frame of mind very familiar to me as a dissociative, and it was never pleasant to re-experience. And it made me realize: that was true for all the Gaiman work I could remember!
In American Gods, Shadow's only relationships are with gods who use him and he knows better to trust, and his dead girlfriend, who died while cheating on him and is spooky and Not Right. The whole point is that she can't let go of him, and he's trying to walk away very quickly. Her great triumph, iirc, he never sees or even knows about! She's the only one who really seems to CARE, and it's a creepy unhealthy obsession!
In Coraline, the writing is so stark and minimalist that I had trouble telling any of what Coraline was feeling, or why she'd go to this creepy, obviously dangerous world. It really felt like being in a numb, dissociative bubble, which... no thanks, I have some already.
And then there's the Graveyard Book, a book about family and community. The ghosts, Silas, the Hound of God teacher, all clearly care about the protagonist! So of course, the book ends with him having to leave them all behind and never see any of them again. I guess it's supposed to be about growing out of childish things, but jeez, NEVER again? Even my disowned loony ass still managed to reconnect with a few folks from my childhood! I daresay I made about as clean a break as anyone, and there are still four or five people I speak to every once in a while!
I don't know why this is such a theme in Gaiman's work. Obviously Gaiman is a well-regarded author, and many of our friends adore his work. But man, with the exception of the Graveyard Book (sans ending), all of it I've read feels like suffocating in a glass bottle alone and surrounded by people. It is a very unpleasant feeling, and I have to assume I'm reading it wrong or something, because I've never heard of anyone else having this reaction to his work.
But at least now I know what my problem is, and I can quit trying to make myself like his stuff!
Our roommates have been watching the Sandman show. Normally I wander in and out at best while they watch stuff, but Sandman has drawn me in. Which is crazy, because: I don't like the Sandman comic. I like the show better, WAY better, and that NEVER HAPPENS. Why?
So a while back, I went to the library, grabbed the volume the show was on, and compared and contrasted. And not only did I realize why I liked the show better, I realized why I have so much trouble connecting to Gaiman's work!
I have read a lot of Gaiman, trying to make myself like him. He is a beloved author, and I didn't get why I didn't like him. I've read most of Sandman, all of American Gods, Neverwhere, Good Omens, Coraline, Graveyard Book, and at least one of his books of short stories, and the only one I really liked was Graveyard Book... and it is the exception that proves the rule.
See, in most of those books, none of Gaiman's characters really seem to connect or care about each other. In Sandman the comic, Rose Walker gets sent to find her little brother, but she doesn't really remember him or seem that motivated. She's just doing it because Mom and Grandma told her to--and she doesn't seem to care that much about THEM either. She just notes how weird the situation is, and seems uncomfortable with her mother's emotional reaction to being reunited with her long-lost mother.
In the show, Rose DOES remember her brother. SHE is the one searching of her own volition, because her mother died never able to find him, and her great-grandmother doesn't know of the boy's existence till Rose tells her. Rose is very motivated and very worried.
In the comic, little brother Jed's head is holding runaway dreamfolk: Brute and Glob, who are using him exclusively as a hideout. They do not care about Jed except as a flesh bunker, and they barely interact. Jed is being horrendously abused at home, but Brute and Glob don't care; when it's clear the Sandman is tracking them down, one of them suggests killing Jed and wearing him as a skinsuit! They do not care. The Sandman doesn't care, except about his runaway nightmares. Even Jed's own dreams have nothing to do with him! It's stuff like that that made me feel dirty inside, reading Sandman. This kid is surrounded by people, and none of them seem to give a shit about what's happening to him. Even the narrative mostly treats him as a MacGuffin, the thing people want to make the plot go.
In the show, Brute and Glob don't exist. Instead, there is Gault. She too is a runaway nightmare, hiding out in Jed's dreamworld, but with one major distance: she cares about what is happening to him. She tries to make his dreamworld a comforting, healing place for him, to the best of her ability, and when the Sandman comes for her, she pleads that Jed needs someone, something to help him survive this. She doesn't want to be a nightmare anymore, now that she has seen the power she has for good. The Sandman still banishes her, but at the end, he rethinks his decision and remakes her as a good dream.
In the comic, Lyta is just a passive sleepwalker. She too lives in Jed's dreamworld and supposedly loves her dead dream husband, but again, she barely interacts with either. She doesn't seem to feel or care about much of anything, until the Sandman banishes her dead husband: then she erupts in grief. She doesn't seem aware of Jed at all, and despite being very strongly themed with motherhood (she's been pregnant for years in the dreamworld), she never acts in that capacity to Jed. In the show, though, Lyta very obviously cares about her husband. She's not in a daze; she's spending every moment with him that she can, and she's clearly aware that he is dead and these are dreams. She also acts very much a friend/big sister to Rose. (In the show, she's been relocated to being with Rose in the waking world. She's not in Jed's head at all.)
Reading the comic again made me realize that it felt like following a bunch of disconnected, disaffected people who didn't care about much. It was very Gen X, which makes sense. But that was a frame of mind very familiar to me as a dissociative, and it was never pleasant to re-experience. And it made me realize: that was true for all the Gaiman work I could remember!
In American Gods, Shadow's only relationships are with gods who use him and he knows better to trust, and his dead girlfriend, who died while cheating on him and is spooky and Not Right. The whole point is that she can't let go of him, and he's trying to walk away very quickly. Her great triumph, iirc, he never sees or even knows about! She's the only one who really seems to CARE, and it's a creepy unhealthy obsession!
In Coraline, the writing is so stark and minimalist that I had trouble telling any of what Coraline was feeling, or why she'd go to this creepy, obviously dangerous world. It really felt like being in a numb, dissociative bubble, which... no thanks, I have some already.
And then there's the Graveyard Book, a book about family and community. The ghosts, Silas, the Hound of God teacher, all clearly care about the protagonist! So of course, the book ends with him having to leave them all behind and never see any of them again. I guess it's supposed to be about growing out of childish things, but jeez, NEVER again? Even my disowned loony ass still managed to reconnect with a few folks from my childhood! I daresay I made about as clean a break as anyone, and there are still four or five people I speak to every once in a while!
I don't know why this is such a theme in Gaiman's work. Obviously Gaiman is a well-regarded author, and many of our friends adore his work. But man, with the exception of the Graveyard Book (sans ending), all of it I've read feels like suffocating in a glass bottle alone and surrounded by people. It is a very unpleasant feeling, and I have to assume I'm reading it wrong or something, because I've never heard of anyone else having this reaction to his work.
But at least now I know what my problem is, and I can quit trying to make myself like his stuff!
