Redbelt: Thoughts about Mamet and Bendis

[michaelpaciocco]

OK, I recently picked up "Redbelt" for $5 at Blockbuster (Soon to be going out of business at a location near you!) and it's my first full-on exposure to Mamet, but a couple things stand out about it to me that ties into how Bendis and most of the noir writers that currently dominate Marvel/DC think (Brubaker, Fraction, etc.):

-The Female Characterization - "Oh....this is where the misogyny comes from" was pretty much my reaction - all the female characters, even the most minor ones (which is to say all of them really) can be classified as a "bitch" or "victim" or some combination thereof, with no real depth or context beyond that. It's sad really, because I think there's a lot that could have been revealed and developed had the film really wanted to make an effort.

-The GRIMDARK - and yes, in this movie, things get pretty bad, with the endless corruption and the fixing and how the odds seem so hopeless for Mike Terry in his attempt to remain even the slightest bit noble....

...BUT HE SUCCEEDS. Yes, it's implausible, and it's silly, but dammit, he kept to his principles, and did what he thought was right, and was rewarded for it - something sorely lacking, especially in current Marvel's output. Now, I ask myself what the hell it is about Bendis, a huge Mamet Fanboy by all accounts, that he can't pull the trigger, and there's two options:

1) He thinks it's more realistic to stay in the darkness. I'm sure this is going to be the theory that Kirk supports, but I tend to favor...

2)Bendis' key limitation is that he's aware that he's in a medium of SERIALIZED, not limited fiction, and that he's pathologically afraid of writing a "real ending" because he's afraid that if he does that, he'll write himself out of a job.


OK, that said, I enjoyed the movie. My Brazilian Jijitsu and MMA experience is pretty limited, so I'm sure there are others who can comment on that, but I thought that it was enjoyable bit of fiction.

And the good guy won at the end.

Nothing wrong with that.


Michael

[K-Box]

Mamet has his not-inconsiderable flaws (yes, as you said, O HAI MISOGYNY, especially in parts played by Rebecca Pidgeon), but he's still worth studying.

And as far as Bendis is concerned, I don't see points one and two as being mutually exclusive. The guy is a market whore, after all, so as you say, he's going to be loath to write himself out of a job, but at the same time, I also think he has serious problems with the mere idea of heroism itself.

Let's not forget, this is the guy who ended his run on Daredevil by putting BOTH Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk in prison, and then having one of his screamingly obvious authorial mouthpiece characters declare, as a coda, that prison was where BOTH characters BELONGED.

That being said, I do find myself wondering if Bendis will undergo Mamet's late-term conversion to political conservatism (if he hasn't done so already).

[michaelpaciocco]

I'm under the assumption he already has - it would go a long way to explaining his take on the Avengers ("THE LAW IS CROOKED! TO ENFORCE TRUE JUSTICE WE MUST BE OUTLAWS")