"I have absolutely no problems with that and I think it's dissappointing there aren't any additional shows set in the Gargoyles universe."
I agree. But my point is that though Weisman, very understandably and rightfully, always felt a strong connection to Gargoyles, it wasn't intended during its creation to ONLY be a big Weisman-centric creation. At one point Weisman even assumed they'd be telling Gargoyles stories "long after [he's] gone." Obviously his mind's changed on that, which is fine! But my only point was that Gargoyles didn't jump out of the gate as Weisman's baby. It coalesced into that.
"The guy who is the head of the project? If there are 2 heads, then both of them are the creators."
That's not really fair. There're plenty of project heads who don't contribute as much to a project than certain subordinate creatives. That sort of thing really is a case by case basis.
"George Lucas came up wih the idea of Star Wars and he wrote the script for the very first release. We are talking about a time when Lucas didn't even have a film studio that wanted to make a movie about it. Kasdan's screenplay was based on Lucas' ideas."
And Star Wars itself is just Buck Rogers slaved to the monomyth, with a dash of Akira Kurosawa for good measure. What makes Lucas's hold to that more sacred than Kasdan's, exactly, especially when Kasdan would grow to define the voice of Star Wars in the iconic way many would argue was lost when Lucas took full control during the prequels.
Which is the point of my inquiry, not claiming you said one thing or another. Sometimes, a work is clearly the product of multiple DISTINCT voices, with the originating voice not always the one people most remember or most represents a particular work. So why should one creator be considered more important just because he got there first?
Likewise, when most of these genre works are essentially the evolution of highly archetypal, resonant communications we make between each other, why can only ONE person do them when they tap into the same primordial pool that Gilgamesh crawled out of?
"I'm just saying... If a franchise is so big that the different creative works contradict, then you always have to stick with the works the original creator produced or let produce based on his ideas."
I think that's bunk, though. I mean, for one thing, not EVERYTHING is an auteur work. Transformers and Doctor Who, for example, thrive on the work of later authors. Some of Doctor Who's most defining writers, like Robert Holmes and Douglas Adams, weren't there from the beginning (and personally, I don't think any writer wrote Sarah Jane Smith better than Phil Ford, maybe Gareth Roberts). You'd find very few people who'd argue a superhero's BEST writer was his original creator, as well.
And what about literature? Why is Shakespeare the source of the agreed upon, canonical Romeo and Juliet story when his wasn't even the original? And keep in mind, I say that adoring the play and caring little about the source material. Why should Alfred Hitchcock's Norman Bates be more sacred than Robert Bloch's, which is the case for pretty much anyone you ask. Storytelling is filled to the BRIM with adaptations, extrapolations, or continuations held in more sacred regard than their source works. Nerds and scholars like to be academic, but the truth is the reasoning really isn't all that academic. It's just the ones people like the most or, just as often, whatever they were exposed to first.
Thing is, I get that a lot of these examples don't EXACTLY gel with the argument you're proposing, which presents a much wider scope that I'm targeting. But I think it hits the same bullet points. For all we talk about creator integrity, etc., I really do think it's all completely arbitrary. Nobody who argues for creator integrity argues for EVERY creator's integrity and I bet if you really thought about it, there's something you really enjoy but have no real interest in what that thing's actual creator has to say about the material in question. Everyone does.
I'd actually go as far to argue that, until the SLG comic came out, Weisman was WRONG about The Goliath Chronicles being apocryphal. Because canon as an academic concept, before nerds co-opted it, has always been about categorizing things with the benefit of hindsight by a larger, theoretically objective body. It's never been about creator intent as much as an INTERPRETATION of creator intent. It just so happened that, at one point, Gargoyles's interpretation of canonicity intent changed from "enough episodes to rerun forever" to "whatever is considered true backstory for this new comic book we're doing."
It's not that I WOULDN'T want Weisman to do it. He's my favorite writer of all time and I'd want him to write Gargoyles and whatever else he'd want to forever. I'd pick him first 100% of the time. But for a fandom so drenched in a love of literature, it's always weird to me when the big auteur stamp is poked out about how only one person can do this highly archetypal, recognizably resonant monomyth that also already reinterprets a bunch of characters he didn't create. Literature, film, etc. is FILLED with works and creators who defined their voice with works that weren't quite theirs, characters they didn't birth. It sounds like I'm bagging on Weisman, but I'm really not because Gargoyles is the pinnacle of everything I LOVE about all of the above. It's the continued evolution and communication of these fundamental storytelling building blocks through the voice of someone who clearly loves them. I love that!
I just don't understand why it'd be less valid if someone else loved them and used Gargoyles as that medium, too. Or why a creator gets special priority in a series that already communicates and reinterprets the voices of countless scribes.
"If not... well, then I ask: What makes the SLG comics more valid then The Goliath Chronicles?"
Nothing. They just happen to be much better and potential later fiction is more likely to draw from them than the Chronicles.
And also, per above, they're considered canon by Disney. But I don't care about canon one way or the other. I just like things to be good, and the SLG comics happen to be phenomenal and Chronicles happens to be poopins.
Harlan of the Ghosts
MELON ENERGY.
posted @ Sun, Feb 2, 2014 9:14:30 pm EST from 76.2.67.11
