LNH: Legion of Net.Heroes Vol.2 #23

Tom Russell milos_parker at yahoo.com
Thu Nov 8 23:32:18 PST 2007


On Nov 9, 2:10 am, Martin Phipps <martinphip... at yahoo.com> wrote:

> The mistake may be trying to pigeonhole everything into genres.  A
> tragedy which has comic relief does not suddenly become a comedy.   A
> trajedy can be accurately described as a kind of story that makes us
> feel sad, specifically one in which the hero meets his end as a result
> of his own folly.  Really, the argument is incomplete unless you keep
> in mind that stories have both major climaxes and minor climaxes: if a
> story ends with the hero climactically dying as a result of his own
> folly then it was a trajedy; if the story ends with the hero getting a
> cream pie thrown in his face then one would assume it was a comedy.

Those are actually all very good points.  I still stand by my main
argument, as you still stand by yours, but the fact that genre is
usually somewhat fluid does account nicely for errors in both of our
arguments. :- )

>
> It's a Wonderful LIfe is a good example: it starts as a drama, become
> a Twilight-Zonesque fantasy and ends with everything alright and
> everybody singing and laughing.  So what was it?

Magical realism?

> The present story is another good example: it contains pornographic
> scenes and the story arguably exists to string them together but it
> was ultimately a superhero story, in this case a mixture of fantasy
> and comedy genres.

Which brings us to the more pressing question: What makes a superhero
story a superhero story?  I'd argue it's the presence of superheroes,
and not any emotion it might arouse-- as it can arouse literally any
emotion.

==Tom




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