Thoughts on the Sandman Netflix Series
Aug. 15th, 2022 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiLike many others, I loved this adaption. It's the most satisfying adaptation/expansion-on-existing-franchise I've seen in years. Below are scattered thoughts. Non-spoilery before cut. Disclaimer: Though I consider myself a fan of the comics, I have not reread most of the series in 25 years, so I have little investment in various light rewrites of secondary characters and plotlines.
Adapting for Fans vs. Broad Audience
IGN's review noted that the series may be more accessible to Sandman comics fans than newbies, and that was their only reason for giving it 9/10 instead of 10/10. I could see that. In my very small sample of personal acquaintances, the newbies have generally said, "I liked it pretty well" and the comics fans have generally said, "This was great!" It may be an adaption made primarily for fans, and that's interesting because it seems the less common choice today.
Or maybe it's more accurate to say, if a new show/movie is in a sprawling franchise (ex. MCU, Star Wars), it seems increasingly made for fans with an assumption that you know all the backstory. But if something is being adapted new from one medium to another (ex. forthcoming Interview with the Vampire), the goal usually seems to be to aim at viewers who are not die-hard fans. That makes business sense because non-fans will almost always be the bigger audience. So it's a bit brave of this series to do a close adaption that doesn't work too hard to be accessible to new viewers. I think that choice made a better work of art (though sometimes far-afield adaptations are great works of art: ex. Blade Runner). Anyway, I give it points for not being afraid to make the entry curve a little steeper in the name of preserving much of the complexity of the comics.
Reflection on Dream in the Show and in General
I really liked the adaptation's version of Dream. He's a less dark and easier to relate to than the comics version, but honestly more likable for that, which was probably the point. Not to harp on Blade Runner, but the difference in tone reminds me of the difference between Do Androids Dream and its film adaptation. In both cases, the original text is more philosophically challenging in ways I deeply respect, but that challenge comes at the expense of some human relatability, which the screen adaptation provides. And on balance, I emotionally prefer being able to relate more easily. Or for another analogy, comics Dream and Netflix Dream remind me of the tonal difference between manga Wolfwood and anime Wolfwood in Trigun. In both cases, the text version is more complex, but the screen version is more likable, which is sometimes a relief. These differences in The Sandman are pretty subtle, though, and on the whole, this is thankfully a very close adaptation of comics Dream.
Possible light spoilers follow, no big plot points
The joy of watching this series had made me reflect in depth on the character of Dream (in both media) for the first time in a long time. One thing I really appreciate about his character—and I find increasingly rare in our polarized times—is that he's morally gray and the text encourages the reader to feel ambivalent about him. His actions, motives, and personhood are coherently written but difficult to reduce to simple ethical categories. Perhaps his greatest virtue is that he takes his work very seriously and, in the main, is very good at it. He is also capable of being kind, fair, and caring in large and small ways.
At the same time, though, he's capable of being punitive and vengeful, often in ways very disproportionate to the crime. He has a pattern of sentencing someone to a horrible fate in perpetuity and then, I think, promptly putting it out of his mind (most of the time), which is a convenient coping mechanism but leaves the victim in continuous misery with little chance of reprieve, even after Dream is not particularly angry anymore. That's very scary—tyrannical really. And, of course, it's part of his character arc, which is excellent, that he becomes less exacting and vengeful as humanity becomes more "civilized," yet his tendency to put these past events out of mind leaves a trail of damage that sometimes lingers unabated across millennia, even if "present" Dream would (probably) not exact the same punishment.
In a lot of ways, Dream is fairly immature for much of the comics, which shows especially in his romantic entanglements (season 1 of the show barely touches on). He tends to equate "love" with passion. (This tendency is subtly there in his use of the word "love" in season 1 of the show in conversation with Joanna Constantine.) And he tends to not know how to behave with partners when the passion begins to wane. And he tends toward possessive and authoritarian (and, again, vengeful), which, of course, causes all kinds of problems.
But this all makes sense for the Lord of Dreams. For one thing, he is very ancient and powerful, so of course he thinks he's a big authority: he is. It's also probably fair to the say that the realm of dreams, whether our literal dreams or fantasies, stories, etc., tends, by its nature, to run behind the times. It is deeply rooted in the old, whether it's the universal, archetypal ancient world, or just the world of a few years/decades ago that shaped us when we were children. It's not surprising, therefore, that Dream also runs behind the times, that he still sees himself as an autocratic king when most of the Earth has gone democratic, for example. He's conservative in the sense of prizing stability and resisting change, and when you're in charge of the Dreaming—by its nature very wild and uncontrolled—that's probably a really good characteristic to have. (He is good at his job.) But it also means he has an old-fashioned view that people should bow to his power with little blow-back, and this gets him into trouble. It also causes him to unnecessarily hurt others, as (spoiler) Rose rightly calls him out for disintegrating Lyta's husband right in front of her with next-to-no warning. Hector had to go, but he didn't have to go like that. (Compare, for example, Death giving one of the people she's visiting the grace of a few moments to prepare himself.)
All of this sets him up very well for his overall series arc of learning to do better, to value other people's feelings more and take more responsibility for his actions, which Gaiman equates with the evolution of human society toward a greater regard for people's lives, rights, individuality, and so on. (I think that's a great narrative move, as far as it goes, and I stole it as a stance toward civilization in my short story "The Descent of the Wind," but I'll also note it's only a subset of all human types of societies, to say nothing of the rest of the universe, so I think it's also interesting to consider how wildly differently Dream and the other Endless might present in other times and places that have had completely different trajectories. One great thing about The Sandman is that it's fan fic potential is endless, no pun.)
Brief Stuff on Updates for the 21st Century
The really brief version: they did this well. Any niggles in my mind seem to me very trivial. But here are a few trivial observations:
As to race, they did a great job expanding representation for black people. Works very well. But the casting choices do leave the impression that the Anglo-American world is people with white people, black people, and almost no one else. I find myself wondering where all the South Asians are and the Latin Americans, etc.
It is an unfortunate artifact of the original comics that the only obviously non-binary character is detestable. Desire has got to be Desire, so the easiest fix here would seem to be to include at least one obviously non-binary good-coded character. Hope they will in season 2.
Despair as encoding some fat shaming: this is really hard to get around. Despair, by definition, is always going to be mostly negatively coded as a character (though she can be sympathetic). That means, in our current climate, any actor you cast will have negative coding sticking to their identity groups. Heavy (like the original)? It's fat shaming. Really skinny? It's anorexic shaming. Conventionally pretty woman (interesting thought for Despair)? It's shaming female beauty. Typical white man? It's reverse bigotry against white men. And so on. The only way out of this I can think of is to frequently rotate actors of different appearances and groups, which might provide some "representation safety," but probably at the cost of having a coherent character (which ought to be more important). Anyway, I think they went with a reasonable compromise by keeping the basic outline of a heavy woman from the original but making her appearance/dress pretty unremarkable and unexploitative.
Some of my other posts have quibbled about how our current progressive movement is very concerned with representing identities and far less concerned with representing cultural diversity. In a background way, I see this reflected in the Sandman show. A fair amount of attention went into more extensively representing different identity groups (full marks). But basically no additional attention went into acknowledging that this story has a serious Western-Anglo-American bias. There's the one nod to Nada's story, which is from Africa, and a couple of lines on how the Endless are in other worlds, billions of years ago, etc. But otherwise, it's virtually all Western-Anglo-American: countries the story is set in, dress, cultural touchstones, etc. I think I would have dropped just a handful more references to other times and places. There are lots of ways this could be cleverly done, either just visually or in dialogue. It was done well with Nada, and just a bit more of that would have expressed the inherent cultural diversity that is a great potential strength of the original but not really enough explored in there.
Overall, I'm very enthusiastic about the whole thing and I can hardly wait for more.
Adapting for Fans vs. Broad Audience
IGN's review noted that the series may be more accessible to Sandman comics fans than newbies, and that was their only reason for giving it 9/10 instead of 10/10. I could see that. In my very small sample of personal acquaintances, the newbies have generally said, "I liked it pretty well" and the comics fans have generally said, "This was great!" It may be an adaption made primarily for fans, and that's interesting because it seems the less common choice today.
Or maybe it's more accurate to say, if a new show/movie is in a sprawling franchise (ex. MCU, Star Wars), it seems increasingly made for fans with an assumption that you know all the backstory. But if something is being adapted new from one medium to another (ex. forthcoming Interview with the Vampire), the goal usually seems to be to aim at viewers who are not die-hard fans. That makes business sense because non-fans will almost always be the bigger audience. So it's a bit brave of this series to do a close adaption that doesn't work too hard to be accessible to new viewers. I think that choice made a better work of art (though sometimes far-afield adaptations are great works of art: ex. Blade Runner). Anyway, I give it points for not being afraid to make the entry curve a little steeper in the name of preserving much of the complexity of the comics.
Reflection on Dream in the Show and in General
I really liked the adaptation's version of Dream. He's a less dark and easier to relate to than the comics version, but honestly more likable for that, which was probably the point. Not to harp on Blade Runner, but the difference in tone reminds me of the difference between Do Androids Dream and its film adaptation. In both cases, the original text is more philosophically challenging in ways I deeply respect, but that challenge comes at the expense of some human relatability, which the screen adaptation provides. And on balance, I emotionally prefer being able to relate more easily. Or for another analogy, comics Dream and Netflix Dream remind me of the tonal difference between manga Wolfwood and anime Wolfwood in Trigun. In both cases, the text version is more complex, but the screen version is more likable, which is sometimes a relief. These differences in The Sandman are pretty subtle, though, and on the whole, this is thankfully a very close adaptation of comics Dream.
Possible light spoilers follow, no big plot points
The joy of watching this series had made me reflect in depth on the character of Dream (in both media) for the first time in a long time. One thing I really appreciate about his character—and I find increasingly rare in our polarized times—is that he's morally gray and the text encourages the reader to feel ambivalent about him. His actions, motives, and personhood are coherently written but difficult to reduce to simple ethical categories. Perhaps his greatest virtue is that he takes his work very seriously and, in the main, is very good at it. He is also capable of being kind, fair, and caring in large and small ways.
At the same time, though, he's capable of being punitive and vengeful, often in ways very disproportionate to the crime. He has a pattern of sentencing someone to a horrible fate in perpetuity and then, I think, promptly putting it out of his mind (most of the time), which is a convenient coping mechanism but leaves the victim in continuous misery with little chance of reprieve, even after Dream is not particularly angry anymore. That's very scary—tyrannical really. And, of course, it's part of his character arc, which is excellent, that he becomes less exacting and vengeful as humanity becomes more "civilized," yet his tendency to put these past events out of mind leaves a trail of damage that sometimes lingers unabated across millennia, even if "present" Dream would (probably) not exact the same punishment.
In a lot of ways, Dream is fairly immature for much of the comics, which shows especially in his romantic entanglements (season 1 of the show barely touches on). He tends to equate "love" with passion. (This tendency is subtly there in his use of the word "love" in season 1 of the show in conversation with Joanna Constantine.) And he tends to not know how to behave with partners when the passion begins to wane. And he tends toward possessive and authoritarian (and, again, vengeful), which, of course, causes all kinds of problems.
But this all makes sense for the Lord of Dreams. For one thing, he is very ancient and powerful, so of course he thinks he's a big authority: he is. It's also probably fair to the say that the realm of dreams, whether our literal dreams or fantasies, stories, etc., tends, by its nature, to run behind the times. It is deeply rooted in the old, whether it's the universal, archetypal ancient world, or just the world of a few years/decades ago that shaped us when we were children. It's not surprising, therefore, that Dream also runs behind the times, that he still sees himself as an autocratic king when most of the Earth has gone democratic, for example. He's conservative in the sense of prizing stability and resisting change, and when you're in charge of the Dreaming—by its nature very wild and uncontrolled—that's probably a really good characteristic to have. (He is good at his job.) But it also means he has an old-fashioned view that people should bow to his power with little blow-back, and this gets him into trouble. It also causes him to unnecessarily hurt others, as (spoiler) Rose rightly calls him out for disintegrating Lyta's husband right in front of her with next-to-no warning. Hector had to go, but he didn't have to go like that. (Compare, for example, Death giving one of the people she's visiting the grace of a few moments to prepare himself.)
All of this sets him up very well for his overall series arc of learning to do better, to value other people's feelings more and take more responsibility for his actions, which Gaiman equates with the evolution of human society toward a greater regard for people's lives, rights, individuality, and so on. (I think that's a great narrative move, as far as it goes, and I stole it as a stance toward civilization in my short story "The Descent of the Wind," but I'll also note it's only a subset of all human types of societies, to say nothing of the rest of the universe, so I think it's also interesting to consider how wildly differently Dream and the other Endless might present in other times and places that have had completely different trajectories. One great thing about The Sandman is that it's fan fic potential is endless, no pun.)
Brief Stuff on Updates for the 21st Century
The really brief version: they did this well. Any niggles in my mind seem to me very trivial. But here are a few trivial observations:
As to race, they did a great job expanding representation for black people. Works very well. But the casting choices do leave the impression that the Anglo-American world is people with white people, black people, and almost no one else. I find myself wondering where all the South Asians are and the Latin Americans, etc.
It is an unfortunate artifact of the original comics that the only obviously non-binary character is detestable. Desire has got to be Desire, so the easiest fix here would seem to be to include at least one obviously non-binary good-coded character. Hope they will in season 2.
Despair as encoding some fat shaming: this is really hard to get around. Despair, by definition, is always going to be mostly negatively coded as a character (though she can be sympathetic). That means, in our current climate, any actor you cast will have negative coding sticking to their identity groups. Heavy (like the original)? It's fat shaming. Really skinny? It's anorexic shaming. Conventionally pretty woman (interesting thought for Despair)? It's shaming female beauty. Typical white man? It's reverse bigotry against white men. And so on. The only way out of this I can think of is to frequently rotate actors of different appearances and groups, which might provide some "representation safety," but probably at the cost of having a coherent character (which ought to be more important). Anyway, I think they went with a reasonable compromise by keeping the basic outline of a heavy woman from the original but making her appearance/dress pretty unremarkable and unexploitative.
Some of my other posts have quibbled about how our current progressive movement is very concerned with representing identities and far less concerned with representing cultural diversity. In a background way, I see this reflected in the Sandman show. A fair amount of attention went into more extensively representing different identity groups (full marks). But basically no additional attention went into acknowledging that this story has a serious Western-Anglo-American bias. There's the one nod to Nada's story, which is from Africa, and a couple of lines on how the Endless are in other worlds, billions of years ago, etc. But otherwise, it's virtually all Western-Anglo-American: countries the story is set in, dress, cultural touchstones, etc. I think I would have dropped just a handful more references to other times and places. There are lots of ways this could be cleverly done, either just visually or in dialogue. It was done well with Nada, and just a bit more of that would have expressed the inherent cultural diversity that is a great potential strength of the original but not really enough explored in there.
Overall, I'm very enthusiastic about the whole thing and I can hardly wait for more.
