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labingiI was reading a comments thread (not about Good Omens) discussing how some people just don’t get satire, and I thought, “Is that me?” I understand the concept. I know “A Modest Proposal” is not a serious proposal, and I love The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is endless social sendup. I get (intellectually) that a lot of Good Omens is also satire, but it doesn’t land for me as it does for many.
Now, the love story between Aziraphale and Crowley is the best I’ve encountered in a long time. (The next most recent that might be competition is probably in the manga Acid Town (2017), so, yeah, best in at least six years.) Hence, my bemused feelings about Good Omens, especially S2: part in love and part confused.
Disclaimer: I have not read the book; I’m only referring to the TV series.
Spoilers behind the cut
The Good
Arizaphale and Crowley in this series are a perfect (positive) storm of impeccable writing, casting, and acting. A friend of mine is a big Starsky and Hutch fan, and I remember her once remarking that the pair works largely because the actors had amazing chemistry and deeply understood the relationship. That’s clearly the case here.
A sign of what a tour-de-force this is is their “breakup” scene at the end. This could very easily have been manufactured conflict to throw a wrench in the relationship. It’s clear Arizaphale is making the wrong choice in returning to heaven, but I believe that he would. He still sincerely believes that heaven is Good and Important, and while he recognizes it has problems, that makes it all the more plausible that he would feel a duty to help reform the institution. And because he does see heaven as Good, he believes reform to be possible. Crowley, of course, knows this is a doomed endeavor and won’t get anywhere near it. (The word “toxic” is way overused in our society, but Crowley is right that both heaven and hell are toxic.) That’s all in character, and I absolutely buy that setup for whatever agony comes next (if we get a S3).
Niggle
My only niggle about their relationship comes not from them but Maggie and Nina telling Crowley to express his feelings. I dislike this trope (see New Star Trek): anyone who says “express your feelings” must be correct because “expressing your feelings” explicitly and directly is the only way to have a healthy life. This is presumptuous, particularly for people who don’t know Aziraphale and Crowley well but are making pronouncements about a million-year relationship. Even if they guess right (and I don’t think the relationship had been going badly without this declaration), minimally this should be framed a question (“Have you considered...?”) rather than “I know what’s best for you.” I’m tired of this pop psych belief that there’s only one right way to be a person. /rant
The Ominous (Sorry)
I’m really interested in worldbuilding, and the worldbuilding of Good Omens snags me. Yes, I get that it’s a satire. And I’ve been asking myself why its idiotic heaven and hell don’t work for me while the Earth being a computer designed by a guy named Slartibartfast (sp?) does. I think there are two salient differences:
Reason 1: Good Omens mixes tones/modes in a way Hitchhiker’s Guide doesn’t. In HG, the Vogons are not realistic. But Arthur Dent isn’t exactly realistic either: he’s just a little upset about his entire planet (family, friends, home) being murdered. Though moments of pathos and humanity exist, the default tone is that nothing is as serious as it would be in real life; everything occurs behind a safe screen of ironic humor.
GO, on the other hand, mixes a satirical/parodic tone with a psychologically realist tone, and, while I don’t want to say this can never be done well, in this case it gives me cognitive dissonance because I can’t figure out a cosmology that makes it all make sense.
In a nutshell, we have two kinds of characters:
a) The main denizens of heaven and hell, who are all pretty much all stupid caricatures.
b) Most of the human beings and Aziraphale and Crowley, who act more or less like realistic human beings.
(And then there’s God, who I’ll come back to.)
This creates a ladder of power relations that looks like this (with plants, animals, etc. largely omitted from relevance):
* Top rung: God (more later)
* Arguably next rung: Aziraphale and Crowley (who don’t outrank the legions of the heaven and hell but keep getting their way anyway): fairly realistic complex moral agents.
* Next rung: heaven and hell: stupid, simplistic moral agents.
* Bottom rung: human beings: fairly realistic, complex moral agents.
This creates an odd layer of stupid (but powerful) sandwiched between two layers of fairly normal adult human functioning. Why? I mean, in universe. Why would God set up a super powerful stupid layer over human beings?
This brings me to God, who I don’t conceptually understand in GO (and maybe we’re not supposed to, which is maybe a smart authorial move). But I figure this God is one of two things:
a) What Aziraphale thinks they are: all good, all powerful, all knowing, etc. and just letting the plan unfold according to their own inscrutable designs.
b) Like a super-heaven layer of stupid creating a stupid heaven and hell, out which, somehow more complex beings (psychologically) evolve under the pressures of living?
I don’t know which it is. I don’t see evidence that argues for one over the other. And this leaves me shrugging my shoulders in bafflement.
I said to my partner that the end result for me is something like watching Pride and Prejudice (as an example of a good love story) set in a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon: I just can’t make sense of it.
Reason 2: This cosmology feels like a cheap shot at Christianity, a straw man, if you will. (Now, straw men are complicated by the fact that some people really do believe in them. Are some Christians as morally blank GO’s Michael, for example? Probably. But it still feels like punching down.)
I think the shots taken at Christianity are a big selling point for many. My partner loves GO and his feelings about religion are not too far off Richard Dawkins’. Another friend also loves it and described herself as the intended audience: she was raised Christian and was involved in Christian community most of her long life before leaving, not due to loss of faith but to disillusion with church politicking/judgmentalism. In both cases, there’s an anger to vent at Christian institutions.
I’m differently oriented. As a lifelong agnostic I’ve suffered some slings from Christianity, but as I wasn’t raised Christian, I’ve never been strongly internally colonized by Christianity (though it has shaped me culturally), and so I’ve never had to internally revolt against it—or to be more fair, my internal revolt happened when I was about five and with the support of my parents, so it was a pretty easy revolt. I tend to find religions, philosophies, and transcendence fascinating, in general. I enjoy the depth of poetic exploration of experience they unfold, and that makes shallow takedowns of shallow angels feel like a letdown. It clearly works for many, and that’s totally valid.
Here, again, a small comparison to HG. HG pokes fun at religion but never actually at God (in what I recall—it’s been years). For example, there’s the schtick about God disproving his own existence by creating the Babel fish, which is so useful it could only be explained as a divine creation, which proves God exists, but because proof denies faith and without faith God is nothing, God vanishes in a puff of logic. But this argument is also widely thought to be a load of dingo’s kidneys. Adams is not mocking God; he’s mocking Man.
GO—honestly, I can’t tell if it’s poking fun at God or not, but it’s poking fun at a high tier of God’s creation, which feels more like a takedown of God than Man (so to speak). That doesn’t resonate with me because, for me, “God” is a signifier that represents something we can’t understand, and to do takedowns of what we can’t understand feels like a kindergartener mocking Shakespeare; it’s just not clever. Again, I’m not talking about things like the appearance of God in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: that’s a farce, and it’s making fun of medievalism. But GO... I can’t quite tell what it’s making fun of. If it’s making fun of human views of heaven and hell, why are (almost) all the humans morally smarter than heaven and hell? I just can’t make it hang together.
Anyway, it all fills me with cognitive dissonance, which gets in the way of my full fannish enjoyment because anytime I try to do mental fan-ficcing—my main mode of true fannish enjoyment—I immediately get stuck on not knowing what the heck is going on, what the nature of this universe is (a bit along the lines of my earlier entry on being confused by the Star Wars sequels).
I guess none of this is a true criticism of GO. It’s just an explanation of why I’m not the audience for it in the worldbuilding dimension, though I’m definitely onboard for some A/C.
Now, the love story between Aziraphale and Crowley is the best I’ve encountered in a long time. (The next most recent that might be competition is probably in the manga Acid Town (2017), so, yeah, best in at least six years.) Hence, my bemused feelings about Good Omens, especially S2: part in love and part confused.
Disclaimer: I have not read the book; I’m only referring to the TV series.
Spoilers behind the cut
The Good
Arizaphale and Crowley in this series are a perfect (positive) storm of impeccable writing, casting, and acting. A friend of mine is a big Starsky and Hutch fan, and I remember her once remarking that the pair works largely because the actors had amazing chemistry and deeply understood the relationship. That’s clearly the case here.
A sign of what a tour-de-force this is is their “breakup” scene at the end. This could very easily have been manufactured conflict to throw a wrench in the relationship. It’s clear Arizaphale is making the wrong choice in returning to heaven, but I believe that he would. He still sincerely believes that heaven is Good and Important, and while he recognizes it has problems, that makes it all the more plausible that he would feel a duty to help reform the institution. And because he does see heaven as Good, he believes reform to be possible. Crowley, of course, knows this is a doomed endeavor and won’t get anywhere near it. (The word “toxic” is way overused in our society, but Crowley is right that both heaven and hell are toxic.) That’s all in character, and I absolutely buy that setup for whatever agony comes next (if we get a S3).
Niggle
My only niggle about their relationship comes not from them but Maggie and Nina telling Crowley to express his feelings. I dislike this trope (see New Star Trek): anyone who says “express your feelings” must be correct because “expressing your feelings” explicitly and directly is the only way to have a healthy life. This is presumptuous, particularly for people who don’t know Aziraphale and Crowley well but are making pronouncements about a million-year relationship. Even if they guess right (and I don’t think the relationship had been going badly without this declaration), minimally this should be framed a question (“Have you considered...?”) rather than “I know what’s best for you.” I’m tired of this pop psych belief that there’s only one right way to be a person. /rant
The Ominous (Sorry)
I’m really interested in worldbuilding, and the worldbuilding of Good Omens snags me. Yes, I get that it’s a satire. And I’ve been asking myself why its idiotic heaven and hell don’t work for me while the Earth being a computer designed by a guy named Slartibartfast (sp?) does. I think there are two salient differences:
Reason 1: Good Omens mixes tones/modes in a way Hitchhiker’s Guide doesn’t. In HG, the Vogons are not realistic. But Arthur Dent isn’t exactly realistic either: he’s just a little upset about his entire planet (family, friends, home) being murdered. Though moments of pathos and humanity exist, the default tone is that nothing is as serious as it would be in real life; everything occurs behind a safe screen of ironic humor.
GO, on the other hand, mixes a satirical/parodic tone with a psychologically realist tone, and, while I don’t want to say this can never be done well, in this case it gives me cognitive dissonance because I can’t figure out a cosmology that makes it all make sense.
In a nutshell, we have two kinds of characters:
a) The main denizens of heaven and hell, who are all pretty much all stupid caricatures.
b) Most of the human beings and Aziraphale and Crowley, who act more or less like realistic human beings.
(And then there’s God, who I’ll come back to.)
This creates a ladder of power relations that looks like this (with plants, animals, etc. largely omitted from relevance):
* Top rung: God (more later)
* Arguably next rung: Aziraphale and Crowley (who don’t outrank the legions of the heaven and hell but keep getting their way anyway): fairly realistic complex moral agents.
* Next rung: heaven and hell: stupid, simplistic moral agents.
* Bottom rung: human beings: fairly realistic, complex moral agents.
This creates an odd layer of stupid (but powerful) sandwiched between two layers of fairly normal adult human functioning. Why? I mean, in universe. Why would God set up a super powerful stupid layer over human beings?
This brings me to God, who I don’t conceptually understand in GO (and maybe we’re not supposed to, which is maybe a smart authorial move). But I figure this God is one of two things:
a) What Aziraphale thinks they are: all good, all powerful, all knowing, etc. and just letting the plan unfold according to their own inscrutable designs.
b) Like a super-heaven layer of stupid creating a stupid heaven and hell, out which, somehow more complex beings (psychologically) evolve under the pressures of living?
I don’t know which it is. I don’t see evidence that argues for one over the other. And this leaves me shrugging my shoulders in bafflement.
I said to my partner that the end result for me is something like watching Pride and Prejudice (as an example of a good love story) set in a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon: I just can’t make sense of it.
Reason 2: This cosmology feels like a cheap shot at Christianity, a straw man, if you will. (Now, straw men are complicated by the fact that some people really do believe in them. Are some Christians as morally blank GO’s Michael, for example? Probably. But it still feels like punching down.)
I think the shots taken at Christianity are a big selling point for many. My partner loves GO and his feelings about religion are not too far off Richard Dawkins’. Another friend also loves it and described herself as the intended audience: she was raised Christian and was involved in Christian community most of her long life before leaving, not due to loss of faith but to disillusion with church politicking/judgmentalism. In both cases, there’s an anger to vent at Christian institutions.
I’m differently oriented. As a lifelong agnostic I’ve suffered some slings from Christianity, but as I wasn’t raised Christian, I’ve never been strongly internally colonized by Christianity (though it has shaped me culturally), and so I’ve never had to internally revolt against it—or to be more fair, my internal revolt happened when I was about five and with the support of my parents, so it was a pretty easy revolt. I tend to find religions, philosophies, and transcendence fascinating, in general. I enjoy the depth of poetic exploration of experience they unfold, and that makes shallow takedowns of shallow angels feel like a letdown. It clearly works for many, and that’s totally valid.
Here, again, a small comparison to HG. HG pokes fun at religion but never actually at God (in what I recall—it’s been years). For example, there’s the schtick about God disproving his own existence by creating the Babel fish, which is so useful it could only be explained as a divine creation, which proves God exists, but because proof denies faith and without faith God is nothing, God vanishes in a puff of logic. But this argument is also widely thought to be a load of dingo’s kidneys. Adams is not mocking God; he’s mocking Man.
GO—honestly, I can’t tell if it’s poking fun at God or not, but it’s poking fun at a high tier of God’s creation, which feels more like a takedown of God than Man (so to speak). That doesn’t resonate with me because, for me, “God” is a signifier that represents something we can’t understand, and to do takedowns of what we can’t understand feels like a kindergartener mocking Shakespeare; it’s just not clever. Again, I’m not talking about things like the appearance of God in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: that’s a farce, and it’s making fun of medievalism. But GO... I can’t quite tell what it’s making fun of. If it’s making fun of human views of heaven and hell, why are (almost) all the humans morally smarter than heaven and hell? I just can’t make it hang together.
Anyway, it all fills me with cognitive dissonance, which gets in the way of my full fannish enjoyment because anytime I try to do mental fan-ficcing—my main mode of true fannish enjoyment—I immediately get stuck on not knowing what the heck is going on, what the nature of this universe is (a bit along the lines of my earlier entry on being confused by the Star Wars sequels).
I guess none of this is a true criticism of GO. It’s just an explanation of why I’m not the audience for it in the worldbuilding dimension, though I’m definitely onboard for some A/C.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-17 04:55 am (UTC)The things that are most honorable, in the Good Omens world, are kindness and questioning. It's making fun of people who try to crush others into mindless, harmful conformity and the people who go along with that as long as they're not the ones being crushed. There is significant overlap with religion, but it's not only religion. Making fun of God would be beside the point.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-17 12:53 pm (UTC)Definitely a critique of bureaucracy of all kinds there.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-18 05:57 am (UTC)But you make a good point that GO is very clearly a critique of the bureaucratic mindset, and I think that's quite different from the usual use of that trope. It usually seems to read more as "Isn't it cute and funny that heaven/hell really just run like any ordinary business?" For example, Boss Baby or a bunch of old Warner Bros. cartoons. I don't find it cute and funny, no; I find it disturbing. And I will hand it to GO: its authors clearly find it disturbing too.
In keeping with PrincessofGeeks' comment below, though, that excellent Doylist point doesn't alleviate my Watsonian confusion. I appreciate your pointing it out though.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-18 09:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-18 04:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-17 12:52 pm (UTC)IMHO the dissonance you describe so clearly (include the dumb denizens of Heaven and Hell) is baked in. The version of the Bible interpretation and the version of the creation of the world as described in the show is an extremely fundamentalist and improbable one. That makes the background to the events involving the humans and the angels extremely out of kilter. There is actually no way to make sense of it.
I feel the show is deliberately being mysterious about the nature of God.
I don't there is any way to coherently describe the entire cosmology in an interiorly consistent way. A lot of cognitive dissonance is just... part of it all.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-18 05:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-18 01:10 pm (UTC)And I believe that for Pratchett, at least, writing it that way is also a comment on the condition of being human!
It is definitely a fun ride. In some ways the show is more interesting than the book (and of course the awesome stars don't hurt) and in other ways the book explored things the show doesn't get into. Of course also the book ended with the season 1 events, so it's fun to see them going on with the angel and demon adventures.