This post is a continuation of my coverage of the MSU Comics Forum 2010, which began in this post.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 11:17 AM

The artist alley meet ‘n’ greet has begun, and the first panel starts in about 15 minutes. Might be a good time to grab some pictures of the gallery stuff, which is still here, but will be gone soon.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 11:56 AM

I just had the opportunity to speak for a few minutes with Randy Scott (at work as usual, acquiring comics for the world’s biggest collection), Ryan Claytor (tabling for And Then One Day and chatting about my recent published article, on comics at MSU), Matt Feazell (The Amazing Cynicalman, great stick figure comedy), Matt Dye (who does his whole production right here at MSU), and Jeremy Bastian (whose Cursed Pirate Girl features artificially aged paper and absurdly intricate line work, done, amazingly enough, at a 1:1 scan ratio).

After dawdling in the artist’s alley for a little too long, I arrive a little late for the first panel. (Oops.) The current subject, with Ethan Watrall, is the future of comics, or comics in digital media. iPad, cell phones, iPods, Kindle, color e-ink, and so on. Will this mean the death of the direct market/local comic book stores? What about publishers? There are analogies to be drawn with the music industry, with greater creative control but perhaps not as much money in physical media. This could be expounded upon at length.

The second speaker, Lee Sherlock, is on his way up now, discussing “Digital Culture Rhetorics in City of Heroes.” Superheroes in gaming space, in other words.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 12:06 PM

City of Heroes is an online games that allows fans to develop and play as their own characters, designing the costumes, creating names, picking from sets of powers, etc. On the one hand, it’s a fascinating example of drawing upon an archetypal kind of character, but it also seems to be an illustration of how formulaic the genre has become. It seems that the old characters are living in endlessly recycled stories, and the newer ones are further recycled versions of the old characters.

One of the cited examples from City of Heroes, Captain Quebec, could be thought of as post-modern: a superhero knowingly patterned on a preexisting character, and as a commentary on that character. A self-aware pastiche. The whole character creation process is an exercise in reshuffling preexisting elements to produce a character who is ostensibly new, but does not offer much that hasn’t been seen countless times before.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 12:21 PM

The next speaker is Joseph Darowski, who presents in the “old school” fashion of printed notes derived from his masters thesis. He raises the point that the superhero–particularly Batman–shares the underpinning of anxiety with the American gothic genre, in that the hero must confront the possibility of becoming the very villain he battles against. This is an interesting thought to pursue, though the converse is also true. The superhero, after all, is what the supervillain is patterned on, and not the other way around.

I’ve thought, on and off, that it would be interesting to see a story in which Batman’s strict moral code and self-image as a crime fighter is revealed to be a complex psychosis. A mechanism to guard Bruce Wayne against the reality that he is virtually indistinguishable from the other freaks and weirdos who populate the underworld of Gotham City. Such a story might be too outrageous for the notoriously risk-averse DC, though for all I know, it’s been done 147 times already.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 12:37 PM

Our latest speaker is looking at the X-Men. He introduces the oft-repeated idea that X-Men originated as an allegory for the Civil Rights Movement, with some going so far as to suggest that Professor X and Magneto are representative of MLK and Malcolm X, respectively. Our speaker is careful to quote Stan Lee, who has refuted such claims and instead proposed the X-Men as a more general parable about persecution against those who are different. (I would further cast doubt that Stan Lee is as responsible for the X-Men as is often suggested. He has admitted on several occasions to taking any credit that isn’t nailed down.)

The speaker also points out that the early X-Men, for all the posturing about struggling against bigotry, were fairly middle-class white characters who, in their civilian lives, could walk among ordinary humans without being noticed. It’s fair enough to claim that this perhaps isn’t quite the racial prejudice metaphor that it’s cracked up to be, but it could be viewed as an unintentional allegory for homosexuals closeting themselves in public.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 12:46 PM

I found the focus on superheroes in the academic panel to be certainly interesting, but a little dissatisfying. For one thing, I thought there was a disconnect between the content of the panel and the largely non-superhero content of the artists alley, which may be more representative of “what’s happening now.” There is so much more to comics culturally than the superhero. Unfortunately, the moral panic of the 1950s effectively killed all the other genres for decades, and recovery has been a struggle. Perhaps the academic analysis of superheroes might be additionally supplemented with a look at the 1960s undergrounds, for example, or Eisner and the birth of the graphic novel. All just as important.

The next panel, in which some of the artists will be talking about their work, will be at 3:00.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 1:22 PM

Some thoughts over lunch:

So far, I like the way they’ve organized the event this year. Last year, with several things happening concurrently, it was hard to get around to all the stuff I wanted to do, and inevitably I had to skip some of it. This year, things are staggered in a way where this isn’t an issue.

There is the aforementioned disappointment with the first panel, which–I want to reiterate–wasn’t bad by any means. It was good, but it had a different focus than what I would have wanted. I do think the superhero is one of the most interesting archetypes that American culture has produced, and there is much to be explored.

My big worry is for the hypothetical casual visitor. Somebody who maybe has a curiosity about comics, but doesn’t care for superheroes. (The common public perception of comics is that superheroes are all there is.) That person might wander into the forums, check out the panel, and come away feeling that this preconceived notion has been validated. There’s more to it, and I think part of the advancement of comics will necessarily be convincing people of that fact.

I really do think comics are on the way up. We’re living in a multimedia world where we’re becoming increasingly used to the integration of text and visuals as a single language of ideas. Web browsers, modern advertisement, new media content–the foundation is in place now, more than ever, for the public acceptance of comics as a medium of art and entertainment.

Furthermore, I was listening to a podcast interview with Art Spiegelman from a couple years ago (it can be found here) in which he said something very interesting. My paraphrasing: though the publishing industry is in a rough patch, and though the comics direct market is still not especially concerned with anything outside of its niche audience, there are two forms of literature that are doing better and better. In the red states, it’s religious-themed literature. In the blue states, it’s graphic novels.

In my own personal observations, it’s the inclusion of comics in the big book chains–think Borders and Barnes & Noble–that is majorly responsible. The average reader isn’t going to amble into the local comics ‘n’ games shop to pick up the latest issue of the X-Men, but he (or she) might be interested in self-contained stories, created and packaged in a novelistic format. These, as well as digital comics, are the greener pastures that comics has been waiting for.

It is encouraging to see comics finding their way outside of the dedicated Graphic Novels sections at these stores as well. I have seen From Hell shelved with historical fiction on one occasion, and on several others, I’ve seen Maus shelved with the biographical books. Though I personally would prefer that comics be recognized as its own medium, independent from purely text-based literature, this phenomenon may indicate a wider acceptance of comics as “real” books, rather than mere juvenile amusements.

Or, as Frank Miller has said, we might be looking at an era when we’ll see “Sin City shelved next to Mickey Spillane instead of Spawn.” The mainstream audiences, which have been thus far kept at arm’s length from comics, might be primed for them now, more than ever.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 2:44 PM

There’s a tour coming through the hallway with the comics exhibit display cases. The tour guide just gestured to the case with the artwork by Toepffer (1799-1846) and said, “And these are examples of student artwork…”

I just made another pass through the artists alley and picked up some stuff: a mini-comic issue of The Amazing Cynicalman by Matt Feazell, a mini-comic “As Eavesdropped…” by Suzanne Baumann, one of Ryan Claytor’s And Then One Day compilations, Gary Scott Beatty’s Jazz: Cool Birth, Jay Jacot’s 24 hour comic: The Chase - A Twist of Fate, and an issue of Jeremy Bastian’s Cursed Pirate Girl. Definitely more on these when I get a chance to discuss them.

Lindsay Gordon, one of the artists tabling today, does knitted dolls of famous characters. They’re pretty amazing. I haven’t seen anything like them. I also spent a few minutes chatting with Jay Jacott, discussing his 24 hour comic and my own abortive attempt from a few years back (more on this, perhaps, later), during which time a drawing board came around to him. The challenge: everybody draws a monster. There was an observable trend of increasingly elaborate and twisted creatures, which Jacott seemed more than enthusiastic to perpetuate. I’m sure the finished product will find its way online eventually.

Feazell does seminars on making mini-comics, and also offers a small guide to making them. I’m noting it here to remind myself: send him an email to inquire about getting one of the guides.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 3:15 PM

Bill “Wolverine MacAlistaire” Messner-Loebs enters: “I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve asked you here today.”

The creator panel begins, with Jay “Dead Duck” Fosgitt and Guy Davis joining Messner-Loebs. Jacott is moderating. Fosgitt grew up on newspaper strips and Jim Henson, and narrowly missed working for Henson due to an unfortunately timed death. Davis brings in influences from everyday life–looking at a hinge or a joint in a piece of machinery and dressing it up to make it look more bizarre, for example. Messner-Loebs: “Everybody thinks I have a strong Eisner influence until they put my work up next to Eisner’s.” Messner-Loebs takes Frank Miller’s mindset to heart: cartoonists are cartoonists, and should resist splitting up into categories.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 3:49 PM

Messner-Loebs, on doing historical comics: “History repeats itself. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. We’re living the farce, so it might be instructive to go back and look at the tragedy.”

Fosgitt: meet people at the big cons. Everybody knows somebody, even “whatever hooker they got to pose as the pin-up girl in the back.” He met the first publisher for his work at Wizard World Chicago. Davis adds that it’s all about perseverance. Keep drawing new samples, even as the rejection slips come in. Messner-Loeb: “The first book, let them screw you. Let them publish it.” In this way, you’ll have something out there that you can show people. “The 30th issue, get someone who will pay you.”

Messner-Loebs again: “You need to be good, you need to be fast, and you need to be able to work with people. But you only need two of those.” This was also said, almost verbatim, in Eisner/Miler–but I don’t remember which one said it.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 3:56 PM

Q&A begins, to “a round of silence,” to quote Gary Scott Beatty from last year. A good story from Messner-Loebs, at Fosgitt’s prompting: Al Capp suggested to Will Eisner that they fake a feud between the two of them. Eisner would parody Capp’s Li’l Abner in The Spirit, and Capp would parody The Spirit in Li’l Abner. Doing so would be a boost for both books. Eisner followed through, and Capp never did. A good summation of the character of the two artists.

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 4:05 PM

Curiously, Guy Davis was not raised religiously and is not a religious person, and draws upon religious imagery in The Marquis purely as a means of portraying good and evil. In Dead Duck, Fosgitt doesn’t consciously work from any political or religious dimension, but does portray various forms of afterlife. Believing in Elvis, for example, will lead to an afterlife in Graceland. Once in a while, politics find their way in, such as an issue set in Canada that deals with universal health care. Though Messner-Loebs considers himself religious, he says, “The doctrine is right there. To make fun of.” Fosgitt: you don’t have to insult something in order to parody it. One of his titles, “Everybody’s Working for the Wiccan” gets a good laugh.

Bill Messner-Loebs absolutely does not have a secret project, for Vertigo, 130 pages in length. There is no secret project. Or so he assures us.

And with that, the panel comes to a close.

In Closing

Overall, I had a great time at this year’s event. Depending on where life takes me, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to attend next year, but I’ll certainly hope for it. I’m definitely on the side of comics as a form of both entertainment and self-expression, and it is my view that comics deserves a better shake than it routinely gets. Events like this can help to legitimize the medium in the eyes of the general public.

Here are some cell phone pics I snapped during the event:

Ryan Claytor’s original artwork for the promotional poster. (Pardon the blurriness and light streaks; they’re reflections in the glass.)

A Guy Davis original, from B.R.P.D.

Guy Davis artwork from The Marquis.

A historical comic: Charles the Disobedient Boy (y. 1888). This, and the next three, are originals, not reproductions.

A historical comic: the artwork of Rodolphe Toepffer.

Another historical comic.

Another historical comic.

Superman. The lower one is an original, while the copy of Action Comics #1 is (obviously) an oversize reproduction.

Batman. Same deal here.

Figurines, done in the style of their original artists–Joe Shuster for Superman and Bob Kane for Batman.

Dolls hand-knitted by Lindsay Gordon.

And a bit of comics from the bathroom.

This post is a continuation of my coverage of the MSU Comics Forum 2010, which began in my previous post.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 7:10 PM

This year’s keynote address is in the Residential College of Arts & Humanities Theater, which is located in the basement of Snyder Hall. It was as hard to find as the previous sentence is hard to say in one breath.

The speech hasn’t begun yet, which is fine with me. After getting out of work and heading straight here, I appreciate the time to settle in. Various organizers are milling around. I recognize Ryan Claytor and Jay Jacot, both of whom I’ve spoken to recently. It’s all very thrilling.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 7:21 PM

The introductory speaker has divulged the specifics of tomorrow’s schedule, to take place at the LookOut! Gallery where the comics exhibit was set up.

11:30 AM: Artist’s alley and academic panel
3:00 PM: Creators panel

Guy Davis is on now, coming down the stairs from the back. “I feel like I’m on the Price is Right,” he says.” Davis was a big drawer as a kid, and a fan of monster movies, but not much of a comics reader. His first foray into comics was a sci-fi strip called Quonto (beginning, in George Lucasian fashion, with “Episode 58, Part 3″). This was in junior high, and, at the behest of a teacher, he pursued it as a hobby. He found that a full 24 page comic was the true test of a prospective comics artist–how long it takes, the amount of work involved, and so on.

He continued Quonto in a local fanzine upon graduation, and kept it going in the early 80s black and white boom. (”Everybody wanted the next Ninja Turtles.”) He also worked on a fantasy strip by another creator, called Realm–his first professional job. Davis reiterates that he was not formally schooled; he is a self-taught artist.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 7:31 PM

His next thing was a detective story called Baker Street. Realm did not increase his demand as an artist–”Nobody wanted to hire me to do anything”–so he kept to his own ideas. During this time, he received a big box of international graphic novels from Scott McCloud (yes… THE Scott McCloud), which expanded his influences and exposure to other styles of art and storytelling. “Things got grittier; things got messier… used a lot more zip-a-tone.”

He moved into the mainstream, doing Sandman Mystery Theater with Matt Wagner. The gas mask Sandman, not the Neil Gaiman Sandman, which was happening concurrently. Davis treated it like Baker Street, on the strength of which he was hired to do this project. The editors did not try to force the typical superhero convention on the book, giving Davis freedom to do what he wanted.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 7:40 PM

An unfortunate effect of the strength of Sandman Mystery Theater was that Davis was typecast. “1930s.” “The guy who draws hats.” When the book was canceled, the big houses didn’t have anything for him, but the fledgling Dark Horse Comics brought him in for Nevermen. Davis treated it as a Dick Tracy style story, with hard-boiled stories and freak show villains. Nevermen expanded his reputation from “the guy who draws hats” to “the guy who draws bizarre shit and monsters.”

After some dead time following Nevermen, Davis went back to his own stuff, developing a book called The Marquis. After doing the strong female lead/detective story with Baker Street, he wanted to do a strong older man lead/18th cenutry devils ‘n’ violence story. The series “The Marquis and the Midwife” is forthcoming from Dark Horse.

He credits the design for one of his monsters to his cat–specifically, his cat’s puke.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 7:53 PM

After doing “devils and perverse stuff” with The Marquis, Marvel (somewhat inexplicably?) brought him in to do Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules, a down-to-earth telling of the backstory of the characters. The job consisted of redrawing from the author’s sketched layouts–not necessarily radical, but cushy, and a departure from his recent stuff at the time.

That’s when he got the call from Mike Mignola to do B.P.R.D., a Hellboy spin-off. Monsters, creepy settings, retro-futuristic stuff–right up his alley. It’s his current gig, and he’s doing another spin-off featuring one of the B.P.R.D. characters next year.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 8:02 PM

One of his recent oddities is a French comic called Les Zombies Qui Ont Mange Le Monde (the Zombies Who Ate the World). Drawn for and published in France, of course, but from scripts in English. Fortunate for the non-French-speaking Davis, who gets an assist from an audience member in pronouncing the title. It began in 2004, which was a seminal year for the comedic zombie apocalypse genre.

Another recent oddity: Davis was tapped by Guillermo del Toro to do some comic artwork for the Pan’s Labyrinth DVD, which was animated in a Monty Python/Flash sprite sort of way. The same technique was later applied for the Hellboy DVD. The “motion comic” style, which I personally think subtracts from one of comics’ central traits–time dealt with in space–but that’s just me. It works better as an avant garde movie than it does as comics.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 8:19 PM

Davis shows scans of some of his pages, first at the penciling stage, then at the inking stage. He reveals that much of his vaunted speed and intricate detail is because his pencil work is quite loose; much of the detail and finished appearance doesn’t find its way in until the ink is applied. It takes me back to the book Eisner/Miller, in which the two masters discussed skipping over the “tight pencil” stage entirely and doing much of the drawing at the inking stage.

In doing pin-up type artwork where he’s doing one non-sequential piece of art on a page (say, for role playing games), he discusses “faking.” In other words, making it seem as though the picture is a panel from a larger story, throwing in details that hint at a larger unseen continuity. It allows the audience to fill in the blanks. I’m reminded of Travis Bickle, who is given no backstory in Taxi Driver. The movie gives us bits of his past (and future) through the details of his present.

Friday, March 26, 2010, 8:37 PM

Davis opens the floor for Q&A.

In response to the question of whether or not the writers ever disagree with his designs, Davis describes it more as a back-and-forth process of hashing out the details, combining thoughts on design, and so on. The next question was: should all comics be creator-owned, or should there be room for work-for-hire franchise stuff? Davis answers, why not have both?

My only objection to that, which is a part of the debate that hasn’t been addressed tonight, is that many franchises exist with “a line of cheated old men standing behind them,” as Alan Moore would say. This is not so much a concern with much younger franchises, but many of the Golden Age characters–including, perhaps, Sandman–were acquired by companies through less than admirable means. It is an understatement to say that the big publishing houses were not kind to the writers and artists who gave them their flagship characters.

After another question or two, the speech comes to a close.

Last year, I was fortunate to attend the MSU Comics Forum, an event that unites readers, artists, and scholars in the exploration of comic art. The time for this annual event has come once again, and like last year, I’ll be writing blog entries in real time to cover the various goings-on. My entries from last year can be found here:

Blogging the MSU Comics Forum, 2009 (part 1)
Blogging the MSU Comics Forum, 2009 (part 2)
Blogging the MSU Comics Forum, 2009 (part 3)

The event itself will be occurring over two days. The keynote speech is this Friday evening, and the guest speaker will be Guy Davis. I’m not tremendously familiar with the stories he’s worked on, but I’ve seen his artwork and it’s pretty strong stuff. I look forward to his address, particularly after last year’s impressive speech by David Petersen.

On Saturday, things will get into full swing. Like last year, there will be discussion panels with guest speakers throughout the day, which I’ll be sure to attend. And again, there will be an “artist’s alley” meet ‘n’ greet, with a dizzying list of creative people. I don’t believe the comic submission contest will be returning this year, which is mildly disappointing, but like last year, I don’t have anything worth submitting on hand at the moment anyway.

One of this year’s new features is a comic art exhibit that will remain open until the forum itself begins. The exhibit is called “From Superman to the Small Press: The Library of Comics Shows Its Stuff.” It features many items on loan from the MSU Libraries Comic Art Collection, gathered together by Randy Scott–comics’ own patron saint, as Ryan “And Then One Day” Claytor has said.

I had the opportunity to visit the exhibit briefly today, and I hope to return before it’s over. There are a couple of glass-encased displays within the gallery, the first one featuring the original superheroes: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Each character is represented with both a genuine first-run copy of one of their earlier adventures, plus a tabloid size reproduction of their first appearance. Furthermore, the Wonder Woman portion of the display is accompanied by a small showcase about female representation in the early days of the comics industry.

At the opposite end, the other display case features a number of curiosities, including a collection of Al Capp’s “Li’l Abner” strips. Capp’s signature style is in full force on the chosen example page, including the idiosyncratic lettering that grows in both size and weight as the shouting reaches its crescendo. The case also contains representatives of independent comics and the dawn of graphic novels, or comics structured in a novelistic format. On hand is a first-run copy of Will Eisner’s A Contract With God, which–it did not escape my notice–features a much cooler cover design than the version currently in print.

In the middle of the room, there are tables and boxes filled with comics that passers-by can read or even trade for comics of their own. These are, admittedly, not quite as luminescent as the curiosities in the glass cases. What they lack in monetary value or cultural significance, they retain in the simple pleasure of riffling around and absorbing the comic book aesthetic from the last few decades.

Down the hall, there are display cases featuring even more gems. One side contains original artwork from keynote speaker Guy Davis–in other words, the actual oversize boards that he drew and inked on prior to the coloring stage. This side also includes a copy of the promotional poster by Ryan Claytor, plus the original artwork for it. The other side contains some of the earliest examples of comics as we know it, including the “picture stories” of German artist Rodolphe Toepffer (1799-1846). Nobody thought to call what Toepffer did “comics” in his day, but his artwork–hand-drawn cartoons sequentially arranged in panels with text–are comics in every way that matters.

For anybody in the mid-Michigan area this week, I strongly recommend coming around for these events. For everybody else, you can read about them here as they occur.

I don’t want to expend too much energy on it, but I thought I might chime in briefly on the results of Oscar Night 2010. I didn’t catch the first part of the ceremony, but I caught the rest once I ran out of better things to do. Here is a list of observations, culled either from the broadcast itself or from summaries of the parts I missed.

1. An honorary Academy Award for Gordon Willis.

This guy’s work with low-exposure photography on the Godfather movies is legendary. That he hasn’t been acknowledged for it until now is shocking, even for the Academy. Was he even nominated for the first two? I don’t think so.

2. Best Film Editing goes to The Hurt Locker.

This will be one of the many remarks I’ll make in this post over how The Hurt Locker, for all its virtues, has no business beating Inglourious Basterds in a number of categories. This is one of them. The Hurt Locker features the “run ‘n’ gun” style of shooting and cutting that I’ve come to despise. It’s not much of an offender—it manages to maintain its coherence—but at the same time, I’ll take the classic technique and clarity of Inglourious Basterds any day.

3. Best Cinematography goes to Avatar.

No. No no no no no. This is one gaffe on the Academy’s part that isn’t just a matter of taste, but of pure, factual wrongness. I won’t deny that Avatar’s stunning images are commendable, but cinematography—by definition—involves actually shooting the footage with a camera. Cinematography is the art of manipulating and capturing light through the lens. Avatar’s visual wonders are almost exclusively dealt with through computer animation. Cameras have nothing to do with it. If there ever was a reason to not take the Oscars seriously…

4. Best Original Screenplay goes to The Hurt Locker.

Is The Hurt Locker really a writer’s movie? It seems to me that you don’t see The Hurt Locker for the dialogue or the story developments, but for the visceral experience of spending time in a bomb suit in the streets of Iraq. The Academy has a tendency to give certain movies a “sweep” of the categories, as a matter of putting as much of its dubious clout into one cause as it possibly can. In this particular case, it looks like The Hurt Locker is the lucky winner. There isn’t much else of an explanation for why this award didn’t go to A Serious Man or (yes) Inglourious Basterds, which are much more written movies.

5. Best Supporting Actor for Christoph Waltz, Best Supporting Actress for Mo’Nique

Shockingly, these are the winners I was pulling for in these categories.

6. The John Hughes and horror movie montages

Somebody please convince me that these two show padders weren’t a complete waste of time. Clips from mostly bad horror movies? A tribute to a man who was a fine enough writer but an unremarkable director? I realize that pandering to fair-weather viewers is the theme of this year’s Oscars (just look at the size of the Best Picture category!), but isn’t this too obvious and counterproductive?

7. Best Actor goes to Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart

Sometimes people praise a movie when they mean to praise an actor. Crazy Heart is one of those movies. I’m not sure it deserves the acclaim it’s gotten, but Jeff Bridges more than pulls his weight, and he’s an excellent actor overall. And you have to love a guy who uses the word “groovy” in his acceptance speech.

8. Best Director goes to Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker

I think I might be getting blue in the face. I’m actually not going to deny that this is a well-directed film. The atmosphere and the tension isn’t in the script or the acting, but in the way the images are put together and the way it pulls us in by our shirt collars. That’s the hand of the director.

That said, Bigelow over Tarantino? Hurt Locker over Inglourious Basterds? Remember, we’re talking about direction here, and if The Hurt Locker pulls us by our shirt collars, Inglourious Basterds sits us down, gives us a shoulder massage, feeds us, and slowly strangles us in the meantime. In a good way.

9. Best Picture goes to The Hurt Locker

I suppose this was predictable. What wasn’t predictable was the four seconds it took for Tom Hanks to appear, open the envelope, and read the name. Check it out when they cut to the backstage camera. Kathryn Bigelow didn’t even have time to get to the snack table before her movie’s name got called. I realize the Academy is raring to break the glass ceiling by showering a female director with as much praise as possible. But when you factor in all that praise, the choice of song, and Streisand’s comment about making history, it all smacks of condescension. It’s one of those calculated superstar moments.

I don’t think it’s at all diminishing to Bigelow, her excellent movie, or her tremendous talent to say that, either. I think it’s diminishing for the Academy to ignore actual merits in favor of imagined ones.

That’s probably all I have to contribute to the discussion over this year’s cavalcade of acceptance speeches, unconscionably expensive clothing, and badly scripted comedy routines. Congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker for victories perhaps partially deserved, and my sincerest condolence to Quentin Tarantino for the 100% undeserved losses of Inglourious Basterds. I don’t know if it truly is his masterpiece, but it—along with the criminally overlooked A Serious Man—is one of 2009’s movies to see.

(Note: If the title of this page isn’t enough of a clue, this article will discuss various plot details of Shutter Island. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you might not want to read this. There’s your spoiler warning.)

This film is an exercise in doubt. If I were to break it into three parts, I would say that the first third sows the seeds of doubt over whether or not the authorities of Shutter Island can be trusted. Our U.S. Marshal characters go in to solve the mystery of a missing patient. They are met by a number of important people who make a big show of being helpful, without ever doing anything to help. We get the pervasive sense that nobody is being honest. This sense is communicated through every frame of every shot.

The middle third sows the seeds of doubt in our perception of the events. In a chance encounter, one particular character makes a compelling point: if our hero’s sanity comes into question, then his credibility is forever undermined, even to himself. And because our hero is our guide through this narrative, that means that everything we’ve witnessed so far and everything we’ll eventually witness can only be taken in those uncertain terms. His mission is no longer just to unravel the mystery, but to cling to the faith that he’s in the right. In his view, the authorities of Shutter Island might question his sanity, but his sanity allows him to see their ulterior motives for doing so. It’s all part of their devious plan.

So what does the final third do? The majority of movies don’t require the audience to think very hard. Most viewers have been trained to expect that the mystery will be solved, that the questions will be answered, that everything will be tied up nicely. The cleverness of this portion of the movie is that these people will find what they’re looking for. Shutter Island provides the necessary evidence to support this interpretation. All has been revealed. We’ve reached the cheese at the end of the maze.

That is, if we stop looking once we’ve found the cheese. We must be careful to guard ourselves against confirmation bias, which is what happens when we see the evidence we’re looking for and disregard the evidence we’re not interested in. In truth, Shutter Island is littered with too much evidence to conclusively point to any one answer. By my count, there are three major possibilities left open at the end of the movie, and they all deserve consideration. They are broken down as follows:

1. Our hero is insane. In the course of the final act, the authorities reveal that our hero is a mental patient, living in an elaborate delusion. It appears that they’ve gotten through to him, that he’s accepted their attempts to convince him. However, in the final scene, he speaks confidentially to his doctor—the man who, in his fantasy, is his U.S. Marshal partner. He reveals that he still intends to escape and bust this Shutter Island conspiracy wide open.

This seems to be the most commonly accepted interpretation of the ending. He’s insane, and has been the whole time. There have been some negative reactions to the film that appear to be based on this version. The viewers feel as though everything they’ve slogged through to get to this point has been invalidated, as if a film this well-crafted could ever be described as a slog. But never mind that.

2. Our hero is sane. In this version of the ending, our hero is still playacting—not as an insane man pretending to be sane to placate his doctors, but as a sane man pretending to be insane in order to guarantee a release from his pain. His last words to his “partner” strongly imply that he is sane, but is willing to be lobotomized so that he won’t have to live with the terrible things that his fantasy was safeguarding him against.

While this interpretation doesn’t frame the earlier portion of the movie in a drastically different way from the first interpretation, it does cast some interesting doubts upon earlier scenes that seem to imply insanity. It becomes that much harder to tell when he’s been wrong and when he’s been right.

3. The conspiracy is real. According to the laws of reality, this is the least plausible of the three endings. But for one thing, “least plausible” is not the same as “implausible.” Shutter Island is an utterly self-contained environment where any attempt to question the authorities can easily be dismissed as the ravings of a delusional paranoiac. One of the main reasons for disbelieving in conspiracy theories is that they’re untenable in an open marketplace of ideas. Shutter Island is anything but.

For another, to dismiss this interpretation out of hand is to ignore the seductive ideas that the film has been playing with all along. Our hero’s certainty is all he has to tell him that he’s sane, and the most obvious way for his enemies to protect themselves would be to declare him insane. In his most vulnerable moment, it may be that they’re not freeing him from the delusion, so much as crafting it for their convenience. In a place like Shutter Island, reality is fragile and mutable. Which version of reality is the “real” one might depend solely on how many people are willing to agree upon it. In the final scenes, our hero simply gets voted down.

There is not enough evidence to settle upon any one ending, and that’s just as it should be. As Scorsese’s on-and-off collaborator Paul Schrader is fond of saying, the final scene of a movie should continue to play out in the lobby of the theater. Movies with open-and-shut endings are rarely as interesting as movies that encourage the viewers to puzzle over the pieces. Unfortunately, it often seems as though a clean-cut ending is all that the average moviegoer cares about, as though two thirds of the story are just a means to arrive at that point. It’s a shame.