The Pantheon: Comparisons to Other Works

[Slovenly Muse]

A place to discuss comparisons between American Gods and other media, such as other works by the cast and crew, other works by Neil Gaiman or the series writers, or other works that explore similar ideas.

[Slovenly Muse]

Well, I don't want to start this thread with an unpopular opinion, but I need to get this off my chest.

This show is so well-done, but there's something about it that's not working for me, and I think I finally figured out what it is. I LOVE Bryan Fuller's other shows, and while the lush, meandering tone of Hannibal absolutely captivated me, in this show I'm finding it a bit wearying. And I think the reason is the material. Hannibal was at its core an extraordinarily small and simple story (two men playing a cat-and-mouse game with each other) which was drawn out into marvellous levels of depth and complexity by the way the story was told and the poetic way it was presented visually. American Gods is the opposite. This is an absolutely MASSIVE story about the biggest and most complex topics there are: Gods, religion, immigration, identity, the push-and-pull between tradition and innovation... new gods and old going to war over the American identity... This is absolutely earth-shattering stuff, and the show chooses to focus on the most superficial aspects of it: Driving across the country, playing checkers, conning banks, telling stories about lucky thieves... Essie's story this week was beautiful, but it WASN'T what I wanted to be focusing on! When this languid, atmospheric approach was applied to Hannibal, it had the effect of adding complexity to a fairly simple story and milking intense horror and suspense out of small moments. Here, I feel like it's stripping complexity out of the story and intentionally leaving the meaty stuff untouched. I don't get the sense that it's really building up a mystery, so much as filling time before having to clearly reveal what's happening and actually deal with it. I'm not blaming Bryan Fuller, because I genuinely think the problem is the source material (I wasn't hugely taken with the book, and I am usually a Gaiman fan). I REALLY want to like this series more than I am, but as much as I enjoy these side stories and backstories, I'm having a hard time with the show's stubborn refusal to actually commit to its premise, dive in and tackle the themes it seems to be dancing around.

For all that Fuller has tackled similar ideas about life, death, and reanimation in his previous works, those stories always strove to illuminate and explore the complex ways that life and death affected one another. Georgia's experiences as a grim reaper on Dead Like Me served to give her a new understanding of life, and an appreciation of the gift she had thrown away. Pushing Daisies explored the ways Ned's power over life and death essentially kept him from having a life of his own, and prevented him from really finding a place among the living OR the dead. Will Graham's empathy for murderers on Hannibal became a sinkhole into which his sense of self and morality could fall at any moment, making his story about identity as much as anything. Given his storytelling past, it makes sense that Fuller wants to focus on Laura and her sort-of-reanimation more than the book did. But the difference is that Laura's death and resurrection doesn't seem to have affected her much, personality-wise, or served much purpose to the story. All these character studies, backstories, etc, that we've seen so far... they are interesting, but they're missing the sort of psychological or existential gut-punch I'm used to from Fuller. It's so frustrating, because all I want to do is jump in and luxuriate in this show the way I could with Hannibal, but I keep finding the pool to be disappointingly shallow.

I will keep watching though, because it is a solidly good show. Just not quite on the level of what Bryan Fuller can deliver when he's working with his own source material, or without being beholden to the original source material (like Hannibal, which really explored the stories that WEREN'T told in the Thomas Harris books, just hinted at or suggested between the lines). Hopefully next week will turn me around!

[Eneya]

10 hours ago, Slovenly Muse said:

Well, I don't want to start this thread with an unpopular opinion, but I need to get this off my chest.

This show is so well-done, but there's something about it that's not working for me, and I think I finally figured out what it is. I LOVE Bryan Fuller's other shows, and while the lush, meandering tone of Hannibal absolutely captivated me, in this show I'm finding it a bit wearying. And I think the reason is the material. Hannibal was at its core an extraordinarily small and simple story (two men playing a cat-and-mouse game with each other) which was drawn out into marvellous levels of depth and complexity by the way the story was told and the poetic way it was presented visually. American Gods is the opposite. This is an absolutely MASSIVE story about the biggest and most complex topics there are: Gods, religion, immigration, identity, the push-and-pull between tradition and innovation... new gods and old going to war over the American identity... This is absolutely earth-shattering stuff, and the show chooses to focus on the most superficial aspects of it: Driving across the country, playing checkers, conning banks, telling stories about lucky thieves... Essie's story this week was beautiful, but it WASN'T what I wanted to be focusing on! When this languid, atmospheric approach was applied to Hannibal, it had the effect of adding complexity to a fairly simple story and milking intense horror and suspense out of small moments. Here, I feel like it's stripping complexity out of the story and intentionally leaving the meaty stuff untouched. I don't get the sense that it's really building up a mystery, so much as filling time before having to clearly reveal what's happening and actually deal with it. I'm not blaming Bryan Fuller, because I genuinely think the problem is the source material (I wasn't hugely taken with the book, and I am usually a Gaiman fan). I REALLY want to like this series more than I am, but as much as I enjoy these side stories and backstories, I'm having a hard time with the show's stubborn refusal to actually commit to its premise, dive in and tackle the themes it seems to be dancing around.

For all that Fuller has tackled similar ideas about life, death, and reanimation in his previous works, those stories always strove to illuminate and explore the complex ways that life and death affected one another. Georgia's experiences as a grim reaper on Dead Like Me served to give her a new understanding of life, and an appreciation of the gift she had thrown away. Pushing Daisies explored the ways Ned's power over life and death essentially kept him from having a life of his own, and prevented him from really finding a place among the living OR the dead. Will Graham's empathy for murderers on Hannibal became a sinkhole into which his sense of self and morality could fall at any moment, making his story about identity as much as anything. Given his storytelling past, it makes sense that Fuller wants to focus on Laura and her sort-of-reanimation more than the book did. But the difference is that Laura's death and resurrection doesn't seem to have affected her much, personality-wise, or served much purpose to the story. All these character studies, backstories, etc, that we've seen so far... they are interesting, but they're missing the sort of psychological or existential gut-punch I'm used to from Fuller. It's so frustrating, because all I want to do is jump in and luxuriate in this show the way I could with Hannibal, but I keep finding the pool to be disappointingly shallow.

I will keep watching though, because it is a solidly good show. Just not quite on the level of what Bryan Fuller can deliver when he's working with his own source material, or without being beholden to the original source material (like Hannibal, which really explored the stories that WEREN'T told in the Thomas Harris books, just hinted at or suggested between the lines). Hopefully next week will turn me around!

I don't agree with you but I love how you argumented your point. :)

[clack]

I feel the opposite -- that Laura is very much in the tradition of the female protagonists in Fuller's 'Dead Like Me' and 'Wonderfalls'.

Like Georgia and Jayne, Laura is disaffected, disconnected, detached, sardonic, and a slacker. And then for each, something supernatural forces them to engage with the world and to connect with other people.

[ombre]

Interesting idea.  I'd never before thought about how giving Laura a real story means wedding the sensibilities of Fuller (with his disaffected dead women) and Gaiman.  What an excellent observation!

I've been listening to The Odyssey, in no small part because Odysseus and Wednesday feel cut of the same cloth - warriors whose preferred weapons are lies and cunning, travelling through many lands on an epic quest for power.  It's had me thinking a lot about the similarities and differences between the two.  Odysseus, like Wednesday, is fond of a two-man con, but his partner is usually Athena, who is more powerful but not as focused on his grift as he is.  Wednesday, however, generally prefers to keep the power to himself, both in terms of godly powers and in terms of being the only one knowing all the information.  

[Kanaloa]

Megami Tensei (Japanese for "Goddess Rebirth") is a videogame series that predates AG by over a decade, going as far back as the original NES/Nintendo. 

It also antedates Pokemon insofar as the objective is to collect beings based on world mythologies rather than gimmicky mascots:

[WatchrTina]

Neil Gaiman has written two more works that touch on this fictional universe.  The first is "Anansi Boys", which (as you can guess) concerns the offspring of Mr. Nancy.  And Shadow turns up in "Black Dog" -- one of the short stories included in Neil's short-story collection "Trigger Warning."

I did not like Anansi Boys at all at first but then it grew on me and I'm really glad I read it.

I'm not comfortable with the "Black Dog" short story because I can't make peace with when it happened relative to the events of "American Gods."  It has to be set afterward but if that is so, Shadow seems awfully naive.