Grant Morrison’s Kill Your Boyfriend is still one of my favorite one-shots’ of all time. I’ve tried and tried to craft some deft theological spin on it.
I’ve failed every time.
At the end of the day, it very well may be Morrison just being Morrison. You know, ripping on the world for not being exciting enough for him. That’s fair. I get it. Though I’m not sure the inadvertent incest he scripts makes life any more interesting. Ironic, maybe . . . you know, in the Oedipus kind of way. Nevertheless, for someone who has just barely staved off poverty by teaching at a few universities, publishing books barely worth reading, fifteen years worth of involvement with theatre, and trying to make this whole Mennonite thing pay off in some ungodly way (there is not quite the high demand for Mennonite strippers as one might originally imagine), this notion of floating identities is worth pillaging.
What a liberating notion (or, possibly, tyrannical–difficult to tell). That is, this idea of being all shook up (shut it, Presley). I just wonder if what is needed is the kind of slaying of the self as found in something like Fight Club. Eliminate that which was never really there, invented in order to own us. That may be a bit off-topic. I’m not sure. Anyway, I’m fairly confident I can reconcile the personalities practiced by the unnamed heroin (and is that not a total act of brilliance?) of this comic–except for the Warhol Superstar. Utter incongruity. But maybe that’s the beauty of it. Reveling in contradiction and all that. Continually reinventing and, simultaneously, creating the non-existent self. Putting on a different face. Perhaps a non-reflective face. I don’t know. But, there we are, locked in perpetual performance. Everyone is our audience.
I can’t help but imagine how lovely (horrid? revealing?) it would be to become the mutant/changeling Jamie Madrox.
Well, normally, the conversation between floating personalities is a little more interesting. But not always. You get the point. Different faces, different personalities, different masks. It breeds a mild case of schizophrenia.
Yes, I’m a housewife with a jar of rat poison.
I only wonder if the so-called “inner-self” that makes such fragmentation possible could benefit from some rodenticidal anticoagulants. It’s got to be healthier than a world full of Tyler Durdens, right?
Eh, maybe not.