REHupa

I really will get around to writing up a review of A RHYME OF SALEM TOWN and Other Poems, but I’ve got something else to yak about right now. It’s just a quick hit here.

Finally today I got around to seeing 300, Frank Miller’s graphic novel brought to the big screen in all it’s CGI glory. There’s been some discussion over on REHinnercircle and on the Conan Forums regarding this movie and its Howardian Imagery, and mentions of Spartans and the history of that time as written about by Ol’ Two Gun. I’m not really up to snuff on that part of ancient history, but I read the posts with interest, hoping that maybe some of that on-line education will sink in.

The movie 300 is very beautiful. That’s my first response to the imagery that was presented to me. It’s great to look at this movie. The colors are subtle and muted, lots of golds and sepia and red (for the blood, of course). Each scene is framed like a comic book (duh), and that’s a good thing for me. (That’s why I liked the movie Unbreakable so much.) 300 just looks damn good. There’s plenty of blood and gore, graphic violence the likes of which I’ve never seen in a movie before – decapitations and limb-severings and spurting blood provided by slashing swords and stabbing spears. And there’s naked women and hints of mysticism – all that good Sword & Sorcery stuff. Pretty much all I could ask for in a movie!

As I watched, it was fairly easy to envision a Howard character like Conan or Kull or Bran Mak Morn being substituted for the on-screen”historical” depictions of a whirling dervish with a sword. There were plenty of dervishes in 300, and their well-coreographed actions combined with computer generated assistance come very close to some of the imagery that Bob Howard puts in my brain when I read his words.

The point I’d like to make about Howard Imagery, however, is just that – each of us intereprets the words of Bob Howard just a little bit differently. That’s what makes discussion and speculation and arguing about what Howard wrote so much damn fun, among those of us who indulge ourselves in all the great words he strung together and left for us to discuss, speculate and argue about. 300 makes for some Howardian-like imagery, and may even have assisted some of my own Howardian Imagery, but in the end I’ll continue to use Howard’s words to rebuild my own in-brain depiction of what he’s telling me.

I’d never call Howard’s Imagery “beautiful” in the traditional sense, but what he gives me is a combination of words which has it’s own beauty. I can read a Howard story over and over, because I’ll always get something new out of it – a missed or overlooked phrase or even just a word – that makes that particular story continually fresh and exciting. The imagery he gives us never ceases to amaze me, and I won’t cite any examples right now because I’ll be here all night!

But you know what I’m talking about here. You all have your own favorite bits of Howardian Imagery, and your own way of interpreting them and discussing them and envisioning them. At the very end of the day, your version is the only one that counts. And that’s exactly why no movie or comic book or illustrator will ever get your Howardian Imagery exactly right.

That’s just one of the things that makes Robert E. Howard so great – what he does to each and every one of us! And it’s only going to get better – this is the greatest time EVER to be a fan of Robert E. Howard!