Dr. Horrible and the Thoroughbred of Sin

Not that anyone reads these (fortunately, for the sanity and well-being of the civilized world) but just in case:

SPOILERS ahem SPOILERS WITH A CAPITAL "s" SPOILERS to follow.






Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is, well, relatively self-explanatory. It is a video blog that you can sing along with about a would-be supervillian named Dr. Horrible.

I've seen it, you've seen it, we've all seen it. But what's it all about?

In the first two acts, in true post-modern fashion, the show establishes sympathy for the lead character, Dr. Horrible (played by Neil Patrick Harris). This works because it plays off the well-worn anti-hero motiff. The anti-hero argument is basically this: traditional heroes are actually symbolic of the shiny veneer on the oppressive Social System, and the real hero is the flawed, unsuper fellow who can see through that facade, and fight against it.

In other words, Superman is a facsistic wish-fulfillment, a literal and figurative extension of the eugenics of the spiritual Third Reich. Batman is a sick sociopath, haunted by his impotence and forever dependent on criminality in order to give himself identity. Captain America is nothing more than a government tool. The Hulk is displaced rage with daddy issues.*

What about the poor, misunderstood supervillain? Doesn't he have motive? Doesn't he have good cause for what he does? Shouldn't his dreams matter?

Such is the case with Dr. Horrible. In act I, we quickly understand that Dr. Horrible is a puffed up, mostly harmless, social basket case. By the end of act II, we root for his cartoonish revenge fantasy, because we believe him to be wronged. By the end of act III, his dreams have simultaneously gone awry and come true, and we abruptly realize the depths of isolation that his success has brought him.

Dr. Horrible is, literally, all fun and games until someone loses a life. And it all started so innocently. Dr. Horrible, the incompetent, yet likable, blowhard confesses his love and ambition, and the viewers are inspired to take up his cause. Here's a guy who wants to be validated by membership in an exclusive club (the ridiculous-sounding Evil League of Evil) and get the girl of his dreams, Penny (Felicia Day). The absolutely goofy plot that develops dares the audience to take it lightly, and to vicariously hope for Dr. Horrible's too-perfect traditional hero foil (and jerk-of-all-trades), Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion), to take one on his well-chiseled chin.

And, in Act III, he does. Dr. Horrible, in taking extreme measures by developing a lethal weapon (something that he found, in his saner moments to be unstylish), gets everything: Hammer is humiliated, people fear/respect Dr. Horrible and, by unintentionally killing Penny, he earns even the respect of Bad Horse, the Thoroghbred of Sin and head of the Evil League of Evil. At that point, when Dr. Horrible could come face-to-face with the consequence of his once-silly rage and once-overreaching ambition, he instead, reluctantly accepts the fruit of his sin, entering the League, reaping the fickle public's acclaim, and starting his quest in earnest to rule the planet. The audience, on the other hand, is left with broken hearts for a now incapacitated, weeping Captain Hammer and a dead Penny.

The last, brief image is that of Dr. Horrible, stripped of all artifice, staring blankly into the camera, feeling nothing.

This wasn't what many expected from something with the phrase "Sing-Along" in the title. But it is, in fact, the perfect title. The show says a great deal about what people have come to expect from their entertainment. It is alluring to live vicariously through the comic actions of bad characters. It is a standard trope that the traditional hero is, by definition, now considered to be, at best, a heavily compromised self-deception, and at worst, a greater problem than whatever evil faces us.

Dr. Horrible takes a lighthearted approach to temptation and sin, gives motive to wrath, revenge and power fantasies, and then pulls the curtain back to reveal what we all know inside: there are many ways to sugarcoat evil - downplay it, lampoon it, sympathize with it, explain it away, or laugh it up - but it is real, it is creeping, and it ultimately leaves us empty as a tomb.

And that is the story's genius. It succeeds as a laugh-out-loud comedy that leads us to the sobering conclusion that sin is nothing to joke about.

The shocking, tragic lesson of Dr. Horrible is that there is a deeply likable face of Wrong.

*It's not just comic books: the antihero-worship is an alternative for those who accept the musical accusation that "John Wayne was a Nazi" or the notion that subsistence is preferred to the risk of heroism.

Ana Ng Musically Mispronounced

Sure, sure, the vowel is off, but the song can't be beat with a shoehorn.

Jesus and Jazz

You know me.* I love music indiscriminately.

I have a real green thumb when it comes to music. If I touch a brass instrument my thumb turns green (greener). I can snap a piano in half by leaning on it with my portly elbow. When I sing in church, the choir rolls up like a scroll, and pewmates scatter like roaches. My most melodious musical performance came the time I vomited onto a banjo.

You get the picture.

But I love music, and if Jesus' resurrection had a soundtrack, I think it'd be jazz.

*Or you don't.