Can you love a thing but hate the person who made it? A Review of Postal by Brock Wilbur and Nathan Rabin
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Can you love something even if the creator of that thing is awful?
The modern highway system is great, but we have to thank Hitler for that. Penicillin is cool, but it was made by a disgusting moldy sandwich (that I’ve heard also hated Jews). This book, Postal, it’s great, but it was created by the awful Brock Wilbur and Nathan Rabin. I’m just kidding. I’ve never met these guys. They are probably cool, though. At least as cool as highways.
With Postal, the 23rd book in the Boss Fight Books series, authors Brock Wilbur and Nathan Rabin highlight two such problematic creators: Vince Desi and Uwe Boll. Desi is the mind behind the video game Postal, released in 1997. Boll is the director of the game’s movie adaptation released in 2008. Both creators are generally depicted in media as deplorable, offensive, and simply not very good at what they do. But only Desi comes out of Wilbur and Rabin’s book remaining that way. For Boll, this is a bit of a redemption story.
Wilbur and Rabin create an interesting tension for the reader. Desi is depicted as an unflappable hothead, someone who’s difficult to be around and difficult to like. He’s a bad person who made a bad game. And he stays that way. He’s easy to categorize. Desi’s presence here is as the benchmark for the reader’s emotional investment.
But Boll’s story is much more nuanced. Boll’s common media persona, unlike Desi’s, feels inaccurate after reading this book. Rabin’s treatment of the maligned director is one of a sad existence. Boll’s entire career output is of knowingly questionable quality. His movies are critically panned. Even disinterested audiences have a hard time watching a Boll movie.
To make his movies Boll has long taken advantage of a German tax loophole that allowed financiers of movies to be reimbursed by the government if the movie doesn’t make a profit. And to make his movies, Boll needed source material so he turned to cheap video game IPs. Boll’s massive accumulation of video game film rights and the resulting poor adaptations has almost single-handedly given video game movies their reputation as garbage. A distant onlooker would see just a greedy supervillain, right?
But Rabin depicts a man that’s convinced himself that his movies are great. Or at least, that his movies have not been given a proper chance. He’s a creator whose creations aren’t appreciated. Any artist can sympathize with that torment. And in humanizing this apparent villain against the unchanging Desi, the reader almost sees Boll as a charming underdog. Boll isn’t a creator worth looking up to, but when paired next to Desi looking up is the only thing we can do. Here, Boll wins by default. But at least it’s a win. He needs one.
I love a book that poses a great question. Can you enjoy the games and movies made by these shady people? How much does your appreciation of a product reflect your acceptance of the creator?
I’ve talked about the competing schools when it comes to interpreting a creative work and the degree to which we should or should not rely on the author to help us interpret, so I won’t do that here. But this is a situation where understanding the creator does impact my own personal thoughts toward a work. Postal is a bad movie. There’s no debating that. But I respect it more, and can watch it with less hostility than I could before reading Wilbur and Rabin’s book. Postal, the game, though? No. I still hate it.
And these authors do right by the material. Brock Wilbur is a comedian and the editor-in-Chief of The Pitch, a local Kansas City independent news outlet, so he’s practically my neighbor and therefore definitely at least as cool as a highway. Brock uses humor to keep a safe emotional distance from Desi, which feels right considering Desi’s seemingly manic nature. Nathan Rabin is an author of several books about the movie industry so he’s used to profiling filmmakers. These guys have created a great book that asks a great question and that’s exactly what I want from a book like this.
Mentioned:
- Boss Fight Books review playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMKbK8vtuoicyVRhGfap2QIj5R5mWJioY
- Postal from Boss Fight Books: https://bossfightbooks.com/products/postal-by-brock-wilbur-nathan-rabin
- Brock Wilbur on Twitter: https://twitter.com/brockwilbur
- Nathan Rabin: https://www.nathanrabin.com/
Credits:
- Music: Bossa Antigua Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- Postal trailer: Via ACHTE BOLL KINO BETEILIGUNGS GMBH & CO. KG. AND NEUNTE BOLL KINO BETEILIGUNGS GMBH & CO. KG.
- Postal Gameplay: via Running With Scissors / World-of-Longplays
