A review by rebus
Ayn Rand's Anthem: The Graphic Novel by Dan Parsons, Jennifer Grossman, Ayn Rand
0.25
It's remarkable that the generations since the late 90s have been drawn to such incoherent, psychopathic, fascist drivel. Rand was a product of government and modern civilization, yet the authors and members of the foundations that produced it would claim that the book is a reaction against governments that are out of control (I guess that didn't matter when the lifelong 3 pack a day smoker committed fraud to get SSDI and treatment for her lung cancer).
It's a thinly veiled attack on communism, any sort of leftist idealism, or any notions of fairness and equality, exalting the notion of superior people as deserving of more (and can anyone who has read her adulation of Howard Roark honestly say that something as boring as architecture and geometry is beautiful compared to nature?). While the simpler times depicted are a bit loathsome, so too are the 'Unmentionable Times' (our current times) of slavery, theft, and exploitation that enriches the very few. There is indeed no such thing as ethical self interest.
As writing, it's as awful and lugubrious as plowing through one of her massive novels, with terrible metaphors such as calling the first named woman the Golden One, the first man the Unconquered, and using electricity and light as a symbol. Lauding the pastoral landscape those two discovered is more than a bit disingenuous when coming from a woman who never left the city. The male was not a brilliant man who discovered or invented anything, merely found ancient things and was inexplicably able to fix them (impossible on the very face of it, centuries after societal collapse). I will it. Me. Happy. No share. Others inferior. Idiotic ramblings and a corrupt philosophy that says we owe nothing to others coming from a woman who felt she was owed her life after destroying it with tobacco.
It all comes with conditions, such as that one MUST do more than be born to be part of the establishment system. Why? Who asked to be born into a fascist society? It's as bad as when the PC left of the 90s demands civility, a fascist dismantling of free speech, in order to be accepted. The man later speaks of the new god, of I, when in fact god was created as an act of fascist oppression, subsuming everyone into the 'we'.
More horrific metaphors come later, the man taking the name Prometheus, the woman Gaea (their mispelling), and the retarded Rand believes that the cities that created our enslavement created freedom, saying that we threw off the chains of the gods, of the kings, of birth, and of race. She's like a 3rd grader raised after 1980, because most people still believe in gods, worship politicians, NEVER rise up from the lower classes, and still see rampant racism that nothing is done about each day (no, your BLM signs do not matter). She lauds ego and believes all the greatness of humanity came from great minds, when in fact all of our achievements came from collective effort (code breaking in WWII or the invention of computers).
It's a shock to see a bookshelf depicted at the end with all of her crappy books next to the brilliant Brave New World--which the authors must not have read--because she was just a retarded, crypto-fascist, psychopath.
It's a thinly veiled attack on communism, any sort of leftist idealism, or any notions of fairness and equality, exalting the notion of superior people as deserving of more (and can anyone who has read her adulation of Howard Roark honestly say that something as boring as architecture and geometry is beautiful compared to nature?). While the simpler times depicted are a bit loathsome, so too are the 'Unmentionable Times' (our current times) of slavery, theft, and exploitation that enriches the very few. There is indeed no such thing as ethical self interest.
As writing, it's as awful and lugubrious as plowing through one of her massive novels, with terrible metaphors such as calling the first named woman the Golden One, the first man the Unconquered, and using electricity and light as a symbol. Lauding the pastoral landscape those two discovered is more than a bit disingenuous when coming from a woman who never left the city. The male was not a brilliant man who discovered or invented anything, merely found ancient things and was inexplicably able to fix them (impossible on the very face of it, centuries after societal collapse). I will it. Me. Happy. No share. Others inferior. Idiotic ramblings and a corrupt philosophy that says we owe nothing to others coming from a woman who felt she was owed her life after destroying it with tobacco.
It all comes with conditions, such as that one MUST do more than be born to be part of the establishment system. Why? Who asked to be born into a fascist society? It's as bad as when the PC left of the 90s demands civility, a fascist dismantling of free speech, in order to be accepted. The man later speaks of the new god, of I, when in fact god was created as an act of fascist oppression, subsuming everyone into the 'we'.
More horrific metaphors come later, the man taking the name Prometheus, the woman Gaea (their mispelling), and the retarded Rand believes that the cities that created our enslavement created freedom, saying that we threw off the chains of the gods, of the kings, of birth, and of race. She's like a 3rd grader raised after 1980, because most people still believe in gods, worship politicians, NEVER rise up from the lower classes, and still see rampant racism that nothing is done about each day (no, your BLM signs do not matter). She lauds ego and believes all the greatness of humanity came from great minds, when in fact all of our achievements came from collective effort (code breaking in WWII or the invention of computers).
It's a shock to see a bookshelf depicted at the end with all of her crappy books next to the brilliant Brave New World--which the authors must not have read--because she was just a retarded, crypto-fascist, psychopath.