Getting off the High Horse: Picking on Cowboy Bebop

Recently, I read an interesting exchange between Daniel and Michael about Cowboy Bebop.

And by recently, I mean about fifteen minutes ago.

Now, I've said my piece about the quality of Cowboy Bebop as a show, but comparing it to Faulkner is a bit unfair – both to Faulkner and Cowboy Bebop.

Faulkner's biggest strength (in my opinion) is his use of form. As Michael rightly points out, the stream-of-consciousness first person narration creates a immersive environment. The reader is not only seeing the story through the character's eyes, but also through their perception. So we're actually inside of the character's mind. It's a form that's often copied, but from what I've read of it, it's never done quite as well.

Where I disagree with Michael is that Cowboy Bebop uses a similar style. In fact, I disagree that Bebop uses form at all. Now I could be a Philistine, but I simply can't see the largely episodic structure (even with the slight tie-in in the end) as a homage. The episodes are too scattered, too tonally inconsistent and too rooted in third-person narration to be anything more than what they are – a collection of short pulp stories with a larger novella spread out among them.

That said, I think Raymond Chandler is a better writer than Faulkner. Hell, I think Robert Ludlum is a better writer than Faulkner.

Now, I'm not go into the whole depth issue. Frankly, I haven't really seen a good way to judge depth. But I do think that the comparison to an "airport thriller" is also incorrect. Bebop is noir. Maybe not quite in the way that Chandler describes hardboiled detectives, but more in the way that noir has become. Spike is Chili Palmer. He's the classic repentant criminal, who's trying to forget about his old life, but can't. Jet Black is… well… Philip Marlowe (or perhaps it'd be more fair to compare him to Matthew Scudder or Spenser). He's the classic disillusioned cop, who still believes in justice, but can't seem to work inside of the corrupt system. Faye Valentine is the femme fatale (there really are too many of them to name.) Really, the only thing that's unusual that Bebop brings to the table is Ed and Ein. Everything else is a stylish re-hash.

But that doesn't make it thematically empty. Yes, it does play out some rather familiar themes like identity, repentance and betrayal. But it leaves this viewer with enough questions to think about after it's all done. For instance, is identity determined by memories? Once an identity is formed can we willingly leave that identity behind? What happens when the things we based our identity on betray us? And if this is a good measure of depth, then I think Bebop succeeds.