I would be hard pressed to pick a better mascot for the United States as an imperial hegemon than Mickey Mouse. In Egypt — as with most of the “developing world” — Mr. Mouse is ubiquitous: you can see his big round eyes staring at you on the side of taxi cabs, through the glass windows of clothing stores, and from the cover of popular comic books. In fact, it is in this latter form that many Egyptians have come to know and love Mickey Mouse, or rather have come to know and love “Mîkî.”
On HU
Domingos Isabelinho does a close read of a page of Herge. In comments he explains what he did wrong.
Stephanie Folse looks at issues 3 and 4 of Elfquest.
Matthias Wivel looks at Jimmy Corrigan in light of Chris Ware’s later work.
Richard Cook looks back at the Comics Code.
Ng Suat Tong reviews Brecht Evens’ “The Wrong Place.”
I discuss Stanley Cavell’s theories of film in relation to Mondrian, HIroshige, Jeff Wall, Blaise Larmee, art, film, and comics.
Alex Buchet looks at how British comics have influenced the English language.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At Splice Today I talk about Chicago juke.
Other LInks
Stanley Fish has a nice review of True Grit.
Chris Sims explains Bane.
Matt Seneca on a panel from Tintin.
Jason Overby quits.
Kate Beaton presents sexy Batman. (Via Sean Collins.
And your Panelist link of the week: Derik Badman discusses bricks.
Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.
— Samuel Johnson, Dictionary (1751)
In a seven-part series, we surveyed the contributions of comics and cartoons to English popular language
Part 1, part 2, part 3 looked at American newspaper comic strips; part 4 and part 5 treated comic books; part 6 reviewed American panel gags and editorial cartoons; part 7 dealt with Britain.
This post serves as an index to the series; after each entry appears a number referring to the series chapter in which it appears.
Art by Heath Robinson
Britain has a long, rich tradition of cartooning second to no other land’s. And, as we saw for American English, cartoons have contributed to the country’s popular language.
I recently finished Stanley Cavell’s 1971 book of film philosophy, “The World Viewed” (with a long addendum from 1979.)
The book is a mixed bag. Many of Cavell’s readings are thoughtful and sharp. On the other hand his take on one film I know well, “Rosemary’s Baby,” is so misguided as to be actually offensive. (He claims that the film is about Rosemary’s husband’s impotence rather than about Rosemary’s rape, and then muses on the exact nature of Rosemary’s sin, which he determines has something to do with the fact that “Rosemary does not allow her husband to penetrate her dreams, allow him to be her devil, and give him his due.” Which I suppose is a roundabout way of saying that her sin is that she was insufficiently accommodating and so her husband had to rape her, or let the devil do it for him. Cavell also seems to believe that the movie is about motherhood, when it’s rather clearly about pregnancy. His inability to tell the difference is of a piece with a consistent incapacity to imagine that somewhere, somehow, the audience for some movie or other might include women. In any case, when you are more misogynist than Roman Polanski, you are in serious trouble. )
Where was I?
Oh right.
So some downsides. But on the other hand there’s lots of interesting theoretical material. Cavell’s book is fascinated with the relationship between film and reality. For him, the most salient fact about film is the manner in which it technologically, automatically, produces a reproduction or an image of the world that is neither a reproduction nor an image. Film is the world itself, though a world from which we (the audience) are exiled; we can watch but not interfere. Cavell therefore sees film as directly confronting Western philosophical skepticism — the Cartesian fear that we’re trapped in our minds with no way to perceive or access reality — or, indeed, the fear that our minds are all there is, and there is no reality to access. The loss of objective reality is also the death of God, and in embodying that absence, film replaces religion.
The revelers which fill the stairwell of Brecht Evens’ cover painting seem like a code for the contents of his book, ever striving for the space which occupies the right topmost corner of that image. They are dressed as for a masque: a conga line of harlequins, butterflies, angels, fairies, gauchos, ballerinas and Greek gods; ancient bacchants holding fiddles and rattles, sitting astride tandem bicycles and hobby horses; leaching on to the front and end papers of the book design, an account of the history of gaiety and debauchery.
