Music For Middle-Brow Snobs: The Best Girls Don’t Always Win

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Noah Berlatsky

Female soul and funk diva download here: The Best Girls Don’t Always Win

The playlist is below….

1. I’d Rather Go Blind — Etta James
2. The Best Girls Don’t Always Win — Betty Wright
3. It’s Raining — Irma Thomas
4. It Ain’t Easy — Betty LaVette
5. Take Him (You Can Have My Man) — jean Knight
6. It Ain’t What You Do (But How You Do It) — Laura Lee
7. Able Mable — Mable John
8. Evidence — Candi Staton
9. I Don’t Lend My Man — Ann Peebles
10. Be Easy — Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
11. You Know I’m No Good — Amy Winehouse
12. If You Feel It — Ms. Tyree “Sugar” Jones
13. Your Mama Wants Ya Back — Betty Davis
14. Walk Out the Door If You Wanna — Yvonne Fair
15. Damn Right Its Good — Gwen McCrae
16. Things Got to Get Better — Lyn Collins
17. What Do I Have To Do To Prove My Love To You — Marva Whitney
18. Out of Breath — Ronnie Whithead
19. Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream — Aretha Franklin

Cross Game– Seven Variations

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Sean Michael Robinson

(this post is a part of this month’s Manga Movable Feast, hosted this round by Derik Badman and the Panelists.)

Cross Game Review Part the First—The Self-Serving Enthusiast

If you haven’t yet purchased and devoured the first three/seven volumes of Cross Game yet, and you have no fear of either sentiment or baseball, then I would that you do so now. Go ahead—I can wait.

Done?

Good.

I’ve tried to avoid writing review-like pieces in my brief spin as a writer, and that’s generally because when I really like something my impulses tend towards a kind of uncritical boosterism, and when I don’t like something, which is, well, most of my life, I seem incapable of having a more moderate reaction to the material that might lead me to being able to even-handedly write about it in a method that would even approximate objectivity. So I haven’t even finished the first full paragraph and already I’ve violated my personal standards for the sake of this series.

So why exactly do I want you personally to buy copies of Cross Game for yourself and all of your friends and relatives? Like most of my motivations, it’s selfish. Adachi is one of my favorite cartoonists, and while I’m pretty damn enthusiastic about Cross Game and his return to baseball, I’m even more thrilled with Touch, his early eighties classic that Cross Game echoes in so many ways. And my ability to one day read Touch in print, in English, depends on you and your deep comics spending. Let’s make this happen, shall we?

Part the Second- Seeing Stars

Punchy plot summary! Adachi Sensei, Oh great flaming star of manga! Four decades of comics! Still alive! Still writing about teenagers! Four stars!!!!

Part the Third, in Which the Reviewer, Failing to Avoid the Worst Aspects of His Own Editorial Impulses, Pens an Overwrought Description of the Book As a Physical Object

For a week this March I slept on a succession of couches, spending the days wandering Seattle with a green duffel filled with a few posessions; my inking supplies, paper, various clothing and toiletries, my spiral notebook, and several books, including the second volume of Cross Game. The fourth day was particularly hard on me—it seemed like there was no where I could just sit and rest for a while without causing a problem for someone else. I kept on thinking about that green-backed volume two, so sleek, compact and inviting, and how it had looked on the night stand next to its partner, back to front, spooning in a little pile, the orange overbalancing the green by its larger size. They seemed so right together at the time, but now they were separated by miles of distance, and by unrelenting necessity.

The cover design is streamline, almost minimalist—painted figures on solid fill, a curly-cue logo and modest indica. It feels slick and modern in one’s fingers, defiantly in opposition to the slightly aged style of the artwork itself. The off-white pages smell of fresh paper and promise that they will stay there, bound together, pressing and yet somehow at rest, until they are one day opened again, held apart by scissored fingers, suspended in the moment of un-touching.

Part the Fourth, In Which the Reviewer Puts Forth a Clever Analogy That, Whilst Possibly Interesting, Won’t Actually Hold Up to Any Scrutiny

Baseball=Making Comics.

No, really. The whole baseball package–the skills building, the isolated mental game of pitcher versus batter, pitcher versus himself, the vast audience waiting to be surprised, entertained, let down, the fate of the game constantly in balance… It’s hard to escape the idea that when Adachi is talking about baseball, he’s also talking about making comics, about the thrill of watching one’s self improve, of pushing, of hitting a barrier only to break through to the challenge previously unseen. Aiming for the top. The sweet satisfaction of an aptitude well-developed, of a lifetime of skill coming to bear on a single moment.

Part the Fifth—Vaguely Related Autobiography

When I was seven I was a member of a coach-pitch little league team called the Pirates. Before each game our coach would give us a mini-pep talk/lecture about how important the day’s game would be, and how we needed to focus and do our best, before sending us off with a team chant: “PIRATES! PIRATES! PIRATES!” I occupied center field, a position which, in most of our games, was more nominal than functional, as seven year olds aren’t generally known for their devastating long drives.

On one particular day, the other team had a flurry of the aforementioned very rare outfield hits, including several that were completely over my head. I did my best to field them, but as the game wore on my failures as an individual had me feeling more and more dejected.

When the game finally, mercifully, came to its punishing conclusion, the coach gathered us all up in the customary circle in front of our Pirates dugout. His face was red and his mustache quivered like a caterpillar beneath his nose. “That was pathetic. You all were pathetic. No, you were pitiful. That wasn’t baseball. That was something… something not baseball.” His shoulders raised and lowered with each breath. “Put your hands in, everyone. Pitiful, on three. Everyone.”

“Pitiful, pitiful, pitiful,” we chanted, some half-heartedly, some through sobs, some shouting as if humiliation were the greatest gift of all.

Part the Sixth, in Which the Reviewer Presents Several Close-ups of the Artwork for the Reader’s Examination

Part the Seventh, in Which the Reviewer Abandons His Conceit for The Pretense of No Pretension

History, and the comics canon, are strange things. What place did Gasoline Alley occupy in critical attentions five years ago? Over the same period of time Yoshihiro Tatsumi has gone from a footnote in manga history to being regarded, to certain English-speaking audiences, as an exemplar of an entire movement.

In both cases, what changed was not the artists themselves, but the availability of their work.

This shifting ground has the potential to drastically change a reader’s reaction to Cross Game. To English-oriented monoglots, who have previously only seen two short story collections by cartoonist Mitsuru Adachi, Cross Game is an assured, uniquely-paced and tempered debut that flicks effortlessly between breezy action and moments of unexpected, intense longing. For Japanese readers, Cross Game is a victory lap. (or, at fifteen 200-page volumes in its original release, perhaps a victory marathon).

Cross Game was initially serialized in Shonen Sunday starting in 2005, when Adachi was 55, thirty-five years and tens of thousands of pages into his career. Adachi has spent most of that career creating clever romantic “comedies” that often feature more than a hint of tragedy and melancholy. More often than not his stories center around young athletes, along with all of the attendant conflicts and triumphs of that world.

Cross Game itself most closely resembles Adachi’s breakout 1983 series Touch, which, following the also-popular Miyuki, furnished him with his second anime adaptation, as well as his most lasting fame. Several of the elements that make Touch so unusual in the company of other popular entertainments are present, albeit rearranged and realigned. The childhood friends and childhood promises carried into the future. The gently melancholic tone and strangely passive protagonists. The sense of time as a construct of memory, sometimes a fraction of a second in a series of pages, sometimes years in a single frame.

I’ve never read a comic before where both the benefits and potential pitfalls of weekly serialization are so starkly clear. With the aid of his squadron of assistants, Adachi had drawn, at minimum, a thousand pages a year for over thirty five years by the time Cross Game debuted, and the result is some of the most natural, and readable, storytelling I’ve ever seen. Complex actions and coordinated sequences play out effortlessly, several lifetime’s worth of breakdown skills and gesture drawing coming to bear on the trickiest problems. But the solutions themselves never veer into overly-flashy results, instead using a myriad of design solutions to preserve a clear, natural path over the most seemingly-complicated layouts.

The sheer amount of pages available to him by virtue of his assistants means that Adachi can afford to tell a different kind of story. It’s hard to imagine a better way of depicting baseball sequences than the method that Adachi has arrived at over his thousands of pages of baseball manga. Just like our memories of a real game, we come in and out of the action, the narrative sometimes summarizing, sometimes lingering. In comics, time is a function of space, and Adachi has the space to give us time.

Adachi also uses this space to leisurely unfold the action, giving us quiet moments of reflection between actions, sometimes serving as transitions, and other times acting as a pause, a moment of breath in the midst of so much action and movement.

And then there are the downsides to that unrelenting weekly crunch. All those assistants mean professional but at times undistinguished backgrounds, which wouldn’t be as obvious a defect were it not for Adachi’s expressive, calligraphic inking line, which is sometimes at odds with the comparatively dead line weight of the backgrounds. More damning, occasionally a chapter seems to be just marking time until the next main plot movement, and these deviations from the overall arc have the added problem of often veering into genre cliché. (the most egregious example so far is a first volume detour involving beaning a fleeing criminal with a baseball)

The improvisatory nature of the story line sometimes trips Adachi up as well. With certain major plot points it seems impossible that Adachi didn’t plan them well in advance, as the needed elements are in place well before the events themselves. Other times, however, Adachi succumbs to the dreaded serial fiction trick of introducing a new element pages before it will be called into use, drawing attention to the artificiality of plot construction itself. Occasionally Adachi, through his narrator voice, draws attention to this himself, presumably with the intent of diffusing the awkwardness with some humor, but not always to good effect.

Ultimately, though, Adachi’s faults are more Freaks and Geeks than Friends, a result of his ambition rather than a lack of same. His failings, when they arrive, are forgivable, and seeming part and parcel of the weekly manga treadmill. Cross Game is assured, confident and wistful, and if you have some tolerance for genre and overt sentiment, there is much here to admire and, most importantly, to experience and enjoy. When you’re aiming for the Koshien, it’s summer forever.

Jeffrey Catherine Jones: The Good Draftsman

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Mahendra Singh

The late Jeffrey Catherine Jones (authorized website
here) was not only one of the best painters in North America, she was one of the best draftsmen of the North American comix scene. Idyl and I’m Age, which appeared in the National Lampoon and Heavy Metal, were high-water marks in the now-ebbing comix cult of beautiful draftsmanship. The modern comix renaissance, at least in North America, still prefers to focus on story instead of art and younger readers might be surprised by the bravura virtuosity of Jones’ work. She demonstrated over and over that Beauty was not a shell to put stories into, it could be the story itself.

Why are so many contemporary comix so ugly to look at? Why is there so little pleasure in drawing anymore? Comix artists take such pains in devising interesting, clever plots but visually they’re often rather … disinterested might be the politest way to put it. Perhaps minimalism is the new baroque and Beauty is passé; perhaps it’s a business decision, drawing with one eye on the clock and not worrying about giving readers full value for their money.

Some of these readers are probably wringing their hands over this insinuation that Beauty can be objective. Doesn’t this author know that self-expression has no rules, that we’ve evolved into a brave new world where you can just do it® and be all that you can be® and have it your way®?

But the Bitch Goddess of Art is sparing with her favors and she accepts only one sort of offering at her infamous altar: the development of talent through endless study and practice. An abundant faith in oneself, by itself, means nothing to her, especially in these times when everyone’s above average. Good draftsmanship requires knowledge, skill and a faith in Beauty. The latter is not as subjective as some think. It’s wired into our genes; our eyes and hands do it instinctively if circumstance lets them. And this is not about merely looking pretty. On the contrary, Beauty in art is always harmonious, even when the subject is grotesque or ugly.

Jeffery Catherine Jones’ comix were few but extraordinarily beautiful. She moved fast around slow shapes, letting the physical happiness of drawing suffuse every mark she made on paper. The contrast of loose gestures atop thoroughly composed panels gave her pages a languid, musical dissonance, the connoisseur’s dissonance of Betty Carter or Leos Janacek in their late prime. And unlike most of us ink-stained wretches, her inking and draftsmanship were seamless and in effect, the same thing. This economy of means is the very essence of good draftsmanship.

Making and recognizing good draftsmanship means possessing what’s called a good eye, the ability to see the universal grammar of the visual world. A good eye is not wholly intuitive, it needs to be nurtured through constant exposure to good art.

And there’s the rub — never before in human history have so many artists been so unrelentingly exposed to so much visual rubbish from childhood onwards. As adults, they’re doomed to making marks on paper which are devoid of visual meaning. This is no accident, it is marketing. If one exposes kids to nothing but crap, they will grow up loving crap, talking fervently about crap and passionately defending its crappy reputation, usually with an obligatory dollop of hipster irony. This pop-culture irony, unlike its literary ancestor, reveals nothing of interest though, for it’s a stance without meaning or history or even relevance.

We are what we look at. If we look at garbage we will make garbage and in time, the cycle will close and become self-perpetuating, an endless karmic hell of breakfast-cereal cartoon super-heroes and high-school yearbook doodlings papering over the abyss of a forgotten, glorious past.

Jones’ comix drew deeply from the heady well of fin de siècle Symbolism, the Salon Pompiers, Art Nouveau and the Golden Age of American illustration. This is what her personality and taste preferred although her eye was above illustrative fashions and gimmicks. Good draftsmanship is most timeless when the draftsman understands their past.

This may seem an odd way to eulogize someone but it’s not, it is the best way to celebrate a great draftsman. Life is short for everyone and for comix artists and illustrators, the money is laughable and the hours dreadful. Doing hack work for money is something we’ve all done but to throw up our hands in cynical despair and make it into the dominant fashion of modern comix — why bother to make art at all then, if it’s all about being practical?

So why not go broke with style? Why not make comix that are fun to look at? Why not make comix that make young people want to draw and read and think, instead of becoming cynical about art and craftsmanship and Beauty?

Why not draw like hell, like you really mean it, as if your life and reputation are on the line? Because they are. That’s the essence of being a good draftsman, of using your good eye: everything counts and everything makes it onto the page. Jeffrey Catherine Jones may be gone but her work is glorious, it is a bravura, draftsman’s performance and her comix still make me feel that drawing is worth doing well.

Utilitarian Review 5/20/11

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Noah Berlatsky

News

Robert Stanley Martin and HU are organizing a poll of the best comics of all time. If you’re a blogger, a critic, a journalist, or a comics professional, please participate and pass on the news to others!

On HU

Featured Archive post this week: Matthias Wivel on Tsuge’s Screw Style.

Ben Crossland discussed Footnotes in Gaza.

My 7-year old explains Marx.

Richard Cook on Thor.

I discuss Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu.

Robert Stanley Martin on Paying For It.

I talk about the movie Priest and racism.

Salem Collo-Julin talks about nannying and super-heroes.

Other Links

Jason Overby on junk culture.

Dlisted with high quality Wonder Woman snark.

Matt Seneca on Paying For It.

Derik Badman on Lone Pine.

The Awl on the movie Bridesmaids.

Nannytales

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Salem Collo-Julin

The boy lies in bed with the big green muscled man. Big and Green is not radioactive but stuck with a permanent, sewn-on sneer on his plushie face. The boy gets little red marks on his back and arms from falling asleep on top of some of the plastic, mini-versions of Big and Green, his Red and Black Webbed friend, and the (less-muscled but still costumed) raven-haired Lady of Wonder. The boy hurriedly tells his nanny about dreams he has about the “Coop a Ca Bra,” and how the talking dog and his stoner rock companion chased this monster out of his bedroom. He is two and a half years old, and has a collection of comics, books, and toys that some middle-aged folk might be jealous of.

It could be worse. His parents could have introduced him to something awful, like Catholicism or Muppet Babies.

I am the babysitter/part-time nanny of the son of two of my best friends. As a fair-weather fan of things Superhero(ine), I was mostly prepared for the onslaught of character-based products that was sure to infiltrate their house, and my life, as this boy got older. The groupings that happen on a casual basis in the living room these days are like a diversity festival on a college campus circa 1993 mixed with a Cronenberg medical thriller gone wrong. For example, Spiderman’s head, long-since separated from his rigid plastic body, shoved onto the ends of two 1960s-era Fischer Price Little People. The new creature, wobbley as s/he is plastic, crouches, in a way, on top of a pile of Happy Meal Batmans plucked out of one of those big bags of plastic toys that one can buy at the thrift store for $1.50 (a tip – empty the entire contents of the bag into a pot of boiling water and sterilize before playtime).

My excitement at the fantastic storylines that babble out of my young charge as he creates and re-creates new heroes and creatures is tempered by my own problems, namely, my Mr. Peabody-esque, know-it-all tendencies. His parents, in contrast, are pretty low-key about most things. Much of his Incredible Hulk collection was passed down from his Uncle Terry in Canada, and there’s a lot of stuff that is handmade, well-loved, unique, and at this point, mostly ignored by the boy in favor of dirt and rocks outside in the yard. The parents have a playful attitude in general, and have helped him decorate his room with a mixture of recent DC Comics propaganda posters picked up at a ComiCon (and advertising some Superman/Wonder Woman series that none of us, including the boy, really give a crap about), whiteboard walls filled with drawings and messages from his many relatives and admirers, and handmade Hulk posters that he has improved with his own drawings. Their own living room is filled with books and its own collection of esoteric weirdness (a series of posters tacked to one wall that all came with various albums – including a scantily clad Prince that I’m unsure the boy will ever notice, even when he gets older and perhaps becomes a Prince fan), and there doesn’t seem to be an aesthetic boundary between one room or the other. His toys resemble their toys. His place is their place.

In short, the entire house is a fun place to be, and I can only imagine that it is one of the best possible situations that a kid could have. Hopefully the boy’s memories of childhood will include hanging out and watching movies in the backyard, playing records with his many faux-aunts (myself included), and devouring stacks and stacks of books, comic or not.

Returning to my problem, my know-it-all itchiness – I find myself constantly correcting when I should be embracing. I hem and haw over sharing old, racier issues of Black Canary, rapidly pointing out the feminist nature of her affairs/relationships while old Prudey Aunt is really thinking “His breast fetish is starting now, at 2 ½, and I’m contributing to it.” I get frustrated, silently, when watching the new Scooby Doo episodes that he has recently learned to cherish. Velma and Daphne are cooler than they used to be, and the writing is sarcastic enough to tolerate, but the animation and even the plotlines (!) lack a certain clunkiness that I crave in my talking dog mysteries.

I know the kid is at a very early stage, and that next year, he may drop the mainstream-cartoon-worship in favor of walruses or stacking things into towers and then knocking them over. Actually, he likes both of those things now. As a caretaker, faux-aunt, and provider of at least 5% of this boy’s introductions to comics, culture, music, and the arts, how can I silence my critic, enhance the childhood he has rather than try to complete my own long-gone childhood, and learn to grin and bear it as he inevitably discovers The Flash or some equally ridiculous capitalist fantasy? Hooded U. parents/caretakers/guardians, what say you?

Vampires on the Prairie

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Noah Berlatsky

As I mentioned yesterday, my essay on racism in the movie Priest sparked a fair bit of discussion at Splice Today. It also led to some (significantly more productive) discussion on Twitter and elsewhere. I thought I’d reproduce some of the conversation I had with Ed Sizemore. I’m grouping together the tweets into paragraphs, incidentally, so please make allowances for any lack of coherence on anyone’s part. Also at points we were typing at the same time. Why does anyone use twitter again?

Anyway, here we go:

Ed Sizemore: I just say I disagree. I think you see racism because you want to, not because it’s there.

Noah Berlatsky: Right; I enjoy going to a film and seeing a racist genocidal fantasy. That’s much more fun than enjoying the movie. Have you even seen it? Or is it just that hollywood never makes racist movies?”

Ed: I saw it and enjoyed it for the what it was. We’ll have to agree to disagree. I see it as a Judge Dredd rip-off.

Noah: It rips off the Searchers. In order to make it more racist. I’ve got no problem with mindless action movies. I just don’t want them to get off on genocide of native americans. It seems like a fairly low bar.

Ed: Noah here is how I perceive out differences. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’m neither a postmodern nor a deconstructionist.I don’t think everything revolves around race, gender, & class. My impression is that you [do]. Therefore you can’t help but see racism n Priest. Whereas, I do not see it because I don’t use that matrix of analysis.

Noah: Everything doesn’t. This movie does. Racism and sexism exist. If you refuse to see it, that’s a political choice with unpleasant consequences. My analysis of priest had nothing to do with deconstruction or postmodernism.It was a basic look at racial issues. It’s really straightforward.

Conservatives have largely forsworn racism. They’ve replaced it with anti-anti-racism. The idea that race might still matter is considered delusional and racist. That’s a way to avoid dealing with ongoing inequity. So sure, it’s a choice of mode of analysis. But you’re presenting it as if that choice is divorced from political or moral content. You’re kind of being postmodernist yourself; you’re claiming that perspective determines reality. I’m the one claiming a reality exists — racism — and you’re determination not to see it is doesn’t erase its existence.

Ed: Yes and no. Perspective shapes how you see reality and thus how you respond to what you think you see. If you see racism then you react to the book, person, event, movie in a manner accordingly. The way you’re denouncing Priest. I would argue believing you can choose your perspective free of moral and political influences is the old model Enlightenment. It’s what postmodernity was a reaction to. Postmodernism says you are mired in a socio-political historical context that takes training to overcome. And even then you will always have to be on guard against it reasserting control.

Noah: You’re still just being a postmodernist. Does racism exist or not? Does not seeing it mean it doesn’t exist?

Ed: Racism exits. I’m saying there is no discussion of race in Priest. I see why you think there is and I think your wrong.

Noah: Then make the argument. You haven’t said anything about the movie. It’s all just hand waving. Is the film not based on the Searchers? Are the vampires not associated with Indians?

And postmodernity is hardly the first philosophy that suggested that there might possibly just maybe be some link between how people act and their society. Rousseau? Hobbes? Basically everybody, because the contrary position is idiotic.

Ed: I say it is not based on the Searchers and no vampires don’t equal Indians in Priest. I say it’s based on Judge Dredd and vampires are simply monsters. You base your comparison on plot. I base my comparison in the world building.

Noah: On what grounds do you deny it’s based on the searchers? It’s the same damn plot. There’s the settler there’s an attack by monsters leaving the reservation, there’s a kidnapping of a niece, there’s concerns about the rescuer killing her if she turns.

Aha. So the plot is based on the searchers. So it is just you refusing to think about the plot because that would make you wrong.

Saying it’s based on Judge Dredd is nonsense. Judge Dredd was derivative crap. It’s all from bladerunner.

Ed: BTW I’m trying to understand why we disagree and if there is a middle ground. I just realized this might sound like a personal attack and I apologize for that. That’s not my intention.

But the Searchers isn’t the only film with that plot or even the first film with that plot. Heck, Dracula had a lot of that plot.

Noah: Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m thicker skinned than that! There’s not really a middle ground, though. You’re wrong!

It deliberately plays with the fact it’s his niece. It’s got a western setting. Arguing that it’s not based on the searchers is crazy. Really. Tons of people have noticed it. I’m absolutely sure it’s intentional on the part of the filmmakers. If you’re analysis depends on that point, you’ve kind of lost. I mean, google priest and searchers. It’s not like I’m a lone nutcase arguing the connection.

Ed: I agree that Priest & Searchers have the same plot. But sharing a plot doesn’t mean they have the same message or meaning. I think of plot like a sentence. It needs a context. That’s where world building comes in. Searchers is historical people. It plays off off real groups of humans and real circumstances. Priest is sci-fi. Fiction can be analogous, but I maintain Priest is not. The vampires of Priest can’t be equated with real Indians. First, vampires are a separate species. Second, with the exception of the queen, there is nothing human-like about vampire. Third, they have always been at war with humans and seek to eradicate them. There is such great divergence between vampires & Indians I find it impossible to equate the two. I hope that’s a better explanation.

Noah: That’s better. Do you deny that historically Indians have been caricatured as subhuman savages who deserve extermination? If you agree that they have, how do subhuman vampires distance themselves from that caricature? Do you claim that putting vampires on reservations and having them attack innocent settler is not deliberately giving them the role of Indians in western narratives?

You seem to believe that the issue is whether *you* equate indians and vampires. The issue is whether the *film* does. I’m sure you don’t equate Jews with subhuman bloodsucking monsters either. Yet people have done so historically. Racism works by caricaturing people as things they are *not* like.

Your argument boils down to simply claiming that nobody could actually be racist enough to equate vampires and indians. But racism gets significantly nastier than that. The only way your argument works is if you presuppose that Priest can’t be racist from the outset.

Oh, and there is something human-like about vampires. They can breed with humans. That seems fairly significant. And Priest and Searchers don’t have the same message! The first is racist; the second is (at least partly) anti-racist. That’s a big difference!

Ed: No, I can’t deny that Indians, and others, have been labeled as subhuman and even nonhuman. The reservation thing is a big plot hole. Why would imprison a species hellbent on your extinction? I confess I never understood that.

After reflection, I concede. I see your point about racism in Priest. I still don’t see it personally, but I have a deep hatred of vampires and so refuse to equate them with anything in the real world. They are part of my pantheon of ultimate evil monsters. Thanks for all the discussion. You were most patient.

Noah: Good lord, you conceded?! Where do you think you are?! This is the internet!

Ed: LOL. I have to bow before superior logic. It’s built in my DNA.

Noah: And thanks yourself. You are exceedingly gracious.

____________
The conversation with Ed (who, as you’ve probably noticed, is a much nicer person than me) also speaks to a related discussion by Mori Theil. Mori writes:

when is something racist? If someone makes a joke, and part of the audience thinks it’s racist, but part of the audience doesn’t, is it truly racist? Does intent matter? Does only the end result matter? We all know that for workplace regulations, anyone feeling offended because of a possible racist interpretation is enough to classify something as racist. But literary and art criticism need not apply legal criteria. Which criteria, then, should apply?

Is it OK to think in ways that parallel racism as long as one isn’t racist in real life? Or should people be on guard against such thought even in fantasy worlds? I rather think this goes into the realm of scientific questions, as it should be possible to demonstrate statistically that repeated exposure to such thinking does or does not lead to racist thought – but who will run that experiment?

I think looking to intent in these matters is largely futile. You can’t read people’s minds, and virtually nobody is going to stand up and say, “yep I’m racist.” I’m sure the folks who made Priest would not advocate genocide of Native Americans if you sat them down to an interview.

Racism is a system of thought. You can participate in that system of thought without necessarily intending to, just as you can be influenced by, say, Kant’s ideas without necessarily having read Kant, or even knowing who he is. You need to look at what is said or what the piece does, not at what the creators say they’re doing. (Some of this does come from postmodernism; I think I disavowed that too strongly in the discussion with Ed.)

The appeal to science is a red herring, I think. Racism is a cultural thing; what is and isn’t racist is difficult to define, and I very much doubt that you could construct an experiment which would tell you anything useful. But…I’d argue that if disputing Priest’s racism had no consequences, then people wouldn’t bother. The relationship between dreaming about racism and committing racist acts isn’t clear or straightforward…but what we dream is part of who we are. And if we don’t want who we are to be racist, it makes sense to think about that when we talk about our fantasies.

Robert Stanley Martin Announces Best Comics Poll