Monthly Archives: August 2014

#FireRickRemender?: Thinking Through Gender, Disproportionate Aging & Sexual Consent in Superhero Comics

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This is a slightly revised version of a post that originally published on The Middle Spaces.
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The recent #FireRickRemender controversy on Twitter and Tumblr brought to mind a topic that I have given some thought to in the past, but that mostly exists in the form of an evolving question that I do not quite have an answer to yet, nor that I can make any confident assertions about. In fact, even as I write this I am trying to think through the best way to articulate the question itself based on some general observations.

For those who are not familiar with the Captain America #22 controversy, I recommend you read this piece. I think it covers it well, but the short version is Sam Wilson—Falcon—has drunken sex with Jet Black Zola who at the beginning of the current series was just a little girl of undetermined age, but since has spent 10 or more years in another dimension where time moves faster. By her own admission, she is at least 23 years old when her sexual encounter with Falcon takes place—beyond the age of consent in most places that I know of.

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There are fans who feel that the ambiguity of her age and the involvement of alcohol in the hook-up suggest the possibility of statutory rape. In addition, Sam Wilson was drunk enough to not remember having sex at all, which means that he must have been clearly drunk enough that no one should be having sex with him if they care about clearly delineated consent. In other words, it is a problematic scene all the way around. (You can read the whole scene here and decide for yourself).

Still, it is not so problematic that I think the writer, Rick Remender should be fired (though I am not a fan of his work and will admit to having a dislike for the guy ever since his “hobo-piss” comment in regards to the reaction to the also controversial Havok “m-word” speech in Uncanny Avengers). The fact is that the age ambiguity—fostered in no small part in these particular issues by John Romita, Jr’s inability to draw children and young adults very well (his art has gotten decidedly worse since the 1980s)—has a long history in Marvel Comics.1

So here is the real question that arises for me from this kerfuffle: It is not about whether Rick Remender should be fired, but instead: How does the flow of time in superhero comics, with its sliding timescales, disproportionate aging, and alternate dimensions confuse and complicate issues of sex and consent in those long-running serials?

Here the thing: There is a pattern in superhero comics of young female characters disproportionately aging so as to make them sexually available for the adult male characters (and ostensibly for their straight male readers). Of course, the nebulous nature of the passage of time in serialized superhero comic books makes any exact determinations impossible, but there are certainly a few examples of transformations that allow for otherwise pre-teen or teen girls to suddenly be the age of consent.

magik4The most obvious example I can think of is Illyana Rasputin, aka Magik, of the New Mutants and later the X-Men. When she is kidnapped by Belasco, not only does he want to make her his bride, but as soon as she starts to get a little older she is depicted in her Darkchilde form mostly naked with a more developed body, little short shorts and a crop top, and with a come-hither look. When it comes to Ilyana, her arc from seven year old girl to New Mutant to X-Man is one that makes the subtext of uncontrollable dark magic and the dangers of female sexuality quite explicit. The whole Belasco’s bride thing makes it text, not sub-text. The way she is depicted now, after having reverted to her original age and then returned to her young adult form again, (dying and then returning), reinforces the possibilities opened up by her aging. She falls safely into the male gaze, from a position of taboo anticipation for her eventual desirability.

There seems to be a very gendered distinction in how characters are aged in superhero comics. While young Franklin Richards, for example, is temporarily aged in the 1990 “Days of Future Present” crossover event and later as a member of the ill-considered Fantastic Force, he is not depicted as hypersexualized in order to make him seem older and more mature. (He has battle armor he pulls from a pocket dimension for that).

Pre-teen and teen girls like Illyana, on the other hand, come pre-sexualized in the hypersexualized world of superhero comics. A young female character’s maturation seems to most often (if not always) be connected to her sexual availability.

The potentially problematic aging is not always immediate, however. For a character like Kitty Pryde, aging is simply disproportionate to the adult characters, allowing her to eventually “catch up” to the others, while they remain just about the same age. Kitty was introduced to X-Men as 13½ years old. Over the course of 34 years since her published introduction, she has been allowed to age about 10 years, while the other X-Men have not really aged much at all. I made the joke to someone on Twitter not long ago that aging in Marvel Comics allows for eventually every child character to be old enough to have consensual sex while the adult characters remain young enough to have it with them. Except, I guess it is really not all that much of a joke. It’s creepy.

Joss Whedon on his run of Astonishing X-Men wrote a great scene in which Kitty and Peter (aka Colossus) have had sex, and Wolverin acknowledges both the act and the attendant temporal discontinuities. The problem of pedophelia is avoided, since the beginning of the series makes a point of stating that Kitty is returning after a long absence. This indeterminate amount of time is elastic enough to absorb any qualms about Kitty’s youth in relation to Peter who always seemed old for his age. Suddenly, the distance between them seems not so great—certainly less than the nearly seven years when their romance began. For many readers drawn back to X-Men by Whedon’s run after a long absence, that elasticity of time is an especially important way to make the distinction between the Kitty of now and the Kitty of the simultaneously distant and not-too-distant past. Wolverine may quip “’bout time,” but really when else might their having sex really worked in terms of their ages?

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Another example of the weirdness of how time passes in the Marvel Universe is Julie Power, formerly of Power Pack. I have not read the issues of Runaways or Avengers Academy that she most recently appears in, but just from what I have read online and the panels I have found by doing a little searching, she has gone from a little 10-year-old girl to a sexually active 17-year old (or so) who wears a halter-top and is posed in erotic ways.

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To be clear, it is not that I think aging characters is a problem or that the depiction of sexuality is necessarily a problem—I wish aging were done more often. Rather, I think it is problematic how young female characters are aged especially in relation to male characters.

Another important example is Kate Bishop of the Young Avengers and Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye series. While she first appeared in comics on the verge of being 18 and the most recent Young Avengers series had her turning 21 (so she aged about 3 years in about 9 years real-world time), she not only moved from technically being a minor to being legal adult (whatever that means). Clint, however, has basically stayed the same age in that time (early 30s maybe?) What makes this such a great example is not the sexual component to their relationship, but that writer Matt Fraction had to explicitly address its possibility on his blog.

He wrote:

But i’ll say this: they’re not gonna fuck. [Kate] doesn’t want to fuck him and he doesn’t want to fuck her. It’s not going to happen. They never daydream about it. They don’t wonder about it. They won’t idly pass the time thinking what if. There is nothing sexual in their relationship. Flirtatious? At times. Sexy, even? To a point, maaaybe? I don’t even want to play with will they or won’t they. Because they won’t. So I’ll say, again, unequivocally, as long as I’m on this book, it’s not in the cards even remotely for either of them. I am interested in a love between these two that has nothing to do with sex or physical/sexual attraction. The dog won’t die and they won’t fuck. The end.

 

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Here’s the thing though, despite Fraction’s protests, the Hawkeye title plays with a lot of sexual tension between them. Sure, Hawkeye claims to not want to sleep with her, and she addresses it as creepy, but there is a lot of subtext that this article over at Comic Vine does a great job of illustrating. But even if that weren’t the case, the fact that Fraction felt the need to address it means that Kate reaching the age of legal consent immediately put her character within the realm of possibility for that to happen because unfortunately it seems like that is how disproportionate gendered aging in Marvel Comics seems to work. Let’s put it this way, while I believe Fraction when he claims “they won’t fuck,” I would not be in the least bit surprised if some other writer down the line makes it happen. She is certainly depicted as sexually active in Young Avengers. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, I just don’t trust comics to not make the leap from her doing the deed with similarly (though statically) aged Noh-Varr in his spaceship and doing it with Hawkeye or Iron Fist.

cassie-langSpeaking of Young Avengers, another example of disproportionate aging is Cassie Lang, aka Stature (a superhero name that might even be worse than Iron Patriot). Before she showed up in Young Avengers I am pretty sure she was last depicted as a sickly girl of about 9 years of age. I remember her from Avengers #223 (1982) which featured a great team-up of Ant-Man (her dad) and Hawkeye. But after being a kid for many years, she returned as a teenager of about 16 years old in 2005—ready to start a romance with Iron Lad (a young version of Kang) and later the young version of Vision built around Iron Lad’s brain patterns (it’s complicated). In Cassie’s case, however, despite the romance plot, there is no case of overt-sexualization. The gradual introduction of an older Cassie Lang avoids the discomfort of the suddenly sexually available character. Maybe she appeared in other books in-between at that younger age or an intermediate age, I don’t know. The thing I do know is that while she was closing in on 18 (until she was killed by Dr. Doom), her dad and other Avengers stayed the same age.

Green_Lantern_Vol_3_34I am not sure what this all means, except as another broad example of problematic depictions of women in superhero comics. The phenomenon seems to suggest that, when it comes to girls and women in superhero comics, age and maturity are overwhelmingly associated with sexual availability, and that is troubling. Disproportionate aging happens all over the genre—for example see Hal Jordan’s whitening hair in post-Crisis Green Lantern while Batman and Wonder Woman stayed about the same—but it seems that when it comes to young women, this pattern takes on a creepy and even potentially predatory cast. As such, I am not surprised that some folks took issue with the Falcon and Jet Black Zola sex scene. At first glance, it seemed like the edges of the veneer of consent and the social mores around sex and age that superhero comics frequently rub up against were being pierced through to reveal the bare truth about the role of women in superhero comics as foremost sexualized objects, whether they are little Cassie Lang, or even Aunt May.

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1. It could also be an issue in DC and other superhero comics, but as I am not as familiar with them I don’t feel comfortable making that claim. However, as if to supplement my exploration of this topic, on the same day that this piece was originally posted, Bleeding Cool posted an article revealing a plot-line in DC Comics’ Batman Beyond comic involving Barbara Gordon’s (aka Batgirl) miscarriage following being impregnated by Bruce Wayne (aka Batman), so I am by no means trying to let DC off the hook.

We Can Be Heroes: Donnie Darko and The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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Adult Eyes

I spent my adolescence in Midlothian, Virginia, a suburb of Richmond, and graduated high school in 1992.  At the time, I would have told you that my life was boring and lonely.  Looking back now, with adult eyes, I think I likely misunderstood the situation.  I was in fact, very busy, and on the whole I did things that I enjoyed.  And while I was never what anyone would call popular, I had several friends — good friends, lasting friends — so much so that two decades later I am still close to some of them, though we live thousands of miles apart and see each other rarely.  The problem was not that I was bored or lonely.  The problem was that I was alienated.

I felt unnatural, out of place, lost, confused, disoriented, like a stranger who didn’t quite speak the language, like I was always, somehow, in the wrong before I even had a chance to act.  Others treated me that way as well.  They looked on me with suspicion, sometimes hatred, occasionally disgust.  I felt oppressed, not only by the suffocating atmosphere of conformity, but by the very normalcy of the people around me.

And I wasn’t the only one.  I was practically surrounded with other weirdos, other kids who felt trapped, and resentful, and sad.  One of those other weirdos was Richard Kelly.

I didn’t know Kelly, and I don’t remember meeting him, seeing him, or hearing stories about him.  But when I saw his film Donnie Darko, the sense of familiarity was unnerving and uncanny, like my internal experience was being projected onto the screen.1  It was only later that I learned why Donnie’s Middlesex so closely resembled my Midlothian; it was Kelly’s Midlothian as well.

I had a similar feeling, slightly diluted, watching Stephen Chbosky’s film, The Perks of Being a Wallflower.2  The resonances are less intimate and more generic — in Darko, Drew Barrymore’s character, Donnie’s English teacher, is obviously modeled on my eleventh grade English teacher; whereas in Wallflower, the points of contact are more about The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Smiths — but the sense of connection is real nonetheless.

Both these movies are about alienated youths.  Both are set in the suburbs of mid-sized Eastern cities, Richmond in Darko and Pittsburgh in Wallflower.  One takes place in the late 80s, the other in the early 90s.   And both are, in a weird way, almost (if not quite) superhero stories.

 

Some Sort of Superhero

Donnie’s heroism begins in a very small way.  Gretchen, the new girl at school, is being harassed by the local bullies and Donnie happens by.

“Do you want to walk me home?” she asks.

“Sure.”

It’s the beginning of a friendship, a romance.  He asks why she moved to Middlesex, and she tells him that her stepdad tried to kill her mom, stabbing her repeatedly.  Now they have a restraining order and had to change their names.  Her stepfather has “emotional problems,” she tells him with a kind of resentful scorn.

“Oh, I have those, too,” Donnie replies, too eagerly.

Donnie suffers hallucinations, which turn out to be premonitions.  He has an imaginary friend, Frank, “a six foot tall bunny rabbit” with a skull for a face, who Donnie sometimes sees when he looks in the mirror.  Frank tells Donnie that the world will end on Halloween.  Frank also tells Donnie to vandalize his school, leads him to find and take a handgun, and has him set fire to the house of a cloying inspirational speaker.  (When firefighters arrive at the house they discover “a kiddie porn dungeon”; the guru is arrested, and Donnie escapes.)  Later, on Halloween, Donnie saves a senile old woman from some hooligans who break into her house, but Gretchen dies as a result.  Then, by arranging himself to be pulled into a time vortex — he sacrifices himself and saves the world.

“Donnie Darko?” Gretchen says, incredulously.  “What the hell kind of name is that?  It’s like some sort of superhero or something.”

Donnie smirks.  “What makes you think I’m not?”

 

Psychos Together

Less bleak, and more solidly realistic, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a sweet movie, even a bit sentimental.  It’s as much about friendship as loneliness, as much about belonging as alienation.

Charlie is a freshman, friendless, “the weird kid who spent time in the hospital.”  He’s shy, he’s lonely, he’s bullied.  He thinks that “high school is even worse than middle school,” until he makes friends with a pair of seniors, Sam and her stepbrother Patrick, and they bring him into their circle.  “Welcome to the island of misfit toys,” Sam says.

After that, Charlie spends the rest of the year hanging out, suffering through a bad-idea-from-the-start first romance, taking drugs, reading A Separate Peace and A Catcher in the Rye, helping Sam study for her SATs, going to Rocky Horror, and basically doing normal high school stuff — normal, anyway, for weird kids in the early 90s.  Of course Charlie isn’t really a normal kid.  His best friend killed himself a few months earlier, and since then he’s been seeing things, hearing things, and always just about two steps away from a breakdown.  Most of the year he keeps it under control.  His friends help to keep him sane.

But then one day in the cafeteria —

A jock trips Patrick, and another calls him a “faggot,” and soon there is a fight.  Kids gather around to watch, in the appalling way they do.  What we know, but they don’t, is that one of these jocks is Patrick’s lover.

Three football players pull Patrick off their friend.  Two hold his arms, and a third punches him again and again.  Charlie is rushing toward the fight when everything slows down, becomes distorted, and goes black.  A moment later, all the kids are staring at him and everyone is quiet.  The bullies lay on the ground, obviously hurt. Charlie looks down and sees that his knuckles are almost black with bruises.  The other kids look at him with a kind of amazed horror.

“I can’t really remember what I did,” he confesses later.

“Do you want me to tell you?”  Sam asks.  “You saved my brother.  That’s what you did.”

But Charlie doesn’t feel like a hero.  He feels like a monster, a freak.  “So you’re not scared of me?” he asks, nervously.

Sam looks at him then with a combination of pity and gratitude.  She looks at him with love.  “C’mon,” she says.  “Let’s go be psychos together.”

 

Tear Us Apart

Alienation and friendship, the heroic and the monstrous — these things are tied together.  Love is most precious precisely where alienation is most acute.  And sometimes, perhaps, our friends are just those people who can see what is heroic about the parts of ourselves that are most monstrous.

Also, for both Donnie and Charlie, it is love for their friends that inspires their heroism.  Charlie  spends most of a year being bullied by older, meaner kids, but he only hulks out when he sees his friend is being hurt.  Donnie deeply hates the place he lives and the people around him.  He wants, at least subconsciously, to destroy it all — to “burn it to the ground.”  In the end, he is the hero, the savior — but he might not have been.

Donnie is also identified, earlier in the film, with the adolescent vandals in Graham Greene’s story “The Destructors,” which his English class is reading.  In the story, young men break into a house and destroy it, in part by flooding it with water.  Donnie, then, in a kind of psychotic sleepwalking trance, breaks into the school and opens up a water main, then attacks a statue of the mascot with an axe.  Discussing the Greene story in class, Donnie is asked why he thinks the boys trashed the house.  “Destruction is a form of creation,” he quotes (with echoes of Bakunin).3  “They just want to see what happens when they tear the world apart.  They want to change things.”  Donnie can sympathize.  Throughout the movie he is at odds with various types of authority — teachers and principals, parents, his therapist, the creepy pop-psych-Christian motivational speaker — as well as school bullies, his sisters, and sometimes even his friends.  His whole suburban, Republican, private school, country club, psych med world is suffocating and oppressive — and yet he acts to save it.

Donnie can only be reconciled to this world through his death.  But that is a choice, which he could make or refuse.  He can save it if he chooses, and life will continue much as it was, but without him.  Or he could end it all, simply by doing nothing.

I think that Donnie embraces his role, not (or not just) as an elaborate form of suicide, and not to save the world in a metaphysical sense, and surely not to save the world in the narrow social sense in which he inhabits it, and probably not even to save his family — but to save Gretchen.  It is not until she is killed that he races toward the wormhole and when he reaches it, and finds himself in bed, weeks earlier, waiting for the mysterious accident — a jet engine that crashes into his room — to kill him.  He offers a victorious laugh.  Donnie Darko does not die for our sins; he is not trying to save the world.  He dies for the love of one girl, which is more heroic in its way.  He trades his life for hers.  “Love will tear us apart” plays in the background.

 

Tunnel Songs

In Darko, the soundtrack is almost a kind of narration.   Echo and the Bunnymen and The Church weave together themes of fatalism and free will (“Leads you here despite your destination”; “Fate/Up against your will”), while Gary Jules and Micheal Andrews (with their cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World”) also incorporate those feelings of banal desperation:

“All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
…

Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher, tell me, what’s my lesson?
Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had”

All three of these songs — given their desolate tone (“loveless fascination,” “So cruelly you kissed me”), their nocturnal imagery (“the killing moon,” “under the milky way”) , and even the name of the band Echo and the Bunnymen — seem like they could have been written for the film.  I suspect that is because Richard Kelly managed to convey cinematographically the sullen, gloomy mood of 80s New Wave, and to remember the way such music does — or at least did — serve as the soundtrack for the lives of a certain type of adolescent, touching their deepest feelings, echoing their secret thoughts.

Music is a plot point in Wallflower. Charlie listens to The Smiths’ lullaby/suicide note “Asleep” almost endlessly, and puts it (twice) on a mix-tape for Patrick.  It conveys a sense of depressed, lonely surrender (“Deep in the cell of my heart, I really want to go”), followed by the dream of “another world. . . a better world.”  The song reflects the duality of alienation and rebellion, as does another featured prominently in the film — David Bowie’s “Heroes.”  The three friends — Charlie, Patrick, and Sam — listen to “Heroes” while they drive through a tunnel, late at night.  Sam stands up in the back of the truck, arms out, the wind in her face.  It feels like flying.  It feels, as Charlie puts it, “infinite.”

Later, after his breakdown, Charlie receives a note from Sam.  “I know you will come flying out of the tunnel,” she writes, “and feel free.”

Both of these songs — “Heroes” and “Asleep” — find a kind of victory in defeat, but the emphasis is reversed.  Where Morrissey is resigned, Bowie is defiant:

“Though nothing will drive them away

We can beat them, just for one day
We can be Heroes, just for one day”

 

Dangerous Gifts

It’s no secret that superhero stories are often a kind of adolescent fantasy: the weak become strong; the outcasts, triumphant.  But they are only fantasies, and in the real world the pressures of adolescence are less likely to result in mutant superpowers, and more likely to produce psychosis.  It may be that the kind of psychosis we see in Donnie Darko and Perks of Being a Wallflower is just a hypertrophied cinematic portrayal of normal adolescent alienation, that to represent the depth and the gloom of the feeling, we need to connect it to madness and violence, which do, after all, often feel so closely related.  If so, then these movies are a darker, more fearsome reflection of the superhero fantasy.  Our adolescent selves may long to be like Spiderman or the X-men, but we feel like Donnie and Charlie.  In fact, we long for the former because of the latter.  The fantasy is a response to the fear.

Darko and Wallflower pull this transference back in the other direction.  Here the outcast is the hero; the weakling and the freak really do save the day.  Charlie does it, in part, by incorporating the fantasy into his reality (“Don’t dream it, be it”); he addresses his journal to an imaginary friend.  Donnie does so by fully entering the fantasy.  He follows the rabbit; he goes through the looking glass.  What he finds, as a result, is more real than his wealthy suburb and his private school — at least it is more real to him.

The metaphysics of Donnie Darko are complex. It is not simply a time-travel story.  Instead, as explained (or at least theorized) by a book Donnie’s teacher loans him, The Philosophy of Time Travel, most of the story occurs in a “Tangent Universe,” which has spun off from the normal universe.  It is, as the book puts it, “highly unstable,” and when it inevitably collapses, rejoining the standard time stream, it risks “destroying all existence.”  Though the mechanics aren’t entirely clear, this catastrophe can be averted, through the intervention of a figure called “The Living Receiver”:

 “The Living Receiver is often blessed with Fourth Dimensional Powers.  These include increased strength, telekinesis, mindcontrol, and the ability to conjure fire and water. . . .  The Living Receiver is often tormented by terrifying dreams, visions, and auditory hallucinations during his time within the Tangent Universe.”

Donnie easily recognizes himself in this description, and he does in the end take on this role and save the world.  He dies, the Tangent collapses, and the events of the previous month are erased.  The world does end, but only this other world, which no one recalls.  Or, put another way:  The world does end, but only for Donnie.  He is a sacrifice, and no one knows it.  The clock turns back.  Gretchen has never met him.  But some of those he saved suffer nightmares, visions.  Is it guilt for his death?  Or has his alienation somehow spread out, touching the community as a whole?

 

Secret Identities

Like superheros, all adolescents lead double lives.  It is almost as though they inhabit two only partly overlapping worlds.  There is the world of their parents, and school, and church, debate club and organized sports.  And then there is the world of their friends, with drugs, and swearing, and cutting class, staying out all night, loud music, teen drama, bullying, and fights.  It’s the second world, from the kids’ perspective, that is the real world.  That is the world where things happen, where it matters. Sometimes those worlds are at war.  And sometimes the first is just a prison to contain the second.  But sometimes the first is a mask that the second wears, not to protect itself, but for the benefit of the adults it fools.  It provides an illusion that our children are safe, sane, and happy — and when the illusion fails, we ask ourselves sadly what is wrong with them.  Donnie’s therapist tells his parents: “Donnie’s aggressive behavior — his increased detachment from reality — seems to stem from his inability to cope with the forces in the world that he believes to be threatening.”

But maybe there’s nothing wrong with these kids, or nothing special.  Maybe it’s just the world we’ve given them.

Toward the end of Wallflower, Charlie has a more serious break.  He remembers his aunt, his “favorite person in the world” abusing him as a child, and it is tied, in his mind to her death in a car accident a short while later.  He blames himself:  “I killed Aunt Hellen, didn’t I? . . .  What if I wanted her to die. . . ?”

When he wakes up, he is in the hospital.  He tells his psychiatrist:  “There’s so much pain, and I don’t know how to not notice it. . . .  It’s everyone.  It never stops.  Do you understand?”

She might, she might not.  What she tells him is, “We can’t change where we come from but we can choose where we go from there.”

It’s a happy ending.  Which is to say, it’s a good start.

 

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1.  I am writing specifically about the director’s cut:  Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut, written and directed by Richard Kelly (Newmarket, 2004).  The basic argument would still apply to the theatrical release, but some details I mention might be different.

2.  Here I am writing about the film, not the book (which I haven’t read).  The Perks of Being a Wallflower, written and directed by Stephen Chbosky (Summit Entertainment, 2012).

3.  “. . . destruction after all is a form of creation.  A kind of imagination had seen this house as it had now become.”  Graham Greene, “The Destructors,” Complete Short Stories (New York: Penguin Books, 2005) 10.

 

Spying and Genocide

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This first appeared on Splice Today.

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“But given the history of abuse by governments, it’s right to ask questions about surveillance — particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives.” That’s a quote from Obama’s news conference last week, in which he defended the NSA’s data collection program.

From the way Obama phrased that, it’s not clear which governments he’s talking about specifically. Who are these governments who have abused information gathering, anyway? What did they do with it?

Well, here’s one abuse of government information gathering I’ve been reading about recently. Not so long ago, U.S. intelligence made lists of civilians, including men, women, and children, to be executed without trial.

This was back in 1965 during the Cold War, just as the U.S. was ratcheting up its involvement in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. At that time, Indonesia was ruled by Sukarno, an anti-colonialist and anti-Westerner with close ties to the the Indonesian Communist Party, or PKI. He was something of a Qaddafi figure, though without quite Qaddafi’s record of support for terrorism and general butchery. Sukarno was an authoritarian ruler, with all that that implies, but certainly no worse of one than the authoritarian rulers of many countries to whom we funneled, and still funnel, money and arms.

On September 30, 1965, there was an abortive coup attempt in Indonesia, and several high-ranking generals were killed. The coup seemed to be linked to the Communist Party. Anti-Commuists in the military, led by one Suharto, used this as an opportunity to seize control, unleashing a flood of anti-Communist propaganda. They also unleashed a bloodbath. Across the country, Communists, or people associated with Communists, or people accused of being Communists, were rounded up and slaughtered — often by virulently anti-Communist Muslim youth groups. An anonymous description of the violence in Robert Cribb’s The Indonesian Killings: 1965-1966 describes village chiefs, children, and members of teacher’s unions being mutilated, tortured, and killed, their bodies dumped in rivers or shallow pits, and banana trees planted on their graves. Here’s one typical account:

A young boy…was arrested by Ansor [members of the Muslim youth group.] He was then tied to a jeep and dragged behind it until he was dead. Both his parents committed suicide.

Nobody knows how many people died in the carnage, exactly, but scholarly estimates range between 300,000 and 1 million.

So what was the U.S. doing while this was going on? Mostly cheering from the sidelines. Again, this was the Cold War, and these were Communists being killed, at least in theory. The U.S. had long hoped that anti-Communist forces would triumph in Indonesia. Officials had contacts with Suharto, and basically wished him the best.

The U.S. did more than just wish him well, though. Twenty-five years after the massacre, reporter Kathy Kadane reported in a May 21, 1990 Washington Post story that she had gotten a number of State Department officials to speak on the record about their involvement. They said that they had provided lists of Communists to the Indonesians, presumably so that Suharto could better hunt them down. The lists included members of women’s groups and youth groups. Kadane quoted former U.S. Embassy official Robert J. Martens justifying his decision to turn over the lists to Suharto.

“It really was a big help to the army…. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.”

In this case, striking hard at a decisive moment meant, apparently, helping thugs track down school teachers so they could chop off their breasts before decapitating them.

After Kane published her piece, U.S. intelligence officials pushed back, arguing that Martens had been acting on his own, without official agency direction, and that the names hadn’t been all that helpful to the Indonesians anyway (in direct contradiction to Martens’ statement above). Ultimately, there’s no way to know exactly what happened, in large part because the Indonesian genocide was so successful —opposition was broken, Suharto moved into power, and Indonesians who knew what was good for them kept quiet about the killings, or else. Kane’s article came out decades after the genocide, and decades after that, scholars still have sparse details about every aspect of the killings, even though Suharto finally was forced from power in 1998.

Still, one thing seems clear — the U.S. had intelligence, and that intelligence was used (with whatever efficacy, and officially or by one dude) to help a bunch of authoritarian thugs commit genocide. Even after the story blew up on him, Martens was still insisting that aiding the military was the right thing to do. ‘If we had any purpose in the world except to be bureaucrats,” he told a New York Times reporter, “that was the sort of thing I felt we ought to be doing.” Shades of Oliver North.

The point, for our present purposes, is pretty straightforward. If spies have information, they will use it in pursuit of their “mission,” whether it’s fighting Communism or fighting terrorism. And if they trample on some civil liberties, or kill a few innocent kids — well, they’re not going to worry about it all that much. Indonesia was a long time ago and a long way away. But 500,000 dead is a whole lot of bodies to contemplate with equanimity. Our spies did though, and I don’t think they’ve changed all that much. I doubt the current NSA program will end up abetting genocide. But the fact that our government has this particular history of abuse seems like a pretty good reason not to trust them at all when they promise that the information they gather will not be used for harm.
 

suharto

Utilitarian Review 8/16/14

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On HU

Featured Archive Post: Betsy Phillips on the appeal and repulsion of blackface, for both blacks and whites.

Voices from the Archive: Caroline Small on the failures of comics symbolism.

Me on why books don’t make you spiritual.

Ng Suat Tong on Li Kunwu and Philippe Ôtié’s A Chinese Life, and choosing stability over freedom.

Chris Gavaler on the Leftovers and an apocalypse without answers.

Kate Polak on J.P. Stassen’s Deogratias, Rwanda, and unethical empathy.

Roy T. Cook asks whether some panel layouts are superior to others (part of the PPP roundtable on Groensteen and page layout.)

Alex Buchet on the dangers of translation and the importance of accountability.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Pacific Standard I explain why, in addition to more strong female characters, we need fewer strong male characters.
 
Other Links

Jennifer Williams at Ms. on why Ferguson is a feminist issue.

David Masciotra on the latter-period Elvis.

Nicholas Jackson on why Pacific Standard doesn’t have comments.
 

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Friendly Advice

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This is part of the Gay Utopia project, originally published in 2007. It is reprinted by permission of EyeofSerpent, and may not be reproduced. A map of the Gay Utopia is here.

This is erotic fiction and NSFW in any way, so be warned.
_____________
 
Corelle D’Amber walked into my office without fanfare and I returned her firm handshake. Quick observations; she was average height with auburn hair that saw more sunshine than I expected, she seemed mid-thirties, but I knew she was ten years older than that, and she really knew how to dress. Suede pumps, silver bracelets that matched the design of her earrings, and a white carnation in her lapel. She was sporting a very nice charcoal suit with a tiny pearlescent pinstripe. The patch over her eye was exactly the same material as her suit, even to the extent that the pinstripe was neatly aligned with her jacket.

I put aside the instant recognition of a personality obsessed with detail. I was hoping for Ms. D’Amber’s help with this case. I just wouldn’t have time to get to know the woman that Forbes magazine called “the most successful entrepreneur since Edison.” She was a millionaire by thirty, a billionaire now. She could afford to indulge her own tastes.

I gestured, “Please take a seat, Ms. D’Amber. I’m so glad you could fit me into your schedule.”

“Thank you, doctor. When we spoke on the phone, you suggested that Mrs. Roth would sincerely benefit from my meeting with you to discuss her case.” She eased herself into the maroon leather chair.

To put her at ease, I sat in the twin to it rather than behind my desk. This was a woman who knew most business interaction from every angle. I didn’t make the mistake of thinking that establishing trust with her would be a matter of quickly pushing the right buttons. Just getting her here was a plus. “Ms. D’Amber, how much do you know about Alice’s situation?”

She didn’t bat an eye, “I’ve worked with her husband, Bill for nearly six months. I’ve met Alice many times on my trips into town. We’ve even gone to dinner together. I don’t know anything about why she’s seeing a psychiatrist. I’d be surprised if you were going to tell me. Client privacy and all that?”

Sharp. “Yes,” I smiled, “but Alice has also been to see two other psychiatrists by court order. I’m not sure what the court will do if a third one throws up their hands on her case. I’m hoping for some good news.”

That got her attention. I could see natural curiosity working away beneath her surprise; “No one has said anything to me. Bill never mentioned this. What crime has she committed?”

“Public indecency. Multiple counts. It’s not a serious crime, but the judge asked for a psychiatric review.” I watched her for a reaction. Most women were actually very conservative about things like this. Women who ‘broke the rules’ were first scorned by other women.

“Alice? Hard to believe. There must be some mistake.” She shook her head.

Good. At least she wasn’t blaming Alice. Now for the hard part. “No. There is no mistake. Alice even admits to flashing in situations where she hasn’t been caught. Ms. D’Amber, I asked you here to help because I’m sure Alice wants to stop. I’ve gotten her interested in changing her behavior. Part of that change involves asking for you to help her.”

Now she did look wary, “Why me? Why not you, you obviously don’t approve of this behavior?”

I laughed gently, “No. Of course I don’t approve. This sort of degrading attention-driven behavior is a cry for help. Even Alice is very embarrassed by how far she has taken this. Her family and friends are aware there is a problem, if not how serious it is. Her husband is nearly beside himself with the stress. Alice has chosen you, I think, because you are a role model, someone of impeccable taste. Someone who is used to making decisions. Someone she knows is a respected woman.”

“I still don’t understand what help I could be.” She didn’t look pleased. Her face was showing all the signs of ‘discussion closed’. She had a nice straightforward face, not pretty, but she could afford to take care of herself and she obviously had a sense for what worked for her. Simple. Almost an inner elegance. Just this short meeting and I could see why Alice had fixed on Corelle D’Amber as the matriarchal figure who’s permission and forgiveness she needed in order to stop her increasingly degrading activities.

D’Amber was the closest thing I had found in Alice’s mental landscape to an icon of authority. I was getting nowhere by myself.

That still made it awkward to discuss with a stranger. My planned response to Alice’s need was unconventional and my credibility was in jeopardy if it became known that I was trying to get at Alice’s fixation by exposing her case to an outsider. After months, of treating her, it seemed to me that I could crack her resistance to taking my help if I could enlist D’Amber on my side.

Alice always spoke of the woman with intense admiration.

I tried to complete the picture for the financier, “You really have to do very little. For instance, if you could meet Alice here during one of our sessions and tell her that you and I have talked things over and that we are in agreement as to how to proceed. That would leave you out of any of the treatment and give me the mandate in her mind to allow access to her motivation. Of course, none of this would ever be discussed outside this office. Your part would be simply validating my expertise with Alice.” I crossed my fingers. Cracking Alice Roth’s case after two specialists had failed would be quite a coup.

“I don’t think so, Dr. Rand.” She shook her head.

Damn. What else could I say to get her to see this? I had tried to make it as easy as possible. “Alice will be disappointed.” I put plenty of emotion in my voice.

Suddenly, her chin came up. “I doubt that. To summarize what you are proposing; you’re acting for the court to try and normalize Alice’s behavior so that her husband and society can respect her once more. Yet her only crime is transforming her sexual privacy into public record. You want to do this by having me lie to her about my faith in your judgment. You don’t know me or my character, yet you’re willing to have me act as your leverage against your patient. You’ve hit an obstacle and rather than hard work, you’re looking for an easy answer and a quick fix from a complete stranger. Having tricked Alice into believing that I agree with the court, you’ll ‘take over’ and make her behave like a good girl. I must say I’m insulted you would propose such a thing.” She gave me an edgy look. “You must be quite the stuck-up elitist prig.”

I gaped at her. The calm and articulate delivery belied the venom of the words. She was like a restrained viper. Dangerous. She kept going on.

“A woman wants to show her breasts and paternal law says she’s mentally deranged? What about freedom of expression? What about art? A husband ignores his wife’s sexual tension for years and a woman psychiatrist rewards that by proposing theatrical therapy that will deceive the patient? Where is your feeling for Alice, doctor? I can no more validate your expertise than you can understand what dark things Alice has dared to look at in herself. Alice is a level beyond you that you do not understand. You are a child by comparison. My advice is loosen up, Dr. Rand.”

That was more than enough, I stood up. D’Amber was a nut case and this was a mistake. Worse. She was making me angry. “I feel we don’t have anything else to talk about then Ms. D’Amber. I will cure Alice without your help. I’m sorry your own problems have never been addressed in therapy. I won’t see you out or thank you for your time. Good day.” I went behind my desk without looking at her.

“Wrong again, Dr. Rand. You and I aren’t done.” There was humor in her voice, I glanced at her.

She sat there like a queen, staring right at me. There was something in her good eye that looked disturbingly like clinical detachment. I used to practice that in my mirror when I was in college. Fine. I’d just handle her with something she could understand. “We’re more than done, Ms. D’Amber. If you don’t leave my office immediately I’ll call for building security. I’m sure you don’t want that.” My ground and my rules bitch.

She studied me as if I was an interesting case. “You’ll find that the phone is temporarily out of order.” She casually laced her fingers on the leather arm of the chair.

Oh my god. She really was a nut. I picked up the phone, “Sorry. I’m not bluffing.” I didn’t even call my receptionist, I dialed 911 directly. Then I realized the phone was dead. Sweat beaded on the back of my neck. How could that be?

I tried to get a dial tone once more. I didn’t want to lose any momentum, I hung up and walked around her to the door.

She was still looking at the diplomas behind my desk. “The door mechanism is jammed. It won’t turn. You’ll also find that Della has gone to the ladies room, so even if you screamed at the soundproof door, there isn’t anyone on the other side to hear you.”

I froze with my hand near the door lever. Megalomania? If I grabbed it and it didn’t turn, she wouldn’t be a nut. I was very afraid of what that meant. If it did turn, I’d run down the hall until I found someone. It wasn’t safe here at all. I was scared to do either. I surprised myself by calling for my secretary without looking away from the handle that was two inches from my fingers, “Della!”

No answer. Ohmygod.

I tried the lever. Jammed. It didn’t turn at all. Cold sweat broke out along my back. I shivered and pushed the fear down and away, turned around and put the door to my back. I swallowed to steady my voice, assume the worst, assume she was psychotic, manipulate that aspect, stroke her, “I think we have misunderstood each other. Let’s start over.”

She turned around in the seat, smiling. Her hand went up, lifted her eye patch, ohmygod! there was———–.

—-Sex. Slutty outrageous sex. Making a public scene. Wearing slutty strap CFM heels to work. I never imagined how hot it might be. How I could ache for sex. You have to flaunt it when you want it that bad. Hot. Sweating. My crotch was getting soaked. Uncomfortable. I flushed with embarrassment. Corelle was going to make me over and display me like a prize cow. Bell collar. Brand on my ass. Black finger nail polish. Fingers playing with my pussy. I felt powerless. Malleable. So weak. So hot. The only things I could think about were my nipples and twat. Ugh, that word. Slutty. Twat. Hated that word. The sweat trickled down under my breasts. Tits. Boobs. If I took a step, I’d orgasm and never stop. Submissive. She had ruined me. A beast. A smart woman reduced to a fuck machine. I would look like a whore. Hot. So hard to fight. Hypnosis can not make you do anything you would not do while—–

An hour later, I was sitting on my desk edge when Della walked in. She gasped and put both her hands over her eyes. “Dr. Rand, I’m so sorry. I should have knocked. I didn’t—-” She turned around and rushed out.

So damn hot. Strange. It was quite a rush. Silly girl should have knocked. I pulled my hand out of my pantyhose and licked my fingers. The smell was so strong. I didn’t care for the taste. Was I actually hotter because she had seen me? I pushed my skirt back down and stood up. The slick sensation made me feel strange. Why had she thought she could just waltz in here? This was embarrassing.

How was I going to explain this? Should I try? Damn. She had interrupted before I could get myself off. I was still horny as a—. Well. No matter.

I went and sat down and pulled out the file on Alice Roth. Just thinking about Alice suddenly made me hotter than before. That was strange.

I pulled my skirt up and pushed my hand down into my pantyhose and started fingering myself. I’d have to convince Alice she was sick without D’Amber’s help.

* * *

A week later, the day’s case load was finished and Della came in and told me Ms. D’Amber was in the waiting room. My feet were hurting from the white strap sandal heels I had been wearing and I wasn’t in the best mood. “She has a lot of nerve not calling after ignoring our appointment last week. I suppose you should send her in, Della.”

“Doctor?” Della looked baffled. “But she did—”

“Did what?” I looked at her raising my eyebrows. “Tell her to come in. You can go. I’ll lock up.”

“Yes, Dr. Rand.” She went back through the door. She certainly looked confused about something.

Corelle D’Amber walked into my office without fanfare and I returned her firm handshake. Quick observations; she was average height with auburn hair, she seemed mid-thirties, but I knew she was ten years older than that. I had done extensive research on her in my plan to get her to help me crack the Roth case. She knew how to dress. Black leather pumps, no jewelry of any kind, and a black silk dress. The patch over her eye was exactly the same material as her dress, it gleamed from the soft light outside the windows.

I put aside the odd reaction that I didn’t want to talk to her. For some reason, it really bothered me that she had skipped our earlier meeting. I really needed her help to make Alice’s case another feather in my cap. Alice. Damn, why did I think of sex every time that woman came to mind?

I gestured, “Please take a seat, Ms. D’Amber. I’m so glad you could fit me into your schedule.” Hmm. That was a little too cold.

“Thank you, doctor. When we spoke on the phone, you sounded a bit desperate.” She eased herself into the maroon leather chair.

I had started to sit across from her, but her calm description of me as ‘desperate’ floored me. What in the world was she talking about? Desperate? “I assure you, my concerns are for a friend of yours. Someone I hope you are interested in helping.” I sat on the edge of the desk instead, letting my superior height give me an edge in the conversation. D’Amber was watching me closely.

Sitting there. I realized I was wet. I was aroused, but something felt wrong.

She pointed at my feet with her chin. “Nice shoes. Quite daring to wear white after Halloween. Don’t they hurt your feet? They look so high.” She looked up at me. I shivered. Why did this seem dangerous? Why did I buy these shoes? They hurt. They looked like shoes a hooker would wear. I looked down at them. Dark red nail polish, white hose, white straps pinching my toes and four inch heels. Tramp. My pussy was even hotter.

I had to say something. “Thank you. I like to surprise people.” I didn’t want to talk about my slutty shoes. It was too damn embarrassing to trade fashion tips with a self-made millionaire. “They don’t hurt at all. Latest thing.” God. That sounded lame. What a bitch she was. Why was I on the defensive?

The embarrassment ran through me like a river of fire. My underarms were suddenly soaked. I was flushed. Impossibly, I was very aroused. Today was not the day to talk to a stranger about Alice’s degrading sexual kinks. “I’m sorry you didn’t call last week to let me know you wouldn’t be coming. I’m afraid that I wasn’t expecting you at all. It just seemed you had changed your mind about coming. Maybe we should do this another day.” There, that should get her out of here.

“About coming? But I did come.” She smiled. Sweat broke out on my thighs. Something was terribly wrong. I squeezed my legs together. I was wet. Horny. I realized I was rubbing my backside on the desk edge and stopped. I stared at her. She was doing something. Had done something to me. She was here to do it again. I reached around for the phone.

When I picked it up, there was no dial tone. Then I remembered Della coming in the office last week after Corelle had left and finding me with my hand buried in my twat. Oh, that word was vulgar. I groaned and my pussy gushed thinking about Della’s expression. She saw me masturbating.

“Why don’t you turn around, Dr. Rand? Or should I call you Bess? The phone isn’t working.”

I put it down. My heart was pounding. I looked for anything heavy on the desk that I could use as a weapon. With a start, I remembered the small revolver in the bottom desk drawer. I had to get around the other side of the desk, keep her talking. “What have you done to me? What are you?” I did manage to get around to the side of the desk.

“Well, I don’t think you could understand what I really am. All I’ve done to you is give you some friendly advice. You didn’t have any respect for the dark things we all carry around with us, Bess. You were using Alice to make your own career. I decided to let you look at your own darkness. Loosen up.”

Loosen up? I was halfway around the desk. Loosen? Loose. Tramp. Whore. I didn’t want to turn around. If I did something terrible would happen. I couldn’t remember what but I knew not to look at her. No one can hypnotize you to do things that you wouldn’t do while conscious. Horribly, I turned to stare at her against my will. She stood up and smiled. Her hand went up, lifted her eye patch, ohmygod! there was—–

—-ohmygod. I was such a two-faced prig. I loved my wet pussy. I could admit that. Slutty sex. Public sex. Dark sex. All those true confessions. All those exciting clinical examples. Wearing Come Fuck Me heels all day. Staring men. Staring women. Dressing cheap. So hot. Aching. Wet. Horny. I got down on my knees before her. I knew I shouldn’t. I wasn’t a cow. Licking pussy on command. I didn’t want to be milked. Hot. Sweating. My crotch was so slick. Can’t stop. Mistress was going to make me over and display me like a prize cow. Bell collar. Black brand on my ass. Black finger nail polish like hooves. Fingers pulling my nipples, my pussy. Milk me. Malleable. So very hot. I realized I was licking her feet. God, it was so hot. So embarrassing. How could I be so slutty? My breasts hung down like small udders. The sweat trickled down my breasts. Tits. Jugs. I came when she tugged my nipples. I was like an animal. I was a—–

A nice morning. Della stopped when she walked in the office. “Dr. Rand?”

I looked up from sorting the mail. “Yes?” She had a half-smile on her face. It wasn’t flattering on her.

“Nothing,” she shook her head, still smiling, “there was a special delivery waiting for you in the mail this morning. Marked personal.” She set it down and went back to her desk.

Why did Della smiling at me make me so horny? That didn’t make sense. I picked up the package. Return address was my own street address. That made no sense at all. So disturbing. I didn’t remember sending myself a package. I opened it up.

Oh. I took the bottle out of the plastic bubble wrap. Black pearl nail polish. The color was so awful. Mindless Goth girls swam into my mind’s eye, all copying each other’s look. I opened it and painted over one finger nail with four strokes. My nipples ached. The color was really quite awful. I did another nail to see if it would look better. I couldn’t stop there. It was so stark. I was getting hot, just thinking about how noticeable it would be. People would stare.

Later, I took off my black fishnets so I could do my toes. When I was done, I couldn’t imagine why Della hadn’t chanced to interrupt me. I felt disappointed. I started playing with myself.

Oh. That was good. Visions of swollen tits and nipples spraying milk came to mind.

* * *

A week later, Della came in and told me Ms. D’Amber was in the waiting room. I flushed and my nipples started aching. “Tell her I’m not here. She can’t make appointments that we agree to, I don’t have to see her whenever she chooses to appear. Send her away, Della.”

“Doctor?” Della looked at me like I was speaking Swahili, “She’s been here twice before. You’ve been acting strangely, too. Are the two things connected?”

“I have?” I looked at her raising my eyebrows. “Such as?”

“Dr. Rand.” She hesitated, “You’re dressing oddly.”

I felt my pussy steam and instantly become slick. Della was insulting me? Criticizing me? God, that turned me on. “What do you mean, oddly,” I husked. Why hadn’t I worn panties this morning? My crotch was soaked.

“You’re wearing black polish and fishnet body stockings. A lot of your new blouses are really sheer. Your skirts are shorter than mine and you used to tell me to watch that. You said I looked unprofessional when I wore short skirts.” She paused, then rushed ahead, “Doctor, you’re dressing like a—.”

I bit my lip and came. The orgasm was horribly intense. She was telling me I was dressing like a young slut.

Corelle D’Amber walked into my office without fanfare and stopped. I came again when I saw her. She was breathtaking. Commanding. Della started to say something else, D’Amber looked at her and she stopped trying.

I put aside the instant reaction that I wanted to rub my crotch on D’Amber’s toes. I wanted to lie down on the floor and have D’Amber work her high-heeled toe between my legs. I was having some kind of breakdown. For some reason, this woman was a dream of realized domination and I wanted her to own me. Preferably right in front of Della. I was so hot now, that I could feel my thighs getting wet.

I whispered, “I’m so glad you could fit me into your schedule, Ms. D’Amber.” Hmm. What would she do to me now? “Don’t go, Della.” I was of two minds, one wanted sex and the other couldn’t think.

D’Amber looked at me, then back to Della, “How do you like the new Dr. Rand?”

“Just fine, ma’am,” Della lied with a false smile on her face. I came again. Oh, the hot shame. I wanted it again and again.

D’Amber walked over to me. She gave me a wolf’s smile. Hungry. She wasn’t human, I realized. How had I ever thought she was a human being? She was something older and more terrible. “Bessy, I don’t think you could stand another treatment. You’re ready now. She reached into her purse and pulled out a collar with a heavy bell on it. She started putting it around my neck.

The orgasms ran up and down my legs, my back, my nipples were so hot, I started pulling on them myself. “Moo,” I whispered.

Mistress D’Amber stepped away. Della stared at me in shock, her mouth an open oval. That was too much, I came again. “Moooooooooo.” I groaned.

“Della?” asked the Mistress. Della tore her eyes from me and looked at her. I could have told her not to.

Well. If I had really wanted to. I’m sure I could have.

Della and I spent the afternoon in intensely heated sex. She punished me. She milked me and told me what a little cow I was. She worked my pussy and ass with a strap-on I had bought some days before. She suggested I get a boob job so my udders would have some real heft. Of course, I agreed.

Of course, I would pay for it. Yes, I loved being banged by my secretary. Oh yes, I’d love to do housework. Yes, I was such a stuck up bitch. Oh, god. Everything was layers of heat and shame.

I came and came and came. It was so awful it was glorious.

Afterwards, I gave her a big raise.

* * *

Corelle D’Amber walked into her office and placed her purse on the mahogany desktop. The phone rang then, as if it knew when its mistress had returned and it could now deliver up its function and help her conduct business.

She eased it up to her ear, “Corelle here,” direct and to the point.

“Alice,” she smiled broadly, “how good to hear from you. Did you get the release from Dr. Rand? Everything signed and sealed? Good. No. That’s great, sweetheart. Glad to do it.”

She listened for a long time. “I’m afraid that’s true, Alice. None of this would have been a problem if Bill had stuck by you. I’m glad you realize that. He hasn’t been fair. He’s put you through a lot of hell.”

She nodded.

“Yes. Of course. You name the time and I’ll be there.” She lowered her voice, “Alice, you’re making the right decision. See you soon, sweetheart.”

Corelle put the phone down gently. She reached to her cheek and adjusted her eyepatch.

Then she smiled.

Found in Translation

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Saint Jerome, the patron saint of translators; engraving by Albrecht Durer (1514)

In a recent article posted on the Hooded Utilitarian, Marc-Oliver Frisch had cause to quote the philosopher Theodore Adorno:

“Not only does democracy demand freedom of criticism and require critical impulses, it is effectively defined by criticism. […] The system of checks and balances, the two-way control of executive, legislature and judiciary, says as much as: that any one of these powers may exercise criticism upon another and thereby limit the despotism to which each of them, without any critical element, gravitates.” (Translation by me) [i.e. by Frisch]

In the comments, one “oh please oh please” (sic) posted a rather personal and acerbic reaction to Frisch’s article, containing the following statement:

In this way “Hater” is a useful term of art pointing to criticism as an act of status anxiety rather than engagement of the work (for example inserting a bland Adorno quote as a means of boasting one has translated it oneself).

Noah Berlatsky (editor of the site and comments moderator) rebuked the commenter for this charge of “boasting” thus:

Saying that Marc put in the Adorno quote just to say he translated it is really incredibly uncharitable. It’s also kind of ridiculous. There are just lots of people who read multiple languages; it’s not a big deal. If you think it’s a big deal, that’s kind of your problem. But in this context, it makes you look like you’re sloshing around in the status anxiety you’re claiming to combat, and also like you’re engaging in some knee-jerk anti-intellectualism.

I wholly agree with Noah here — multilinguism is common all over the world, in every class and at every level of education.  It’s quite normal, for example, in the Philippines to meet people fluent in four languages: Tagalog, Spanish, English, and whatever the local tongue or dialect is. There are probably more polyglots than monoglots in the world’s population.

In fact, truly snobbish behavior would have dictated that Frisch leave the quote untranslated in the original German. That was in fact the default practice for academic papers well into the 1960s and is not unknown today. (Until the ’50s Harvard University required that all entering students master Greek, Latin, French and German as a matter of course.)

But I’m not writing this article to revive an old dispute. That comment has bothered me for the past couple of months because it shows an ignorance of one of a translator’s most important duties: to be answerable.

I’ve been translating professionally for over thirty-five years — from English into French and vice-versa, with the occasional venture into Italian — to eke out my main living as a language teacher.  I’ve translated novels, plays, screenplays, comics; teachers’reports, lessons,  curricula vitae, memos, letters of intention, business articles; technical manuals, packaging graphics, powerpoint presentations; the oddest and most delightful commission being a painter’s prayer. In short, a bit of everything.

Translation is seldom thought of as a dangerous trade — but it is.

Imagine that I make a mistake in a manual for operating heavy machinery. For instance, I lazily translate ”metres” as ”yards” because the two measures of distance are approximately equal. As a result, a worker gets maimed or killed.

Or a medical treatment plan calls for semi-monthly (twice a month) checkups, and I render that as bi-monthly (every two months). You can imagine the grim outcome.

Legal documents offer particular landmines. Suppose a French company sends a letter of intention to an American one offering to take a 20% stake in it, and states that ‘eventuellement’ they will increase that stake to 100%. I foolishly translate ‘eventuellement’ as ‘eventually’. The American company now believes there’s a firm  takeover bid on the table. No: ‘eventuellement’ translates as ‘maybe’.  One can see  the possible catastrophe of litigation this misunderstanding could bring about, and the translator would quite rightly be held responsible — legally and financially.

It’s why legal translators and interpreters are almost universally certified and bonded specialists, and why general translators such as I will not touch such matter with a ten-foot-pole. (Well, I have overcome my caution a few times out of greed, but always with a disclaimer attached to the document.)

It’s true for criminal law, as well.  Many are the convictions that’ve been overturned on appeal because of incompetent courtroom interpretation.

Translation errors can even change history. It appears that Saddam Hussein erroneously thought he had American approval for his invasion of Kuwait because of an interpreter’s mistake. (For more famous translation errors, please go to this site.) 

And a famous translation error led to the doctrine of Jesus’ Virgin Birth.

In the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah 7:14, the coming of the Messiah is foretold thus:

Therefore the LORD Himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

(King James translation)

But in the original Hebrew text, the word “virgin” (betulah) is not used, rather “young woman” (almah).

Now, in the 3rd century BCE King Ptolemy II of Egypt commissioned the translation of the Hebrew sacred texts into Greek (the result being known as the Septuagint). And here the fateful error crept in: alemah was rendered into the Greek parthenos (virgin). A similar mistake would have been possible in English, where “maiden” originally meant a virgin woman, but through sense creep has come to mean simply young woman.

Four hundred or so years later appeared the Gospel of Matthew. It was written in Greek (the liga franca of the Middle East) and drew heavily on the Septuagint’s version of Isaiah:

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

(King James translation)

Yes, the old parthenos error had wormed into this Gospel. Hence the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, rejected by some, accepted by others, the source of so many wars, massacres of “heretics” and Inquisitions…  people were burnt at the stake because of a trivial translation mistake.

I trust you see what I’m getting at with regards to Frisch and Adorno. Translation is a serious business that can have serious consequences. It is therefore incumbent on every translator to sign his work — to accept accountability. Far from meriting scorn, Frisch is to be commended for intellectual rigor and responsibility.

Translators everywhere: own your work!

mary05
Not a virgin, but still super: Mary as seen by artist Soasig Chamaillard.

 

Are Some Panel Layouts Inherently Superior to Others? (Groensteen and Page Layout Roundtable)

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This is the second installment in the PencilPanelPage roundtable on panel layout and Theirry Groensteen’s work (The System of Comics, Comics and Narration). Check out Adrielle Mitchell’s first installement in the series here!
 
ComicsNarrationIn Comics and Narration Thierry Groensteen introduces a four-part taxonomy by which we (or at least he) categorizes comics in terms of the nature and structure of panel layout. The taxonomy consists of different ways in which the payout of the panels might be more or less regular:

  1. Do all pages have the same panel layout (or are they all variations on a single such template, etc.)?
  2. Are all the tiers of panels on a particular page (or all the tiers in the comic, etc.) the same height?
  3. Are all the panels within a single tier (or all the panels on a page, or all the panels in the comic, etc.) the same width?
  4. What is the number of panels placed on each page (i.e. what is the density of the page)?

A page for which the answer to (2) and (3) is affirmative is a waffle-iron grid. Further, the more variation with respect to (2) and (3) found on a page, the more irregular the page. Factoring in (1), we also have a criterion for measuring (roughly) the regularity of the panel layout of an entire comic.

WaffleThe density of panels on a particular page – i.e. criterion (4) – while discussed at the same time as the first three criteria, is somewhat orthogonal to measuring the regularity of a page although variation in density from page to page obviously increases the irregularity of the comic in the relevant sense. Clearly, however, if the number of panels on a page varies from page to page, then as a matter of geometrical fact their layout must as well – thus, with regard to measuring regularity criterion (4) is redundant, subsumed under criterion (1).

This taxonomy is interesting, and allows us to categorize comics in terms of three distinct (although not completely independent) dimensions: the regularity of panel height (on a page), the regularity of panel width (in a tier or on a page), and the uniformity of these when considered page-to-page. Taxonomy is, of course, a wonderful tool for analysis and explanation, but a taxonomy is only as good as the explanation of, and analysis of, the relevant phenomena that it provides.

McCloudLayoutDigression: One pet peeve of mine is the tendency of scholar in the humanities – comics scholars definitely included – who propose taxonomies as if a system of categories is an intellectual end in and of itself (and as if they are following a more ‘scientific’ methodology). A taxonomy is a tool, however, not a result.

So, the obvious question is this: Are there any theoretical questions that can be answered by attending to the complex geometrical framework for analyzing comics panel layout provided by Groensteen? Groensteen seems to think so: he argues that, in general, the more regular the panel layout, the better the comic and its narrative (all else being equal). His argument for this claim is somewhat indirect – he identifies a regularity-eschewing ‘movement’ in comics, which he calls the neo-baroque and characterizes as preferring:

… the destructuring of the hyperframe by images that bleed off the edge of the page and intrusions into the gutter, the use of multiple insets, the maximization of the contrast between large background images and the inset panels, the vertical or horizontal elongation of panels (as if to achieve a shape as far removed from the square as possible!), and the frequent stacking of very narrow horizontal panels… (Comics and Narration p. 47).

Groensteen stridently disapproves of such strayings from the waffle-iron way of truth:

It is as if the simple succession of panels was no longer deemed sufficient to ensure the production of meaning: the apparatus must become more sophisticated (or more hysterical) by piling special effect upon special effect (Comics and Narration, p. 47).

It is worth noting that Groensteen’s complaints have a bit of a Euro-elitist tone to them: He explicitly blames the neo-baroque movement on the pernicious influence of manga (pp. 47, 61) and 1980s American superhero comics (p. 47, fn. 17, p. 61).

Setting this aside, however, it is worth asking whether Groensteen could be right: Are some panel layouts (and maximally regular waffle-iron grids in particular) better suited for effective narratives than others? There are two possible questions one could ask here:

  • In general, are comics better the more regular their panel layout?
  • If comics had to restrict itself to a single layout, would a more regular layout be better than a less regular one?

WareLayoutGroensteen seems to think the answer to the first question is affirmative, but I just can’t see how this could be the case. As many scholars have argued (and see the predecessor to this post by Adrielle for some evidence) panel layout can be carefully attuned to the type of story being told and the way in which the teller is telling it, resulting in narrative effects that are both theoretically interesting and likely unachievable by other, more ‘traditional’ means. Chris Ware’s work, for example, would be far less compelling had it been produced in a regular 3×3 grid (interestingly, Ware somehow gets a pass from Groensteen, despite his vast deviations from panel regularity in Groensteen’s sense.)

More promising, perhaps, is the second question (although it is not, I think, what Groensteen himself has in mind): If all comics had to be produced with the exact same panel layout, would a regular one be preferable? The answer here might be affirmative – it might be the case that a regular waffle-grid is neutral in a certain formal sense, so that it is amenable to functioning in all sorts of different narrative environments in a non-interfering manner (although the positive contributions of panel layout of the sort mentioned in the previous paragraph would be ruled out). Of course, certain metafictional comics that make direct use of panel layout would be impossible. But the second weaker claim regarding super-regular waffle grids does not seem immediately absurd in the way the first does.

So, are some panel layouts inherently superior to others?