Utilitarian Review 4/11/15

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

On HU

And we asked for some roundtable ideas. We got many, though still not sure what the consensus is….

Me on who is more blasphemous Stryper or Deicide.

Matt Healey on Ian King’s Pies, a furry graphic novel.

Katherine Wirick on OCD and why you shouldn’t name your cosmetic line after a mental illness.

Chris Gavaler on pulp heroine the Domino Lady and sexy chastity.

Kim O’Connor on how no one wants to censor you, comics.

I argued that free speech isn’t a moral good in itself.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Atlantic I wrote about Vietnam war reenactors and the truth and unreality of war.

At Reason I wrote about how protecting kids means letting them sext.

At Ravishly I wrote about:

—why all art is political.

—how anti-Semitism builds on racism.

—Joanna Russ’ The Female Man and the 2nd waves discomfort with femininity.

At Splice I wrote about the Chi-Lites, Alex Chilton and smooth soul indie rock.

At the Reader I did a little review of neo-soul artists Zo! and Carmen Rodgers.

Other Links

A couple articles quoted me this week:

Carl Wilson on how we should get rid of indie.

Tracy Clark-Flory on the spanking scene in Outlander.

And some other links:

Osvaldo Oyola on how readers of color rewrite black superheroes.

Brian Beutler on how all of us, North and South, should join together in hating the Confederacy.

Paul F. Campos on why college tuition costs so much.

Censure vs. Censor: A Blog Carnival

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

Megan Purdy hosted a Blog Carnival on Censure vs. Censor over at Women Write About Comics. I thought I’d mirror the organizational post here with links and such (as you’ll see, Kim O’Connor and I both contributed here at HU.)

The mirrored post is below.
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by Megan Purdy

Welcome back to WWAC’s irregular blog carnival! It’s been awhile. This time we teamed up with Hooded Utilitarian, Paper Droids, Panels, Comics Spire, and Deadshirt to talk about censorship. Here’s the question I put to our brave writers:

Censors and censures: What’s the difference? What is the social utility, if any, of them? What to do about the strange reaction to criticism of comics, where it’s all perceived as threatening, even post-Code, with Frederic Wertham invoked at every turn? Why are so many people so defensive, so Team Comics, about a medium that’s enjoying a creative renaissance?

Throughout the day, our partners have been publishing their responses. Here now, are all of them collected:

The Effect of Living Backwards, by Kim O’Connor at Hooded Utilitarian

And yet, censorship is an accusation frequently hurled at “politically correct” liberal-leaning members of the comics community. The accusers are, like, Tinfoil Hat Bulbasaur, sometimes even using words like self-censorship and thought police to describe what most of us would call a conscience. We’re through the looking glass, where the people with the most power and the loudest voices are the ones who worry most about being silenced. Potent industry figures like Gary Groth are waging an imaginary war against opponents (“opponents”) who have no actual interest in stripping artists of their freedom of speech. So let me say it once, loud and clear for all the turkeys in the back: Expressing an opinion—even a harsh one—is not equivalent to arguing for censorship. It’s not even close.

Censoring the World: The Fight to Protect the Innocence of Children, by KM Bezner at Women Write About Comics

Parents want to protect their children. This isn’t a groundbreaking revelation or a new development, and of course is completely understandable. But it’s impossible to censor the world. Restricting their access to books can not only suppress a love of reading, it can also discourage them from seeking out answers to the questions they will inevitably have about sex, racism, religion, and violence. It’s important to remember that challenging a book is a decision that will impact children other than your own.

Diversity: There’s Plenty of Room in the Sandbox, by Swapna Krishna at Panels

It’s a great time to be a comics fan. The industry is enjoying such an amazing renaissance, with diverse titles releasing left and right. More people are getting into comics, are interested in exploring and trying the medium for the first time. With an increasing emphasis on diversity comes increased sales and a larger audience. This should be a good thing. Why, then, are so many people defensive about the way things were? Why are so many fans resistant to these changes?

A Superstitious and Cowardly Lot: Sexism, “Free Speech,” and Comics Fandom, by Joe Stando at Deadshirt

Among these tricks are clothing their harassment in progressive buzzwords. Free speech is good, right? And censorship is bad. This is America, after all. So even the most sexist remarks by creators, the most offensive artwork and the most prolonged harassment must be good, since they’re “free speech.” Similarly, anytime someone criticizes said speech, it must be censorship, because that’s the opposite, right?

My Problematic Faves: On Censureship and Self-Censorship in Comics, by Allison O’Toole, at Paper Droids.

We all enjoy stories that unintentionally do things wrong at times, but everyone has a different threshold for the kind of problematic content they can overlook. Personally, I think mine has something to do with other redeeming qualities in a comic. I believe it’s possible to point out that any story–comic, novel, movie, TV show, etc.–is deeply problematic while acknowledging that it has other strengths, and it’s up to each reader to decide whether they want to engage with that particular work or not.

The Morality of Free Speech, or Lack Thereof, by Noah Berlatsky at Hooded Utilitarian

For many who identify as comics fans, or as art fans, or as libertarians, or as some intersection of all those things, this may seem like heresy. Supporting free speech is often touted as a kind of iconic sign of open-mindedness; a stand against the philistines. Alternately, or in addition, to be against free speech is seen as supporting tyranny and that mighty argument-quashing shibboleth, Big Brother.

The Fightin’ Fans Vs. the Censorious Critics, by Steve Morris at The Spire

‘Mainstream’ comics, as they’re called for some reason, have been trained to react defensively to any new challenge – since Wertham managed to restrict the medium, fans and authors have wanted to prove that nothing will ever hold them back again. This led to some comics which went way over the line in their approach, and it also led to some of the strongest work in the medium. Right now, though, the comics themselves are being overshadowed by the people who’re buying them.

The Morality of Free Speech, Or Lack Thereof

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

This is a belated response to the Blog Carnival at Censor vs. Censure, hosted by Women Write About Comics.
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Free speech isn’t a moral good.

By that I don’t mean that free speech is evil. I just mean that, in itself, free speech isn’t an ideal to strive for; supporting free speech, as an end in itself, doesn’t make you a better person.

For many who identify as comics fans, or as art fans, or as libertarians, or as some intersection of all those things, this may seem like heresy. Supporting free speech is often touted as a kind of iconic sign of open-mindedness; a stand against the philistines. Alternately, or in addition, to be against free speech is seen as supporting tyranny and that mighty argument-quashing shibboleth, Big Brother.

There’s no doubt that Orwell and his speech that was free could fling a vicious slogan, thereby making all around him shut up. But putting aside the well-worn phrases, what does or doesn’t free speech actually do? “Free speech” is not a guide for how to treat your neighbor; it doesn’t tell you how to do unto others, or how to behave with kindness, or decency. It isn’t equality or love or “do not murder”. It is a subset of freedom perhaps — but even there the ground gets murky very quickly. If freedom means freedom to speak, it surely means, to the same degree, freedom not to listen; freedom to shout in the public square must, by its nature, impinge on other people’s freedom to go about their business in peace. Why should freedom of speech trump these other kinds of freedoms? What gives it extra special moral status, so that it takes precedence over other kinds of freedoms, or over kindness, or what have you?

The answer is that there is no special moral status. What there is, is a special political status. Free speech is not a moral good, but the argument is that, in the modern community and the modern state, free speech is an invaluable tool for arriving at moral goods like equity, freedom, and happiness for all. Free speech creates a marketplace of ideas in which, the theory goes, the good ideas will gain traction and the bad will winnow away. Free speech is actually then allied as a moral good most closely not with freedom, but with truth.

This is a grand and appealing faith — but it is, still, just a faith. There’s no empirical evidence that free speech leads to truth, nor that it leads to more truth over time, nor that it creates happiness and freedom and equality, necessarily. The Bill of Rights was enshrined in a country built on slavery. The first amendment didn’t make slavery wither away either; on the contrary, slavery became if anything more entrenched over time. It was done away with not by argument, but by force of arms.

Force of arms isn’t a good in itself either, obviously. Lots of people, including me, think it’s an evil. And that’s really the best argument for freedom of speech; not that it is a good in itself, but that to stop it, you have to escalate violence. Speech can do harm, but the harm is generally less than the physical violence — such as restraining someone, or arresting them — you need to engage in to stop people from talking.

Speech can absolutely do good things, or lead to good. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t bother writing. Speech didn’t get rid of slavery, but it did help set the ground for people to believe that getting rid of slavery was a worthwhile goal. It also, though, led to people being willing to defend slavery in the 1860s, and racism in the 1860s and on up to today. The goodness or value of speech can’t be separated from the content of speech. This is why the much brooted dictum “I disagree with what you say, but defend to your death the right to say it!” is largely incoherent. If content doesn’t matter, if you’re not even listening to what is said before you defend it, in what sense can you be said to actually disagree?

You could certainly argue that the state shouldn’t police speech, because using state power against people is cruel, violence is bad, and the people most likely to be stomped by the state are those with the least institutional power. You can argue that the government should not be able to censor speech, because that opens the door inevitably to government censoring criticism of itself, which vitiates the transparency necessary for a democracy to function. Those are reasonable arguments. But they’re not really an argument for free speech as a moral good in itself.

In fact, in practice, the call of “free speech” seems like it’s often a way, not to take a moral stance, but to avoid taking one. If you support free speech as a moral ideal in itself, you don’t have to think about the content of speech at all. The nature of the speech — what it’s saying — is beside the point. Oddly, the call of “free speech” tends to end discussion. Once you’ve praised the speech for being free, what’s left to say? It doesn’t matter what you mean, it only matters that you mean something. Whether it’s Hitler or Ghandhi talking, it’s speech. Defend it!

But if free speech isn’t a moral good in itself, it becomes, not an ideal, but a tool, which, like any tool, can be used for good or ill. That doesn’t mean that we should lock in prison people who say things we don’t like, not least because locking people in prison is an evil as well, and often a worse one than the wrongs it purports to punish. But it does mean that if you defend vile shit, you’re just defending vile shit — though what is and isn’t vile shit can, of course, be up for vigorous debate. That debate seems like it should be on the merits of the speech itself, though, and not on the grounds that everyone should be able to say whatever they want in every venue. Still less should it be on the grounds that vile speech is especially valuable because of its very vileness. You don’t become a better person by championing revenge porn.

Again, morality isn’t legality, and for many of the reasons I’ve discussed here I think making speech illegal is in most circumstances a bad idea. But expression in itself isn’t a good, or a guarantor of virtue. Morality inheres in what you say, not in having said it.

The Effect of Living Backwards

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Kim O'Connor

This is part of a Blog Carnival organized by Women Write About Comics.The entire round table on Censure vs. Censor is here
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Cold open on the Oxford English Dictionary: two words that kinda sorta look alike. Part of me wants to drop them at the top like a 10th-grade English essay. I could ask a whole high school to write about the difference between censor and censure and see nothing half so stupid as the conflation of the two we see in comics discourse today. You’d think the solution would be so simple as to point out the mistake—to say this isn’t that. What I’ve come to understand over the last year or so is that trying to talk to people about freedom of speech in comics is like trying to reason with your drunk uncle about racism: appeals to logic simply aren’t going to work.

‘I know what you’re thinking about,’ said Tweedledum: ‘but it isn’t so, nohow.’ ‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t it ain’t. That’s logic.’

The last person here at HU who explicitly addressed the difference between censure and censorship was Jacob Canfield, who pointed to an inversion of logic: people defended Charlie Hebdo’s right to free speech by (falsely, absurdly) deriding its critics as proponents of censorship and even murder. The post went viral in mainstream media, garnering Jacob a lot of racist blowback—not just from people who disagreed with his ideas about racism, but also from racists who disapproved of him personally. One of the most amazing “critiques” he received along these lines was from a right-wing troll with a super silly avatar: a Bulbasaur with a Confederate flag superimposed on its face.

“The meat of the article was focused on the disgustingness of me as a not-quite-white-person,” Jacob wrote. “It was funny to read the stereotypical ‘get out of my country’ shit directed at me, coming from Confederate Bulbasaur.”

Man oh man. Months later, Confederate Bulbasaur is *still* cracking me up. Much like this guy I wrote about at Comics & Cola, he has made my Internet a happier place. Now all racist commenters, including outspoken atheist Patton Oswalt, are Confederate Bulbasaur to me. Jacob’s anecdote resonates because writing about racism and sexism on the Internet can be as funny and absurd as it is depressing. Confederate Bulbasaur is emblematic of the particular maddening and comical experience that is writing about those issues in comics. A rich symbol, he also represents futility. There’s really no use in arguing with a guy like that; if he can’t see what makes him ridiculous, there’s no way that anyone is going to be able to explain it to him.

In lieu of definitions, let me tell you something that might not be immediately obvious given how many people keep quacking about it: Censorship in American comics is a dead moral question. Yes, yes, I know CBLDF is out there fighting the good fight against conservatives who want to ban books from libraries and so forth, and kudos to them for that important work. I’m not talking about anything that involves the actual law. I’m talking about the fact that no one speaking from within comics today is a proponent of censorship, de facto or otherwise; it is unanimously decried by all of us. The pro-censorship side of the argument simply does not exist.

And yet, censorship is an accusation frequently hurled at “politically correct” liberal-leaning members of the comics community. The accusers are, like, Tinfoil Hat Bulbasaur, sometimes even using words like self-censorship and thought police to describe what most of us would call a conscience. We’re through the looking glass, where the people with the most power and the loudest voices are the ones who worry most about being silenced. Potent industry figures like Gary Groth are waging an imaginary war against opponents (“opponents”) who have no actual interest in stripping artists of their freedom of speech. So let me say it once, loud and clear for all the turkeys in the back: Expressing an opinion—even a harsh one—is not equivalent to arguing for censorship. It’s not even close.

So why does a dead moral question carry so much weight in comics discourse today? First and foremost, cries of “Censorship!” are an effective way to quell uncomfortable conversations about sexist racist garbage comics. (Anti-censorship is an easy position to defend because it doesn’t need defending; everyone already agrees with it. If someone were to explicitly defend bigotry, well, that’s a tougher sell.) This agenda dovetails nicely with the values of people for whom the most real and salient moment in comics history is not now, but decades ago, in the underground’s resistance to the Comics Code Authority. And finally there’s the lived experience of older white men (and, occasionally, older white women), who are so accustomed to speaking freely, and so unaccustomed to having people challenge their views, that they’re fundamentally incapable of understanding the difference between being forcibly silenced and being called an asshole.

Here at HU, I sometimes write about people when they act like assholes, not out of personal animosity, or even hope that I’ll change their minds, but because the live issues I perceive in comics discourse pertain to forms of silence other than censorship. Some are borne of power differentials I can name, like the phenomenon of punching down, or refusing to listen. Some stem from cowardice, like the unnatural quiet that descends across prominent platforms when someone important behaves badly. Many others are more difficult to articulate. How can I effectively describe the silence of someone who’s been rendered mute by anger or frustration? Or the silence of people who are just too tired of this stuff to bother speaking up? What is the word for the kind of silence that comes from disgust, or out of the fear of being treated poorly?

By definition, silence is not something I can present to you as evidence, but these people are not hypothetical; they’re real, and they are effectively rendered invisible. Their voices are profound in their lack. Some are lost and some are lurking and some are just plain gone. Some never even existed, quelled before they could be found. Some are mermaids, singing each to each in the vast and mysterious ocean that is Tumblr. Obviously I can’t speak on behalf of these missing persons. I find it hard to even speak about them since they’re so abstract. Instead I focus on my anger, which is huge, and the comedy of it all, which is not inconsiderable. I write about the voices I hear and the things I see, and I’m blown away by how much of it is total fucking nonsense.

Censorship, though—for this we have a word with a meaning. Look it up and write it in your notebooks, friends, because its constant misuse has real-world ramifications. From comics to comedy to videogames, people who invoke this dead moral question to demonize political correctness are either straight-up stupid, or acting in service of something else (usually nostalgia, fandom, white male supremacy, or some combination thereof). No one in American comics today—no creator, no fan, no publisher, no marketer, or critic—is actually arguing about censorship. The next time you see someone sling that word around, ask yourself what, in fact, he or she is fighting for.

The Domino Lady Does the Depression

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Chris Gavaler

Even for softporn it’s pretty tame stuff:

“A nightgown of sheerest, green silk was but scant concealment for her gorgeous figure. A chastely-rounded body and a slender waist served to accentuate the seductive softness of her hips and sloping contours of her slim thighs, while skin like the bloom on a peach glowed rosily in the reflected sunlight.”

Or better still:

“With a feeling of naughtiness, she slipped into a pair of black-lace panties. Then, sheerest hose for her shapely legs, black velvet slippers for the dainty feet.”

It’s 1936, and we’re flipping through the pulp-grade pages of Saucy Romantic Adventures. Our heroine, a lady thief and proto-Batman, is Ellen Patrick, AKA The Domino Lady. She’s going to punish those crooked politicians who murdered her father. Which apparently will require a great deal of bathing and napping and dressing and undressing, but no descriptions of genitalia, primary or secondary. The closest we get to a sex scene is:

“An hour later, Ellen left Raythorne’s cabin.”

Five stories appear in Saucy, and a sixth in the still milder Mystery Adventure Magazine. It’s a short run, even by pulp standards, all credited to Lars Anderson, an untraceable pseudonym. Ron Wilber resurrected the scantily-clad avenger for Eros Comix in the mid-90s, and Moonstone Books published a collection of new short stories and a comic book by Nancy Holder and Steve Bryant. Silver Age icon Jim Steranko also illustrated a collection of the original stories, plus a seventh of his own, “Aroused, the Domino Lady.” Jim is a saucier than Lars:

“Only the tops of Ellen’s thighs were covered by the kimono. When she spun and kicked it was shockingly apparent that she wore no underwear and that her flesh was the color of pale alabaster in the secret slopes and valleys above her tanned legs.”

“Domino,” by the way, is a description of Ellen’s mask (the style sported by Robin and the Lone Ranger) not “dominatrix,” the S&M term appropriated from Latin in the sixties. Ellen is no dominator. She’s more likely to get herself into a compromising corner. Though, despite all that sloping and peach-blooming sensuality, she doesn’t end up getting much.

The Domino Lady is one of the very few Depression-era superheroines, debuting the same year as the Phantom, Ka-Zar, and the Green Hornet. Though not as virginal as Doc Savage and Clark Kent, she has less in common with 1930s Mystery Men who share their batcaves with “fiancés” or 1940s comic book superheroes with their ambiguous “wards.”

Ellen is a loner. She likes foreplay, but always escapes before the climax. Where most of her male predecessors settled into their marriage plots, the Domino Lady rejects such happiness: “the amorous little adventuress had denied the love she craved with all her heart. To her affection and marriage were things to avoid, shun.” Like Batman, Ellen’s Daddy-avenging mission is all that gets her off.

It also helps not to have a recurring love interest. No Lois Lane is trying to peek under her mask and/or kimono every month. And no Margo Lane is cooking her breakfast. Ellen may spend an hour in Mr. Raythorne’s cabin, but she climbs into bed alone at the end of her adventures. Raythone is just a one-story fling, ignorant of her secret identity. A month later the Domino Lady is saving another equally eligible bachelor from certain death, relieved afterwards when the so-called detective remains clueless. “Ellen Patrick laughed throatily as she went to his open arms.” Only the reader is in on the joke. No one else ever sees her naked.

Her thrills, like the reader’s, are vicarious. She specializes in stealing “compromising letters” from blackmailers, the plot engine of half her tales. The “indiscrete” content is never spoken, just Ellen’s promise: “that precious husband of yours will never find out.” She likes secrets. She never reveals her own and she never reveals any of the friends’ she saves. It makes her an accessory after the fact, each adventure a retroactive ménage a trios.

Plus there’s the thrill of the adventure itself. In fact, forget Daddy. What really gets Ellen going is the danger, the threat of being caught and unmasked: “Her heart was thumping with the acceleration of the chase, the knowledge that here was new, exciting adventure in the making! It was her life, her greatest thrill of living!”

If unmasking is the deepest intimacy, a forced unmasking is rape. Anderson has Ellen flirt with that fantasized danger every issue. Her adversaries arouse her. One blackmailer “was the type who could stir her soul to the depths and arouse the latent passions of her affectionate nature.” When cornered for the first time in her career, her mask about to be torn away, “Ellen was thrilling as she had never thrilled before.” And if that orgasm metaphor is too subtle for you: “Something totally primitive had awakened in her innermost being, she thrilled to the core!”

But these are fantasies under Ellen’s control. Anderson’s action sequences always turn on the Domino Lady’s ability to remain “cool as a cucumber,” “cool as winter breeze.” Unlike Zorro’s self-arousing costume, the Domino Lady protects Ellen from herself: “hot blood in her veins turned to a gelid stream of ice as Ellen stared through the mask.”

Her other lovers are her biggest threat, men who could make her surrender herself, give in to the affection she’s “starved” for. Ellen may love a “gaze penetrating to the very center of her being,” but it’s her own “hungry longings” she battles. The men are interchangeable, not the “compelling desire” she holds out against. Winning for the Domino Lady means no happy endings.

The fifth story concludes both her vengeance plot and her run in Saucy. Those dastardly politicians are brought to ruin for murdering her father. But a month later, Anderson reboots in Mystery Adventure, and those vague and omnipresent villains are still at large. A superhero’s mission is never ending. Even a softporn superheroine never climaxes.

Good girls don’t unmask. It’s a bizarrely sexualized celibacy plot. In the end Ellen climbs into bed alone again, still anticipating the romance she defers, still only “vaguely cognizant of the emptiness of her lonely existence.” She’s still Daddy’s girl after all.

This Won’t Be Pretty

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Katherine Wirick

Sometime in the early 1990s, a troubled New Jersey teenager named David Klasfeld began to experiment with makeup. The hobby brought some solace into a difficult life; he was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder at fourteen. “I had 42 shampoos and conditioners because I could never use the same ones twice in a week, so I could go six weeks without using the same combination,” he said in 2013, in a New York Times piece on the company he founded: Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics.

OCC is a mid-range line, more expensive than drugstore brands like Revlon and more affordable than cosmetics lines from couture brands such as Chanel and Dior. Their signature product is Lip Tar, a liquid lipstick packaged in paint-like tubes which boasts brilliant pigmentation, exceptional wear and a rainbow of shades beyond the traditional pink and red. They’re hugely popular among professional makeup artists and beauty bloggers. There’s more to celebrate about the company: their stance against animal testing is the strongest in US cosmetics, and in 2013 they helped a trans woman who worked at their boutique pay for surgery her insurance company refused to cover.

The name, though.

I probably inherited my OCD from my father. He became a hand-washer at about the same age David Klasfeld started collecting haircare products. Later in life my dad would drive around in circles, looking for bodies in the road, because he was convinced that some minor violation of traffic etiquette he’d committed had caused a chain reaction behind him, resulting in wrecked cars and mangled pedestrians. Anxiety had killed his mother, years before I was born: she was obsessed with the notion that she might become pregnant again, which so terrified her that she was going to multiple doctors to get multiple birth control prescriptions. This was in the early years of the Pill, when the drugs were stronger and the risks less well understood, and she was a middle-aged woman with high blood pressure and heart disease.

An OCD episode starts with “what if?” A thought comes into my head that frightens me. It’s almost never based in reality, but I can’t brush it off. Suddenly I can’t think of anything else. My heart hammers; my guts churn; sweat runs down the back of my neck. I try to use logic to prove to myself that the imaginary scenario won’t come true, but that only makes it worse. There’s no thinking my way out of this situation; I just have to wait until the chemicals in my brain change. I mostly don’t have compulsions, but often I wind up on the internet, desperately trying to Google my way out of the panic hole. I’m not delusional–I know perfectly well that what I’m worrying about is ludicrous, and that makes me feel worse, out of control and crazy. The episode can be as brief as a few hours or go on for months.

It doesn’t help to distract myself with people and things that I love, because anything that makes me truly happy eventually becomes a focus for anxiety. The anxiety itself, the loss of feelings that were precious, and the inability to find refuge form, in combination, the most devastating mental experience I’ve ever had, and I’ve had it every year since 1994. Five years ago it came pretty close to breaking up my marriage. If there’s something good in your life, mental illness will poison it.

There’s only one coping mechanism I’ve found that has remained–fingers crossed!–unaffected: makeup.

Like many OCD sufferers, I also have a problem with depression. Sometimes my chest feels heavy, like my heart is a stone, and everything is bleak and empty and I don’t want to live anymore. It was on one of those days that I did the eyeliner look above; it helped.

There are a lot of people who take a moral position against makeup. “You’re just hiding your real face” is something they say, and they’re right–that’s exactly what I’m doing. You can’t seriously expect me to trust a world of strangers with my real face.

If I had more disposable income (or any at all, really) I’d be something close to the ideal Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics customer. I’m an arty type, I like to slap bright colors on myself, and I hardly ever have to conform to a dress code. But I wouldn’t use OCC products if they gave them away for free.

Isn’t it David Klasfeld’s right, you might say, to deal with his condition in his own way, and discuss it however he wants to?

Yes, absolutely. But we are no longer talking about one person’s coping mechanism when we talk about OCC–we are talking about corporate marketing. OCD is David Klasfeld’s disease; OCC is his brand. It’s sold at Sephora stores across the US. You can buy it in England and Australia and Singapore. Money and time and the expertise of advertising executives have made OCC what it is. Klasfeld is selling makeup, but he’s also selling mental illness.

In his public statements, he places strong emphasis on the “positive” aspects of OCD. He has to; he probably wouldn’t move a lot of product if the name of his company were associated in people’s minds with sick, gnawing, bowel-disrupting fear. Instead he links OCD to marketable concepts such as order, precision, cleanliness, attention to detail:

“What’s been amazing about the company is turning what’s viewed as a negative into a positive,” said Mr. Klasfeld of obsessive-compulsive disorder. “Coordinating and matched sets are definitely things that are born out of an O.C.D. mind.”
—NYT

Sounds nice. But OCD is a negative. It’s not a social-model disability like deafness or Asperger’s syndrome; if everyone in the world had OCD, OCD would still make people want to die. If there were a pill that promised to cure my OCD forever but make my depression twice as severe, I’d take it. I’d commit crimes to get it.

My father was fanatically tidy and clean, the way all OCD sufferers are in the popular imagination. I’m not tidy or clean or organized, and nothing I own matches anything else. During my second year in grad school, I was afraid to be alone in my apartment, so I spent as little time there as possible; once I went three months without cleaning my bathroom. Kelp-like fronds of mold waved at me when I flushed the toilet. I am not what Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics would like you to envision when you think of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

OCC probably doesn’t need attention-getting branding to maintain their position in the crowded cosmetics market. Unlike Urban Decay, whose line, without the veneer of danger, would be difficult to distinguish from Make Up For Ever or Stila, OCC has a genuinely unique product in Lip Tar–there is no competitor at any price point. But they’ve decided to run with the theme (their professional discount program for makeup artists is called “the Obsessive Compulsive Discount (OCD) Program”), and if it’s hurt them in the market, I can’t see any evidence of it. Even in hotbeds of activist outrage like tumblr, there’s a distinct lack of concern about OCC.

I hear a lot of jokes about obsessive-compulsive disorder, and throwaway references that aren’t really jokes: “I’m a little OCD about my spice rack.” That kind of thing. I don’t usually have it in me to call anyone out, and when I do, I’m circumspect about it, trying to get people to think about OCD as a serious illness without putting them on the defensive. One of these days it might even work. It’s hard to be sick; being a punchline makes it harder.

How would the focus groups have gone if David Klasfeld had been diagnosed with something else?

Social Anxiety Cosmetics: acronym less than ideal
Post-Traumatic Stress Cosmetics: respondents said the name evoked images of soldiers, which have a certain glamour but not the kind of glamour that sells makeup
Clinical Depression Cosmetics: “Does that mean the products only come in one color and it’s gray?”
Generalized Anxiety Cosmetics: name did not evoke anything; respondents don’t know what it means
Schizophrenic Cosmetics: respondents said it sounded “scary”
Bipolar Cosmetics: “So… everything’s either black or white?”

The general public has a warped conception of every mental illness. Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics only works as a brand because the warped public conception of OCD happens to be marketable. OCC does nothing to combat this.

Q: Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics? What’s up with the name?
A: “The first step is admitting you have a problem,” says company founder David Klasfeld, “I did and the result is a line obsessively crafted from the finest ingredients possible, to celebrate the driving compulsions of makeup fanatics everywhere.”
–from the OCC FAQ

It’s frightening to speak in public about being mentally ill. I probably wouldn’t be doing it right now if Emily Thomas hadn’t cleared the path. There can be repercussions. You can lose credibility; you can lose the benefit of the doubt. A guy can bull-rush you during a baseball game and break your collarbone and people will say it was your fault because you’re not normal. You become Other.

I recognize and salute David Klasfeld’s courage. But by perpetuating misconceptions and contributing to the trivialization of OCD, his company ultimately does harm to sick people. The good intentions I’m sure Klasfeld had went wrong the moment an illness became a commodity. Despite the “100% vegan and cruelty-free” promise, OCC is casually cruel.

This is not what obsessive-compulsive disorder looks like:

It looks a lot more like me, hunched over in sweat-soaked pajamas, staring without focus into the vacant middle distance, scared out of my fucking mind. It’s just not pretty.

Pies, by Ian King

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Matt Healey

This piece first ran on adjective species.
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PIES is Ian King’s first graphic novel, although he contributed a short comic – a small and meditative exploration on sleep – to the first edition of RRUFFURR. His RRUFFURR comic features the same hero and acts as an inessential mini-prequel to the richer and deeper PIES.

PIES is long at 114 pages, and completely wordless save for ‘PIES’, which is spelt out on the protagonist’s hoodie. It is available to read online for free and also in a high-quality print version, printed on heavy paper and bound in a textured cover. It’s well worth the $20 for a physical version.

For a debut, PIES is incredibly assured and nuanced. It’s clear that King has invested much time and thought into the editing and presentation, as well as the detailed illustrations. It joins the increasingly mature output from artists in the furry community, quality work that can stand alongside the very best of today’s independent graphic novels.

PIES follows our hero – I’m going to call him Pies – on an allegorical journey, that starts when he hops into an inner tube on a beach. He drifts away, and for the remainder of the book he has little or no control over his destination. Like the ageing process, where we all get older one day at a time regardless of our actions, Pies floats along towards his unknown but certain destination.

I showed PIES to a furry friend of mine recently, who remarked that he didn’t realise he’d need his ‘2001: A Space Odyssey brain’ to follow the story. It was a comment made in jest but it gives you a good idea of what to expect. PIES is abstract and wilfully obscure at times, but like the final third of 2001 it’s clear enough that our hero’s journey is a metaphor for his own life.

The torus of Pies’ inner tube is a recurring motif in PIES. Each torus represents a moment where his journey will forever change, a point of no return. This reflects the entropy of life, where we exist in an unchanging world until suddenly we don’t: when we turn 18 and become a legal adult; when we get married; when we hurt someone; when we have children; when we are diagnosed with a terminal disease. Pies’ world changes irreversibly when he reaches these waypoints, and while memory can conjure up images of the past, we must move on and exist in the world as it is now.

This is well-trodden ground, but PIES stands out by exploring this journey in an unusual way. Pies is alone, but PIES is not about loneliness. His journey is that of his life, but PIES is not about ageing or the transience of youth. PIES is, instead, about the greatest experience that life has to offer: love.

Pies carries a love note through his journey. In an early, sublime sequence, Pies drifts off to sleep while gently floating down a waterway. The sun has set, and the points of light reflected in the water become confused with the stars in the sky. As he falls asleep, the points slowly grow and morph until they crystallize into an endless sea of faces. For a moment, in his dream, Pies becomes one of those points of light: part of a community, a group of people (well, animal people) who are all experiencing their own journey, together alone.

There is peace and fellowship in the shared experience. Pies and everyone else are each drifting along in their own way.

In the next panel we see Pies’ lover, clutching the same love note, drifting along a different waterway in a different vessel but looking up at the same sky. It’s clear that the two of them share a close bond, and in Pies’ dream, the connection they share seems real and tangible. Their love is something Pies carries with him in his heart, as represented by the note itself.

Love is so close to a palpable presence, you sense it must be physically real. It can be expressed through a lover’s touch, but that’s just a fraction of the full feeling. The touch of someone you love is merely the sweet cherry on the substantial cake.

Think now, reader, of a loved one: a partner, a relative, a friend. Notice the physical sensation, not of their body, but of their essence. You may feel bereft, as if there were something nearby that you need. Yet the sensation is simultaneously tantalizing and fulfilling.

We lose our loved ones as we go through our journey. People die. We move. We break up. We drift apart. Yet the feeling of love is still there, ready to be conjured again and again, tinged with the bitterness of grief for what we have lost. But grief is not sadness. Grief is a close neighbour of joy, the joy that we would feel if we could see someone we’ve lost just one more time, the joy that we feel when a loved one walks into the room. Grief is the knowledge that we will never again feel the love without also feeling the loss.

But we will lose them all, eventually.

Pies will not see his lover throughout his journey, outside of his dream. But Pies carries his love everywhere. His last act, as he eventually is pulled down under the waves, is a defiant, celebratory fist in the air. A fist containing his lover’s note.

As well as the story of Pies’ journey, PIES is a formidable technical work of art. Geometric shapes and mesmerizing organic patterns appear and reappear, collapsing and coalescing through the story. It’s a book that deserves to be experienced on paper.

You can buy PIES for $20 if you are in the United States here (https://squareup.com/market/Pies), or here (http://pies.bigcartel.com/product/pies) for everyone else.

You can also read PIES online for free at fieldghost.com.

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The relative anonymity of Ian King and PIES within the furry community is a bit of a puzzle. It is a major, meaty, immensely enjoyable animal-person graphic novel.

The high-profile artists who produce well-regarded works of art within furry tend to be technically accomplished. However their works, while pretty, are often artless beyond the illustration skills. That’s not to say that popularity isn’t deserved, just that more intellectually complex works like PIES rarely seem to attract much attention.

Furry graphic artists are taking advantage of an old trope, the use of anthropomorphic characters as a frame for exploration of the human condition. Animal-people give the artist freedom from the constraints of the real world, which means they can engage in flights of fancy without any implied requirement to adhere to the laws of physics and nature. In many ways, this is what we furries are doing in our lives: by adopting an animal-person identity, we are freeing ourselves from mundane social mores, making it easier to explore our own path with less pressure to conform to the mainstream. (As in: “hey I’m going to roleplay as gender x while being attracted to gender y, because let’s face it, it’s not that weird if you consider that I’m already an animal person”.)

The furry community is spoiled for riches when it comes to graphic novels and comics exploring these ideas – be they intellectual like PIES, or whimsical like Clair C’s works. These graphic novels and comic strips are rare examples of furry artists producing world-class works.

On release of the physical PIES book, King compared it to Werewolves of Montpellier, an acclaimed graphic novel by Norwegian artist Jason. The two books are very different in many ways – PIES is joyful and abstract; Werewolves is maudlin and direct – but the comparison feels apt. They are both complex works of art that rely on a world populated by animal-people to tell a story with an undercurrent of emotion and with minimal dialogue. The animal-people are essential because they prime the reader to trust the artist to maintain the internal logic of each story, without worrying about the ways it deviates from reality. Both books deserve a wide audience, an audience that PIES has not (yet) found.

The group of furries producing high-quality and serious graphic art is growing. RRUFFURR collects short pieces from several artists and accordingly feels like a great introduction. But I don’t really know where to go from there. Is there a hub for publications from our promising artists, collecting amateurs like Redacteur and professionals like Artdecade? Does someone have a carefully curated Tumblr follow list?

In the meantime, take a look at PIES. It deserves to be shared and read and cherished.
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Follow Matt Healey on twitter @jmhorse.

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon

Monthly Archives: April 2015