A nice write-up by Peter Suderman; the consensus seems to be, pretty good, but not much like the original series.
This Fucking Dream
Years ago there was a tv comedy star named Red Skelton, most likely forgotten now. His show was in its last years when I was a kid. I used to watch it, though not with much interest. Still, he was an appealing sort of fellow, with a gentle, sad-funny air about him. I remember him as having a long face with almost flaring cheekbones and a sandy trace of hair hanging on to the crown of his head. If you clicked the link just above, you’ll have seen that this memory is not completely accurate.
Last night I dreamt that I had wound up in a midsize French provincial city down toward the south. I was trying to fit in with the city’s crowd of wealthy American retirees, a very aged crowd, and was happy to seize on Mr. Skelton for a moment at the crowded party thrown by one lady in her musty apartment. He was in his 70s or 80s but had lost none of his vitality. The week before he had made a small international splash by showing up Olivia de Havilland and a venerable French comedian at a televised bout of t’ai chi, or what was supposed to have been a bout of t’ai chi but ran entirely counter to that quiet discipline’s spirit. Skelton interposed himself in the business, sitting cross-legged between the two, who were also sitting cross-legged, and flourishing with mock grandiosity a tiny pair of ivory boomerangs that implicitly mocked the whole travesty of t’ai chi that the proceedings represented.
The coup de grace came when he seized the French comedian’s shoulders and simply lifted. It turned out the French comedian had smuggled himself inside a false set of shoulders and head. Skelton pulled them off so deftly that they appeared to sail thru the air. Revealed beneath was pretty much the same aged French comedian as before, but far smaller; his bald head stared out from the shell of his body like one Russian doll nested inside another.
The t’ai chi, or “t’ai chi,” event ended there. It could not continue. Skelton had made his point and brought a measure of needed sanity to the carnival atmosphere that had overtaken the world’s most beloved physical discipline. In fact the French comedian and Olivia de Havilland bore him no ill will. Perhaps they were grateful to be freed from the pretense they had got up to. Only the event’s presiding impresario, a wizened party from Asia, had been embarrassed.
Standing at the party amid all the ancient elbows and wattle, I congratulated Skelton on his feat. I did so with the relief and warmth one feels on being able to offer heartfelt praise. He responded graciously and with honest pleasure; a showman, no matter how advanced in his career, feels the success of one of his coups.
I suppose the dream reflects how I feel about getting old. But there was a lot more to it, hours’ worth, involving a film festival at a giant shopping mall in Connecticut, a pair of stand-up comedians’ debut as indy filmmakers, the role of Tony Roberts (Woody Allen’s old sidekick) in their film, my well-taken but much-resented remark during the comedians’ presentation of the film, and the hunt for a mens room in the shopping mall, which had a women’s room on the ground level and then another women’s room when you traveled down the long route to the lower level. The lower of the two was besieged by a crowd of frustrated women waiting for one neurasthenic party to stop hyperventilating and step out of the stall, which more properly resembled a telephone booth and was being used in that spirit.
Other parts of the dream: me and Candice Bergen and Jane Fonda getting high and going to the season premiere of Jean Doumanian’s edition of Saturday Night Live, me getting stuck on camera (thru no fault of my own) and having to hold still while the camera whirled about thru the show’s razzle-dazzle opening imitation of a Folie Bergeres show in Third Republic France, Candice and Jane laughing cattily at a humorous film that parodied the eccentric but brilliantly gifted comic actress Penelope Gilliatt.
So, something to do with women, I guess. But the fucking dream went on and on and on, and I never want to dream again.
Scorpion
Finally saw this Japanese woman-in-prison film Scorpion thanks to Matthew Brady’s recommendation. It’s definitely interesting to watch it in comparison to the American Women in Prison movies from the same period. For one thing it’s a lot artier than any of them (with the possible exception of Jonathan Demme’s Caged Heat.) One rape scene is basically shot from up through the floor; the climactic battle scene is shot sideways, with the protagonists staggering around as if they’re walking on a wall. Lots of creepy lighting of grotesque faces. It’s actually very nicely done; effectively creepy and nicely composed; it gives the whole thing a dreamlike aura, though a very grimy one.
Unlike many of the WIP films in America or Europe, this one has basically no feminist overtones…either positive or negative. There’s no sense of female solidarity as a possible source of empowerment, as in Caged Heat or Jack Hill’s movies. But there also isn’t the vicious misogyny of Jess Franco. The women prisoners are certainly violent and frightening and largely irredeemable, and there is at least one scene, in which a bunch of them rape a group of male guards, that at least nods towards Franco’s vision of fetishized, deplored Bacchanal. But overall, the women are actually much like the male guards; torturous scum mostly there as obstacles for the heroine, Nami. Men and women alike beat her, torture her, rape and humiliate her…and she bears it all with a deadly, steely glance that says that you’re going to get yours.
In fact, in a lot of ways this is more a rape-revenge film than a WIP one. In WIP movies, relationships between women, or women collectively, are usually thematically central; it’s one of the few exploitation genres which regularly, even obsessively, passes the Bechdel test/ Rape-revenge, films, on the other hand, tend to isolate the female protagonist; the whole point is to watch this physically unassuming, supposedly helpless women kill everybody by herself.
Scorpion makes some concessions to WIP tropes about female bonding: Nimi has three friends in prison, a weaker naif who she mothers; a tough older prisoner who, effectively, mothers her; and an undercover cop who tries to pump her for information, but who she instead ravishes so thoroughly that the straight cop falls in love with lesbian lovin’ in general and with her in particular. These relationships, though, all seem definitely secondary to the main issue, which is getting revenge on the copy boyfriend who set her up. The relationship with the guy was transformative; he robbed her of her innocence, turning her from a beautiful young lover into a killng machine. None of the female relationships are anywhere near that important.
I guess that, in fact, is the main thing that distinguishes this from any other WIP movie I can think of. It’s a very rare WIP movie which is based around the conceit that prison isn’t all that important. Everything that matters that happens to Nami (the whole rape-revenge plot) occurs outside the walls; prison is just a place for her to be stoic and show how much punishment she can take (the Rorschach prison experience.)
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I wonder if part of the issue is that rape-revenge makes more sense in Japan than regular WIP does. Our Helter Skelter roundtable made me suspect that Western-style feminism may be a hard sell in Japan. But everybody loves revenge.
Nobody Cares About Your Breasts
Valerie D’Orazio has an entertaining post up about Power Girl. (Via Dirk of course.)
If you want a DC comic that contains new ideas, then you buy something like Vertigo’s Air. The fact that there has to be a separate imprint for comic books with new ideas is pretty telling of how the market goes. Power Girl is going to pull in way more money than Air, though both books feature female protagonists. Power Girl is comfortingly familiar. Even criticism of Power Girl is comfortingly familiar. Where would any Power Girl-related comic be without the same complaints like a broken record regarding the way her body is drawn and her costume designed? Love her or hate her, everyone is comforted by the familiar.
Here’s my version of Power Girl: she’s living her life, wearing this boob-costume, but deep down she hates herself. But she’s afraid to change the costume because of branding issues. It’s hard enough to get ahead in the superhero biz as a woman, and there are a lot of younger superheroines around to take her place. Then one day, after binge-drinking a la “Superman III” (“Do you know who I am (snurf) I’m fucking Power Girl, that’s who! Goddammit!”), she decides to change her costume anyway and cover her boobs up. Now here is the funky part: once her boobs are covered, she becomes invisible. I mean: literally invisible. Nobody sees her anymore. Like an enchantment. At the end of the issue — or, if you want to drag it out (and you’re in mainstream comics, so you probably do), the first arc — she learns that it’s better to be who you are if who you are is well-known and everybody likes you.
As I said, I quite enjoyed the post; I like the idea of Power Girl agonizing about whether to boob window or not to boob window. And any post that mentions Carol Channing pretty much wins.
Still…there are a couple of basic assumption here that don’t parse.
Assumption #1: There is some fairly large group of people out there who are comforted by Power Girl’s familiarity.
Assumption #2: Power Girl is well known and everybody likes her.
Obviously, these two assumptions are actually one assumption, which is that anybody fucking gives a rat’s ass about mainstream super-hero comics.
I mean, yes, sure, there are people who care. There are enough people who care, even, that you can spend virtually your entire life talking only to people who care, if that’s what you want to do. You can surf from comics blog to comics blog on the net, and get into the same discussions over and over again about whether or not Power Girl should have such big boobs. There’s not even anything wrong with doing that. If you’re interested in super-heroes, you’re interested in super-heroes: there are worse vices. But, the thing is, if that’s what you’re doing, you can sometimes forget that that world of people who read or even think about mainstream comics is really, really tiny.
I mean, we’re not talking about Batman here. We’re not talking about Wolverine. We’re not even talking about Iron Man, or Wonder Woman or Storm. This is Power Girl. Compared to her, Aquaman is a superstar. She needs a stool to get up to D-list. The only notable thing about her is that you can say “D-list” in reference to her and the twelve people in the know will laugh like Beavis or Butthead.
So here’s my Power Girl story. Power Girl hates her costume. She hates it so much that she tears it off, and goes flying around the city shrieking ‘You want to see my boobs, fanboy! Here are my fucking boobs!” Five fanboys look up and say, “Wow, I’m sure going to buy that comic!” But that’s it. Everybody else in the entire world is watching a Ciara video or reading the Left Behind novels or playing City of Heroes, or whatever. Nobody cares about Power Girl. Clothed or naked, branded or un, she’s just as invisible as she ever was. And she gets cancelled and nobody gives a shit. The end.
Update: For more critic-on Power Girl-action, check out Nina Stone’s column, which includes the solid gold line, Go fly your Power Girl boobies around the world fighting evil.
Violent Women of the Golden Age
Of related note: the latest in Noah’s posts on the first thirty issues or so of Wonder Woman.
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I dug out some scans of comic book covers, all from Fiction House comics. One lesson you can draw from the sampling is that, if you wanted to be an action-oriented woman on a Fiction House cover, it really helped to have some wildlife to beat up on. But another woman would also do, just no men. Inside the comic things might be a bit different, possibly because of plot requirements.
Firehair 1. Per Wikipedia, the issue was dated Winter 1948, the series lasted 11 issues, and Firehair first appeared in Ranger Comics 21 (1945) and showed up in every issue until 65. Sorry, I don’t know who drew the cover.
Planet 47. Heritage Galleries says it came out in 1947 and that the cover was drawn by Joe Doolin. Planet did cover after cover of women and creatures, usually but not always with a guy there to rescue the woman.
Jumbo 105. Heritage says it came out in 1947 and notes “Matt Baker and Jack Kamen art,” but I think that’s just for the inside, not the cover. You’ve heard of Sheena; everybody has. The woman’s she fighting is colored the odd shade (cobalt slate, possibly) that Fiction House often used for inhabitants of Africa.
Jeff Autosue
I keep promising this, but I think this is really the last entry by me in our Mary Sue roundtable. No, really.
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I wrote a brief review of Jeff Brown’s new book Funny Misshapen Body for the Chicago Reader a week or so ago:
With his relentless grid lay-outs, charmlessly crude drawings, and solipsistic subject matter, Jeff Brown has long embodied the most predictable tropes of sensitive alternative comic cartooning. His latest volume is, in every sense, more of the same: a series of short stories dedicated to rigorously chronicling every possible hipster autobio cliché. So we get one story about how Brown felt awkward around girls as an adolescent; one about how he came to draw comics; one about medical problems (Crone’s Disease, in his case); one about his experiences with alcohol; one about his experiences with drugs; one about how his teachers didn’t understand his art; one about how he finally started to be successful with his art, and on and on and on. As is de rigeur for this sort of thing, nobody else in the book is ever graced with either a personality or any sustained interests; it’s all just about Jeff’s ambivalence, Jeff’s bittersweet life lessons, Jeff’s struggles with his art. Through it all, Brown is careful to add that extra detail— the smug smile when he renounces pot; the fifteenth Chris Ware cameo — which pushes his work past tedious and right on into insufferable.
To expand just a little — one of the things that I like least about Brown’s work is the extent to which it mirrors the flatulent self-congratulation of super-hero decadence. These days, Justice League comics are often little more than long puff pieces about how great is the Justice League; Wonder Woman comics are often little more than long puff pieces about how great is Wonder Woman; and Jeff Brown comics? They’re just puff pieces about how great is Jeff Brown.
Here is Jeff Brown himself, chronicling his encounter with a rapturous Chris Ware. “Follow your bliss! Be honest!” Ignore the haters!” Ware asserts, while Brown stands by, presumably thinking “Shit yeah! I can totally use this in my next comic and then everybody will know how great I am because Chris fucking Ware! said so! And in clichéd terms too! Awesome!”
At least I can understand the appeal of the Justice League and Wonder Woman versions of self-puffery. Some small subset of people feel nostalgic for these characters; they have a relationship with them; they want to be told that Superman is wonderful, or Wonder Woman is wonderful, or whatever, because they like thinking about Superman and Wonder Woman. As I said in posts here and here, it ties into the Mary Sue trope; a kind of love/identification with a character. There’s a romance there which, especially in its corporate super-hero manifestations, tends to make for bad art…but at least the impulse is comprehensible.
But…why on earth would anyone want to read about how great Jeff Brown is? People don’t have childhood associations with the character; he’s not somebody who’s ever had good, or even marginally better, stories written about him. What is the percentage in having him preen in public? Are people really identifying with him as a Mary Sue; a character to love and to dream about? Are they actually seeing themselves in this anodyne hipster; or imagining themselves meeting him and engaging in orgies of self-regard? It all seems too repulsive to even consider. I’d much rather believe that people buy his books just because Chris Ware inexplicably told them to, period. In any case, give me an idealized Mary Sue any day over this image of smugly complacent mediocrity.
At Least Two Angry Agnostics (formerly “One Hell of an Angry Agnostic”)
UPDATE: Yeah, me and Taibbi. We’ve got a head of steam up.
Another title possibility: “Agonistic Agnostics.” The back-and-forth in Comments drove me to Merriam-Webster’s. There, while looking up everyone’s word of the day, I stumbled upon “agonistic,” which primarily means “of or relating to the athletic contests of ancient Greece.” But I like the second part of the definition better: “2: ARGUMENTATIVE.”
Fucking agnostics, the shit we get up to. Thank God no souls or church revenue is at stake. We’d have a non-afterlife-oriented St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre every weekend.
Cole, if you’re listening, no hard feelings. But I wasn’t a philosophy major and I’m going to stick with our two favorite words the way the dictionary and I like to use them.
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I thought Matt Taibbi was an atheist because he gets so pissed at believers. But no. Dig the windup to this blog post laying into Terry Eagleton and Stanley Fish:
They seem to think that if one doesn’t believe in God, one must believe in something else, because to live without answers would be intolerable. … But there are plenty of other people who are simply comfortable not knowing the answers. It always seemed weird to me that this quality of not needing an explanation and just being cool with what few answers we have inspires such verbose indignation in people like Eagleton and Fish.
Taibbi uses “weird,” so you’d think he was bemused. But no, he’s angry. You don’t let loose the following with a quizzical shrug:
… a recent book written by the windily pompous University of Manchester professor Terry Eagleton, a pudgily superior type, physically resembling a giant runny nose, who seems to have been raised by indulgent aunts who gave him sweets every time he corrected the grammar of other children.
Yow!
Most of the post is about lectures Eagleton gave on faith vs. nonbelief. The excerpts do sound woolly and dumb, a lot of vapid bluff written in jocose academese. But does Taibbi get this mad at atheists? In the post he charges Richard Dawkins with being “humorless” and of trying to make atheism into a religion of its own. But he doesn’t get worked up about him. For the record, I saw Dawkins on the O’Reilly show and he seemed like fun. That’s a nice argument he has about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But like any atheist or believer (really an atheist is also a believer, in God’s nonexistence, but I’m using shorthand here) he’s left with the problem of trying to settle an infinite question by using finite means.
Of course I had no idea that Eagleton and Fish cared anything about religion. I thought they dealt in some sort of advanced (at least for 1975) French school of heavy literary analysis. Maybe they’ve kind of eased into religion over the years.