[Part of the Slow-Rolling Orientalism roundtable.]
Those looking for a detailed examination of Craig Thompson’s Habibi would do well to read Nadim Damluji’s recently published review on this site.
Nadim’s article had an unexpected side effect. The generous tone of his article convinced me that Thompson’s comic was still worth reading despite its flaws. What that review didn’t prepare me for was the tale’s construction — a collation of tidbits from Islamic art presented in an ad hoc manner in order to denote sincere contemplation. The composition of Habibi seems less governed by concerted purpose than the passing interest of the author who intermittently introduces religious, scientific, and poetic subjects into his work without fully incorporating them into his narrative. Themes are inserted, explained, and discarded in a matter of pages; frequently devolving into distractions and adding little in the way of density to the book as a whole. One imagines a flitting bee, passing from flower to flower ever in search of a suitable subject matter for illustration and juxtaposition, yet bereft of any deep intellectual purpose or real spiritual engagement. The rich thread of narrative weaving and insight is not to be found in this work. Thompson’s characters are caricatures whose actions follow the dictates of a fairy tale less the wonder and the imagination. They are dried husks whose presence is so foul and whose formulaic fortunes are so unbearable as to elicit an all consuming desire to scream.
In many ways, I’m stunned that Nadim managed to get through the comic with so little complaint. I’m certainly amazed at the strength of his constitution or at least his stomach. Perhaps he has taken fully to heart the instructions of the Qu’ran that “…whosoever shows patience and forgives that would truly be from the things recommended by Allah”
As Nadim points out, at least three quarters of Habibi seems to be the product of a mind which chose to pore over images by Ingres, Delacroix, and other assorted Orientalist painters; this as opposed to any adequate political and cultural histories of the Middle East. As Thompson explains in an interview at Bookslut in 2004:
“…it’s a sort of an Arabian folktale of my own making. Not that I have… not that I’m justified in telling such a story; it’ll definitely be filtered through my isolated Western sensibilities. But that’s the stuff I’m reading now, a lot of Islamic art, culture, the original Arabian Nights, the Burton translation. I’m going to go on a trip to Morocco in about a month. I’m just sort of drawing on all these fun, fantastical, exotic elements of Islamic culture.”
And later in another interview at Millions from 2011:
“I trusted the Turkish writer Elif Shafak — she wrote The Bastard of Istanbul — who describes fiction as a way to live other lives and in other worlds. You don’t need to have those experiences directly. It’s almost a shamanistic journey where by tapping your own imagination you access these other roles. And I trusted that.”
The comments from 2004 may not tell the full story of Thompson’s creative endeavor but they are revealing. Of note is Thompson’s choice of the Burton translation of The Arabian Nights as opposed to a modern one by a native speaker such as Hussain Haddawy. In the introduction to his translation, Haddawy notes that “from Galland to Burton, translators, scholars, and readers shared the belief that the Nights depicted a true picture of Arab Life and culture at the time of the tales and, for some strange reason, at their own time….Burton’s translation…is not so much a true translation of the Nights as it is a colorful and entertaining concoction.” He proceeds to label an excerpt from Burton’s translation a parody or a self-parody. This is exactly what we get in Habibi. As Thompson explains in an interview at Guernica:
“The late 19th-century French Orientalist paintings are very exploitative and sensationalistic. They’re sexist and racist and all of those things, and yet there’s a beauty to them and a charm. So, I was self-consciously proceeding with an embrace of Orientalism, the Western perception of the East….“Embrace” may not be the right choice of words. The book is borrowing self-consciously Orientalist tropes from French Orientalist paintings and the Arabian Nights. I’m aware of their sensationalism and exploitation, but wanted to juxtapose the influence of Islamic arts with this fantastical Western take.”
Knowing or not, this parody of Middle Eastern culture shows little evidence of irony or cynicism. A charitable reading might suggest that Thompson subverts his source material by revealing the layer of cruelty behind French Orientalist paintings but, as Nadim points out, that sense of barbarism is part and parcel of a scornful ideology which has been promulgated throughout the West and which is accepted as fact today — a view which sees those men and women as objects of fantasy and, more acutely, members of an alien and subhuman world. This is a perception of that society as one which has little to offer the modern world except exoticism and the glories of past ages. It is an experience so infuriating that one would do well to wash out one’s eyes and brains with the novels of Naguib Mahfouz and Orhan Pamuk having taken it in. The works of the latter author in particular would provide an object lesson in how best to traverse the borders of history, myth, and contemporary society which Thompson has chosen to explore.
What follows is a bare bones summary of Thompson’s narrative. As a young girl, our fair heroine, Dodola, is sold by her illiterate and destitute father to a scribe to be his wife. The scribe proceeds to deflower her but she gains some learning through her husband’s occupation. Her husband is subsequently killed and Dodola is seized by bandits, caged, branded, and enslaved. She manages to escape with a young black slave, Zam, who proceeds to fall in love with her. Dodola struggles to find sustenance and swiftly falls into prostitution, selling her body for food while seeking refuge in an ark-like boat stranded in the rolling sands of a vast desert. There our hapless maiden is violently raped by one of her customers. She is then abducted by a sultan of sorts who promptly puts her in his harem where she is shown at toilet, learns to use her feminine wiles, is raped repeatedly, tortured, and finally made pregnant.
This brings us up to about the halfway mark in Habibi and it should be clear from this synopsis that Thompson has been true to his word and purpose as stated in his interview at The Crimson:
“The focus of Habibi,… is not political or even historical; the power in this tale lies in human passion, sometimes cruel and sometimes sweet, combined with its geometric precision and deep sense of the sacred.”
In other words, Habibi is a kind of pulp novel with the author layering his cake with stylish Arabic calligraphy and stray excerpts from the Qu’ran; a comic following upon the much superior genre works of Christophe Blain (Issac the Pirate and Gus & his Gang) and their tone of contemplative adventure. Lest one has any doubts as to the motivations of the author, it is also peppered with a selection of half-baked feminist grievances bemoaning the fate of Arab women; this not solely evidenced by the perils of Dodola but also visions of a stopped up dam (“She was a slender river, but we plugged her up good!”) and the inclusion of a lover who mutilates his own genitalia because of the shame he feels in his own sexuality (and perhaps in the male sex to which he belongs)
Later, a short retelling of “The Tale of the Enchanted King” (from The Arabian Nights) is labeled racist and misogynistic by Dodola. It is a moment of self-awareness meant to be self-referential and critical, both of those ancient tales and perhaps all that has gone on before. Where Alan Moore chose to elevate the insanity and inanity of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen so as to mitigate the inclusion of the character Golliwog, Thompson inserts sly winks and homages to Orientalist painters, trotting out caricatures without let or hindrance. What I sense is a certain amount of admiration for the technique of those painters, now ingrained with the pathos of oppressed females and the politics of racism. The seriousness of Thompson’s project is further emphasized by his careful study and deployment of Arabic script. This jumbling up of fantasy and political correctness produces not only an uneasy aesthetic alliance but affirms every negative stereotype produced through years of Western indoctrination; this despite Thompson’s presumed best intentions. While it may be true that Thompson’s cartooning lacks the emotive and stylistic range to capture the pain and suffering he is depicting (almost everything takes on the sensibility of an exercise in virtuosity or an educational diagram), it is sufficient to imbue the proceedings with a certain gravitas. If we are to accept the heroine’s predicament as genuine and emotionally involving, so too must we accept the veracity of Thompson’s view of Arab civilization. There are few if any countermanding examples provided.
The resultant comic is one that will excite every Western prejudice imaginable; not only of a depraved society but one of helpless, abused Arabian women begging to be saved from their bestial male counterparts. Just as the picture of a mutilated Afghan girl on the cover of Time magazine was used to justify the ongoing war Afghanistan, so too does Thompson’s comic inadvertently excite the bigotry of the unsuspecting and the gullible; a side effect which is totally at odds with his project of syncretizing the three major religions of the region. While Thompson displays earnestness in exploring the roots of these beliefs, he is completely facile when exploring their real and far more important differences — in particular the arch and potentially violent disagreements on these similarities. There is no stronger and more problematic symbol of this in our modern age than the Dome of the Rock (and the Foundation Stone contained therein) on the Temple Mount.
Not being a Muslim or of Middle Eastern extraction, it is hard for me to gauge the level of offence Thompson’s comic would cause the average person living in that part of the world. Now I can imagine a comparable comic with a Chinese woman with butterfly lips and dressed in flowing silks, mutilated by having her feet bound, opening her legs in the royal courts, and being bought and sold like live stock. All this before a flash forward to a pollution-ridden metropolis with individuals living lives of quiet desperation built on the foundation of ancient monstrosities. That tale of woe would probably end with our Chinese damsel in the arms of a brawny Caucasian as is the case in classics such as The World of Suzie Wong. In such an instance, I suspect that most modern Chinese would laugh it off as just the work of another ignorant American or an unimaginative, dated satire. From Thompson’s interviews, it would appear that some of his Muslim friends gave his explorations of the underbelly of Middle Eastern civilization a firm thumbs up. As the author puts it in his interview at The Millions:
“There’s a very offensive Islamophobia that happens in the media, especially the conservative media. But then there’s also this overly-PC, liberal reaction to tiptoe around a lot of subjects which I think is its own form of insult, because the Muslims I know are very open-minded people and would rather engage in a dialogue.”
It might be educational if one of these individuals were to step forward to defend the first 400 or so pages of Habibi. It would count for something if some of them found Thompson’s comic a fair and accurate depiction of their culture. For my part, I found Habibi utterly repugnant and well deserving of a place on a list of worst comics of 2011.
Thompson is an eye-candy cartoonist whose literary pretensions are just embarrassing. The tastelessness of this new book isn’t at all surprising.
Unfortunately, offering effective eye candy is generally all that’s needed for wild acclaim from the comics world.
I’m glad that there’s a stimulating back and forth about the big picture. When I was an undergrad at SCAD’s comics program, Thompson’s status of my generation’s comic genius was uncritically left floating in the general ether. I can’t say either way, because I couldn’t make it through blankets. The unselfconscious melodrama made me ill. Some scene where he’s walking across a frozen lake, pondering great ponderables. Blech. Jesus. Chunky Rice is cute as hell, though.
I like the Blain comparison, because it really lets the air out of the book. I haven’t read it, but there’s been a big to-do about Thompson’s process on Habibi. To spend so much time and effort reputedly researching and trying to grow as an artist on a project that you’ll eventually going to explain away as merely a genre or a faery tale story or what have you, strikes me as not only pretentious, but… ah, kind of a waste of effort.
Blain’s Gus and his Gang is a wonderful antidote to this kind of book to me. It’s drawn and colored gracefully. The story is light as air and gripping and feels new and so fucking funny. It’s masterfully done, but never puts on the airs of a masterpiece. Of course, there’s plenty of wiggle-room for Europeans to draw Westerns, as long as they’re talking “Cowboys” and not “Indians.”
This might be unfair of course. I would like to take a crack at Habibi when I get around to getting my new Library card.
“it is hard for me to gauge the level of offense Thompson’s comic would cause the average person living in that part of the world.”
This is really political correctness run amok. The Muslims I know (and I know quite a few) are as open minded as Thompson’s friends. But your knee-jerk assumption about Muslims is that they are quick to offense. That sounds like a pretty ugly caricature, and a racist one at that.
And why should he be required to offer a “fair and accurate depiction of their culture”? Because they are Muslim? What if they’re Christians (or better yet, Catholics)? No need for the fairness then?
Your Muslim and Arab friends are happy to see the men in their society depicted as obese, malevolent rapists or simply innocent fools? And nearly without exception in the first 400 pages of the book? They like to see Arab women depicted as slaves, harem maids, rape victims, and prostitutes? They’re happy to see the Middle East depicted as a cesspit, good for nothing except its ancient traditions in art? Well then, good on them.
I should add, however, that you’re mistaken about my assumptions concerning Muslims and Arabs. The only feelings I’m projecting are my own, and I do think that Thompson’s comic is disgusting on many levels and certainly inferior in construction. It’s undoubtedly more insidious than any right wing rant by Miller.
And if a cartoonist writes/draws something stupid or shallow about the Bible/Christians, I can assure you that I would have no qualms about taking them to task about it. If I had the time, that is.
JDL, Suat’s a Christian.
I’ll ask what I asked on the other thread; is there any circumstance in which you could possibly be offended by the content of a piece of art? Blackface caricature? Jewish stereotypes? Rape fantasies? How all-pervasive is your anti-anti-racism?
And just for kicks: would you like to actually make a text-based argument that Habibi is not a racist piece of crap? Or is that impossible? I’d be pretty interested to hear a defense of the book (which I haven’t read), but so far you’re only convincing me that even it’s most ardent defenders find it indefensible.
I haven’t read this book, nor will I, but a good contrast by way of a possible defense might be something like Kafka’s Amerika. Was his book of exotica really offensive to Americans? I don’t think so. At least, I wasn’t offended.
The Burton translation of Nights is also a hodgepodge of stories from a variety of locales and time periods. The Haddawy translation attempts to isolate those stories which were initially affiliated with the frame story (of Scherezade), from the same locale and time period in order to give the text more “coherence” and to see perhaps what the purposes, ideology, etc. of the Nights initially was. Burton’s (and most other translations) are just a collection of “Oriental” tales which had only the most tenuous relation to one another. Which is to say…from the West, everything in the “East” looks/looked much the same and could be thrown together as a kind of “zoo” of “exotica.” Draw whatever connections to Habibi you like…I haven’t read it.
Charles, there are many reasons not to read this book. There’s its rather poor main narrative, its cardboard characters, and the simple fact that one would be much better served by going back to the source material (Orientalist art/fiction and Arabic/Islamic art in general). Even David B.’s short story, The Veiled Prophet (from The Armed Garden), exceeds Habibi in intellectual depth and imagination.
As for the offensive nature of Habibi, I think the comic needs to be read within the context of the times. If I was a mainland Chinese living in the late 1930s reading a Japanese manga depicting the Chinese people as degenerates, I would probably react quite differently than if I read it today. For an American to produce this kind of comic while his country is in the midst of a devastating imperialistic adventure in the Middle East adds a bitter taste to my mouth. Thompson’s comic, while disavowing all political intention, is actually part of the problem. Not a purposeful act of propaganda but one highly influenced by it (and presumably created with the best intentions).
Eric is right. I will add that Haddawy did accede to popular demand and produce a second volume of favorites from The Arabian Nights (Sinbad, Ali Baba, Ala al-Din etc.) which are not found in the 14th century Syrian manuscript he translated the first volume from.
That’s an interesting contrast. As always with these things, though, inequality means that things are unequal. European stereotypes of America haven’t been leveraged to oppress Americans for the past several hundred years the way that Western stereotypes of the Orient have.
Kafka’s work is also so internal; it always feels like a fever dream in his head rather than like an actual representation of anything happening outside it. He certainly doesn’t make any comment about American politics that I can remember, at least nothing as explicit as the taking-off-the-veil moment that Nadim reproduced seemed to be….
“In many ways, I’m stunned that Nadim managed to get through the comic with so little complaint. I’m certainly amazed at the strength of his constitution or at least his stomach. Perhaps he has taken fully to heart the instructions of the Qu’ran that ‘…whosoever shows patience and forgives that would truly be from the things recommended by Allah'”
Suat, I would really like to shake your hand someday! To be honest: I do know Craig in person and talked with him pretty extensively about the book before publishing my review, which is why I tried to get across what he gets right and how well-intentioned he is as a writer. That said, I still feel like I had to raise my criticisms, and I’m overjoyed and honored to see you build upon them as eloquently as you do here. I sincerely want to re-quote ever other sentence of this review. Anyway, thanks for better articulating a lot of what makes reading Habibi less than pleasant and problematic in 2011.
On this emerging Orientalism/Habibi roundtable, I’d be very interested to read a contribution by an academic with a strong background in Middle East studies and a solid understanding of Orientalist theory but little or no knowledge of comics generally or Craig Thompson specifically, if such a person could be convinced to contribute.
Robert: “Unfortunately, offering effective eye candy is generally all that’s needed for wild acclaim from the comics world.”
That’s right! The HU list is there to prove it.
Michael: “Blain’s Gus and his Gang is a wonderful antidote to this kind of book to me. It’s drawn and colored gracefully. The story is light as air and gripping and feels new and so fucking funny. It’s masterfully done, but never puts on the airs of a masterpiece. Of course, there’s plenty of wiggle-room for Europeans to draw Westerns, as long as they’re talking “Cowboys” and not “Indians.””
You never read _Matt Marriott_, I suppose. It’s a UK newspaper comic strip and it’s the best Western ever done (Suat may not agree with me, but he never read the stories published during the 70s). James Edgar and Tony Weare never created any stereotyped Indians or stereotyped white folks, for that matter.
I also have problems with the Blain appraisal. It looks as if comics are incapable of producing masterpieces. It’s as if comics artists need to aim low to avoid pretentiousness. What’s wrong with being pretentious? An artist should aim as high as possible. Being afraid of failure isn’t the best strategy to achieve greatness…
Maybe I should add that, even if I think that he’s OK, I don’t like Blain much…
Andrew, that’s an awesome idea…but I don’t think I have the contacts to make it happen, unfortunately. I’ll think about it though.
Suat this quite a takedown. Very well written.
Noah, I can think of a few people I would nominate who might be interested. Email me know if you want suggestions/contact info.
Apart from that, Suat, how did you enjoy the book?
As much as I detest the exploitation of racial and cultural stereotypes as cheap literary devices, I, too, would be interested to see an accurate comparison of this work against the actual societies and culture this comic draws from. I know that a lot of people would protest this book simply because of how ridiculous it would seem for people to act and be treated this way but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening or never happened. The fact remains that women ARE treated badly in many Muslim dominated parts of the world. That’s not AT ALL to say women in the west are treated perfectly or that we don’t have anything backwards in our society.
If this is a bad book due to literary or artistic inadequacies then that’s well and good (and seems to be the case from what I’ve read) but to discount a work simply because it draws on uncomfortable subject matter isn’t really a good reason to put it down. That is, if the subject matter is being treated fairly and accurately.
I also don’t subscribe to the PC notion that no American can work with or look at these themes because our government has a shitty foreign policy. Art is not supposed to be censored by or because of the government.
Mike, nobody said that he couldn’t look at these themes. The question is whether or not he dealt with them well or poorly.
Franklin, maybe Nadim thought he might encounter Orientalist in Habibi…because Thompson said he was going to write an Orientalist work?
Noah, to quote Ng: “For an American to produce this kind of comic while his country is in the midst of a devastating imperialistic adventure in the Middle East adds a bitter taste to my mouth.”
That smacks of “an American shouldn’t do this kind of work” to me. If it’s inaccurate or otherwise done badly then I don’t think it should be done…but that’s simply in the name of “not producing bad works” and not “because the government that rules him is doing bad things”.
Mike, have you actually read “Habibi”? Because when I say “this kind of comic”, I mean “this kind of comic”. I don’t mean *any* book critical of the Middle East or Islam.
If Thompson had produced a film like Forough Farrokhzad’s “The House is Black” or Jafar Panahi’s “The Circle”, I doubt we would be having this conversation. Neither of these films are wholly complimentary of Iran (or Islamic law in some instances). I shoud add that Panahi’s critical aspects are balanced by his other films such as “The White Balloon” etc.. And wasn’t I just complimentary of David B.’s “The Veiled Prophet” – a work which is quite exotic and depicts the history and legends surrounding a real life Muslim “heretic” and his conflict with the Abbasid Caliphate? It is exceedingly difficult for an outsider to produce quality work concerning a society without a proper grasp of its language and culture. Thompson took a chance and failed.
Noah, So now I’m called upon to prove that Thompson isn’t racist? You seemed to be obsessed by race. Do you really view the world that way? It must be a sad place…
What you and the other commenters are guilty of is Infantilism – by treating Islam as a “special child” that can’t be criticized or skewered without raising charges of “racism” you are demeaning the culture itself. Your logic (Noah) is then to say “Thompson is racist unless you can prove he isn’t.” Think about this for a few seconds and tell me this makes any sense whatsoever?
Ng, your statements bring me back to the rest of what I was saying initially that I would be interested in seeing his work compared to the actual societies and cultures this book draws upon. I agree that Thompson probably doesn’t know enough to make an informed commentary on Islamic culture and society but I can’t say that I do and I doubt that most here really do, either. I think the majority of people’s opinion here is being shaped on what they’ve been told about another culture vs. what they factually know about another culture. That’s NOT AT ALL to say that slavery and rape is par for the course in modern Islamic society or anything like that but we can’t be culturally critical in a vacuum and do much more than pat ourselves on the back for defending other cultures.
I haven’t and probably won’t be reading this book for the simple fact that nothing in it other than the brief piece on calligraphy interests me. Regardless of the cultural implications I don’t really feel like reading anything that uses rape as a plot device. Based on its own weight it just doesn’t look like a very good story.
Mike, I’m pretty certain that Nadim knows enough about Islamic culture and society to give informed commentary. But that position has subsequently laid him open to accusations of bias. My insight into Arab culture is probably as limited as that of Thompson’s but I do have interactions (mostly small, sometimes large) with Muslims on a daily basis; and I know they’re nothing like what is depicted in Habibi.
Thompson’s main excuse is that he’s not especially interested in politics or history – he’s just playing with Orientalist tropes he enjoys. These claims of ahistoricality and genre playfulness are an attempt to defuse the misogyny on display for much of the book.
If this was the case, we could just criticize Thompson for writing/drawing a bad story and be done with it. But it’s clear from his other comments and Habibi that he does have political and cultural points to make about Islam and the Middle East. His views on these matters are unmeasured and narrow minded. It’s a toxic cocktail when mixed with his fondness for the most vicious aspects of Orientalism. They reinforce each other in a most unpleasant manner.
JDL, I have no problem with people criticizing Islam. Nor do you have to prove Thompson hasn’t perpetuated racist tropes. I’d be perfectly happy if you’d just shut up. But if you want to have a conversation about how Thompson hasn’t perpetuated racist tropes, it would behoove you to have that discussion, rather than to flap your arms up and down and whine about how it’s unfair for anybody to suggest that he’s failed in his handling of those tropes.
A perhaps obvious point, but I think it’s important to remain explicitly aware in this kind of discussion that Arab does not equal Muslim, and vice versa — and that neither of those equals North Africa and the Middle East.
No need to be rude, Noah. So I don’t have to prove that Thompson hasn’t perpetuated racist tropes? (proving a negative – that’s a good one) But if I want to discuss the matter, I do need to offer proof? Great…
So how’s this for proof: if there really was a “smoking gun” that showed Thompson using anything close to your equivalent of blackface, you guys would have plastered it all over your blog – and you’d be waving it in my face.
Ng, I’m not really talking about Nadim so much as you and everyone else in this conversation. I liked Nadim’s original article and thought it was fair in its criticism. I like that he’s actually making an attempt to see what Thompson was thinking instead of assuming everything he’s saying is a lie to mask his penchant for racism and rape.
Not to mention that I’m only agreeing with/repeating something Andrew mentioned earlier. I think it’s a great idea to treat such a subject as an intellectual “roundtable” discussing instead of everyone patting themselves on the back for being nicer than this “anglocentric mysogenist”. (my own emphasis added)
Let me re-re-reiterate that I’m not defending this guy’s work by any means. I’m simply interested in seeing a more involved criticism of these subjects he’s playing with in this work. What better way to show who Arabs/Muslims/Middle Easterners/etc. actually are than to compare the stereotypes played out in Habibi with the materials source(s)?
P.S. I include myself in the first sentence of my above post.
Nope, not good enough. There are lots of ways to perpetuate racist tropes short of blackface. And it’s not clear to me that you’d even recognize something as egregious as blackface if it were shoved in your face.
You don’t need to prove a negative. But you do need to engage with what Thompson’s doing and explain why his (repeatedly avowed) use of Orientalism undermines or works against the tropes he’s deliberately decided to use.
You might start by explaining why it’s necessary to have the main character mostly nude and repeatedly raped. Franklin says he has an explanation (which I’d be interested to hear), so obviously one can be formulated. So give it a shot; why is Thompson’s use of the eroticized Arab woman, ripe for Western rescue and lust (not necessarily in that order) necessary to this book, and how does Thompson work to use or undermine it?
I’ve done this sort of thing myself on more than one occasion. Here for example, I talk about Jack Hill’s use of transformation rapes (where the girl is raped and likes it) in his films, and explain why I think it’s not misogynist.
I might as well point out again — I have no stake in Thompson’s book being either bad or good. I haven’t read it. If you can provide an interesting reading to support your view, I might be tempted to pick it up. On the basis of what Nadim and Suat have said, I’m pretty uninterested, but my mind could be changed. If you want to give it a shot, go ahead.
Noah, it’s good to know that we’re both equally ignorant. I haven’t read it either, as I pointed out up front. However your reviewers have, and their case for his using racist tropes hangs on innuendo and lots of hand wringing about what Muslims might think about it. Again, if they had a “gotcha” panel they’d put it up on a billboard.
I also have no stake in his book being bad or good – it sounds rather like racy pulp fiction, which could be fun. And what’s wrong with having some fun?
Hey Mike. Just FYI, Suat’s given name is “Suat.”
That’s awesome!
Dealing with racist tropes isn’t about gotcha moments. It’s trying to figure out what the book is saying and why it’s saying it.
You actually seem to have a huge stake in the book not being Orientalist or racist. I won’t speculate as to why that is. I will note, though, that you don’t seem to be able to engage with the reviews either. General accusations, ridiculous charges of censorship, and an inability to understand why stereotypes of Arabs (not all of whom are Muslims) might bother anyone other than Muslims (not all of whom are Arabs)…it doesn’t add up to a very impressive performance.
There’s nothing wrong with having fun; racy pulp fiction can be great. Habibi claims to be a lot more than that, however. Thompson’s said it’s a more ambitious work, so I don’t see anything wrong with reviewers treating it as a more ambitious work. You want to buy it as stroke material, go ahead; I doubt Thompson will especially thank you for it, though.
Noah, I can see from your other work that’s you’re pretty much a one-trick pony, with identity politics being your stock in trade.
Frankly, I find dealing with you and your racial pigeonholing creepy. I think we’re done here.
Domingos: Ugh.
Noah and JDL: Why does everything here have to get so personal?
(I shouldn’t engage but…) JDL, you are grossly oversimplifying Mr. Berlatsky’s arguments and offering very little of your own. As far as I can tell your only message is, “Don’t talk about race!” I think we’re done, indeed.
Michael A; actually we haven’t had a good troll battle in a while. People can get really excited/enraged when you talk about topics like race or Orientalism, though. It’s charged material.
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Ng Suat Tong says:
…As for the offensive nature of Habibi, I think the comic needs to be read within the context of the times…
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Indeed; as well as the possible intentions of its creator (and how successfully those were carried out; Crumb’s “When the Goddamn Jews Take Over America” and its companion piece a case in point).
A little experiment in perception (with apologies to Frazetta):
http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/SpicyPostColonialism3.jpg
And: http://www.tcj.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/3.Pussey.tong_.jpg ! (Bruno Gummelman — or whatever the Art Spiegelman’s stand-in name was supposed to be — then flipping out and ejecting Pussey from his offices once he found out Pussey was being sincere…)
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Domingos Isabelinho says:
…It looks as if comics are incapable of producing masterpieces.
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Nah, the art form has had its share; if not nearly as much as it could have, because of many factors enumerated on another thread.
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It’s as if comics artists need to aim low to avoid pretentiousness.
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If the vast majority of work in an art form was marketed at kids or those seeking breezy entertainment and amusement, of course “aiming high” — especially in the Domingoesque sense — would be counterproductive.
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What’s wrong with being pretentious? An artist should aim as high as possible.
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Your command of English usually comes across as impressive. Might I point out, though, that “pretentious” is not exactly a positive term:
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1. full of pretense or pretension.
2. characterized by assumption of dignity or importance.
3. making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious.
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1. making claim to distinction or importance, esp undeservedly
2. having or creating a deceptive outer appearance of great worth; ostentatious
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Alas, when an artist aims high, and hasn’t the wherewithal — life-experience, maturity, intelligence, wisdom, creative depths, ability to critically see their work from an emotional remove, etc. — to carry things through properly, what we get is melodrama rather than drama (see Kubert’s “Fax from Saravejo,” most of Eisner’s “serious” work), heat rather than light, an empty imitation of the form of high-minded art (sorry, BWS: http://www.boomspeed.com/hungabout/FATE_SOWING_STARS.jpg ) without its depths or substance.
…And they and the world would be better off doing work that’s within their capacity and more truly akin to their sensibilities. “A man’s got to know his limitations,” as Dirty Harry pithily put it.
Unfortunately, it sure does look like “Habibi” can be accused of pretentiousness; with a lot of examinations of Islamic calligraphy, similarities to Christianity and Judaism, and so forth giving the impression that the Muslim world is being looked at fair-mindedly, some renderings displaying graphic verve, yet melodramatic, incoherent in its view of the Middle East, relying heavily upon stereotype without exploding stereotyping.
For Thompson to go from http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/Habibi0012-714×1024.jpg …
…to http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/Habibi0005-730×1024.jpg
…is rather mind-boggling; it’s as if an anthropological treatise of the cosmology of a particular African tribe were to be followed by a scene such as this http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/dal/lowres/daln329l.jpg .
(Oh, how cute! http://www.johncoxart.com/cannibals.jpg . It sure is outrageous how dem Libs keep vilifying conservatives as racists, innit? More along that vein at http://www.johncoxart.com/cartoons/ , where a smilingly benevolent Pope is contrasted to a screaming turbaned fanatic waving a scimitar and holding up a Koran.)
Mike: “Your command of English usually comes across as impressive. Might I point out, though, that “pretentious” is not exactly a positive term”
Thanks and thanks for the heads-up, but I’m perfectly aware of that. I was a bit provocative, I know, but at the same time what’s the difference between a masterpiece and a pretentious piece of shit? As you say above: failure, that’s all… I may not like Craig Thompson’s book (I will never know because I didn’t like his other books either, so I will not buy this one), but I’m the first in line to applaud his effort.
One of the things that ruffles me a bit in the comicsverse (this is my latest favorite word!) is this panic in front of pretentiousness and elitism. I know that this is ingrained in American culture. Something against Europe (methinks at the risk of committing Occidentalism), but still…
I would generally prefer an umambitious success to an ambitious disaster…which is why I think In the Shadow of No Towers is worse than whatever random superhero piece of crap you happen to pick up. But mileage on this sort of thing varies, obviously.
I prefer none of the two.
You are taking a bit of a beating over on Eddie Campbell’s site, Suat, but I wouldn’t take it too hard. Whatever EC’s axe is that he’s grinding, the comments seem to be largely by people who either hate HU, never read it anyway or consider comics to be a “hobby,” rather than the art form that it is.
Eddie Campbell is grinding an axe in defence of Chris Staros, I suppose…
I thought it was interesting that a Comics Journal writer was lumping everyone that writes for HU together as a group mind under the thumb of the dreaded Noah. That’s as counterproductive as hating the Comics Journal because one has difficulty reading Kenneth Smith.
Milo wasn’t a Comics Journal writer, he was the managing editor until his head bumped into Gary Groth’s.
I found it pretty funny that Milo criticized HU in pretty much the same terms I would criticize TCJ–namely the absence of editorial process and “the culture of ‘fostering the discussion’ for its own sake.” Of course, it’s well known that Gary Groth fired Milo, so maybe he was trying to reverse those tendencies when he was editing the magazine.
Yeah, and he wasn’t lumping everyone together really; more saying that his enthusiasm for some writers (like Domingos and Suat) was not enough to overcome his general disdain for me/the site’s overall direction.
It’s somewhat hard to figure out exactly what he’s objecting to. Trolling for hit counts seems the main objection…which must mean there’s a particular type of article he thinks gets a lot of hits, but I don’t know which he thinks those are — presumably controversial contrarian ones? Those sometimes get the most traffic, but not always, is the thing. I wish I knew how to predict which articles would get the most hits, but mostly it’s a crapshoot. I thought the Wire roundtalbe would disappear unheralded, and yet….
The other thing he mentions is lack of editorial push-back and a desire to further the conversation. I can see the downsides, but I’m pretty committed to both of them, so that’s the way it goes I guess.
At any rate, there is no HU mindset that I know of, for instance I don’t agree with Robert on some what are to me key points and I often don’t grok what is being discussed because I’m focussed on my own line of narrow obsession.
Ditto.
Gary Groth was interested in the industry’s politics above all else. Sure he had better taste than your average comicsverse reader (I respect him a lot for his take on Will Eisner’s “serious” later work), but, in the end, he always remained a man working within the system. Gary Groth and Kim Thompson have pretty conservative tastes and The Comics Journal always suffered because of this indefinition: it’s OK to criticize the comics industry, but not the man who built it. It’s almost like early Christians being excommunicated by later popes. That’s why the Journal remained behind in my humble opinion. It dared to explore new territory sometimes, but it never dared to forget the past and create a new church…
The “ditto” above is an answer to what Robert said.
Good to note that you weren’t agreeing with me, Domingos, that proves my point.
I couldn’t agree with you when I posted because we were writing at the same time.
James, I think there is some coherence to what HU does…or at least I like to fool myself that that’s the case. I was sort of mulling writing a post about it, which may or may not happen, but I’d say as a maybe very brief gloss that my general aim is to see comics as part of a broader discussion about art (and, you know, also about other things that might possibly matter besides art) rather than as a specialized hobby or subculture.
There are various ways I try to go about doing tha, and probably I’m not successful much of the time, and part of that is also giving other people a chance to work out their own obsessions or interests. So given all those caveats, I can see where Milo or anyone might not see much of a plan.
I see HU paying attention to theory and popaganda in a way that’s unprecedented in comics criticism outside of the Academia. I’m not saying that we don’t need some de Certeau once in a while, but I’m perfectly happy with the Frankfurt (old) School. That’s what I like the most in the HU, anyway… My two cents…
Aw, thanks.
Theory and politics are definitely both things I feel fit into the goal of trying to make comics part of a wider conversation. So is trying to encourage conversations with folks in the academy. So is focusing on other art forms besides comics (like Robert’s Godard review today, or like the Wallace Stevens roundtable from a bit back). So is trying to solicit writing from a broad range of people, including some who aren’t males or Americans or what have you. So is trying to get a range of opinions and a range of writing styles.
I don’t know that any of it is unprecedented, but that’s where I’m coming from, more or less.
“It’s somewhat hard to figure out exactly what he’s objecting to.”
I’d chalk it up to the traditional divide between artists/critics. The former is always going to doubt the latter’s reason for being in one way or the other. It never ends. Campbell has been both, but the former is always going to be the dominant bias.
And from that same post, I find it really hard to take the following quote of his seriously:
Hey Steven. Nice to see you over here again.
I was somewhat taken aback by that quote too. It certainly doesn’t seem to reflect the way Eddie approaches his own work, does it? Not that I love the Alec stories (which I’m quite ambivalent about), but they’re certainly ambitious…. But sometimes the back and forth of argument can make you say odd things, I guess.
I wonder he was referring to the comics he grew up with? The quote was in reference to Suat’s review of an EC comic. He’s written recently about “Prince Valiant” and before that certain fifties Batman artists. I haven’t read enough of any of those to comment, but I guess for certain material he’s willing to simply admire the artwork.