On HU
Somewhat shortened week with the holiday, but here’s what we had:
Featured Archive Post: Caroline Small on Ellen Raskin’s Christmas illustrations.
My nine-year-old drew a Santa Tiger.
I talked about Nigerians invading London in John Christopher’s The Long Winter.
I suggested it might be worthwhile to think of comics as a genre rather than a medium.
I posted about Trollope and capitalism and lazy lordlings.
Kim Thompson on Tintin in the Congo.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At Splice I argue that, contra Mike Huckabee, Jesus really would not have blamed children for getting shot.
At the Atlantic I talk about Jared Diamond’s new book and child-rearing among traditional societies.
Other Links
Karen Swallow Prior on Mary’s radical declaration of consent.
C.T. May detourns an HU comments thread.
Andrei Molotiu on abstract comics and systems theory.
Ta-Nehisi Coates with a great post on living prepared for violence or prepared for non-violence.
And I think I’ve seen this before, but it’s worth linking again to this nifty romance comics blog.
This Week’s Reading
I finished a preview copy of Bee Ridgway’s River of No Return; read Jason Mittel’s Genre and Television; read Trollope’s The Claverings, and read the second dreadful Fifty Shades of Grey book.
Fifty Shades of Gray yeeey!!! Not sure it would ease your pain, but the translator in Hungary has become the most well known figure and the most popular meme of 2012. He is capable of mistranslating anything. Our version is thus full of his own private fantasies and really funny word-by-word or “I thought she meant that” kind of translations. Here’s a link to the memes, enjoy his smiles when not reading :) http://fuckyeahtoteas.tumblr.com/
The Coates piece is beautiful. I often find it hard to express what it’s like to have spent so many years in a neighborhood of violence and yet deal day to day with middle/upperclass suburbia. During the gun talks, I often have emotional whiplash over the gun fantasies of people who really don’t know what it’s like to face that kind of violence.
I was looking back over the year, thinking about gratitude, and the thing I’m most grateful for is my tiny little house in the suburbs. We’ve been here a year and a half now, and there’s been not *one* gunshot. (I’m such a cliche, but yes, the first thing I did when I had enough money was buy my mom a nice house–it just took me a while.)
I never join the pacifism discussions which pop up, but I often think of my mom and the way she stopped a gang fight at the grocery store (I’m still amazed we all didn’t die….) and my own moments of doing similar things. There’s so many different ways to deal with that world, and it’s so complicated. I never much see the middle-aged mom type pacifism talked about, but it had some interesting effects. Anyway, it’s always good to read Coates about the whole mess.
Last week I didn’t read much, because of the holidays, but this week I’ve been reading Josef Albers Interaction of Color. Noah, if you’ve never read it, you might enjoy the theories and stuff in it.
My understanding is that there’s a fair bit of discussion in development circles about the way in which empowering women is important to the reduction of violence. I’ve only read about it peripherally, though; I should see if I can find a book on it….
Noah,at my library today I saw exhibited ’50 authors on 50 shades of Gray’.
May I vomit?
Reading ‘Men of Tomorrow’ by Gerard Jones. Priceless for the articles I’m writing.
Also scored ‘From Hell’ and ‘Berlin: City of Stone’.
Your “contra Mike Huckabee, Jesus really would not have blamed children for getting shot” essay was very fine, Noah; more level-headed and polite than I would’ve managed. Indeed correct on all counts.
But, before someone “nails you to the cross” about it, you surely wanted to say Calvary, not cavalry…
Yeah, I did. Dang it.
Though I liked the idea of Onward, Christian Soldiers on Horseback…
This week (or maybe the week before, since I didn’t comment last week and have forgotten what I read/watched when), I read The Best American Comics 2012, the latest volume of American Vampire (volume 4?), and most of the Wally Wood EC collection from Fantagraphics.
Movies: I watched Django Unchained (it was awesome), Lincoln (it was all right, with some good performances and interesting moments, but some of the expected Spielberg schmaltz), The Raid: Redemption (an awesome, awesome Indonesian action movie), and The Artist (which was overrated, but a decent trifle). Oh, and I got my wife to watch The Blues Brothers, which she had never seen. She thought she wouldn’t like it, but she ended up really enjoying it, just like I knew she would. I think she was expecting all car chases and didn’t realize there would be so much good music.