On HU
Shortened week due to the holidays this time out.
Featured Archive Post: Ariel Kahn on subversion of authority in Salem Brownstone and Skim.
I expressed skepticism about the supernatural manga Natsume’s Book of Friends.
I talked about race or the lack thereof in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows.
Isaac Butler talks about memory and his father’s illness.
Richard Cook talks about preparing food with his girlfriend.
I talked about morality and other people.
And I compared comics sales to sales of other media.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Atlantic I talk about Twilight and abortion.
At Reason I review Jason Dittmer’s new book on nationalist superheroes.
At Splice Today I talk about filibuster reform and Democratic revenge fantasies.
Other Links
Christopher M. Jones on why worrying about fake geek girls is stupid.
The Republicans were for sensible copyright reform before they were against it.
Sean Michael Robinson interviews David Lasky.
This Week’s Reading
I finished Stanley Hauerwas’ “God, Medicine, and Miracles” read Nate Silver’s “The Signal and the Noise,” reread “The Hobbit” and read Alun Llewellyn’s “The Strange Invaders.”
Read Nao of Brown by Gly Dillon and Multiple Warheads #1 by Brandon Graham.
Do you know who’s responsible for the cover painting of Jason Dittmer’s book?
I don’t; it wasn’t on my copy (I had a preview version.)
Wait! I do have it. It’s Massacre in Haditha by Tanya Tier, a British Jordanian author. Dittmer says it’s a reimagining of Picasso’s Massacre in Korea.
Thank you, Noah. Just found out that some of her cartoons were showcased in The Guardian in 2010, nice stuff: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/tanya-tier
I’ve also learned that her website “features elements of taxidermy” which is funny somehow, because ‘Tier’ does mean animal in German: http://www.tanyatier.com/
Going through Jane Jacob’s “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.”
Really enjoyed Sweetgrass. And I mean the documentary. Also highly enjoyed Zhang Ke Jia’s Platform. Filmmaking like that is always a pleasure.
Finally heard The Roches’ first record. A pretty good record, but probably not essential in the way that something from say Joni Mitchell would be. They probably veered too much into “The Shaggs”-style wackiness for their own good. At least the musicianship was rock-solid.
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Noah Berlatsky says [at http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/12/11/twilight-is-not-simply-a-prolife-fantasy/265377/# ]:
It makes sense, though, that Rosenberg would focus her piece almost exclusively on abortion rather than birth. Contemporary feminism in the US has been obsessed with the first and much less focused on the second.
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Well, sure. Because, rather than being “obsessed” (those wacko feminists!), they clearly see the Right’s war against abortion as a war against women having any kind of reproductive rights whatsoever.
Of course they’re not going to focus on birth; if there’s anything everybody agrees on it’s that all women, no matter how impoverished and/or egregiously incapable of being good mothers (one crackhead hooker with AIDS said her greatest dream was to have a baby), are entitled to have all the children they feel like. And this freedom is covered in the reproductive rights umbrella, where “freedom of choice” automatically covers the alternatives.
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If it weren’t for the courage of people like Bella, or people like Halappanavar, there wouldn’t be any us anywhere, male or female.
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It only takes “courage” in places where women have the choice of birth control and abortion; throughout the great majority of the world, women have no say-so on giving birth. Might as well praise the “courage” of soldiers marching into machine-gun fire during WW I; who knew if they didn’t, they’d be shot dead by their officers.
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Deciding to have a child doesn’t make you a victim of false consciousness—it doesn’t even make you a victim.
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victim
2. one that is acted on and usually adversely affected by a force or agent
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/victim
Even the most blissful Mom, who may have the best-behaved kids ever, is inescapably “adversely affected” by the arrival of Baby. (Unless you find midnight feedings and diaper-changing a thrillingly enjoyable experience.)
Short of being a slave, there is nothing a woman can do to maintain herself more oppressed, stressed, and under dire financial pressure than having kids.
See: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/01/25/highly-educated-women-pay-a-high-price-to-have-children/
“The Wage Penalty for Motherhood”: http://tinyurl.com/3pfl64n
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Among research scientists, being a woman is not what holds them back as Jeneen Interlandi outlined for Newsweek: “The Center for American Progress (CAP) reported that family obligations (read: child rearing) are still pushing young female researchers out of science. The findings build on a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report from earlier this year that also dissected the biases against women in science, but concluded that much progress was being made. Taken together, the two studies suggest that the stumbling block for women researchers is not being a woman but being a mother.”
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http://www.psychology-advice.net/the-wage-penalty-for-working-mothers-is-five-percent-per-child
More: http://www.arfamilies.org/news/money_and_marriage/issue10_children.htm
In general she will be more responsible for child care and housekeeping even in cases where there’s a husband; she may be financially trapped in a horrendous marriage because the loss of hubby’s money would lead to impoverishment (most homeless families consist of a single mother and children); she will be perceived as a less dedicated employee and end up in the lower-paying “Mommy Track”; will incur huge loss of free time, emotional space; the burying of romance under stacks of stinky diapers.
It’s rather telling that the groups that are most ferociously anti-women’s-rights are also against their using birth control, being able to have abortions. They certainly are highly aware of how keeping a woman “barefoot and pregnant” serves mightily to “keep her in her place”; stuck as a caretaker, financially struggling and/or dependent on a man, having to sacrifice self-improvement in order to slave for her kids.
In other words, the total opposite of “liberated.”
There may be pluses, sure; but consider the reaction when Ann Landers — whose readership was mainstream as can be — in 1976 passed on the question, “If you had it to do over again, would you have children?”
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I printed that letter and the sky fell in. The word didn’t come from Chicken Little. It came straight from the gut of young parents and old parents, from Anchorage to San Antonio. I heard from Junior Leaguers and welfare mothers. The Boston Brahmins wrote and so did the hill people of Kentucky. I had struck an unprecedented number of raw nerves. The question unleashed an incredible torrent of confessions—“things I could never tell anyone else…”
After five days of reading, counting, and sorting mail, a bleary-eyed staff of eight secretaries announced we had received over 10,000 responses, and—are you ready for this?—70 percent of those who wrote said, “No. If I had it to do over again, I would not have children.”
Twenty years of writing the Ann Landers column has made me positively shockproof. Or so I thought. But I was wrong. The results of that poll left me stunned, disturbed, and just plain flummoxed…
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Much, much more at http://www.raleighnokidding.com/articles/creatorsSyndicate.html
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Maybe, in some respects and from some perspectives, it might make you a superhero…
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Yes, with the ability to change diapers and wipe runny noses faster than a speeding bullet!
Can we squeeze more twisty qualifiers in there? Might as well say, “Maybe, in some respects and from some perspectives, being able to wiggle your ears and rub your stomach at the same time might make you a superhero…”
Or how about the gigantically unlikely yet appealing (what parent-to-be doesn’t consider their kid will be extraordinary?), “What if that child you’re considering aborting could be another Einstein, or bring about world peace?
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Millions of people will get that message in a movie theater this weekend. I refuse to believe that that’s incompatible with feminism, or that it in any way trivializes Savita Halapannavar’s death, or the value of women’s lives.
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When women are debating whether or not to have children, pushing the idea that there is something massively noble, life-enhancing, liberating and empowering about having kids (even if birthing threatens to kill you) — rather than a realistically warts-and-all portrayal — encourages them onto the “Mommy Track,” financial hardship and dependence.
What the Right and the last “Twilight” book push is that it’s admirable and ennobling for a woman to embrace the role of sacrificial victim, endlessly giving up of herself — even her life, if need be — for the precious offspring.
See this 1872 Nast cartoon: http://www.harpweek.com/09cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=February&Date=17 . “Get Thee Behind Me, (Mrs.) Satan!” says the Wife (with heavy burden). “I’d rather travel the hardest path of matrimony than follow your [Free Love, women’s rights] footsteps.” While Nast in no way prettifies the situation of the Wife, her willingness to sacrifice herself for babies and drunken sot of a husband is shown as clearly the noble and correct moral path.
If procreation is “liberation” (liberation the essential goal of feminism; hence the tag, “Women’s Liberation”) it’s of a kind akin to a black person’s choosing to sell themselves into slavery. There may be pluses (job security!); and sure, they have the legal freedom to do that.
But let’s not have glowing “Maybe, in some respects and from some perspectives, slavery might make you a superhero” commercials for that action…
It’s a little bizarre, Mike, that you’re always talking about your dislike of radical feminists…and yet your views are a kind of parodic reductio ad absurdum of mainstream American feminist empowerment fantasies and distrust of femininity.
Beyond that…I’ll just say again that taking a bold stand against femininity and/or pregnancy is not actually helpful to women in any way. As Julia Serano says, it’s just a more acceptable form of misogyny; hatred of femininity rather than women — which ends up as hatred of women, since women are far more likely to feel a connection to femininity than men are (for reasons of nature or nurture; it doesn’t really matter which.)
Thinking about it…I don’t know that mainstream American feminism is the term I should be using. I think Caro called it pop feminism, which might be closer.
I’m very much for birth control and abortion rights. But you don’t have to compare motherhood to slavery to be for those things. For pity’s sake.
But thanks for being willing to confirm the dynamic I was talking about in the essay, I guess….
I finished Henry IV part 1.
Comics-wise I’m still reading Mr. Natural.
Movies: Anna Karenina (the new one), Hulk (re-watch, saw it on the big screen as part of an Ang Lee retrospective going on in Maryland), Breaking Dawn Part 2, The Life of Pi, Skyfall, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, The Smurfs, Baby Geniuses, Mirror Mirror, The Wife (Tom Noonan adaptation of his own play starring Wallace Shawn), and re-watched Wolf (Jack Nicholson werewolf movie from the 90s), Soy Cuba, A Bug’s Life, and The Twelve Chairs.
Forgot to mention The Brain that Wouldn’t Die in my movies.
Have not been feeling well, so I’ve imbibed far more media than I usually do. Watched the first half of Going Postal and remembered why we did not finish it last year. Loved the book and audio book, hated this version, which did not get the characters right (except for Vetinari).
Also rewatched a couple Midsommer Murders–still fab acting, still discovering cozies are creepiest genre ever. Have been binging on JD Robb police procedurals. God damn I love Eve Dallas, but am, sadly, much more Roarke-like in my approach to things. It’s such a relief to read a series that understands class issues in America.
For art, I’ve been watching a lot of inking videos on YouTube, hope to post about that soon. I also have been reading a lot of color theory as done by Modern Quilters (who take a very different approach than modern Art Quilters or contemporary traditional quilters). If you’ve seen some yellow and gray fabric color groups with smooth bold shapes, that’s Modern Q.
For comics, I reread Loveless 7, just for the art, which always moves me.
I started Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962. It’s filling the space on my bookshelf left by Debt: The Last 5000 Years, the last large, red, weighty, excellent nonfiction book I wanted to keep forever, but had to leave in the UK because I couldn’t fit it in my luggage.
Levity aside, it’s a very good book on a difficult topic.
Despite Noah’s recommendation to the contrary I’m on the fifth Earthsea book (it and the sixth were each under $2 for Kindle so it wasn’t a big outlay if they suck). I really liked the third and fourth ones, though so far the first story in the fifth one felt pretty pointless.
Also rereading Miyazaki’s Nausicaa in the new hardcover set from Viz (I recently gave away all the old pamphlet edition issues I had). So far so good, about halfway through. I forgot how weird the story got as it went along.
I saw The Master…uh, it was, shall we say, elliptical. One of those “art-house” films that, at any time in the last half hour, could have faded to black after any particular scene and left you with the same impression as the actual ending point. “Oh, okay, I guess the film is over now.” I liked it, but it was more Punch Drunk Love than There Will Be Blood — something of a let down after that last, incredible film.
And I read a bunch of comics: the recent reprint of Kirby’s Spirit World, which contains some art from Kirby at his absolute early 1970s prime, but at that price/page ratio is definitely for completists only.
Folly: The Consequences of Indiscretion, a collection of Hans Rickheit’s comics — the early stuff is shaky, but the later stuff, man oh man. Fitting that there’s a blurb from Jim Woodring on the back; they’re both coming from a very similar, but not at all similar, place.
Vol. 3 of Fantagraphics’ Captain Easy reprints. I really dislike the cardboard stock for the covers. It certainly gives them a distinctive look, but the corners damage sooo easily, and that kind of thing really matters for a high-end archival series like this. What the hell were Fantagraphics thinking? Their design is usually very good, especially Jacob Covey’s; his work on the Mickey Mouse series sends me into raptures.
Vol. 3 of the Dark Horse Milo Manara library — you know, the one separate from their Milo Manara Erotica library. This series is such a mixed bag. I don’t know the wisdom of their publishing strategy for this, which appears to be to include lots of inessential, minor and not very good stuff in each volume, along with the good…it didn’t work for their Junji Ito series, either. Probably not going to be continuing with this series, myself; $60 rrp for maybe 100 good pages is not a good deal by any account.
And Joe Kubert’s Fax from Sarajevo, about which the nicest thing I can say is that it would sit easily next to Will Eisner’s graphic novels on a library bookshelf.
Noah, BTW, how was Nate Silver’s book? From what I hear about him, his approach to political punditry could not be further up my alley, even if it lived at No. 1 Jones Alley.
I’ve got a review of Nate Silver’s book coming out I think tomorrow over at Splice Today. It’s definitely worth reading…though I had reservations.
If you’re wondering whether to buy it though, I’d actually agree that you’d be really into it — probably more than me, and I wasn’t sorry to have shelved out for it, so….
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Noah Berlatsky says:
It’s a little bizarre, Mike, that you’re always talking about your dislike of radical feminists…and yet your views are a kind of parodic reductio ad absurdum of mainstream American feminist empowerment fantasies…
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What’s so bizarre? I detest rad-fem absurdities like “all men are rapists” or “a women can’t have sex with men and be a real feminist”…
…and heartily agree with “mainstream American feminist empowerment” ideas. In what way is suggesting that women rationally weighing the pros and cons of having kids and deciding to skip the experience, there are just too many negatives, a “fantasy”?
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Thinking about it…I don’t know that mainstream American feminism is the term I should be using. I think Caro called it pop feminism, which might be closer.
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Whatever…
What about all the women who already have kids, decide they can’t afford/don’t want the hassle of having more, and get their tubes tied? Doesn’t this involve the same type of reasoning?
Is it a “fantasy” to believe that women are capable of being driven by rational, calculating logic, rather than emotion? Join the Dave Sim club…
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…and distrust of femininity.
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Oh, is procreation an inherent part of what it is to be a woman? Join the Pope club…
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Beyond that…I’ll just say again that taking a bold stand against femininity and/or pregnancy is not actually helpful to women in any way. As Julia Serano says, it’s just a more acceptable form of misogyny; hatred of femininity rather than women — which ends up as hatred of women, since women are far more likely to feel a connection to femininity than men are (for reasons of nature or nurture; it doesn’t really matter which.)
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So you are saying that femininity and breeding are inherently linked. Because anyone who criticizes procreation, is therefore attacking “femininity.” As your argument has it, women who have no interest whatever in babies or having one of their own…are not really women; not “feminine.”
And to point out the countess negative, anti-liberation aspect of having kids is supposed to translate to hatred of women; note how repeatedly my anti-procreation arguments are seen as anti-femininity statements. Because –so the thinking goes — having children is an essential part of being a woman.
Since the great majority of women (at least 90%) are hetero, are radical feminist arguments like “a women can’t have sex with men and be a real feminist” to be likewise considered “a more acceptable form of misogyny; hatred of femininity rather than women — which ends up as hatred of women, since women are far more likely to feel a [sexual attraction to men] than men are”?
And are you maintaining then, as was done with women who don’t want to have kids, that women who aren’t sexually interested in men aren’t “feminine,” not real women? Thus does radical feminism merge with the Right; as with their joining up with fundamentalist crusaders to fight pornography, or feminist Naomi Wolf’s “Vagina: A New Biography,” where Wolf argues that the vagina is the center of Woman’s being.
What ever happened to old-school feminism’s rejection of “anatomy is destiny” arguments?
From an earlier debate:
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Noah Berlatsky says:
[Alice] Walker also isn’t saying that childrearing should not be a feminist issue. She’s saying she doesn’t want her daughter to have children.
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But, why is she saying this? In order that her daughter might be free to do “what really mattered according to her…having a career, travelling the world and being independent.” And arguing against the society-propagated view “that motherhood can make you blissfully happy [which she saw as] a complete fairytale.” [The source at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021293/How-mothers-fanatical-feminist-views-tore-apart-daughter-The-Color-Purple-author.html#ixzz1eXIlhI7h ]
Alice Walker told her daughter “that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery,” “that children are millstones around your neck.” Isn’t feminism — AKA “Women’s Liberation” — about freeing women from “traditional” women’s roles, being trapped in the house, which children forcefully tend to do?
And regrettably, being “liberated” does not simply mean “indulge yourself in whatever way you feel like”; it necessarily includes rejecting things that might be highly appealing, yet have anti-liberating consequences. (“Stop the presses! You can’t have your cake and eat it too!”)
“And Joe Kubert’s Fax from Sarajevo, about which the nicest thing I can say is that it would sit easily next to Will Eisner’s graphic novels on a library bookshelf.”
Ouch. (I’m taking that as a burn, but maybe others wouldn’t?)
I certainly would. Fax From Sarajevo is Joe Kubert trying to do a serious book about the Bosnian War to end up producing just another Sgt. Rock comic.
Indeed so!
From an old TCJ message board thread:
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sinous:
…I think that’s one way to define most of those long time mainstream guys. They all seem to have one flaw or the other when it comes to writing their own stuff. Their draftmanship may be perfectly fine, but they have seemingly no idea how to escape or redefine genre conventions. Their conceptual and verbal skills are severely undeveloped or arrested.
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Mike Hunter:
…Joe Kubert in “Fax from Sarajevo” unfortunately did not turn loose of visual genre conventions. So effective in his mainstream comics work, so inappropriate here. (While mainstream fans would find “Fax” more appealing, to anyone with a jot of sophistication Joe Sacco’s “Safe Area Gorazde” is clearly superior.)
But — perhaps learning from criticism of the earlier work? — in “Yossel” ( http://www.jbooks.com/firstchapters/index/FC_Kubert1.htm ), though his lighting and compositions remain highly dramatic, at least by employing sketchy illustrations he tones down the polish of his more tightly-rendered usual art, gives it an immediacy. And word balloons, sound effects are left out.
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A couple pages from “Fax,” by no means the worst offenders:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wvXJ6tSTiXI/SquAUYbhl0I/AAAAAAAABq4/tne_TxXsGhw/s400/sarajevo-2.jpg
http://www.safcomics.com/pictures/134350.jpg
In utter contrast, from “Safe Area Gorazde”:
http://genocideinvisegrad.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/visegrad-strip.jpg?w=423&h=428
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Tj8DeMxpvBI/TVD8g-af-KI/AAAAAAAABC0/RJY4d5GyI2c/s1600/gorazde+1.jpg
Even in low-res scans, those Sacco images are horrifyingly real, not least because of the matter-of-factness with which the appalling events are composed and drawn. There is not the slightest touch of what Noah had found troubling about Sabato tregua, on another HU thread:
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…how much of a problem is it to be launching a social critique in such aesthetically beautiful terms. The car burning, for example…you note that it’s a violent image, but it’s also just really appealing formally. Is there an aesthetization of violence and despair, and is that a problem?
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https://hoodedutilitarian.com/2011/07/monthly-stumblings-11-andrea-bruno/
…At least Andrea Bruno’s renderings are far more powerful and sophisticated — this is truly Art — than Kubert’s skillfully-drawn yet totally “comic-bookish,” in the worst sense of the word, approach.
I’m late this week due to post-vacation catchup, but last week I finished the DMZ and The Boys collections I was reading, and I read the latest collection of Fables and Eddie Campbell’s The Lovely Horrible Stuff, and I started reading the second print volume of Charlie “Spike” Trotman’s webcomic Templar, Arizona (soon to be followed by volumes 3 and 4).
Regarding the filibuster article, I think there’s more to a desire for a talking filibuster than just the hope that Republicans will make fools of themselves: there’s a desire to make the minority work to block a bill that they technically shouldn’t be able to stop (since they can’t vote it down). The whole point of the filibuster, as I understand it, is to annoy everyone to the point that they give up on passing their bill. But they don’t even have to do that anymore; they just threaten to filibuster, and the majority has to give up, which seems dumb and subject to arcane rules.
I heard an anecdote from some talking head (I think it was Rachel Maddow as a guest on The Daily Show) that Strom Thurmond tried to filibuster civil rights legislation back in the 60s, and eventually had to give up because he had to go to the bathroom, and thus the bill passed. That’s probably bullshit, but I think that’s part of the desire for a talking filibuster: turn this into an actual contest of wills, and hopefully your side can last longer (if this is the case, they shouldn’t be betting on Harry Reid). The idea that these guys will be humiliated if they’re forced to talk long enough that something stupid comes out doesn’t really hold up, considering that they pretty much constantly say stupid things all the time, whether in front of Congress or not, and nobody really cares that much (although that did seem to change this year, what with all the rape talk, so who knows, maybe it would work to let these guys dig their own graves).
I guess it’s in part a desire to make it an endurance test of virtue — which is idiotic. Politics doesn’t have anything to do with either endurance tests or virtue.
Again, Reid can make them talk anytime he wants. He doesn’t because the majority has business they want to conduct, and letting the minority take up tons and tons of time isn’t in their interest. The Republicans will talk forever if you point a tv camera at them, because they are politicians.
The law needs to be changed, but it needs to be changed so its harder to obstruct, not so that people can satisfy their dreams of making Republicans uncomfortable, and/or of a dramatic triumph of right.