News
First, my book is officially out next week. We will have a bunch of Marston/Peter content out next week and possibly into the week after, including reviews, interviews and more. So stay tuned!
Also, as folks probably know, Jacob Canfield‘s post on the Charlie Hebdo shootings went viral. We’ve gotten exponentially more traffic than we got even when the Sean Michael Robinson and Joy DeLyria’s post went viral way back in March 2011. Since the post went up on Wednesday, we’ve gotten close to as much traffic as we received in the entirety of last year. The site has done better with it than I thought it would, but we’re still somewhat glitchy and erratic. I’m hoping that with the weekend things will calm down and we’ll start getting back to normal.
More after a brief appearance by our preposterous stats graph for this week.
On HU
Besides Jaob’s monster, here are the other pieces that went up on HU this week.
Featured Archive Post: Betsy Phillips on Sleepy John Estes and the poetics of place.
A list of my best writing of the year from around the web.
On the Handmaid’s Tale and bad slavery comparisons.
Michael Arthur on furry and profiling your own damn fandom.
Alex Buchet gives credit to the comic-book creators who developed the characters in Marvel’s Age of Ultron film.
Chris Gavaler on why we should get away from the term “genre ghetto”.
Isaac Butler on Joe Sacco’s BUMF#1, and why we need satire.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Atlantic I wrote about Kanye West and Paul McCartney’s lovely new song, and how no one needs to know who Paul is.
At the Atlantic I interviewed DeRay Mckeeson, one of the organizers of the Ferguson protests, about the importance of social media to the movement.
At Ravishly I wrote about feminism as the patriarchal ogre father.
At Ravishly I wrote about the fact that the James Bond films are white supremacist, and why casting Idris Elba won’t necessarily change that.
At Splice Today I wrote about how you can’t trust book release dates.
At Splice Today I explained why Islamophobia can be racist.
At the Pacific Standard I wrote about evidence that images of effective torture can convince people that torture is okay.
At the Chicago Reader I got to write about great grunge primitives Bionic Cavemen.
Other Links
Anne N. Bornschein on the scholarly study of romance.
Tim Hanley on the Marston/Peter Wonder Woman newspaper strips.
Serene Khader on Charlie Hebdo and racism.
On life without police in Bed Stuy.
Jesse Walker points out that sources lie to reporters.
Tauriq Moose is skeptical of public marriage proposals.
Serene Khader’s post is so wrong I wouldn’t know where to begin to refute it, so I won’t bother to try.
JE SUIS CHARLIE.
As bad as the Live and Let Die film is, the novel is way more explicitly racist. “****er Heaven” is a title for one of the chapters.
All the evidence suggests that Ian Fleming was a kind of a horrible person.
The fact that JFK loved his books has always made me more than a little queasy.
How nice for you that you benefitted so well from spreading lies and scorn about our freshly murdered colleagues in Paris. Ghoul.
Well, the “benefits” are pretty vague; the site makes no money, and I doubt I’ve exactly helped myself reputation-wise, as your comment shows.
Here’s some explanation of those Charlie Hebdo cartoons your columnist painted as racist/anti-Islam.
http://gocomics.typepad.com/tomthedancingbugblog/2015/01/in-non-satirical-defense-of-charlie-hebdo.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/07/charlie-hebdo-cartoons-paris-french-newspaper-shooting_n_6429552.html
They already know, Zan. They have no intention of admitting how badly they screwed up here. Or maybe it was mendacity instead of incompetence. Hard to know.
It’s very disappointing that HU would write such a post about CH without even knowing what they were about. You didn’t do an ounce of research before calling CH cartoonists “racist assholes.” Maybe you’ll enjoy your spike in traffic, but I have since unliked your FB page. Your post was as divisive and irresponsible as those terrorists were to the Muslim communities.
http://junkee.com/the-problem-with-jesuischarlie/48456
http://www.euronews.com/2015/01/08/turkish-satire-magazine-leman-pays-tribute-to-erstwhile-charlie-hebdo-colleagues/
Jacob and Kim, this harkens back to our argument about Fukitor and my take on Cathy Johnson’s “Overcompensating” essay, which you both praised. I think that when you make blanket condemnations based solely on an initial impression of racism or misogyny, you risk overlooking some important nuances. But I understand your concern about “punching down.”
I’ve seen further discussion of the comics in context. I don’t think those contexts necessarily mean that Jacob is wrong in saying that the images are racist. I don’t actually agree with some of Jacob’s points (the “racist asshole” line seems excessive.) But I often print things with which I don’t agree, in whole or in part.
“Your post was as divisive and irresponsible as those terrorists were to the Muslim communities.”
We’ve definitely lost some readers over this, as well as gained some. However, the easy equation of criticism and actual murder strikes me as really thoughtless, and is the sort of rhetorical move that prompted Jacob’s post in the first place.
The public opprobrium that comes from perceptions of racism, sexism, and homophobia in Western liberal circles and the violence that can result from perceptions of blasphemy in religious extremist circles are not the same thing. But transferring a satirical cartoon from one culture to another with no explanation or translation while adding whatever demonizing label will serve to rile your readers is an unscrupulous attack either way. For example, I could just not bother to translate that Joe Sacco cartoon the Bolling article links to, take it to a non-English speaking country, and tell people it’s a racist, anti-Semitic comic strip that ends with a clear incitement to violence. Cartooning is not a universal language after all.
It isn’t a universal language, that’s true. Some people don’t think Crumb’s work is racist. I think it often is. I’ve even called Crumb a racist shithead, I think. Is that an unscrupulous attack? Some would think so, I’m sure.
The Joe Sacco piece is pretty clearly a reaction against the kind of cartooning Charlie Hebdo is doing. You’ve just taken it out of context as a way to defend Charlie Hebdo. Is that unscrupulous? I don’t think so. Art can create different contexts and different interpretations. That’s one of the things that’s great about it, and maddening.
Er, no, I used the Sacco cartoon in context to point out how easy it is to change the apparent meaning of a cartoon. Anybody who follows my link can easily see its intent. “Art can create different contexts and interpretations” is an amoral, postmodern response I don’t think you would find very satisfying if someone misrepresented you. Crumb is deliberately ambiguous in his own culture, and all I would ask if you chose to broadcast your opinion would be that you either familiarize yourself with his work or tell your readers how much of it you’ve seen to help you arrive at that conclusion. Some of the criticism I’ve seen on your site borders on a Millennial Literalism with the guiding principle that if an artist drew/wrote it she must agree with it, like calling The Handmaid’s Tale a utopia.
You failed to note that Sacco’s cartoon is about his dislike of the kind of cartooning CH does. That seems relevant when you’re defending CH using his cartoon.
I find the label “Millenial literalist” to be really unfortunate. It seems like comics’ old guard circling the wagons, and telling themselves (once again) that they’re cool because they’re old and inflexible. I respect Ken Parille a lot, but I really don’t like that article.
Calling me a literalist becauese you have trouble following my arguments about the Handmaid’s Tale seems like a particularly idiotic rhetorical strategy. But that’s the way it goes. And as for how I’d feel if someone misrepresented me; you could see my comments about Jezebel here. I was irritated, but I don’t think they committed some sort of moral atrocity, or even did anything particularly untoward.
But its intent is obvious if you bother to read it, and my point was related to its use of racist images. I never held it up as advocacy for Charlie Hebdo. And so, you don’t think the reaction to your OITNB article was a moral atrocity or particularly untoward (I think the article itself didn’t succeed in making its case, never mind the larger context of your writing) but you will call my opinions idiotic, and claim I couldn’t follow your arguments; I recommend people check out my participation in the thread and make up their own minds. And on and on we go…
I’m not saying you’re morally evil or anything. I just think you’re a little dense (at least in the context of this particular argument.) I’m not condemning you; I’m condescending to you. No contradiction (though no doubt irritating from your perspective.)
But don’t most charges of misrepresentation come down to saying, “I don’t know if this person is stupid or being deliberately deceptive, but this is wrong?” You can never say for certain whether a pundit knew better or just didn’t perform due diligence. Enjoy your condescension.
Condescension is always enjoyable.
I think it’s generally better to assume ignorance rather than malice. And I don’t think there has to be one context that you need to know to interpret art. If you put something out there, people are going to take it in different ways or have different interpretations. That can be frustrating, but it’s not necessarily wrong. And different interpretations aren’t necessarily misrepresentations. Whether CH’s cartoons are or are not racist seems like something that people can disagree about.
A pop-postmodern throwing up of hands is always condescending. I think whether or not the cartoons were racist is a difficult question, much more than Canfield’s article makes it seem, but calling the “love is stronger than hate” cartoon homophobic or treating the “welfare queens” cartoon as some kind of right wing racist screed is just wrong. If we can’t make value judgments, why are we here?
You can make value judgements! Go for it; HU is all about value judgements. I’m iffy on the love is stronger than hate comic being homophobic; I think the welfare queens cartoon is in fact racist — not exactly intentionally so, perhaps, but in an R. Crumb, let’s use racist imagery because it’s fun and shocking vein. So there you go; value judgements.
I’m not saying you can’t disagree with Jacob. I’m saying I don’t agree that his opinions are factually incorrect, or that they’re beyond the pale of possible interpretations.
If I drew myself tongue-kissing a violently homophobic person I’d had an altercation with (which is pretty much what Hebdo did; the cartoon ran after the fire-bombing of their office), it would be understood that I wasn’t wholly offering an olive branch. But I think you’d need to be very touchy to consider that homophobic. The welfare queens cartoon is an attack on right-wing “welfare queens” rhetoric, as to say, if you’ll attack disadvantaged women this way, why not the victims of Boko Haram? You could at least explain that if you’re going to argue the cartoon is offensive. Look at it this way, if you wish to mount a truly effective attack, then you should try to prove your allegations using the evidence at your disposal. If your argument depends on omitting that amount of context, well…
R. Crumb claims Angelfood McSpade is an attack on right wing racists. I don’t buy it with him; I don’t buy it with the Boko Haram cartoon either.
I actually like the “Love is stronger than hate” cartoon. Radical Islamists firebomb the guy’s offices, and he responds by drawing himself making out with a Muslim in an apparent spoof of Spiegelman’s Crown Heights New Yorker cover. Call me a Tumblr-eschewing Krazy Kat enthusiast who doesn’t care about transphobia, but I find it kind of lovable.
(Shit, I posted before I saw ZAN’s comment, which said the same thing.)
Then who do you think the Boko Haram cartoon was attacking, Noah?
The Boko Haram cartoon at face value doesn’t make sense even if it was meant to be offensive to Muslims. It shows impregnated sex slaves of Boko Haram (Nigeria story) demanding people not to touch their welfare benefits (presumably some unrelated French story). Although I don’t find what I have been shown by the Je ne Suis pas Charlie campaign particularly pleasant and endorsable, I am now persuaded by those trying to explain the cartoons – that they are more nuanced than what first impressions might indicate. In addition for a magazine that has been in publication for many many years, the examples given are quite low in number, and do show ambiguity.
Now the dust has settled the events do seem to indicate that the attack was enacted by a small group of French muslims that have been “radicalised”. They do appear to have received training abroad and likely were part of the fairly large group of “disillusioned” European muslim youth that have gone off to “war” to fight for their “religion” on middle-eastern soil. These three (plus one plus …) seem to have attacked Charlie Hebdo on the basis of “revenge” (I wander what the effect would have been if they had killed Salman Rushdie) and they certainly killed shoppers in a Kosher supermarket on the basis of “race – religion – identity”, they also killed three law enforcement officers. Overall this was certainly muslim extremist violence.
Now we can all be against such extremist violence but freedom of speech and freedom of choice doesn’t mean we have to be part of a Je Suis Charlie group identity choice. Some of the cartoons in response to the attack were very neutral – showing a gunman saying he drew first.
Now of course not everyone from the Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie is beyond criticism. Some clearly are motivated by an agenda which appears when they add in irrelevant material. As always life is more complex, more heterogeneous, than what the media and politicians portray, and what most people can deal with (hence the need for “education”).
zan, the Boko Haram cartoon, like some of Crumb’s work, may be poking fun at the right, but much of the energy of the cartoon seems to me to come from a joy in racist caricature, which is seen as enjoyable offensive, and offensively enjoyable.
Jack, I don’t disagree with you about that cartoon.
I’m saying I don’t agree that his opinions are factually incorrect, or that they’re beyond the pale of possible interpretations.
They are factually incorrect, and they do lay outside the realm of possible interpretations. You can’t just drip whatever ignorant reaction leaks out of your ass on the thing that you’re looking at and call it interpretation. You have badly misinformed thousands of readers and from the looks of this comment thread, that was deliberate.
I disagree with you. I guess that’s deliberate…
All interpretations are possible then? Okay. Your new book is really about how badly you want to fuck your mother.
There’s actually a lot of discussion of incest in my book. Mother love was a hugely important theme for Marston. Freud thought incestuous feelings were bad and needed to be repressed; Marston rejected that. He felt mother love was good, and would lead to utopia.
But for what it’s worth, arguing that cartoons which are intended to offend and use racist caricatures can be seen as racist is not, to me, the same as saying that all interpretations are possible.
And I guess I’ll have to close this thread too before Franklin further embarrasses himself. Thank you all for commenting.