On HU
Featured Archive Post: Ng Suat Tong criticizes Dan Clowes on criticism.
Caroline Drennen on Turkish Airlines’ flights to Metropolis.
Ng Suat Tong on the theological confusion of Chester Brown’s May Wept.
Jimmy Johnson on what Aquaman’s ancestors were doing during the Middle Passage (and how slavery doesn’t exist in the DC/Marvel universes.)
Me on why it’s okay for artists and critics to know each other.
Chris Gavaler on Hamlet, superhero.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Daily Dot I wrote about
—how doxxing is abuse, not invasion of privacy.
—the upside of Google controlling everything.
At The Establishment I wrote about the virulent racism in Marston’s original Wonder Woman comics.
At PLayboy
—I interviewed Sara Benincasa about her new book, sex, art, and puppies.
—how Beyoncé is the most important pop musician ever.
At Splice I started a series on the Hammer Dracula films! I’ll be writing about all nine in chronological order; for this first one, I talked about how narrative sinks its teeth into you—with your help.
Also at Splice Today I wrote about
—how fame and money go together for writers less and less.
—being old and seeing old rockstars rock loudly.
At the Reader I wrote about La Sera, a band that’s a little bit country, a little bit the Smiths.
Other Links
Katherine Cross on male dreams of subservient female robots.
Nice Pitchfork write up of the new Dawn Richard track.
Andrew Wheeler explains that Frank Cho is an idiot.
“And to get that compromise you need competing mega-corporations to wrestle each other to a middle ground. Mickey will never be free until Google lobbyists pry him from Disney’s hands.”
I would revise this a bit – you need competing *institutions* to wrestle each other to *neutralize each other so that democratic process can overwhelm them both*. That last sentence is almost certainly true anyway though.
Looking forward to the Hammer Dracula reviews, never made it through all of them as much as i love the one from 1958 … Interesting point about the anachronistic setting – think i always took this as a clichéd perspective on eastern europe (and a critique of a pre-modern, feudal society), but I think your interpretation as an out-of-time zone is definetely more original. Anyway, curious to read more!
SOMEWHERE, WONDER WOMAN IS BEING MISTREATED–
even by her creator, it seems.
Sheesh.
Not sure what you mean, Gene; I didn’t say her creator mistreated her. I said her creator was racist.
I presume you agree he’s racist. You’re just flapping around in an effort to explain why no one should care, or say so, right?
Eagerly awaiting the moment where you explain that pointing out that Gone With the Wind is racist is the same as accusing Margaret Mitchell of mistreating Scarlett O’Hara…
The consistency with which you’ve been critiquing the handling of Wonder Woman and the liberal themes she embodies (or that you believe she embodies) led me to create a post-title as a pun on a Freud-phrase with which I imagine you’ve familiar. Whether you like or hate my pun, that’s the context of my use of the word.
My complaint is not that you said Marston was racist: I made the same conclusion in my post. What I will never understand, though, is why you find it necessary to indulge in hyperbolic attacks.
This time I can keep the complaints down to just two:
“To present black Africans as Nazis both whitewashes Hitler and suggests that black people were implicated in an evil regime which called for their genocide.”
What genocide? Is there a little moment when Wonder Woman or Steve Trevor yells, “Exterminate all the brutes?” I have not read the full story, but other blogposts lead me to suspect that nothing of the kind is in the actual story.
(2)”Marston’s belief in female superiority and his belief in black inferiority are incompatible. He cannot imagine black women, and therefore, for the one and only time in the Wonder Woman series, is unable to imagine feminist revolution. Racism undermined Marston’s progressive vision. ”
If you want to believe that Marston ought to have anticipated bell hooks in 1946, that’s your privilege. But I would like to see you supply the names of any liberal intellectuals of the time who managed that bit of fore-sightedness.
Better yet, can you cite even one MALE progressive of the time who descanted on the importance of liberating the females of either local minorities or Third World cultures?
If you can, I’ll admit that that intellectual’s anticipation of hooksian liberation was way ahead of anything Marston did.
But it probably still won’t support your conclusions about what Marston ought to have known or done.
good grief, Gene. The Nazis were interested in exterminating all black people. I’m sure you’re aware of this. It doesn’t need to be mentinoed in the story because the Nazis were *real people with a coherent ideology.* ffs.
” I would like to see you supply the names of any liberal intellectuals of the time who managed that bit of fore-sightedness.”
Ida B. Wells?
Oh, wait,you’re assuming that black people don’t exist or don’t count, right? Only white people matter, and we can’t expect white people to be anti racist; that would be mean.
The really quite simple point, which you could probably figure out if you weren’t so worried that someone, somewhere, would think less of some comic book artist for something, is that Marston was decades ahead of his time in terms of female equality, but not so much with racism. The failure with racism also causes problems for his vision of gender equality. That’s an important point *for us today, you dope!* It teaches us something now, which is valuable to think about. I don’t give a fuck about Marston’s morality or amorality or immorality, but his life matters to us today because *we’re still fucking racist.* As you will continue to demonstrate, I”m sure.
Gene, I think your argument is a bit akin to the one which is being used whenever some fameous white guys arseholery is being exposed: “It was a different time, so it’s, like, totally unfair to call him racist.”
The foundation of this argument is the idea that ‘real’ racists are people who had consciously decided that they wanted to have a skewed world view. As opposite to the fameous white men who accidentically expresses racist opinions because they didn’t knew better because it was a different time.
The problem is that the requirements for being a ‘real’ racist are so high that no one can live up to it: If a person really was 100 % conscious of the deeper aspects of his racist viewpoints, he would no longer be able to hold on to them.
“good grief, Gene. The Nazis were interested in exterminating all black people. I’m sure you’re aware of this. It doesn’t need to be mentinoed in the story because the Nazis were *real people with a coherent ideology.* ffs.”
But going by the words on the page, you weren’t talking about what the Nazis had done; you were talking about what Marston had put across in the story. Maybe it was not your intention to say that Marston had directly or indirectly called for genocide of blacks, but that is the effect of your peculiar wording.
I have no idea what the phrase in quotes refers to, but it’s irrelevant to my post since I wasn’t talking about the proper representation of Nazi ideology.
“The really quite simple point, which you could probably figure out if you weren’t so worried that someone, somewhere, would think less of some comic book artist for something, is that Marston was decades ahead of his time in terms of female equality, but not so much with racism. The failure with racism also causes problems for his vision of gender equality.”
For you, certainly. My point is that your judgment on racism stems from an assortment of changes in social priorities, and that no one else in Marston’s time had any cognizance of these priorities. No, that doesn’t mean black women’s problems didn’t exist, then or now. But it does mean that Marston’s vision is not exceptionally flawed for not seizing upon a particular cause that you care about. If no black women appear in Sinclair’s THE JUNGLE, does that vitiate that author’s vision as well?
“The foundation of this argument is the idea that ‘real’ racists are people who had consciously decided that they wanted to have a skewed world view. As opposite to the fameous white men who accidentically expresses racist opinions because they didn’t knew better because it was a different time.”
As I clearly said, I have no problem with stating that Marston was a racist.
My problem appears when people wish to lay every sin possible to a racist at his door. That’s not the same as the “it was a different time” argument.
Gene, you stumble further and further into incoherence…and yes, racism as well.
Marston puts swastikas on the loin cloths of black people. He is saying black people supported the Nazis. That is saying black people participated in an ideology that called for their own genocide, because *the Nazis called for the genocide of black people.* Marston doesn’t need to say in the comic “Nazis called for genocide,” because Nazis in real life called for genocide. Marston knew this, or should have known it.
“My point is that your judgment on racism stems from an assortment of changes in social priorities, and that no one else in Marston’s time had any cognizance of these priorities. No, that doesn’t mean black women’s problems didn’t exist, then or now”
As I said, there were peopel who in fact knew black women’s problems existed, including black women themselves. Marston wrote a comic about black people in which he fails to represent black women. Black women are the one group of women he seems unable to write about. This tells us something specific about how racism works, for him…and for us. And your racism works much the same way. You are unable to even process the idea that black women existed in the past, and discussed their own oppression. You can’t even say Ida B. Wells’ name when it’s put right in front of you. It’s more important for you to preserve the reputation of a white guy who is dead than to try to think about how racism functions. All that matters to you is to show that Marston’s vision is not “exceptionally flawed” — to which I respond, why the fuck should I care if it’s “exceptionally flawed” or not? Am I grading on some sort of curve? Do we care about racism or not? Marston’s work continues to influence us today; its flaws remain relevant, and it’s important to think about those flaws if we don’t want to reiterate them when we use his character and ideas today. Because you know what? Racism isn’t an “exceptional flaw” at the moment. Sometimes it takes the unexceptional form of people demanding we not talk about racism because everybody’s racist, so how can you blame people?
“My problem appears when people wish to lay every sin possible to a racist at his door.”
This is such a preposterous straw man it’s something of an insult to the structural integrity of straw. I did not “lay every sin possible to a racist at his door.” I said (a) he created an exceptionally racist comics which despicably suggested black people were the real Nazis, and (b) that his racism interfered with his feminism, in that he was unable to depict or celebrate black women. Why don’t you actually engage with what I said if you want to talk about my essay? Or alternately, you could just go away. I’d be fine with that too.
Gene, maybe you’re reading that sentence wrong?
“To present black Africans as Nazis both whitewashes Hitler and suggests that black people were implicated in an evil regime which called for their genocide.”
What do you read here:
a) The evil nazi regime called for their genocide.
b) The way Marston portraits black people (that is, portraiting them as implemented in an evil regime) calls for their genocide.
“Marston puts swastikas on the loin cloths of black people. He is saying black people supported the Nazis. That is saying black people participated in an ideology that called for their own genocide, because *the Nazis called for the genocide of black people.* Marston doesn’t need to say in the comic “Nazis called for genocide,” because Nazis in real life called for genocide. Marston knew this, or should have known it.”
No, that’s your politically overdetermined reading, not the reality of what’s on the page.
If you had stated that it was ironic that the Africans were ignorantly implicated in a system that called for their own genocide, that would have been correct. But that would have meant that you’d have to ignore the correct context of the story, which paints the Africans as being too uneducated to know what’s what about the Nazi regime. Marston can be fairly criticized for painting the typical African of 1946 as a savage who can be easily deceived by evil Europeans, but his story assumes that the Africans have no real knowledge of Nazi ideology.
In response to your essay, I wrote:
“According to [another blog-writeup] of the same story, it looks to me like WW and her buddies manage to win back the Africans from the Nazis, who were “threatening [the natives] with their [the Nazis’] death-ray.” It’s true that WW and her buddies win out by playing upon the foolish superstitions of the natives, and their natural sense of rhythm, etc. But of what relevance is it that “Hitler loathed black people?” The story in question was dated September/October 1946, so it’s long after the conclusion of WWII, and Hitler’s presumptive death. The die-hard goose-steppers of this story have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by attempting to persuade the natives that they can become part of the coming regime. I don’t imagine Marston bothered to work out this scenario very carefully, but WW#19 is certainly of a piece with many wartime stories in which Axis agents are seen suborning or subverting established Third World cultures.”
I notice that your essay makes no mention of the Africans being threatened with a death-ray. Do you agree that this is an element of the story that you omitted?
“As I said, there were peopel who in fact knew black women’s problems existed, including black women themselves.”
But the gist of my question remains, How many male liberals of the time spoke specifically to black women’s problems? Since you named none, I’ll stick with my original notion: there weren’t that many not because the problems didn’t exist, but because the ideals of feminism hadn’t become widely dispersed enough to address subgroups in this manner.
There were comics-writers in 1946 who called for racial tolerance and understanding, and so no one can exempt Marston from judgment on general racism based on the “different times” argument. But if no one at the time called for looking at black women’s problems through the lens of feminism, why should Marston be faulted in particular for that failing?
I’ll skip over most of the other stuff, except to note that I don’t see Marston worrying much about liberating women in any culture save that of modern America and various fantasy-worlds. Again, while he was a racist, he’s not guilty of the particular sin you’re laying at his door.
Good lord, Gene. Your response is that the Africans are too ignorant to know what Nazism means, therefore they’re not implicated in their own genocide? And this is a refutation of my point how?
Seriously, this is ridiculous. Marston decided black people are the real Nazis, and you insist it doesn’t matter because…what? I can’t even follow your preposterous argument. And you go on to say that it’s okay because other stories at the time also presented third world peoples as stupid dupes?
Seriously, what the fuck is your point? You don’t actually seem to disagree with me, no matter how you bob and weave and splutter. Marston was racist. His representation of black people is condescending, racist, and offensive. Your sole objection appears to be that it makes you sad (awwww) to have to think about what that means in terms of Marston’s overall vision. It makes me sad too! I love Marston; I am not pleased that he was a racist. But he was, it matters for his themes and for his utopian vision, and it matters to us today. In part because the racism of artists prompts so many in the present to insist racism is irrelevant.
“What do you read here: a) The evil nazi regime called for their genocide. b) The way Marston portraits black people (that is, portraiting them as implemented in an evil regime) calls for their genocide.”
If the actions of the Africans in the story are seen as “whitewashing Hitler” while the Africans somehow remain totally implicated in the evil of Nazism, then the logical conclusion is that they are even more guilty of Nazi evil than Hitler. So yes, while you are free to deem my reading “wrong,” Reading #2 is the only one that makes sense of that garbled sentence– which is why I was trying to find out if anyone in the story actually called for extermination of black people, because they were somehow even more evil than actual Nazis.
“But the gist of my question remains, How many male liberals of the time spoke specifically to black women’s problems? ”
For. fucks. sake. I am not grading on a fucking curve. THe point of the piece is not “Marston is presented as a male liberal, but in fact he was a retrograde asshole, fuck him.” The point of the piece is that (a) Marston was advanced in terms of his view of women, but not in his view of race, (b) the failure to care about black women because of racism corrupted his vision of female liberation, (c) the whiteness of the character was implicated in Marston’s racism, and continues to inflect the character today.
I don’t think this is hard to understand…unless you care more about defending Marston’s reputation than about racism, in which case, obviously, your priorities will be what you are demonstrating they are.
Marston does think black people are more evil than Nazis. Nazis are portrayed as human. Black people are portrayed as animalistic monsters.
“Good lord, Gene. Your response is that the Africans are too ignorant to know what Nazism means, therefore they’re not implicated in their own genocide? And this is a refutation of my point how?
Seriously, this is ridiculous. Marston decided black people are the real Nazis, and you insist it doesn’t matter because…what? I can’t even follow your preposterous argument. And you go on to say that it’s okay because other stories at the time also presented third world peoples as stupid dupes?”
I’ll keep it short this time: no, I don’t think Marston, whatever he thought of black people or other people of color, would have considered them “implicated” in Nazi evil either (1) because they were ignorant of the big picture, or (2) because they were giving in to an invader with superior technology. And none of your arguments for that “implication” (happy, so-vague-it’s-meaningless bullshit-word!) hold water.
Also, the issue is not that the ideals of feminism hadn’t become widely dispersed enough to affect subgroups. The issue is that *feminists were often very racist, and feminism, like Marston’s, was often built on racism*. It isn’t just, oh, too bad feminism didn’t go far enough. Marston’s views of female purity and superiority which powered Wonder Woman were tied closely to his vision of white superiority and white power. That is most evident in this comic, which deals directly with black people.
Gene, Marston *put swastikas on the loin cloths of Africans*. He was saying the Africans were Nazis, and he presents them as villains tied to the Nazis. I don’t know how much clearer he could have been, or how much more ridiculous your desperate, flailing apology could be.
Okay – Gene read that there sentence as it is the cartoonist who calls for their genocide (that is, ‘called for their genocide’ refers to the part in uppercase)
“[for the cartoonist] TO PRESENT BLACK AFRICANS AS NAZIS both whitewashes Hitler and suggests that black people were implicated in an evil regime[,] which called for their genocide.”
However, the sentence could *also* be undestood as claiming that nazis called for their genocide, which is a fairly mainstream observation (again, ‘called for their genocide’ refers to the uppercase part)
“To present black Africans as Nazis both whitewashes Hitler and suggests that black people were implicated in AN EVIL REGIME which called for their genocide.”
I think it is kinda fundamental whether the sentence being debated mean one thing, or something radically different. So Noah, which one is correct?
The Nazis certainly were bent on the genocide of the Jews and the Gypsies, but…the Blacks? Was that actual Nazi policy, or did they rather envision subjugation/enslavement?
It’s the Nazis who call for their genocide, not the cartoonist. I don’t think it’s that obscure…
Not sure what Hitler claimed. He wasn’t in a position to exterminate black people, really. I feel fairly confident he would have if he had the chance.