On HU
Featured Archive Post: Nadim Damluji on caste in Indian graphic novels.
Me on imperialism in Anne Leckie’s Ancillary series.
Kim O’Connor on the end of Comics and Cola and how the comics community will learn nothing from it.
…and we had a shortened week since I’m on vacation.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At Quartz I wrote that the Democrats should work to enfranchise voters in DC and Puerto Rico.
At Reason I reviewed Rajan Menon’s new book on why humanitarian intervention is awful.
At the Daily Dot I wrote about virtue signaling about virtue signaling about…
At Religion Dispatches I wrote about Orientalism in Don DeLillo’s crappy new novel.
At the Guardian I wrote about Holy Hell and the appeal of cults.
At Random Nerds I declared that superheroes aren’t myths, damn it.
At Splice Today I wrote about
—Matt Bruenig and the argument that hurting bad people is morally justified.
—Hammer’s Taste the Blood of Dracula and sexual revolution.
Link to the Reason article.
Ack; sorry. It’s fixed now.
Thank you for writing the “Superheroes =/ myths” article. That has to be one of the most irritating new-age statements I hear from some of my friends who follow comics/superheroes.
Ok, this is fraught ground for me but…oh well.
“Just because the U.S. didn’t intervene in Rwanda doesn’t mean it was wrong to do so in Kosovo.”
This is bullshit. Utter bullshit. Please watch “Kosovo: Can You Imagine?” on YouTube, which details the US supported pogrom by Albanian Kosovars against Serbs, as well as the fact that Kosovo, to this day, is essentially a colonial kleptocracy run high-ranking members of the mafia and actual terrorist groups. All of this is, perhaps not a direct result, but certainly bolstered by US intervention. I also have huge misgivings about using Srebrenica as an example of a “failure to intervene” given that the concept of “humanitarian intervention” was pioneered, long before the UN adopted R2P, by the Clintons in order to justify intervention in Yugoslavia. It turns out, almost all the claims of atrocities (including the claim at Srebrenica) were either fabricated, exaggerated, or misrepresented. “The Weight of Chains” is also a very good documentary on the same issues (albeit, by the same person as “Kosovo: Can You Imagine?”). Now, I want to be clear; atrocities absolutely DID happen. But the nature, frequency, and effect of those atrocities was blatantly misrepresented for geopolitical purposes by the Clinton administration.
So…the next sentence goes on to explain why humanitarian intervention is a bad idea. I don’t think intervention in Kosovo saved lives.
Ok, maybe I am just overreacted. When I read your piece, I thought you did not distinguish forcefully enough between the cultural response to atrocities (which may very well be altruistic, in a very narrow and naive sense) and the geopolitical one, which is almost universally based on “national interests” and only nominally influenced by moral concerns. I realize you actually did spend a great deal of verbage dealing with that issue, so my apologies. I guess my objection is that you were not as confrontational towards the reader as I would have been writing the same article. But then again, maybe I would not be able to publish the article I would have written. Now I’m rambling, but the gist is, my bad.
maybe I just overreacted**…sheesh
No, I think that’s a fair criticism. The book is more academic than confrontational, and I sort of followed along with that, I think.
*All* your articles should be prefaced by Alex Ross tableaux
http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/bad-people-don-t-suffer/
I liked that one. Solid writing! The way it constantly twists the sympathy around underline its angle.
is it a problem for your argument that superheroes aren’t myths that, no matter what victory a popular superhero wins in a given story arc, it’s eventually reversed so that they can fight the battle again? The villain is imprisoned, they escape, the villainess is reformed, she’s brainwashed back to being evil, corruption is exposed, it takes root again. Mythic hero’s also prevail for a time and enjoy victories. Oedipus is riding pretty high when he defeats the sphinx, but the victory is always temporary. Batman and superman still haven’t definitively beaten the joker or lex luthor after the better part of a century trying.
thanks for writing and hosting so many interesting essays
E, I don’t think it’s a problem? Every storyline for superheroes is a melodrama of justice triumphant via the transcendent power of noble humanity. The storylines are staged again and again, but that doesn’t to my mind change their essential character or message. With myth, you always know Oedipus’ eventual fate, which gives even his successes a tragic irony. Superheroes have no end, though; they just triumph over and over forever; the villains escape because the superheroes have to have someone to thump.