Author Archives: Nate Atkinson

Can a Genre Be Racist?

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In a series of articles on race and superhero comics, several HU regulars cast doubt on the possibility of racially progressive superhero comics. This, in turn, prompted Noah and others to suggest that the superhero genre is itself racist. Conceived in an era of scientific racism and honed through nationalist propaganda, the superhero genre seems to contain a worldview that pulls creators toward narratives that are, if not exactly white supremacist, unable to comment thoughtfully on issues that concern African Americans.

Of course, there are rebuttals. Some argue that because two Jewish kids created the Ur-Superhero back when Jews weren’t exactly white, therefore superheroes can’t be totally racist. However, this rebuttal ignores the fact that you needn’t be racist to create racist art. Another rebuttal follows from the idea that the traits that make the superhero different also make them super, which suggests that superhero comics portray difference, and maybe even diversity, as a social good. This seems like a difficult possibility to reject out of hand, but the fact that few superhero comics have thoughtfully addressed issues of diversity creates a difficulty for anyone looking to make the case. To my mind, this suggests that the jury is still out on the question of whether the genre is racist.

But what does it mean to call a genre racist? To answer this question, I’ll start with a brief definition of genre.

Following the work of Carolyn Miller, I’m defining genre as social action, i.e., as a typified response to a recurring situation. Defined as such, we recognize eulogies as eulogies because they respond to a situation that recurs (the funeral). This is not to suggest that the genre is not defined in part by form and content, but that this form and content responds to, and is therefore shaped by the situation and audience to which it is addressed. As the funeral situation evolves and audiences for eulogies change, the genre will evolve with it. So, if you found a eulogy in an old file cabinet you could recognize it as a eulogy based on its formal characteristics. However, those formal characteristics exist as such because they address recurring needs and expectations.

If superhero comics are a genre, to what situation(s) were/are they addressed? Often, we look for the answer in eras. For example, we might argue that Superman reflects the anxieties of late depression—a culture of feeling shaped by a sense of injustice and the need for strong leadership. Not coincidentally, this was the era in which the US flirted with fascism, and in which certain European nations embraced it. Thus, we have the argument that the genre is tainted by fascism, or a fascist mindset that trips easily into racism. However, by defining an era according to a specific concern, one is forced to operate at a level of abstraction at odds with the rhetorical conception of a situation, which includes historical context, but also material constraints such as medium, power dynamics between the producers of and audiences for texts, and so on. Where does this leave us?

To define superhero comics as a social action, i.e., a motivated, conventionalized response based on the demands of a recurring situation, I think we need to look at the relationship between the producer and the audience. Specifically, we need to see comics as a response, at least in part, to the situation of adolescence as experienced by boys. After all, adolescent boys were, until quite recently, the primary audience for superhero comics. Moreover, and more to the question of race, white adolescent boys were the imagined audience for comics, which is to say they were the audience to which comic creators addressed their narratives.

Is it any surprise, then, that the X-Men are a lousy metaphor for race? Sure, mutants appear as a persecuted minority, but they’re a minority that assumes great power as a birthright. This strikes me as a better metaphor for the young white man who is old enough to see power on the horizon, but is feared and despised by the adult world during this particular stage of his development. Compare this to the young black man, who can expect to face fear and hostility for years to come.

A similar combination of power and persecution dogs Superman. Though he is celebrated as a hero, he submits to daily humiliations. Why? We can psychologize Kal-El all day, but I’d bet money that the answer lies not in his character but in the demand it fills. Namely, it’s an effort to connect with an audience of young men subject to the regular degradations of adolescent life.

How does race factor into all of this? After all, it’s not as though young black men aren’t subject to fear and persecution. The answer is that superhero comics, as a general rule, assume that unearned power lies behind or beyond the fear and the persecution. The mutant, the Kryptonian, the scion of billionaires, the kid genius who sticks to walls… All of these characters could get everything they want and more. Only two things hold them back. One is ethics, and this is a potential positive to the genre. The other is less positive: it’s the notion that lesser beings are holding them back (I’m looking at you, X-Men).

So, is the superhero genre racist? As a rhetorical theorist, I’m contractually obligated to answer yes, and no.

Yes, the genre is racist. It is addressed to a situation unique to an increasingly small but nevertheless over-privileged group. As a result, it developed conventional features that make a dog’s breakfast of any effort to incorporate issues of social justice that don’t entail being nicer to young white men.

No, the genre isn’t racist. Situations recur, but they evolve over time. As the audience for comics grows increasingly diverse, the conventional features of the form will change accordingly to better address the situation of the readership. Sure, we’re going to read some confused comics as we transition, but it will all work out in the end.

In short, the answer to the question of whether a genre can be racist is yes, but it doesn’t have to be. As to whether the superhero genre is inherently racist, I want to suggest that it has developed some narrative conventions that are, if not racist, seriously problematic. However, I’d be reluctant to consign the genre to the realm of minstrel shows and Orientalist travelogues. Instead, I’d argue that recent flare ups over its less progressive features indicate a genre that’s struggling to expand the range of situations to which it can speak.

Freedom To and Freedom From

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Editor’s Note: Nate Atkinson left this comment on my recent post, and I thought I’d highlight it here. It’s part of our recent discussion on Censure and Censorship in comics.
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Freedom of speech arguments suffer from the fact that the word “freedom” has become a God-term in US liberal-democratic discourse. In fact, what a lot of commenters are calling a value of the left is actually a value of classical liberalism, where “freedom-to” trumps “freedom-from.” This isn’t an accident, as liberalism views that the individual is the fundamental unit of society, and thus views anything that restricts those freedoms as a threat to the social order. Compare this to a society that defines freedom as “freedom-from,” as in freedom from want, or freedom from threat. In those societies, a person’s freedom-to is more readily limited to assure freedom from (that’s where we get truly progressive taxation). Importantly, both definitions of freedom allow for democracy, though freedom-to is more encouraging of laissez faire capitalism.

So what does this have to do with speech? The smart-ass answer is that in a country where money=speech, the emphasis on freedom-to provides an argument for unlimited campaign donations. But that’s not what we’re discussing here, is it?

When we talk about freedom of speech we default to the “freedom to speak.” We forget that when we protect the freedom to speak we risk impinging not only on freedom-from speech, which is to say freedom from speech that makes the world a difficult place in which to live, and for certain people, to speak. Paradoxically, the unreflective privileging of the freedom to speak actually creates an obstacle to freedom of speech. And this gets me to the question of moral goods.

As a society, the US has a long history of divorcing politics from questions of moral good. There’s a reason for this, which is that the pragmatism of Rawls (and to a lesser extent Dewey) greases the wheels of discourse by bracketing questions about what is “true” or “good” and focussing instead on questions about what is legitimate and procedures for securing a consensus. As a result, assumptions about moral goods sneak in through the backdoor and elude sustained examination. Everyone just agrees that freedom is good without actually examining what freedom means, not only to them, but to others. Freedom-to is conflated with freedom-from, and we all truck along under a false consensus about what freedom of speech means.

However, if we unpack the notion of freedom even a little, we see the dynamic between freedom-to-speak and freedom-from-speech. This creates dissensus, which makes it anathema to pragmatism, but it also allows us to recuperate freedom of speech as a moral good, something to nurture and protect. This would allow us to discuss it as more than means to an end, a means that might or might not outlive its usefulness.
 

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by Winsor McCary

The Purest Hate of All

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A little background…

This started as a comment on the Benjamin Marra interview over at The TCJ Website, but I wanted to make sure it didn’t get buried under the contract negotiations with Dave Sim. The danger of posting it here is that it’s going to get mixed in with the whole “Hate Week” thing, and I don’t want people reading this as inspired by hate. (That said, by the end you’ll see some self-hate in action, so if you’re here for hate you can just skip to the last paragraph or two.)

In actuality, two decidedly non-hateful things inspired the comment. The first was an aside made by Joe McCulloch some time ago, I think during one of his “This Week’s Comics” features over at TCJ. Bascially, he wondered why there wasn’t much controversy over Marra’s work given the content. The other inspiration was Darryl Ayo’s thoughtful post about Marra on his blog. Ayo’s piece moved me to read the interview, which in turn led me to write this post.

If I have these story ideas, I can’t censor myself or else I won’t do them, because I won’t think that it serves the artwork in the end if I try to water it down based on this illusion of how I think people will react. That’s not a viable gauge to base decisions on, because it’s not real. It’s only real after.

Benjamin Marra, from the tcj.com interview

Here’s the thing, when a person writes and draws a comic they have to make choices. They make choices about what to put into a panel and what to leave out. They make choices about how to present information within a panel. Marra understands this. At one point he says that a profile-shot at eye level is a good way to convey action. He’s basing this assertion on the imagined reaction of an audience. Yet later he says that anticipating reaction is not a “viable gauge” for making decisions about whether or not what goes in might come across as racist. Contradictions like these suggest intellectual laziness, and this laziness is particularly problematic when the goal is satire. It is problematic because the difference between effective satire and just playing stereotypes for shits and giggles largely comes down to careful consideration and execution. Based on this interview, Marra is committed to the execution but not to the consideration. However, he also realizes that for his work to come off as anything other than racist, it needs to come off as satirical:

“Gangsta Rap Posse is underground comics, it’s not on a lot of people’s radar, but the things is, I’ve never gotten anything but a positive reaction to it. I’m sure if it was distributed to a much wider audience it would get a really negative response, if people took it seriously — not as satire, not as a comment on myself as a white suburban artist making a comment on black urban culture from a specific time period. I think people might react negatively.

Note that Marra explicitly calls Gangsta Rap Posse a work of satire. It is, by his account, a self-referential commentary on commentary. This might very well be Marra’s intention, but it doesn’t really show up in the work itself.  This is because Marra’s stated goal of making comics that read as though they were created by someone who didn’t know what he was doing is at odds with the meta-commentary he’s after. Put another way, if you strive to make your work look earnest, then you can’t expect people to see it as self-reflexive commentary.

And Marra seems to recognize this tension, hence his over-the-top author photos designed to convey a “Hey, I’m only sort of serious about all this” attitude. However, even he seems to think that this sort of paratextual gesture might fall short of the goal. Note that in the same quote he imagines that given wider distribution Gangsta Rap Posse would get more negative responses. I think he’s right about this, and I think that this should be a red flag for us.

What Marra is saying is that we’ve failed as readers of and writers about comics. We’ve completely passed on the opportunity to discuss his comics from the perspective of race, gender, or any other political or ethical lens. Instead, we’ve decided to discuss them from the perspective of other comics. We’ve skipped over the tough questions about representation to play facile games of spot the influence. As a result, we’re missing out on some good conversation, something that gets beyond the usual “you’re so great, you’re so cool” stuff that gets passed off on us as a long form interview. Aren’t we bored of that by now?  That we don’t seem to be bored suggests a certain intellectual laziness on our part. Ah, self hate, the purest hate there is.
 
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Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.

When We Had Moebius in Our Living Room

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Moebius was one of the weirdest things my roommate had in our living room. He wasn’t weird in the way that the shrine to my former workplace janitor was weird. That is to say, he wasn’t weird in that stupid way early 20’s ironic décor is weird, which is not weird so much as dopey (think a vintage speculum or the rare can of Storm Malt liquor found at Grocery Outlet in downtown Oakland). Moebius was weird by virtue of his incongruity. He was worth more than everything we owned and maybe even the apartment we lived in. He was definitely prettier than anything else we owned, and we took better care of him as a result. My roommate and I destroyed glassware (glass performs poorly in the hands of drunks), three futons, a couple of lamps, a garbage disposal, and a bathroom sink. Most of our other books had coffee stains on them. The ones that didn’t had been soaked in other liquids, and their spines buckled as a result. Our lives weren’t very pretty either, though they lacked the level of degeneracy necessary to make them really interesting. This is all a long way of saying that while we weren’t miserable we weren’t quite happy, either, which is a way of explaining in advance why we kept Moebius around so long.

My roommate found Moebius on the floor of a movie theater in Sand Diego in 1995. Actually, an employee of his found Moebius. Knowing my roommate (who I’ll call Rob, since that’s his name) read comics, the employee brought him to him. He was a little, 4” by 6” black, and hardbound Moebius. He contained a bunch of little drawings on medium press paper that felt slightly rough to the touch. The drawings were put down in shiny black ink, their line weights uniformly uniform, and their subject matter various. The thing about the drawings is that they were so perfect the employee thought it was a facsimile of Moebius that some conventioneer had dropped. For a second Rob thought the same thing. But before he pitched it on the lost-and-found he realized it was real. A weird little colored-pencil doodle by Bob Burden and some children’s drawings in crayon were what gave it away.

The lost-and-found was no place for such a thing. The San Diego Comic convention had ended earlier that day. This was before everybody was on the Internet. It was before everybody knew what the Internet was. Rob did what was maybe the right thing. He put it in his bag and took it home. He moved into my Oakland apartment a few months later.

I was in the process of a protracted breakup and in need of a roommate. Like many young men my age I was a terrible person, though I maintain I had my charms. The least of these charms (but a charm nonetheless) was that I drew well enough to make others think I had a future in drawing. Although I hadn’t read comics regularly in some time, I was still looking for work in the field. What’s more, I had maintained an interest in the things. So when Rob moved in he unpacked Moebius and placed him in my hand. Upon meeting him I knew exactly who he was. Good to meet you in person, Moebius.

Those little drawings had an amazing way of making the tiny pages seem ten-times their actual size. There was a drawing of a canyon that you all but fell into. The drawing of a man plodding through the desert looked vast. The man was less than an inch tall, but he was fully formed and totally lost. There were lots of crystalline landscapes, many exotic hats, some beautiful women and some less than beautiful men. There were no pencil marks, no erasures. It was totally Moebius.

Moebius lived with Rob and me for almost five years. How the hell did we get so lucky? We certainly didn’t deserve him. More often than not he’d just hang out on the shelf. But he’d come out at critical moments, like when one of us was depressed, or when somebody with an interest in comics was over, when we wanted to show off how random the world could get.

Rob and I understood that Moebius couldn’t stay forever. He certainly wasn’t ours, and we knew we’d need to find him a way home. But we were also too lazy to write letters or call France. About two years later we did take Moebius to the local comic convention. We thought we might connect with a friend of Moebius who could help him out. After a few shady dudes offered to take him off our hands, I asked a friend who dealt in original art what we should do. He and a few pros took a minute with Moebius and they all agreed. Do not give Moebius to anyone other than Moebius.

I moved out the next year, but Rob, Moebius and I still spent a lot of time together. I was back in school and feeling better about my life. Ditto Rob. Moebius was the same as ever, though he was also coming to Oakland for a convention. When Rob found this out he called me to ask if I wanted to give Moebius back to Moebius. I had to work (or something) that weekend, so Rob and Moebius headed to the convention together.

When Rob got to the convention he found Moebius at the end of a long line of autograph seekers. He stepped into line. The guy managing the line, a Mr. Rory Root, was asking people what they were getting signed or explaining the rules or doing whatever he was there to do. I wasn’t there, and while Rob has filled me in on the details, they’re the sort of details that derail a good story. Anyway, Rory did eventually get to Rob, and Rob showed him Moebius. Rory took Rob and Moebius to the front of the line.

Moebius introduced himself to Rob, not knowing why he’d been brought to him. Rob, not knowing how to start the conversation simply introduced Moebius to Moebius. He explained really briefly where he’d been, and what he’d been up to. Moebius didn’t bat an eye at the explanation, but he did tear up. “They’re quite good drawings, no?” He thanked Rob, and Rob called me almost immediately after. We were going to miss Moebius.

Jaime and His Readers

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In their essays on the recent appreciation of Jaime Hernandez at the TCJ website, both Noah and Caro ask, What makes JH’s work a masterpiece, and if you can’t tell me that, then why should I, as a potential reader, care? These are good questions. And I’m going to provide an answer that, in the spirit of HU, should piss-off just about everybody. Ready?

The TCJ appreciation is not about Love and Rockets but its readership. This is necessary and also unfortunate.

Before I go on, let me clarify two things. First, I’m using the term masterpiece in its colloquial sense, as in a superlative work. I’m not going to worry over canon formation here, nor am I going to suggest the need for criteria for determining worth relative other works. Second, by arguing that that TCJ roundtable is about the readership and not the comic, I don’t mean we should disregard it. As will become clear, I think Love & Rockets is, and always has been, part of a conversation about what comics can be. To read Love & Rockets without reading the conversations about it would be to read only part of Love & Rockets. Basically, I’m arguing that the quality of the comic book Love & Rockets is less important than its role in creating a reading public of a certain character, bound together by their shared attention to the comic.

This argument derives from the work of Michael Warner, whose book Publics and Counterpublics argues that publics are the outcome of texts that address them as such. So, I’m going to offer a quick and dirty account of Warner’s theory of publics, explain why it is important to understand contemporary North American comics not simply as works of art, but as loci for the formation of publics, and finally, why assessing the quality of Love & Rockets is, in many ways, beside the point of the TCJ Roundtable. I’ll also argue that this is OK.

Warner makes the case that a public is created by shared attention to text. Texts, he argues, “clamor at us” for attention, and our willingness to pay attention to certain text and not others determines the publics we belong to” (89). By giving our attention to a text we recognize ourselves as part of a virtual community bound by that shared attention, and as part of an ongoing conversation unfolding in time. The classic example would be the local newspaper, which in addressing its readership constitutes each reader as a member of a locality. The daily paper does this because it encourages readers to imagine themselves as part of a virtual community, defined by a common civic-mindedness and a commitment to that text as a way to make sense of the multiple texts affecting their lives. They do this not only through reading but also through letter writing, impromptu conversation, and so forth. The daily newspaper metaphor points to another aspect of the relationship between texts and publics; namely, the publics constituted by texts “act according to the temporality of their circulation” (96). The daily rhythm of the paper is a daily reminder of one’s status as part of a public, a status that is part-and-parcel of one’s identity.

The flipside of this is that if the text ceases to receive a level of attention necessary to sustaining it, not only does it go away, but so too does its public, and with that public, a part of each member’s identity. Understood as such, it is easy to see why the cancellation of a TV show, magazine, or comic book creates a level of anxiety seemingly disproportionate to its quality as an artifact. Publics exist by virtue of attention, something that in today’s world, has been stretched incredibly thin. We’ve got many, many texts vying for our attention. Moreover, traditional rhythms of circulation have been thrown out of whack by innovations in comic book publishing, and, as Warner himself notes, the Internet. But I’ll get back to these points in my discussion of the TCJ roundtable. Now, I’m going to explain why this theory of publics is crucial to understanding North American comics.

Here’s a bold statement that is likely as false as it is true: North American comic books have, until very recently, been a means to public formation first, and a art form second (if at all). And this includes Love & Rockets. I’m not an authority on comics history, but my understanding is that superhero comics took off in part because they were created and edited by members of the science fiction community—a public constituted by fanzines—who understood itself as defined by its devotion to a textual form that many in society treated with contempt. This sense of community was fostered in letter columns, fanzines, and eventually conventions. It’s even easier to see public formation in Marvel superhero comics… Stan Lee addresses the readers as friends, in on the joke, but also serious about what the text they’re reading means to them relative other publics (true believers vs. everybody else). He directs their attention to the history of his comics’ circulation, he answers letters, and he asks readers to find mistakes in continuity. In exchange for their attention to the minutiae of circulation the careful reader receives a “No Prize,” as if to say that attention is a reward in itself. After all, its what makes you part of a public, which is what makes you who you are.

Love & Rockets emerged at a decidedly different moment in comics’ history. This is important because, as you will recall, publics act according to the temporality of their circulation. The public L&R addressed was the public bound together by the ruminations of The Comics Journal, and of other comics aspiring to a level of artistic sophistication that had yet to be realized in a significant way. It was, in short, a text that in its initial incarnation constituted an audience in a manner consistent with its aspirations for the medium. It was part of the medium, inasmuch as it came out regularly, ran letters, and so on. But unlike the superhero comics that surrounded it on the racks, Love & Rockets did not assume a new readership every five years. Nor did it require a status quo be maintained in order to insure the brisk sales of toothpaste and hastily cobbled together cartoons. In short, it promised comics readers a text that would reward sustained attention, and honor their identity as part of a community of readers over the long term. (This suggests that Dave Sim’s commitment to 300 issues was crucial to constituting the incredibly robust public constituted by Cerebus. But that’s a whole different post.)

What is remarkable about Love & Rockets is that it has made good on this promise for many years. Moreover, its publisher’s commitment to keeping the books in print has made it possible for the public to grow. And aside from the occasional detour, Jaime’s central storylines continue, which allow for the renewal of a reading community… a public that understands itself as defined by its ongoing attention to the text. This is no small thing in an age when publics from and dissolve according to the logic of direct-market orders and cross-media synergy.

That said, the rhythms of its circulation and appreciation have been disrupted by changes in the comics market, and in the forums for discussing it. When Love & Rockets began, it’s public entered into a relationship with the text fostered by the weekly trip to the comics shop, the letter column, and fan magazines like TCJ. As Frank Santoro pointed out in his “The Bridge is Over Essays,” Love & Rockets is no longer part of a larger community of comic readers. It comes out as a book now, and not in a monthly pamphlet. This isolates its public from the institutional frameworks that incubated it. Similarly, with the end of TCJ’s regular publication in print, and the balkanized world of online criticism, consensus about what comics are worth reading, what comics criticism should look like, etc. The public constituted by Love & Rockets is understandably nervous.

This talk of publics, and the disruptions to Love & Rockets rhythm of circulation leads me to why I think the appreciation is necessary, but also unfortunate. The roundtable in necessary because it does what public must periodically do to maintain itself in the face of threats to its existence. Hernandez just produced a work that by his own admission he will have trouble following up. Absent the imperative to monthly publication, and of a regular, print forum for praise and blame, the burden to compel the effort falls to the public that exists because of it. What we are seeing here is epideictic rhetoric, an effort to affirm a public’s taken for granted ideas in order to argue for why Love & Rockets should continue.

The appreciation is also unfortunate. It is unfortunate because is relies on shared and implicit assumptions to bring the community together, which in turn implies a certain “you had to be there” exclusionism. In this respect, I agree with others that more attention to the “why” of Love & Rocket’s value would have been salutary to the goals of the appreciation. In this respect, the appreciation was a missed opportunity to expand the public.

Ultimately, I think we have here a really interesting example of the intersection between artistic form and ritual performance. That it inspired the HU to go off on taken for granted values (Love & Rockets as soap-opera in particular) also suggests that whatever threat the Internet poses to this public, it also puts it into a larger conversation. So, while the bridge between publics is gone, its been replaced by a confusing, and to my mind much more interesting, network of bridges.
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This is part of an impromptu roundtable on Jaime and his critics.