Category Archives: Blog

Utilitarian Review 8/16/14

Posted on by

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Betsy Phillips on the appeal and repulsion of blackface, for both blacks and whites.

Voices from the Archive: Caroline Small on the failures of comics symbolism.

Me on why books don’t make you spiritual.

Ng Suat Tong on Li Kunwu and Philippe Ôtié’s A Chinese Life, and choosing stability over freedom.

Chris Gavaler on the Leftovers and an apocalypse without answers.

Kate Polak on J.P. Stassen’s Deogratias, Rwanda, and unethical empathy.

Roy T. Cook asks whether some panel layouts are superior to others (part of the PPP roundtable on Groensteen and page layout.)

Alex Buchet on the dangers of translation and the importance of accountability.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Pacific Standard I explain why, in addition to more strong female characters, we need fewer strong male characters.
 
Other Links

Jennifer Williams at Ms. on why Ferguson is a feminist issue.

David Masciotra on the latter-period Elvis.

Nicholas Jackson on why Pacific Standard doesn’t have comments.
 

images

Friendly Advice

Posted on by

tumblr_l5s5csE6lr1qc93qfo1_1280

 
This is part of the Gay Utopia project, originally published in 2007. It is reprinted by permission of EyeofSerpent, and may not be reproduced. A map of the Gay Utopia is here.

This is erotic fiction and NSFW in any way, so be warned.
_____________
 
Corelle D’Amber walked into my office without fanfare and I returned her firm handshake. Quick observations; she was average height with auburn hair that saw more sunshine than I expected, she seemed mid-thirties, but I knew she was ten years older than that, and she really knew how to dress. Suede pumps, silver bracelets that matched the design of her earrings, and a white carnation in her lapel. She was sporting a very nice charcoal suit with a tiny pearlescent pinstripe. The patch over her eye was exactly the same material as her suit, even to the extent that the pinstripe was neatly aligned with her jacket.

I put aside the instant recognition of a personality obsessed with detail. I was hoping for Ms. D’Amber’s help with this case. I just wouldn’t have time to get to know the woman that Forbes magazine called “the most successful entrepreneur since Edison.” She was a millionaire by thirty, a billionaire now. She could afford to indulge her own tastes.

I gestured, “Please take a seat, Ms. D’Amber. I’m so glad you could fit me into your schedule.”

“Thank you, doctor. When we spoke on the phone, you suggested that Mrs. Roth would sincerely benefit from my meeting with you to discuss her case.” She eased herself into the maroon leather chair.

To put her at ease, I sat in the twin to it rather than behind my desk. This was a woman who knew most business interaction from every angle. I didn’t make the mistake of thinking that establishing trust with her would be a matter of quickly pushing the right buttons. Just getting her here was a plus. “Ms. D’Amber, how much do you know about Alice’s situation?”

She didn’t bat an eye, “I’ve worked with her husband, Bill for nearly six months. I’ve met Alice many times on my trips into town. We’ve even gone to dinner together. I don’t know anything about why she’s seeing a psychiatrist. I’d be surprised if you were going to tell me. Client privacy and all that?”

Sharp. “Yes,” I smiled, “but Alice has also been to see two other psychiatrists by court order. I’m not sure what the court will do if a third one throws up their hands on her case. I’m hoping for some good news.”

That got her attention. I could see natural curiosity working away beneath her surprise; “No one has said anything to me. Bill never mentioned this. What crime has she committed?”

“Public indecency. Multiple counts. It’s not a serious crime, but the judge asked for a psychiatric review.” I watched her for a reaction. Most women were actually very conservative about things like this. Women who ‘broke the rules’ were first scorned by other women.

“Alice? Hard to believe. There must be some mistake.” She shook her head.

Good. At least she wasn’t blaming Alice. Now for the hard part. “No. There is no mistake. Alice even admits to flashing in situations where she hasn’t been caught. Ms. D’Amber, I asked you here to help because I’m sure Alice wants to stop. I’ve gotten her interested in changing her behavior. Part of that change involves asking for you to help her.”

Now she did look wary, “Why me? Why not you, you obviously don’t approve of this behavior?”

I laughed gently, “No. Of course I don’t approve. This sort of degrading attention-driven behavior is a cry for help. Even Alice is very embarrassed by how far she has taken this. Her family and friends are aware there is a problem, if not how serious it is. Her husband is nearly beside himself with the stress. Alice has chosen you, I think, because you are a role model, someone of impeccable taste. Someone who is used to making decisions. Someone she knows is a respected woman.”

“I still don’t understand what help I could be.” She didn’t look pleased. Her face was showing all the signs of ‘discussion closed’. She had a nice straightforward face, not pretty, but she could afford to take care of herself and she obviously had a sense for what worked for her. Simple. Almost an inner elegance. Just this short meeting and I could see why Alice had fixed on Corelle D’Amber as the matriarchal figure who’s permission and forgiveness she needed in order to stop her increasingly degrading activities.

D’Amber was the closest thing I had found in Alice’s mental landscape to an icon of authority. I was getting nowhere by myself.

That still made it awkward to discuss with a stranger. My planned response to Alice’s need was unconventional and my credibility was in jeopardy if it became known that I was trying to get at Alice’s fixation by exposing her case to an outsider. After months, of treating her, it seemed to me that I could crack her resistance to taking my help if I could enlist D’Amber on my side.

Alice always spoke of the woman with intense admiration.

I tried to complete the picture for the financier, “You really have to do very little. For instance, if you could meet Alice here during one of our sessions and tell her that you and I have talked things over and that we are in agreement as to how to proceed. That would leave you out of any of the treatment and give me the mandate in her mind to allow access to her motivation. Of course, none of this would ever be discussed outside this office. Your part would be simply validating my expertise with Alice.” I crossed my fingers. Cracking Alice Roth’s case after two specialists had failed would be quite a coup.

“I don’t think so, Dr. Rand.” She shook her head.

Damn. What else could I say to get her to see this? I had tried to make it as easy as possible. “Alice will be disappointed.” I put plenty of emotion in my voice.

Suddenly, her chin came up. “I doubt that. To summarize what you are proposing; you’re acting for the court to try and normalize Alice’s behavior so that her husband and society can respect her once more. Yet her only crime is transforming her sexual privacy into public record. You want to do this by having me lie to her about my faith in your judgment. You don’t know me or my character, yet you’re willing to have me act as your leverage against your patient. You’ve hit an obstacle and rather than hard work, you’re looking for an easy answer and a quick fix from a complete stranger. Having tricked Alice into believing that I agree with the court, you’ll ‘take over’ and make her behave like a good girl. I must say I’m insulted you would propose such a thing.” She gave me an edgy look. “You must be quite the stuck-up elitist prig.”

I gaped at her. The calm and articulate delivery belied the venom of the words. She was like a restrained viper. Dangerous. She kept going on.

“A woman wants to show her breasts and paternal law says she’s mentally deranged? What about freedom of expression? What about art? A husband ignores his wife’s sexual tension for years and a woman psychiatrist rewards that by proposing theatrical therapy that will deceive the patient? Where is your feeling for Alice, doctor? I can no more validate your expertise than you can understand what dark things Alice has dared to look at in herself. Alice is a level beyond you that you do not understand. You are a child by comparison. My advice is loosen up, Dr. Rand.”

That was more than enough, I stood up. D’Amber was a nut case and this was a mistake. Worse. She was making me angry. “I feel we don’t have anything else to talk about then Ms. D’Amber. I will cure Alice without your help. I’m sorry your own problems have never been addressed in therapy. I won’t see you out or thank you for your time. Good day.” I went behind my desk without looking at her.

“Wrong again, Dr. Rand. You and I aren’t done.” There was humor in her voice, I glanced at her.

She sat there like a queen, staring right at me. There was something in her good eye that looked disturbingly like clinical detachment. I used to practice that in my mirror when I was in college. Fine. I’d just handle her with something she could understand. “We’re more than done, Ms. D’Amber. If you don’t leave my office immediately I’ll call for building security. I’m sure you don’t want that.” My ground and my rules bitch.

She studied me as if I was an interesting case. “You’ll find that the phone is temporarily out of order.” She casually laced her fingers on the leather arm of the chair.

Oh my god. She really was a nut. I picked up the phone, “Sorry. I’m not bluffing.” I didn’t even call my receptionist, I dialed 911 directly. Then I realized the phone was dead. Sweat beaded on the back of my neck. How could that be?

I tried to get a dial tone once more. I didn’t want to lose any momentum, I hung up and walked around her to the door.

She was still looking at the diplomas behind my desk. “The door mechanism is jammed. It won’t turn. You’ll also find that Della has gone to the ladies room, so even if you screamed at the soundproof door, there isn’t anyone on the other side to hear you.”

I froze with my hand near the door lever. Megalomania? If I grabbed it and it didn’t turn, she wouldn’t be a nut. I was very afraid of what that meant. If it did turn, I’d run down the hall until I found someone. It wasn’t safe here at all. I was scared to do either. I surprised myself by calling for my secretary without looking away from the handle that was two inches from my fingers, “Della!”

No answer. Ohmygod.

I tried the lever. Jammed. It didn’t turn at all. Cold sweat broke out along my back. I shivered and pushed the fear down and away, turned around and put the door to my back. I swallowed to steady my voice, assume the worst, assume she was psychotic, manipulate that aspect, stroke her, “I think we have misunderstood each other. Let’s start over.”

She turned around in the seat, smiling. Her hand went up, lifted her eye patch, ohmygod! there was———–.

—-Sex. Slutty outrageous sex. Making a public scene. Wearing slutty strap CFM heels to work. I never imagined how hot it might be. How I could ache for sex. You have to flaunt it when you want it that bad. Hot. Sweating. My crotch was getting soaked. Uncomfortable. I flushed with embarrassment. Corelle was going to make me over and display me like a prize cow. Bell collar. Brand on my ass. Black finger nail polish. Fingers playing with my pussy. I felt powerless. Malleable. So weak. So hot. The only things I could think about were my nipples and twat. Ugh, that word. Slutty. Twat. Hated that word. The sweat trickled down under my breasts. Tits. Boobs. If I took a step, I’d orgasm and never stop. Submissive. She had ruined me. A beast. A smart woman reduced to a fuck machine. I would look like a whore. Hot. So hard to fight. Hypnosis can not make you do anything you would not do while—–

An hour later, I was sitting on my desk edge when Della walked in. She gasped and put both her hands over her eyes. “Dr. Rand, I’m so sorry. I should have knocked. I didn’t—-” She turned around and rushed out.

So damn hot. Strange. It was quite a rush. Silly girl should have knocked. I pulled my hand out of my pantyhose and licked my fingers. The smell was so strong. I didn’t care for the taste. Was I actually hotter because she had seen me? I pushed my skirt back down and stood up. The slick sensation made me feel strange. Why had she thought she could just waltz in here? This was embarrassing.

How was I going to explain this? Should I try? Damn. She had interrupted before I could get myself off. I was still horny as a—. Well. No matter.

I went and sat down and pulled out the file on Alice Roth. Just thinking about Alice suddenly made me hotter than before. That was strange.

I pulled my skirt up and pushed my hand down into my pantyhose and started fingering myself. I’d have to convince Alice she was sick without D’Amber’s help.

* * *

A week later, the day’s case load was finished and Della came in and told me Ms. D’Amber was in the waiting room. My feet were hurting from the white strap sandal heels I had been wearing and I wasn’t in the best mood. “She has a lot of nerve not calling after ignoring our appointment last week. I suppose you should send her in, Della.”

“Doctor?” Della looked baffled. “But she did—”

“Did what?” I looked at her raising my eyebrows. “Tell her to come in. You can go. I’ll lock up.”

“Yes, Dr. Rand.” She went back through the door. She certainly looked confused about something.

Corelle D’Amber walked into my office without fanfare and I returned her firm handshake. Quick observations; she was average height with auburn hair, she seemed mid-thirties, but I knew she was ten years older than that. I had done extensive research on her in my plan to get her to help me crack the Roth case. She knew how to dress. Black leather pumps, no jewelry of any kind, and a black silk dress. The patch over her eye was exactly the same material as her dress, it gleamed from the soft light outside the windows.

I put aside the odd reaction that I didn’t want to talk to her. For some reason, it really bothered me that she had skipped our earlier meeting. I really needed her help to make Alice’s case another feather in my cap. Alice. Damn, why did I think of sex every time that woman came to mind?

I gestured, “Please take a seat, Ms. D’Amber. I’m so glad you could fit me into your schedule.” Hmm. That was a little too cold.

“Thank you, doctor. When we spoke on the phone, you sounded a bit desperate.” She eased herself into the maroon leather chair.

I had started to sit across from her, but her calm description of me as ‘desperate’ floored me. What in the world was she talking about? Desperate? “I assure you, my concerns are for a friend of yours. Someone I hope you are interested in helping.” I sat on the edge of the desk instead, letting my superior height give me an edge in the conversation. D’Amber was watching me closely.

Sitting there. I realized I was wet. I was aroused, but something felt wrong.

She pointed at my feet with her chin. “Nice shoes. Quite daring to wear white after Halloween. Don’t they hurt your feet? They look so high.” She looked up at me. I shivered. Why did this seem dangerous? Why did I buy these shoes? They hurt. They looked like shoes a hooker would wear. I looked down at them. Dark red nail polish, white hose, white straps pinching my toes and four inch heels. Tramp. My pussy was even hotter.

I had to say something. “Thank you. I like to surprise people.” I didn’t want to talk about my slutty shoes. It was too damn embarrassing to trade fashion tips with a self-made millionaire. “They don’t hurt at all. Latest thing.” God. That sounded lame. What a bitch she was. Why was I on the defensive?

The embarrassment ran through me like a river of fire. My underarms were suddenly soaked. I was flushed. Impossibly, I was very aroused. Today was not the day to talk to a stranger about Alice’s degrading sexual kinks. “I’m sorry you didn’t call last week to let me know you wouldn’t be coming. I’m afraid that I wasn’t expecting you at all. It just seemed you had changed your mind about coming. Maybe we should do this another day.” There, that should get her out of here.

“About coming? But I did come.” She smiled. Sweat broke out on my thighs. Something was terribly wrong. I squeezed my legs together. I was wet. Horny. I realized I was rubbing my backside on the desk edge and stopped. I stared at her. She was doing something. Had done something to me. She was here to do it again. I reached around for the phone.

When I picked it up, there was no dial tone. Then I remembered Della coming in the office last week after Corelle had left and finding me with my hand buried in my twat. Oh, that word was vulgar. I groaned and my pussy gushed thinking about Della’s expression. She saw me masturbating.

“Why don’t you turn around, Dr. Rand? Or should I call you Bess? The phone isn’t working.”

I put it down. My heart was pounding. I looked for anything heavy on the desk that I could use as a weapon. With a start, I remembered the small revolver in the bottom desk drawer. I had to get around the other side of the desk, keep her talking. “What have you done to me? What are you?” I did manage to get around to the side of the desk.

“Well, I don’t think you could understand what I really am. All I’ve done to you is give you some friendly advice. You didn’t have any respect for the dark things we all carry around with us, Bess. You were using Alice to make your own career. I decided to let you look at your own darkness. Loosen up.”

Loosen up? I was halfway around the desk. Loosen? Loose. Tramp. Whore. I didn’t want to turn around. If I did something terrible would happen. I couldn’t remember what but I knew not to look at her. No one can hypnotize you to do things that you wouldn’t do while conscious. Horribly, I turned to stare at her against my will. She stood up and smiled. Her hand went up, lifted her eye patch, ohmygod! there was—–

—-ohmygod. I was such a two-faced prig. I loved my wet pussy. I could admit that. Slutty sex. Public sex. Dark sex. All those true confessions. All those exciting clinical examples. Wearing Come Fuck Me heels all day. Staring men. Staring women. Dressing cheap. So hot. Aching. Wet. Horny. I got down on my knees before her. I knew I shouldn’t. I wasn’t a cow. Licking pussy on command. I didn’t want to be milked. Hot. Sweating. My crotch was so slick. Can’t stop. Mistress was going to make me over and display me like a prize cow. Bell collar. Black brand on my ass. Black finger nail polish like hooves. Fingers pulling my nipples, my pussy. Milk me. Malleable. So very hot. I realized I was licking her feet. God, it was so hot. So embarrassing. How could I be so slutty? My breasts hung down like small udders. The sweat trickled down my breasts. Tits. Jugs. I came when she tugged my nipples. I was like an animal. I was a—–

A nice morning. Della stopped when she walked in the office. “Dr. Rand?”

I looked up from sorting the mail. “Yes?” She had a half-smile on her face. It wasn’t flattering on her.

“Nothing,” she shook her head, still smiling, “there was a special delivery waiting for you in the mail this morning. Marked personal.” She set it down and went back to her desk.

Why did Della smiling at me make me so horny? That didn’t make sense. I picked up the package. Return address was my own street address. That made no sense at all. So disturbing. I didn’t remember sending myself a package. I opened it up.

Oh. I took the bottle out of the plastic bubble wrap. Black pearl nail polish. The color was so awful. Mindless Goth girls swam into my mind’s eye, all copying each other’s look. I opened it and painted over one finger nail with four strokes. My nipples ached. The color was really quite awful. I did another nail to see if it would look better. I couldn’t stop there. It was so stark. I was getting hot, just thinking about how noticeable it would be. People would stare.

Later, I took off my black fishnets so I could do my toes. When I was done, I couldn’t imagine why Della hadn’t chanced to interrupt me. I felt disappointed. I started playing with myself.

Oh. That was good. Visions of swollen tits and nipples spraying milk came to mind.

* * *

A week later, Della came in and told me Ms. D’Amber was in the waiting room. I flushed and my nipples started aching. “Tell her I’m not here. She can’t make appointments that we agree to, I don’t have to see her whenever she chooses to appear. Send her away, Della.”

“Doctor?” Della looked at me like I was speaking Swahili, “She’s been here twice before. You’ve been acting strangely, too. Are the two things connected?”

“I have?” I looked at her raising my eyebrows. “Such as?”

“Dr. Rand.” She hesitated, “You’re dressing oddly.”

I felt my pussy steam and instantly become slick. Della was insulting me? Criticizing me? God, that turned me on. “What do you mean, oddly,” I husked. Why hadn’t I worn panties this morning? My crotch was soaked.

“You’re wearing black polish and fishnet body stockings. A lot of your new blouses are really sheer. Your skirts are shorter than mine and you used to tell me to watch that. You said I looked unprofessional when I wore short skirts.” She paused, then rushed ahead, “Doctor, you’re dressing like a—.”

I bit my lip and came. The orgasm was horribly intense. She was telling me I was dressing like a young slut.

Corelle D’Amber walked into my office without fanfare and stopped. I came again when I saw her. She was breathtaking. Commanding. Della started to say something else, D’Amber looked at her and she stopped trying.

I put aside the instant reaction that I wanted to rub my crotch on D’Amber’s toes. I wanted to lie down on the floor and have D’Amber work her high-heeled toe between my legs. I was having some kind of breakdown. For some reason, this woman was a dream of realized domination and I wanted her to own me. Preferably right in front of Della. I was so hot now, that I could feel my thighs getting wet.

I whispered, “I’m so glad you could fit me into your schedule, Ms. D’Amber.” Hmm. What would she do to me now? “Don’t go, Della.” I was of two minds, one wanted sex and the other couldn’t think.

D’Amber looked at me, then back to Della, “How do you like the new Dr. Rand?”

“Just fine, ma’am,” Della lied with a false smile on her face. I came again. Oh, the hot shame. I wanted it again and again.

D’Amber walked over to me. She gave me a wolf’s smile. Hungry. She wasn’t human, I realized. How had I ever thought she was a human being? She was something older and more terrible. “Bessy, I don’t think you could stand another treatment. You’re ready now. She reached into her purse and pulled out a collar with a heavy bell on it. She started putting it around my neck.

The orgasms ran up and down my legs, my back, my nipples were so hot, I started pulling on them myself. “Moo,” I whispered.

Mistress D’Amber stepped away. Della stared at me in shock, her mouth an open oval. That was too much, I came again. “Moooooooooo.” I groaned.

“Della?” asked the Mistress. Della tore her eyes from me and looked at her. I could have told her not to.

Well. If I had really wanted to. I’m sure I could have.

Della and I spent the afternoon in intensely heated sex. She punished me. She milked me and told me what a little cow I was. She worked my pussy and ass with a strap-on I had bought some days before. She suggested I get a boob job so my udders would have some real heft. Of course, I agreed.

Of course, I would pay for it. Yes, I loved being banged by my secretary. Oh yes, I’d love to do housework. Yes, I was such a stuck up bitch. Oh, god. Everything was layers of heat and shame.

I came and came and came. It was so awful it was glorious.

Afterwards, I gave her a big raise.

* * *

Corelle D’Amber walked into her office and placed her purse on the mahogany desktop. The phone rang then, as if it knew when its mistress had returned and it could now deliver up its function and help her conduct business.

She eased it up to her ear, “Corelle here,” direct and to the point.

“Alice,” she smiled broadly, “how good to hear from you. Did you get the release from Dr. Rand? Everything signed and sealed? Good. No. That’s great, sweetheart. Glad to do it.”

She listened for a long time. “I’m afraid that’s true, Alice. None of this would have been a problem if Bill had stuck by you. I’m glad you realize that. He hasn’t been fair. He’s put you through a lot of hell.”

She nodded.

“Yes. Of course. You name the time and I’ll be there.” She lowered her voice, “Alice, you’re making the right decision. See you soon, sweetheart.”

Corelle put the phone down gently. She reached to her cheek and adjusted her eyepatch.

Then she smiled.

Found in Translation

Posted on by
280px-Dürer-Hieronymus-im-Gehäus
Saint Jerome, the patron saint of translators; engraving by Albrecht Durer (1514)

In a recent article posted on the Hooded Utilitarian, Marc-Oliver Frisch had cause to quote the philosopher Theodore Adorno:

“Not only does democracy demand freedom of criticism and require critical impulses, it is effectively defined by criticism. […] The system of checks and balances, the two-way control of executive, legislature and judiciary, says as much as: that any one of these powers may exercise criticism upon another and thereby limit the despotism to which each of them, without any critical element, gravitates.” (Translation by me) [i.e. by Frisch]

In the comments, one “oh please oh please” (sic) posted a rather personal and acerbic reaction to Frisch’s article, containing the following statement:

In this way “Hater” is a useful term of art pointing to criticism as an act of status anxiety rather than engagement of the work (for example inserting a bland Adorno quote as a means of boasting one has translated it oneself).

Noah Berlatsky (editor of the site and comments moderator) rebuked the commenter for this charge of “boasting” thus:

Saying that Marc put in the Adorno quote just to say he translated it is really incredibly uncharitable. It’s also kind of ridiculous. There are just lots of people who read multiple languages; it’s not a big deal. If you think it’s a big deal, that’s kind of your problem. But in this context, it makes you look like you’re sloshing around in the status anxiety you’re claiming to combat, and also like you’re engaging in some knee-jerk anti-intellectualism.

I wholly agree with Noah here — multilinguism is common all over the world, in every class and at every level of education.  It’s quite normal, for example, in the Philippines to meet people fluent in four languages: Tagalog, Spanish, English, and whatever the local tongue or dialect is. There are probably more polyglots than monoglots in the world’s population.

In fact, truly snobbish behavior would have dictated that Frisch leave the quote untranslated in the original German. That was in fact the default practice for academic papers well into the 1960s and is not unknown today. (Until the ’50s Harvard University required that all entering students master Greek, Latin, French and German as a matter of course.)

But I’m not writing this article to revive an old dispute. That comment has bothered me for the past couple of months because it shows an ignorance of one of a translator’s most important duties: to be answerable.

I’ve been translating professionally for over thirty-five years — from English into French and vice-versa, with the occasional venture into Italian — to eke out my main living as a language teacher.  I’ve translated novels, plays, screenplays, comics; teachers’reports, lessons,  curricula vitae, memos, letters of intention, business articles; technical manuals, packaging graphics, powerpoint presentations; the oddest and most delightful commission being a painter’s prayer. In short, a bit of everything.

Translation is seldom thought of as a dangerous trade — but it is.

Imagine that I make a mistake in a manual for operating heavy machinery. For instance, I lazily translate ”metres” as ”yards” because the two measures of distance are approximately equal. As a result, a worker gets maimed or killed.

Or a medical treatment plan calls for semi-monthly (twice a month) checkups, and I render that as bi-monthly (every two months). You can imagine the grim outcome.

Legal documents offer particular landmines. Suppose a French company sends a letter of intention to an American one offering to take a 20% stake in it, and states that ‘eventuellement’ they will increase that stake to 100%. I foolishly translate ‘eventuellement’ as ‘eventually’. The American company now believes there’s a firm  takeover bid on the table. No: ‘eventuellement’ translates as ‘maybe’.  One can see  the possible catastrophe of litigation this misunderstanding could bring about, and the translator would quite rightly be held responsible — legally and financially.

It’s why legal translators and interpreters are almost universally certified and bonded specialists, and why general translators such as I will not touch such matter with a ten-foot-pole. (Well, I have overcome my caution a few times out of greed, but always with a disclaimer attached to the document.)

It’s true for criminal law, as well.  Many are the convictions that’ve been overturned on appeal because of incompetent courtroom interpretation.

Translation errors can even change history. It appears that Saddam Hussein erroneously thought he had American approval for his invasion of Kuwait because of an interpreter’s mistake. (For more famous translation errors, please go to this site.) 

And a famous translation error led to the doctrine of Jesus’ Virgin Birth.

In the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah 7:14, the coming of the Messiah is foretold thus:

Therefore the LORD Himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

(King James translation)

But in the original Hebrew text, the word “virgin” (betulah) is not used, rather “young woman” (almah).

Now, in the 3rd century BCE King Ptolemy II of Egypt commissioned the translation of the Hebrew sacred texts into Greek (the result being known as the Septuagint). And here the fateful error crept in: alemah was rendered into the Greek parthenos (virgin). A similar mistake would have been possible in English, where “maiden” originally meant a virgin woman, but through sense creep has come to mean simply young woman.

Four hundred or so years later appeared the Gospel of Matthew. It was written in Greek (the liga franca of the Middle East) and drew heavily on the Septuagint’s version of Isaiah:

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

(King James translation)

Yes, the old parthenos error had wormed into this Gospel. Hence the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, rejected by some, accepted by others, the source of so many wars, massacres of “heretics” and Inquisitions…  people were burnt at the stake because of a trivial translation mistake.

I trust you see what I’m getting at with regards to Frisch and Adorno. Translation is a serious business that can have serious consequences. It is therefore incumbent on every translator to sign his work — to accept accountability. Far from meriting scorn, Frisch is to be commended for intellectual rigor and responsibility.

Translators everywhere: own your work!

mary05
Not a virgin, but still super: Mary as seen by artist Soasig Chamaillard.

 

Are Some Panel Layouts Inherently Superior to Others? (Groensteen and Page Layout Roundtable)

Posted on by

This is the second installment in the PencilPanelPage roundtable on panel layout and Theirry Groensteen’s work (The System of Comics, Comics and Narration). Check out Adrielle Mitchell’s first installement in the series here!
 
ComicsNarrationIn Comics and Narration Thierry Groensteen introduces a four-part taxonomy by which we (or at least he) categorizes comics in terms of the nature and structure of panel layout. The taxonomy consists of different ways in which the payout of the panels might be more or less regular:

  1. Do all pages have the same panel layout (or are they all variations on a single such template, etc.)?
  2. Are all the tiers of panels on a particular page (or all the tiers in the comic, etc.) the same height?
  3. Are all the panels within a single tier (or all the panels on a page, or all the panels in the comic, etc.) the same width?
  4. What is the number of panels placed on each page (i.e. what is the density of the page)?

A page for which the answer to (2) and (3) is affirmative is a waffle-iron grid. Further, the more variation with respect to (2) and (3) found on a page, the more irregular the page. Factoring in (1), we also have a criterion for measuring (roughly) the regularity of the panel layout of an entire comic.

WaffleThe density of panels on a particular page – i.e. criterion (4) – while discussed at the same time as the first three criteria, is somewhat orthogonal to measuring the regularity of a page although variation in density from page to page obviously increases the irregularity of the comic in the relevant sense. Clearly, however, if the number of panels on a page varies from page to page, then as a matter of geometrical fact their layout must as well – thus, with regard to measuring regularity criterion (4) is redundant, subsumed under criterion (1).

This taxonomy is interesting, and allows us to categorize comics in terms of three distinct (although not completely independent) dimensions: the regularity of panel height (on a page), the regularity of panel width (in a tier or on a page), and the uniformity of these when considered page-to-page. Taxonomy is, of course, a wonderful tool for analysis and explanation, but a taxonomy is only as good as the explanation of, and analysis of, the relevant phenomena that it provides.

McCloudLayoutDigression: One pet peeve of mine is the tendency of scholar in the humanities – comics scholars definitely included – who propose taxonomies as if a system of categories is an intellectual end in and of itself (and as if they are following a more ‘scientific’ methodology). A taxonomy is a tool, however, not a result.

So, the obvious question is this: Are there any theoretical questions that can be answered by attending to the complex geometrical framework for analyzing comics panel layout provided by Groensteen? Groensteen seems to think so: he argues that, in general, the more regular the panel layout, the better the comic and its narrative (all else being equal). His argument for this claim is somewhat indirect – he identifies a regularity-eschewing ‘movement’ in comics, which he calls the neo-baroque and characterizes as preferring:

… the destructuring of the hyperframe by images that bleed off the edge of the page and intrusions into the gutter, the use of multiple insets, the maximization of the contrast between large background images and the inset panels, the vertical or horizontal elongation of panels (as if to achieve a shape as far removed from the square as possible!), and the frequent stacking of very narrow horizontal panels… (Comics and Narration p. 47).

Groensteen stridently disapproves of such strayings from the waffle-iron way of truth:

It is as if the simple succession of panels was no longer deemed sufficient to ensure the production of meaning: the apparatus must become more sophisticated (or more hysterical) by piling special effect upon special effect (Comics and Narration, p. 47).

It is worth noting that Groensteen’s complaints have a bit of a Euro-elitist tone to them: He explicitly blames the neo-baroque movement on the pernicious influence of manga (pp. 47, 61) and 1980s American superhero comics (p. 47, fn. 17, p. 61).

Setting this aside, however, it is worth asking whether Groensteen could be right: Are some panel layouts (and maximally regular waffle-iron grids in particular) better suited for effective narratives than others? There are two possible questions one could ask here:

  • In general, are comics better the more regular their panel layout?
  • If comics had to restrict itself to a single layout, would a more regular layout be better than a less regular one?

WareLayoutGroensteen seems to think the answer to the first question is affirmative, but I just can’t see how this could be the case. As many scholars have argued (and see the predecessor to this post by Adrielle for some evidence) panel layout can be carefully attuned to the type of story being told and the way in which the teller is telling it, resulting in narrative effects that are both theoretically interesting and likely unachievable by other, more ‘traditional’ means. Chris Ware’s work, for example, would be far less compelling had it been produced in a regular 3×3 grid (interestingly, Ware somehow gets a pass from Groensteen, despite his vast deviations from panel regularity in Groensteen’s sense.)

More promising, perhaps, is the second question (although it is not, I think, what Groensteen himself has in mind): If all comics had to be produced with the exact same panel layout, would a regular one be preferable? The answer here might be affirmative – it might be the case that a regular waffle-grid is neutral in a certain formal sense, so that it is amenable to functioning in all sorts of different narrative environments in a non-interfering manner (although the positive contributions of panel layout of the sort mentioned in the previous paragraph would be ruled out). Of course, certain metafictional comics that make direct use of panel layout would be impossible. But the second weaker claim regarding super-regular waffle grids does not seem immediately absurd in the way the first does.

So, are some panel layouts inherently superior to others?
 

Unethical Empathy: A Case for J.P. Stassen’s Deogratias

Posted on by

20 years ago, by the end of July, the genocide in Rwanda had ground slowly to a halt as the Rwandan Patriotic Front took control of all but a small margin of the country. I was only 12 years old, but had followed the news coming out of the tiny east African country with an interest bordering on obsession. The images were appalling: row after row of hastily constructed huts and tents, children not much older than me carrying water down dusty roads for miles, a rail-thin mother nursing her baby among piles of cloth. The piles of cloth resolved into human-shaped forms, but they didn’t move. These stood in stark contrast to the bright floral dresses and poufy hair of Christine Shelley, the Clinton administration’s State Department Spokesman, as she awkwardly avoided the “g-word.” Video crews passed through filthy camps, and on occasion, the news anchor warned viewers of upcoming “graphic footage,” usually a wide keloid scar, sometimes spread across a handsome young man’s cheek. It wasn’t until years later that I realized how ambivalent these images were: reporters had largely been dispatched to refugee camps in bordering Uganda and Zaire, where survivors were forced to live alongside those who had tried to kill them.

My experience of horror and pained sympathy was retrospectively unmoored from my ethical stance. I had no idea for whom I had felt, which felt very ominous. This prompted a more critical eye: “Who is being shown here? Where is their suffering coming from? To what end?” It also provoked suspicion of my emotions: “Who am I feeling for? And what is the point of feeling anyways?”

During my graduate program, I was reminded of the source of these questions during two key events. I was invited by my advisor and mentor Gary Weissman to TA a Literature of the Holocaust class, and rather than giving me the job most TAs are tasked with (grading mounds of papers), he insisted I co-teach the course. It was an honor I didn’t take lightly, and I spent weeks researching, trying to better understand how to frame debates about the representation of the Holocaust in an advanced classroom. The course went through works like Elie Weisel’s Night and Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, as well as Art Spieglman’s Maus. By the time we hit Maus, both Gary and I were frustrated (and occasionally unnerved) by some of the responses from students. As we plowed through midterm papers, we kept coming across a phrase again and again: “walking a mile in their shoes.” I’ll return to that in a moment.

The other key event, not long after TAing for Gary, was when the man who would become my husband handed me J.P. Stassen’s Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda, a fictional graphic novel following the title character through his lives in the pre- and post-genocide landscapes. In the era before the genocide, he is depicted as a normal young man: going to school, working, getting drunk, and attempting to woo two sisters. In the era afterward, he resembles the images of the refugees I had seen so many years before: torn, dirty shirt, dull, haunted eyes, slouching towards the hope of a bender. His search for urwagwa, a banana beer, is relentless, and only 26 pages into this 79 page work, Deogratias is rendered bestial, becoming a dog as he creeps on all fours through the landscape back to an open tin-roofed shack not quite the width of a bed. Moving back and forth between the present and the past with the title character’s memories as a sort of frame, readers are introduced to a small cast of characters. Deogratias is in love with two Tutsi sisters, Apollinaria and Benina, who are the daughters of Venetia, a local woman and sometime-prostitute. Apollinaria is the product of Venetia’s affair with Father Prior, a Catholic missionary, who is a mentor to Brother Philip. Brother Philip is new to Rwanda, and earnest in his desire to help. The French Sergeant is a more cynical character, as is Julius, an Interahamwe leader (the Interahamwe were the Hutu youth militias responsible for the bulk of killing during the genocide). More minor characters include Augustine, a man of the Twa ethnic group, and Bosco, a Rwandan Patriotic Front officer who has become a drunk after his work to help stop the genocide. Much of the graphic novel is devoted to “slices of life,” brief moments and short conversations that would be casual in any other context.

The Rwandan Genocide took place over 100 days in 1994, starting in April the day after a plane carrying President Habyarimana was shot down. While there was a plan in place in the government to slaughter all Tutsis, this was not a “top-down” genocide. As Mahmoud Mamdani discusses in When Victims Become Killers, the Rwandan Genocide was distinct from the Holocaust in part because a large proportion of the population took part in the killing. Between 600,000 and a million Tutsis were killed by a minimum of 200,000 genocidaires in a country of 11 million. While the differences are significant, it is also worth remarking on the similarities. The Rwandan Genocide was as “efficient” as the Holocaust. Unlike Western media representations of the violence, this was not “Africa as usual”. It was a tragedy that was the combined result of decades of colonial rule, Western reluctance to intervene in an area with few natural resources, racial enmities manipulated through the use of propaganda, French support of the genocidal government, a toothless U.N. Peacekeeping force, and many, many other factors.

Deogratias is not the first graphic novel to explore genocide, and certainly is not the most famous. That honor goes to Spiegelman’s landmark Maus, which explored his father’s experiences during the Holocaust and Spiegelman’s own difficulty with both his father and recounting his story. His visual conceit in this work employed a variety of animals (Jews as mice, Germans as cats, etc.) to highlight the factors of race, ethnicity, and nationality in the genocide. Maus is hyper-self-reflexive, Spiegelman frequently weaving scenes of his arguments with his father in the present day among illustrations of his father’s recollections. It is a powerful work interrogating racism, memory, intergenerational relationships, the effects of historical trauma on a family, and what it means to tell a story. As such, it is very “talky”—Spiegelman litters the page with questions and anecdotes, deftly balancing the textual and visual elements of the graphic form.

Deogratias, in contrast, is an intensely quiet graphic novel. The title character rarely speaks, and while we see the pre-genocide world partially through his memories, he never contextualizes them, or connects them to the silent, dirty man we see in the post-genocide era. The characters who speak in the pre-genocide era have relatively normal lives and normal concerns. The characters who speak in the post-genocide era carefully avoid any reference to the events of April-July 1994. What I find perhaps most important about Deogratias is the extent to which Stassen emphasizes the unreliability of images and the emotional responses they provoke in readers.

The comic opens with Deogratias staring blankly into an open-air café set in a hotel. A smiling white man hails him, inviting him to sit and drink. The man, later identified as a French sergeant, attempts to show Deogratias pictures from his recent tour of the gorilla preserves in Rwanda (among Rwanda’s only “natural resources”). One panel is entirely filled with these vacation photographs, so readers may assume that we are sharing Deogratias’s point-of-view, but the following panel reveals that in fact he is not looking at the photographs (see Figure 1). He is staring intently at the beer he is pouring into the glass, while the French sergeant looks briefly confused.
 

figure 1

Figure 1

 
At first glance, this would appear to be a relatively minor event in a graphic narrative about genocide, but in fact, it lays out the primary thesis: attempts to “see through the eyes” of those who went through the genocide are always partial, and are limited by the relative privilege of the reader.

This recalls what I found in the Literature of the Holocaust course while struggling to explain to students why “walking a mile in their shoes” was perhaps an inappropriate phrase. While we read novels and memoirs, the imaginative closure students experienced while attempting to envision what was being explained in the text prompted them to fantasize “seeing” the Holocaust. While not the worst use of the imagination—after all, we rely on texts to help us better understand the world—it also underscores an often-overlooked issue: to what extent is it ethical to create metaphors between one’s own experiences and situations of extremity?

Maus, because of its form, offered a corrective against the impulse to closely identify with experiences distant from our own positions of relatively safe U.S. citizens. When one looks at a panel, one is simultaneously invited to see through a window into the world and reminded that what they are seeing is mediated. Students were intensely interested in Maus, but were also able to see the characters’ experiences as distinct from their own lives and emotions.

Deogratias takes the ethical self-reflexivity inherent in the graphic narrative form and uses it to emphasize what the reader generally cannot see from their vantage point in the Global North. The tourism photographs of gorillas are the most common image out of Rwanda aside from those of the genocide, which, as I mentioned above, are often not properly images of Rwanda at all.

Stassen narrows this distance when depicting the pre-genocide era by showing scenes that could occur anywhere in the world. For example, Deogratias waits for Apollinaria outside of school, eager to present her with a comic book as a present. The large heart on the cover suggests its topic is romance, but when we look at the panels through Apollinaria’s perspective, we see a lonely woman on a couch, as well as the corner of a panel depicting an upset or disappointed man (see Figure 2).
 

figure 2

Figure 2

 
Deogratias asks her “if we could do the same things as in those stories?” at which point, Apollinaria rejects both the gift and the sentiment. The comic, meant to communicate his love for her, reveals the opposite; the page Apollinaria views shows abandonment and frustration. Immediately afterward, Deogratias is approached by Apollinaria’s sister Benina. Deogratias hides his tears, and promptly presents Benina with the same comic book. Unlike Apollinaria, Benina sees a scene of passionate kissing, overlain by the same question Deogratias had posed to her sister, which is more successful in this case (see Figure 3).
 

figure 3

Figure 3

 
As readers, we are prompted to connect with, if not identify with Deogratias. He is the main character, and while his intentions are not always pure, his actions are understandable; he is a teen trying to figure out his way in the world. In addition to the scene’s familiarity—many young men have struggled to woo young women with gifts—it is important to note the ambivalence of the images received by each sister. Neither sees “the whole picture,” wherein the comic depicts both suffering and passion, and only Benina sees the image that Deogratias intends.

In the post-genocide era, however, the reader watches Deogratias as the memories become too strong, and he physically transforms into a dog. The transformation recalls one of the most ominous aspects of post-genocide Rwanda. In Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, he recounts that “The nights were eerily quiet in Rwanda. After the birds fell silent, there were hardly even any animal sounds. I couldn’t understand it. Then I noticed the absence of dogs. What kind of country had no dogs?” (147). The RPF had killed them all because the dogs were eating the corpses.

Deogratias’s transformation is symbolically representative of the trauma undergone by the country. In his continued presence, he is a manifestation also of what is absent in the present day. Over the course of the comic, it becomes clear that not all of the characters we saw in the past have survived to today, but it remains unclear how precisely Deogratias escaped their fates. As a sympathetic Hutu who was intimately connected with a Tutsi family, he would have surely been one of the targets for the Interahamwe. Occasional stray references during the course of the comic suggest he may have been complicit, but at those moments, he retreats into happy memories. It is not until Brother Philip returns and sees Deogratias that the reader understands that Deogratias has been systematically poisoning all of those complicit in the genocide, from the French sergeant to Bosco to Julius.

In addition, Deogratias’s role in the genocide is revealed. In a scene from the genocide itself, the Interhamwe are depicted retreating to the Turquoise Zone. Augustine comes looking for Venetia, Apollinaria, and Benina, and Julius crudely describes the sisters’ rape and murder at the hands of Deogratias and others. The reader is left to wonder why he would be the protagonist.

Herein lies two major aspects of why Deogratias is an essential work. In the first place, it emphasizes how point-of-view in graphic narratives can provide important insights for what it is to “empathize” with images. As readers, we exist in a privileged space in relation to these characters: a space of safety wherein we can choose not to look. Furthermore, what we are shown when we choose to look is suspect as well, because what we see may be only partial. We may misinterpret it. Both the provisional nature of images and the chance of misinterpretation suggest that images can lead us to dangerous conclusions. In the case of the Rwandan Genocide, we conflated perpetrators with victims. We misrecognized the violence as something “naturally African,” something that happens in those places.

The second aspect Deogratias expertly negotiates is the extent to which the reader is allotted access to victim experience, and what victim experiences can be emotionally legible. By invoking empathetic identification with a perpetrator, to some extent Stassen is suggesting a broader complicity in the genocide than simply those hundreds of thousands that did the killing. At the end of the graphic novel, we see through Deogratias’s eyes as the bodies of Benina and Apollinaria are eaten by dogs (see Figure 4). In this moment, we are both visually identified with the culprit and are shown an image from the genocide itself—one considerably more extreme than we saw during those months in 1994.
 

figure 4

Figure 4

 
When readers in the Global North seek to “walk a mile in someone’s shoes,” it is perhaps an honest desire to understand experiences of extremity, but we rarely want to recognize where our paths lay in relation to the ones down which we vicariously traipse. Deogratias is a powerful precisely because it exposes us not to the subjective experiences of the victims, but to that of the perpetrator. I am not asserting that victims’ stories are unimportant. I am asserting that Deogratias reminds us that the object of our empathy may not be deserving of it, and that, perhaps more importantly, from our vantage point in relation to the Rwandan Genocide, we were considerably closer to the bystanders who did nothing than to the victims who suffered.

An Agnostic Apocalypse

Posted on by

watch-damon-lindelofs-hbo-pilot-for-the-leftovers-now

The end of the world is a comfort. Things have finally and definitively fallen apart, no more struggle, and, most importantly, all the Big Questions are answered. In literary terms, an apocalypse is a mystery novel. The word means “uncovering” or “unveiling,” the exegesis Sherlock Holmes performs at the close of every story. Religions promise big reveals in the afterlife, delivered on a first come first served basis, but an end-of-the-world apocalypse provides closure to all readers at once.

Sometimes the answers suck. The Walking Dead apocalypse reveals that God is dead, life is brutal, and death a mockery and negation of all human values. But that’s still an Answer. Mystery solved. Horror usually tips the opposite scale: the universe overflows with supernatural import. Sure, most of the supernatural forces want to flay and eat you, but even when they succeed, the stench of blood and brimstone is still comforting. You finally know what’s what—whether Buffy or the Winchester brothers swoop in at the last-minute or not.

But the biggest horror is an apocalypse that doesn’t reveal anything. That anti-Rapture, the ten-episode adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers, has been airing on HBO this summer. Although I’ve met Tom Perrotta (nice guy, drove him back to his hotel after his reading at UVA a few years ago), I have the blissful ignorance of having not read the novel. So I don’t know how season one will end, and based on ratings, season two is anything but a certainty.

leftovers book cover

That’s appropriate for a show about radical uncertainty. Left Behind, the book series Perrotta is at least partially lampooning, delivers the ur-apocalypse of Revelations, complete with an all-mysteries-solved Antichrist at the center of its plot. The Perrotta Apocalypse is way scarier. When 2% of the planet’s population pop out of existence, the leftover 98% are left without any answers. Dr. Who, in the form of Christopher Eccleston’s American-accented clergyman, says it wasn’t God. A three-year congressional report might as well be blank.

That abyss-deep level of not-knowing is too much for some people. Liv Tyler and Any Brenneman join a nihilistic cult of mute chain smokers hell-bent on proving life is worthless. Their evangelical pamphlets are literally blank. They are the show’s zombie horde: they stare at you blankly from the sidewalk outside your living room windows; they buy your church and paint its windows white; they stage protests at commemorations for your vanished loved ones; they break into your home and steal your family photos from their pictures frames.

At least zombies are accidental. Reanimated flesh-eating corpses are random byproducts of a random universe. Perrotta’s zombies choose meaninglessness, abandoning their families and severing all emotional ties and then terrorizing others into adopting their philosophy—while inwardly struggling to maintain it themselves. People secure in their nihilism wouldn’t bother to terrorize or recruit converts or take vows of silence—behaviors as inherently meaningless as all other behaviors.

But the cult is a fundamentalist church. Most non-apocalyptic atheists don’t congregate in the name of non-God. They have better, more meaningful things to do. But being leftover raises the stakes. When the bank forecloses on Eccleston’s church, he gambles the existence of God at a roulette table. But do three double-or-nothing wins equal divine intervention? Are those pigeons gray-feathered messengers of the Supernatural—or are they just brainless birds? Are the voices in the ex-sheriff’s head evidence of his schizophrenia—or did they send a very corporeal, tobacco-chewing hunter to help his son shoot packs of wild dogs? These and many other burning questions will not be answered next week, or any other week.

Perrotta’s teenagers at least know how to channel their universe’s amoral indifference into an app (in addition to “kiss” and “hug,” a game of spin-the-cellphone includes “punch” and “fuck”). They know the baby Jesus in the town’s Christmas display is just a mass consumer object–yet one so haunted with a residue of meaning that burning it isn’t as easy as stealing it. In this world of heightened uncertainty, even the disappearance of a nametag or a bag of dry cleaning or a bagel is enough to trigger existential crisis.

Although this agnostic apocalypse is Rapture-inspired, it reminds me more of Kurt Vonnegut’s brand of godless humanism. Vonnegut’s end-of-the-world revelations challenge basic assumptions of reality: water only freezes when cold, time moves in one direction, gravity is a constant, humans have free will. After a “timequake” causes years of predetermined repetition, humans find themselves suddenly at the metaphorical wheel again and are so unprepared they literally drive into each other. The Leftovers opens with a similar car wreck, a driverless car careening through a not-just-existential crossroads.

Vonnegut founds his own religions too. The Book of Bokonon announces that its teachings are lies, although useful ones, godly untruths that impose order on an unloving universe. Perrotta’s Guilty Remnant can’t cope with such abandonment and so their lies impose an uglier order. Their leader writes on her tablet: “There is no family.” It’s as true/false as any other religious claim. The “Lonesome No More” government in Vonnegut’s Slapstick randomly assigns the population middle names, providing everyone with an extensive family of siblings and cousins to care for them. It’s nonsense, but it also works. There might not be any Supernatural order to your life, but that doesn’t mean you have to act like a soulless zombie.

If that orderless order sounds too frightening for you, wait till October. The powers-that-be are giving the Left Behind franchise a second chance. Nicholas Cage will be our pilot through the end-of-days reboot.

I’d rather take my uncertain chances with The Leftovers.

Left_Behind_-_Teaser_Poster

 

Chinese Choices

Posted on by

A Chinese Life_0004

Li Kunwu and Philippe Ôtié’s A Chinese Life is the kind of book I would normally resist reading; the chief reason being it’s overly familiar subject matter.

For a period during the 80-90s, it seemed almost impossible to escape the Cultural Revolution Industry. These were the scar dramas which followed in the footsteps of the scar literature; the subject de jour once Deng Xiaoping pronounced that period between 1966 to 1976 as being “ten years of catastrophe” (shinian haojie). As far as the Western sphere is concerned, one should not underestimate the effect the commercial success of works like Jung Chang’s Wild Swans had on this era. For Chinese writers and filmmakers who had stories to tell and willing publishers and financiers, the Cultural Revolution soon became ten years ripe for cultural monetization.

As far as Chinese contemporary art is concerned, a collector once laughingly told me that Chinese artists had discovered that the key to financial success was to make art which is “political.” Not an approach alien to the professional writer who understands full well that controversy sells, but here made more acute by the Western preoccupation with China’s political woes almost to the exclusion of all else (anyone read any non-political Chinese literature lately?).

The 2012 Nobel Literature prize winner, Mo Yan, presents us with the opposite side of the coin. The disgust with which some Western-based China watchers and dissidents greeted his elevation to the ranks of the literary “elite” was largely based on his poor politics and only secondarily his lack of literary merit.  In short, he is perceived in some parts to be a party boot licker or at best a literary coward without a strong inclination to be exiled and imprisoned like a latter day Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or, more precisely, the Nobel Peace laureate, Liu Xiaobo. Mo Yan’s novels are in fact frequently political but not in the way favored by Western journalists and academics. He is, in fact, the wrong kind of Chinese novelist.

A Chinese Life is a bit late to the party and passed with minimal notice in the year of its publication. Its contents would appear to be of a piece with the literature and movies which have inundated the West since the opening of the Chinese market. As a comic, it is solidly mediocre, the kind of “worthy” book some would point to if questioned concerning the suitability of comics for adults. It does gain some gravitas from its roots in autobiography but, as always, the failure here lies in the lack of narrative imagination and literary beauty—as history, it is far too shallow; as a work of literature, plodding and unemotive. It was, in short, an absolute chore to get through and ranks as one of the worst things I’ve encountered concerning China’s late 20th century history.  The fault lies largely with Ôtié who fails to sculpt Li’s story into an engaging whole. All that remains is Li’s frequently interesting draftsmanship; he is a good artist undone by a poor storyteller.

If a reviewer like Rob Clough is made to wonder whether A Chinese Life is propaganda, it is simply the result of the largely unexamined and uninterrogated life which fills these pages—an approach which informs not only the third and final book of A Chinese Life (the one concerning modern China) but, for all intents and purposes, its entire length. If there is one exception to this rule, it would be Li’s thoughts on the “6/4” incident.

A Chinese Life_0001

 

A Chinese Life_0002

So what made me borrow and read this book? Well, it was this snippet from a review by Rob Clough:

 “The whole philosophy of the book is very much “the past is the past”…we once again go back to the Deng doctrine of “Development is our first priority”. As Li describes it, it’s the only priority.

This leads to an interstitial scene where Li and Otie argue about how best to present his view on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Otie stresses to him the importance of this event to Western readers, and Li is resistant, because he said that he wasn’t anywhere near Beijing, only listened to the reports on the radio and has no idea what actually happened. Because he “didn’t personally suffer”, it wasn’t something that was really part of his story like the Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward…He notes that while he understands that lives were lost and people suffered, he considered the event within the context of Chinese history. Essentially, he was tired of China being a whipping boy for foreign interests and invaders. He was tired of instability. He was tired of being behind the industrialized nations of the world. The most salient quote is “China needs order and stability. The rest is secondary.” The past is the past. Development is the first priority.

It’s a statement that makes a degree of sense within the context of a countryman who suffered during the prior youth revolution (indeed, some women in his story fear the events of the protests as the potential return of the Red Guard)…It is disappointing, however, to see an intelligent man like Li who fancies himself a moralist in rooting out corruption to simply toss aside human rights and freedoms as expendable when the corporate well-being of China is involved. It is a kind of moral compartmentalization that reeks of hypocrisy, the same kind of hypocrisy he faced (and was part of) during the Cultural Revolution. It values dogma (or progress) over humanity.”  [emphasis mine]

But what exactly does a word like a “progress” mean to a person like Li? His words are sparse, his actual intentions up for conjecture. When Li indicates that, “China needs order and stability. The rest is secondary,” should we take his words as those of a coward, a hypocrite, or one with little respect for “humanity?”  Can there in fact be any conception of human rights in a state without order and stability?

What can it mean for a man like Li to hear of distant reports of protesters being killed when the reports in earlier times had been those of war and cannibalism; the evidence before his eyes that of people dropping like flies by the wayside. The past clearly isn’t the past for Chinese citizens like Li. If anything, it thoroughly colors their perception of China’s present day fortunes.

A Chinese Life_0003

Two other reviews online arrive at the same point as Clough in the course of their largely positive reviews:

 “Li is far more a witness than a commentator. He declines to cover the events of Tiananmen Square because, he says, he wasn’t even there (but that scene with his co-writer Philippe Ôtié shows him wriggling apologetically to avoid it – it was obviously a bone of contention), and you won’t see Tibet mentioned once. He’s far prouder of what China has accomplished in thirty-five short years…”  Stephen at Page 45

“Although this 60 year story largely ignores China’s fragile relationship with Taiwan and Tibet and only briefly mentions Tiananmen square, Li acknowledges these weaknesses by openly accepting that this is a story of his life, a single man, and no single man lives through all the history of his entire country (he didn’t know anyone affected by Tiananmen and therefore had little to say).” Hardly Written

The reviews which accompanied the publication of A Chinese Life seem more useful in revealing the differing attitudes of readers (presumably) from the West and the mainland Chinese; for Li’s attitude towards the Tiananmen demonstrations are hardly novel and have been ennunciated periodically over the years by the Chinese people. On the other hand, it is all too clear that the Tiananmen Massacre is one of the central prisms through which the West understands China, in much the same way the word “Africa” conjures up images of war, famine, and disease for the casual reader.

These reviewers would appear to be readers who have grown up in stable and ordered societies while Li has actually been one of those deluded and disappointed revolutionaries; one who has been recurrently attracted to mass movements. These experiences have clearly allowed him to entertain doubts concerning received notions of what is best for China and what human beings need first and foremost. And in this instance at least, ideology has come in second best.

Progress and human rights may not be mutually exclusive but it seems obvious that Li views the democracy movement and potential revolution of June Fourth as detrimental to the former and, as a consequence, to the latter. The prescription which America has recommended and administered to its client states has been political freedom (this word used loosely) before economic freedom, while Li clearly believes that the reverse is the surer course towards true liberty—patiently awaiting the creation of an educated middle class more attuned to the demands of a democratic system and who will, hopefully, make greater demands for political expression. Such has been the course for the former dictatorships in South Korea and Taiwan as well as the authoritarian democracy of Singapore.

What is the objective of political freedom if not the happiness of its people? For many Chinese today, mere sustenance, attaining a first world lifestyle (for all its ills), and the well being of their family members come before notions of a democratically elected government, especially when that tarnished model of democracy, the United States government seems effectively little better than the authoritarian one they are currently experiencing. The rampant capitalism which is America’s true essence, on the other hand, seems rather worth emulating; greed being altogether more attractive as far as human nature is concerned. Liu Xiaobo is a poor thinker when it comes to the history of the Western powers but he affords a somewhat different perspective when it comes to China’s economic “rise”:

“The main beneficiaries of the miracle have been the power elite; the benefits for ordinary people are more like the leftovers at a banquet table. The regime stresses a “right to survival” as the most important of human rights, but the purpose of this…is to serve the financial interest of the power elite and the political stability of the regime… […]…an autocratic regime has hijacked the minds of the Chinese populace and has channeled its patriotic sentiments into a nationalistic craze this is producing a widespread blindness, loss of reason, and obliteration of universal values…The result is our people are infatuated more and more with fabricated myths: they look only at the prosperous side of China’s rise, not at the side where destitution and deterioration are visible…” [emphasis mine]

A recent survey by researchers at the University of Michigan indicates that China’s Gini coefficient for income inequality could be as high as 0.55 having recently surpassed that of the United States. According to a report from Peking University, China’s Gini coefficient for wealth inequality comes in at 0.73 which is slightly lower than that of the U.S.. If there are lessons being learnt from the West, it would appear to be all the wrong ones. Consider the words of Liu Xiaobo in “On Living with Dignity in China” and see if they might not also be applied to the America we all know and love:

“In a totalitarian state, the purpose of politics is power and power alone. The “nation” and its peoples are mentioned only to give an air of legitimacy to the application of power. The people accept this devalued existence, asking only to live from day to day…This has remained a constant for the Chinese, duped in the past by Communist hyperbole; and bribed in the present with promises of peace and prosperity. All along they have subsisted in an inhuman wasteland.”

[I should note here that the 2013 BBC Country Rating Poll suggests that the citizens of China and the United States have equal amounts of antipathy towards each other.]

A Chinese Life

Given a choice between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, the American public chose the lesser evil—the man who has delivered some change and only marginally more murder—the man with no moral center. It is not hard to see that Li might view his own choice in a similar light. And he is living with his choices as are the rest of the Chinese people. As I sit in the comfort of my home, in all my life not having suffered one day of hunger, repression, and fear as severe as those experienced by Li Kunwu through China’s turbulent 20th century, I am inclined to be more understanding and less judgmental.