May the Links Be With You

Posted on December 17, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, also Star Wars. So, what the hey, I thought I’d jump on the hype and do a little link list of my pieces on the franchise over the years.

Star Wars and the 4 Ways Science Fiction handles race.

Star Wars’ Original Scum-Caked Brilliance.

The Star Wars reboot and how Hollywood sci-fi doesn’t care about the future.

Slave Leia as uneasy sexual fantasy (about Han Solo)

Star Wars and a universe without women.

Star Wars and a universe with boring gender roles (or, let Octavia Butler write Star Wars)

Lupita Nyong’o, Star Wars, and keeping black actors off-screen

And, finally, why the Force Awakens will probably suck.

The Rhyming Dead (Analyzing Comics 101: Page Schemes)

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Chris Gavaler

The Walking Dead Volume 1 “Days Gone Bye” is anti-feminist, anti-government, pro-gun, libertarian fantasy propaganda. So pretty much my opposite on the political spectrum. And yet I teach it every year in my first-year writing seminar. It helps that it pairs so well with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (which is nihilistic, anti-everything fantasy propaganda). It helps even more that I like the Walking Dead TV show so much. I always assign open essay topics, so I get a range of gender critiques, pro-family analysis, and (my favorite) the meaning of Rick’s hat. That one requires a deeper level of visual analysis, and that’s what I want to focus on today.

On a previous blog, I laid out my thoughts on layout, and now I want to apply them a little more systematically to one specific comic: The Walking Dead #1 (October 2003) by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. I’ll work through the issue page-by-page first, then follow up with a page scheme analysis: how the layouts of separate pages combine for issue-wide effects. I’m working with the general principle that pages have base patterns, and when those patterns repeat, their pages relate at a formal level (they visually rhyme) and so the content of those pages are connected too.

PAGE 1:

Irregular 4-row layout, with top and bottom full-width panels. The bottom panel is also unframed and merges with the underlying page panel, giving it additional significance.

PAGES 2-3:

Full-page panel and a regular 3×3. Often a comic establishes a single base pattern, but the 3×3 contradicts the 4-row (and the implied 4×2) of page one. The full-page panel is ambiguous since it can divide into any layout pattern, and so it is an effective bridge between the two base patterns.

PAGES 4-5:

The irregular 3-row begins with 3 panels, but then switches to a 2-panel bottom row that breaks the 3×3 pattern established on the previous page. The next page is also a 3-row, but since the top, full-width panel could divide into three panels, I’d say the page is still using 3×3 as its implied base pattern.

PAGES 6-7:

Another full-page panel (on the left side of the spread like the full-page panel of page two, so the positioning rhymes as well) and another 3-row with a top, full-width panel that implies a 3×3 base pattern, same as page five (which was also on the right side of the page spread, so another positioning rhyme).

PAGES 8-9:

And here Moore and Kirkman completely break any base patterning. The bottom row would suit a 3×3, but the top two-thirds could suit an implied 4×2. The top two-thirds also shift to an irregular 2-column layout, with the first column combing three panels to establish the reading path for the paneled second column. The next page then switches back to an irregular 3-row. The top, full-width panel is unframed and merges with the underlying page panel which slowly darkens to black gutters, a motif continued on the next page.

PAGES 10-11:

Another atypical page, a 3-row but now with a bottom, 4-panel row, which is a new layout element. Like the preceding page, the top, full-width panel is unframed and merges with the page panel which darkens to black gutters again. The next page returns to a regular 3×3, same as page three.

PAGES 12-13:

A 3-row and implied 3×3, since both the top unframed full-width panel and the middle framed full-width panel would divide accordingly. The implied 3×3 is further suggested by the actual 3×3 of the facing page.

PAGES 14-15:

Atypical again. The bottom row partly evokes 3×3, but the panels are closer to half-page height, and they are also insets over the full-page panel image that dominates the top half of the page. The next page is an irregular 3-row, though now with a bottom, 4-panel row (as first seen on page ten).

PAGES 16-17:

Two irregular 3-row pages, with a total of three full-width panels, two 3-panel rows, and one 2-panel row. (That all black background at the bottom of 16 is interesting, but not part of today’s focus.)

PAGES 18-19:

More irregular 3-rows, with three 3-panel rows, two full-widths, and one 2-panel. The second page repeats the exact layout of pages five and seven, with a top, full-width implying the 3×3.

PAGES 20-21:

Two more 3-rows with an implied 3×3 base. The first page repeats page nineteen, seven, and five, and the second partially echoes page fourteen, though here the top two-thirds of the page fit a 3×3 pattern by combining two implied rows into a single unframed panel. Also the the bottom panels are insets over the full-page panel which darkens into black gutters–so close to page fourteen, but not an exact match, more of a slant rhyme.

PAGES 22-23:

The fifth iteration of an irregular 3-row with a 3×3-implying top full-width panel. The second page’s irregular 4-row also brings back the implied 4×4 of page one, now with black gutters.

PAGE 24:

Mostly an irregular 4-row, though the first panels of rows one and two are combined into a half-page column, the only column seen since page eight. This is also the sixth page to include black gutters.

So how does any of this combine into any meaningful analysis?

Since well over half of the pages (fourteen or fifteen depending on how you feel about page twenty-one) are irregular 3-rows, there’s a dominant base pattern. Eleven of those pages follow a flexible 3×3, and the two full-page panels can be added to that count too. Those two full-pages deserve special attention, rhyming the two formally largest moments in the narrative layout: Rick waking up for the first time after his apocalypse-triggering injury, and the first, apocalypse-signifying depiction of zombies. Pages fourteen and twenty-one are the next visually significant, with their top panels dominating more than half of their layouts: Rick being struck by a shovel, and a zombie appearing behind a fence. Frankly, the shovel shot seems a bit gratuitous to me since the moment is not that narratively important (a character-introducing misunderstanding patched up by the next page), but page twenty-one is key to Rick’s development since he learns not to waste a bullet by killing a zombie unnecessarily, setting up his character-defining mercy killing on the concluding pages. The two concluding pages also rhyme with page one, creating implied 4×2 bookends to the issue. The black gutter motif also begins on pages nine and ten, when the bicycling zombie is introduced, further linking to page twenty-one’s black gutters and harmless zombie.

So the page scheme shapes Rick’s character development in different ways than just the words and image content. There are other angles of interpretation available here (I’d tackle all of those top full-width panels next, or maybe those two brief columns on pages eight and twenty-four), but the point is that layout doesn’t simply transmit narrative. The formal qualities shape the narrative, adding meanings and relating moments that in terms of story alone are not directly linked.

Why Darth Vader is My Favorite Superhero

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Chris Gavaler

Okay, maybe not favorite, but as far as morally ambiguous asthmatic cyborgs go, Anakin Skywalker is at the very top.

If you doubt his superhero creds, do the checklist yourself. Superpowers? That lightsaber would be plenty, but he could also go head-to-baldhead with Professor X in a telekinetic wrestling match. Secret double identity? Vader/Skywalker is self-explanatory, and if it wasn’t a secret there’d be no Episode 5 shocker: “Luke, I’m your father!” Masked costume? Can’t get more masked than a grill-mouthed, aviator-lensed Samurai helmet. Plus he struts around in a cape.

Of course the main objection to Vader joining the Guardians of the Far Far Away Galaxy isn’t wardrobe or weapon related. It’s his mission: eradicate all Jedi knights, his Galaxy’s actual Guardians. In fact, it would seem to put him near the top of the supervillain roster, just under his evil mentor, Emperor Palpatine.

But Anakin was born with a larger mission: to bring balance to the universe. He is the highest manifestation of the Force, the immaculately conceived uber-child of the midi-cholorians, those symbiotic lifeforms that surge in the cells of all Jedis. In fact, he has the highest midi-cholorian blood count ever recorded, 20,000 per cell, eight times higher than the 2,500 of mere humans (yeah, I couldn’t stomach Episode One either).

So Anakin is the Chosen One, the guy foretold by ancient legend—basically King Arthur or a laser-wielding Jesus Christ. But what exactly does the prophecy mean? According to the Jedi, those evil Sith lords throw the Force off balance and so it’s a Jedi’s duty to battle them. Thus the Chosen One would “destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force.” Sounds good, but that’s not exactly the happy ending they got.

Episode Three wedges in the unfortunate phrase “the Jedi and then” between “destroy and “the Sith.” Does that mean the Force and its microscopic avatars are all metaphysical morons? Oops. Sorry about the annihilation of your entire Jedi Order. Our bad. Thanks for worshipping us though.

I think the Jedi read their prophecies through Jedi-tinted glasses. I think the Force was tired of them and the Sith see-sawing the universe on its back. A never-ending battle between good and evil is fun and all, but after 25,000 years maybe that Manichean match-up starts looking like the problem, not the solution. If war is the enemy, then all warriors, Sith and Jedi alike, are obstacles to peace.

So the Force took things into its microscopic hands, impregnated an unsuspecting slave woman, and released the biggest Force-wielding superhero of them all, letting him and his Sith boss slaughter every Jedi knight in existence, except for his first mentor who chops off three-quarters of his limbs while dunking him in a river of lava, after which his lying boss clamps him into a wheezing cyborg suit. That’s all in the fine print of the Chosen One job description.

Then the Force chills for a couple of decades, letting the Sith-administered Empire explode a few planets and whatnot, until the Chosen One gets around to offing mentor number two, plus himself in the lightning-discharging process, and so finally destroying the conveniently tiny two-guy Sith Order. End of all Force manifestations in the known universe. Balance Accomplished.

That is until the Empire of Disney assumed control of the Lucas Republic and released Darth Abrams on the Star Wars franchise. Episode Seven awakens the Force on December 18^th, overturning all of Anakin’s brutally hard work. The guy sacrificed everything for the greater good, and now that little punk son of his, Luke, has been rebuilding the damn Jedi order, throwing the Force off balance again? If I were a midi-cholorian, I’d be pretty pissed right now!

Although George Lucas originally said he had three trilogies in mind, he later admitted the third was less prophecy and more publicity. The catastrophically bad prequels were always more-or-less part of the implied backstory, but he just thought it sounded cool to say later sequels would parallel the actors’ actual ages. Thus Luke Skywalker and Mark Hamill are both 63 now. That’s adorable and all, but not exactly the premise for a three-film blockbuster extravaganza.

In other words, the Force and the creator of the Force both considered the story over. But director J. J. Abrams is a good choice for beating a dead sci-fi horse back to life. He yanked the Star Trek franchise back into existence too, even dragging the late Leonard Nimoy into his parallel continuum reboot. I expect no less from his reborn Star Wars.

Though I do hope he’s noticed that Mr. Hamill bears more than a little resemblance to Senator Palpatine these days. Could it be mere coincidence that the ex-Jedi has made a post-Star Wars career voicing animated supervillains, including that uber-Sith Lord, the Joker?

Sadly, the universe’s greatest superhero, Darth Vader, won’t be there to save the day again.

The Naked Tragedy

Posted on December 14, 2015 by Philip Smith

Podcasting is a fairly new form of media. It has precursors in the twentieth century, but has only existed in its current form over the last fifteen years. It resembles radio. Indeed, many professional podcasters work, or formerly worked, in radio and many podcasts are re-edits of radio broadcasts. Podcasts are quite different, though – many are financed through listener donations in addition to advertising, they exist in perpetuity, allowing for ‘binge’ listening, and their independent format means that they can feature content which would not be suitable for public radio. Perhaps most importantly, podcasts do not need to adhere to a set time limit, allowing for greater freedom in terms of broadcast length. By far the most noteworthy podcast of recent years has been Serial. I found Serial utterly compelling and, with the first episode of the new series having dropped, I want to unpack why.

In its most simple description, the first season of Serial was a true crime story. It is, in fact, two narratives – the story of a murder and ensuing trial, and the story of Sarah Koenig exploring that story. The very first words of Serial series one were ‘For the last year, I’ve spent every working day trying to figure out where a high school kid was for an hour after school one day in 1999– or if you want to get technical about it, and apparently I do, where a high school kid was for 21 minutes after school one day in 1999.’ She begins, in other words, not with her subject, but her own narrative. Accordingly, she begins not by interviewing the people involved but people from her own life. Koenig’s presence in the story as a substitute for the audience works wonderfully because she often voices the same thoughts as the listener and, unlike the author of fiction, the resolution of the story is equally unavailable to her as to the listener.

In some ways the story which unfolds resembles fiction; Koenig asserts of the first season ‘on paper, the case was like a Shakespearean mashup– young lovers from different worlds thwarting their families, secret assignations, jealousy, suspicion, and honor besmirched, the villain not a Moor exactly, but a Muslim all the same, and a final act of murderous revenge.’ In other ways, however, Serial is compelling because it captures the way in which real life stubbornly refuses to resemble fiction. In Arden of Faversham, another Elizabethan play, this time presenting a version of a real murder, the following is asserted;

Gentlemen, we hope you’ll pardon this naked tragedy,
Wherein no fil’d points are foisted in
To make it gracious to the ear or eye ;
For simple truth is gracious enough,
And needs no other points of glosing stuff.

True crime, in other words, is not beautiful. Serial bears out this assertion. In the new season Koenig begins by explaining (not apologizing for) the presence of microwave ‘bing’s, the sound of a dog scratching, and other intrusions of life in all of its imperfection. Often the voices are distorted, as is the case over Skype or other media. These signs of authenticity make the podcast all the more engrossing because we have a sense that what we are listening to has its own life beyond the narrative.

What ultimately made the first season of Serial work is that Koenig, brilliantly, presented within the murder story, two narratives. One where Adnan killed Hae Min Lee, and one where he did not. Both narratives involve versions of the same characters, and both narratives are entirely plausible, but only one can be true. Here, again, the refusal of life to work the same way as fiction is present – both narratives are flawed and subject to mistakes and lies. Facts are presented which contradict one another. As the story grows, like a good detective story, the possibility of resolution apparently becomes more remote, except, in this version, when we reach the final chapter all we have is a fascinating mess, because, as we know from Arden of Faversham, a true naked tragedy is not beautiful.

Utilitarian Review 12/11/15

Posted on December 12, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Mahendra Singh on the draftsmanship of Jeffrey Catherine Jones.

Chris Gavaler on analyzing comics layout.

Me on why writing for hire isn’t spiritual debasement.

Me on Robocop 2 and the joy of hating children.

Roy T. Cook tries to tell Indiana Jones from Harrison Ford.

Robert Stanley Martin with on sale dates of comics from the end of 1950, including the first graphic novel ever.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Guardian I :

—interviewed William Richards on his new book about psychedlics and spiritual experience.

—wrote about Lex Luthor, Jr, and corporate fan fiction.

At the Establishment I wrote about my son’s acting career and the myth of meritocracy.

At Splice Today I wrote about

—Project Runway and how people suck and friends don’t win.

—why Trump is not the future.

Other Links

Mistress Matisse on the James Deen accusations and how the law doesn’t care about sex workers.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on hope, or lack thereof.

Neil Drumming on diversity on Project Runway.

Two Puzzles About Photographic Fiction

Posted on December 10, 2015 by Roy T. Cook

By a photographic fiction I mean any work of fiction where at least part of the narrative is communicated to the audience via photography of some sort. The most obvious example of photographic fiction is live action cinema, although photocomics are another kind of photographic fiction that will be of great interest to typical PencilPanelPage readers.

Now, one natural thought we might have about photographic fictions, as opposed to non-photographic fictions, is that the characters in these stories appear exactly as they are depicted in the photographs that partially or completely make up the fiction. As a result, we might be tempted to accept the following two claims:

In A New Hope, Han Solo’s fictional appearance (e.g. what he looks like when other characters see him, and how we are to imagine him appearing when we are experiencing the fiction) is the same as Harrison Ford’s actual appearance.
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones’ fictional appearance (e.g. what he looks like when other characters see him, and how we are to imagine him appearing when we are experiencing the fiction) is the same as Harrison Ford’s actual appearance.

But now consider the ten-page comic titled “Into the Great Unknown”. “Into the Great Unknown” appears in issue #19 of the anthology comic Star Wars Tales. In this story Han Solo and Chewbacca crash the Millenium Falcon in a forest on an unknown planet after a blind hyperspace jump. The Falcon is irreparable, and Han is eventually killed by the locals (who turn out to be late 18th century inhabitants of the Portland area). More than a century later the wreckage of the Falcon is discovered by – wait for it – Indiana Jones, with Chewbacca, who is now also Sasquatch, observing from afar.

Now, even though the stories in Star Wars Tales are explicitly non-canonical (in virtue of a framing story we need not get into), it still seems that the following are plausible constraints on a proper interpretation of this story:

Everything fictionally true of Han Solo in the canonical Star Wars fiction is also true of Han Solo in the imaginary/non-canonical story “Into the Great Unknown”.
Everything fictionally true of Indiana Jones in the canonical Raiders of the Lost Ark fiction is also true of Indiana Jones in the imaginary/non-canonical story “Into the Great Unknown”.

Note that we don’t, of course, want to accept the converses of these statements – that’s the upshot of the story being non-canonical.

But if all of this is right, then it would seem to follow that, when interpreting “Into the Great Unknown”, we should accept the following:

In “Into the Great Unknown”, Han Solo’s fictional appearance is the same as Harrison Ford’s actual appearance.
In “Into the Great Unknown”, Indian Jones’ fictional appearance is the same as Harrison Ford’s actual appearance.

But these, in turn, imply:

In “Into the Great Unknown”, Han Solo and Indiana Jones are identical in appearance.

And surely this is not something we are meant to imagine to be true in the story. Of course, the story is in some sense meant to make us metafictionally ponder the role that appearance and actor identity plays in the nature of fiction. But it would be a mistake to assume, within the fictional world portrayed by this ten page comic, that Chewbacca is immensely confused when Indiana Jones appears on the scene, since Indy looks exactly like his old, now dead friend Han Solo. Wouldn’t it?

Actually, things are even a bit more complicated than this. The above discussion assumed that the photographs that provide much of the content of A New Hope (or Raiders of the Lost Ark) provide us with accurate, objective, reliable information regarding Han Solo’s appearance (or Indiana Jones’ appearance) in virtue of providing us with accurate, objective, reliable information about Harrison Ford’s appearance. But this is too simple. Even if we accept the controversial claim that, when viewing a photograph, we genuinely see the objects depicted in the photograph, this does not mean that we see such objects as they truly are in the world. This point is nicely emphasized by Susan Sontag in her influential On Photography:

But despite the presumption of veracity that gives all photographs authority, interest, seductiveness, the work that photographers do is no generic exception to the usually shady commerce between art and truth. Even when photographers are most concerned with mirroring reality, they are still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and conscience… In deciding how a picture should look, in preferring one exposure to another, photographers are always imposing standards on their subjects. Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings or drawings are. (1971: 6-7)

In other words, when we look at a photograph of Harrison Ford, we don’t see Harrison Ford as he actually appeared when photographed, but instead see Harrison Ford as mediated through the stylistic, technical, and aesthetics choices of the photographer.

Nevertheless, it does seem like we are meant to take the photographs that appear in photographic fictions to be unmediated and (all else being equal) accurate depictions of the fictional characters being depicted. Thus, when viewing Star Wars, we are being shown Harrison Ford’s appearance as mediated by the aesthetic/technical/stylistic choices of Gilbert Taylor (A New Hope‘s cinematographer) and others, but we are being shown Han Solo as he really appears within the fiction. In other words, the various interpretational choices made by Taylor and others interfere with our direct access to what Harrison Ford looked like at the exact moment he was photographed, but those same choices are partially constitutive of what Han Solo looks like during the fictional events depicted by those same photographs. In short, the information these photographs provide regarding the appearance of the fictional characters depicted in the films is more reliable than the information the same photographs provide regarding the appearance of the actors who play those characters.

But this makes the situation even more puzzling than before. First off, it seems like we still ought to accept:

In “Into the Great Unknown”, Han Solo and Indiana Jones are identical (or nearly identical) in appearance.

since the photographs that provide us with canonical information regarding the appearance of both of these characters do depict these characters as having identical, or nearly identical, appearances. But we need not accept that:

In “Into the Great Unknown”, Han Solo looks exactly like Harrison Ford.
In “Into the Great Unknown”, Indiana Jones looks exactly like Harrison Ford.

We’ve already seen the reason: Our information regarding the fictional appearance of Harrison Ford is always mediated via the choices made by the photographer. In short, Han Solo looks just like Indiana Jones, but this is compatible with it turning out that neither of them looks very much like Harrison Ford (although they will both look very much like the relevant photographs of Harrison Ford). And this is just plain weird.

Robocop vs. Your Offspring

Posted on December 9, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

This post is one of my Twisted Mass of Heterotopia columns, supported by my Patreon subscribers. If you think it’s the sort of thing you’d like me to write more of, consider contributing (and thank you!)
________

Robocop 2 was mostly, and not wrongly, ignored when it came out in 1990, but it did manage to spark a smidgen of controversy. One of its major villains was Hob, played by Gabriel Damon, who would have been 13 during filming and looked like he could easily have been a year or two younger. Hob curses foully, dispenses narcotics, attempts murder, and watched vicious bloodletting while barely blinking an eye. Then he dies in a sentimental, tearful scene clutching Robocops hand.

Critics were appalled. “The use of that killer child is beneath contempt,” Roger Ebert declared. David Nusair added, “That the film asks us to swallow a moment late in the story that features Robo taking pity on an injured Hob is heavy-handed and ridiculous (we should probably be thankful the screenwriters didn’t have Robocop say something like, “look at what these vile drugs have done to this innocent boy”).”

Ebert and Nusair aren’t exactly wrong. Robocop 2’s use of Hob is both gratuitous and cynical. Hob doesn’t need to be a child; everything he does could just as easily been given to an adult actor. There’s no effort to explain what a 13 year old is doing in the drug business, either. As far as the script is concerned, Hob is played by a 13 year old purely because it’s shocking to have him played by a 13 year old. It’s pure exploitation of a minor. Who can blame the critics for recoiling?

Still…I love Hob. I love him precisely because his presence in the film is so utterly, bracingly cynical. For most of the film, he embodies our hyperbolic fear and hatred of children; the preposterous inflated fear of a new generation of cynical pre-teen superpredators, the jaded youth terrifyingly familiar with vice. And then, in his death scene, when he’s no longer a threat, he becomes the perfect, heart-tugging victim. The film’s view of Hob turns on a needle from paranoia to pathos; from loathing to sentimental catharsis. There’s no attempt at connective tissue; no effort to make Hob a character beyond the tropes. He’s just Childhood Monster or Childhood Victim. There’s not even a pretense that he’s anything else.

I don’t know whether Hob is intentional satire, gleeful hyperbole, or sincere fever dream. Probably a little of all of those, if the scene with the pre-teen Little League team and their coach robbing a store is any indication. But whatever the motivation, the result comes across like a sardonic, giggling sneer at every Hollywood film that has ever whipped up moral panic about teens, or dropped a dead child onto its protagonist in the name of Real Emotion. From the bad news kids breaking jazz records in Blackboard Jungle to the kidnapped youngster motivating a tearful Tom Cruise in Minority Report, all the children on screen, everywhere, start to look like Hob. And suddenly you wonder, do we even care about these kids? Or do we just get our kicks by pretending that they’re nightmare demons, innocent angels, and/or both at once?

Roger Ebert adored Minority Report, dead kid and all, and Millenial think pieces continue to dot the Internet. If you use racial or gendered or homopohobic stereotypes, there’s at least a decent chance someone will point them out. But kids aren’t seen as a marginalized group, and tropes around them aren’t seen as invidious, or just aren’t seen at all. Kids really are innocent victims, right? Or else they really are dead-souled thugs in training who need to get off my lawn.

Robocop 2, though, takes up the difficult task of exploiting childhood so blatantly that you can’t look past it, even if you’re determined to set your eyeline a foot over Hob’s head. Robocop 2 presents a dystopic future in which we hate and fear and condescend to children, just like we do now, just with a little less hypocrisy.

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon