Tag Archives: Noah

Utilitarian Review 7/25/15

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On HU

Featured Archive Post: Bert Stabler on Bloom County as the last realist comic strip.

Robert Stanley Martin with on sale dates for comics from mid 1944, including lots of Walt Kelly.

Chris Gavaler on Zorro, secret identities, and homosexuality.

Phillip Smith tries to figure out what cartoonist Brandon Graham is doing with the sex and 9/11 references. There’s a longish, interesting thread about porn and criticism and other issues, where Sarah Horrocks, Darryl Ayo, and other folks show up to chat.

Me on freelance pitching and how to get rejected while trying pretty hard.

Kate Polak on gun violence and the limits of empathy.

Jimmy Johnson on Mr. Monk and toxic masculinity.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Qz.com I wrote about

—why ending the drug war won’t address our incarceration problem.

—Southpaw and the dangers of masculine vulnerability.

At Vice I explained why Ant Man is white.

At the Guardian I wrote about the problems with the new Marvel hip hop variant covers.

At Playboy I wrote about

—Stephen Crane’s story The Monster, and white people writing about race.

—how nostalgia means the new Bloom County isn’t as good as the old Bloom County.

At Ravishly I wrote about Ant Man and shrinking men and women into their respective gender roles.

At Splice Today I wrote about

—why I’m glad blacklivesmatter protestors interrupted Bernie Sanders.

—my favorite albums at midyear.

The Shmoop study guide I worked on for Albee’s Zoo Story.

The Shmoop Study guide I worked on for Melville’s Piazza Tales.
 
Other Links

Shawn Pryor on Marvel’s hip hop variants.

James Kilgore on why anti-poverty and decarceration have to go together.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is good at politics.

Kathleen Gilles Seidel has put several books online for digital sales, including one of my favorites, “Again”.
 

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How To Get Rejected While Trying Pretty Hard

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Freelance has been somewhat kicking my butt this week, so I thought I’d reprint this piece, first published on Splice Today.
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The worst thing about freelancing is the constant rejection. No matter how battle-scarred and hard-hearted you are, it still sucks to have people constantly showing up in your inbox to tell you that your ideas aren’t good enough and also that they are not going to pay you. Like other writers, I would like to learn some secret formula — any secret formula — that would allow me to get to the point where only 40% of my pitches are rejected, rather than half of them or more. And so New York Times culture editor Adam Sternbergh has kindly attempted to help, by posting a series of tweets (some storified here, laters added here which explain just what editors are looking for in a pitch, and how you can make sure you don’t get pushed to the bottom of the electronic slush pile.

There’s only one problem. Sternbergh’s advice isn’t very good. In fact, based on my own experience as a freelancer who pitches constantly to outlets large, small, and in between, much of Sternbergh’s advice is largely useless, and in places its actively misleading.

Now, “largely useless” here does not mean “entirely useless.” In fact, if your goal is to pitch specifically to the New York Times culture section, Sternbergh has a bunch of detail that I’m sure would be valuable. Sternbergh says that he wants short pitches. He says he wants stories with characters and conflict, not ideas. He says that he doesn’t want to talk on the phone. Those are good, practical details about what Sternbergh wants, and if I ever get up the gumption to pitch him at the NYT, I’ll definitely keep them in mind.

But the conversation around Sternberghs’ suggestions (at the storify link for example) seems to be couched at least in part in general terms — not as a style guide for what the NYT in particular wants, but as advice for what editors more broadly want. And the problem here is that different editors want really different things. Most editors don’t want to talk to you on the phone, it’s true…but I’ve had some who did. Some editors may want short pitches, but others seem to like more detail. Some editors are looking for ideas, not stories — and in a lot of cases, ideas and stories are both really secondary to having a good news hook.

In fact, one of the most important things about freelancing is that there isn’t a formula. That’s the nature of the job. You’re working for a bunch of different clients, and pitching to a bunch of different outlets, and none of them will have the exact same procedures or expectations. This is a good thing to some degree, because it means that if your pitch gets rejected one place, it might be accepted somewhere else with different priorities. But it’s a frustrating thing too, because it means that you can’t get into a groove (or even a friendly rut) the way you can when you work for a single employer.

Sternbergh addresses this in a tweet from earlier this week, where he writes (https://twitter.com/sternbergh/status/474275132824096768) : “If you’re not sure if your idea is right for that magazine you shouldn’t be pitching that magazine. Not until you’re sure.” Again, there’s some truth to that; you should be at least somewhat familiar with the venues you write for. Pitch the story about the local Chicago arts show to the Chicago Reader, not to the Atlantic. Pitch the story about Chris Ware to the Comics Journal, not the Dissolve. That may seem somewhat obvious, but I know, for example, that the Comics Journal would sometimes get pitches about stand-up comedy — so if you do just a little research, you’re going to be ahead of at least some folks.

But Sternbergh’s broader point here seems like it’s designed not to help freelancers, but to make them despair. Sternbergh says that you should be “sure” your idea is right for a magazine before you pitch— but, again as someone who pitches all the time, the one thing I’m sure of is that you’re never sure. If I waited till I was sure something would work, I’d never pitch. Even with magazines I’ve worked with frequently, even with outlets I work with weekly, even with editors I talk to all the time, I still don’t know when a pitch will be accepted. I’ve had hope and a prayer pitches taken because they struck an editor’s fancy; I’ve had things I thought were certainties turned down. You can read a magazine, but you can’t read an editor’s mind — and even if you could, that still wouldn’t necessarily help you. I’ve had pieces turned down because the editor didn’t get a chance to look at the pitch until after the news hook went cold. I’ve had pieces turned down because the editor was over budget and just couldn’t afford to run them. I’ve had pieces turned down because they were too good a fit, and the editor already had something similar in the works. I’ve had pieces turned down because the editor I had a relationship with left, and the new editor just wasn’t that interested in my work. And so forth. There are as many reasons for rejection as there are pitches to reject. If you throw a ball into the air, gravity will bring it down. If you throw a pitch into the Internet, more likely than not it will come back to you with a “no”.

The ugly truth is that successful pitching often has less to do with the form of the pitch or how many paragraphs it’s got, and more to do with that somewhat humiliating ritual known as “networking”. But that’s hardly unique to freelancing; if you’re lucky enough to know someone who knows the right person, you can get past a lot of the hoops that are set up expressly to provide overworked employers/editors/whoever with some rubric for weeding people out. When you’re pitching cold without an introduction, there’s not much you can do but try to do due diligence, follow the submission instructions if any, give it your best shot, and cross your fingers. Nobody can tell you how to do more than that, because there’s nothing more than that to be done. And yes, that can be a little disheartening. But, on the other hand, at least you’ll know that getting rejected doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It just means you’re a freelancer. Welcome to the club.

Utilitarian Review 7/18/15

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News

Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews edited by Sarah Lightman won the Eisner for best scholarly book! I wrote a little blurb about Ariel Schrag for it, so I sort of not really just a little won an Eisner too. Below’s a pic of cartoonist Miriam Libicki (former HU writer!) and her daughter accepting the award.
 

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On HU

Featured Archie Post: Cartoonist Jason Overby vs. Godard.

Robert Stanley Martin provides on sale dates for comics from early 1944.

Kate Polak on Hannibal, Laura Kipnis, and power.

RM Rhods explains to Grant Morrison that Heavy Metal Magazine isn’t punk.

Chris Gavaler on the swampy Heap and his thingy off-shoots.

I wrote about Ta-Nehisi Coates and the way of white critics.

I wrote about the first appearance of John Stewart and black superheroes saving white self-esteem.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Playboy I reviewed Go Set a Watchman, which is kind of a racist piece of crap.

At Splice I wrote about the establishment media’s embarrassing response to TNC’s “Between the World and Me.

At Quartz I wrote about:

—how POC don’t talk in films, and why Her and American Hustle are awful.

—the tradition of anti-country country music.

At the Guardian I wrote about Wesley Chu’s Time Salvagers, a sci-fi novel that cobbles together old tropes into an uncertain future.

At the Reader I wrote a short review of fuzak folk band Little Tybee.
 
Other Links

Arielle Bernstein on Rihanna, Taylor Swift, and female revenge narratives.

Julia Serano on how pseudoscience harms trans women.

Dianna E. Anderson on bisexuality and Christian ethics.

Michael Sonmore on feminism and his open marriage.

Lux Alptraum on funding research on sex and sex workers.

The Ways of White Critics

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Why is it when critics confront the American as Negro they suddenly drop their advanced critical armament and revert with an air of confident superiority to quite primitive modes of analysis?”

—Ralph Ellison, “The World and the Jug”

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ latest book Between the World and Me has prompted the critical establishment to embarrass itself even more than is its wont. As I wrote earlier this week at Splice Today, the Economist and the NYT both wrote the same review of Coates’ book in which they flapped anxiously at his lack of respect for 9/11 firefighters and assured him that the world was getting better all the time because of nice establishment folks at the NYT and Economist, why oh why must he be so bitter? To follow that, Freddie de Boer spoke up for the anti-establishment establishment to insist that he did like Coates but only within limits—which is to say, he didn’t like him as much as he liked James Baldwin. DeBoer then went on to insist that the rest of the media overpraises Coates, thereby implying (in line with the anti-establishment establishment playbook) that he alone is telling it like it is and everyone else is blinded by something that sure sounds like liberal guilt, even though deBoer assures us that’s not what he means. (Posts are here and here.)

DeBoer on twitter suggested that objections to his minor critiques of Coates demonstrate his point—i.e., that Coates is overpraised. But I don’t think the resistance deBoer is meeting is because he criticized Coates. Because, as lots of folks have pointed out, there’s tons of criticism of Coates. Again, reviews in the NYT and Economist — two of the largest profile venues around—were both mixed to negative. There have also been a number of criticisms questioning his treatment of black women, notably Shani O. Hilton’s piece at Buzzfeed and a really remarkable essay by Brit Bennett at the New Yorker. I also saw Coates being taken to task in no uncertain terms earlier this week on twitter for alleged failures to reach out to black media with advanced review copies. The idea that Coates is somehow sacrosanct is simply nonsense. Though as Tressie McMillan Cottom pointed out on twitter, it might be easy to miss those critiques if you’re not reading, or considering the words of, any black writers.

And I think that’s really the frustrating thing about deBoer’s argument here. The discussion of Coates’ work, and the reception of it, is framed almost entirely in terms of the health and thought of a left which is figured as implicitly white. In an earlier piece on online media, for example, deBoer made a glancing sneer at folks who frequent Coates’ lovingly moderated comments section at the Atlantic. DeBoer characterized them as a “creepshow” and sneered that they were “asking [Coates] to forgive their sins.” I don’t know how to read that except as a suggestion that Coates’ commenters are actuated by white liberal guilt. Which assumes that none of the commenters are black. Which is a mighty big assumption to make, it seeems like.

Presumably deBoer would say that he wasn’t talking about all the commenters, just the creepshow white ones. But then, why are white commenters the only ones who get mentioned? Why is the criticism and the conversation always focused on white people? Why does a discussion of Coates’ work, turn, in deBoer’s second post, into an embarrassing paen to deBoer’s own righteous consistency? “They used to say I was leftier-than-thou, that I always wanted to be left-of-left. Now they say I’m anti-left. I guess that changed. But I didn’t change,” he declares. Coates’ book isn’t a chance to talk about Coates’ book. It’s not even a chance to respond to Coates’ criticism, exactly, since deBoer doesn’t directly acknowledge in his second piece that one of the people calling him out is Coates himself. Instead, the post is an opportunity for deBoer to declare himself, again, the one righteous man, stuck in the same righteous rut as ever.

I wish deBoer weren’t trapped in quite that impasse for various reasons, but the most relevant one here is that there really is a worthwhile discussion to be had about how white critics can, or should, approach black works of art. On the one hand, I think it’s important for white critics to engage with work by black artists because those works deserve serious consideration by everyone, of whatever color. Creators like Ta-Nehisi Coates, or Rihanna, or Jacob Lawrence, are not in some marginal genre, to be considered as footnotes. They’re at least as important as Harper Lee, or Madonna, or Picasso, and they should be treated as such by whoever happens to be sitting down at the keyboard.

But at the same time, when white critics write about black artists, they often bring with them a lot of presuppositions, and a lot of racism — both personal and structural. White people have been defining and criticizing black people for hundreds of years, and mostly that process has ended up with white people declaring, in one way or another, that black people aren’t human, not infrequently as a prelude to killing them. “Too often,” Ellison writes, “those with a facility for ideas find themselves in the councils of power representing me at the double distance of racial alienation and inexperience.” There’s a brutal, relevant history there that you have to think about before you as a non-black critic blithely insist a black author is too bitter, or start spiraling off at random to discuss your own career prospects.

Too easy praise can be as condescending as too easy sneering, of course. There’s no easy route to truth, though an awareness of the difficulty of the task should probably be balanced with the recognition that the trials of the white critic are not the most difficult trials ever devised. In any case, it’s worth keeping in mind, when that piece takes shape in your head, that out there in the world black people exist, who have been known to criticize black art themselves, and even, at times, white critics.

“So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.”

—Langston Hughes, “Theme From English B”

Utilitarian Review 7/11/15

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On HU

Featured Archive Post: Robert Jones, Jr. on why he gave up reading superhero comics.

Robert Stanley Martin on on-sale dates for comics in late 1943—Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, and Crockett Johnson.

Ken Derry on L. Frank Baum and genocide (or the lack therof) in Oz.

Chris Gavaler on H.G. Wells in thigh boots.

Donovan Grant on Superman fighting for Ferguson, and why it doesn’t work.

Nix 66 with thoughts on Bree Newsome and the nonexistence of the law.

Jimmy Johnson on how cop shows believe in black criminality even when they present white supremacists as villains.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Quartz I wrote about the doc Mama Sherpas and how midwives can lower national Cesarean rates.

At the Awl I wrote about Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home and how dystopia requires narrative, and vice versa.

At the New Republic I wrote about

—how Rihanna is a depoliticized Pam Grier.

—Self/Less and the dream of a rich guy everyman who will save us all.

At Playboy

—I reviewed Chauntelle Tibbs’ Exposed and discussed sociology and porn.

—I wrote about Miley, Captain America, Rihanna and how everybody is empowered by kicking someone else.

At Splice Today I wrote about the realness of country radio, and how poptimism will eat itself.

At the Reader I did a little review of Atlanta rapper Father
 
Other Links

Athletes allege racism at U of I, Urbana.

Jonathan Bernstein on how Obama’s been a crappy manager of the executive.

This is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ favorite review of his forthcoming book.

Indian studies scholar Andrea Smith responds to accusations that she has misrepresented her identity.

The Dissolve (where I wrote for a bit) has sadly gone out of business.
 

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Utilitarian Review 7/4/15

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On HU

Featured Archive Post: Our complete Joss Whedon roundtable.

Robert Stanley Martin with on sales dates of comics from June-August 1943, including Wonder Woman, Carl Barks, Plastic Man, and more.

Me on the fact that Joss Whedon doesn’t exist.

Phillip Smith on Indonesian comics’ representation of the May 1998 riots.

Kristian Williams compares Mad Max and Fury Road.

Me on how gay marriage changes marriage for everyone.

Chris Gavaler on Thomas Jefferson, the 4th of July, and zombies.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Playboy

— I wrote about The Wind Done Gone and why removing Confederate symbols matters.

—I argued that sex can be radical (or at least political)

At Vice I wrote about Terminator: Genysis and being colonized by robots.

At Splice Today I wrote about why David Brooks is confused about Robert E. Lee.
 
Other Links

Arthur Chu on Dollhouse as Whedon’s self-parody (inspired by our Whedon roundtable.)

Nix with an open letter to Meghan Murphy from the other side of feminism. (Nix says some kind things about me in the piece.)
 

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Gay Marriage for Straight People

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This was first published on Splice Today. I thought it seemed like an opportune moment to repost.
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A couple of days before North Carolina voted for officially sanctioned homophobia and Barack Obama voted against it, Maggie Gallagher recorded a video making the case that gay people marrying each other are a deadly threat to the institution of marriage.

I realize that many people disagree with me, but if you ask me why am I involved in this, it’s because the framing ideas of marriage are the most important and the most powerful thing about it, and you cannot get to same-sex marriage without denorming and changing and really transforming the basis of marriage in the public square. And I think it’s really frankly going to lead to a marriage that is weaker and weaker and less and less coherent… I think it is the end of the project of trying to revive marriage as a public institution.

For Gallagher, then, gay marriage threatens the “framing ideas of marriage.” She doesn’t quite say what those ideas are, but presumably they have something to do with marriage as a bond between one man and one woman, husband and wife, and (ideally) father and mother.

Folks like Andrew Sullivan (on whose blog Gallagher’s video appears) generally counter these arguments by arguing that, in fact, the “framing ideas of marriage” are not one man, one woman, and certainly not the rearing of children. Rather, marriage, they argue, is about love, not gender roles. From this perspective, gays and lesbians getting married doesn’t hurt the core principals of marriage. On the contrary, it solidifies them. That’s why, for Sullivan, gay marriage is a conservative movement. It simply includes gay people as equals in one of the organizing institutions of our society—an institution designed expressly to integrate individual love and relationships into society. Thus, for Sullivan, marriage is a way for gay people to learn from, and become like—the same as—straight people.

Here, for example, is Sullivan in 2008, reflecting on his own marriage.

The wedding occurred last August in Massachusetts in front of a small group of family and close friends. And in that group, I suddenly realized, it was the heterosexuals who knew what to do, who guided the gay couple and our friends into the rituals and rites of family. Ours was not, we realized, a different institution, after all, and we were not different kinds of people. In the doing of it, it was the same as my sister’s wedding and we were the same as my sister and brother-in-law. The strange, bewildering emotions of the moment, the cake and reception, the distracted children and weeping mothers, the morning’s butterflies and the night’s drunkenness: this was not a gay marriage; it was a marriage.

In a lot of ways, then, Sullivan and Gallagher, while diametrically opposed in their conclusions, are working from very similar presumptions. Both of them think that marriage, as it is, has fundamental principles, and both of them think that it is important to preserve these principles. Or, to put it another way, both of them think marriage is swell, and that it should keep on keeping on.

I like marriage too. I’ve been married 12 years, as a matter of fact. Marrying my wife was probably the single best decision I’ve made in my life; the only real competition is the decision we made to have our son. Moreover, as it happens, just a few weeks ago I got one of those online ordinations and was, as the theists says, blessed to preside over the wedding of two of my dearest friends. So… marriage. I’m for it.

I think, though, that it’s worth recognizing that, wonderful as marriage can be, it also has some serious downsides. If marriage can be the best thing in the world, then it can also be the worst. If you doubt it, I suggest you read Judith Herman and Lisa Hirschman’s 1981 book Father-Daughter Incest—undoubtedly one of the most depressing tomes I’ve ever read.

Herman and Hirschman reveal marriage as an institution not of love, but of dominance, cruelty, violence, and, above all, of rape. Moreover, they argue that rape is not an accidental, perverted result of traditional marriage—rather, it is the logical culmination. Through their work with incest victims, the authors conclude that father-daughter rape occurs most often not in perverse or abnormal marriages, but rather in hyper-normal ones.

Specifically, incest is most likely in families where the father takes the traditional role of a dominant, authoritative (not to mention authoritarian) patriarch. Incestuous fathers are generally competent workers, good providers, and respected in the community. Mothers in these families, on the other hand, are almost caricatures of feminine disempowerment. They often don’t work outside the home, and may be ill, depressed or exhausted; in large part because their husbands abuse them physically and emotionally.

According to Herman and Hirschman, the emphasis on traditional sex roles within marriage—a strong father little involved in child-rearing, a weak mother unable to effectively protect those in her care—leaves children vulnerable to rape. The father sees the daughter as essentially a perk of patriarchal power—patriarchal power the mother cannot effectively counter. The authors conclude, “As long as mothers and children are subordinated to the rule of fathers, such abuses will continue.” They add that this is a tragedy not just for children and mothers, but for fathers as well, who “As long as [they] retain their authoritarian role… cannot take part in the tasks or the rewards of parenthood.”

Of course, most marriages do not have much to do with the caricatured gender roles that Herman and Hirschman identify as typical of incestuous families. But still… those caricatured gender roles do have something to do with marriage. They are one distorted image of marriage’s essence—of marriage designed not as an outgrowth of love, but as an outgrowth of patriarchy and rigorously codified gender roles. Many radical queer activists have opposed gay marriage for just this reason. For them, marriage is, at its core, oppressive and inequitable.

I think they’re wrong—marriage isn’t inequitable at its core. But Sullivan and Gallagher are wrong, too, when they claim that the essence of marriage is beneficent. The truth is that marriage doesn’t have an essence, any more than it has a core. Certainly, marriage is an institution, but institutions aren’t immutable. They shape us, but we shape them, too. Marriage has been, and can still be, a way to oppress women, to enforce particular gender roles, and even to abuse and torture children. It has also been, and can still be, a way to link family and community in love.

Gallagher is correct when she suggests that gay marriage will change the institution of marriage. Marriage has, in the past, been about one man/one woman, just as Gallagher says; it’s been an assertion that gender and gender roles are as important as, or even more important than, what you feel in your heart.

Gay marriage is a final, absolute refutation of that logic. If two men can get married, or two women, then marriage must really be not about power, but about love. Gay marriage, then, is radical in the best sense, in that it offers equality and hope not just to gay people, but to children, women, and men of every orientation—even to Gallagher, resist it as she will. Gay marriage is not just about straight people accepting gays into our institutions. It’s about gay people teaching us what those institutions mean. The gay community has given straight people a lot over the years, but surely gay marriage is one of the greatest gifts it has offered us. Despite North Carolina, despite Maggie Gallagher, I still believe, as I believe in my marriage, that we will, someday, humble ourselves enough to be worthy of it.