Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Feiffer Again
I found Jules Feiffer quotable in an earlier post; I've just finished re-reading his The Great Comic Book Heroes, (Fantagraphics, 2003; orig. pub. 1965), and here are some more:
Comic books, first of all, are junk. ... [E]ducation is not the purpose of junk. Junk is there to entertain on the basest, most compromised of levels. It finds the lowest fantasmal common denominator and proceeds from there. ... [C]ertainly ... a good many of their readers ..., when challenged, will say defiantly: "I know it's junk, but I like it." Which is the whole point about junk. It is there to be nothing else but liked. Junk is a second-class citizen of the arts: a status of which we are constantly aware. There are certain inherent privileges in second-class citizenship. Irresponsibility is one. Not being taken seriously is another. Junk, like the drunk at the wedding, can get away with doing or saying anything because, by its very appearance, it is already in disgrace. It has no one's respect to lose; no image to endanger. Its values are the least middle class of all the mass media. That's why it is needed so.
The success of the best junk lies in its ability to come close, but not too close; to titillate without touching us. To arouse without giving satisfaction. Junk is a tease; and in the years when the most we need is teasing we cherish it--in later years when teasing no longer satisfies we graduate, hopefully, into better things or, haplessly, into pathetic and sometimes violent attempts to make the teasing come true.
There is a positive side to comic books that more than makes up for their much publicized antisocial influence. That is: their underground antisocial influence.(73-4) [W]ithin [a] shifting hodgepodge of external pressures, a child, simply to save his sanity, must go underground. Have a place to hide where he cannot be got at by grownups. A place that implies, if only obliquely, that they're not so much; that they don't know everything; that they can't fly the way some people can ... or beat up whoever picks on them... (77)
Comic books, which had few public ... defenders in the days when Dr. Wertham was attacking them, are now looked back on by an increasing number of my generation as samples of our youthful innocence instead of our youthful corruption. A sign, perhaps, of the potency of that corruption. A corruption - a lie, really - that put us in charge, however temporarily, of the world in which we lived and gave us the means, however arbitrary, of defining right from wrong, good from bad, hero from villain. It is something for which old fans can understandably pine - almost as if having become overly conscious of the imposition of junk on our adult values: on our architecture, ... our advertising, our mass media, our politics - we have staged a retreat to a better remembered brand of junk. A junk that knew its place was underground where it had no power and only titillated, rather than above ground where it truly has power - and thus, only depresses. (78)
I think Feiffer's word "junk" is too denigratory and strong to describe comic art; ephemera works better for me. However, portions of Feiffer's analysis mirror mine, here.
So my questions are:
Is it quixotic for us to even expect comic books to provide acceptable depictions of the female body, the male body, human relationships and sexuality, and the state of the universe?
Are Feiffer's observations gendered? Do they hold for girls/women as well as they do for boys/men?
Are Feiffer's observations generationally bound? Do they hold for old fogeys, but evaporate for today's young readers?
When Feiffer first wrote (in 1965), many more comics were in circulation each month. How has the shrinking of the market-base effected the utility of his insights?
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Is it quixotic for us to even expect comic books to provide acceptable depictions of the female body, the male body, human relationships and sexuality, and the state of the universe?
If that were so, then it would be idealistic to expect this of almost any media. And, I do expect this. I have to, because if I didn't then the world would be quite the marginalizing experience.
So maybe, the answer is "yes." Doesn't mean I'll stop trying - the status quo is boring. ;)
Are Feiffer's observations gendered? Do they hold for girls/women as well as they do for boys/men?
I'm not sure which aspect of his observations you are referring to - but, in general, I found his thoughts to be universal. At the least, they were something I recognized.
This part I found interesting:
The success of the best junk lies in its ability to come close, but not too close; to titillate without touching us. To arouse without giving satisfaction. Junk is a tease; and in the years when the most we need is teasing we cherish it--in later years when teasing no longer satisfies we graduate, hopefully, into better things or, haplessly, into pathetic and sometimes violent attempts to make the teasing come true.
Recently, I have struggled around the loss of an idealistic view on the world. I grew up thinking there must be a PURPOSE to life, and I've had to restructure that thinking. I find the idea of "violent attempts" especially intriguing. I definitely know many people, including myself, who have experienced this shift into grit and reality as a violent reorienting of self. Comics might have some connection to the building of an idealistic life view.
Are Feiffer's observations generationally bound? Do they hold for old fogeys, but evaporate for today's young readers?
If you mean do the younger generation not feel this way? Well...the medium changes, but I think his observations are a common thread.
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If that were so, then it would be idealistic to expect this of almost any media. And, I do expect this. I have to, because if I didn't then the world would be quite the marginalizing experience.
So maybe, the answer is "yes." Doesn't mean I'll stop trying - the status quo is boring. ;)
Are Feiffer's observations gendered? Do they hold for girls/women as well as they do for boys/men?
I'm not sure which aspect of his observations you are referring to - but, in general, I found his thoughts to be universal. At the least, they were something I recognized.
This part I found interesting:
The success of the best junk lies in its ability to come close, but not too close; to titillate without touching us. To arouse without giving satisfaction. Junk is a tease; and in the years when the most we need is teasing we cherish it--in later years when teasing no longer satisfies we graduate, hopefully, into better things or, haplessly, into pathetic and sometimes violent attempts to make the teasing come true.
Recently, I have struggled around the loss of an idealistic view on the world. I grew up thinking there must be a PURPOSE to life, and I've had to restructure that thinking. I find the idea of "violent attempts" especially intriguing. I definitely know many people, including myself, who have experienced this shift into grit and reality as a violent reorienting of self. Comics might have some connection to the building of an idealistic life view.
Are Feiffer's observations generationally bound? Do they hold for old fogeys, but evaporate for today's young readers?
If you mean do the younger generation not feel this way? Well...the medium changes, but I think his observations are a common thread.
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# posted by 
: 3:20 AM
: 3:20 AM
Thanks for your comments, Nida!
I appreciate your thoughts and perspective.
It's interesting that the issue of violence, darkness, and idealism in comics was recently addressed in a DCU editiorial panel at the WonderCon; newsarama.com provides a summary:
When answering a question about what, editorially, the goal of Crisis is in an editorial sense, rather than a storytelling sense, Waid said that Infinite Crisis doesn’t have to do with specifically fixing anything that’s ‘wrong,’ rather, everything moves in cycles. As the writer further explained, DC books have become darker and grittier over the last few years, and Crisis is a means of bringing things back a little. The bottom line of the DCU, Waid explained, is that the characters of the DCU like each other, and Crisis allows for the chance to get back to that feeling or camaraderie, not a "Silver Age shininess", Waid continued, but rather a sense of balance. The heroes of the DCU are the firemen and policemen of the DCU, and both Crisis and 52 are a chance to reaffirm that notion.
The entire summary is worth reading; I found Grant Morrison's views on the DCU especially fascinating.
I appreciate your thoughts and perspective.
It's interesting that the issue of violence, darkness, and idealism in comics was recently addressed in a DCU editiorial panel at the WonderCon; newsarama.com provides a summary:
When answering a question about what, editorially, the goal of Crisis is in an editorial sense, rather than a storytelling sense, Waid said that Infinite Crisis doesn’t have to do with specifically fixing anything that’s ‘wrong,’ rather, everything moves in cycles. As the writer further explained, DC books have become darker and grittier over the last few years, and Crisis is a means of bringing things back a little. The bottom line of the DCU, Waid explained, is that the characters of the DCU like each other, and Crisis allows for the chance to get back to that feeling or camaraderie, not a "Silver Age shininess", Waid continued, but rather a sense of balance. The heroes of the DCU are the firemen and policemen of the DCU, and both Crisis and 52 are a chance to reaffirm that notion.
The entire summary is worth reading; I found Grant Morrison's views on the DCU especially fascinating.
That was a great summary. I like their ideas of where DCU should go - I just hope they don't lose some of the grit. I like grit :)
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# posted by : 2:21 PM
: 2:21 PM << Home
