How do you define politics in art?
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There’s nothing inherent in politics that requires intelligence or a lack of access to the internet. The former is an issue with evaluation said politics, and the latter is mere distribution.
And, no, because no person is “random” in any sense but an aggregate effect for a recipient in this case (sensu “rando”). Culture is political, too. Culture is a thing. Trying to write in a void of culture is pretty impossible.
“Reading politics” into a given work merely requires some minimal level of reflection, expressed either as “I see where this author is coming from, and I accept/reject it” or “hey, why can’t black/gay/non Christian folk wield a sword/missile weapons/magic wand/operate a spacecraft as well”?
There is literally no genre of work not affected by this dynamic. Claiming there are exceptions demands ignorance, either that held by a child of privilege encountering their default catering inculcated into the work, or that of an adult who refuses to see the demarcations, even after they’ve been pointed out.
Edited for: aphasia. Because damn. Also examples.
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I just want to say a thing. An opinion can be 100% correct.
Merely calling out an opinion does nothing to enhance one’s own argument at all, even when discussing more nebulous topics. You may actually have to show why an opinion is wrong in order to make a coherent argument.
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I think they really are misogynists. I’m sure they’re also desperate for attention.
Or, the entire history of, you know, comic books, which had characters going after unbridled capitalists, fascists, racists, etc. from the very start.
And the rest. Superman, Green Arrow, Captain America, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, etc. Traditionally, comic book superheroes have been “social justice warriors” by definition. Superman spent much of the early comics fighting wealthy corporate types, Green Arrow is literally a comic book version of Robin Hood, etc.
I’m not sure they’re reading comics at all, given that they seem to want comics to stop being comics…
“So what’s the ethical problem?”
“Women.”
“Women… what?”
“They exist.”
What I love about “Comicsgate” is that is actually their argument, except they don’t ever mention ethics. It’s impossible to take them seriously.
I say this as a Lovecraft fan, but a) he was a terrible writer, and b) his racism works against him, conceptually, in his stories. So just in terms of the quality of his writing, the racism would be working against him, and thus also getting published or even acknowledged, now.
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Very well said.
I remember how weird it was reading “Reanimator” and realizing that the narrator, upon witnessing the horrific consequences of his unholy experiment, seemed less put off by the sight of a cannibal zombie than by the fact that it was a BLACK cannibal zombie.
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But aren’t these the same thing?
If I put my political stance on a work, it is now political.
If I read a political stance in a work that wasn’t intended to be there, the work is now political.
If I misinterpret the political nature of a work and substitute my own interpretation of it, then does that negate the original political message or is it now a multiplier?
I guess that maybe we’re not using political in the same way. If politics is the art of decision making then anything that influences our decision making is political in nature.
I’m fully aware that whenever somebody say’s “Don’t bring politics into this” that they are probably talking about known and contentious political issues that are part of current political discourse, usually on a national level, and likely because we know that there really isn’t going to be a debate, just people shouting at each other.
This isn’t that.
The sense in which art can be political is by either addressing a big hot button political topic where political parties have already gone and drawn a line in the sand, it can also be political by informing what decisions we make, whether it’s what brand of shoes we buy, what we aspire to, what we want, what we accept as beautiful, what we accept as normal.
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White supremacy pits the working class against each other.
Blaming anti-racists for the situation is not very helpful.
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Yeah, and in so many stories, the way Lovecraft makes the monsters scary is… racism. The monsters end up, contrary to his intentions, being the sympathetic ones. That’s something that the modern “Lovecraftian” writers that I find most faithful to his work actively acknowledge - the “monsters” are the protagonists, because it’s the only way it works.
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Yes, a lot of the stories are essentially about the horrors of miscegenation, such as some European aristocrat going mad upon the realization that one of his ancestors was an ape-like African woman that a nobleman secretly took as his bride.
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That reminds me, I have to get on this book:
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It is a really great read and one where you are not sure what is more disturbing the eldrich horror or the racism of the time it is set in.
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Yeah, the number of his stories where the horror can be boiled down to, “the protagonist realizes that one of his ancestors was a…” is rather funny. But beyond that, whenever the racism shows up, it makes the narrator unreliable, so a natural response is to start questioning whether anything else is true about the other “alien” entities described as well, and whether they’re actually so bad, especially if no malevolent acts are even ascribed to them. For example, The Shadow Over Innsmouth’s two sources of horror (the one that propels the story and then the twist at the end) get completely demolished when the xenophobia and fear of miscegenation are taken away - which leaves the “protagonist” and the US government as the real monsters, responsible for mass deaths and the destruction of a peaceful community whose only sin was to (rightly) identify the narrator as a threat to their existence.
Yeah, me too. And also The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle, which explores a Lovecraft story (specifically, “The Horror at Red Hook”) from an African-American perspective, with racism as one of its twin horrors.
I’m reading Ruthanna Emrys’ “Innsmouth Legacy” series right now, and the stories are based on a reversed (that is to say, a non-racist reading) of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” directly connecting it to the Japanese Internment and American homophobia and racism in the post-WWII period. But also in this vein: Elizabeth Bear’s story, “Shoggoths in Bloom,” Cassandra Khaw’s Lovecraftian stories (e.g. “Hammers on Bone,” “A Song for Quiet,” etc. There’s a whole faction of modern Lovecraftiana where the “monsters” are the protagonists or otherwise sympathetic, and the horror derives entirely from all-too-human sources.
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There’s is a HUGE difference between Lovecraft and Twain, though.
“Our Civil War was a blot on our history, but not as great a blot as the buying and selling of Negro souls.” –Mark Twain
“A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.”
–H.P. Lovecraft
Now, naturally, I could find quotes that make Mark Twain sound a lot more racist, but I think it’s important to judge his words on the time in which he lived. This is getting far from the mark, which is that people seem upset that some racist asshat is taking it upon himself to publish his racist asshat comics, and marvel that it can even happen in this day and age. Well, of course it can. He’s free to waste his money on his bullshit. I’m sure tens of people will buy them. I was just disturbed, and only a little, at the notion that someone would print something when it could be found offensive to someone.
And I’m going to sound hypocritical for saying so, because I know people who have literally refused print jobs because the jobs in question where wildly racist diatribes, but I’m not sure I want to live in a world where asshats are denied the right to disseminate their bullshit. Because tomorrow, the offensive bullshit to mainstream society might be reproductive rights, or basic rights for women.
But I tend to agree, a printer should be able to make a decision on whether they’re going to print something if it’s going to be received in a negative way.
(I’m not sure how to dig myself out of this one, so I’ll just stop, I swear I had good intentions.)
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More fun with Vox and Comics Gate!
- 𝗗𝗥𝗔𝗠𝗔𝗚𝗔𝗧𝗘: 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 #𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀𝗚𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲! Dateline 9/04/18 :Vox vs EVS: 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙞𝙘𝙨𝙂𝙖𝙩𝙚’𝙨 𝘽𝙞𝙜𝙜𝙚𝙨𝙩 𝘼𝙨𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙚𝙨 𝙎𝙝𝙞𝙩 𝘼𝙡𝙡 𝙊𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙀𝙖𝙘𝙝 𝙊𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧! https://twitter.com/IAmDeathRay/status/1037010085048987648
2)The Menace of Doc Vox! https://medium.com/@Death_Ray/the-menace-of-doc-vox-b5b070a8af4c
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Don’t we all!
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Coming back to this conversation.
Again to me this ComicsGate stuff is dumb, and I think I know why I feel that way. I didn’t grow up reading a narrow style of what we call comic, I didn’t grow up just reading superhero comics or BD. I read all kind of comics, starting with Franco-Belgian Bande dessinée, Indie US comics, Japanese manga, Korean Manhwa, Italian fumetti, etc. and this diversity is a delight to me, something to celebrate.
So when I see a new generation of authors coming I’m happy and curious, I’m glad and enthusiast to see more PoC, more women and more LGBT bringing their voice to this art form.
So welcome to all of them, please break as much things as you want and create as much things as you can.
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Isn’t the point there that Arthur Jermyn’s ancestress was an actual ape (a “white ape”, in fact), not an African?
Putting a message supporting a particular political view into the work.
If I make a poster showing the President with a pig nose, that’s political.
If I take a picture of a daisy in a meadow and someone says this represents the communist revolution because it is round, that’s their own politics.
Obviously there is a huge amount of grey area here, but viewers don’t arbitrarily get to declare that my work supports a particular political position just because they read something into it.
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So if a lesbian writes a series of children’s books that always have a strong female hero and a weak male character that has to be saved. Is that a political statement? How is a straight male author that always write strong males saving weak females any different? In both cases the respective authors critics would be focused on how these books impact children and how it will impact society when these children grow up. Both authors may or may not see their writing as a political message.
What if another artists makes a nearly identical poster at the same time as you and they insist it is not political and anyone that says it is, that’s their own politics?
If you just meant it as a pretty picture and yet it lit a political fire storm that led to the end of capitalism in America I would say it ended up having a huge political impact despite your lack of political agenda in the creation of that image.
I think the pivot here is between the focus on artist intent versus viewer impact. Since we can not truly know what another person is thinking the seemingly innocuous daisy in a field could be for the artists a massive political statement or just a flower.
Separate from the artist’s intent or non-intent is the impact their work has on society. The artist is limited in what they can represent. They have to make choices in the characters they represent. What they choose to show or omit filters the real world. While the intent of artist may or may not be be political the results of their choices can have a political impact.
The point I think several people above are making is that when you consistently omit certain types of people or only include them to be the butt of a joke or to fill a stereotype that has as much political impact on our society as when an artist adds something that is seen out of the norm and gets certain people up in arms.
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