season of the bitch

I’m quite happy with this interview that just went up today on Newsarama. G. Willow Wilson is a journalist turned comic book writer, and her excellent new book Air just hit stands yesterday. My local shop was already sold out, so you might have to ask your shop to re-order, but check it out. It’s quite good.

And check out my interview, please. There’s a link to click to recommend it, and I’d appreciate if you did that too, but enjoy the story.

So I recently wrote an article on the 20th anniversary of the Sandman for Comic Foundry magazine. It will be in the next issue, so pick it up.

I made an excellent playlist to listen to while I was re-reading and staring at interview transcripts and writing, and though I can’t share my actual music with you, I thought I’d share my list, anyway. Isn’t there an option on iTunes somewhere that you can make a playlist and people can download things if they want them? Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

Anyway, list below the fold. Because it’s really long. But I put in some pictures, too. » Read the rest of this entry «

Yeah, I loved it. And blogged about it over at BUST, complete with lots of linky goodness and some pictures. Check it out.

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what’s wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
- Neil Gaiman

Ok. So I guess I’ve got to weigh in on this New Yorker cover thang. Some comments here, here, here, here and here. And a particularly good one here. Edit* my favorite one here, h/t Summer.

I was walking out the door earlier to go do errands and I stopped, because NPR (which I leave on for the dog when I’m not home) had Art Spiegelman on to comment about the cover. And because he’s someone I respect (and a former New Yorker cartoonist himself) I waited to listen to him before I headed up to the bank.

He said he loved the cover. He said that it was successful satire because it held a mirror up to the lies being perpetuated about the Obamas, and it shone a light on them.

I agree that this is what satire is supposed to do, as is allegory, and other such things. I tend to love satire and allegory. I do not love this New Yorker cover.

It’s not that it’s really that offensive to me. Maybe because I don’t really have a problem with any of the things portrayed on that cover (well, maybe with Osama Bin Laden, but whatevs. Also not a huge gun fan, but, well, civil libertarian and all…). I just don’t happen to see Muslim as a slur, despite understanding why Obama has to, for political reasons, continually separate himself from the perception of being a Muslim. I certainly don’t see Michelle Obama with a ‘fro as a bad thing.

More to the point, since people noted above have covered the offense, racism, etc. angles quite well, I think the cover fails at satire. Spiegelman said it holds up a mirror and reverses the image–but it doesn’t. It’s an image that, aside from the quality of the cartoon, I would expect to see on the cover of the National Review or Weekly Standard. It does nothing to subvert the stereotypes being thrown out there. It just depicts them. No mirror, straight on.

Spiegelman also said that he thought people couldn’t be afraid of the reader in Kansas who might see the cover and think that it’s serious. He misunderstands, again. I’m not worried about this cover converting any new people to thinking that the Obamas are terrorists, militants, Muslims, what-have-you. That stuff is already out there, and anyone who’s going to believe it already does, despite lots of evidence to the contrary (and those numbers seem to hold steady at about 10-12%).

No, I just think the cover straight-up fails in its mission to be satirical. It is not funny. And it ain’t because I don’t have a sense of humor, people. I laugh at many, many things that the rest of the world does not find amusing. I laugh a lot. But again–there’s no mirror here. There’s no subversion. There’s nothing but a drawing of how about 10-12% of America sees a man running for president, and his wife.

What’s funny about that? Where’s the irony?

Another thing said on that NPR show was the idea that irony died on September 11. We all know that ain’t true. Anyone who’s ever come into contact with a hipster knows better than to think irony is gone. Postmodernism may have died (but that’s a big long issue that I don’t want to get into right now) but irony is alive and well.

But this wasn’t it. So no, I don’t like the New Yorker cover. I will defend their right to run whatever stupid crap they want on their covers, just as I will defend all sorts of ugly speech (don’t mean I’m going to publish your asshole comments on my blog, but if you’ve got your own, well, mazel tov). I’m not a regular reader, so I’m not going to be protesting or threatening to cancel my subscription.

But it was not funny. It was not witty. If this is what we’ve got for political satire in this country, well, I worry.

That I’ll finish later today, I promise.

For now, I recommend this, Hilzoy on the government’s bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and this, wherein Latoya asks what we’re fighting for when it comes to feminism. Interestingly, both those writers are feminist bloggers who do not primarily center feminism in their blogging, yet I think it comes through in everything they say and do.

And for you to check out the new category in my blogroll: comics & art. Since they didn’t really fit in my regular blogroll and all.

Or if not that, then they want you to be something that you just aren’t, even though you might wish you could be. That’s worse.

-Kate in ‘Girl You Want’

My review of DEMO is here. Go on, read it. Then come back here and delve into this post.

I’ve mentioned Laura Mulvey’s theory on ‘the gaze’ in film before, and linked there to a good summation of her, plus some notes on reactions to her. Even more basically, she posits that film assumes a male spectator who takes pleasure in looking-at. She differentiates between “voyeuristic” looking, which asserts control over the person or thing looked at, and “fetishistic” looking, which turns the object of the gaze into something pleasing in and of itself–a fetish.

I wrote a paper deconstructing this a bit back in the day, threw some Kristeva in there, and was given a pat on the back and a department award.

But I’ve never seen a better examination of this whole theory, and how it leaves the movie theater and comes into our lives, than DEMO #5, ‘Girl You Want.’

(If you haven’t read it yet and you think you want to, go, buy the new collected edition, and then come back and read this. If you have read it, or you probably won’t but want to see what I’m on about, keep reading.) » Read the rest of this entry «

I bought this print from Kelly Howlett at Wizard World Chicago. She’s utterly adorable and the picture is gorgeous.

Comics, meet politics. Politics, meet comics.

Good stuff, that.

Speaking of comics and not of politics, I’m off to Chicago tomorrow for the comic con, work, and friends. Unless I decide to get some blogging in, I’ll be working and drinking all weekend, so you will have to miss me. Until Tuesday at least.

Look sad.

Keep an eye on Newsarama for my reports. Possibly liveblogging the Warren Ellis panel, if the setup is there.

So you’ll have noticed that I’ve been leaving politics alone for a bit. Other than commenting at other people’s blogs, I’ve been giving myself a break–posted a guest column at KB a couple of weeks ago and had to scrounge for this week’s option.

I feel  like we’re in the eye of the hurricane right now and I’m allowing myself to be semi-oblivious (my oblivious being still ten times more informed than most of America, but far less than the blogosphere). Don’t get me wrong, I’m still thinking about it–Napolitano for VP, please!–but just  not to the all-consuming level that I was.

I’ve got an addictive personality, not with drugs or drink, but with people, politics, and art. I will go through phases where I see three movies a week and phases where I don’t bother with the movie theater at all. Phases where I drop $30 a week on comics and months at a time where I don’t buy anything. And of course, times where I’m polishing off three thick books on arcane political, feminist, or media theory that no one in their right mind reads for fun, and times when I’m re-reading Francesca Lia Block novels.

A chance opportunity sucked me right back into comics-obsession-land, and I’m actually taking a creative writing course in the fall (along with Communications Law and Journalism and Politics, so never fear), so I’m reading novels again as well. In the past two weeks, I’ve demolished all the issues of Northlanders, the first 24Seven trade, Wanted, Cross Bronx, the first Vinyl Underground trade, the most recent two Fables trades, Preacher: Dixie Fried, and re-read every Garth Ennis Hellblazer trade that I own. Oh, and most recently, Local #12, which is so damn good that it gets its own two sentences. If you ever thought about giving comics a try but weren’t sure where to start, Local would be an excellent place. Mmmm. Comics.

So bloglandia has been treated to lots of my thoughts on sex and sexuality, desire, monsters, and pop culture. And to quote Madonna, “I’m not sorry.”

I realized over dinner and drinks with my friend last night that you know what, I DID help Barack Obama win the nomination, as the Facebook group said, and that feels pretty good. So I’m still working, still thinking, still planning for later in the summer and in the fall when I’ll gear up to put Barack Obama in the White House–and then switch modes to watchdog. Because yeah, I’m a supporter, but I know that there’ll be pressure for him to move right, and all of us who did help put him in that spot have to make sure that we hold him to our ideals. That’s the other half of democracy. It’s not just vote and go home. It’s make sure the guy you voted for does what he said he’d do, and responds to new problems in the way that we want. And if Obama does make it to the White House, he’s going to owe a lot of little people more than a few big people, and that makes me optimistic about his possible administration.