Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Meme Time!
I've been tagged for a meme once again by the good Ami Angelwings, so here it is: 8 facts about yours truly.
Here are the rules:
- Each player starts with eight random facts about themselves.
- Those who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight facts and post these rules.
- At the end of the post, choose some people to get tagged and list their names.
1) My favorite super-hero is Mister Terrific (Michael Holt). The rest of my top five, in no particular order, is Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Power Girl, the Blue Beetle (Ted Kord), and Booster Gold. I am prone to changing my mind frequently, however.
2) The only U.S. states I've spent a significant length of time in are Massachusetts (my home), Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and Florida, plus the Canadian province of Quebec.
3) On the same tack, the farthest north I have traveled is Montreal and the farthest south is Lake Buena Vista, but I've never gone father east than Boston (I've lived in the Bay State all my life but I've never been to Cape Cod or Nantucket) or father west than Albany.
4) I have a dog (rottweiler/akita mix... he's an Axis dog!) and I love him, but I'm really more of a cat person.
5) In 7th grade I came in 4th place in a city-wide Scrabble tournament.
6) I used to be in the Boy Scouts of America. It was a mostly traumatic experience, since most of the guys I shared a troop with were obnoxious pricks and the two troop leaders I had were both scary burned-out Vietnam veterans, and I still hold a grudge against them because of their policy against gays and atheists. I am, however, very proud that my entry into the pine box derby won best of show.
7) I enjoy writing fiction, but I'm not particularly good at it. Most of what I've written is just mediocre D&D fanfiction (set in my own setting and using my own characters, but still using the game's familiar races, creatures, and character types), and to date I've completed only one single short story, seven years ago.
8) I'm fiercely proud to be from Massachusetts, despite the ridiculously high taxes, the messed-up health care/insurance system, the absurdly high level of crime in my city (Springfield), the fact that we'd have a horrible Republican governor for as long as I can remember (until we elected Deval last year, anyway, who is a Democrat and a good guy, but geezus, Mitt Romney can kiss my -- ahem), the corrupt politics, the whole Big Dig fiasco, the walking embarrassment that is John Kerry... well okay, Massachusetts sucks, but I love it anyway dammit.
And I tag... well dernitall, DJ Black Adam has already been tagged, so I don't have anyone to choose. Meh. Anyone reading this who hasn't already done it: Consider yourself tagged.
Here are the rules:
- Each player starts with eight random facts about themselves.
- Those who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight facts and post these rules.
- At the end of the post, choose some people to get tagged and list their names.
1) My favorite super-hero is Mister Terrific (Michael Holt). The rest of my top five, in no particular order, is Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Power Girl, the Blue Beetle (Ted Kord), and Booster Gold. I am prone to changing my mind frequently, however.
2) The only U.S. states I've spent a significant length of time in are Massachusetts (my home), Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and Florida, plus the Canadian province of Quebec.
3) On the same tack, the farthest north I have traveled is Montreal and the farthest south is Lake Buena Vista, but I've never gone father east than Boston (I've lived in the Bay State all my life but I've never been to Cape Cod or Nantucket) or father west than Albany.
4) I have a dog (rottweiler/akita mix... he's an Axis dog!) and I love him, but I'm really more of a cat person.
5) In 7th grade I came in 4th place in a city-wide Scrabble tournament.
6) I used to be in the Boy Scouts of America. It was a mostly traumatic experience, since most of the guys I shared a troop with were obnoxious pricks and the two troop leaders I had were both scary burned-out Vietnam veterans, and I still hold a grudge against them because of their policy against gays and atheists. I am, however, very proud that my entry into the pine box derby won best of show.
7) I enjoy writing fiction, but I'm not particularly good at it. Most of what I've written is just mediocre D&D fanfiction (set in my own setting and using my own characters, but still using the game's familiar races, creatures, and character types), and to date I've completed only one single short story, seven years ago.
8) I'm fiercely proud to be from Massachusetts, despite the ridiculously high taxes, the messed-up health care/insurance system, the absurdly high level of crime in my city (Springfield), the fact that we'd have a horrible Republican governor for as long as I can remember (until we elected Deval last year, anyway, who is a Democrat and a good guy, but geezus, Mitt Romney can kiss my -- ahem), the corrupt politics, the whole Big Dig fiasco, the walking embarrassment that is John Kerry... well okay, Massachusetts sucks, but I love it anyway dammit.
And I tag... well dernitall, DJ Black Adam has already been tagged, so I don't have anyone to choose. Meh. Anyone reading this who hasn't already done it: Consider yourself tagged.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Moral Panic and Popular Culture
This is actually a research paper I wrote earlier this year; now that it's behind me, I felt like sharing it. It could use a lot of work, I'm sure, but as the closest thing I'll probably ever get to a scholarly dissertation, I don't think it came out too badly. I've removed the citations for ease of reading.
Moral Panic and Popular Culture
On April 20, 1999, two teenage boys named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold came to Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado and gunned down their classmates, murdering twelve students and one teacher and leaving twenty-four wounded. When it was learned that they had planned their attack ahead of time using a popular violent video game as a simulator, the American mass media launched into a feeding frenzy, blaming this game and others like it for the boys' murderous rampage.
Between 1988 and 1989, an introverted print-shop employee, Tsutomu Miyazaki, kidnapped, killed, and performed acts of necrophilia on four girls of preschool age before being apprehended by Tokyo police. When the authorities searched his apartment, they found it filled with nearly six thousand videos, including gory "slasher" films and animated child pornography, as well as many comics of a similar nature. The Japanese media leapt upon the incident, and many soon believed that all otaku – fans of comics and animation – were just as deranged as Miyazaki.
In 1950, a fourteen-year-old boy named Willie was tried and sentenced for the murder of a man whom he supposedly shot from the roof of his building. An avid fan of violent comics about gangsters, Willie had seen many ads in his comics for hunting rifles, and eventually obtained one for himself. Though the case received little nationwide attention, to a child psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham, who had known Willie since infancy, it was symptomatic of a mass breakdown of societal morality caused by trashy comic books.
These are but a few examples of moral panic, that tendency of people to believe en masse that something poses a greater threat to society at large than it actually does. The term was popularized in 1971 by sociologist Jock Young in his studies on drug culture. For the purposes of this paper, we shall focus on the phenomenon in relation to popular commercial culture. We shall see in the end that moral panic directed against popular culture is not justified at all.
At least as far back as the 1790s in Great Britain, growing industrialization and urbanization, mass publication, and the creation of mass transit led to the birth of a nationwide commercial culture, in contrast to the communal pastimes that had previously provided entertainment. Even then there were those who railed against "the poison continually flowing thro' [sic] the channel of vulgar and licentious publications.” By the 1830s, British legislators were speaking out against penny gaffs, inexpensive plays with bawdy or sensationalist content, which were supposedly corrupting "the children of the lower classes" and leading them to crime. Thus, we see that moral panic is nothing new.
A classic example of moral panic was the crusade of Doctor Frederic R. Wertham against American comic books in the 1950s. Comic books were wildly popular in the 1940s and 1950s, having enjoyed widespread popularity among United States soldiers during the Second World War thanks to their colorful heroes fighting against the Axis powers. After the war, comics about masked mystery men fell out of popularity, to be replaced by comics about gangsters and supernatural horror – Tales from the Crypt, still popular today, got its start in this era, then published by EC Comics. A 1950 survey showed that 41 percent of American adult males and 28 percent of adult women regularly read comics; another survey in the same year revealed that 54 percent of comics readers were twenty years of age or older. Comics were even more popular among young people, however: 95 percent of boys and 91 percent of girls between the ages of six and eleven read comics, as did 80 percent of all teenagers.
During the war, the likes of Superman and Captain America had drawn criticism from parents for their might-makes-right message. Intellectuals viewed comics as a drug for children and the mentally deficient, keeping them occupied with colorful characters and black-and-white conflicts settled through brute force. This concern turned to outright panic with the ascendancy of horror and crime comics, which regularly portrayed cold-blooded murder, wanton sex, and supernatural elements such as occultism, vampirism, and walking corpses. Despite being sold to children, however, these stories were written with adults in mind. "We were writing for ourselves at our age level," recalled EC Comics editor and artist Al Feldstein in 1972.
Doctor Fredric Wertham abhorred all this. A German-born New York psychiatrist, Doctor Wertham believed that there was a direct link between comics and juvenile crime. A resident psychiatrist at the free Lafargue Clinic in Harlem, Wertham cared greatly for the mental health of children and was an ardent supporter of civil rights for people of color. Wertham drew many disturbing conclusions from his studies on comics and published them in his 1953 book, Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham was convinced that violent imagery led children to perform violent acts. For instance, one ten-year-old child he interviewed said:
"Once I saw in a science comic where this beast comes from Mars. It showed a man’s hand over his eyes and streams of blood coming down. I play a little rough with the kids sometimes. I don’t mean to hurt them. In a game I said I would gouge a child’s eyes out. I was playing that I was walking around and I jumped out at him. I scratched his face. Then I caught him and sucked the blood out of his throat. In another game I said, 'I’ll scratch your eyes out!'"
The boy later said, “I played such games because I got them from comic books.”
Wertham picked and chose his examples, however, often citing fringe comics with low readership and exceptionally gory content as the norm; none of them were from major, mainstream publishers like DC or Fawcett. He spoke at length about comics leading children to homosexuality, displaying the prejudices of his day. He condemned Batman and Robin for promoting a gay lifestyle and Wonder Woman for partaking in un-feminine activities. He went out of his way to attack the use of onomatopoeic words as "thunk" and "blam," apparently believing that they degraded children's reading skills.
Wertham also never addressed whether his case studies were true of delinquents across the board and tended to jump to conclusions without considering all evidence. His case studies were just a random assortment of juvenile delinquents who all just happened to read comic books.
Doctor Wertham’s accusations toward the comics industry weren’t all hyperbole. For instance, he was immensely troubled by the comics’ depiction of blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and other racial and ethnic minorities as sub-humans and savages. He was concerned with the hypersexualization of women in comic book stories and ads and the effect they had on girls’ self-image. Despite this, however, most of his declarations amounted to alarmist hype.
Regardless, people listened. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, already at odds with EC publisher Lev Gleason due to his leftist political leanings, turned an ear to Wertham. Despite one 1950 congressional hearing that found that crime was actually decreasing when crime comics were at their most popular, Wertham pushed on. A 1953 Senate hearing in which Wertham testified – described by a British comics authority as a show trial much like the anti-communist witch hunts of the era – ultimately fell in Wertham’s favor. In 1954, in response to veiled congressional threats of censorship, a group of major comics publishers formed the Comics Code Authority, a draconian self-censoring committee. Over 100 comics series were put out of publication due to failure to comply with CCA standards. The CCA essentially neutered the industry, reducing comics to harmless fluff for children. Comics sales would not begin to pick up until the introduction of Stan Lee’s popular characters at Marvel Comics in the early 1960s (the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, etc.), and comics written for adults would not appear again until the “underground” comics late in the same decade, and in either case the damage was done: Comics sales never rose above a fraction of what they were after the war, even to this day.
Japan in the 1980s and 1990s provides an interesting parallel to Wertham's America. Unlike America, comics in Japan (manga) never experienced significant censorship, and by the 1980s they were regarded as a mainstream medium for readers of all ages, much like television or video is in America. Toward the end of the 1980s, pornographic manga was as easily available as adult videos are in America, some of it containing elements of rorikon (from "Lolita complex") – child pornography. It was in this time and place that Tsutomu Miyazaki went on his killing spree.
The Miyazaki slayings would not be the only time the Japanese media turned the spotlight on manga. Media outcry against manga and anime (Japanese animation) repeated in 1995, due to their use as promotional tools by the doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyō. Aum's leader, Shōkō Asahara, directly lifted some of his ideology from popular science-fiction anime of the 1970s, such as Space Battleship Yamato and Future Boy Conan, and many of his converts were culled from the otaku subculture. Aum was responsible for the deaths of twelve people when they unleashed nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system. The idea that a fevered mind could draw such grisly plans from cartoons shocked parents.
Some claim that violent and sexual imagery in the media is leading to societal breakdown. For instance, one commentator claimed that adults and youth alike receive "inspiration" from television featuring "casual sex and filthy language," leading them to commit acts of molestation and adultery. The same source notes that in 1996, cases of STD infection, divorce rates, and television viewing were at an all-time high in America. Yet in Wertham's America, the rate of murders per year was at an all-time low when comics, then filling the niche that television fills today, were experiencing the highest sales they would ever attain. In Japan, comic books regularly portray acts of sex and violence that make anything American television has to offer seem tame in comparison; yet two 1994-5 studies on crime revealed that Japan experiences about one-tenth as many murders and one-fortieth as many rapes as the United States. Despite the constant barrage of sexuality in popular culture, dating back as far as the erotic ukiyo-e art of the 1600s, people in Japan continue to present an air of staidness and repression. As the commentator above himself admits, "No cause-and-effect relationship can be absolutely proven."
All too often, self-appointed moral guardians use popular culture as a scapegoat, an excuse not to deal with legitimate social problems such as poor education or poverty. Sensationalism is easy: A headline that reads “Gory video game turns boy into killer” sells more papers than “Lonely boy turns against classmates.” Hip-hop music, wildly popular among French youth (the country being the second largest market for the music after the United States) was blamed by some in the media for the devastating Paris riots of 2005, ignoring France’s long history of neglect towards its ethnic minorities. The rioters’ outrage may have been reflected in hip-hop, but it was fuelled by poverty and racism.
Throughout the ages and especially in the past few centuries, popular culture has been blamed for everything from individual acts of violence to the breakdown of society at large. Looking beyond this alarmist hype, however, we see that other forces are at play: Individuals’ personal experiences, cultural influences, and society’s own failure to look after its members. Moral panic, we see, is simply not warranted at all.
References:
Chagall, David. “Television – The Phantom Reality.” The Media & Morality. Ed. Robert M. Baird, William E. Loges, Stuart E. Rosenbaum. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1999. 259-76.
Dudley, William, ed. Opposing Viewpoints: Mass Media. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2005.
McBride, James. “Hip-Hop Planet.” National Geographic. Apr. 2007: 100-19.
Perry, George, and Alan Aldridge. The Penguin Book of Comics. Norwich: Jarrold & Sons, Ltd. 1967.
Schodt, Frederik L. Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkley: Stone Bridge Press. 1996.
Springhall, John. Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta-Rap, 1830-1996. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1998.
Thompson, Jack. “Violent Video Games Promote Violence.” Opposing Viewpoints: Popular Culture. Ed. John Woodward. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2005.
Wertham, Frederic. Seduction of the Innocent. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company. 1953.
Moral Panic and Popular Culture
On April 20, 1999, two teenage boys named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold came to Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado and gunned down their classmates, murdering twelve students and one teacher and leaving twenty-four wounded. When it was learned that they had planned their attack ahead of time using a popular violent video game as a simulator, the American mass media launched into a feeding frenzy, blaming this game and others like it for the boys' murderous rampage.
Between 1988 and 1989, an introverted print-shop employee, Tsutomu Miyazaki, kidnapped, killed, and performed acts of necrophilia on four girls of preschool age before being apprehended by Tokyo police. When the authorities searched his apartment, they found it filled with nearly six thousand videos, including gory "slasher" films and animated child pornography, as well as many comics of a similar nature. The Japanese media leapt upon the incident, and many soon believed that all otaku – fans of comics and animation – were just as deranged as Miyazaki.
In 1950, a fourteen-year-old boy named Willie was tried and sentenced for the murder of a man whom he supposedly shot from the roof of his building. An avid fan of violent comics about gangsters, Willie had seen many ads in his comics for hunting rifles, and eventually obtained one for himself. Though the case received little nationwide attention, to a child psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham, who had known Willie since infancy, it was symptomatic of a mass breakdown of societal morality caused by trashy comic books.
These are but a few examples of moral panic, that tendency of people to believe en masse that something poses a greater threat to society at large than it actually does. The term was popularized in 1971 by sociologist Jock Young in his studies on drug culture. For the purposes of this paper, we shall focus on the phenomenon in relation to popular commercial culture. We shall see in the end that moral panic directed against popular culture is not justified at all.
At least as far back as the 1790s in Great Britain, growing industrialization and urbanization, mass publication, and the creation of mass transit led to the birth of a nationwide commercial culture, in contrast to the communal pastimes that had previously provided entertainment. Even then there were those who railed against "the poison continually flowing thro' [sic] the channel of vulgar and licentious publications.” By the 1830s, British legislators were speaking out against penny gaffs, inexpensive plays with bawdy or sensationalist content, which were supposedly corrupting "the children of the lower classes" and leading them to crime. Thus, we see that moral panic is nothing new.
A classic example of moral panic was the crusade of Doctor Frederic R. Wertham against American comic books in the 1950s. Comic books were wildly popular in the 1940s and 1950s, having enjoyed widespread popularity among United States soldiers during the Second World War thanks to their colorful heroes fighting against the Axis powers. After the war, comics about masked mystery men fell out of popularity, to be replaced by comics about gangsters and supernatural horror – Tales from the Crypt, still popular today, got its start in this era, then published by EC Comics. A 1950 survey showed that 41 percent of American adult males and 28 percent of adult women regularly read comics; another survey in the same year revealed that 54 percent of comics readers were twenty years of age or older. Comics were even more popular among young people, however: 95 percent of boys and 91 percent of girls between the ages of six and eleven read comics, as did 80 percent of all teenagers.
During the war, the likes of Superman and Captain America had drawn criticism from parents for their might-makes-right message. Intellectuals viewed comics as a drug for children and the mentally deficient, keeping them occupied with colorful characters and black-and-white conflicts settled through brute force. This concern turned to outright panic with the ascendancy of horror and crime comics, which regularly portrayed cold-blooded murder, wanton sex, and supernatural elements such as occultism, vampirism, and walking corpses. Despite being sold to children, however, these stories were written with adults in mind. "We were writing for ourselves at our age level," recalled EC Comics editor and artist Al Feldstein in 1972.
Doctor Fredric Wertham abhorred all this. A German-born New York psychiatrist, Doctor Wertham believed that there was a direct link between comics and juvenile crime. A resident psychiatrist at the free Lafargue Clinic in Harlem, Wertham cared greatly for the mental health of children and was an ardent supporter of civil rights for people of color. Wertham drew many disturbing conclusions from his studies on comics and published them in his 1953 book, Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham was convinced that violent imagery led children to perform violent acts. For instance, one ten-year-old child he interviewed said:
"Once I saw in a science comic where this beast comes from Mars. It showed a man’s hand over his eyes and streams of blood coming down. I play a little rough with the kids sometimes. I don’t mean to hurt them. In a game I said I would gouge a child’s eyes out. I was playing that I was walking around and I jumped out at him. I scratched his face. Then I caught him and sucked the blood out of his throat. In another game I said, 'I’ll scratch your eyes out!'"
The boy later said, “I played such games because I got them from comic books.”
Wertham picked and chose his examples, however, often citing fringe comics with low readership and exceptionally gory content as the norm; none of them were from major, mainstream publishers like DC or Fawcett. He spoke at length about comics leading children to homosexuality, displaying the prejudices of his day. He condemned Batman and Robin for promoting a gay lifestyle and Wonder Woman for partaking in un-feminine activities. He went out of his way to attack the use of onomatopoeic words as "thunk" and "blam," apparently believing that they degraded children's reading skills.
Wertham also never addressed whether his case studies were true of delinquents across the board and tended to jump to conclusions without considering all evidence. His case studies were just a random assortment of juvenile delinquents who all just happened to read comic books.
Doctor Wertham’s accusations toward the comics industry weren’t all hyperbole. For instance, he was immensely troubled by the comics’ depiction of blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and other racial and ethnic minorities as sub-humans and savages. He was concerned with the hypersexualization of women in comic book stories and ads and the effect they had on girls’ self-image. Despite this, however, most of his declarations amounted to alarmist hype.
Regardless, people listened. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, already at odds with EC publisher Lev Gleason due to his leftist political leanings, turned an ear to Wertham. Despite one 1950 congressional hearing that found that crime was actually decreasing when crime comics were at their most popular, Wertham pushed on. A 1953 Senate hearing in which Wertham testified – described by a British comics authority as a show trial much like the anti-communist witch hunts of the era – ultimately fell in Wertham’s favor. In 1954, in response to veiled congressional threats of censorship, a group of major comics publishers formed the Comics Code Authority, a draconian self-censoring committee. Over 100 comics series were put out of publication due to failure to comply with CCA standards. The CCA essentially neutered the industry, reducing comics to harmless fluff for children. Comics sales would not begin to pick up until the introduction of Stan Lee’s popular characters at Marvel Comics in the early 1960s (the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, etc.), and comics written for adults would not appear again until the “underground” comics late in the same decade, and in either case the damage was done: Comics sales never rose above a fraction of what they were after the war, even to this day.
Japan in the 1980s and 1990s provides an interesting parallel to Wertham's America. Unlike America, comics in Japan (manga) never experienced significant censorship, and by the 1980s they were regarded as a mainstream medium for readers of all ages, much like television or video is in America. Toward the end of the 1980s, pornographic manga was as easily available as adult videos are in America, some of it containing elements of rorikon (from "Lolita complex") – child pornography. It was in this time and place that Tsutomu Miyazaki went on his killing spree.
The Miyazaki slayings would not be the only time the Japanese media turned the spotlight on manga. Media outcry against manga and anime (Japanese animation) repeated in 1995, due to their use as promotional tools by the doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyō. Aum's leader, Shōkō Asahara, directly lifted some of his ideology from popular science-fiction anime of the 1970s, such as Space Battleship Yamato and Future Boy Conan, and many of his converts were culled from the otaku subculture. Aum was responsible for the deaths of twelve people when they unleashed nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system. The idea that a fevered mind could draw such grisly plans from cartoons shocked parents.
Some claim that violent and sexual imagery in the media is leading to societal breakdown. For instance, one commentator claimed that adults and youth alike receive "inspiration" from television featuring "casual sex and filthy language," leading them to commit acts of molestation and adultery. The same source notes that in 1996, cases of STD infection, divorce rates, and television viewing were at an all-time high in America. Yet in Wertham's America, the rate of murders per year was at an all-time low when comics, then filling the niche that television fills today, were experiencing the highest sales they would ever attain. In Japan, comic books regularly portray acts of sex and violence that make anything American television has to offer seem tame in comparison; yet two 1994-5 studies on crime revealed that Japan experiences about one-tenth as many murders and one-fortieth as many rapes as the United States. Despite the constant barrage of sexuality in popular culture, dating back as far as the erotic ukiyo-e art of the 1600s, people in Japan continue to present an air of staidness and repression. As the commentator above himself admits, "No cause-and-effect relationship can be absolutely proven."
All too often, self-appointed moral guardians use popular culture as a scapegoat, an excuse not to deal with legitimate social problems such as poor education or poverty. Sensationalism is easy: A headline that reads “Gory video game turns boy into killer” sells more papers than “Lonely boy turns against classmates.” Hip-hop music, wildly popular among French youth (the country being the second largest market for the music after the United States) was blamed by some in the media for the devastating Paris riots of 2005, ignoring France’s long history of neglect towards its ethnic minorities. The rioters’ outrage may have been reflected in hip-hop, but it was fuelled by poverty and racism.
Throughout the ages and especially in the past few centuries, popular culture has been blamed for everything from individual acts of violence to the breakdown of society at large. Looking beyond this alarmist hype, however, we see that other forces are at play: Individuals’ personal experiences, cultural influences, and society’s own failure to look after its members. Moral panic, we see, is simply not warranted at all.
References:
Chagall, David. “Television – The Phantom Reality.” The Media & Morality. Ed. Robert M. Baird, William E. Loges, Stuart E. Rosenbaum. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1999. 259-76.
Dudley, William, ed. Opposing Viewpoints: Mass Media. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2005.
McBride, James. “Hip-Hop Planet.” National Geographic. Apr. 2007: 100-19.
Perry, George, and Alan Aldridge. The Penguin Book of Comics. Norwich: Jarrold & Sons, Ltd. 1967.
Schodt, Frederik L. Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkley: Stone Bridge Press. 1996.
Springhall, John. Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to Gangsta-Rap, 1830-1996. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1998.
Thompson, Jack. “Violent Video Games Promote Violence.” Opposing Viewpoints: Popular Culture. Ed. John Woodward. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2005.
Wertham, Frederic. Seduction of the Innocent. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company. 1953.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Hey! It's my Anniversary!
I just realized that I've had this blog for exactly one year today!
I've only attracted two readers that I'm aware of, but still... that's pretty flippin' impressive. When I got started, I was sure I was gonna fold after a month or two.
You go, Filby! Keep it up another year! Woo-hoo!
I've only attracted two readers that I'm aware of, but still... that's pretty flippin' impressive. When I got started, I was sure I was gonna fold after a month or two.
You go, Filby! Keep it up another year! Woo-hoo!
Creepiest Thing I've Seen in Years? I Think So.
From The Adventures of Mark Twain:
Actually, if this were live-action or a comic book or something, I wouldn't be half as freaked out, but since it's in a typically "kiddie" medium like claymation, it's just... *shudder*.
It actually seems like something Neil Gaiman would write. Knowing that Gaiman thinks highly of Mark Twain, that's not all that surprising.
Damn, I'm gonna have nightmares for a week.
Actually, if this were live-action or a comic book or something, I wouldn't be half as freaked out, but since it's in a typically "kiddie" medium like claymation, it's just... *shudder*.
It actually seems like something Neil Gaiman would write. Knowing that Gaiman thinks highly of Mark Twain, that's not all that surprising.
Damn, I'm gonna have nightmares for a week.
Monday, August 13, 2007
R.I.P. Mike Wieringo
I just now learned that comics artist Mike Wieringo died yesterday from a heart attack, aged 44.
I didn't know much about him -- most of his work for DC was before I got into comics. In fact, my only connection to the man was that I was subscribed to his DeviantART gallery. But I know he was a damn fine artist and, more importantly, a really decent person in an industry filled with schmucks. Comics need more guys like him.
Damn. I'll miss him.
So long, Ringo.
I didn't know much about him -- most of his work for DC was before I got into comics. In fact, my only connection to the man was that I was subscribed to his DeviantART gallery. But I know he was a damn fine artist and, more importantly, a really decent person in an industry filled with schmucks. Comics need more guys like him.
Damn. I'll miss him.
So long, Ringo.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Willis Gets it Right
It's good to know you can always count on David Willis to cut right to the heart of the matter.
"You can't empower females! That's political correctness! And we all know that's the worst thing that could ever happen. Ever."
"You can't empower females! That's political correctness! And we all know that's the worst thing that could ever happen. Ever."
Monday, August 06, 2007
DC: The New Frontier Preview
I was going to post a full critique of this, but I'm really tired after going all the way from Springfield to Boston for nothing today (and getting lost on the way home) and in the throes of a post-sugar-rush meltdown, so I'll just post some brief thoughts.
First of all, DC: The New Frontier was one of my favorite graphic novels from DC. I love reading about super-heroes in historic settings (which is one reason I love the Justice Society so much), and I think it's absolutely awesome to see it brought to life in my favorite artistic medium.
For all his faults, in my humble opinion John F. Kennedy was the greatest president of the later 20th century. I really look up to him, and to hear his voice on the video is kind of an experience for me. That's got nothing to do with the movie; I'm just saying.
Every time I see Dan Didio I want to rip his smug face off. That's also got nothing to do with the movie; I'm just saying.
It seems like they've cut the Martian Manhunter from the story, which fills me with dismay. I wouldn't be surprised if they've cut the Suicide Squad, the Challengers of the Unknown, and/or John Henry as well.
But Lucy Lawless as Wonder Woman is nothing short of inspired.
I love John Stewart and think he was the right Green Lantern for Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, but it's really good to see Hal Jordan in the animated spotlight for once.
I love the character designs, but the animation itself looks kind of clunky. Maybe I'm just too used to hyperkinetic anime.
All in all, I am really looking forward to this.
Friday, August 03, 2007
All I will say on the subject of Marvel Zombies...
...is that it's a damn shame that no one in the Marvel Universe had a +3 disrupting undead-bane longsword on hand.
Think of all the trouble that would've saved.
Think of all the trouble that would've saved.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Fox News LOL
Christ, Fox News is such a fucking joke.
...since when is 4chan a "secret website," anyway?
...since when is 4chan a "secret website," anyway?
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
A Batman Anime?
I read on Newsarama that there's a "Batman anime" movie in the works.
I hate it when American cartoons are called "anime."
I'm not an anime snob. I don't think that Japanese cartoons are superior to or any more "special" than cartoons from anywhere else. In fact, I love anime and American animation equally, and I recognize the flaws of both. It's just a matter of terminology, is all. "Anime" means "an animated cartoon made in Japan," end of story. It's why we called it "Japanimation" back in the '80s and '90s. It does not refer to the art style -- which is a great deal more varied than its detractors seem to think, and which to my knowledge has no specific name (I just call it "the Japanese pop art style").
I feel the same way about so-called "original English-language manga." Much of it is very good indeed, but if it's not from Japan, it's not manga.
So, no, this movie will not be a "Batman anime." It will be "an American Batman cartoon drawn in the Japanese pop art style." (Or a close approximation, anyway. How many "Amerime" shows look like actual anime? I love me some Teen Titans, but the resemblance to actual anime is purely superficial.)
If they wanted a "Batman anime" so much, they should have gotten a Japanese animation studio to write, produce, and draw it themselves. Heck, they could've licensed Kia Asamiya's Batman: Child of Dreams (a very good read) to a Tokyo animation studio and let them do with it as they would. I'd have liked that a whole lot better, since I love seeing pop culture icons from anywhere given a distinct "spin" by a different culture; I'd like to track down some back issues of Adam Warren's Dirty Pair for that very reason, but that's off-topic.
Meh... well, there's nothing I can do about it.
I hate it when American cartoons are called "anime."
I'm not an anime snob. I don't think that Japanese cartoons are superior to or any more "special" than cartoons from anywhere else. In fact, I love anime and American animation equally, and I recognize the flaws of both. It's just a matter of terminology, is all. "Anime" means "an animated cartoon made in Japan," end of story. It's why we called it "Japanimation" back in the '80s and '90s. It does not refer to the art style -- which is a great deal more varied than its detractors seem to think, and which to my knowledge has no specific name (I just call it "the Japanese pop art style").
I feel the same way about so-called "original English-language manga." Much of it is very good indeed, but if it's not from Japan, it's not manga.
So, no, this movie will not be a "Batman anime." It will be "an American Batman cartoon drawn in the Japanese pop art style." (Or a close approximation, anyway. How many "Amerime" shows look like actual anime? I love me some Teen Titans, but the resemblance to actual anime is purely superficial.)
If they wanted a "Batman anime" so much, they should have gotten a Japanese animation studio to write, produce, and draw it themselves. Heck, they could've licensed Kia Asamiya's Batman: Child of Dreams (a very good read) to a Tokyo animation studio and let them do with it as they would. I'd have liked that a whole lot better, since I love seeing pop culture icons from anywhere given a distinct "spin" by a different culture; I'd like to track down some back issues of Adam Warren's Dirty Pair for that very reason, but that's off-topic.
Meh... well, there's nothing I can do about it.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
I just had a revelation.
Judd Winick and Bill Willingham are the same person.
Think about it. They both drove Batman into the ground. They both insert hamfisted politcal allegory into everything they write. They both have deplorable track records writing women. They both write long-standing characters out-of-character to suit whatever agenda they're pushing. The only difference is that one's an obnoxious conservative and the other's an obnoxious liberal.
How can this be? Easy. Alternate Earths. I'm hoping Final Crisis will sort this all out. And maybe erase them both from continuity.
Think about it. They both drove Batman into the ground. They both insert hamfisted politcal allegory into everything they write. They both have deplorable track records writing women. They both write long-standing characters out-of-character to suit whatever agenda they're pushing. The only difference is that one's an obnoxious conservative and the other's an obnoxious liberal.
How can this be? Easy. Alternate Earths. I'm hoping Final Crisis will sort this all out. And maybe erase them both from continuity.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
I don't see a problem with it.
I usually have a strict policy of not talking politics on my Blogger journal; I keep my political ramblings limited to my LiveJournal. But this is something that's been bothering me for some time, and it's relevant to my interest in comics, so I've decided to post it here.
There's been some discussion in the comics fan community lately over the cover to a collection of various Batgirl stories from the '60s (and the same has happened many times before over many other matters) that shows Batgirl putting on make-up rather than, you know, kicking ass like a super-hero should. The reaction has been the same as it always is: The fangirls on one side saying how demeaning it is, and the fanboys on the other side saying how they just don't see a problem with it and that the girls shouldn't worry their pretty little heads over it.
News flash, boys. YOU DON'T GET TO TELL ANYONE NOT TO WORRY ABOUT ANYTHING.
See, that's what I think is wrong with society. It's not the the Klansmen, the wife-beaters, or the gay-bashers who are the real problem here. We can see their evil for what it is and deal with them accordingly. No, the real problem here is, just like MLK said, the status quo-worshiping moderates who just don't understand why all those coloreds, broads, and queers have to be so darned uppity. After all, things look awful swell from where we're sitting; why do all of them have a problem with it?
If someone has a problem with anything in our society, it is their right -- it is their DUTY -- to speak up about it. You don't have to agree with their viewpoint, BUT YOU CANNOT TELL THEM THEIR OPINIONS ARE NOT WORTHWHILE.
I'm not even going to get into my own opinion of the cover. I just wanted to get that thought out there.
There's been some discussion in the comics fan community lately over the cover to a collection of various Batgirl stories from the '60s (and the same has happened many times before over many other matters) that shows Batgirl putting on make-up rather than, you know, kicking ass like a super-hero should. The reaction has been the same as it always is: The fangirls on one side saying how demeaning it is, and the fanboys on the other side saying how they just don't see a problem with it and that the girls shouldn't worry their pretty little heads over it.
News flash, boys. YOU DON'T GET TO TELL ANYONE NOT TO WORRY ABOUT ANYTHING.
See, that's what I think is wrong with society. It's not the the Klansmen, the wife-beaters, or the gay-bashers who are the real problem here. We can see their evil for what it is and deal with them accordingly. No, the real problem here is, just like MLK said, the status quo-worshiping moderates who just don't understand why all those coloreds, broads, and queers have to be so darned uppity. After all, things look awful swell from where we're sitting; why do all of them have a problem with it?
If someone has a problem with anything in our society, it is their right -- it is their DUTY -- to speak up about it. You don't have to agree with their viewpoint, BUT YOU CANNOT TELL THEM THEIR OPINIONS ARE NOT WORTHWHILE.
I'm not even going to get into my own opinion of the cover. I just wanted to get that thought out there.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Comics Thoughts
I've been to both comics stores in my town and I can't find The All-New Atom #13.
I... I just need a moment.
*sniff*
I... okay. I'm... I'm centered. Moving on.
I did get a copy of Justice League of America #10 against my better judgement. It... wasn't horrible, but dammned if it couldn't have stood a crapload of improvement. It's intensely annoying how the characters seem to stammer whenever they speak. Putting ten ellipses on every page does not make dialog sound natural. The way he has characters say the exact thing at the exact time hundreds of miles apart is really vexing, and with all the color-coded internal monologue boxes flying around I have trouble remembering who's saying what.
The problem is that Brad Meltzer is altogether too lax about continuity and characterization. Since when is Wildfire the Red Tornado's future self, or was he just saying that to disorient Reddy? And what really made me mad was how Mister Terrific said they should just let the Legionaires kill themselves, like it's not a big problem. News flash: Being an atheist or scientist does not mean you have no respect for the sanctity of life! *waps Meltzer with a newspaper* Bad Meltzer! Baaaaad theist! No cookie!
I'm ashamed to have that hideous Michael Turner cover in my collection, too, for all the reasons everyone else across the comics blogosphere have already covered in depth. I don't have as much problem with Ed Benes's art -- I mean, I like my super-heroes, male and female, to have larger-than-life proportions and lots of sex appeal (which is why Power Girl/Citizen Steel as drawn by Dale Eaglesham is now my OTP) -- but they all have the same builds and same faces, and the cheesecakey poses he puts them in annoyed me a great deal after a while. I shouldn't have bought it, but dammit, I hate having a hole in a storyline in my collection like... like...
...like the Atom...
*emo tear*
Why must bad things happen to good geeks? Why, Gail? WHY?!
I... I just need a moment.
*sniff*
I... okay. I'm... I'm centered. Moving on.
I did get a copy of Justice League of America #10 against my better judgement. It... wasn't horrible, but dammned if it couldn't have stood a crapload of improvement. It's intensely annoying how the characters seem to stammer whenever they speak. Putting ten ellipses on every page does not make dialog sound natural. The way he has characters say the exact thing at the exact time hundreds of miles apart is really vexing, and with all the color-coded internal monologue boxes flying around I have trouble remembering who's saying what.
The problem is that Brad Meltzer is altogether too lax about continuity and characterization. Since when is Wildfire the Red Tornado's future self, or was he just saying that to disorient Reddy? And what really made me mad was how Mister Terrific said they should just let the Legionaires kill themselves, like it's not a big problem. News flash: Being an atheist or scientist does not mean you have no respect for the sanctity of life! *waps Meltzer with a newspaper* Bad Meltzer! Baaaaad theist! No cookie!
I'm ashamed to have that hideous Michael Turner cover in my collection, too, for all the reasons everyone else across the comics blogosphere have already covered in depth. I don't have as much problem with Ed Benes's art -- I mean, I like my super-heroes, male and female, to have larger-than-life proportions and lots of sex appeal (which is why Power Girl/Citizen Steel as drawn by Dale Eaglesham is now my OTP) -- but they all have the same builds and same faces, and the cheesecakey poses he puts them in annoyed me a great deal after a while. I shouldn't have bought it, but dammit, I hate having a hole in a storyline in my collection like... like...
...like the Atom...
*emo tear*
Why must bad things happen to good geeks? Why, Gail? WHY?!
Friday, July 06, 2007
When the Cicadas Cry
June, 1983. At night in a small town in rural Japan, a teenage boy murders two girls, bludgeoning them repeatedly with a steel baseball bat until they stop living. Realizing what he's done, the boy drops the bat and stares in wild-eyed disbelief at the two corpses before him. Cue title card.
So begins Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: When the Cicadas Cry*. A Japanese animated series that aired in the summer of '06, Higurashi is a 26-episode thrill ride of pulse-pounding suspense, gripping mystery, and gruesome horror. A mild-to-moderate anime buff, I'd heard a fair amount of buzz about this show last year. My interest in anime had waned a bit over the last several months, so to get myself back into the medium, I thought, why not give it a shot?
*Released in English as When They Cry -- Higurashi, "higurashi" being a particular species of cicadas with a distinctive mournful call. And the red "na" is, oddly enough, an official component of the title.
The premise of Higurashi is unusual. The series consists of multiple "chapters" telling the same story over and over again, each time from different perspectives or with significant divergences from previous chapters. Many storylines are mutually exclusive: A character who dies one way in the first chapter may die differently in the next, and not at all in the chapter after that. Practically every character gets to play the hero, villain, or victim over the course of the series.
There are, however, certain elements that run throughout each chapter without changing. At its core, Higurashi is about an average teenager named Keiichi Maebara who moves to the tiny village of Hinamizawa, where he falls in with four girls: Easygoing Rena, tomboyish Mion, would-be tough girl Satoko, and Cute (with a capital "C") Rika. The five spend lazy summer days hanging out and playing games; if it weren't for the gory opening scene described above, I'd have immediately assumed that this was just another fluffy, superficial harem comedy and passed the show over completely.
By the end of the first episode, however, we begin to see that there's much more going on here. Keichii learns that his friends are keeping something from him, a tragedy that struck Hinamizawa five years ago: In retaliation for a proposed dam that would have flooded their homes, a government employee was lynched and dismembered by the villagers; each year for the next four years, one more person has been mysteriously murdered and another disappeared completely, all on the night of the annual Watanagashi festival to the local deity (or demon?), Oyashiro-sama. The prefectural police refuse to look into the murders, chalking it up to "Oyashiro-sama's Curse." What's worse is that some or all of Keichii's friends are connected to the incident, either as blood relatives of the victims or as possible conspirators. And the eve of Watanagashi is fast approaching...
I reacted negatively to some of the show's elements. What really took me out of it first was the sheer level of moe, that hard-to-define anime aesthetic that aims to attract male fans to female characters through the use of stock quirky character traits, over-idealized physical appearance, a glut of cuteness, and worst of all, vulnerability. I managed to get past it once the show got rolling, and it actually worked to the series's advantage juxtaposing the deliberately "cute" imagery with the increasingly dark subject matter, but it was a pretty big turn off for the first fifteen minutes or so.
And then there was the violence. Really, for the most part, Higurashi sticks to the old horror adage that it's better to keep the most horrible parts off-screen and in the viewer's imagination, but when it does show violence, it shows a lot. In fact, there was one point late in the series in which one character repeatedly stabs another that was so gory that for a split second I had to stop myself from chuckling at just how over-the-top it all was. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief any further. So, yeah, this is not a series for the faint of heart (or the faint of stomach).
Yet there is much to recommend the series. Higurashi very skillfully weaves a shroud of suspicion, paranoia, and doubt over all its characters. The most fascinating aspect of the series is that we are never quite sure just who or what is behind the grisly events of the series. Is there really a supernatural entity visiting its vengeance upon transgressors, or is it the mundane but very real evil of human spite that is driving the characters to their dooms? We are provided with leads that suggest one or the other, and by the penultimate episode we think we see the whole picture. Or do we?
The soundtrack, too, was enjoyable. The ending theme wasn't to my taste -- a sappy ballad sung completely in ungrammatical, heavily-accented English -- but the opening theme really stood out to me. A rather intense elegy with slightly disturbing lyrics (for frame of reference, it reminded me a bit of Evanescence), the song was a welcome change from the typical bouncy, saccharine J-pop anime theme songs to which I'd grown accustomed. I didn't pay a great deal of attention to the in-show music, but the sound crew did a commendable job at crafting sound effects that enhance the constant feeling of wrongness that pervades Hinamizawa, particularly the haunting, ubiquitous chirping of cicadas that punctuates every episode.
In closing, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is an intense experience of gripping psychological drama and bone-chilling horror. If you're a fan of anime and/or horror, you could do worse than to give it a try.
So begins Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: When the Cicadas Cry*. A Japanese animated series that aired in the summer of '06, Higurashi is a 26-episode thrill ride of pulse-pounding suspense, gripping mystery, and gruesome horror. A mild-to-moderate anime buff, I'd heard a fair amount of buzz about this show last year. My interest in anime had waned a bit over the last several months, so to get myself back into the medium, I thought, why not give it a shot?
*Released in English as When They Cry -- Higurashi, "higurashi" being a particular species of cicadas with a distinctive mournful call. And the red "na" is, oddly enough, an official component of the title.
The premise of Higurashi is unusual. The series consists of multiple "chapters" telling the same story over and over again, each time from different perspectives or with significant divergences from previous chapters. Many storylines are mutually exclusive: A character who dies one way in the first chapter may die differently in the next, and not at all in the chapter after that. Practically every character gets to play the hero, villain, or victim over the course of the series.
There are, however, certain elements that run throughout each chapter without changing. At its core, Higurashi is about an average teenager named Keiichi Maebara who moves to the tiny village of Hinamizawa, where he falls in with four girls: Easygoing Rena, tomboyish Mion, would-be tough girl Satoko, and Cute (with a capital "C") Rika. The five spend lazy summer days hanging out and playing games; if it weren't for the gory opening scene described above, I'd have immediately assumed that this was just another fluffy, superficial harem comedy and passed the show over completely.
By the end of the first episode, however, we begin to see that there's much more going on here. Keichii learns that his friends are keeping something from him, a tragedy that struck Hinamizawa five years ago: In retaliation for a proposed dam that would have flooded their homes, a government employee was lynched and dismembered by the villagers; each year for the next four years, one more person has been mysteriously murdered and another disappeared completely, all on the night of the annual Watanagashi festival to the local deity (or demon?), Oyashiro-sama. The prefectural police refuse to look into the murders, chalking it up to "Oyashiro-sama's Curse." What's worse is that some or all of Keichii's friends are connected to the incident, either as blood relatives of the victims or as possible conspirators. And the eve of Watanagashi is fast approaching...
I reacted negatively to some of the show's elements. What really took me out of it first was the sheer level of moe, that hard-to-define anime aesthetic that aims to attract male fans to female characters through the use of stock quirky character traits, over-idealized physical appearance, a glut of cuteness, and worst of all, vulnerability. I managed to get past it once the show got rolling, and it actually worked to the series's advantage juxtaposing the deliberately "cute" imagery with the increasingly dark subject matter, but it was a pretty big turn off for the first fifteen minutes or so.
And then there was the violence. Really, for the most part, Higurashi sticks to the old horror adage that it's better to keep the most horrible parts off-screen and in the viewer's imagination, but when it does show violence, it shows a lot. In fact, there was one point late in the series in which one character repeatedly stabs another that was so gory that for a split second I had to stop myself from chuckling at just how over-the-top it all was. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief any further. So, yeah, this is not a series for the faint of heart (or the faint of stomach).
Yet there is much to recommend the series. Higurashi very skillfully weaves a shroud of suspicion, paranoia, and doubt over all its characters. The most fascinating aspect of the series is that we are never quite sure just who or what is behind the grisly events of the series. Is there really a supernatural entity visiting its vengeance upon transgressors, or is it the mundane but very real evil of human spite that is driving the characters to their dooms? We are provided with leads that suggest one or the other, and by the penultimate episode we think we see the whole picture. Or do we?
The soundtrack, too, was enjoyable. The ending theme wasn't to my taste -- a sappy ballad sung completely in ungrammatical, heavily-accented English -- but the opening theme really stood out to me. A rather intense elegy with slightly disturbing lyrics (for frame of reference, it reminded me a bit of Evanescence), the song was a welcome change from the typical bouncy, saccharine J-pop anime theme songs to which I'd grown accustomed. I didn't pay a great deal of attention to the in-show music, but the sound crew did a commendable job at crafting sound effects that enhance the constant feeling of wrongness that pervades Hinamizawa, particularly the haunting, ubiquitous chirping of cicadas that punctuates every episode.
In closing, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is an intense experience of gripping psychological drama and bone-chilling horror. If you're a fan of anime and/or horror, you could do worse than to give it a try.
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