Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Fascinating column in (the pay section of) the Wall Street Journal, by comic book industry insiders Chuck Dixon and Paul Rivoche:
In the 1950s, the great publishers, including DC and what later become Marvel, created the Comics Code Authority, a guild regulator that issued rules such as: “Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal.” The idea behind the CCA, which had a stamp of approval on the cover of all comics, was to protect the industry’s main audience—kids—from story lines that might glorify violent crime, drug use or other illicit behavior.
In the 1970s, our first years in the trade, nobody really altered the superhero formula. The CCA did change its code to allow for “sympathetic depiction of criminal behavior . . . [and] corruption among public officials” but only “as long as it is portrayed as exceptional and the culprit is punished.” In other words, there were still good guys and bad guys. Nobody cared what an artist’s politics were if you could draw or write and hand work in on schedule. Comics were a brotherhood beyond politics.
The 1990s brought a change. The industry weakened and eventually threw out the CCA, and editors began to resist hiring conservative artists. One of us, Chuck, expressed the opinion that a frank story line about AIDS was not right for comics marketed to children. His editors rejected the idea and asked him to apologize to colleagues for even expressing it. Soon enough, Chuck got less work.
The superheroes also changed. Batman became dark and ambiguous, a kind of brooding monster. Superman became less patriotic, culminating in his decision to renounce his citizenship so he wouldn’t be seen as an extension of U.S. foreign policy. A new code, less explicit but far stronger, replaced the old: a code of political correctness and moral ambiguity. If you disagreed with mostly left-leaning editors, you stayed silent.
In the post immediately previous I recall making reference to the First Conquest Rule, that people are conservative about what they know best (or whatever is closest to them). This thing may have to do with the Second: “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” It is the way of large, entrenched, layered bureaucracies, because it is the way of image over substance. Everyone wants to look enlightened, everyone wants to appear forward-thinking, everyone wants to get something for nothing. So once people pool up into large organizations and start to worry about reputation more than mission, they just love to put out an image of their group that attracts maximum attention but involves minimal commitment to the stated ideals.
The gay-friendly thing doesn’t bother me so much, other than the introduction of adult themes into a medium that is supposed to be for children. That, the way I see it, is a rating-problem: Comic books are much more popular with older kids than they used to be. This introduces challenges with mixing up the age groups that the industry has not adequately addressed, which in turn causes some social commentary to be put in that doesn’t really belong there. But what worries me far more is this thing about moral ambiguity. Superman doesn’t want to “be seen as an extension of U.S. foreign policy.” Excuse me, but doesn’t this get to the very core of word “hero”? Doesn’t it at least interfere with the ideals? How is this supposed to work — Superman defends the defenseless but only up until such point as it starts to cramp his style?
What we saw in the 1990’s, in comic books and elsewhere — and it has yet to lose momentum, even this late — is a cultural phobia against true heroism. This could always use more & better inspection, even if the inspection results in unflattering things being noticed about the phobia, which I think for the most part is the case. Let’s see, what are the reasons heroism might be a pain in the ass. There are some: 1) A hero who rights wrongs, might come after you if you’re the guy doing something wrong; 2) Heroes raise the standard, since it isn’t really the physical capability to do what’s right that makes the hero, it’s the resolve. So they pose a threat to the active evil-doer, and the passive bystander alike. May I suggest that our two-decades-old or so beef with yesteryear’s simpler and cleaner brand of heroism, is advocacy for the benefit of the passive and not so much for the active. It is a shadowy crusade for sake of the lazy.
It is, I think, a fulfillment of success by way of defining success downward to meet status quo. Here’s an evil thing being done, and here’s a rationale for not doing anything about it: If true heroism is nothing more than recognizing that we shouldn’t do anything about it, then we can all be heroes by continuing to sit on our asses, playing Angry Birds on our phones. And therein lies a complete inversion that didn’t take too many years to come about; since when Superman got started it wasn’t his superpowers that made him a hero, it was his recognition that something was amiss and something had to be done about it. “This looks like a job for,” remember that?
The Kryptonite that poisoned Superman, here, is the nihilistic aspect of modern liberalism. The perpetual search for reasons not to do things, not to give a damn, not to see anything as worth doing. To leave a tinier “footprint,” or something. The more environmentally-conscious Superman wouldn’t dash off to stop a bank robbery or save a woman from being mugged, since such actions might actually change the outcome of a situation, which is the one single ignition point of this phobia. Ideally, such a modernized Superman would do what any other adherent to modern nihilistic liberalism would do: Make a hole, as tiny as possible, jump into it and pull it in after himself. It’s all about not having an impact on anything. Don’t, don’t, don’t: Don’t do anything about Iraq, don’t do anything that creates carbon, don’t even get up to wash dishes or take out the trash.
As a child of the “Star Wars” generation, I am truly perplexed by this because I understand the enormous revenue-generating potential of restoring “good guy versus bad guy” western heroism. It stirs passions in the soul, and it should. In my lifetime, as this good-versus-evil clarity has been proven out as the high octane story-telling fuel that it is & should be, our modern society has shown this resistance against it as we seek to placate the hero-phobes. These are people living among us who have been somehow warped, I don’t completely understand how, but probably in childhood. They somehow have been “educated” that there is no evil in the world, other than a higher standard. Apart from whatever passes as “bigotry” in the moment, nothing should be resisted, ever — except the calling, to do what plainly ought to be done, and get up off your ass. There’s nothing for any of us to do, except resist bigotry, play up our sense of group-victim-hood now & then, and keep playing games on our phones.
We’re living in their time, the time of the nihilist. I’m not entirely sure why that is. Perhaps boredom?
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[…] Blogger Freeberg discusses the effects, as the Wall Street Journal and he perceive it, of liberalism on comic books, since the 1990s onwards, here. […]
- Progressivism’s effects on comic books | Patriactionary | 06/10/2014 @ 15:25Try this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns1m_aXJa58
- FunkyPhD | 06/12/2014 @ 09:31