Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal # 58, October 8, 1958.

Héctor Germán Oesterheld's and Francisco Solano López's "Enterradores" (gravediggers)

A curious thing happened when Argentinian scriptwriter Héctor Germán Oesterheld found his own comics publishing house, Editorial Frontera. For a brief period of time, 1957 - 1963, mainstream adolescent comics raised much above the business as usual, pervasive formulaic dreck. Oesterheld proved to me a very simple and often forgotten truth: it's easy to dismiss a whole category if we base our judgment on the worst examples (usually those are the only ones that the judges know about). It's easy to debase something when the judge is socially much above the subject of her/his scorn; in these circumstances s/he can only be applauded by her/his peers while all outraged reactions can't be heard outside of the attacked subculture.
I don't defend adolescent comics, mind you, I'm just saying that when the best comics writer ever decided do try a hand at this particular genre (if we can call it that) the inevitable happened. Here's what he had to say in Hora Cero Suplemento semanal (zero hour weekly supplement) # 1 (September 4, 1957):

There are bad comics when they're badly done only. Denying comics all together, condemning them as a whole, is as irrational as denying cinema all together because there are bad films. Or condemning literature because there are bad books. There are, unfortunately in a huge ratio, lots of bad comics. But these don't disqualify the good ones. On the contrary, by comparison, they should underline their quality. [...]

Oesterheld is a German family name and Héctor inherited a German tradition which, according to Christian Gasser (in the Lisbon comics convention catalog, 2003) dates from the enlightenment:

This didactic interpretation of literature is a product of the 18th century. At that time, the qualities of literature and art were used to educate and morally elevate the common people. Meanwhile, these efforts became obsolete in literature, but not in the restricted domain of children's literature where people continue to ask: "Very well, what can a child learn from this book?" The pedagogic function continues to be overrated.

Oesterheld viewed the, then, popular medium of comics as an opportunity to reach hundreds of thousands of children and adolescents. At a certain point he felt the need to put the following warning on the cover of Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal: "Historietas para mayores de 14 años" (comics for those who are older than 14). The anti-comics crusade was still on and he didn't want any trouble. Anyway, he wanted to both educate and entertain. What he meant by "educate" wasn't exactly what may be on our minds today though...
He aimed at four goals: (1) to be accurate with his data (pedagogic texts about warfare punctuated his comics; he wrote stories in a lot of genres - Western, Science-Fiction, Historical, Noir –, but War - WW2, to be exact - remained the bulk of his magazines' content); (2) he didn't want to edulcorate reality or bowdlerize his stories; (3) he wanted to convey moral values of self-sacrifice, unselfishness, team work (he strongly opposed the individual macho hero as he - it's usually a "he" - is seen by North American mass artists; ditto the glorification of violence... besides, the main character is usually someone socially "invisible" who reacts unexpectedly in a stressful situation); (4) linked to (2): Oesterheld didn't want to hide what's darker in the human condition, but, at his best (he produced hundreds of stories, so, lots and lots of them aren't that good) he was never Manichean.
Four great draftsmen drew Oesterheld's stories at Editorial Frontera before working (immigrating even) exclusively for the UK. After these artists disbanded the graphic quality of Frontera's stories dwindled dramatically. Not even a young José Muñoz could equal them:

Hugo Pratt:

Hora Cero Extra! # 4 October, 1958.

Hugo Pratt did very rare unprejudiced portraits of black people in the 50s. In this Hora Cero Extra! cover he illustrated a story by Oesterheld about Senegalese soldiers fighting for France during WW2.

Arturo del Castillo:

Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal # 58, October 8, 1958.

An impressive Western scene from "Randall." Castillo would do for the UK the best The Man in the Iron Mask comics illustrations ever.

Carlos Roume:

Frontera Extra # 7, May 1959.

Roume was a great animal artist. In this Frontera Extra cover he drew Pichi, the Pampa dog. A story scripted by Héctor's brother, Jorge.

Alberto Breccia:

Misterix # 749, March 22, 1963.

Alberto Breccia and Héctor Germán Oesterheld's Mort Cinder (a series that, in my view, isn't as good as Ernie Pike) remains one of the most famous of Oesterheld's creations (along with Argentinian cultural icon: El Eternauta - the eternaut). This doesn't surprise me because of comics fans' bent for fantasy. Even so the story to which the above page belongs, "En la penitenciaria: Marlin" (in the penitentiary: Marlin), is one of the series' best ones.
I immersed myself in Oesterheld's oeuvre for the last year. Reading hundreds of his stories I can safely say that he could have been one of those world famous South American writers like Jorge Luis Borges. Borges and Oesterheld knew each other and used to take walks together. Oesterheld was an inventive plotter and a purveyor of ideas and great phrases. Even when the story is no good at all (as I said, he produced too much) a phrase sparkles suddenly making the reading worthwhile.
I stumbled upon lots of Oesterheld's great stories, but I had to choose one for this Stumbling. I chose "Enterradores." In it a German major freshly arrived from Berlin to the Stalingrad front is shocked when he discovers that two German soldiers (Wesser and Hofe) of the disciplinary battalion (whose mission is to bury corpses) are burying Russians and Germans together:

Hora Cero Extra! # 1, April 1958.

The drawings are by Francisco Solano López. To be honest I don't like Solano's drawings as much as I like the work of those four artists above. I find his understanding of the human figure a bit strange and his lines a bit heavy and formless sometimes. Even so it seems to me that he captured the facial expressions of the veterans well in contrast with the major's. The overall darkness of the atmosphere is more than adequate to convey the theme of the story.

[The captain explains to the major how desperate the situation is (he wants to excuse the two men's lack of discipline). Here's what Oeserheld wrote in the last two strips: "It was in the Steppe, near the Don. / There stayed a shared grave different from all the others. A grave in which Russians and Germans mixed. / That grave was the revenge of soldiers Wesser and Hofe of the disciplinarian battalion." Equally impressive are the eerie shadows walking into oblivion at the end...
Can you imagine such a story in a children's comic today? It wasn't even suitable for a children's comic back in the 1950s. And yet, Argentinian kids bought Hora Cero and Frontera in their various incarnations. Judging from Oesterheld's example, maybe I'm not against children's comics... maybe I'm against children's comics that insult their readers' intelligence, that's all...

[PS After my post on July 25, 2010 at The Hooded Utilitarian I had the great joy and honor of receiving the below comment by José Muñoz. Moments like this are priceless, and make all the effort of writing pro bono more than worthwhile!

Fifty years ago we were already there, another five years passed by… and Los Enterradores, Amapola Negra (I’ve worked there with my brush plenty of water with black ink doing clouds, mechanical interiors of the B 17, Messerschmitts and lots and lots of used leather jackets…to search the right light on them was, is, a giant pleasure) El Eternauta, El Cuaderno Rojo, are part of my central memories.
I’m so touched by your interest, respect and conmotion around the superbly well done works of my masters.
Roume camina con Del Castillo
por las calles de mis barrios,
el polvo de las Pampas y del Painted Desert
entra en la ciudad,
Solano, Pratt y Breccia los esperan
en el Bar La Comedia, Corrientes esquina Paranà,
Oesterheld està llegando con su tìmida sonrisa.]

Lighten Up

Ronald Wimberly, "Lighten Up," Eat More Comics, September 2015.

 

How is the daughter of a Mexican Father and an African-American mother light skinned? The answer: if she's in a comic and the editor is, er... (I don't want to throw the r word, so...) impervious to darker skin tones...

Monthly Stumblings # 2: Frans Masereel

Frans Masereel’s Route des hommes (men’s path)

In my humble opinion the best Belgian comics artist is not Hergé… The best Belgian comics artist is Frans Masereel…
I vaguely remember mentioning this to a couple of Masereel’s fellow countrymen and I’ve got two different answers (I must add that, in my view, of course, I chose my collocutors well): (1) a nod of approval; (2) something like: In Belgium we don’t view Frans Masereel as a comics artist.
(Needless to say that, besides some puzzled expressions asking “who are those?,” most of my possible Belgian interlocutors would react in a third way calling me a lunatic, or worse, depending on the person’s degree of Tintinophily.)
The first reaction was understandable because said person is an artist himself and what he does is akin to Masereeel’s work. The latter one is more interesting to me at this particular moment because it permits me to enter one of the muddiest territories in comics scholarship once again (when will I learn, right?…), the old conundrum: what is a comic?…
I’m not going to answer that question because it can’t be done. All the answers that one can come up with are rigged because they depend on a previous particular view of what’s essential in a comic (and that’s not only prescriptive, that’s also arbitrary). To Bill Blackbeard, for instance, speech balloons and image sequences are essential so (even if there are older examples, namely, here or even, here) comics started with Richard Felton Outcault’s Yellow Kid in 1896.
Saying this though, doesn’t get us very far (my thoughts on the subject, are here, by the way). What interests me right now are two related points: (1) the sociological side of the problem; (2) anachronism. (1) Words have a (social) commonly agreed meaning. The dictionary tries to stabilize it, but significations aren’t fixed. There’s a reason why we call Maus a “comic.” The sense evolved to include serious work while the signifier stood still. Even so I accept that “comics,” to most people, don’t include Frans Masereel’s oeuvre. Perhaps it will, someday… (2) Frans Masereel didn’t view himself as a comics artist. As far as he was concerned he did wood engravings, that’s all… To call his cycles “comics” is an anachronism. Maybe so, but it seems to me that we are guilty of anachronism all the time and nobody cares. To go back to Tintin, the expression “bande dessinée” didn’t exist when Hergé started doing comics. Why do we continue to say that he did comics, then?… Did the Lascaux painters call what they did “painting?” Is that important? How logocentric can we get?…

As you can see in this 1915 illustration above Frans Masereel was a naturalist. But working for the pacifist newspaper La feuille in Geneva as a political cartoonist during WWI Masereel needed a less detailed, more urgent, style. As Josef Herman put it:

Working for La Feuille posed two main problems for [Masereel], both of a technical nature. One was that the drawing had to be done quickly, leaving no time for the careful, detailed draughtsmanship he had practised until then. The other was how to achieve maximum effect using poor quality paper, on which thin lines were simply lost. He solved these two problems with the true instinct of a man of genius. He avoided drawing with a fine pen and took a thick brush, in the process giving up the search for tonal texture. He now used large planes of intense black, drawing lines wherever needed with a brush. The emotional effect he achieved was staggering.

Maybe the times weren’t right for nuanced views of the world (?). I love Frans Masereel’s verve and variety (he did manga in the original sense of roaming drawings), but his ideological views and Expressionist style push him into a less than complex view of the world sometimes (the fat, jeweled, cigar-chomping capitalist, for instance, is a regrettable stereotype). You can see one of Frans Masereel’s political cartoons as published in La feuille below:

Frans Masereel was 75 years old when he published Route des hommes (1964). He did “novels without words” all his life (more than 50, according to David Beronä). Route des hommes is far from being one of his best (that would be Passionate Journey – 1918 – and, my personal favorite, The City – 1925).

Route des hommes is about the horrible and great things that happen to humankind. We find in the book Masereel’s usual topics: war, famine, exploitation, but also progress, team work, joy, etc…
The greatest thing about this edition of the Musée des Arts Contemporains au Grand-Hornu and La Lettre volée (2006) is that it shows both Masereel’s prep drawings and his wood engravings. In this way we have access to the artist’s creative process as never before.

We can see above how Frans Masereel cites another Belgian painter, James Ensor (ditto Jacques Callot at some point). It’s interesting how what seems to be a tree in the foreground of the drawing becomes a sinister figure in the wood engraving (death waits us all at the end). His composition changes (increasing the two background figures’ size) greatly improve his work.

 Masereel used allegory a lot. In this drawing the cars represent careless rich people. The city lights aren’t just that, they connote poor people’s acceptance of the status quo: they’re hypnotized, alienated (as Marxists liked to say)…
 

…But, to tell you the truth, I prefer allegoryless Masereel. He could be very poetic, as we can see above…

Ha muerto Ceesepe!

 Alberto Garcia-Alix, 1982

El artista Carlos Sánchez 'Ceesepe', ilustrador de la Movida, ha fallecido este viernes 7 de septiembre en Madrid, según han confirmado a Europa Press fuentes cercanas al pintor.

Monthly Stumblings # 1: Pierre Duba

Racines (roots) by Pierre Duba

Sometimes I mumble an inner “Wow!”… It happens when I stumble upon a book that I find great. It’s quite possible too that, upon rereading, months or years later, I also say to myself: “How could I like this stuff so much?!”

The thing is that we need the right mood, the right brain wave connection to the work in order to truly like it. That, needless to say, is highly subjective and unconveyable. If our past selves can’t agree with our present selves, how can we (the journalist critics and reviewers) agree with people (the readers) whom we have never met?
There’s only one answer for that rhetorical question: the critics are always preaching to the already converted. Critics explain, analyse, synthesize, extrapolate, digress, etc… These are intellectual operations that have nothing whatsoever to do with love. Critics dissect and people (them included, I suppose, even if opinion is divided on the subject) enjoy living, breathing things, not corpses, as it were…
That being said criticism may also be very enjoyable. Conversely to the proof at hand (namely, this foreign’s poor attempt at writing in English) it can be very well written. It can also give the readers some food for thought after their consumers’ experience. (I don’t really like the word “consumer,” but it was too awkward to write: reader/viewer/listener… etc… you get the picture…)
In fact, the critic begins by simply enjoying the work, I suppose… What twisted mind picks up the scalpel after love? That’s what we do folks, but don’t be too harsh passing judgment on the judges: we do it because we are a curious lot (we are like children opening up their favorite toy); plus, we may unbury hidden treasures: discover highly ingenious mechanisms, work with the artist to reflect on the human condition, etc…
The title of this monthly column is too ambitious? Am I expecting to stumble on a comics masterpiece every month? Not really, true greatness (even if perceived in a subjective way) is rare. I will write about some “Hmmms…” instead of some “Wows!” most of the time, I guess… (I will also use the title to excuse myself: what do you expect? I’m stumbling here!)
For my first column I chose an author that I feel, since my TCJ’s messboard days, I’ve unwarrantedly neglected: UK born, French comics artist Pierre Duba. Here’s what I said in my blog’s first post:

It was February 24, 2004, 08:27 AM, on the Comics Journal Messboard. I’m not sure if this was the first time that I listed these comics there (probably not), but that’s what I did in that particular occasion. If I remember correctly (unfortunately I didn’t write a crib sheet at the time) I did previously post what I now call “my canon” because I was fed up with the accusation of not liking comics at all because I found children’s comics (and I do like Carl Barks’ oeuvre) somewhat wanting (melodrama and manichaeism in particular bother me plenty).”

A list followed, but I vaguely remember saying something like: I could add a couple more names and, then, I cited Pierre Duba.
Duba’s last book is titled Racines (6 pieds sous terre, 2010), but instead of trying an interpretation I will follow Susan Sontag’s advice and I will try what I say above is impossible to do (“unconveyable”). As Sontag advices in Against Interpretation I’ll try an erotics of art instead of a hermeneutics.

To truly experience the above page we need it to be just that: the original paper page (material aspects are the basis for a sensuous experience). Here, on a screen, it lacks the glossiness of the paper (and it is glossy). Even touch and smell are an important part of the process (I wonder if the internet and ebooks are going to establish the same relation with books as repros in art books established with real paintings and sculptures: it all comes down to a reduction of experience, substitutions of the real things by simulacra). This page is very appealing because it achieves the feeling which psychoanalyst Marion Milner called a close relationship with objects. It does that using three devices: 1) the black gutters (I miss Chester Brown’s stories, but I also miss his black, large, gutters) which “compress” space and unite as much, if not more, as they divide; 2) the panels lack a clear distinction between background and foreground giving us a closeness with whatever is represented (blood, methinks); 3) moduled forms that tend to be viewed as texture (en masse) rather than as individual shapes. The visual rhythm is also very appealing: we’re going along with the hypnotic movement marvelously and smoothly flowing from panel to panel. The colors’ muted contrast is also an important part of the whole effect.

In this page a certain creepiness appears (Racines is a bit creepy, to tell you the truth). The hands morph into the roots of the title. We’re still close, and I don’t need to repeat what I said above, but closeness isn’t always a good feeling.

This page is here because of the black and blue contrast. The foreground has holes that let us see a few steps, the doll, and a rabbit. (What’s the deal with Pierre Duba and rabbits, anyway?) But I’m falling into interpretation again. I told you this was an impossible task…

Pierre Duba’s pages function better as double-page spreads, as you can see here.

Duba explains himself.

Pierre Duba’s site.

What’s Missing From This Picture?

[If my piece about Contempt is my only film criticism, today I give you my only TV criticism. If I remember correctly it was written during a serious writer's block. I loved the series and I wanted to give my contribution to the round table about it, but the muse didn't show up that day and the crib sheet didn't help much either. I remember ending up with a sort of bad taste in my mouth... Even so, upon rereading the post below now I don't dislike it. It's right on the mark of what capitalism is doing to us all.]

 

Others have already pointed out that The Wire isn't as realistic as it seems. Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), for instance, is the hero of the American Monomyth. Here's how the latter is summarized in the words of John Shelton Lawrence and  Robert Jewett:

A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil; normal institutions fail to contend with this threat; a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task; aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal condition; the superhero then recedes into obscurity.

The Wire revises the myth thus: a community in hell (Bubbles - Andre Royo: "it's a thin line between heaven and here.") is threatened by some of hell's inhabitants; normal institutions, paralyzed by red tape, political agendas, and business as usual, fail to contend with this threat; a self-aggrandizing supercop emerges to be afflicted by temptations and fails to carry out the redemptive task; bumping his head against the system the supercop recedes into obscurity.
That's quite good. It revises the myth until it lies there, almost unrecognizable. Here's my version though: in its mythology of being the only possible system (in the best of all possible worlds as Pangloss would say; at the end of history as Fukuyama would add), and in its sanctification of profit (the market will provide), global capitalism transferred labor to developing countries where the wages are low (Walden Bello):

The extreme international mobility of corporate capital coupled with the largely self-imposed national limits on labor organizing by the Northern labor unions (except when this served Washington's Cold War political objectives) was a deadly formula that brought organized labor to its knees as corporate capital, virtually unopposed, transferred manufacturing jobs from the North to cheap-labor sites in the Third World.

Under these conditions a parallel economy thrives (mimicking the mainstream economy with its power struggles, cut-throat wars and iron clad hierarchies); those who are unprepared and uneducated, the poor, have no other option than to go underground; everything becomes simulacra in order to keep up appearances.
Hostage to the worlds of finance and economics politics is reduced to being a sport (I love the scene in which Carcetti campaigns in an elderly home: we can hear the crickets chirping because the seniors in there couldn't care less for this kind of sport); the police are a political tool; the education system is a dead end (and the students know it - Howard "Bunny" Colvin - Robert Wisdom: "I mean, they're not fools these kids. [...] [T]hey see right through us."). That's why Marcia Donnelly (Tootsie Duvall), the Assistant Principal of Edward J. Tilghman Middle School says to Bubbles that Sherrod (Rashad Orange) is going to be "socially promoted" after missing school for three years. In the end, everybody knows that it doesn't matter (those who do matter aren't in that kind of school). Everybody has some reason to pretend that it does though. I'll give the last word to David Simon:

Baltimore's dying port unions, is a meditation on the death of work and the betrayal of the American working class, it is a deliberate argument that unencumbered capitalism is not a substitute for social policy, that on its own, without a social compact, raw capitalism is destined to serve the few at the expense of the many.

My problem with this statement is that David Simon should be saying it about the series as a whole. Why just season two? I hope that there isn't a hint somewhere suggesting that, given the chance, black people would still prefer the world of the corners instead of being part of the mainstream economy.

Another instance where the creators of the series juggle dangerously with cliché is in season four (my favorite, pardon the personal note). The aforementioned season includes a kind of Teacher Movie. It's true that, again, the writers do a good job of transcending the pernicious genre (the teacher, Roland "Mr. Prezbo" Pryzbylewski - Jim True-Frost - doesn't win the trust of his most difficult students completely alone). But he also conveys what I call the flawed Sesame Street Syndrome (or SSS). That is, students can learn while playing. Nicholas Buglione, wrote:

Dr. Robert Helfenbein, an education professor at Indiana University who specializes in urban education issues, believes these films trivialize the learning process and present an erroneously simple solution to what’s really a far more complex problem: Closing the achievement gap in inner-city schools.

That goal can't be achieved by any superhero teacher or caped crusader. It can only be achieved by closing the parallel gap between the wealthy and the poor.
The image above shows Bubbles pushing his peripatetic business. The original is a print on a t-shirt. I chose it because it is semiotically fascinating. On one end it's the perfect symbol of the parallel economy I talked about above. On the other end it shows the absolute base of the social pyramid, the junkie that is everybody's victim (I'm aware that Bubbles is a fictional character, mind). And yet... it's in a t-shirt... for sale! Grammar mistakes and all!... Capitalism appropriates everything by selling everything.

What's missing above is the real one.

In conclusion, the use of parallel montage gives the impression of a kaleidoscopic and complex view of the city. That's not untrue, but it just gives us the street level (in today's world of virtual politics, even the temples of infotainment and city hall are at street level). What really affects these people's lives is happening elsewhere, in the hallways of the plutocracy.

Mickey Mouse The Racist

The theory that Mickey Mouse's design, by Ub Iwerks, was inspired by the racist show known as blackface minstrelsy appears here and there in texts about comics (and animation, I guess, but I don't read those...).You may think that it's just a theory lacking empirical proof. That may very well be... until now, that is.

You just need to look below, here's the smoking gun.

Left: gag by Floyd Gottfredson (Mickey Mouse daily, April 16, 1930); 

Right: Mammy, CD Compilation (1988) showing Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, 1927.

Back To Film or Contempt: A Visual Reading and Other Loose Ends - Coda

Here's what I noticed:

Greed - 1924
L'Atalante - 1934
Brief Encounter - 1945
Late Spring - 1949
Stromboli - 1950
The River - 1951
Life of Oharu - 1952
El - 1953
Tokyo Story - 1953
Sansho the Bailiff - 1954
The Searchers - 1956
A Man Escaped - 1956
Pickpocket - 1959
Viridiana - 1961
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - 1962
Charulata - 1964
Husbands - 1970

Are the 1950s the golden age of film or what?!

Aren't there any good films shot after 1970? I bet there are, but this is a personal list and I can't think of any which impacted me as much as these ones.

Even worse than that. Here's an alternative list:

Sunrise - Murnau - 1927
The Wedding March - Stroheim - 1928
Queen Kelly - Stroheim - 1929
Young Mister Lincoln - John Ford - 1939
Bicycle Thieves - Vittorio de Sica- 1948
Rashomon - Akira Kurosawa - 1950
Ikiru - Kurosawa - 1952
Europe 51 - Rossellini - 1952
Ana-Ta-Han - Sternberg - 1953
Sound of the Mountain - Naruse - 1954
Ordet - C. Th. Dreyer - 1955
The Apu Trilogy - Satyajit Ray - 1955, 1956, 1959
The Apartment - Billy Wilder - 1960
Persona - Ingmar Bergman - 1966

See? More of the same...

I like Theo Angelopoulos, Abbas Kiarostami, Nuri Bilge Ceilan, and maybe, just maybe, I could think of some film made by these like Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami) 1997, even if I prefer the Kiarostami photographer to the Kiarostami filmmaker, or The Travelling Players (Angelopoulos) 1975, or Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders) 1976, but that's about it. Some Rohmer, I guess...I can't also forget two consecutive films by Martin Scorcese: the absolute delight that is the Proustian The Age of Innocence (1993) and the great Casino (1995).

Back To Comics

With Tsuge, no less...

Contempt: A Visual Reading and Other Loose Ends

[I hesitated to publish the below post on this blog about comics, but since I'm reposting here my Hooded Utilitarian posts I decided to give it a go...
It's my only film criticism. I wrote it because this is one of my favorite films (the others being, in no particular order - or, maybe, in this order: Sansho the Bailiff by Kenji Mizoguchi, Stromboli, by Roberto Rossellini, The Searchers by John Ford, A Man Escaped by Robert Bresson, L'Atalante by Jean Vigo, Late Spring by Yasujiro Ozu, Greed by Erich Von Stroheim, Husbands by John Cassavettes, Viridiana by Luis Buñuel, The River by Jean Renoir, Charulata by Satyajit Ray, Brief Encounter by David Lean, and a couple more by all of the above - or others, of course - like Pickpocket or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance or Tokyo Story or Life of Oharu or El or...).
Aparently (or explicitly) it embraces the auteur theory, so dear to nouvelle vague critics. Jean-Luc Godards's direction is crucial to this film, of course, but we can't forget other creative forces: the actors with a superb Brigitte Bardot in the role of her life; the magnificent cinematography by Raoul Coutard; the music by Georges Delerue; the original writing by Alberto Moravia, or... Adalberto Libera, the architect of Casa Malaparte...]

Lucien Goldmann, a Marxist critic, said that Contempt, a film by Jean-Luc Godard (1963): “is about the impossibility of loving in a world where The Odyssey can’t be filmed.” (In a world without gods.) It's an imaginative interpretation, and a surprisingly reactionary one coming from a Marxist critic commenting on the work of a Marxist director, but it links two of the picture’s themes: 1) the end of the couple Camille (Brigitte Bardot) and Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli); 2) the difficult relation between art and commerce; i. e.: the creative differences between director Fritz Lang (himself) and producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance).  The problem with Goldmann’s thesis is that he reached a totalizing conclusion starting with a particular example, but, mixing gods to the equation, the film invites such an universal statement.
Apparently the reason why Camille starts to despise Paul is more down to earth than hinted above: she feels used by her husband. When Jeremy Prokosch hits on her Paul does nothing until it is too late (he even encourages his advances ignoring her supplicating eyes). Godard himself said that Camille is like a vegetable

"acting  […] by instinct, so to speak, a kind of vital instinct like a plant that needs water to continue living."

Contempt is a tragedy (George Delerue's score never let us forget it; Paul to Camille:

"I love you totally, tenderly, tragically.")

and that’s why Lucien Goldmann isn’t that wrong. The events are linked together in a fabric weaved by the fates. Paul Javal was a hack who sold his wife the moment he sold himself. Camille doesn’t rationalize her reactions, but she’s a victim of the commodification of human relations.
The gods no longer exist, so, they can’t influence the lives of humans, but, in a capitalist world, money took their place reigning supreme over everything. That's why Jeremy Prokosch says:

"Oh! Gods! I like gods! I like them very much. I know exactly how they feel."

To which Fritz Lang replies:

"Jerry, don't forget: the gods have not created men; men have created gods."

If men created gods and destroyed them, they can also destroy capitalism.
It wasn’t the first time that Paul was an hack either. He previously wrote Totò Against Hercules. We can only imagine a comedic peplum (Totò, Antonio Gagliardi, was an Italian comedy actor who starred in Totò contro Maciste [Totò against Maciste] in 1962). Contempt’s producer Joseph E. Levine did produce Hercules in 1958 though. He may very well be the target of Godard’s satire. Prokosch is a caricature, obviously: showing him lusting after a nude female swimmer in Fritz Lang’s The Odyssey is a comment on Godard's producer’s insistence to show Brigitte Bardot’s body in the film (Paul:

“cinema is great: we look at women and they wear dresses, they participate in a film, crack, we see their asses.”)

Contempt is full of self-referential and autobiographical details like the one above. Another is Brigitte Bardot wearing a black wig to look like Anna Karina, Godard’s wife. Paul is clearly Godard’s alter ego: wearing a similar hat (as shown in his cameos) and a similar admiration for American films (Camille:

"I prefer you without hat and without cigar.";

Paul:

"It's to imitate Dean Martin in Some Came Running.")

While being on the terrace of villa Malaparte Camille waves at some point. At whom? The paparazzi who infested the surrounding bushes?...
At the beginning of the film, at Cinecittà Studios in Rome (sold by Prokosch to a chain of malls), we can see film posters of Godard’s own Vivre sa Vie (To Live Her Life) and his favorite films also produced in 1962: Hatari by Howard Hawks, Vanina Vanini by Roberto Rossellini; and 1960: Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock. We may draw two conclusions from this list: 1) not everything that money touches is crap; 2) the Italian film industry wasn’t as dead as it seemed because masterpieces continued to be created.  This means that the reading of the images gives some nuance to an otherwise seemingly boneheaded message.

Camille being trapped between the posters of a film in which men hunt and a film about a sex worker. It's no wonder that she wears a dark color. More about that, later...

In the above image, taken from Godard's La Chinoise (1968)  we are invited to confront vague ideas with clear images. The image is clear enough to me: it shows a bourgeois interior with red furniture. Red being the symbolic color of communism the contradiction is self-evident, but how many viewers do the reading? In a logocentric culture, what's shown to us is automatically hidden.
Being a commercial product directed by an avant-garde director means that Contempt self destructs. Godard even mocks the choice of CinemaScope, a format that, in the words of Fritz Lang:

"Is not suitable for Men. It's suitable for serpents and funerals."

And yet... it allows the most interesting formal device of the film. CinemaScope is the format of epic action movies so something unusual was bound to happen when put in the service of domestic drama. In the central act of this three part play (some may argue that it is the most interesting) Camille and Paul are shown in a maze of walls and doors. (The door without glass that Paul opens to enter a room while returning through the wide opened hole is a Keatonian gag. Ditto Camille absent mindedly passing under a ladder to avoid doing the same on her return when she realized what she had just done.) The couple is shown like mice in a lab experiment, the architectural obstacles between them being symbols of their gradual estrangement. Godard even shows a book about opera and an image of the interior of an opera house to further hint at how ridiculous his producers' ideas of grandeur are (or as an omen of tragedy). In the duly famous conversation between Camille and Paul with the white lamp between them Godard forces the wide format to behave like a more intimate close up framing refusing to do what would be obvious: to show both actors at the same time.
Another great device used by Godard is color. He uses it (especially the clothes' colors) as symbols. We know Godard's attraction for primary colors. In Contempt they're codified as indifference (yellow, but also green), antagonism, communism (red, but also orange), fate, fight, Neptune (blue). All those colors are shown at the beginning of the film (as filters) to contradict the love scene. Or, in a Deleuzian image-time manner to flash-forward what's already written in the
fates' tapestryscript. The living room in Camille and Paul's house has blue chairs, a white lamp and an orange couch (it's almost bleu, blanc, rouge, the French flag; France is viewed as a nation divided). The examples of the use of colors as symbols are too many to cite here: it's in the orange couch that Camille discovers that Paul is a member of the Italian Communist Party. This turns his selling out to capitalism even more unforgivable of course (being Paul Godard's alter ego it's obvious how self-loathing this scene is; ditto Paul using a bath towel to look like a toga in Levine's peplum). On the other hand the Italian Communist Party was an important member of what was called back then eurocommunism, that is, a revisionist mild version of hardcore communism. We may thus read Paul's betrayal as a more profoundly political one. Ditto the singer in orange and red at the theater singing a pop song to the masses around her (24000 baci - 24000 Kisses - by Adriano Celentano with the lyrics detourned to include the word "politics") . In the same sequence Fritz Lang quotes "poor" BB - a pun between Bertolt Brecht's initials and Brigitte Bardot's nickname:

"Every day, to earn my daily bread/ I go to the market where lies are bought/ Hopefully/ I take up my place among the sellers.  [...] Hollywood.")

At the end of the film Prokosch's red Alfa Romeo (Camille:

"get in your Alfa, romeo.")

has an accident against a blue oil (!) truck. Prokosch, Neptune's tool, is dressed in red while Camille, a willing sacrificial victim on the altar of capitalism is dressed in blue. (Fritz Lang:

"Death is not the end."

It isn't because the film has an epilogue.)
This use of color may have influenced John Cassavetes in Opening Night (1977). A film about theater as Contempt is about filming. In it actress Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands) fights with a red dress (life and youth) against the forces of aging and decay (black).

 Godard, like Johannes Vermeer frames domestic drama to give us the feeling of peeking some secret that we're not supposed to witness.

 Like Rembrandt Godard uses shadow to a dramatic effect: showing melancholia and distress...

The opening shot ends with Raoul Coutartd's camera pointed at us, the viewers, while a voice over quotes Michel Mourlet (not André Bazin as stated):

"The cinema substitutes for our gaze a world more in accordance with our desires. Contempt is a story of that world.”

What are these desires, then? The camera asks... Do we want tragedy and catharsis like the old Greeks did in their theater? Or do we want unresolved disturbing truths? Godard's film ends with the death of Camille and Prokosch, victim and tool of an inhuman system. The last sequence being shot in Contempt of the diegetic The Odyssey ends with a victorious Ulysses, as he arrives at his homeland, Ithaca. He is facing the sea (Neptune), to tell him that, against all odds, he fought and beat him. In this story outside a story the

"truth 24 frames per second"

could never do that. (Another cinephile reference in Contempt is Viaggio in Italia - Journey to Italy - 1954 - by Roberto Rossellini, in which a troubled couple finds redemption. The same thing doesn't happen in Contempt, of course.) The last words belong to Jeremy Prokosch and Francesca Vanini, yes, Vanini (Georgia Moll): after being reminded by Paul that Fritz Lang fled Germany because he didn't want to have anything to do with the Nazis, the former simply put it:

"This is not 33, it's 63."

(There's no escape.) Plus: Francesca to Paul:

"You aspire to a world like Homer's, but, unfortunately, that doesn't exist."

Pamplemoussi by Geneviève Castrée

Comics and music may relate in a few ways: musicians and their music may be cited in comics (as seen below); abstract forms and colors, organized in patterns in a comic, may be associated with music as Wassily Kandinsky theorized; comics artists themselves may be musicians (Fort Thunder) linking their two creative activities together like Geneviève Castrée.

Gato Barbieri in Muñoz and Sampayo's first album/graphic novel (seen on the background as Changuitos - boys - jujeños - from Jujuy), Perché lo fai, Alack Sinner? (why do you do it, Alack Sinner?) "Viet Blues" episode, Milano Libri, 1976. Famous Argentinian jazz musician Gato Barbieri is singing the lyrics of El arriero (the muleteer) by Atahualpa Yupanqui ["plights and cows follow the same pathway, plights are ours, cows are someone else's." By citing Barbieri citing Yupanqui Muñoz and Sampayo make a clear left-wing political statement. You can hear Barbieri playing and singing, here (5.20)].

Since her almost wordless beginnings in 2000 with Lait frappé (milk-shake - L'Oie de Cravan) and Die Fabrik (the factory - Reprodukt) that Geneviève Castrée showed little inclination towards the orthodox storytelling so prevalent in the comics industry. Her comics are dreamlike, mysterious, symbolic, barely narrative.

 Geneviève Castrée, Lait frappé, L' Oie de Cravan, 2000.

Geneviève Castrée, Die Fabrik, Reprodukt, May 2002.

After publishing her third book (Roulathèque Roulathèque Nicolore, L'Oie de Cravan, 2001), Geneviève Castrée published Pamplemoussi (grapefruit). Here's what she has to say about it:

I wanted to make a book with a record for years. One day I was looking out the window of my studio and I decided to start writing songs for the stories. It took me a lot more time than I was used to and when it came out I went on tour for a few months. I never had enough copies and there are none left. It was published in 2004 by L'Oie de Cravan.

Pamplemoussi is a large square book (obviously, it has the form and size of the vinyl LP record that comes with it - or is it the other way around?). Just for a taste, and because that's what I found on You Tube, here's one of the songs:

Geneviève Castrée, "Chanson pour les guêpes," Pamplemoussi, L'Oie de Cravan, 2004.

Geneviève's drawing style could be part of a long tradition of children's books illustration, but, if we read between the lines, her comics are about abusive relationships, depression, solipsism, etc... In other words, they're not unlike all good children's books, of course... In Lait frappé, for instance, a series of episodes with titles in Russian (god knows why!?) describe a journey from low self-esteem and self-hate to the desire of changing people (anonymous black cats) in order to suit them for our purposes (as seen in a dream in which Geneviève portrays herself as an evil sorceress transforming black cats into white milk in order to drink it) to a relationship with a self-defensive abusive cat (she tries to drink from a milk bottle with a broken neck that she finds on the street just to cut her lip). All this told in clever visual figures of speech in 27 pages only. No doubt about it: Lait frappé is a little comics masterpiece that deserves to be reprinted increasing its original print run of 350.

 Geneviève Castrée, "The Fire In Mr. Pea," Kramers Ergot # 4, Avodah Books, 2003.

Geneviève Castrée (signing as Geneviève Elverum - her husband's last name), cover for Drawn & Quarterly Showcase # 3, July 2005. The cover alludes to "We're Wolf," another great improv about awkward relationships in a beautifully illustrated story inspired by Hergé's Tintin in Tibet. 

Geneviève Castrée, Susceptible, Drawn & Quarterly, 2012. Geneviève's more recent book. 

Pamplemoussi explores the same themes already mentioned above, but the relations between the song lyrics, the (minimal) music, the incantatory tone and the symbolic drawings are even more allusive and elusive. There's a song about feeling uncomfortable in one's body ("Chanson pour la géante" - "Song for the girl giant" [sic]) and another one for vanquishing one's fears ("Chanson pour les guêpes" - "Song for the wasps" - listen above) and yet another one about how limited we are in the little boxes of our minds; how we futilely dream of escaping ("Chanson pour la hase" - "Song for the hare"). Since solipsism is so important in Geneviève's work, I'll let you with the part of this last song's lyrics in English (as translated in Pamplemoussi) which explains why there's no escape. I'll let you also with another song by Geneviève Castrée... just because I like it this time...

some animals dream/ of countries, of planets and stars/ of which they only know details;/ adopted and spied from conversations/ they were not part of/ it is to wonder/ if they know that in other countries/ people are just as mean/ on a different planet/ you suffocate/ and before reaching the stars/ you burn/

 Woelv [Geneviève Castrée], "Gris", from the album Gris, P. W. Elverum and Sun Ltd., 2006.

The Blind Men and the Elephant

 Hanabusa Itcho, Blind Monks Examining an Elephant. Itcho, by the way, not Hokusai, contrarily to popular myth, coined the word "manga."

Speaking of stories... you know the parable: the blind men feel different parts of an elephant's body and, afterwards, they disagree on what an elephant looks like. Such is the nature of truth; knowing only part of it we can't grasp... speaking of pictures, the whole picture. In another version the men and the elephant are in a dark room, so, as the great Mevlana Rumi put it in this version: "If each had a candle and they went in together/ The differences would disappear[.]" If you didn't get it already, and there are absolutely no reasons for you to know where I'm heading, I'm referring to the Eddie Campbell vs. Suat Tong or the "picturaries" (as I called them) vs. "literaries" controversy. I guess that the differences of opinion can be extended in an "us vs. them" kind of way to The Hooded Utilitarian (the non-essentialists) vs. The Comics Journal (the former Comics Comics - a great name to describe their philosophy echoing Eugeni Dors' "painting-painting"). As I see it there are really two disputes, not just one: the aforementioned "various ways to look at an elephant" (Eddie vs. Suat) and the essentialist debate (THU vs. TCJ). I'll try to address the two.

I'm worlds apart from Rumi's greatness and I don't believe that the differences will be solved by my saintly intervention, but, in a true meta-critical stance, I'll try to do my best. I'll state from the start that, obviously, I'm an interested part in this debate. Coming from a "picturaries" background, I graduated in Studio Art, I pass as one of the literaries. I don't see myself as one, though. To explain why let me examine the core (as I see it, of course) of the text that started the whole thing: Eddie Campbell's "The Literaries" at TCJ's website:

What appears at first to be taking a more stringent view is in fact applying irrelevant criteria. It dismantles the idea of a comic and leaves the parts hopelessly undone.

See that elephant over there? Besides, this is where the two debates converge: essentialist Eddie views literary criteria applied to comics as misguided because the true applicable criteria must be about pictures. And yet, what does Eddie consider to be literary specifically? The story or, the plot. The only problem is that in comics the drawings are the story too. To prove it I don't need to go any further than Lee and Kirby's (et al.) case in point below, given to us as an example of non-literary excellency in the aforementioned "The Literaries" blog post:

 Stan Lee (w), Jack Kirby (p), Frank Giacoia (i), Sam Rosen (l), anon. (c), "The Blitzkrieg of Batroc!," Tales of Suspense # 85, January 1967 (page 8).

Curiously enough in the above example it's the words that are self-referential and non-diegetic while the images tell the whole story: two characters beat the crap out of each other. If story equals literature who's a literary now? Eddie Campbell himself inadvertently acknowledges this when he says:

Now, I am cognizant of the fact that the multitude of kids reading that Captain America were just thinking about what Cap and Batroc were doing to each other.

Exactly so because they were reading a story (the use of the word "reading" is, if you ask me, a co-option by the literary field because those putative kids were interpreting images). Why did this co-option of everything narrative by literature occur? Eddie Campbell didn't invent it. It's one of the dogmas of Modernist art of the Greenbergian kind. But Clement Greenberg didn't invent it either. Here's what Paul Cézanne said according to Joachim Gasquet, writing in 1912/13 (not exactly a reliable source, but still...):

I don't like literary painting. [...] [T]o want to force the expression of nature, to twist the trees, to make the stones grimace like Gustave Doré, or even to refine like da Vinci, that's all still literature.

And yet Eddie Campbell doesn't go that far. What he likes in the above page is clearly the expression (here's what he says about a performance by Billie Holiday; we can't compare comics with literature, but, apparently, it is OK to compare comics with literature if in a song; Eddie isn't much of an essentialist, after all, even if he used the very word "essence" below):

I’m not talking here about technique, a set of applications that can be learned, or about an aesthetic aspect of the work that can be separated from the work’s primary purpose. The performer’s story is the essence of jazz music. The question should not be whether the ostensible “story,” the plot and all its detail, is worth our time; stories tend to all go one way or another. The question should be whether the person or persons performing the story, whether in pictures or speech or dance or song, or all of the above, have made it their own and have made it worthy.

So, Eddie Campbell wants us to pay attention to the artist's expression (Cézanne/Gasquet would call him a literary I'm afraid). That's one blind man feeling the elephant and I don't deny his importance and value. But what about the other blind men? Don't they feel equally important parts of the beast? Why this rage against the story?

I can't talk for others, but what I value in a comic isn't the story per se. What I really value is the meaning. This may be clichéd, but so be it: I believe that great artists reach some kind of truth. (They may be as blind as Itcho's monks, but they're very good feeling the little part of reality that interests them.) Doing so I considered already that the technical skills of the artists and writers, their ability to convey feelings (their expression or lack thereof because an artist may choose to convey ideas mainly) were capably handled. This isn't an either or kind of situation. That's why the claim that we literaries value Fun Home over Cliff Sterrett doesn't make any sense (it's an obvious straw man). Besides, meaning can be found in every mark that the artists and writers create on the page. I don't see why meaning has to be associated with story and why story has to be associated with literature. By claiming meaning for my main criterion am I calling it the whole elephant? Maybe I am, but I'm as biased as the next guy. Why choose this elephant instead of that one is my next question? 

That leads us to the essentialist problem (counseled reading: Leonardo da Vinci's Paragone): why can I compare a comic with another art artifact? Because meaning is something that we can find in every work of art. Exalting the comicness of comics to us non-essentialists doesn't make much sense: yes, a comic is not a piece of music, but can't we find cadences, internal rhythms in a comic? Again, why do we accept that those qualities are in music alone and not everywhere? Yes a drawing in a comic may be read in a narrative context (so, now the story is important again?; Eddie goes in and out of his philosophies as it suits his arguments), but aren't these drawings lines and textures and compositions as all other drawings?

I could go on, but I prefer to analyze Lee and Kirby's (et al.) page above from my point of view. I must acknowledge first the fact that it is a segment of a larger story (ten pages). I never write about stories that I've never read or are in progress, so I'm breaking one of my rules here... for now... This is wrong because, I don't know?, judging a comic by one of its pages is the same thing as judging a book by its cover, isn't it (that's what Eddie kind of did in Kurtzman's case)? Also, doing so, it seems to me, dismantles the idea of a comic and leaves the parts hopelessly undone, right? Gérard Genette (p. 34) said that there are two readings in a comics page:

in [visual] forms of narrative expression, such as the [fumetti] or the comic strip (or a pictorialstrip, like the pre-della of Urbino, or an embroidered strip, like the "tapestry" of Queen Matilda), which, while making up sequences of images and thus requiring a successive or diachronic reading, also lend themselves to, and even invite, a kind of global and synchronic look—or at least a look whose direction is no longer determined by the sequence of images.

(As a side note: it's interesting to realize that the great critic and theorist, one of the literaries if I ever saw one, acknowledges the existence of visual narratives while Eddie doesn't or tactically avoids acknowledging them.) The successive diacronic reading (what Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle called the linear reading) of words and images gives the reader the succession of events, the narrative. The global synchronic look (what Fresnault-Deruelle called the tabular reading) gives the viewer more of an aesthetic feeling. Both readings exist in all comics and the latter is what Eddie and Noah are talking about when they speak of "something else" and "ab ex." I doubt that many will read the above page in a linear way (what's the point: it's just two guys in funny costumes fighting), but I will do just that:

What we have here is a nine panel grid, a static page layout if there ever was one, which isn't bad for the intended purpose: the page layout contrasts with the action going on inside the panels. The first panel shows Batroc in one of Kirby's famous foreshortenings. Another of Kirby's tropes is the character invading the gutter as seen subtly here. What's interesting in these three panels is Batroc's leg in the air pointing up. In the second strip what's pointing up are Captain America's hand (when he receives a blow) and, again, Batroc's arm and hands. Those who have limbs pointing up are losing balance and, hence, are losing the fight. The last strip is pretty much the consummation of the scene with Batroc falling on his back. The last panel depicts post-action fatigue and domination if you know what I mean. The guy who fell into the passive role in the doggie style position was feminized and lost the fight. Also interesting is the back of Batroc in the second panel mirroring Cap's back in the 7th, but with opposite meanings: powerlessness in Batroc's case and absolute power for Cap. So, not only do these images tell a story, maybe it's not exactly the story intended for the frantic one (i. e. the infant reader). 

What does the global synchronic look tell us, then? First of all there's a rhythm of circular speed lines and straight shock lines (notice how Cap's are a lot more powerful than Batroc's sissified ones) constructing a texture that gave Noah the ab ex aspect that he mentioned. These are there to underline the violence and speed of the actions, but, more than that, to unify and create a relentless cadence in the page design. Here, again, the page functions differently in the three strips: a vertical thin speed line is counteracted in the next panel by a more powerful also vertical one. Things begin to change in that very panel though because the rhythm becomes horizontal until, at the end, returning to vertical completing a full circle with Cap's might (in crescendo) replacing Batroc's frailty. The full shot is consistently applied, but the feet deny that on panels one, two, five, six, seven, eight (it's a device used by Kirby frequently: the characters don't fit - as a curio see here the same effect used in 1109!). Cap starts on the viewer/reader's opposite side to end up near his/her standpoint inverting positions with Batroc, in a kind of dance, as we have seen above. The 180 degree rule is broken from panel two to three. The point of view changes around the fighters. There's a curious symmetry in the page with a kind of knot at the center. The last panel has no gutter (or has a virtual gutter) to show that something changed: the positions are now the same as those in the first panel, but Cap circles his prey in triumph (the symbolic order was restored; citizens may calmly eat their freedom fries again - Batroc, if you don't know, is French and speaks with a heavy French accent - notice also the stereotypical pencil moustache and beard; I know that Europe was a female, so, it's only natural that Batroc had to lose in combat against a macho American hero). The colors are loud and out of sync at some places. The background colors divide the page in, more or less, a dynamic diagonal. (If you allow me a personal note I always liked the imperfections of the old coloring.) Cap is garbed in white and primary colors (red and blue), Batroc is secondary colored (orange and purple). Looking at their colors alone no one can deny who will win. All this may seem exhilarating to Eddie, but I suspect that nostalgia plays a role also: "for me this page, and others of a similar stripe, opened up a whole new different way of thinking about comics (I was nine; I’d been thinking about them for quite a few years)."

Who are these people though? From now on Eddie will call me a literary, I'm afraid, but I insist, how come?, I analyzed drawings until now, nothing else! When Eddie asks and answers quite absurdly "how does that Marvel comic stand up if you take away the pictures? It doesn’t." I say it does, a bit, but not that page above and why is that? That's right: because if the pictures disappear the story disappears too. Storywise it's interesting to note the micro-use of the known formula of popular tales (identified by Propp) "win-lose-win."  

"The Blitzkrieg of Batroc!" is a superhero ten-pager with the usual macho boasting, dick waving contest and misogyny of old comics. The plot (oops!) is simple enough: Cap fights Batroc to save Agent 13 of Shield (aka Sharon Carter). After a plot twist Batroc and Cap team up against agents of Hydra to save the mam'selle who, obviously, has an infatuation for the gallant Nationalist hero. How many times do we need to read another damsel in distress kind of story? I want my time back! See how those nine pages did lack for a full appreciation of the comic?

Am I denying all the good compositional things that I said above about page 8? Of course not, but why should I forget everything else either? And isn't the final product more important than just an aspect of the whole thing? What's the meaning of this comic according to your truly? Woman, even if they're agents of Shield, are frail little creatures who need the strong Nationalist hero to save them from the bad bad guys (that Manicheism again! Jeez!). Jack Kirby may have made the superhero genre his own, but he certainly didn't make it worthy.

Even worse: the apparently good things said above about page 8 aren't ultimately in the service of a formula as noted already? (As I said elsewhere, the game is rigged: the dashing Nationalist hero always wins.) And how about the innocuous violence? Isn't it going to give the impression to the frantic ones that it's OK to beat the crap out of the bad guys (violence is an abstraction, after all)? Are the frantic ones, or their modern day descendents, doing it right now somewhere, on this poor planet Earth, in the holy name of the plutocracy?

A alma é o negócio em que se perde sempre

João Bénard da Costa em imagem que ilustra a entrevista de 1990. Se ele cá voltasse!...

Por um acaso feliz deparei com esta entrevista de Manuel S. Fonseca a João Bénard da Costa (originalmente publicada n'"a revista" do jornal Expresso de 1 de Dezembro de 1990). Já o escrevi neste blogue, João Bénard da Costa foi o meu mestre. Foi na Cinemateca que aprendi a ver cinema: primeiro ainda no Palácio Foz, depois na rua Barata Salgueiro, antes e depois do incêndio; guardo ainda o meu primeiro bilhete de "antes do fogo" (fui ver um filme de David Wark Griffith, não sei qual, o bilhete, sobre isso, nada indica, no dia 5 de Novembro de 1980 às 18.00 horas). João Bénard da Costa foi um crítico muito influênciado pelos Cahiers du Cinéma, revista cuja matriz crítica se pode encontrar neste texto de François Truffaut: contra "une certaine forme de cinéma du seul point de vue des scénarios et des scénaristes". Contre la littérature dirais-je. É compreensível: muitos já não se lembram (eu próprio não vivi esses tempos, não sou assim tão antigo), mas o cinema viveu as mesmas dores de legitimação que a banda desenhada sofre hoje. Nessas condições socorreu-se da literatura como bengala (a mesma estratégia usou a fotografia ao imitar a pintura). Aquilo a que Truffaut chama "la Tradition de la Qualité" não é mais do que um cinema visto pelo prisma literário. Os Cahiers, pelo contrário, reivindicaram o cinema como arte visual e daí ser o desprezado, na altura, bem entendido, Hitchcock o seu padrinho fundador.
Na verdade, tudo isto me soa demasiado à crítica de banda desenhada que mais abomino para me deixar confortável. Não que deteste Hitchcock, bem pelo contrário, mas Hitchcock está longe de ser, como diria João Bénard da Costa, muito lá de casa (my crib's assiduous visit, diria eu). Ou seja, não posso dizer que os meus gostos cinematográficos coincidam com os de João Bénard da Costa, a não ser quando ambos achamos John Ford, Kenji Mizoguchi, Rossellini e Visconti mestres incontestáveis.
Coincido com João Bénard da Costa em mais algumas coisas, mas não poderei nunca dizer como ele "O cinema não é uma arte narrativa — a história de um filme é o que é menos relevante num filme". Não posso porque acho que nem os Cahiers nem Bénard perceberam algo que a banda desenhada me ensinou: as imagens também são narrativa. E não perceberam porque eram herdeiros de uma tradição essencialista que vai de Lessing ao tardo-modernismo. A literatura não é dona exclusiva da narração e João Bénard da Costa, que amava o cinema mudo, e Stroheim e Murnau e Fritz Lang, tanto como eu, deveria sabê-lo.
Em resumo: o que faz de João Bénard da Costa o meu mestre não é o cinema, é outra coisa muito mais importante: uma atitude perante a vida e a arte em que ética e estética se confundem.
Daí a citação abaixo... Não poderia finalizar melhor esta entrada no meu blogue:

[JBC—] Com o aparecimento da cultura de massas deixou de haver uma «aristocracia da cultura». Ao que tem de se saudar do ponto de vista social e político, opõe-se o «reverso da medalha», isto é, uma tirania de gostos ditados por pessoas sem preparação. E tal como há pessoas cegas aos valores morais, há também pessoas cegas aos valores estéticos. São sempre minorias as que não são cegas, nem a uns valores nem aos outros. Esse abastardamento passa, aliás, pela compreensão do ter­mo «cultura». Há uma ideia, que teve em Portugal expressão importante no pintassilguismo, e num teórico como o Eduardo Prado Coelho, segundo a qual, desde um prato bem cozinhado, a um bom quadro, a um livro, tudo é indistintamente cultura. Essa concepção revela já uma grave crise vinda do interior do mundo que vive dessas mesmas referências culturais.

MSF — Outro tópico re­corrente no seu livro é a nos­talgia. Nostalgia de uma visão romântica da criação que faz de cada autor um «génio mal­dito», que vê na estreia de cada filme um escândalo.

JBC — Há dois tipos de nostalgia. Quando falo das sa­las de cinema, de um modo de vida, essa é a componente pes­soal da nostalgia. É como se falar das casas da minha infân­cia, de pessoas que já morre­ram. São circunstâncias irrepetíveis que se evocam. Outro tipo de nostalgia surge quando, ao comparar dois modos de vida, nos perguntamos se existe ou não uma perda. Parece-me evi­dente que existe uma perda e que ela é relevante na discussão dos actores, dos realizadores e da qualidade das suas obras. Muitos deles entraram em cho­que com o gosto dominante e pagaram a factura. Fizeram o tal negócio com a alma, que é o negócio em que se perde sem­pre, como dizia o outro. Era essa a grandeza da arte. Punha-se a alma em jogo e perdia-se, quan­to mais não fosse, o corpo.

O Campo Alargado e Outras Irritações

No Quarto de Jade de Maria João Worm e Diniz Conefrey.

J'Accuse

In July 2007 David Enright was at a Borders bookshop in the UK with his wife and two children when he stumbled upon a copy of Tintin in the Congo by Belgian comics artist George Remi (aka Hergé). The couple couldn't believe their eyes: was this filth at children's reach? Worst: was it addressed to them? Here's what he said:

"So you are married to a monkey and have two little yard apes. Good job. Got bananas?" This is one of the letters and emails that my Ghanaian wife and I received, when we asked that the Hergé book Tintin in the Congo be removed from the children's sections of bookshops back in 2007.

According to The Telegraph (July 12, 2007), after being contacted by Enright a spokesman for the CRE (Commission for Racial Equality), said:

This book contains imagery and words of hideous racial prejudice, where the 'savage natives' look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles.
It beggars belief that in this day and age Borders would think it acceptable to sell and display Tintin In The Congo. High street shops, and indeed any shops, ought to think very carefully about whether they ought to be selling and displaying it.

That same month, on July 27, 2007, a Congolese citizen living in Belgium (see above), Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, read an Enright related article in a newspaper and decided to act filing suit in a Belgian court against Tintin's copyright holder, Moulinsart Foundation. After patiently waiting for three years Mondondo, now supported by a French anti-racist organization (CRAN: Conseil représentatif des associations noires - representative council of black associations), extended his suit against Tintin in the Congo's publisher, Casterman. The suit was also filed in France.
Mondondo and the CRAN wanted Moulinsart and Casterman to ban the book or, as an alternative, if the first plaint failed, they wanted a warning to be put on the cover of future editions as well as a foreword inside explaining the colonial context in which the book was created (basically they wanted the French-Belgian editions to follow the British Egmont edition). On February 10, 2012, the Brussels Court of First Instance rejected the applicants’ claims. The same thing happened at the Brussels Appellate Court last December 5.
Here are some of the court's allegations:

If we were to follow the appellants, for whom it would suffice to take into account the simple intent of publishing a book, that would require banning today, for instance, the publication of some of the works of Voltaire, whose racism, notably toward Blacks and Jews, was inherent to his thought, as well as whole segments of literature, which cannot be accepted [as] the passage of time must be taken into account. Hergé limited himself to producing a work of fiction with the sole objective of entertaining his readers. He carries out therein candid and gentle humor.
It is above all a testament to the common history of Belgium and the Congo at a given epoch[.]

The Telegraph, again (February 13, 2012) also translated the following court statement:

It is clear that neither the story, nor the fact that it has been put on sale, has a goal to... create an intimidating, hostile, degrading or humiliating environment[.]

Read here the whole document in French.
I'm not a lawyer or, more specifically, I'm not a Belgian Lawyer, but come on! "candid and gentle humor"? How can a book that dehumanizes the Congolese people depicting them as childish and lazy and in need of white peoples' guidance contain "candid and gentle humor"? Are racist jokes "candid and gentle humor"? And how does the entertainment purpose excuse anything? Plus: how can the environment depicted in this blatantly racist book not be "hostile, degrading [and] humiliating"? The known argument that the book reflects its times' prejudice doesn't hold water either as I've shown, here. Hergé could not invoke an insanity defense. He was responsible for creating racist imagery and racist writing. Others, like Alan Dunn, for instance, at roughly the same time, didn't do so.
There's another reason why Hergé couldn't invoke the insanity defence mentioned above: he's dead since 1983. Again, I'm no lawyer, but how can a court judge a dead man (guessing his intentions!) is completely beyond me. I know that the "goal" part above is what matters to the court, but in the dubious case that they are psychic isn't there something called criminal negligence in the Belgian law? What they should be judging is how can today's copyright owners ignore the racism in one of their books refusing to do anything about it. I can understand why did the Brussels court mention the banning of a book by Voltaire, but Mondondo and the CRAN didn't want to ban Tintin in the Congo in their secondary plaint, they just wanted to add some heads up and some informative paratext? Here's what the court had to say about that:

As for the subsidiary inclusion of a warning it is not only an interference with the exercise of the freedom of expression it also hampers the moral right to the integrity of the work which can't be contested because the defendants don't own it [Fanny Rodwell owns the moral rights to Hergé's oeuvre, not Moulinsart and Casterman].

From now on we're informed that a foreword constitutes a violation of a "work's integrity." I can understand the reasoning behind the idea that such a foreword would be a violation of Moulinsart's and Casterman's freedom of expression (as well as Fanny Rodwell's moral rights) though. Said foreword would be forced on them by the court. You're wrong if you think that I'm on Mondondo's side on this. I agree with him only when he says that the court suit was a means to force Moulinsart to seat at the conversation table. I understand the strategy, but it was doomed from the beginning: big corporations don't deal with the little guy. When I repeatedly say on this post that I'm not a lawyer what I really mean is that I don't want to discuss matters I know little about. (What I do know, however, is that they are lousy comics critics at the Brussels court.) What's unfortunate is that the publishers themselves don't comply with Mondondo's wish for a foreword of their own free will as they should. It shows that Continental Europe is still way behind America and the UK when these matters surface in the public sphere.
Another quote in the court's decision (written by De Theux de Meylandt), states:

We see in particular that Tintin in the Congo does not put Tintin in a situation where there is competition or confrontation between the young reporter and any black or group of blacks, but puts Tintin against a group of gangsters... who are white[.]

I'll let a Portuguese anthropologist living in Maputo, Mozambique, José Flávio Teixeira, answer to the above for me (in a review of Deogratias, a book about the Rwandan Genocide by Belgian comics artist Jean-Phillipe Stassen):

Beyond a self-centered gaze (ethnocentric: what interests him, above all, is how "his people" behave themselves elsewhere and how they get astray from the recommended "good behavior") what the book states (distractedly) are two fundamental points: the perennial (the need for?) European leadership; the inferior malevolent capability of the Rwandan people (the African people). Thus crystallizing the racism, affirming white superiority: “people” (race, because, in the end, the book is about race) who are more in the lead, who are more corrupt, meaner. More human, right?

Going back to the UK, Ann Widdecombe, a Conservative politician, criticized the CRE (see above) for their support of Enright's views (she said that their claim was ludicrous):

It brings the CRE into disrepute - there are many more serious things for them to worry about.

This reminds me of that American officer, after Belgium's liberation, who refused to accuse Hergé of collaboration with the Nazis under the excuse that he didn't want to cover himself in ridicule. It's a well known fact: comics are less powerful, less corrupt, less mean. Less of an art form, right?