"Listen as the Syllables of Slaughter Cut with Calm Precision"

So, a new year is upon us, and I thought it somewhat appropriate to focus a little bit upon on music, seeing as how it is a somewhat under-represented category given this blog's subtitle.

And, as it happens, during the last few days I have been revisiting an old favourite of mine, which still holds up with razor sharp excellence. Dear readers, I give you Marillion's 1984 album Fugazi.

The album consists of seven tracks, "Assassing" (7.02), "Punch and Judy" (3.21), "Jigsaw" (6.50), "Emerald Lies" (5.09), "She Chameleon" (6.53), "Incubus" (8.30) and "Fugazi" (8.13); the B side of the vinyl starting with "She Chameleon". In the strictest sense, it is not a concept album. There is no plot running through the album, tying the songs together and shaping a unified narrative, but that having been said, I would strongly argue that it is a conceptual album. Because the songs are cleverly tied together thematically. Fugazi, as an album, is all about human relationships, and more specifically ones that "Fucked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In" (the acronym stemming back to the Vietnam war).

The brilliance of the album comes, to a large extent, from Fish's lyrical genius. As a huge Fish fan, I would say that this album in many ways constitutes one of the man's finest hours. Each song deals with the aforementioned theme, but each song does so by placing the theme in a certain semantic field. The reference is always to the human relationships going down the drain, but the fantastic metaphors used create seven very different tableaux.

In "Assassing", Fish opens up by creating a mixed metaphor of a battle and linguistics, appropriately expressed in a phenomenal piece de resistance of word play extraordinary. As the title of this post ought to demonstrate quite adequately.

The short, but very intensive, second track, "Punch and Judy" makes use of the commedia dell'arte character Puncinella, or more commonly in English, Punchinello or Mr Punch; or even more precisely it uses the old puppet show classic about a relationship taken to murderous levels (Mr Punch killing both his baby and wife before moving on to other pastures – for people interested in the story, I would strongly recommend Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's interpretation in The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch) to express the theme in a more modern, urbanised, and bourgeois setting.

"Jigsaw" is built up on several metaphors, from the notion of jigsaw pieces fitting together (or not, as it were) in the first verse, through the hopelessness in "Screaming out a ceasefire, snowblind in an avalanche zone" in the second one, to the utter despair of playing "Russian roulette in the waiting room / Empty chambers embracing the end" in the final verse. All of these, however, are nicely fitted together as functioning puzzle, almost working as a mise-en-abyme of the album as a whole (i.e. I would argue that it expresses the artistic and stylistic principle behind the lyrics on the whole album, neatly compressed in a single song).

Closing the original A-side of the album, "Emerald Lies" combines a medieval reference involving the Inquisition with a modern day courtroom drama. The colour green is obviously the colour of jealousy and this in turn suits the semantic fields of choice when it comes to the metaphors, since the invasive nature both of the Inquisition and a prosecution eloquently expresses this feeling that can almost literally tear a relationship apart.

Opening the original B-side, "She Chameleon" uses the metaphorical value of a chameleon as type of shape-shifter or deceiver to express physical encounters that somehow never amount to any true meaning, yet which the poetic I nevertheless do not refuse or abandon. Incidentally, I would dare anyone to find a better, more poetically apt use of the word fuck (repeated at that) than in this song.

One of my favourite tracks has always been "Incubus", with its use of photography-, cinema- and stage-related metaphors to describe the lingering remnants of the torn-apart relationships around which the album centres. The power in a phrase like "You who wiped me from your memory like a greasepaint mask / Just like a greasepaint mask" never ceases to amaze me, and never fails to affect me emotionally.

The title track, "Fugazi", brings the theme to a strong close. In some sense, it opens up the notion of failing relationships to a larger stage. It starts with the somewhat intimate lines – "Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a Blackheath cell / Extinguishing the fires in my private hell / provoking the heartache to renew the license / Of a bleeding heart poet in a fragile capsule" – but then moves this loss of faith in the Romantic beyond its simpler application on twosome relationships to human relationships on a larger scale, referencing the Holocaust, race riots and the ever-present (at the time) threat of nuclear annihilation.

After establishing that "This world is totally fugazi," the song, and the album, closes with the repeated lines "Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries / Where are the poets, to breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary," which suggests a desire on the part of the lyricist to plead for a way out of the madness, or perhaps more accurately a way of seeing outside the box, when it comes to human relationships.

Ah well, do not take my word for it. Listen to the album yourselves. And be sure to give those lyrics some extra attention.

Freedom of Speech, Yet Again: Apropos of the Recent Verdict in Uppsala District Court, Sweden

I have discussed the idea of Freedom of Speech in here before, and it would seem that it is high time to do so yet again (although for a different reason this time). On June 30 this year in Uppsala District Court, Sweden, a man was found guilty of possessing child pornography. The man in question is a Japanese translator, and the images for which he was prosecuted and sentenced were manga, that is, Japanese comics. A combination of things that well and truly brings a lot of Freedom of Speech issues to the fore, no doubt; yet interestingly enough, it took more than a while for the Swedish media to react, and even when they finally did (and there have been many interesting defences of Freedom of Speech from those quarters since), the blogosphere has been surprisingly quiet – a blogosphere which was in a furious uproar earlier this year during the Lars Vilks debacle. It is obviously much easier to shout oneself hoarse for the right to offend some people on religious basis than to enter a discussion on the subject of child pornography. At least if the discussion is not altogether a condemnation of the phenomenon, and even something in any way related to the phenomenon.

The two preceding sentences can easily be read as a critique of some people that did not want a balanced discussion in the previous case, but while it is indeed in part intended as such, it is also honestly meant, in a nigh despairing fashion. For I would be a hypocrite not to note that the sentence was pronounced on June 30 and that it is now August 16, that is, some one and a half month later.

The reason for my own procrastination is quite simple: I spent a few years in my youth in Swedish Save the Children, actively propagating the Children’s Convention and working against child pornography. I am a huge fan of author, lawyer and children’s activist Andrew Vachss, and in particular of his brilliant little book Another Chance to Get It Right: A Children's Book for Adults, which has helped shaped a lot of the ideas on the importance of children’s rights in my mind. In short, I too cannot help to question the “need” for pornographic illustration of children to be made in the first place. And nevertheless...

I am certainly not naive enough to think Freedom of Speech absolute in any practical sense. Most judicial systems, even (dare I say it) the American, where Freedom of Speech is pretty high on the agenda, have (and quite rightly so) laws against libel and threatening people. But there is certainly something to be said for a Freedom of Speech that is much freer than it is shackled.

Do not get me wrong. Child pornography is wrong; it is vile; and it constitutes a crime. But exactly what is that crime? Many a year ago now, I read an article by Vachss (translated into Swedish, albeit specifically written for that occasion), where the sound argument was made that child pornography is photographic, or filmic, evidence of the sexual abuse of a child. As such, this evidence is an extension of that abuse, in fact, constituting a continued abuse of that specific child, in some sense. Similarly, I would argue that nude pictures of children (obviously not necessitating the same levels of abuse to exist) still falls within these parameters as they exploit these children’s nudity, and granted that the children themselves in the eyes of the law can hardly be deemed fit to make a decision about “willingly” being part of such pictures, nor necessarily agree with such pictures’ existence when they are old enough to understand that better.

(It is, I feel, at this point worth noting that the Swedish law has been very carefully formulated not to criminalise A) teenage couples photographing themselves and sharing those pictures with _each other_ (as long as the age difference is not substantial or the photographs taken against either party’s will), or B) people owning nude or sexual photographs (or films, I assume) of themselves (alone) even when adults. Basically this states that the presumed injured party cannot be found guilty of such possession. Although spreading such photos would obviously fall within the rules of distributing illegal material, and it would equally obviously be illegal for other parties to view them. Still, the detailed thinking vis-a-vis these questions are well worth noting, especially when we head into the topic at hand.)

In all cases I have brought up, the issue is not only that the images or films are offensive. The point is that they document and extend sexual abuse, that watching them makes any viewer guilty of furthering that abuse. And against this, hard laws are required. But, can a drawn image truly be said to do this? Can it be included in this argument? What I have just outlined above clearly does not apply. A drawn image does not require an act of abuse to exist in the real world. Nor does it depict a specific nude (or even fictionally abused) child. We might find these images offensive. We may well argue against such things being produced. But it is almost frightening how many times I have read comments on on-line articles where the commenters are arguing against child pornography itself on the basis that it is offensive. To me, this seems like pulling the teeth out of the proper definitions of child pornography, that is, as something a hundred times worse than merely being found offensive, simply by the fact that it is both a document and form of abuse.

If drawn images do not constitute such abuse, and granting that we do not easily legislate in matters of taste (and let us be honest, matters of offense are clearly linked to matters of taste), why should drawn images of nude children, or even children in sexually explicit acts, be deemed illegal? Now, here the reason cited is that such images may well incite paedophiles to commit sexual acts, or even (if we are to believe some assumptions) cause people to become paedophiles themselves. Surely, it is better to be overly cautious in such circumstances? Surely it is, as the saying goes, better to be safe than sorry? Or is it?

Now bear with me and please remember that I am by no means arguing in favour of such images, but as Neil Gaiman has pointed out, defending Freedom of Speech, also means defending such speech with which one does not necessarily agree oneself. I would in connection with this also like to bring up Peter Jones’s point that "[w]e may even fight shy of curtailing our conception of the non-legal rights of authors; we can criticise the use that people make of their rights without implying that they have no right to do what we criticise" (in Reading Rushdie: Perspectives on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie 321), which I have already drawn upon before. Following Jones’ judicial reasoning, we must be allowed to debate the usages of Freedom of Speech, to make moral and even aesthetic judgements about any and all utterances, without impeding the Freedom of Speech itself.

My main objection to the current Swedish law on the issue of these types of drawn images (and to laws formulated along those lines in other countries), is that is an arbitrary law. If we fear that such images may incite paedophiles to commit sexual acts (or even, though I honestly find this less likely, generate more paedophiles), why do we stop at images? If it is better to be safe than sorry, why should fictional texts be any different than drawn images? Surely they too must entail the same possibilities of incitement, must they not? And if explicit images (or texts) can do so much damage, surely the seeds of our destruction must also reside in any and all texts or images that even implicitly deal with paedophiles or children in sexual situations (without openly condemning these things three times over and every time they are mentioned, lest someone only reads selected passages). Along these lines, ought not Nabokov’s Lolita, where the narrator Humbert Humbert is trying to seduce the reader into sympathising with his own paedophiliac desires, also be deemed illegal? And before someone suddenly twists my words into being pro-censorship extraordinary: my point here is, of course, where do we stop? Where do we draw the lines in such an arbitrary quagmire?

The problem with this arbitrariness is that it allows us to feel good about ourselves, to feel vindicated for a moment or two. We have found something offensive and that which was found offensive has been punished accordingly. While I will certainly hold on to my right to vocally oppose things I find offensive, I also find this judicial arbitrariness unsettling, and cannot help but remember that old adage, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” For there are many levels to this quagmire. If we are truly worried about the sexualisation of children, why do we not attack (vocally if not legally) cultural phenomena like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, who in their wake have children dressing in an explicitly “sexy” fashion and dancing around in manners it would only be ludicrous to argue do not evoke sexual acts (whether or not the children themselves are aware of it)? These things are situated right in the pop cultural mainstream. Yet in a time, when we are so afraid of the possibility that drawn images might incite a paedophile to commit a crime, we do not even have a large on-going mainstream debate on this problem. Because if these things are not ways of sexualising children, and if such sexualisation is not a way of allowing children to be viewed as sexual objects, then in all honesty, I have no clue what would be.

In this sense, we need to legislate less against fictions and worry more about continually debating that which we find deplorable (we do have that option). Because at the end of the day, fictions do not constitute abuse, but that which could incite such abuse certainly does not, nor will it ever, be confined within the arbitrariness of our laws.

"Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell"

The title of this week's post is line 76 of Book IV in John Milton's 17th century epic poem Paradise Lost, and the speaker is Milton's Satan. So, you may wonder, what is this all about? What's the topic of the post? Well, I have a confession to make. Gentle readers, I am a literary Satanist.

Now, before that mayhap controversial line gets twisted out of context, let me first off repeat it with some emphasis in the right places; that is, I am a literary Satanist. My approach here is purely secular and unrelated to faith, in fact focused rather on the metaphorical, perhaps mythical, and most certainly literary value of the figure of Satan. And in that context, there is a great value and a rich tradition as varied and wondrous as could be. Because the figure of Satan, the Devil, the Adversary, or the fallen angel – Samael, Iblis, Lucifer, the Lightbringer, the Morningstar, etc. – (many of which are merely repetitions of the same name or function in different languages) is pluralistic and pliable. Even the basic mythologies (if you will pardon that label) allow for varying literary interpretations.

The metaphysical rebellion against divine authority can be, and has been, envisioned as a righteous rebellion against an unjust authority (obviously then questioning the role of God for, at the very least, the duration of the story at hand); just as it can be, and has been, seen as an attempt to usurp righteous power. In some cases, as with Milton, this very question has been something of a controversial struggle between interpretations of the literary work itself. We need only remember William Blake's infamous line from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

Note: The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. (Plate 6)

Yet these two strands of interpretation and depiction (because let's face it, not all depictions are in and of themselves phrased so as to generate the Miltonic duality of interpretation seemingly inherent in Paradise Lost) are not the only ones. Myths, legends, religious and literary traditions offer an array of versions and interpretations of this struggle, and of the identity of Satan. The basic question that needs be asked is, of course: Why did he rebel?

Naturally, here we find the traditional notion of the old Biblical proverb "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18 (King James' Bible)), which is obviously a fitting one, but also one that many a poet and writer have challenged. After all, in some sense, God needs Lucifer's fall, needs an Adversary, for his conception of good and evil (and by extension free will itself) to work. Neil Gaiman draws upon this idea in his wonderful short story "Murder Mysteries" (found in Smoke and Mirrors and also beautifully adapted into a comic by P. Craig Russell), which points to this notion of divine necessity. Similarly, many years before Gaiman, the Swedish poet Karin Boye wrote the beautiful poem "Den fallande morgonstjärnan" (Eng. The Falling Morning Star (this link provides an, in my humble opinion, less than stellar translation, aesthetically speaking, of Boye's poem by David McDuff, but it does give those of you not versed in Swedish a chance to get the literal gist of what I am getting at here), which was published in her 1927 collection Härdarna (Eng. The Hearths). Boye's poem not only points to the divine necessity of Lucifer's fall, but the divine sacrifice involved. I have more than once conceptualised this myself, in purely fictional terms, as a first sacrifice later to be echoed in the image of the crucifixion of Christ.

Then there is a version found in Sufi tradition (one of the many of which I am particularly fond of myself, I confess), where God presents his newest creation, Man (i.e. Adam), to the Angelic host and commands them to bow down before it. Iblis refuses the command, but (in the version I most appreciate) this refusal is not prompted by either pride or an inherent contempt for Man, fleshly and material as Adam is (these versions exist too, of course); no, it is prompted by an extreme faith. Because surely God's command to the Angelic host to bow down before Adam is a form of idolatry and an offence against the first commandment as later given to Moses: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3). Here we have a paradox of sorts, obviously, since it could well be considered heresy to disobey a divine command (i.e. the command to bow down before Adam; hence, Iblis' fall would be justified as a violation of that command), but equally so to bow down before the non-divine (violating what at the very least will be the command of Exodus 20:3). As such, Iblis becomes a heretical preserver of divine law and (dare I say, at least in some sense, unjustly) punished for his firm faith in and strong love of the divine.

Naturally, these different depictions provide very different versions of the figure itself (righteous revolutionary, evil usurper, necessary sacrifice, heretical preserver of faith), all of which affects his relationship to us (i.e. human beings). We have the tempter, the pedlar in souls, the wheeler and dealer, but also the indifferent, sometimes even sad, observer of human behaviour and human nature (who in more than one case objects to being blamed for our own shortcomings). Most, if not all, of these open doors into a rich tradition of Satanic satire (e.g. C. S. Lewis' wickedly funny The Screwtape Letters); and especially the latter (i.e. the observer) is echoed in Ambrose Bierce's wonderful definition of Satan in The Devil's Dictionary:

SATAN, n. One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. "There is one favor that I should like to ask," said he.
"Name it."
"Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws."
"What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul — you ask for the right to make his laws?"
"Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself."
It was so ordered. (The Devil's Dictionary (online))

This notion of Satanic satire actually takes us to the roots of this post (because I am sure that at least some of you by now wonder what may have prompted this literary confessional); that is, the fact that I am currently reading Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer. The basic story of Duncan's novel (and thus far, over halfway through it, I love it) is this: Lucifer is offered to get a shot at redemption. All he needs to do is live out a mortal existence. He does not even have to decide all at once, but is given a trial month (with an option to renew the lease, as it were) in the recently and suicidally deceased author Declan Gunn (obviously a nice little anagram of Glen Duncan). Thus, the novel opens with a diabolical mission statement (from a Lucifer who has no intention of playing by the rules or accepting the offer permanently):

I, Lucifer, Fallen Angel, Prince of Darkness, Bringer of Light, Ruler of Hell, Lord of Flies, Father of Lies, Apostate Supreme, Tempter of Mankind, Old Serpent, Prince of This World, Seducer, Accuser, Tormentor, Blasphemer, and without doubt the Best Fuck in the Seen and Unseen Universe (ask Eve, that minx) have decided — oo-la-la! — to tell all.

What follows is a satirical review of humans and human nature, analyses of organised religion and questions of faith. Duncan's Lucifer is not necessarily what I would call nice (far from it), but nor do I think he is necessarily to blame for everything either. We (i.e. humans) are doing quite a good job all on our own (with a few nudges in the right, or perhaps more accurately wrong, direction), implying a less than perfect divinity (also pointing to some contradictions along the way). Even before having finished the novel, I recommend it warmly, partly because I like Duncan's way of writing (I will definitely be picking up more of his novels), but also because his take on the diabolical, and his wondrous Satanic ventriloquism, fascinates and engages me.

Incidentally, Duncan was not alone in paving the way for my writing this post. There are also related matters in my scholarly work at the moment which have brought these issues to the front and centre. And then, even more recently (apropos of the whole affair of the recent boarding of the Ship to Gaza flotilla), I stumbled upon the following, fantastic (in a double sense) comment on an on-line article:
I think the comment speaks quite clearly on its own, but would nevertheless like to stress my appreciation for it as very well-rendered and successful attempt at Satanic satire. The commenter (whoever he or she is) has managed ever so well to perform a similar act of ventriloquism to that of Duncan's, and its anonymous, yet simultaneously (in some sense) devilish, authorship fits perfectly into its satirical mission.

In short, as a literary Satanist, how could one not love this brief piece's sharpness and wit.

Comics — A Medium Not a Genre

There is a common, flawed assumption that comics are some form of (sub)literary genre, right next to your supposedly lesser genres of thriller, SF, horror and fantasy.

This, however, is untrue!

The argument that comics would be a literary genre is about as valid as claiming that film is a literary genre. Film is clearly a different medium from literature and while both literature and film can be, and most often are, used for storytelling (i.e., for narrative purposes), they are also different in how they can and do achieve this.

Comics, of course, also operate differently than literature. It is quite clearly more visual in nature than regular literature, which is fundamentally conceptual in that we have to imagine what we as readers "see" before our inner eyes, guided by the literary text itself. Yet, I also find Will Eisner's comment on comics being "movies on paper" to be an equal disservice.to the medium. Sure, the argument could be made that comics are, in some sense, closer as a medium to film than to literature (at any rate, it is at least closer to film than literature is), but even then we are missing things, like film being an audiovisual medium, for instance (whereas comics are merely visual).

Most importantly though, I would argue for the following distinction:

Film is a temporal medium. It shows the viewer a sequence of images all placed, as it were, in the same space yet sequenced in time. As such, a film unlike say a novel actually has a set time for its own consumption (sure we can play with pauses and fast forwarding these days if we want to, but if we just want to watch the film, it is a certain number of minutes).

Comics, however, are a spatial medium. Like film it is based on visual sequential storytelling, but unlike film, the sequence is not set in time but in space. Each frame holds a specific space on a single page, each page holds a specific place in the comicbook or TPB, and the sequences of frames on each page together with the sequences of pages forms the narrative, is the narrative.

I actually found a good example to illustrate this difference when I read the first Angel After the Fall collection. Now don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed this comic, but in the extra material was an included script and I reacted to one thing in particular. Writer Brian Lynch indicates time and again that he builds up each page as a scene thinking very filmically, i.e. he sets each page up to hold a surprise reveal at the end (which will work as a sort of cliffhanger and keep the audience's interest). What struck me, however, was that this did not quite come across in the finished product. In fact, it could not. See, in film, temporal as it is, the end of the scene will not be known until we reach that particular point in time. In a comic, however, anything that I can see by a glance at the end of the page or even at the opposing page, will not come as a full on surprise for me when I reach that place. Rather, I will read the whole scene being fully (or at the very least partially) aware of what the reveal will be. For the surprise to function in a comic, the final panel on the page must instead be the cliffhanger setting up the reveal and the reveal itself needs to be in the first panel on the next page (letting the scene end there, as it were), or even effectively in some cases as a full splash page (the latter of course works particularly well with cliffhanger endings to an issue/chapter, etc.).

Another rather clear cut example, which differentiates comics as a medium, this time from literature, is a sequence from Gaiman and McKean's early masterpiece, Violent Cases. Now, while comics can be "silent" in that they only require sequential art to tell the story (or even make their argument), the medium certainly allows for and commonly uses written words as well (which is perhaps one of the reasons for wanting to view it as a literary genre). However, in Violent Cases, where the narrator is telling a story about a childhood meeting with an osteopath (who was supposedly the osteopath of Al Capone), there is a sequence which could not effectively be translated to written language (which, of course, is the domain of literature). The sequence is basically four panels (see included image) inset at the top of a what is really a full page panel. The part of the story that is being narrated is actually the osteopath relating some of his past in a series of captions, while the images we get are basically a combination of that story as seen or imagined by the osteopath and by the narrator's child self. In particular, the fourth caption and the second panel both verbally and visually introduce O'Banion, a man whom we learn in the following caption "started saying that stuff about Sicilians" (this caption is set in the third panel showing three blazing gun nozzles). The same caption then continues to state that "Al and Johnny Torrio had to have him rubbed out." All of which follow the logic of the blazing gun nozzles and the gangster language. However, the final of the four inset top panels is a repetition of the second panel (i.e. O'Banion's face looking back over his shoulder), only in this panel it is smeared as if someone has started erasing the image, and it sports the caption "(Rubbed out?)", a question from the narrator's child self. The obvious effect is the double meaning of the phrase "rubbed out" and the child's difficulty in comprehending what the story the osteopath is telling means. However, any attempt to capture this double meaning in written language quite simply becomes analytical, and in some sense both less artistic and less eloquent (albeit most likely more verbose). In effect, it shows a strength of the comics medium where any attempt to adapt the piece into a short story or a novel would entail what adaptation theorist Brian McFarlane talks about as adaptation proper (as opposed to a direct transfer); that is, finding a suitable medium equivalent to that medium specific element in the source text.

I have now shown two examples differentiating comics as a medium from both the medium of literature and the medium of film, respectively. So why does the misconception linger? Most likely, it has to do with matters of prestige. The medium of film went through a phase early in its career, where it in some sense attempted to be literature, because of literature being an older, tried and more prestitigous medium and domain. But film gained its own prestige and didn't look back... well, at least not in the sense that it wanted to be literary (now, and for most of its existence, it is merely happy to adapt literature, to use already tried source material as a basis for what is still the most expensive artistic medium around. But I'm sure we'll return to such matters at another time).

Comics, however, despite being roughly as old as film, if not even older, depending on how we define comics as a medium (Scott McCloud's definition in Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, for instance, suggests that something like the Bayeux Tapestry could arguably be seen as an early comic), has simply not managed to gain the same type of prestige as film. This sadly leads to a lot of comics enthusiasts trying to lean on the prestige of literature by claiming comics as a literary genre, something of literary value, just to prove the value of the comics themselves (and yes, I have in earlier days fallen into that trap myself, I'll admit). The trap here, however, lies in the fact that, while we can argue the value of certain stories told and the telling thereof, to simply compare a piece of comics work to a literary work in literary terms, is quite frankly doing comics a disservice. They cannot do what literature can, or perhaps more accurately, they cannot do it in the same way, just as literature cannot function the same way as comics. For a story to move from one to the other requires adaptation, and adaptation proper at that, because there are medial differences to overcome in that particular translation.

The Graphic Novel: A Brief History and Some Thoughts on a Useful Genre Term

Okay, so following speeches on the state of today's comics industry in my last two posts, "Komiks for Kids" and "Mature, Adult or Merely Sophomoric," I figured I'd spend this post looking at terminology. More specifically, I want us to turn our attention to that ever so fanciful term "graphic novel."

Since sometime in the 90s sometime this term has been running rampant in the field. It has come to pass itself off as a fancier substitute term for "comics" (which, of course, to many carry that stigma of being the domain of children). In Hy Bender's The Sandman Companion, Neil Gaiman relates the following brief yet telling anecdote:

"Once, while at a party in London, the editor of the literary reviews page of a major newspaper struck up a conversation with me, and we chatted pleasantly until he asked what I did for a living. ‘I write comics,’ I said; and watched the editor’s interest instantly drain away, as if he suddenly realized he was speaking to someone beneath his nose.
Just to be polite, he followed up by inquiring, ‘Oh, yes? Which comics have you written?’ So I mentioned a few titles, which he nodded at perfunctorily; and I concluded, ‘I also did this thing called Sandman.’ At that point he became excited and said, ‘Hang on, I know who you are. You’re Neil Gaiman!’ I admitted that I was. ‘My God, man, you don’t write comics,’ he said. ‘You write graphic novels!’
He meant it as a compliment, I suppose. But all of a sudden I felt like someone who’d been informed that she wasn’t actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening.
This editor had obviously heard positive things about Sandman; but he was so stuck on the idea that comics are juvenile he couldn’t deal with something good being done as a comic book. He needed to put Sandman it a box to make it respectable."

While Gaiman's anecdote touches upon this apparent need in certain to put some comics in more respectable boxes, there is also a tendency, both among publishers and fans, to overuse the term and apply the more respectable box to more or less the entire medium of comics per default. In the case of the publishers, presumably to reach the more sophisticated non-comics reading audiences. In the case of the overeager fans, more likely to present themselves as slightly more sophisticated and attempt to wash out the nerd/geek stigma (don't get me wrong here, I am a life long comics reader and an advocate of the medium to be sure, but "a rose / By any other name"... and all that).

So, where did the term come from then?

The term first seems to have appeared in print on Richard Corben and John Jakes' Bloodstar (an adaptation of the Robert E. Howard short story "Valley of the Worm"), which was published in 1976 as an original large format volume as opposed to a trade paperback of reprinted material (see "Richard Corben's Bloodstar: A Look Back at the First Graphic Novel"). It is, of course, worth considering that the phenomenon of TPB reprints itself was not as common at the time as it is today, where TPB reprints are commonplace.

However, the term is more oftenly traced back to Will Eisner. As Denis Kitchen puts it, "Eisner created the very first successful graphic novel ---and popularizing the term--- with the publication of his seminal A Contract with God, (1978). The semi-autobiographical 'graphic novel' revolutionized the art form, inspiring countless fellow professionals worldwide to follow" (Denis Kitchen's Eisner biography; see also Andrew D. Arnold's "The Graphic Novel Silver Anniversary"). The key point here being the fact that Eisner's success and use popularised the term in a way that Corben and Jakes' effort obviously did not (at least not in historical hindsight).

During the 1980s Marvel Comics made use of the term by starting a publication line entitled Marvel Graphic Novel, which was, to borrow a phrase from John Wells, an "attempt at emulating European-style graphic novels, with big-name creators, complete-in-one-volume stories, 8.5 x 11 dimensions and fancy paper and printing" (see The Definitive Graphic Novels List). The first book in this publication series was the somewhat famous Jim Starlin piece The Death of Captain Marvel (1982), and it was followed by a number of releases up until 1993 (although more and more sporadically towards the end). DC also followed suit, though to a lesser extent, and it could be argued that Marvel managed to work up the imprint of the Marvel Graphic Novel better than DC did with their equivalent.

Following that, of course, what had originally been reserved for the publication of original comics material directly in book format (though I think some of the Marvel material is debatable in terms of length and ought more aptly be called "graphic novellas") started to cover first all kinds of TPBs (whether reprints of diverse story arcs and limited series or actual original publications) and then further on to cover the entire medium itself. Somewhat erroneously, I would argue, since that merely makes it more fanciful term for "comics."

And the term graphic novel is useful. Make no mistake about that. It is useful as a genre denomination, just as the "novel" it not so subtly leans upon is useful genre terminology in the field of literature. But for the term to be useful, it cannot be the entire medium. It cannot function as the more respectable box used to dress up the old comics for the general public. It needs to be thought of as a genre, and as a genre, it reasonably needs to be novelistic in some sense. Eisner's usage certainly applies to this category, as does quite a bit (if not all) of the Marvel Graphic Novel material, although some of that (due to its length, as mentioned above) might benefit from borrowing the term novella from literature (after all, if there are graphic novels, it would only be logical that there are also graphic novellas, as it were). Each and every TPB reprint, however, does not warrant the use of the terminology.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that the old "publication of original comics material directly in book format" rule need apply. Not at all. The novel itself had its humble beginnings in serial publication, and even rose to prominence in that area in the course of two centuries or so. Let's remember that Dickens, held up by many as one of the greatest novelists of all times, did not write novels as full books in the sense we tend to think of them today, but as serial installments on a weekly basis. That is, something very much comparable to the history of comicbook publication.

However, I would like to reiterate, there does need to be something novelistic about it. There needs to be a single story, albeit perchance multifaceted, in there. Limited series naturally quite easily fall into this slot, and I do consequently not have any problem talking about Camelot 3000, The Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen as graphic novels. The same goes for clear novelistic story arcs reprinted in TPB. Most of Neil Gaiman's Sandman amply exemplify this, and is more over an extraordinarily good examples as two of the ten TPBs, Dream Country and Fables & Reflections, so clearly aren't novelistic, but rather serve as the comics equivalent of a short story collection (as many regular TPBs, of course, are wont to be). And yes, the concluding Sandman volume, The Wake, does reside on the borderlines, what with it containing a shorter "long" story (if published as a separate TPB, perhaps more of a graphic novella) and some short stories.

In all cases, however, we are talking about comics. Because if we look at it sanely, consider the term graphic novel useful and wish to keep it as such, we simply must realise that all graphic novels are comics, while far from all comics are graphic novels. The distinction has absolutely nothing to do with quality, it is not a matter of which comics are prestigious enough to go into the "respectable" box. It is simple a matter of genre.

And genre is never in and of itself about quality.

The Blank Sheet of Paper

First off, sorry about the delay. I have a few (hopefully interesting) ideas for upcoming posts in the pipeline, but all of them, unfortunately, require a bit of preparation each and I have not yet had the time and opportunity to get to that yet.

Consequently, I've had a lot on my mind that I wanted to say, yet nothing on my mind that I could say at this time. Or perhaps more accurately, nothing I felt was interesting enough to share here.

Last night, however, I casually quoted a bit from an old favourite song of mine, Marillion's "Bitter Suite" from the Misplaced Childhood album:

It's getting late, for scribbling and scratching on the paper
Something's gonna give under this pressure, and the cracks are already beginning to show

A good friend of mine commented on this by saying that songs about writers were always golden in his book, and I could but agree.

And not only songs either. It is really, at least for my own part, about texts and stories about writers and writing. There is something almost perversely pleasurable to read or listen to tales about writers and writing. Perhaps because it becomes so self-referential. After all, this type of writing does represent one of various forms of metafiction, that is fiction that calls attention to itself as fiction or to its own narrativity and fictionality as it were. In other words, it speaks a little bit extra to those who themselves wrestle with ink and blank pages, keyboards and empty screens. To those of us who enjoy breathing in ideas and letters and then exhaling words.

The comment, in fact, made me think about one of my favourite issues of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. It's a single issue story called "Calliope" (found in the Dream Country TPB) and it's all about a writer by the name of Richard Madoc. Madoc is a desperate man, because he's the author of the successful debut novel The Cabaret of Dr. Caligari with a sequel due (if not overdue) at the publisher's and a severe case of writer's block. This causes him to seek out the help of an older, reclusive writer called Erasmus Fry (who actually has a rather unconventional remedy to Madoc's problem).

When Madoc first meets Fry, the old man goes into a speech on bezoars (something which Madoc has brought along as payment for Fry's remedy) and the pressed Madoc rudely interrupts him desperately screaming, "Will you shut up? I haven't written a word in a year -- Nothing I haven't thrown away! Do you know what that's like? When it's just you, and a blank sheet of paper?" Everything that follows, the mystical remedy and the eventual cost for it, stem from this desperation.

In fact, this phrase has stayed with me ever since I first encountered it at some point in the early 1990s. Even without the context of the story, there is something haunting about the phrase. At least it is to someone who can just imagine what that's like; i.e. someone who's life is strongly tied to texts and their production. Within the context of the story, the phrase is not merely haunting but properly horrific. It is, as stated, what brings everything that follows (and without revealing too much and spoiling the story for those of you who haven't read it, what follows is, as always, the price we pay for the success we claim). It is, in effect, the fuel that drives the action, but it is also the horror itself.

While novels like Stephen King's The Dark Half cleverly play on other fears a writer may encounter, in a manner of speaking, in Gaiman's comic (visually brought to life by Kelley Jones and Malcolm Jones III), which is equally based in a fictional dark fantasy/horror reality (allowing more than a little for intrusions of the supernatural), the horror itself is not of a supernatural agency. Sure, there are dimensions to how the story unfolds that is clearly both horrific and supernatural in a combined fashion, but the basic horror is something rather more tangible. It is something that can happen to any writer and underneath the surface of that horror lies an empty despair.

In short (to put these ramblings to an end), "Calliope" as a story, besides being a really good story generally speaking and a mighty fine piece of dark fantasy in the medium of comics, is horror for writers.

A World in 3D – It's RealD!

Okay... so a rather busy week and then to top it off I had planned to write a completely different post than this one. But, for reasons that will become apparent (I hope), I just had to write this one first and postpone the other one until my next update.

See, this Monday I spoke to a friend and colleague who absolutely raved about Coraline 3D. Now, as a big fan of both Neil Gaiman's book and director Henry Selick's previous, wonderful collaboration with Tim Burton (i.e. The Nightmare Before Christmas, in case anyone had missed that), it's almost a wee bit odd that I'd not already seen it, but I do believe the trailer simply didn't catch my interest enough. What I had seen seemed lighter and... fluffier somehow, than the book as I remember it.

As it is, I'm kind of happy that I hadn't already been to see it. Because if I had, it would most likely not have been Coraline 3D I'd gone for but the regular Coraline feature. I mean, why waste extra money on 3D, right? I remember 3D. It became rather fashionable for a while back there in my childhood in the 80s. Red and green glasses on the whole family in the sofa in front of the telly watching Creature From The Black Lagoon and all that. Followed by a wave of other TV stuff (especially directed at kids) as well as a few comics. Fun to be sure, but still... not something I'd spend a bundle of extra cash on, really.

Don't get me wrong. It's not as if I thought the technology hadn't advanced or anything. I simply just didn't figure it was my particular cuppa. Not something that I required, as it were. But my friend's raving was as much about the whole 3D thing as the film itself. How the two worked ever so well to create depth in the fictional world of the piece. And it was the latter that really sold it to me. I simply had to see this film... and in 3D.

The technology is new, to be sure. Gone are the red and green glasses, now replaced by some nifty looking "sunglasses" (though they're not really sunglasses, of course; the caveat on the package made this abundantly clear in about three different languages). RealD is obviously the term for this new 3D technology and it relies on polarized light in some fashion or other, from what I've understood.

Yet, what is most amazing, at least with Coraline 3D (and also seemingly with Ice Age 3, Up and G-Force from what I could tell from the 3D trailers they showed at the cinema; all looking really good to different degrees), was not the great technology in and of itself, but rather how it was used. There has always been an impetus to use 3D to reach out and grab the audience, scare them and figuratively poke them in their eyes (something which Coraline 3D does quite literally at one point, but at least with a very good reason). This is probably why the technology has often been applied to horror films (the aforementioned Creature from the Black Lagoon leaps to mind), and still is to at least some degree. I couldn't help noticing a poster for My Bloody Valentine 3D, a film for which I, despite all my newly found love for the RealD format, couldn't muster even the slightest enthusiasm.

Coraline 3D, on the other hand, uses the technology mostly to, as my friend put it, create depth in the fictional and animated world it projects. And with great effect, at that. The whole world came to life before me in a new way, and part of me think it's telling that it is an animated film that manages to do this so well (note that the trailers mentioned above, that caught my eye as well, are all for animated films as well). It may well be that animation knows, as it were, how to use the technology to help tell the story rather than (as effects of all sorts can be manhandled at times) using a story – any story – to showcase the latest and greatest in terms of effects.

In short, what this film shows is the profound and ages old practice of excellence in storytelling. Of using whatever effects, stylistic or technical, that you have at hand to tell the story, and tell it in the best possible way. This is no mere showcase of a proverbial fireworks display saying look-at-what-we-can-do. It is a sincere case of we're-here-to-tell-you-a-story-and-we-will-use-all-the-tools-available-to-us-in-order-to-tell-it-the-best-way-we-possibly-can. And a very successful case, at that.

It also hints at this being an ongoing option already for animated films. This is, I'll admit, an assumption on my part thus far, but one I'll stick with for the time being, taking the aforementioned 3D trailers into account (and let's remember that trailers are usually keen on showing off effects for effects' sake. So if that's not a burden in a trailer, it seems less likely to be a burden in the finished product).

All in all, I'm gearing up to watch at least two more 3D films before the end of this year: Pixar's Up and Disney's G Force. Worlds in 3D – it's RealD!