Miriam Libicki

If anyone is still reading I thought I'd share something interesting.

When we discussed Jobnik! in class, another one of Libicki's works was mentioned, Towards a Hot Jew: The Israeli Soldier as Fetish Object.

I did a search for the essay, fully expecting to have to purchase it. Much to my surprise I found that Libicki posted the essay online and in a PDF file as well.

It's interesting to say the least.  It's short (12 pages maybe), but deals with a very rich subject.

Pop *Culture*

For my final blog entry I figured I'd take a moment to look back at a lot of the work I've engaged with over the semester. I'm happy with the opportunity I've had to read so many graphic novels/watch films and have the time to think about each piece in an in depth way.

To echo my initial post, graphic novels and other expression of culture (including pop culture) can be used as excellent tools to explore our own or others cultures if treated differently than as a passive bit of entertainment. The stories behind the stories, as it were, and reactions to such forms of art and storytelling, are fantastic sources of information that add dimension and richness to my experience as a member of the audience.

Maus I and II was probably the best example of reader reaction if for no reason other than the fact that Speiglemen deals with it straight out in the second volume.  Never mind how frequently I've read since that Maus changed the way people looked at graphic novels.

Waltz with Bashir is the best example of "stories behind the stories" for me simply because of the topic of my research paper.  For example, the song "I Bombed Beirut" used in the film is actually a cover of a Cake song, "I bombed Korea".  Observe!






I'm bringing this up because I found out later that there is a famous incident during the first Lebanese War when IDF soldiers appeared on Israeli television singing children's folks songs but with altered lyrics expressing disillusionment with the military campaign.  I'm going to assume that this is Folman's conscious or unconscious nod to that.

Original Song (English Translation)
Come down to us, airplane,
And take us to the sky.
We'll soar up
To top of the trees
And will be
Like birds.

Altered Song (English Translation)
Come down to us, airplane,
And take us to Lebanon.
We'll fight
For Sharon
And we'll come back
In a coffin.

[Yael Zerubavel, "Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition", (1995),  page 175]

It's a small detail I completely didn't catch before but it makes a repeated viewing that much richer and demonstrates something about history and culture beyond a song in a film.

Story Time!

I liked the last bit of Megillat Esther, mostly because this time around I feel like I got the side jokes.

What stood out the most for me was the 'tale-being-told' interlude on pages 128-131, 138, 143, 149-151. It was a good reminder at the end that there is a long history of not only studying these texts but of their use as popular story. The children, almost comically, questioning the inconsistencies in the story were amusing [143]. I had the same bit of confusion and I appreciated the way the artist choose to depict that fact that this confusion wasn't just for me alone. [The bit with Ezekiel might take some unpacking though. I have a very vague idea concerning it.]

I think the interlude also highlights the way that people interact with the text. It's not just through services and study, but through Purim costumes, associated foods, and really discussing the story.

Obedient Women

One thing that caught me off guard while reading the graphic novel as well as the traditional book of Esther was how the wise men reacted to Vashti's refusal in the first place:

¹⁶Then Memukan replied in the presence of the king and the nobles, “Queen Vashti has done wrong, not only against the king but also against all the nobles and the peoples of all the provinces of King Xerxes. ¹⁷ For the queen’s conduct will become known to all the women, and so they will despise their husbands and say, ‘King Xerxes commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, but she would not come.’ ¹⁸ This very day the Persian and Median women of the nobility who have heard about the queen’s conduct will respond to all the king’s nobles in the same way. There will be no end of disrespect and discord.
 ¹⁹ “Therefore, if it pleases the king, let him issue a royal decree and let it be written in the laws of Persia and Media, which cannot be repealed, that Vashti is never again to enter the presence of King Xerxes. Also let the king give her royal position to someone else who is better than she. ²⁰ Then when the king’s edict is proclaimed throughout all his vast realm, all the women will respect their husbands, from the least to the greatest.”
 ²¹ The king and his nobles were pleased with this advice, so the king did as Memukan proposed. ²² He sent dispatches to all parts of the kingdom, to each province in its own script and to each people in their own language, proclaiming that every man should be ruler over his own household, using his native tongue.
[Copied from BibleGateway.com - NIV]

Since the Book of Esther is of such cultural significance (Purim) I wonder how prevalent these versus are in conversation when family power dynamics are discussed within religious communities (Jewish/Christian/Islamic).  I image it might be played up to lend legitimacy to a more traditional family structure that underlines a wife's/daughter's obedience to the male head of household/husband/father. 

That, or in some traditions and cultures, this part of the story might be white-washed as it might be considered unpalatable.  For example, while cruising YouTube I ran into a 1970s American Protestant (Lutheran specifically) cartoon version of the story that completely skips over Vashti.

Stranger to a Text

Maybe this isn't the wisest thing to admit as a religious studies major but I am not overwhelmingly in touch with many sacred texts - sort-of kind-of familiar but not at any point where the foreign names and places roll off my tongue and I can easily keep track.  (Not that I'm against improving my skills and exploring this topic.)

I like the way the artist of Megillat Esther uses the text; it certainly has an "epic" feel to some plot points and there is a great deal top absorb in most panels.  I suppose my lingering unease with the story is that I get the impression that there is so much going on in the text and in the images that I'm just not catching.

I understand the pages 30 through 35 is suppose to be humorous - biblical characters on a modern day game show of sorts.  It just completely flew over my head because I'm unfamiliar with the underlying joke.

Graphic novels may be a way to catch a new audience and express inside jokes but this one was a turn off for me.  I'm simply ill prepared for all the inside jokes so it became overwhelming.  Visually beautiful and all but still a bit confusing.

That said, I'm very glad this book with take up two weeks of discussion.  I think I'll need that to really "get" this piece of work.

Lebanese Divisions

The film choose to point out the rather massive expanse of Bashir iconography.  I believe the observation in the film was something like "Bashir was to them what David Bowie was to me".  With the importance of Bashir as a symbol in mind I suppose the Sabra and Shatila massacre might make less sense without a good grasp on some of the dynamics of the Lebanese civil war.

The best case I can make is that the Lebanese are not split along religious lines the way it might look at first glance.  Sure it's a conflict along Sunni/Shia/Druze/Maronite Christian lines but religion isn't the thing that's being fought over really.  Religious affiliation is a short hand way of identifying allegiance to political parties, ideas on international allegiances (enter the problem of Syria and the PLO), and perceived cultural divisions (identify as an Arab or Phoenician).  Religious affiliation is also a way of signifying where your family probably lived for hundreds of years and probabilistically what family name you might have. It's a fight over who has the right to direct the new nation-state and therefore a fight over who really represents the true Lebanon.  Should it go by population? (This raises the issue of running a government based on population when the last official census was taken in 1932.)  Age of the community's presence in the region and tradition?

Civic nationalism really doesn't exist in Lebanon.


1982, the year of the massacre, was well into the civil war.  For the Maronite Christians - predominately supporters of the Christian Phalange - Bashir (son of prominent politician Pierre) Gemayel looked to be the leader to bring an end to everything (albeit probably violently).  As Dr. Eichler-Levine said, he was kind-of the Lebanese Kennedy.  The loss of a young leader, with strong ties to a family that had become symbolic as well, who had become such a symbol in his own right, was that triggering for some member of the Christian Phalange.  A previous attempt on Pierre's life, years prior, prompted revenge killings as well.

With this in mind the massacre might make a little more sense in the grand scheme - terrifying and inexcusable, but not preformed against a blank historical and political background.

Ari Folman Interview - Animation and Acid

Since I'm doing my paper on Waltz with Bashir this journal is pulling double-duty this week because I get to talk about some of the things I've read about the film.  I like documentaries; I like animation; putting the two together makes for a really interesting experience.  Even so the first time I saw the film I didn't think too much about that fact this it was animated beyond being amused by it and analyzing the techniques they used.

In fighting to keep my paper very connected to the film (instead of  writing a history paper on the Lebanese Wars) I stumbled across a fantastic interview with Ari Folman (the director).  What he has to say about why he choose animation made a great deal of sense to me and adds another layer of meaning to the viewing experience.

Ari Folman Find Freedom in Animation - Steve Erickson
_______________________________________________
Erickson: What led you to decide to make an animated documentary about your memories?

Folman: I thought that animation is the only way to tell this story, with memories, lost memories, dreams and the subconscious. If you want to feel any freedom as a filmmaker to go from one dimension to another, I thought the best way to do it was animation.

Erickson: Several of your interview subjects say they got through war by acting like they were watching a movie. Did that influence your approach?

Folman: Definitely. War is like a very bad acid trip, if you’ve ever experienced it. I wanted the audience to go through this experience in a dimension that you don’t know. It’s completely different from your everyday life. The design of the animation is intended to produce this effect. From the very opening, when you see dogs running through the streets of Tel Aviv, you’re in this very unpleasant hallucination. Then it goes deeper and deeper until it reaches the documentary footage of the massacre.

Erickson: Was it always your intent to end the film with that video footage?

Folman: Yes. I didn’t want anyone to leave the theater thinking “This is a very cool animated movie with great drawings and music.” I wanted people to understand this really happened. Thousands of people died that weekend. Most of them were kids, unprotected women and old people. It puts the whole film into proportion and perspective. I felt I had to do it. It seems longer than it is. It’s only 50 seconds."
_______________________________________________
I recommend reading the whole interview linked above as these are only three questions I picked out.  Thinking back on the first time I watched it, yes, there was a definite bad acid-trip feel to the opening.  The film simply would have been hard pressed to get that message across to me as a viewer if it was done in live-action.  The last scene composed on actual footage is all the more disturbing by contrast.

Exit Wounds

As long as we were reading Jobnik! this week I decided to finally crack open Exit Wounds (by Rutu Modan), another graphic novel about life in Israel (presumably set in the past decade as well) that deals with violence on the fringes of the story but isn't 100% consumed by it.

I'm going to copy and paste the description from wikipedia because it's a good description without a whole mess of spoilers:
"Modan's first full length graphic novel tells the story of Koby Franco, a 20-something cab driver working in Tel Aviv. Franco's mundane everyday life is interrupted when a female soldier approaches him, claiming his estranged father was killed by a suicide bomber at a train station. He and the young woman begin searching for clues to see if Franco's father, whom the soldier was romantically involved with, is dead or alive."

There are some very interesting themes this work shares with Jobnik!  Both stories are concerned with how personal life moves within/in spite of a potentially violent and tense atmosphere.  One would expect that a story about a girl in the IDF during the second intifada would be much more of stereotypical action-packed war story, but it's not.  Exit Wounds throws the same curve ball.  The story is based around a missing father who may or may not have been killed in a suicide bombing, but the story isn't about suicide bombings, the conflict, death, and destruction.  It stays fairly well focused on the interactions of the main character and his family and the female lead Numi.

Exit Wounds also touches on women as members of the IDF.  Numi often discusses how she fits in with other women the expectations of femininity she feels she's not living up to.  Numi feels out of place in her own country in some regards and it reminded me a bit of the feelings expressed by Miriam.

What I found most interesting about reading Jobnik! and Exit Wounds back-to-back was how conflict and stress was just part of the background of the stories.  It says something interesting about the experience of an Israeli or even long-term residents.  The conflict can be overwhelming at times, reach out and affect someone personally, but it's still part of the background.  After so many years in conflict it's almost become part of the day to day noise.

The Role of the Personal Experience in Major Events

A lot of the graphic novels we've read thus far have dealt with foreign times, places, cultures and this week isn't an exception.  Jobnik! gives us a peak into the life of an American girl who joins the Israeli Defense Force just before the second intifada.  The first time I read Jobnik! I had just wrapped up a paper on women in the IDF and I had a relatively good handle on the history of the conflict and the major political issues and players involved.  It made my experience with the book radically different from what I might have had without a lot of background knowledge. I was able to really focus on her story and experiences because I wasn't super confused by the surrounding details of the conflict.

There is this odd, but fantastically descriptive, mix of news reports combined with her worry over Shahar (and others), and how - in the midst of everything - life kind of continues on in small ways in the middle of such events.  The worry, tension, and shock after so long can become a hum in the background [as illustrated by news report text as background on page 58].  Miriam can still be caught up in personal drama, she can still dye her hair, and none of that means that the world around her is unimportant.  It just can't be all consuming all the time for all those involved.

Quite frankly the fact that she chose to incorporate the text of news reports (accurate to the day as described in the author's notes) and still show that she was living day-to-day in her world within the larger conflict is pretty impressive.  If Miriam wasn't so grounded in telling her own story she might have turned the comic into something a bit impersonal - a macro-level history lesson or political diatribe.  Even though on BOS 244 she describes herself as feeling "guilty that [her] comics don't try to go beyond [her] own experience" as I reader I appreciate being let-in on her experiences in such raw detail.

I know the history of the conflict, and I know the events, but I don't know too many personal experiences connected to those events.  There is an important place for stories like these to remind us that the day-to-day doesn't come to a complete halt, even when it looks like everything is in melt down mode.

Overlap

I like that Sfar touched on the way religions can overlap, especially in the same wider tradition (Abrahamic in this case) and in the same geographic region and similar cultures.  I'm referring to the pilgrimage to the Saint/Sufi grave mentioned on pages 83-87.

Sfar's inclusion of this side-trip was probably fed by the current tension in France over (mostly) Muslim Algerian immigration.  It's the author's way of including a contemporary moral, or at least his views on the topic, while keeping in embedded deep within the story set in pre-war Europe and North Africa.  It's cute how Sfar even introduces the character's to each other with the strikingly similar greetings: shalom aleichem and salaam aleikum.

I'm reading into it too much but I find it amusing that the only character's ready to fight over religious claims are the cat and the donkey.  The religious men are perfectly happy to converse, play music, and enjoy each others' company.  Sfar may be hinting that such disputes over religious claims appeal to a more 'animal' territorial nature, whereas "real men of god" (presented as fully human here) are more inclined to celebrate commonalities than devolve into such disputes.  Of course this is just my guessing at Sfar's intentions, without his direct acknowledgment of his motive in these panels I cannot be 100% sure.

Three Parts

I initially thought that The Rabbi's Cat was a bit of a jumbled story.  The cat's role changed a little bit throughout, characters were introduced without a whole lot of resolve (Malka of the Lions), and by Exodus I was thoroughly confused about where this story was headed.  That was before it was brought up in class that it was supposed to be three stories in one book, not chapters leading to one nice-and-neat ending.  I reread it Wednesday night with that in mind got a lot more out of it oddly enough.

That being said I liked the visual style from the beginning.  The use of cursive to express the cat's thoughts, and print to express speech, was creative because it underlined the importance of speech (a greater theme to the whole book, not to mention the 62-66 "cat loses his voice while invoking the name of God" part of the story).  A lot can be said with the font/color of text and I get the impression that as an audience we probably recognize it less than more obvious aspects of each panel.  The font was cursive [I'm old enough to still have had cursive drilled into me so it wasn't difficult to read] and to me, combined with the cat's attitude, it lent an air of snarky confidence.  Cursive looked "smoother" than print and it's perfectly fitting for a cat.

Overall I enjoyed the book and I'll probably have to give it a third read in the next few months to absorb more of it since it was so busy with themes touched on for a moment, so subtly, and then left to move onto a new point.  I liked that it was narrated by a cat - fantastic enough to remind me of stories I liked when I was little, but dealing with themes and points of interest an adult could enjoy.

Real Live Prisoners.

I was surprised to see an actual photo of Vladek toward the end of Maus, especially in a cleaned/fitted prisoner's uniform.  That fact they he took the photo in the uniform kind of hints to either a slight sense of humor that was never extinguished or his desire to have solid evidence in order to remember what those uniforms looked like should his memory fade later on in life.  That fact that he took it for Anja, who obviously knows what the camps and the uniforms looked like because of her own experiences, makes me think it was the former but who can say? 

I was surprised to see a real photo of Vladek none the less.  Maybe it's because after almost two complete volumes I was so used to seeing him as a mouse.  To throw that out there - "Hey, look, remember this is a real person we're talking about here" was slightly jarring and gave me pause.  I suppose that was Art's intention and since he has a history of fusing both drawn and photographic images [as discussed in Comic Book Confidential] I know I shouldn't be surprised.

It certainly had the feel of a modern "period piece" photo; something you'd find at a tourist stop or a theme park.  The fact that it did conjure those feelings was striking.  Not only is this Art pushing out as image of his father to us as the audience but we (or at least I) was forced to really roll the image around in my mind.  I found myself actually thinking through the line of thought that: "This looks like a fake period piece photo but it's not.  It's not just mice, it's people.  It is rooted in reality.  It's not just a comic book full of fantastic fantasy but a retelling of someone's journey through intense trauma."

If this wasn't what Art was aiming for it's still the message that came across for me.

Cultural Jewishness

This is a bit of a throw back to my last update but I think it's certainly post-worthy none-the-less.

A new book is coming out, The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, and it holds the question of Jewishness (in this case, 'cultural Jewishness') front and center.

"What does it mean to be Jewish? To some it means sitting down at Katz's delicatessen with a pastrami sandwich. To others, it's setting up a hilltop outpost in the West Bank and waiting for the messiah. That essential uncertainty, pondered by everyone from rabbis and philosophers to Shakespeare and Sammy Davis Jr., is what Howard Jacobson tackles head on in The Finkler Question.
...
The story revolves around Julian Treslove, a melancholy, lackluster London liberal. After Treslove is mugged one night, he believes, with increasing certainty, that his attacker called him a Jew. Though his best friends are Jewish, Treslove is not. Or at least he's fairly certain he isn't. But as a result of the incident, he becomes increasingly obsessed with the question of Jewishness.
Treslove doesn't approach his journey into Judaism from a religious standpoint. He takes no steps to learn Hebrew or convert. Instead, his obsession is cultural. He wishes to understand the mannerisms of Jewish life; the hidden code of Jewish sarcasm and the subtleties of Jewish body language.
As Treslove yearns to pass as a Jew, many of his Jewish contemporaries in the book do their best to pass as gentiles, including one pitiful character who spends his waking hours trying to reverse his circumcision, chronicling his efforts on a blog, photos and all."
'Finkler' Questions the Meaning of Jewishness - David Sax [All Things Considered]

I quote this article because the commentary on The Finkler Question explores something we see Art Spiegelman exploring in Maus I and II- what exactly makes someone Jewish and to "what extent" are they Jewish (further still, what specifically are the qualifiers and how important is each box that must be checked)?  In the case of Maus, who gets to be painted as a mouse and who just gets a mouse mask; is it fluid?

From my limited understanding there are several different interpretations of Jewish identity.  Honestly?  I think we see this is any minority or even subculture: larger identity in dispute, "truer than you" language, sometimes more laid back interpretations and a general acceptance of splinter/sub-identities.

Mice and Masks

There was a bit of discussion in class over the use of masks in Maus.  While there are many interpretations of the use of masks I find this one the most intriuging:

"Neither Art nor Francoise manifest any affinity for Jewish theology, and they clearly do not buy into the concept of racial Jewishness, but they do feel a deep, albeit guilty, connection to Vladek and what he represents.  So when Spiegelman decides to tell his father's story, he literally paints himself (and all Jews) in the same image..." [BOS 90]

So the masks could be a way of marking shared history either as survivors or attachment to survivors or those who died, and emphasizing third person perceptions (ie Vladek's concern that Anja looked Jewish) without making comment on the ethnicity/religion debate?

In any case the ethnicity/religion debate seems to trouble Spiegelman, or at least this is what some of my classmates, who had read ahead to the second volume, hinted at (specifically where his French-born Jewish-convert wife is concerned).  It's interesting that he would have this conflict in the second volume but not in the first.  Maybe it's because he had time between volumes to think about how he had chosen to depict people?  He may not have wanted to enter the ethnicity/religion debate but his choice of representation in his work kind of forced him to do so, or at least forced him to spend time thinking about it.

In any case it underlines that identity - the ones we choose for ourselves or the ones others marks us with - play a significant role in how we see ourselves and others may or may not interact with us.  In this way Vladek's story, and Art's own story, are quite universal.

Time Tables and Maus

I really enjoyed Maus but my favorite aspect of the graphic novel is usually found at the beginning and end of each chapter where Spiegelman is telling us the story of how he got the stories from his father for this project.  It's a fabulous method of bringing the audience in close in preparation for his father's retelling of his life during the Holocaust.  Personally, it allows me to connect not only with Vladek but Art as well to be privy to the complications and "real life" aspect of their relationship.

It's important (and impressive) because it makes the events in Vladek's retelling more real/more compelling.  I think without skipping between "now" and "then" it would be too easy to disconnect myself from Vladek's story for several reasons: I didn't live through that era; I have never been to Eastern Europe; I'm not Jewish; I don't know anyone personally who went through that ordeal.  It's exceptionally foreign to me so seeing Vladek in a setting more familiar to me (contemporary USA) makes it easier to connect with him.  It's a really fantastic storytelling tool.

While there are numerous tools that Art skillfully wields the one I was surprised at, because I was consciously thinking about it, was the use of mice.  The fact that this is a well established tradition (to emphasize vulnerability) in Eastern European storytelling is quite interesting [BOS 86].  I wonder if Art consciously did that or if it was something passed through culture that he used unaware of the history of the method.

Harvey Pekar and "Fresh Air"

I was interested in Pekar's work The Quitter where he exposing a bit of his childhood and deals more openly with his Jewish background.  I'll probably attempt to get hold of the book sometime but for now I found a 2005 interview with Pekar about his life on NPR's Fresh Air (appox. 20 minutes) that might be interesting.

Toward the beginning of the interview Pekar discusses his family and neighborhood.  His parents were Polish immigrants who were Jewish but he doesn't dwell on that fact too much.  I'm not going to speculate on why he never delved into that.  What he did talk at length about was the neighborhood he lived in - he was one of the only Caucasian kids in a predominately African American neighborhood and high school.  He explains that this is the reason he was singled out and beat up a great deal; he cites as the cause of a few things in his life.

This 'neighborhood' issue has influenced many of the authors/artists detailed in Kaplan's book.  A lot of the authors and artists seem to have come from metropolitan areas and are most likely to work with people they knew at a very local level.  "I went to high school or lived near so-n-so who knew that one guy" sort of thing.(Here's the point where we highlight that they didn't have the internet and didn't have such easy access to people in another city, on another coast).

While some people might wonder at the sizable amount of Jewish people in comics books in the Golden Age and even the Silver Age it makes a great deal of sense and it flushes out Kaplan's assertion that they flocked because it was a creative occupation that was easier to get into.  Business was a who-knows-who network and still is today.  When new mediums and industries arise, like comic books, there tends to be a close network of people at the outset - this one happened to arise out a metropolitan area, with some great Jewish artists and writers, who opened the doors for others at a time of prevalent anti-Jewish discrimination.  Neighborhoods, especially in urban areas, have a great impact for revealing new avenues and shaping perceptions of the world.

Women in Comix and Sharing

I think I might take the presence of women authors and artists in the current comic/graphic novel scene for granted.  I also think that webcomics skew my assumptions about women involved in comics in general - they're there, not a super small minority, but present less frequently than men.  I wonder what the actual numbers are but then I suppose we'd fall into a debate about what constitutes a comic/graphic novel and the importance of being published through traditional mediums vs. the internet.

As I said in class - I'm surprised that Aline Kominsky, Robert Crumb's wife, was an artist.  Truth be told I am not a huge fan of Crumb's work so maybe that's why I never investigated his ties to other artists.  It occurs to me that for the vast majority of the golden age there no prominent artists who are women.  I'm sure there are a lot of factors, and logically it makes sense with the historical context is realized.  Even so I was only reminded of the absence until we got to section in Kaplan's book dealing with underground comics.

There is an assumption expressed on page 139 (the first full paragraph) that doesn't sit too well with me.  I'm a little unconvinced that autobiographical comics/graphic novels are really mostly in the domain of women because 'they like to share more'.  What about the subtle influences Will Eisner put into his work that were certainly representative of aspects of his life?  Coloring the process of sharing one's life experience through art as an almost entirely female artist's pursuit seems silly.  Even if it's not as overt as an autobiography real life experience shining through artistic expression has been a large part of this book.  It has been exhibited or analyzed with most of the artists introduced in previous pages.

Tales From the Crypt and Revival

I've been a fan of Tales from the Crypt since I was little kid, mostly due to reruns of the HBO show that scared the ever-living-daylights out of me.  Because of the brand's rebirth in the late 1980s and 1990s Tales from the Crypt was the first thing I looked for when a comic book shop open up near my house.  I think I spooked the owner a little bit as an eight-year-old searching for horror comics and not for something a bit lighter and more age-appropriate.

I noticed a few other classmates had this same experience though - enjoying a well known title after it's rebirth in the 1980s or 1990s.  It's a really cool wave effect after the CCA lost a lot of it's power.  It some ways it's a perfect symbol of the revival of comics, old titles and new, during those years.

Oh and for those who liked those comics but don't know a lot about horror film CreepShow (1982) was a horror-comedy film done very much in the spirit of the Tales from the Crypt / Vault of Horror.  It was a collaborative work between Stephen King and George Romero who were probably greatly influenced by the EC comics of the 1950s.

Did I mention you can also buy really awesome hard-cover reprints of the old EC comics now?

Gumby as an Incarnation of Jewish Folklore?

We spent a little bit of time in class discussing the origins of the golem and it just occurred to me that the comic book cover shown on page 18 of Kaplan's From Krakow to Krypton depicts Gumby.  You know, claymation, was-on-the-air-for-forever-and-three-days Gumby.

This guy:


What catches me off guard is that this seems like a pretty obvious piece of trivia but a google search of 'gumby' and 'golem' turns up nothing for the first few pages and even Gumby's wiki page, usually the first place for such trivia, makes no reference to the golem tie although it does mention the comic book (which won the Eisner award in 2007 for Best Publication for a Younger Audience).

In any case it's really interesting that an aspect of Jewish folklore, often explored in the early years of comics, was reinterpreted in 2006 with an easily recognizable children's television character.  It's an interesting demonstration of how ideas move across cultures and time and are transformed for different purposes.

I'd be really interested to see how that specific comic book handles the whole Gumby as a golem angle.

Intense Backdrop in 'A Contract with God'

I noticed something interesting toward the end of this week's discussion while flipping from page to page in A Contract with God.  Not only does Eisner have a way with letting the backdrop, or lack there of, in each panel speak for the characters or play a role in setting the tone for the story, but it is actually an integral part of the beginning few pages and the last page.  It's a line strung through the "other tenement stories" that ties them together on an interesting visual level.

The first few pages of A Contract with God really emphasizes the weather - the absolute downpour of rain specifically.  I think it has more to do than foreshadow the lightening/argument with God a few pages on.  It illustrates perfectly Fremme's emotions upon losing his daughter.  It's all so overwhelming that it 'floods' his perception and actions the same way the street outside his tenement is being flooded and everyday items (like the fire hydrant) are being engulfed and disappearing.  This 'flood' of complex emotions carries us beyond A Contract with God and into the other stories within the book.

The last frame of the book and Cookaline is also a perfect example of background speaking for the whole graphic novel and not just the story at hand.  There is no text, just a young man peering out into the city.  The city is rather detailed on these last two pages, underling the complexity and interconnectedness of the people and everyday events.  In the context of Cookaline and the graphic novel as a whole is gives a simple message to the audience: city or not people and places are complex, daily events can have an impact, merely living implies a furious range of experience we all might be left to ponder.

Taking Comics Seriously

I've always loved comics, graphic novels, manga so to me it's rather natural to view these things as something with layers of meaning, a medium with the potential for expressing difficult subjects, and a 'legitimate' form of story telling.

While it was never my parents who shook their heads at my reading material I did get playfully teased my friends, coworkers, and even former relationship partners.  One former significant other simply could not understand the notion that 'simple childhood comics' could deal with more adult subjects.  I bought him a copy of Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers to prove a point and because I enjoyed that bit of work and wanted to share it.  We'll be reading Maus but I was happy to see In the Shadow of No Towers referenced in the introduction of The Jewish Graphic Novel - Critical Approaches [xxi] as another example of the medium being used in a way that's not aimed at children.

This assumption that 'comics are for kids... and only for kids' is still pretty prevalent.  As much as I enjoy NPR, columnist David Lipsky indulged in this assumption pretty heavily even today during a review of Runaways.  The refrain "I like it but I feel guilty for liking it because it's kid's stuff" gets old fast.

I'm looking forward to the class because I feel that this is medium that gets shuffled aside a bit and examining it with a specific topic in mind, the Jewish experience by Jewish authors in this case, will be challenging and give my reading a better focus.