Vanessa Raney

Comics

from "The Politics of Fat" (copyright 2007)

by Vanessa Raney

	This is an excerpt of what I posted to the Comics Discussion Board:   This is one of the unique things about comics or other art forms that make up a series of related concepts: the image/whatever associates with another image/whatever, thus offering to the viewer a multiple perspective for what may be a specific idea or context. By focusing on one image/whatever concept in a series of image/whatever concepts without considering its relationship to the other image/whatever concepts is to (1) ignore the artist; (2) suggest meaning that the series as a whole may compromise (i.e., someone might read an image of a goat in a picturesque background as an indication that the artist means a positive pastoral connection when the theme actually concerns sacrifice which is why in a later image, the goat is shown dead and bloody in the same picturesque background; one would need to read all of the images to know what statement the artist is attempting to make); (3) limit the discourse. If we consider comics to be a series of image/text concepts, we have an obligation to look at both; what text gives us that images support is the formal context. Erasing the text leaves mostly impressions of the emotive context; this is why paintings (this is just an example; there are drawings, sculptures, photographs, etc. that would serve the same purpose) have the power to disgust or arouse us, etc. even when we don't know what's going on, which is the case unless you know something of the history of a particular painting, artist, etc.   I'm just raising some questions regarding the difference between a single image/whatever concept and a series of image/whatever concepts, the latter of which belongs to comics generally (even strips, which may be understood as a series of vignettes, thus requiring no connection except at least one recurring character throughout rather than in every instance; one-shot cartoons, of course, present exceptions, though often an editorial cartoonist returns to the same theme throughout his or her career). For just in case I get censored on the Comics Discussion Board, I wished to repeat my thoughts here:   Yesterday, Aaron Kashtan, [current] moderator of the comix listserv, unsubscribed me for personal attacks. (The major thing that happened is I called out Peter M. Coogan - you know, my former co-editor who bailed - and that created a panic because, immediately after, Aaron Kashtan sent out an e-mail about personal attacks.) I believe that, had I been male, I'd still be on the listserv. Females apparently are held to a much higher standard; but let it be a man who did what I did, and he'd be simply chided - because that's the history concerning personal attacks on the listserv. Seriously, unless you've been a member of the listserv for a while, you don't know the kinds of personal attacks that were taking place, even with members like Trina Robbins. The previous moderator, Philip Sandifer, did nothing concerning the word "nigger." The original member (a male) and others who took on the word are still members of the listserv. I say something that wasn't to that level (I mean, before the warning went out), and I'm threatened with removal. And then Philip Sandifer thinks it's cool to chime in backing up Aaron Kashtan; I refer again to my note regarding Philip Sandifer's previous inactions. Then, of course, I cursed and so forth and was knocked out of the listserv. I also e-mailed several members with the Subject heading with deragatory terms against the sexes. As I said, though, I think Aaron Kashtan chose to remove me solely because I'm female, though my later actions didn't help me. So I wish to ask a very important question: What role does sexism play in comics scholarship? As moderator of the Comics Discussion Board, Clare may choose to censor me. If not, I'd like to know what you think of my question. And don't worry: I won't think badly of you if you're male. Poem What Freedoms to Forgive by: Vanessa Raney All rights reserved. 2-22-07 Patriarchy got a hold of me. Some like to call it sexism. But women, we're supposed to be prim, hold ourselves higher.   If we speak like men, we're removed from the scene: because then we're a contagion.   I could infect you: dare you to speak out with equal disregard.   It matters that I'm female.   Men are allowed to misbehave.   One woman called me "unbalanced" (because I acted out in anger): "a lunatic" she said.   Is this not familiar, the things we're called when we get out of line?   But oh, to be a man, what freedoms to forgive.   But a woman: she'll always be trash.   If we spread our legs for men we're either sluts or tokens; and these aren't the worst of what we're called by every eye -   male or female, because the women want to condemn us if we choose equality before every sex.   Some women are smart and men exist who treat us with respect,   but more of you despise any fact of woman who speaks her self real.   Poem by: Vanessa Raney All rights reserved. 2-22-07 Repeating my comment to the  listserv: If the concern is that comics scholarship is often ignored by academia, the more important question is: Why? Well, the most likely reason is that comics scholarship generally doesn't position itself within an established discourse. In several of the books I've read (not all), again, the focus is on survey. There's a lot in academic publishing that's survey and not necessarily written at a "high" level (that is, non-jargon specific), but it refers back to itself (aka the field). More importantly, it generally backs up what it's saying with evidence, regardless if the author's perspective is flawed. If you're working on a Ph.D., even if you don't grasp concretely what contribution to the field means, your specializations (where you have to learn the field related to your specific interests, and then get tested on it through comprehensive exams or essay) are training for this. So academic scholars are trained to do this, and that is what their scholarship generally reflects. This doesn't mean people in the mainstream aren't contributing to the field. There are public intellectuals, independent scholars, etc., but many of these completed some advanced training. (Is it Paulo Freire, who graduated with his Ph.D. from Yale, but because he was getting the jobs that his white counterparts weren't, dropped out of academia, and has since become a leading figure in the field of education?) The evaluative criteria, however, has nothing to do with the publisher being academic or mainstream. Academic publishing was a response to the need of an academic community (aka faculty) to get published, which one is usually required to do to get tenured, because there were limited opportunities in the mainstream for research-oriented publications that were geared to people in the field; that is, there wasn't a market for the kind of work that comes out of academic publishing. That's why a lot of academic publishers print maybe 1000 copies, most of these sold to libraries. The issue isn't about "scholarly," but the expectations associated with books in a field like comics. Many comics scholars are in academia, while others are outside of academia. There has been comics scholarship (books) that's academic, and these reflect the standards of academic publishing. Other comics scholarship isn't academic (that is, its primary audience isn't academia), and tends toward survey. Survey's fine, but it's frustrating because you can't really use it except as reference. If one aim of comics scholarship is to establish comics as a viable field of academic study (that is, separate from literature or popular culture), then it needs to conform to the expectations of academic study. It must: 1) define itself: what is included or excluded from the term comics that is generally recognized, and what schools of thought come out of this? (It's moving in this direction, but sequential art is still too broad; it says anything with text and image that shapes some kind of definable action is a comic.) 2) establish a discourse: why is comics study important and what distinguishes it (The problem is that comics are text and image, which means you can't overemphasize either the text or the image (that is, you can't look only at the text or only at the image to talk about a comic, because then you're doing a disservice to the artist who created something using both; but there's an already established discourse on visual studies, which has, from what I've read, branched into things like visual anthropology. What makes comics different from this, and why should it be its own discipline?) 3) identify key scholars (first, the ones who started the field (not necessarily the creators, but those who began publishing about comics); second, those who challenged the first (ah, here we start talking about schools again; and, clearly, with the debates raging about literature, art, and sequential art, there's a minimum of three); third, those like Eisner, McCloud and Cohn, who have contributed to the grammatology of comics (you have to be inclusive, and this is so limited an area it's impossible to ignore Cohn, though he's younger and not as highly reknown - but that's only because he's at the beginning and not toward the end or middle); etc.) 4) define the canon (the same figures appear in almost every survey text, and there's been newer stuff that's in journals, etc.; with a canon, however, there are questions about its legitimacy, but it usually established people for whom a general consensus has been reached that they are examples of good whatever) 5) etc. The standards of scholarship (i.e., the expectations) are different in academia and mainstream, and that in no way presents an argument that either is better than the other. It also doesn't suggest that scholars are only found in academic publishing. However, the questions raised by several of us is what should comics scholarship be defined by? What criteria, going back to the original thread, do we want to establish for it? Surveys are fine, but there's also other scholarship that reads from literary analysis (is this wrong? Almost every discourse includes theory; I don't think it's presumptive to say that every Humanities discipline uses theory). Both contribute toward the field, but if one creates standards, that's the aim that comics scholarship as a discipline should aim for. The great thing about disciplines is that there can be great debates; the key is that there are arguments.