The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or the Boob Tube

     I went to The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Chicago today.  It was an interesting experience.  I really enjoyed a lot of speakers, but there was an odd kind of controversy during the rally.  The Chicago rally organizer had decided to have a jumbo-tron at the rally site.    They played the introductory remarks from the Washington D.C. rally and then have the sound off during the speakers.   A large number of rally attendees objected to this and demanded that the television’s audio be restored in lieu of listening to the speakers.   I found this particularly annoying.  This was not a rally watching party.  This rally, while held in conjunction with the D.C. rally, did have a set program of speakers, musicians and comics and that is what I went to the rally to see.  The D.C. rally was on television and people wanted to watch T.V. then why did they come all the way down to Grant Park.  When someone finally voiced the opinion that those who wanted to watch T.V. could go home, a large group actually got up and left.  I don’t know what the proper situation would be but I found it surprising the type of people who wanted to watch T.V. as opposed to those who wanted to listen to the speakers.  The majority of T.V. watchers around me seemed to me to be middle aged.  The type of people that I would assume would have been around to remember the 1960s protest movement and would object to the crowds focusing on the watching a rally so far away when there were people there who wanted to speak to them.  I just found it surprising, for what it is worth.  

The Twenty-something Brain

Jobnik, by Miriam Libicki, at its essence is a coming of age story but with the big twist of a young woman dealing with military service in a country under siege.  This omnibus seems very scattered for a person looking for a linear narrative but I feel it really fits with the subject matter.

I was talking with a friend of mine today and we were discussing about how life seems to constantly change and seems to rush by you when you are eighteen.  I think this is the experience that Miriam is having on the base in the Israeli desert.  She is dealing with boredom in her own job while at the same time worrying about her friends and acquaintances that are off dealing with real combat situations.  She is also dealing with hormones, hers and others, and the problems they can cause when you are unsure what you want in life and in a relationship.   The narrative jumps because the artist’s mind is going to a million places at once.  She is thinking about where she has been and the choices she is making currently.  But I do have to agree with those who think the comics lack a kind of narrative.  I know that these comic books are based on her diaries but I think she needs to a bit more time developing more background so we can see how she came to be in the military.

Only I Can Make Pop Culture Seem This Boring.

Okay, so this is the weird pointless pop culture post. I am really excited about the upcoming Halloween episode of Glee. I find it a bit weird to be this excited about a show that I have only been watching for like five months but I think it has more to do with the Glee cast doing Rocky Horror Picture Show.   I have been a fan of that movie since my high school boyfriend and his friends took me to see it.  It is also a movie that is connected to so many great memories from my freshman and sophomore years in college. Sadly, because I don’t get Fox, I have to wait until the episode shows up online the day after.

In the theme of comic book superheroes, I thought I was going to really like No Ordinary Family.  I really like Michael Chiklis in pretty much anything he does but the rest of the characters in this show really don’t do it for me.

          Maybe because it is because I am a senior, but it seems like lately I have had no time to go to the movies.  I know the new Harry Potter is coming out in a about a month but it seems like that is the only movie that I would take time out of my schedule to see.  Anyone else have any recommendations of movies that I should go out and see this fall?

Do Rabbis Dream of Electric Cats?

     I still can’t decide whether or not I liked The Rabbi’s Cat.  This graphic novel, as an art form, wasn’t my favorite.  It was almost too linear.  The layout never changed with a consistent six squares per page.  It was a comic strip layout.  The drawing and colors were also not my favorite.  The one thing I can say I really liked about the art was how Joann Sfar drew the cat.  But since Wednesday’s class discussion, I have spent more time thinking about the themes in The Rabbi’s Cat and more things seem to pop out at me.  In “Imperfect Masters: Rabbinic Authority in Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat, Paul Eisenstein states, “Zblaya’s marriage to him threatens to interrupt a life…unchangeably idyllic…Jules is the cat’s first sexual rival.” (Baskind and Omer-Sherman, 163)  While yes, the cat has sex in the book, it is with OTHER CATS.   I feel the relationship between the rabbi’s cat and Zblaya is more of a child with a childish crush on a mother figure.  The cat feels threatened that he will have to share Zblaya’s affection and care with, first, a husband, and then children.  The cat feels that his life will be torn apart by these changes.  And what child has not felt threatened by changes in his or her life.  This childish worldview fits well with the idea that the cat’s version of Eden was lost with his eating of the bird and gaining a voice.  But the cat isn’t the only one to question life in this book.  The rabbi also goes through a similar loss of this mentor and the questioning of whether religious faith makes you happier.  No one in this book seems to have the answers but then again no one seems to have the answers in life.  

Tony Stark As the Nuclear Option: Comics and Political Science

It seems I got nothing to say this week.  My week of comic books covers the range of the Shoah to Iron Man II but I don’t have much else to say on either thing.  I did find something interesting while watching Iron Man II that relates to another class I am taking.  This week in my political science class we are discussing the four forms of force.  One of these forms is deterrence.  In class, we discussed how it is impossible to know if deterrence is working because if it is working then nothing happens.  But it could be that nothing is happening because nobody is plotting anything.  In Iron Man II during Tony Stark’s testimony to a Senate committee, he states that he is the United States deterrence and the world’s longest lasting peace was because of him. Maybe he is a deterrent and maybe nothing was going on because all the u enemies were off doing something else during that time.

Guess you just had to be there.

Animal Farm

Every week it seems I get more behind in my blog posts.  The end of the week seems to always sneak up on me. 

           I really enjoyed re-reading Maus this week.  The last time I read it was over ten years ago so it was almost as if I was reading it for the first time.  Something that also made reading it again a pleasure was the discussion we had in class this week.  There were so many great ideas brought up during discussion.  It is always interesting to see what others notice in the book that I may have overlooked.   I was especially fascinated by the discussion about the part animal characteristics are part of the story. 

Cats, mice, dogs, frogs and pigs are just animals.  But when you say any of these animals, inevitably certain characteristics come to mind.  For me, when I think of a dog I think loyal, strong, protective.  Cats are standoffish and cunning.  Mice are disease carriers and gross.  Frogs are slimy.  Pigs are cute and fat.   This is what I think when I hear these animals mentioned.  But it was different when I was reading Maus.   I saw those mice as shy and helpless.  The pigs strike me as piggish, to use a human characteristic.  The cats were not house cats but almost vicious Cheshire Cats.  I think Art Spiegelman did a wonderful job using animals to represent human nature. 

Another thing I did notice about Maus was the fact that it was as much a family story as much as it was a story about the Shoah, to use a term from class.  Every child at some point in his or her life wants to understand his or her parents.  To understand what makes a parent tick is to understand part of one’s self.  By hearing his father’s story, Art Spiegelman hopes to understand his father better.  I think that is why he is so upset by his father burning his mother’s notebooks.  Because of this act, Art’s mother is now lost to him forever.  It makes me realize the importance of getting to know one’s parents while you still can.

Addendum

Please ignore my earlier entry. I read a bit further on and received my answer.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Mickey's Daddy

I don't have access to a computer right now but the reading "A Tale of Two Mice". Made me think of something. Wasn't Walt Disney anti-Semitic?

By the way, the part of Maus I that troubled me most was pages 88 to 91. I hated how the father is asking the son for advice and the son not knowing how to answer. I made me think of my own mother and sister and how helpless I would feel in that situation


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Spiderman: The New Cats?

I wonder if I am the only one that thinks that the comic book Spiderman does not lend itself to the genre of Broadway musical.  I first heard about this about six months ago and again more recently.  Now it appears it will be opening on Broadway in November.  It isn’t that the creators are not talented people.  But I keep picturing Spiderman hanging upside down from his web and singing “Memories” from the musical Cats.

Julie Taymor wrote and will be directing Spiderman.  She also directed the movie Frida and Across the Universe.  I really liked Frida.  I thought it was visually beautiful and a great story.  Across the Universe, on the other hand, was gorgeous but I felt it had no soul.  So I have to wonder how her re-telling of Spiderman will turn out.  I feel the same about the people behind the music and lyrics.  I love U2’s earlier works but I am really not a huge fan of their current albums.  So I wonder what kind of direction they will take Spiderman. 

But really how critical of Spiderman when I would be willing to pay money to go see the musical American Idiot, which also strikes me as a dumb idea for a musical?

         

Mutants and the Holocaust

The essay “Witness, Trauma, and Remembrance: Holocaust Representation and X-Men Comics”  brings up some interesting points about not just about how the Holocaust has been made part of the X-Men’s narrative but also the differences in how each of its creators portrayed Judaism in comic books.  X-Men was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963.  From earlier class readings, Jack Kirby seems to be a more observant Jew who consciously puts aspects of his faith in his work.  Stan Lee, on the other hand, appears to be more of an ethnic Jew and less a religious one.  I have even seen him identified as being atheist but I am unsure how true that it.  But Stan Lee does indicate in interviews that he has never purposely giving his characters Jewish identities.  Yet there are many characteristics of the Jewish faith that can be read into his comic books.  Chris Claremont, who re-vamped the comic book in 1974, is much more overt in making Judaism part of the X-Men narrative, especially when it comes to Magneto’s back-story.

 In her essay, Cheryl Alexander Malcolm writes, “When…Professor X introduces the mutants by their given names followed by their superhero ones, he implies that the X-Men are humans first and mutants second.” (Baskind and Omer-Sherman, 146)  I think that by giving some of the X-Men characters a back-story that includes the Holocaust, Claremont makes the characters more human and less superhero which I like because it makes a person better able to identify with the character. 

But for all the good characteristics in the X-Men series, Malcolm points out many of the negative Jewish stereotypes, Stan Lee seems to give some of his villain characters.   I wonder if there is a bit of self loathing in Lee creating these characters or am I reading too much into it?

The Spirit Leaves Me Cold.

I spent the evening watching the movie The Spirit.  It is a Frank Miller film based on Will Eisner’s comic book of the same name.  I have to say that I am not impressed.  It does have some really good points.  I love the cinematography.  In one of the readings from class, I don’t remember which one at this time, talked about the comic book artists framed their panels as if they were filming the scene.  But it seems more like many movies and TV shows now film their scenes as if it was a comic book.  The cast is filled with many actors and actresses I like.  But the film feels like it has no heart.

It feels as though they don’t know how they want this movie to feel like.  They jump from film noir to camp to comedy and back again.  And what is with Samuel L. Jackson in a Nazi uniform?  The film does seem to keep true to the comic books in some ways.  The Spirit still has a thing for Sand Saref and the Commissioner and his daughter are still his allies.  I haven’t read the comic books but I am pretty sure I would like them more then I like this movie.  But not every comic book movie can be Iron Man.

The Golden Rule : Those With The Gold Make The Rules.

While Arie Kaplan’s book, From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books is not a comic book, it does offer a lot of great illustrations throughout.  These visuals really help a person get a feel for the kind of comic book art that was occurring during the Golden Age of comic books.  For that reason, this book is an interesting history of comic books.  And while it gives some perspective on the beginnings of comic books in the 1930s, it also left me with some questions unanswered. 

          Kaplan offers a sort of cautionary tale of three young comic book artists/writers who were the geniuses behind two legendary superheroes, Batman and Superman.  While Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman, arguable the most recognized comic book superhero ever, it was only much later in their lives when they get the credit they deserve for influencing pop culture for decades.  The comic book system from the 1930s to the 1950s did not recognize the individual artists for their work nor where they properly compensated for the work they did for the comic book publishers.  Most of the illustrators and writers did not share in the profits that their work generated for their publishers.   While most of the artists were denied credit by their employers, some had credit for their work stolen by a fellow comic artist.  Bill Finger is one such example of this.   Bill Finger came up with many of the ideas that have become part of Batman’s mystique, including the memorable villain, The Joker.  Yet it is Bob Kane who claims the credit for all things Batman.  These are just a few examples of this kind of treatment in the comic book industry. Why was this allowed to happen?

          The early part of the 20^th century was known for discussion and protest over many social causes, the issue of worker’s rights and unions being just one of them, and many Jews were a part of those causes.  So, why wasn’t there more protest about the exploitation of the young Jewish men that worked in the comic book industry?  Yes, this was happening during the Great Depression when many people were out of work.  But, many workers in other industries during this time were going on strike for better wages and working conditions.  Why were these men willing to take such exploitation when many of them would have been willing to jump at helping change other social injustices?

Comix: Not Just For Geeks Anymore.

In the forward to The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches edited by Samantha Baskind and Ranen Omer-Sherman, J.T. Waldman asks, “Why are so many Jewish imaginations attracted to the medium of comix?  Is there something particularly Jewish about comix?  Does this outsider art form embody the essence of an outsider culture? (Baskind and Omer-Sherman, xii) While Jews may have been present in large numbers at the birth of the comic book and continue to be influential presence in the world of comic books and graphic novels,  comix are no longer the outsider art form they used to be. 

          Comix, comic books and graphic novels are popping up everywhere.  So many art forms are influenced by comic art.  Many comic book superheroes have appeared on the silver screen and Saturday morning’s TV screen.  Comic books have also been made into live action TV shows for the adult television audience.  AMC, home of Mad Men, will be premiering Walking Dead, based on the comic book by Robert Kirkman, on Halloween night. Another underappreciated example is the live action version of The Tick.  Comic books have influence literary works such as Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  The New York Times even has a best-sellers list made up of only graphic novels.  Comic book artists have returned the favor by turning novels into graphic novels.  One example of this is the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.   And lest we forget, even famous artists, such as Roy Lichtenstein, have been influenced by comic books.

          While not everyone spends their weekends at comic book shops, a person would hard pressed to escape comix influence on our day to day culture.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

As a fan of graphic novels, there are several graphic novels either on the booklist for my Religious Studies class or mentioned in the introduction of the book The Jewish Graphic Novel that I either own or have read previously.  Maus, Volume I and II and Miriam Katin’s We Are On Our Own.  But before this class I had never read A Contract With God or heard of Will Eisner.  To be honest, my first thought was “I wonder if he is related to the guy that used to run Disney.”  So I was not sure what I would think of this graphic novel.

Upon reading it, I have to say that “I love this book.”  There are few books that I get a truly emotional response from.  I may think a book is well written but can put it out of my head soon after I read it.  A Contract With God is not one of those books.  The stories in this book that really hit me were A Contract With God and The Super.  They both evoke an emotional response from me but for different reasons. 

          As a formerly religious person, I can say I have had my own “Contract with God” moment when I was still in high school.  So, I can really feel for Frimme Hersh’s pain when his daughter dies.

          The story The Super is an entirely different case.  I actually feel guilty for feeling for the super in the story.   Is he a pedophile or someone that was unable to resist a temptation?  I don’t know.  But it does seem like he was a lonely man whose only constant companion was his dog.  The young girl with the innocent veneer takes advantage of this loneliness and the natural hatred of the super by the residents of the tenement for her own benefit.  It shows even the most innocent looking can be evil on inside.   This made me think about the term the “banality of evil.”

          The entire graphic novel seems to be a chronicle of broken dreams and frustrations by the tenants of 55 Dropsie Avenue.  Although sad, they all continue to hope for better.