More on Spiegelman's talk

[sabotabby]

Since I know that there are fellow Spiegelman fans about:

He's brilliant, really, and very funny. The event itself was sponsored by Hillel, which gave me pause (and was interesting, since their politics are substantially to the right of Spiegelman's) but my love for Maus and underground comics in general outweighs my being very, very uncomfortable in that audience. Also, there were a fair number of comic book geeks in attendance, which balanced things out a bit.

The subject of the talk was "Forbidden Images." So he began his talk with this slide:



...and went on to relate it to the caricatures of Mohammad, and Iran's anti-Semitic cartoon contest, and horror comics from the 1940s, and the New Yorker, and Mad Magazine. (And his own work, of course.) He talked a bit about semiotics and the relationship between words and images: how images become shorthand for concepts, except of course that's problematic because of how shorthand transmits cultural norms and stereotypes.

Probably the most interesting bit was about how Mad Magazine changed the cultural landscape. He talked about his own discovery of horror comics that had since been banned (comics were sanitized in the 1950s, but his father was cheap, so he bought Wee Art old comics with damaged covers that happened to be about playing baseball with human heads), so when Mad came out with its blatant agenda to shock, it gave an entire generation counter-cultural ideas. It introduced irony and anti-authoritarianism to the visual landscape.

And so, he said, it was read by people who later created underground comics. But it was also read by Karl Rove and people who would eventually become advertising execs. Irony becomes co-opted, and now we're in a post-ironic era.

He also pissed off a few in the audience, I think, by bringing up Palestine by Joe Sacco as an example of the brilliance of the new breed of comics. (Persepolis as well, of course, which was very much influenced by Maus.) You could hear the gasps; it was very funny.

Anyway, I wish he'd put the slides online because it's really much easier to analyze controversial images when they're actually in front of you. I've been on a comic-reading binge lately (The Watchmen, DMZ, and Transmetropolitan, all of which do very interesting things with the genre) so I'm all about babbling on the subject.

When you look at a work of art and don't understand it, you think you're stupid. When you look at a comic and don't understand it, you think the cartoonist is stupid.

Comments

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

A great deal of burning-with-jealousy here. Wish I could get ahold of a sociology professor I knew - I want to get him to read Watchmen and Transmet.

[sabotabby]

Oh God, I'd love to do Watchmen in a sociology class. Transmet too, but I think Watchmen probably has more discussion points.

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

Well, also, Watchmen is more managable in a semester where you also have to teach other things. You could teach Watchmen along with other things, but because of Transmet's length, it'd probably have to go to more specialized classes that could give it a bit more time. Sad, because they're both astonishing.

[morgoid.livejournal.com]

I saw him give this speech last year at the Uni. Really neat. I acutally wish it was longer and went more in-depth, but I suppose it's not like he's teaching a class on the subject. It's interesting that I live in a radically right-wing province and his mention of Palestine got no such reaction from the crowd.

Though it could be because no one had read it. ;)

[sabotabby]

I wish he turned it into a course. I would take it in a flash.

I don't think Edmonton is as heavily Jewish as Toronto. This was mostly an audience drawn from Hillel, which in recent years has gone from a nice Jewish campus group to Kahane Youth.

[constintina.livejournal.com]

I fucking love Art Spiegelman and wish I had been at that talk. plus he has amblyopia like me!

[sabotabby]

Oh, wow. I didn't know that.

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

If you haven't already read them, I recommend The Invisibles. :D

[sabotabby]

That's on my list, once I get through Transmetropolitan and DMZ.

I had this unfortunate/fortunate thing happen, which is that a very good little comic store opened up along the route that I take home from school. It is run by two nice guys, they have a buy 10, get one free deal, and they give 20% discounts to educators. It's as though a crack dealer took up residence outside of my house.

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

I'm going to move to Canada and become a teacher.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Art Spiegelman has definitely influenced my own views on literature, comics and the power of images. Maus was and remains one of the most influential books about the Holocaust I'd ever read (if only more people here read it, things would improve greatly I think) and opened my eyes to the power of comics (along with Gaiman).
Yes, I'm jealous of you.
A lot.

Odd that it was Hillel, as you say they're significantly to the Right of him, but hey he's Jewish, so how bad could he be *snort*

[sabotabby]

Yeah, I'd credit Spiegelman and Gaiman for forcing people to take comics seriously as art and literature. Those were the two who got me into comics as well—before I read them, I thought comics were just superheroes in spandex.

Spiegelman also had some very cool things to say about Holocaust education. The Anne Frank thing I posted yesterday was part of a discussion about how much of the education around the Holocaust is softened for the kids. He had some particularly harsh words for Schindler's List. And I don't think that it's a coincidence that one of the sharpest and most visceral works about the Holocaust is a comic, because it hits in ways that books and movies don't.

[ilipodscrill.livejournal.com]

thanks for posting about this, i'm a huge fan of his and definitely identify as a comic geek. i hope a Watchmen movie won't suck.

[sabotabby]

I liked the promo pictures. And Alan Moore doesn't like the idea, but he doesn't seem to hate it as deeply as he hated the V for Vendetta adaptation. Yet.

(Poor Alan Moore.)

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Agreed that Spiegelman is a great cartoonist.
Did he mention the New Yorker covers that got him in so much trouble? The 1993 and 1999 ones, I mean.

[sabotabby]

He did, and he showed them, along with a bunch more that got rejected.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Wow, that lecture sounds really good. I hope he comes out to the west coast U.S. with it.

He talked a bit about semiotics and the relationship between words and images: how images become shorthand for concepts, except of course that's problematic because of how shorthand transmits cultural norms and stereotypes.

Do you know if he has any writings expanding on this concept? It's eerily related to an art project I'm working on and I'd like to see how other people have approached the subject. Thanks.

[sabotabby]

I think he talks about it some in his new book. He also wrote some stuff for Harpers that might relate.

[esizzle.livejournal.com]

do you recommend reading the watchmen? i heard a lot of good things about it, but so far only from people who don't have the same interests as me. would be interested to know if you liked it

[sabotabby]

God, yes. The raving about it is entirely justified.

[kchew.livejournal.com]

Thank you for giving us more detail; I am still in deep deep envy, and glad that at least one person I know got to see him.

[sabotabby]

I'm so glad I got to go.

[culpster.livejournal.com]

Ya wish I'd known. I'm so glad he gave props to Mad Magazine. As the years go by I am starting to think that Mad was the absolute number one influence on my forming brain, beating out Star Wars (easily) and Walt Kelly (a close one) (Schulz WAS my brain). I spent my childhood on a farm in Southern Ontario spewing Yiddish obscenities (Please, does anyone know how to pronounce "potrzebie"?!) and making pop culture references I didn't even understand. Gaines is also a hero in his battles against copyright tyranny, and in his testimony against the comic book McCarthies...worth reading.

OK just got all inspired and twinkly reading this, is all.

Also: does anyone know how to find out exactly WHICH Garbage Pail Kids Art did the art for? (I'm rooting for Nick Lick)

[sabotabby]

Also: does anyone know how to find out exactly WHICH Garbage Pail Kids Art did the art for? (I'm rooting for Nick Lick)

I thought all of them.

[culpster.livejournal.com]

The idiot-proof solution as usual: wikipedia!

"Spiegelman has also worked in more commercial forums: After a summer internship (when he was 18) at Topps Bubble Gum, he was hired as a staff writer-artist-editor in Woody Gelman's Product Development Department. During his 20 years with Topps, Spiegelman invented Garbage Candy (candy in the form of garbage, sold in miniature plastic garbage cans), the Wacky Packages card series and countless other hugely successful novelties. With Mark Newgarden, he co-created Garbage Pail Kids stickers and cards.

"After 20 years of asking Topps to grant the creators a percentage of the profits, and after other industries (such as Marvel Comics and DC Comics) had grudgingly conceded, Topps still refused. Spiegelman, who had assigned Topps work to many of his cartoonist friends or students, left over the issue of creative ownership and ownership of artwork. In 1989 Topps auctioned off the original artwork they had accumulated over the decades and kept the profits."

[ghostwes.livejournal.com]

What do you think of Transmetropolitan?

I can't count the number of times it's been recommended to me, but I just cannot get into it for some reason. I must be missing something.

Watchmen, on the other hand, is my favourite piece of fiction, period. Check this out when you get a chance:

http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/wm/

I contributed a few thoughts for that a while back.

[sabotabby]

I've only read the first collection so far, but I loved it. I forget—are you into Hunter S. Thompson?

That site looks awesome. Also, I finally get your icon.

[ghostwes.livejournal.com]

I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, years before the movie was even a glimmer in Terry Gilliam's eye. It was a funny book, I guess, but I didn't think it was that great (despite, again, having been recommended by a *lot* of people).

I hadn't really made the connection to HST before you asked me. Maybe I'm just not getting the whole gonzo thing... must be me.

[canonfire.livejournal.com]

I hate to sound like a shill, but my publishing house has a book from Danny Fingeroth that you might find interesting regarding the subject of Jews and comics.

[sabotabby]

Oooh, that looks really good. Never apologize for giving me book recommendations.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Oooo. Colour me jealous.

[sabotabby]

I was very lucky. My mom heard about it and thought I'd be interested. I'm in such a school bubble that I'd have missed out otherwise.