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Conservative Tastes
Trash Collection
From comics to 3-D, pretty much everything is trash now.
When I was a boy, my mother wouldn’t let me read comic books for an unusual reason. At least it’s not one that I have ever heard of another parent’s citing in favor of such a prohibition. It wasn’t because the comics were morally or intellectually corrupting, or because they would spoil my appetite for quality or “improving” sorts of literary experiences. It wasn’t because she had read Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent and believed — as David Hajdu’s Ten-Cent Plague recently claimed millions of moms did in the '50s and '60s — that comics were politically subversive. No, it was because, according to her, comics would ruin my ability to spell correctly. If readers have ever heard this charge made against them before, I would be grateful to hear from them. The odd thing was that, although I always was and still am a pretty good speller, I can’t remember ever seeing a misspelled word in any of the comic books that I used to sneak into the house under my shirt and hide under my bed. Maybe comic books when she was a girl, such as they were, were different.
Anyway, it seems in retrospect that I only liked to read them because they were forbidden. Their equivalents in pulp fiction never had the same charm for me, for instance, though both would equally have been considered “trash” by my mother. This was not because the latter didn’t have pictures — which, being partially color-blind, I couldn’t see properly anyway — but because (I assume) the pulps and science fiction were not forbidden me the way the comics were. Apart from my surreptitious truancies with Superman and his kind, I mostly read history books and a few favorite novels, mainly Huckleberry Finn, multiple times. I sometimes wonder if the whole charade of prohibition and secret defiance that went on between my mother and me wasn’t intended from the beginning to channel my subversive impulses into relatively harmless courses.
At least they seemed so at the time. Now, of course, as I have noticed before in these pages (see “In Defense of Snobbery,” TAS, July/August, 2008) and never cease to marvel at in the movie reviews I write for the magazine’s website, the comics are the master art form of our age. Heavy-duty think pieces in the Sunday New York Times — “All the News That’s Fit to Print” used to be its motto — are devoted to what no one but, ironically, me considers trash anymore. Nothing is trash anymore. Or everything is. It comes to the same thing. Axel Alonso, the new editor in chief of Marvel Comics (now a division of Disney), is solemnly quoted by the Times’s reporter as saying that “There’s no type of fiction that comes close to comics for the layers of storytelling….This is mythology, but it’s not mythology that’s refined slightly over time. It’s mythology that’s constantly evolving.” No, no! Mythologies are things we believe in — like the primal significance of youthful rebellion against authority — things which we reenact again and again (see “Rebels Without a Clue,” TAS, June 2010) in order to reinforce our belief in them. Comics are the opposite: throwaway fantasies that we demand to be made ever new, and ever more unbelievable.
Unless we are delusional, that is, comic books are things that we love precisely because they are unbelievable — because they provide us with a holiday from realities we find unpleasant or frightening. Morven Crumlish may write in the Guardian that, as a girl, she loved Wonder Woman “because she seemed utterly feasible to me,” but I think she means the opposite of what she says. If Wonder Woman had been “feasible” — that is, doable — for her, she wouldn’t have been sufficiently Wonderful to have taken up the space that she seems to have occupied in her girlish imagination. Ms. Crumlish now gives herself retrospective credit for a sort of credulity that she is most unlikely to have had at the time in order to express in stronger terms her approval of the political symbolism underlying the fantasy of feminine superpowers. Like Mr. Alonso she wants, now, to see the comic as myth: the reenactable myth of female empowerment of which Wonder Woman’s superpowers were a metaphorical expression. But I think her childish self must have had a better grasp of the distinction between reality and wish-fulfilling fantasy than she apparently has now.
Moreover, the brightly colored hyper-realism of the comics sends its own message about the necessarily fantastical nature of what they represent. The same paradox applies to 3-D, which couldn’t take hold in the movies to the extent that it now has until the movies themselves had become as completely identified with fantasy as the comics have always been. The closer you get to perfect visual verisimilitude, the further away you get from any other kind, since you are inevitably emphasizing the artifice of the medium by heightening the audience’s sense of illusion in experiencing it. That’s why the motto of the anti-3-D party in Hollywood is, according to Michael Cieply, also of the New York Times, “If you can’t make it good, make it 3-D.” There does seem to be a finite amount of disbelief-suspension that a moviemaker, like any other artist, can ask of his audience. If he uses it all up on spectacular visuals, there’s bound to be nothing left for anything else, and he ends up with — Avatar, which is both the highest-grossing movie of all time and one of the worst, in my view.
AND THERE’S ANOTHER PARADOX for you. Audiences seem to love this trash — perhaps just because, like comic books, it so obviously is detached from reality — and yet a lot of directors who have somehow managed to retain a shred of artistic integrity in spite of having worked in Hollywood for years don’t. They’re balking at the suits’ desire for more and more lucrative 3-D pictures. According to Mr. Cieply, at the most recent Comic-Con convention in San Diego audiences applauded those filmmakers who had resisted the studios’ pressure to make their movies in 3-D — or, even worse, to turn them into 3-D movies once they had been made in 2-D:
The crowds cheered, as they had in an earlier Comic-Con briefing by Chris Pirrotta and other staff members of the fan site TheOneRing.net, who assured 300 listeners that a pair of planned Hobbit films will not be in 3-D, based on the site’s extensive reporting. “Out of 450 people surveyed, 450 don’t want 3D for The Hobbit,” a later post on the Web site said. But in Hollywood, an executive briefed on the matter — who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate negotiations surrounding a plan to have Peter Jackson direct the Hobbit films — said the dimensional status of the movie remained unresolved.
The dimensional status! There’s status anxiety for you. So on the one hand you have Hobbits stretching off into the distance as far as the eye can see, and on the other you have a visceral reaction among a lot of the people who have chosen to deal with this and similar stuff for a living against the movies’ further leap into the merely cartoonish and fantastical. Their willingness to pander to the most debased and unconservative of tastes appears to have its limit after all. Who knew?
Could this be a sign of a growing movement in the direction of reality in the movie industry? It’s hardly shown up yet in the movies made in America, the homeland of unreality, but the fact that it has shown up at all could be taken as significant of a larger cultural shift. I am not the first to notice that of the films which were up for the Best Picture Award at the Oscars this year, all but two of the expanded category of 10 were made for grown-ups. Four or five of them were even not too bad, though two of these (including the winner, The King’s Speech) were made by foreign directors. And by far the best in any category was (as usual) the Best Foreign Language film, In a Better World by the marvelous Dane Susanne Bier.
Yet on the bright side there was no Avatar in sight. Not that there won’t be plenty more Avatar wannabes, lots in 3-D, in the summer blockbuster season now just beginning. I doubt that there will be many parents today who will try to keep their children away from the trash, if only because pretty much everything is trash now. By forbidding it they might even succeed, as my mother did, in making the trash more attractive. On the other hand, in a different cultural context — a context where almost nothing is forbidden to them — children might instead begin to get the idea that there is good and bad in art, not just generic entertainment, and that there might be some value to them in discriminating between the good and the bad. There’s no way to know unless you try.
About the Author
James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.
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Hal Colebatch| 5.31.11 @ 6:38AM
One of the most interesting examples of a non-trash comic was the British "Eagle", begun in the 1950s by a clergyman, the Rev. Marcus Morris, who got first-class artists and made sure the stories had good moral values. As an example of the painstaking nature of the work, the futuristic-looking buildings, space-ships etc., of its star, the space-pilot Dan Dare, were built as models before they were drawn to get the perspectivers right. It also had articles on science and historical subjects, such as a series on the seige of the Alcazar in the Spanish Civil War, cut-away drawings of machonery, and illustrated life-stories of great and edifying men - Nelson, Livingstone, Churchill, etc. It was sad to see it slowly decline and eventually become subsumed into the all-pervasive trash of modern British comics. Another more recent convert to trash has been "The Lady", until recently one of the last surviving intelligent womn's magazines.
Alan Brooks| 5.31.11 @ 8:06PM
No one will ever go broke selling trash in America because America's soul is not merely trash, but blatantly commercial trash. Even sex has been commodified to the point it isn't erotic anymore; it is business-- the business of sex is business.
dee see| 5.31.11 @ 6:46AM
Not a single surpassing and essential artist
at work on the scene. Not even one.
EUGENICS programmers disguised as artists
(Cameron, Speilberg, Lucas et al) rule the
franchise slum.
Fading EYE-cons such as Clint Eastwood
are even worse with their TOTAL disengagement
from the issues (RED China Halocaust concealment, sellout, TREASON)
and their cunningly EUGENICS 'friendly' themes of unresolvable despair and demoralization (Million Dollar Baby,
Mystic River, IWO trilogy).
Even a genuine talent like Scorsese's been
stale for decades. We tried watching 'Aviator'
the other night and couldn't even stomach
10 minutes. A pointless retread at any rate.
Were then amazed to watch some of Hughes's
own 'Hell's Angels'. Like a breath of fresh air.
Seek| 5.31.11 @ 2:08PM
Hey, now. Scorsese's in great form. "Gangs of New York," "The Aviator," "The Departed," and "Shutter Island." You call that stale?
Appleby| 5.31.11 @ 7:21AM
I have macular degeneration that has made it impossible for me to watch movies in 3D. They give me a headache. I am glad to hear the Hobbit will not be 3D.
The last movie I saw was The Kings Speech, and I could have lived without the outbursts of profanity that were added for, er, um, well, to entertain the part of the audience who cannot think in words longer than four letters, maybe. The next movie I will see is the last Harry Potter movie, and then I will wait until the Hobbit comes out.
I used to read a lot of Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov when I was a kid -- Heinlein because he angered me with his attitude toward women, and made me think about why girls were reduced even in SF to breeding machines, and why the men landed on planets dressed in combat gear and girls arrived garbed for cage dancing on the stage of Hullabaloo. (How did the Star Ship Enterprise carry enough pantyhose for a five year mission?) Later on my boys hooted at the Power Rangers Pink Ranger who spent a lot of tim shrieking, *Save me, Tommy! Save me!* to the leader of the team. Often they would answer for poor Tommy, *Tommy cant come to the phone right now -- please hang up and save yourself!*
The difference today is that we talk about these *givens* that some of us have been thinking about since Wonder Woman showed up dressed like a hooker and Heinlein suggested that a girl ought to give up her idea of being a pilot because nobody would hire her, and instead confine herself to running the daycare centre on the spaceship. At least the discussion is a start.
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 10:13AM
While I don't doubt you were a religious viewer of Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, I seriously doubt you ever read Robert Heinlein, at least not in an intelligent manner. You do seem the type to be attracted to pretentious git Arthur C. Clarke (how anyone could even get to the end of Childhood's End still befuddles me) or the overrated Isaac Asimov (Fredrick Pohl and above all C.M. Kornbluth were the most talented of the Futurians), but Heinlein was and remains a different kettle of fish.
Appleby| 5.31.11 @ 11:32AM
I am referencing specifically "Podkayne of Mars" in which this little Martian girl has exactly that discussion with herself (you could look it up). Heinlein sexualizes every woman he writes about, and even in one of his stories goes so far as to travel back in time to have sex with his mother.
And if you want a really good laugh, read "Door into Summer" which is written about the far future of 1973, and see how utterly misled he was about the "future".
I have always liked Asimov's writing, especially "The Naked Sun" which has a lot to say about the direction of present-day Western civilisation although it was written in the Fifties. And "Imperial Earth" is my favourite Clarke story although he was wrong about the Titanic.
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 2:08PM
Read just about every last word Heinlein ever wrote including Stranger in a Strange Land, Door into Summer, and Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I know Heinlein's strengths and weaknesses, but as far as predicting the future, he record stacks up about as well as any other SF writer (for dealing with near term developments, though, it's hard to be Jerry Pournelle).
Asimov's writing is like Asimov's scholarship--a mile wide and an inch deep. I never really understood the popularity of the Foundation Trilogy, especially when stacked up against Kornbluth's work, such as The Syndic, and my all time favorite, "The Marching Morons".
As for Clarke, everyone has his own tastes, but I generally find him to be both boring and unreadable. I suppose a lot of people were influenced by the Kubrick adaptation of 2001, but I have to say, when I first saw it ca. 1973, I was one of the few people in the theater not stoned out of his gourd, which might be why they all left the theater saying, "Wow, dude, that was heavy!", while I was muttering "WTF was that?"
Appleby| 5.31.11 @ 4:43PM
What interests me about Asimov is that he is agoraphobic (hence my fascination with The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun), which seems odd in a writer on spacefaring. I don't care for the Foundation Trilogy either -- having seen the blinding speed with which life continues to change during my personal lifetime (and the trouble Star Trek: Voyager had just keeping current, much less ahead of the curve), I find the entire premise preposterous. But I read them as a kid when Girls were supposedly too stupid to understand anything but boyfriends, prom dresses, and babysitting. (Except for Nancy Drew). I was once told by a librarian who was vetting my summer reading list, that I could not have read a certain book because I had no idea what the prom dresses looked like -- although I could tell her every detail of the "hot rod" the boys were bringing into race trim.
In 1968 I thought "2001: Space Oddity" was waaaaaay too long both at the beginning and at the end, but it was beautifully Chesley Bonesell in the middle. The stupid Monolith was clearly a SmartPhone, and eventually turned everybody into zombies.
My one complaint about Clarke is that he never left well enough alonoe. "Rendezvous with Rama" was wonderful; the two sequals were unreadable. Of course Frank Herbert made the same blunder with "Dune."
Ore Gone| 5.31.11 @ 5:37PM
Wow, you shame me with your thorough reading of Heinlein and science fiction in general. Early on that was all I read along with some L'amour westerns. Authors can be a lot like musics "one hit wonders" and you can be dismayed by their next attempt. Joseph Heller comes to mind. Thanks for the reviews now I can go find some more science fiction to read. The thing I noticed about the authors view of the future is how the science community has been in a doldrum ever since we started down our road to socialism. Betweem 1940 amd 1970 there was a lot of breakthroughs and since then all we have managed to do is bankrupt ourselves and come up with phony government driven ..science..?
Stuart Koehl| 6.1.11 @ 12:26PM
The first half of Dune is undoubtedly the most brilliant work of SF ever written. The second half of Dune is still pretty good. But the sequels represented a prolonged slide into godawfulness.
Surprisingly, the Brian Herbert "prequels" are better written than most of Poppa Frank's work, albeit the vision is not original and credit for the subcreation goes to Frank Herbert.
Steve B | 5.31.11 @ 8:19PM
"Heinlein because he angered me with his attitude toward women, and made me think about why girls were reduced even in SF to breeding machines,"
Was this perhaps another Heinlein than Robert A.?
Every single one of Robert A. Heinlein's numerous female characters is: highly intelligent, courageous, and perhaps a bit condescending to the men they have set their sights on. I sometimes find this a bit irritating. My highly intelligent, courageous wife just smiles condescendingly.
Oh yes, and they enjoy being pregnant and are philoprogenitive. Surely the quest for gender equality would be better served if highly intelligent and courageous women refuse to procreate...
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 10:27PM
Most of Heinlein's women were based on his red-headed bombshell of a third wife, Virginia Gerstenfield. She was a very competent organic and bio-chemist who was also fluent in Russian. They met in 1946, when she moved to California to get her masters degree.
Bill| 5.31.11 @ 8:50AM
What drew me to comic books in my preteen days was the story of people who had great powers and could solve problems, fight crime, and that sort of thing in ingenious ways. That seems to have been what drew many people if the reviews of comic books in the 1980s and afterward (up until recently) are accurate.
My mom discouraged me from comic books because they were trash in her mind, not because of spelling errors. Like the commentator, I don't remember many spelling errors in the comics I read.
A bit after my time, the Spiderman comics gained popularity because of the teenage angst of the hero, Peter Parker. Before that, the hero had been the superhero, not his ordinary alter ego. The Spiderman issues ushered in a whole new attitude toward comics.
But comics never got beyond the barely minimum of human issues, and still haven't. The struggle with the friction between having super powers and for some reason having to accommodate ordinary society involves fantastic and incredible problems that a maturing mind over the age of about 13 or 14 has lost the will to deal with.
Now we have movies about the comics. They are all ultimately unsatisfying, although they often are appealing in the area of special effects.
grant1863| 5.31.11 @ 8:55AM
I am currently reading Heinlein's Starship Troopers and almost all the pilots are woman.
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 10:16AM
All the pilots are women. Heinlein notes that women were physically better suited for space navigation, being better able to withstand g-forces and having faster reaction times. But Heinlein also notes that women would just suck in the Mobile Infantry.
For the most part, women in Heinlein stories are strongly feminine, but not interchangeable with men. They are highly competent and intelligent (Heinlein had no time for the stupid of either sex--see Sayings of Lazarus Long: "Stupidity is the only universal capital offense, sentence executed immediately"), but understand the different sex roles played by men and women. They can defend themselves, but prefer that men do it, because that's what men are for.
PolishKnight| 5.31.11 @ 11:42AM
Stuart, Heinlein's women reminds me of the Buffy the Vampire slayer genre or Xena, Warrier princess. The women are feminine in a comic book kind of way (well endowed or attractive) but also masculine and could kick men's butts effortlessly. In the meantime, they were still entitled to special protection as "women and children first" when they desired it.
Consider the military where when a woman soldier is in danger, they have to rescue her first before taking care of the men. So women in the military are a net liability rather than asset as far as men are concerned.
Appleby| 5.31.11 @ 11:59AM
That's the point I was trying to make -- essentially Heinlein's women are hermaphrodites.
Roy| 5.31.11 @ 1:18PM
I liked some of his books, but then "Stranger in a Strange Land" was so off the deep end that I wondered what his problem was.
He wrote in a different time, where endless complaints about the "religious right" repressing people had not led to the industrial scale vivisection of unborn infants. But I don't have the luxury of not knowing what he (I hope) didn't know.
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 2:09PM
I know this. You would know that I know this, if you read all my articles on the subject.
Steve B | 5.31.11 @ 8:21PM
Skad pan wie? Jestem Americaninem ale mieskalem w Polska 13 lat y moja zona jest polka. Moja wwebsite tutai stephenwbrowne.com
Ryan| 5.31.11 @ 9:06AM
What modern specific examples show comics as "trash?" There have been some good recent stories told (DC's "Blackest Night") and some bad (Spider-man no longer married to MJ, an idea that is nearly universally loathed right now).
diviz| 5.31.11 @ 12:17PM
Have you ever tried reading old comics? Go back to your attic and pull out a random sample, most of them are laughably bad. I still love comics, but reading some of my collection from just a couple decades ago is painful.
Ryan| 5.31.11 @ 12:54PM
THAT'S the truth. The much-vaunted "silver age," while replete with some excellent characters, have plenty of bad stories, particularly with DC. Didn't get better until the late 70s/early 80s.
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 10:08AM
Bowman finally encounters "Sturgeon's Epiphany" (after science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon):
"Ninety percent of everything is crap".
The work of the past looks good only because of the filtering effect of time: only the very best works of a particular culture, civilization or period manage to pass down the generations and are remembered; all the rest ends up on the dust heap of history, because mediocrity is the rule not the exception. That's why its called "mediocrity".
Look at Elizabethan London: there were a dozen or so theaters active at the time. How many plays do we know from that period? Mostly those of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Johnson. So, what was being performed on all those stages, week after week, year after year, and who wrote it? The answer is forgettable dreck written by forgotten non-entities.
Look at the Golden Age of Cinema (to bring us to Bowman's area of specialization): the studio system cranked out hundreds of movies each year--A movies, B movies, shorts, serials, a very broad spectrum of film indeed. Look at the repertoire of films broadcast both on AMC and Turner Classic Movies, and you will see the same two or three dozen films run over and over again. Occasionally, something much less familiar gets broadcast, and disappears into the vault again. Why? Because most of the movies produced by the studios are utterly unwatchable except by film students. They have improbable plots, clunky dialogue, bad acting, and low production values. They were the product of an industrial system, not "art". But, because man is a creative being, from time to time, art did emerge from it. That art has entered into our consciousness, and now we call those films "classics", and judge the Golden Age based on that handful--the brilliant 10%--and not by the 90% of films that were deservedly forgotten.
Bowman, in his O tempora, O mores! laments fails to see that, in a century or so, ninety percent of all films, all music, all literature produced in his lifetime will have been forgotten, while ten percent of it will be called masterpieces, brilliant examples of early 21st century artistic endeavor, new classics fit to last through the ages.
Petronius| 5.31.11 @ 10:35AM
Once more into the breech dear friends. An artist needs an audience. The audience operates on expectation and predictability. They know what they like, and like what they know. The only break takes place in the fine arts with high priced tickets. It doesn't mean the movie goer is left out. He must then choose, because then it's not just about paying that higher ticket price. It's about true enjoyment over mere amusement.
There's a line in a potboiler film about a rookie stock car raver called Hard Driver. "There's two kinds of everything in this world: the best, and all the rest." What we should be discussing is why all the rest are not getting told that. On the other hand, those film makers and producers who are the best should abandon public displays of hauteur. Ditto for authors. I mentioned Jonathan Franzen refusing an interview on Oprah in my post yesterday. His publishers were outraged. Just once: consider the possibility that when a shlub buys a ticket to a film or performance that is better than he is used to seeing, and is moved by the experience to desire more, that his patronage should be cultivated.
Remember when television was in it's first decade and sets were expensive. We got The Voice of Firestone, Arthur and Catherine Murray, and the Bell Telephone Hour. And now it's American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, and Nightline. All that's left of the old titles on the networks is two productions each year of Hallmark Hall of Fame. There is room for excellence. We could use more.
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 11:01AM
"There's two kinds of everything in this world: the best, and all the rest."
A fair summation of Sturgeon's Epiphany.
"There is room for excellence. We could use more."
True of any age. The real issue is whether excellence can be "forced", or whether there is only just so much excellence to go around. How many Salieris are there, for every Mozart?
Also remember that tastes and preferences, especially academic tastes and preferences, change over time. When I was a lad, the art of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages was considered degenerate and derivative, in no way matching that of Periclean Athens or even Augustan Rome. Today, these works are judged not in comparison to others, but on their own merits, so that the icons of Hagia Sophia can be considered perfection in their genre in the same manner that the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon are epitomes of their genre.
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 11:00AM
"There's two kinds of everything in this world: the best, and all the rest."
A fair summation of Sturgeon's Epiphany.
"There is room for excellence. We could use more."
True of any age. The real issue is whether excellence can be "forced", or whether there is only just so much excellence to go around. How many Salieris are there, for every Mozart?
Also remember that tastes and preferences, especially academic tastes and preferences, change over time. When I was a lad, the art of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages was considered degenerate and derivative, in no way matching that of Periclean Athens or even Augustan Rome. Today, these works are judged not in comparison to others, but on their own merits, so that the icons of Hagia Sophia can be considered perfection in their genre in the same manner that the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon are epitomes of their genre.
Ryan| 5.31.11 @ 12:59PM
I actually have always enjoyed the iconography of early Christianity and early middle ages. The eyes that follow you everywhere...I think the only problem I have is that 75% of them ALL seem to be "Madonna and Child."
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 2:18PM
No, less than half of them are, at least in the Eastern Churches. The canon of church decoration that emerged after the iconoclasm more or less ensures that. Every Orthodox church has an icon of Christ Pantocrator in the dome, while an icon of "The Virgin of the Sign" (Mary with the unborn Christ in her womb surrounded by the nimbus of divinity) is in the apse behind the altar. The Royal Doors of the Iconostasis always feature the four Evangelists as well as an icon of the Annunciation. An icon of Mary (usually Theotokos Hodegetria) is on the left hand side, while Christ the Teacher is on the right hand side of the doors. The two deacons doors have St. Stephen Protomartyr on one side, and either St. Lawrence or St. Michael Archangel on the other. The remaining panels of the so-called Deisis Row contain icons of John the Baptist and the patron saint or feast of the particular church. Above the Deisis Row is the Apostles's Row, showing the Twelve (including Paul) arranged six on either side of the Royal Doors, with the Last Supper immediately above them. Then some churches feature a "festal row" above that, with icons of the Twelve Great Feasts.
The side walls of the church are usually decorated with icons of the saints or of events in salvation history; baptistries have icons of events considered typoi of baptism (Crossing the Red Sea, Moses Brings Forth Water from the Rock, Three Youths in the Firey Furnace, and of course, the Baptism in the Jordan).
Among small, personal icons meant for domestic devotions, icons of the Theotokos may predominate, but mainly because She is favored by women, and women generally have charge of the domestic church and get to pick which icons go in the icon corner.
Ryan| 6.1.11 @ 8:33AM
Gotcha. It's the books, I think, and probably part of the impression I got when I was in Italy for 6 weeks almost...10 years ago now? Sheesh.
Anyway, I REALLY like the old Christ Pantocrator paintings. They strike a good nerve in me, I guess.
Of course, most of that art was later Middle Ages and afterward.
Poor St. Sebastian stood out for me as well. All we ever see is the poor guy naked and arrow-filled.
Roy| 5.31.11 @ 1:23PM
I like the "trash" because I don't want to hear deep thoughts expressed by those paragons of wisdom, Hollywood actors and studio executives.
Normally they keep their deep thoughts out of things like Batman Forever.
However..Avatar broke that rule rather badly and now I don't know if I even want to watch "trash" coming from Hollywood.
Le Cracquere| 5.31.11 @ 1:44PM
I'm not convinced that comic strips, books, or "graphic novels" have yielded any top-of-the-line fine art, but would temper that with the following observations:
A) Nothing about the medium is inherently INCONSISTENT with fine art: a Bergman- or Kurosawa-grade opus by some future geniuses is readily imaginable, whether or not it actually happens.
B) The genre has already produced several well-done and artistically respectable tales and genre pieces. Comics haven't equalled Proust or Yeats, but the very best of them can withstand comparison with the likes of Haggard, Hammett, and E.R. Burroughs: this is not a simple or contemptible achievement by any means.
In addition, if we want to compare apples with apples, shouldn't we try setting the garden-variety superhero comics against the garden-variety mass-market novels, movies, and TV shows that account for most public consumption? Maybe the former will still suffer artistically & intellectually by comparison ... but I'm inclined to doubt it.
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 2:20PM
"I'm not convinced that comic strips, books, or "graphic novels" have yielded any top-of-the-line fine art"
As Chou En-lai said of the impact of the French Revolution, "It is too early to tell".
Ryan| 6.1.11 @ 8:37AM
Maybe so, but there are plenty of images that are near to it in some ways. For example, I bet you can think of these precise images from the title:
Action Comics #1 (1st app Superman)
Amazing Fantasy 15 (1st app Spider-man)
Detective Comics 27 (1st app Batman)
The art for each tended to be a little raw in the beginning, but we DO remember the images of some of the more important moments, and covers in particular. It may not be "fine art," but it DOES stick with us in a way that fine art does.
Seek| 5.31.11 @ 2:10PM
Poor James Bowman. It gets harder and harder each year to hold back the uncouth barbarians from crashing through the gates. Eeeek! Comic books! Movies based on comic books! Rock music! The B-52s! We're being overrun! Civilization as we know it is over!
voted against carter| 5.31.11 @ 2:29PM
As a professional commercial artist on hiatus, (read FORCED retirement) due to OBAMANOMICS.
With over 20 plus years in the advertising industry.
I can say with all certainty it just EYECANDY and NOT very tasty eyecandy at that.
On 3-D. We already have 3-D. Have had it for A LONG LONG time. BEFORE movies even existed.
It's called REAL LIFE.
We have gone to the "movies" to ESCAPEE real life.
Hollywood MIGHT try remembering that.
YeloStalyn| 5.31.11 @ 3:25PM
The problem I see with comic books in terms of being great is that they are the soap opera in written form for boys. Any run of a character has to be chopped up in small bits that are, within themselves, a story (for the most part) as well as part of a continuous whole. It is when you get to specials and graphic novels that these universes and characters can then be used to express deep ideas and provoke good thought. Take Batman forexample. Even in the early years, he was merely super neat detective hunting down the bad guys. Simple fun. Then, even today, he's an emo-detective hunting down bad guys. But when you get to deeper story lines such as the Dark Knight Returns (I believe that was the one...) graphic novel you get to see Batman deal with his morals of not killing, even in the name of upholding justice, with the need to ultimately stop the Joker before he wreaks massive havok.
Or what about The Watchmen? Granted, the movie did a much better job of the "set up" for the ending by getting rid of the out of place "alien" story and using Dr. Manhattan instead... but that's irrelavent to the story. It deals with rape, love, what it means to be human, can killing innocents to cause peace be just? What about Rorschach? Is the mask truely the man? Or is Walter Kovaks able to take over in the end? Is he asking to be killed so that he can be stopped or is he threatening the powers that be that if the only way he'll let them get away with what they did is if they kill him? Those are very different things and are a point of serious contention about characters and how they develop and change (or do they?). My point being (aside from being a fanboy of it) is that it is great. It does more to provoke the mind than anything else I've ever read. And most likely always will.
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 10:29PM
Kind of like the Iliad or the Norse sagas were soap operas in oral form for (admittedly overgrown) boys?
Ryan| 6.1.11 @ 8:41AM
No, in a sense, this is part of how boys become men. The stories help teach us ideals, of courage, of pushing ourselves beyond our limits and looking for something greater. That was/is REALLY special about Superman in particular, I think. He's the hero we all really wanted to be, Batman is the hero we're afraid we would become, and Spider-man is the hero we wind up being. In a sense.
Tom Scheffelin| 5.31.11 @ 4:19PM
Two comic books are well worth reading: any Uncle Scrooge comics written and drawn by the late Carl Barks (however, newer stories are good, too); and Classics Illustrated Junior comics, currently available new from Jack Lake Productions.
I currently read both to my 8 year old. In addition, the students in his second grade class also love to read the Juniors, too (the class has a complete set).
Older children and young adults (and 52 year old adults like me) enjoy the Classics Illustrated comics such as Black Beauty (they first read the comic, then the book). I highly recommend both Classics and Classics Juniors. In my case, I just finished reading the book titled "Lion of the North" after reading the Classic comic book.
Ryan| 6.1.11 @ 8:42AM
I'd REALLY like to get my hands on some of the Barks stuff. His reputation for storytelling, with Scrooge and Donald Duck of all characters, has become near-legendary.
Roughcoat| 5.31.11 @ 4:46PM
I grew up in the 50s and I read comics in addition to regular books because the comics were almost without except better than children's fiction--which was mostly treacly junk. I mean, think about it: think about what was on offer in the form of children's fiction. Bowman overlooks this. For example, I read Classics Illustrated and these resulted in my reading, eventually the actual literary works upon which they were based; I read Sergeant Rock, which taught me something about World War II and courage; and I read Archie comics because they were funny. Children's literature in the same categories were boring and stupid. I talking about when I was, say, an eight-year-old kid in 1958. What was I supposed to read, the Hardy Boys? Norman Vincent Peale? Give me a break.
Pat| 5.31.11 @ 5:34PM
Not many chuckles in this piece – nor many insights either. The author could have explained the examples he offered as sure and certain signs of cultural degeneration, as all great cultures eventually degenerate if not first wiped out through war or plague. But compared to ancient Rome after the time of Julius Caesar, America’s trash can’t hold a candle to the “entertainment” tastes of Rome and other major cities within that ancient empire. The Romans raised “sex and violence” to an art form while gradually evolving their “games” to the point where, in the twilight of the empire, victims were simply forced one after another into the arena, killed and then the next victim brought forth in a cycle often lasting hours. The Games, brutal as they always were, eventually lost any pretense as an exhibition of martial arts and a celebration of manly Roman virtues – becoming nothing more than an excuse for exhibiting gruesome death.
But along the path toward terminal degeneracy, the Romans became just as fond of “trash” entertainment as Americans today. The words of one such “entertainment” critic have come down to us through the centuries as he describes a typical Roman “blockbuster” within Rome’s Coliseum where, through their impressive engineering skills, the Romans could entirely flood the arena floor for the purpose of staging nautical battles. One such battle featuring hippos and crocodiles versus humans fighting from barges was fully described - and with the sophisticated critic caustically denigrating the physical beauty of the slave girls who were manning the oars and desperately trying to avoid the lunges of the giant crocs.
That this critic and member of the Roman nobility could remain bored while witnessing scenes of utter terror and frightful depravity indicates that even the better educated Romans were only dimly aware of how their once admirable culture was degenerating through the engine of unearned wealth and corrupt political power. That the enormous crowds of commoners sitting in the cheap seats could become completely mesmerized by this ferocious violence and continuous bloodletting also points toward an entire society of citizens who couldn’t help themselves - but instead eagerly looked forward to the next scheduled series of games where the so-called entertainment was expected to be even more wildly imaginative than crocodiles attacking half-naked slave girls - who, as deliberately planned, also happened to be poor swimmers and loud screamers.
Stuart Koehl| 5.31.11 @ 10:34PM
"The Romans raised “sex and violence” to an art form while gradually evolving their “games” to the point where, in the twilight of the empire, victims were simply forced one after another into the arena, killed and then the next victim brought forth in a cycle often lasting hours."
Actually, the games began to fade out some time in the late third or early fourth century, victims of economics and changing social mores. The last gladiatorial games were held in 404, while the Empire still had some kick left in it.
The apogee of gladiatorial entertainments happened to coincide with the apogee of the Roman Empire--that is, around the reign of Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus. After that, the Empire was too hard pressed to meet its security needs to waste money on extravagent munera, and the games gradually faded away.
Pat| 6.1.11 @ 3:19PM
Stuart: Wikipedia, your probable source, has a minor write-up on the games but doesn’t tell the entire story. First, there were both state sponsored and privately sponsored games – you’re confused by Wiki in that the state sponsored games were often affected over the centuries by government economies as well as the enthusiasm of the various emperors, but the privately held games were not, or at least to a lesser extent. Additionally, in emulation of the City of Rome, the acknowledged seat of both culture and government, other cities throughout the empire also maintained arenas where games were held – similar to minor league baseball teams vs. the majors – same activities, only on a smaller scale. And Roman culture included cities within conquered nations and such cities did their best to emulate what the local citizens imagined Roman culture to be – including the games.
Relative to your apogee comment, the games evolved both in the number of games held annually as well as the types of elaborate events featured. As the games increased in annual number, the more elaborate events such as reenactments of historic battles complete with appropriate costumes and weapons, as well as nautical battles, animal hunts, ingenious public executions of enemies of the state, etc. began and grew in complexity many decades prior to Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Additionally, Aurelius’ reign came to an end around 180 C. E., but as you stated the state sponsored games were officially discontinued for the second time around 404 C. E. indicating a span of over 200 years where the slaughter continued unabated. And, with the sacking of Rome around 410 C. E., the state sponsored games lasted almost until Roman culture was suppressed by barbarian incursions and increased external challenges to Roman culture and authority.
Toward the end of the state sponsored games, the populace had grown thoroughly bored with simple gladiatorial matches as had existed much earlier in the games - a widespread appreciation for displays of swordsmanship within individual combats was lost. Gradually, the games evolved into mere executions lasting for hours and consuming every type of criminal, probably including jaywalkers. In the earlier years, POW’s from Roman military campaigns served as convenient fodder for the arena in addition to convicted criminals. But, as the empire stopped expanding, the supply of enemy POW’s decreased in numbers, thereby curtailing the raw material for the games but not the Roman public’s appetite for spectacle and gruesome death.
As I indicated earlier, the games evolved apace with the decline in Roman culture. If you eliminate the gruesomeness of the games and focus on the change in the frequency and types of events held, it is consistent along a timeline with the decline in Roman culture. We see the same process ongoing today in our society, only we use our technology to produce the horrific scenes reminiscent of the Roman games, we legally slaughter virtual gladiators using computer simulation instead of the real thing – indicating, perhaps, that while technology improves, people remain unchanged.
Stuart Koehl| 6.1.11 @ 8:16PM
Actually, Pat, there are several excellent books on my shelf about the Ludi Romana, gladiatorial games and Roman culture, in addition to standard reference works such as The Oxford Classical Dictionary.
I'll stand by my assertion that the apogee of gladiatorial combat came at the end of the second/beginning of the third centuries. Several factors combined to reduce both the frequency and the scope of the games, including marked population decline from the plague that hit the Empire under Marcus Aurelius, increased military expenditures, barbarian incursions that reduced revenues, political instability that caused the Emperors to spend most of their time on the frontier, and, from the accession of Constantine, increasing official disapproval, leading, ultimately to their abolition.
As to blood sports more generally, they'll always be with us, because that's part of fallen human nature. I certainly think it better to be slaying virtual opponents than to be engaged in bear baiting, dog fighting, cock fighting or ratting.
ティファニー 通販 | 6.1.11 @ 3:21AM
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dee see| 6.1.11 @ 6:10AM
RE: Scorsese
'Gangs of New York' -ill-timed, unmemorable
and second hand
'Aviator' -also ill-timed, unmoving and a retread
'The Departed' -pointless, second hand --and in fact inferior to the Chinese original
'Shutter Island' -Over-wrought, second hand,
pointless and about 3 decades stale
What else?
--his equally pointless 'well-crafted' documentary
worship-fests of past their prime 'pop' idols
NOTE all this while the ever unfolding
RED Chinese Halocaust isn't even mentioned
--even as 4 decades of systematic Globalist sellout,
cultural degradation and TREASON rounds the final bend.
Scorsese the cutting edge? ---RRRRRIGHT!
Stuart Koehl| 6.1.11 @ 12:29PM
Cato the Elder was equally boring when he insisted on appending "Carthage Must Be Destroyed" to every speech he made.
Renaissance Nerd | 6.1.11 @ 2:15PM
Reading this article made me look over at my library and see how diverse my collection is. I've got "The Rifle in America" sitting next to "6000 Years of the Bible" and just above them the whole reprint of "Savage Sword of Conan" comics, Cornelia Funke's "Inkheart" series, "Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual 4.0," and don't forget "SAP R/3 Handbook" and "Hands-on Korn Shell Programming." While I'm not a fan of comics in general, there are exceptions, and I have a few graphic novels as well. Same goes for fiction, I love Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft as well as Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. I've been downloading new comics on my iPhone to take a look at what's happening today and mostly I feel very little interest--but there are a few exceptions, as always. I'm not interested enough to buy any of them yet, but you never know.
I've read a lot of trash, many many MANY novels I would never read again, and I've also read philosophers I reckon trash. I have a couple of hundred DVDs and even more VHS tapes and have ripped most of them to the computer, so I have better than 1,000 movies on my server--many of them I don't even particularly like. Just every so often I'm in the mood for that kind of thing--idiotic and goofy, without any redeeming qualities. Like "Pineapple Express." Right now the books by my bed are "Theory of Moral Sentiments" by Adam Smith and "The Three Musketeers" that I'm reading for the 97th time (I may exaggerate). But next on my list are three used L. Sprague de Camp novels from the 70s that are as pulpy as possible. I don't see that de Camp's enjoyable little books make me any less capable of appreciating better works, rather the contrary. I think the problem is one of excess--too much of anything is bad news (Mae West notwithstanding: "too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.") Anybody who spends all their time on comics is going to miss out. As will those who read "Able Team" or romance novels to the exclusion of all else. Movies are the same way--and there's fewer choices now.
I don't share Mr. Bowman's dislike of science fiction and fantasy, because I see them as having the potential to be the apotheoses of fiction, and fantasy more the SF. Fiction lets us in on a writer's view of the world, but in a 'realistic' novel, the reader carries so many preconceptions that it can dim the writer's vision to the point of opacity. SF and Fantasy are popular enough that we've reached that point with them too, as cliches become so common that we all expect Dwarves to have a Scottish accent. (If it were me, I would've gone with a Bronx Jewish accent. Tolkien's Dwarves always seemed like Jewish Vikings to me). It doesn't mean that a Fantasy or SF writer CAN'T come up with a world new enough that the reader has few preconceptions to deal with. That would allow the writer, at least theoretically, to guide the reader directly to the message without a gaggle of assumptions to wade through.
Hasn't been done yet, not even by Tolkien. But hope springs eternal, and if I have to wade through some trash to find a few nuggets, it's worth the slog. Same goes for movies. I've seen lots of awful movies, but every so often my expectations get a whippin and I end up loving a movie I thought I'd hate. I'd like to only see/read/hear only things I love, but then without the opposition of things I don't how would I know? The trash has it's purpose, if only to allow us to see the jewels by the contrast.
shipley130| 6.1.11 @ 8:34PM
I think many of us middle aged X generation are catching on to the destruction by the left. Now that the left wing Hollystooges have admitted their plans, we don't need to argue about it anymore. We just need to stop purchasing their goods and stop unknowingly supporting their agendas.
dee see| 6.2.11 @ 12:10AM
Martin 'SCORE-says-HE' ---catches it in a
nutshell.