Comic Book Guilt
This morning, AV CLUB posted a fantastic article titled Drawing-Board Confessional: 22 unflattering moments from autobiographical comics, and thus reminded me what I love about the form. Last year I wrote reviews on two of the comics featured in the article; Ed Brubaker's A Complete Lowlife and Joe Matt's Spent. I said this about the former:
As his alter-ego Tommy, Brubaker chronicles his young adulthood in the late 80s and wasted no time getting to the heart of his dysfunction. He does copious amounts of drugs, punches his cheating girlfriend in the face, robs a computer store at gunpoint (to make money for more drugs), gets kicked out of a nightclub after drinking nearly a whole bottle of Whiskey, steals from his employers, and, perhaps most criminally these days, longinly reflects on past loves gone awry. Ed himself is aware of the trouble of autobiographical works and how at once you can't ignore your past mistakes and yet it's nearly impossible to not make yourself a hero despite them. "I've always found it funny that reviewers act as if autobiographical work doesn't go through any sort of creative process at all, and that the guy who shows himself being cheap all the time, and hitting his girlfriend, thinks he's showing himself at his finest and it's just an accident that it got down on paper."...While it does not necessarily excuse Brubaker for anything he may or may not have done when he was younger, it's clear that his telling of these stories is signaling toward both regret and a despair for all the friends he had lost and the places he cannot revisit.
I then wrote about Joe Matt's work, comparing it to Brubaker:
Spent feels like a confession much in the same light, but there isn't the same feeling of remorse; the only feeling I have that Joe Matt knows how pathetic he is via his portrayal of himself. He treats his friends--fellow comix authors Chester Brown and Seth--like a jerk in this book and makes no attempt to show himself as a righteous, likable person. Of course we ought to give him the benefit of the doubt that perhaps he is only showing the despicable side of himself on purpose of by way of his own neurosis, much like how I only seem to write about the awful things about me, so we can at least take comfort that if he is willing to admit that he jerks off up to twenty times a day and had once given his girlfriend a black eye that there is likely not anything much darker in his life.
I also wrote about the legendary R. Crumb:
A lot of people will be put off by R. Crumb's content: it's sexist, racist, and endlessly perverse. I don't feel like looking up the exact quote, but somebody in the book mentions that the space between Crumb's mind and what ends up in his work is more narrow than most artists. There have been very few times in my life where I've drawn a dick, but Crumb doesn't seem to have any such restrictions on himself and I can't think of any other artist who has achieved the success he has by censoring himself so little (if at all). He draws a lot of "blackface" characters, but it becomes clear that they aren't meant to cause harm so much as they're meant to provoke the kind of sick and disturbed feeling you ought to get when you see that kind of stereotype. Now that I think about it, much of Crumb's work is horrifying stuff: My nightmares as a toddler used to look like his drawings.
What is there to like about these misogynistic, self-indulgent, compulsive masturbators? Besides the art, of course, I think what compels me to read autobiographical comics is the refreshing quality of honesty presented within. Not only do these men fess up to their most wicked deeds, they embellish them without celebrating their bad behavior. Each graphic novel is like a Thanksgiving feast of guilt and shame that is so rare in today's media.
Consider the recent example of Nick Hogan, who turned his best friend's face into a soap-dish after a car accident. When given the opportunity to reflect on his wrong-doings after a lengthy prison sentence, did the Hogan family express regret for their son's impaired driving ability? No, they did what any self-respecting family would do and blamed God. It was an accident, right? Sure, driving drunk and going 40mph over the speed limit was a deliberate choice, but Nick Hogan didn't mean to Schiavo-Up his best buddy, why should he be in prison?
I think the reason why people like Nick Hogan and Paris Hilton wind up in jail but are famous and yet R. Crumb and Joe Matt are merely counter-culture heroes yet, however, out of jail is the fact that the former truly don't feel responsible for their actions whereas the latter do. Artists who are aware of their devious acts are more likely to put them on paper than to actually live them out and fail to take responsibility for it, even at the risk of coming off as total creeps (which, to be fair, they are). Having been famous all their lives, the Hogans and the Hiltons of the world are not likely to feel guilt regardless of what they do. It is definitely understandable how this can happen ( I would be an insufferable brat if I were born rich and famous, for sure), but that doesn't necessarily make it right.
Can there be a balance between pitiful self-loathing and taking responsibility and the celebrity hero-worship that takes no accountability for anyone's actions? Maybe. As much as I personally would love to see a copy of Acme Novelty Library on everyone's bookshelf, I realize that most people's tastes aren't as downtrodden as mine. Maybe we need to stop creating so many infallible heroes. Nick Hogan's dad (THE HULKSTER) played the role of a can-do-no-wrong good guy for 20 years on TV; where do you think he and legions of other kids his age got the idea? From Cracked.com's article titled 5 Terrible Lessons Hollywood Loves To Teach You:
"...Of course, the reason people like to think about being a Jedi or a Wizard is that it's not something they have to work for, it's just encoded into their DNA that they'll have the ability to do kick-ass things at the drop of a hat. A hat that you will be able to catch and then kill someone with.
But it doesn't appeal to our optimism, it appeals to our laziness."
I'm not saying that irrational guilt and shame should be our paragons of virtue, but I think its much better to look up to someone who can turn their life's mistakes into beautiful works of art rather than those who pretend to have never made any at all.
As his alter-ego Tommy, Brubaker chronicles his young adulthood in the late 80s and wasted no time getting to the heart of his dysfunction. He does copious amounts of drugs, punches his cheating girlfriend in the face, robs a computer store at gunpoint (to make money for more drugs), gets kicked out of a nightclub after drinking nearly a whole bottle of Whiskey, steals from his employers, and, perhaps most criminally these days, longinly reflects on past loves gone awry. Ed himself is aware of the trouble of autobiographical works and how at once you can't ignore your past mistakes and yet it's nearly impossible to not make yourself a hero despite them. "I've always found it funny that reviewers act as if autobiographical work doesn't go through any sort of creative process at all, and that the guy who shows himself being cheap all the time, and hitting his girlfriend, thinks he's showing himself at his finest and it's just an accident that it got down on paper."...While it does not necessarily excuse Brubaker for anything he may or may not have done when he was younger, it's clear that his telling of these stories is signaling toward both regret and a despair for all the friends he had lost and the places he cannot revisit.
I then wrote about Joe Matt's work, comparing it to Brubaker:
Spent feels like a confession much in the same light, but there isn't the same feeling of remorse; the only feeling I have that Joe Matt knows how pathetic he is via his portrayal of himself. He treats his friends--fellow comix authors Chester Brown and Seth--like a jerk in this book and makes no attempt to show himself as a righteous, likable person. Of course we ought to give him the benefit of the doubt that perhaps he is only showing the despicable side of himself on purpose of by way of his own neurosis, much like how I only seem to write about the awful things about me, so we can at least take comfort that if he is willing to admit that he jerks off up to twenty times a day and had once given his girlfriend a black eye that there is likely not anything much darker in his life.
I also wrote about the legendary R. Crumb:
A lot of people will be put off by R. Crumb's content: it's sexist, racist, and endlessly perverse. I don't feel like looking up the exact quote, but somebody in the book mentions that the space between Crumb's mind and what ends up in his work is more narrow than most artists. There have been very few times in my life where I've drawn a dick, but Crumb doesn't seem to have any such restrictions on himself and I can't think of any other artist who has achieved the success he has by censoring himself so little (if at all). He draws a lot of "blackface" characters, but it becomes clear that they aren't meant to cause harm so much as they're meant to provoke the kind of sick and disturbed feeling you ought to get when you see that kind of stereotype. Now that I think about it, much of Crumb's work is horrifying stuff: My nightmares as a toddler used to look like his drawings.
What is there to like about these misogynistic, self-indulgent, compulsive masturbators? Besides the art, of course, I think what compels me to read autobiographical comics is the refreshing quality of honesty presented within. Not only do these men fess up to their most wicked deeds, they embellish them without celebrating their bad behavior. Each graphic novel is like a Thanksgiving feast of guilt and shame that is so rare in today's media.
Consider the recent example of Nick Hogan, who turned his best friend's face into a soap-dish after a car accident. When given the opportunity to reflect on his wrong-doings after a lengthy prison sentence, did the Hogan family express regret for their son's impaired driving ability? No, they did what any self-respecting family would do and blamed God. It was an accident, right? Sure, driving drunk and going 40mph over the speed limit was a deliberate choice, but Nick Hogan didn't mean to Schiavo-Up his best buddy, why should he be in prison?
I think the reason why people like Nick Hogan and Paris Hilton wind up in jail but are famous and yet R. Crumb and Joe Matt are merely counter-culture heroes yet, however, out of jail is the fact that the former truly don't feel responsible for their actions whereas the latter do. Artists who are aware of their devious acts are more likely to put them on paper than to actually live them out and fail to take responsibility for it, even at the risk of coming off as total creeps (which, to be fair, they are). Having been famous all their lives, the Hogans and the Hiltons of the world are not likely to feel guilt regardless of what they do. It is definitely understandable how this can happen ( I would be an insufferable brat if I were born rich and famous, for sure), but that doesn't necessarily make it right.
Can there be a balance between pitiful self-loathing and taking responsibility and the celebrity hero-worship that takes no accountability for anyone's actions? Maybe. As much as I personally would love to see a copy of Acme Novelty Library on everyone's bookshelf, I realize that most people's tastes aren't as downtrodden as mine. Maybe we need to stop creating so many infallible heroes. Nick Hogan's dad (THE HULKSTER) played the role of a can-do-no-wrong good guy for 20 years on TV; where do you think he and legions of other kids his age got the idea? From Cracked.com's article titled 5 Terrible Lessons Hollywood Loves To Teach You:
"...Of course, the reason people like to think about being a Jedi or a Wizard is that it's not something they have to work for, it's just encoded into their DNA that they'll have the ability to do kick-ass things at the drop of a hat. A hat that you will be able to catch and then kill someone with.
But it doesn't appeal to our optimism, it appeals to our laziness."
I'm not saying that irrational guilt and shame should be our paragons of virtue, but I think its much better to look up to someone who can turn their life's mistakes into beautiful works of art rather than those who pretend to have never made any at all.