gettin' closer
"funny and/or rude drawings of the guy you don’t like"Académicos-por-vir de estudos culturais que se ocupam de cultura popular na vertente politizada: segue-se um ponto de situação para análise futura de BD e militâncias radicais em mais um recap de diferentes tópicos em aparente dissociação que, por passe de magia — voilá! — surgem enredados num único fio condutor. OS POSITIVOS: for tha peeps.
Cómicos e punks: vale igualmente a vossa atenção. Sabemos que as nossas intervenções são duplamente desperdiçadas entre aqueles que regressam a este espaço — os cómicos não partilham dos nossos fins, os punks suspeitam dos nossos meios — mas também cremos que cada vez mais essa distância se esbate no actual momento. Perdidos no deserto há apenas uns anos — aqui brandávamos aos céus"where are my grown folks at?!" + "make war, not cómicos!", a razão de ser da nossa militância tornou-se entretanto tão mainstream que mesmo entre donas de casa numa dieta de tv à base da programação matinal se discute o putedo nazi e relacionados — e o Trumpas keeps on givin’.
E as big tech keep on takin’, nacionalismos keep on dividin’ e o big $$$ keeps on subtracting, de modo cada vez mais descarado e conflituoso. O lado positivo? Diz-nos a História que podemos avançar a causa da Humanidade quando se consegue espreitar pelas fissuras do sistema que a reprime, uma call-to-action (*) que um pouco por todo o lado se faz ouvir.
* Micro-mini sermão paternalista aos punx, os cómicos podem saltar este.
Podemos e devemos recolher-nos a um espaço só nosso e celebrar a nossa própria cultura quando pouco nos importam os outros e esses pouco se importam connosco — é muitas vezes difícil de decidir qual das premissas é a original e claramente reforçam-se uma à outra. Mas essa zona de conforto não se deve tornar um limite que nos — uh — limita. Não podemos derrubar a sociedade sem a defrontar, qualquer que seja a tua estratégia: a revolução ou a reforma, construir melhores alternativas num futuro possível ou fazer ruir de podre a realidade que te oprime hoje. É ao underground que chamamos de casa, mas já várias vezes vos incitámos a sair desta e okupar as ruas: é no mainstream que se fará a luta.
É um bom dia para sair de casa e ir à rua — aproveita, adivinha-se mau tempo lá mais para a noite.
Exemplo, banda desenhada.
O Matt Seneca publicou ontem uma peça no TCJ que iremos replicar generosamente — e na nota de coincidências que se sucedem não deixa de ser irónico que apesar de deixarmos de fora nesta volta a imprensa e os media, começamos com um artigo que se intitula "PayWall" 19 set 2017.
Deste, cruzado a todas as frentes que nos conhecem, boas leituras:
Here we all are smack in the middle of the most interesting times I’ve been alive for, but you sure wouldn’t know it going off the view from the comic store. In comics, this year looks the same as the last year — that is to say, a great time to indulge in some escapist entertainment of whatever very particularized flavor you want, true believer! Meh! Don’t worry about it! For a medium that can make a serious claim to be currently in the process of expanding its worth and scope, comics too often seems blinkered to the world outside the panels. Where are the books with the revolutionary, uncompromising engagement with politics that our times demand?
in "PayWall" 19 set 2017
Do mainstream e do alternativo.
There are a few reasons it’s such a tough search. Heading up the list is that mainstream action comics’ "nerd culture" (gag) has always been one of the biggest apologists for and believers in market capitalism as a justification unto itself. Expecting huge corporations with billion dollar investments in fictional squads of militarized fascists wearing costumes goofier than anything this side of Charlottesville to manifest a relevant political viewpoint is optimistic to say the least.
Not as obvious but equally pernicious is the fact that a less diseased branch of comics rides the same boat. Those nicely designed "graphic memoirs" from big book-trade publishers smell a little less like Taco Bell CrunchWrap Supremes and Mountain Dew Code Red, get written up in your favorite liberal media organ, and sometimes even manage to "engage" with "politicized topics". But they too originate from corporate America just like the superheroes do, and go through editors who learned all the wrong lessons from Persepolis and get paid to watch out for dollars and sense, not provoke the retail account holders in white supremacist country.
in "PayWall" 19 set 2017
Enter os que rejeitam o Sistema.
And so it falls as always to small press and self-published comics to do anything of worth for
Americancomics when they need it.
in "PayWall" 19 set 2017
Mas como é habitual também às vezes ficamos short das intenções. Isso, e aquilo que vos notámos em ocasiões passadas — de onde julgamos que vem o principal potencial de luta:
But here too, we are vastly underserved. My read on the inability of alternative comics to deliver anything that feels politically trenchant goes back to milieu. An overwhelming amount of the time alternative comics reject engagement with consensus reality and build a castle of the mind. Even the most resolutely reality-based entries in the idiom (Bechdel, Derf, Crumb) restrict themselves to deep dives into the individual selfhood of the artist or a chosen subject, so much so that close relations like parents, friends, and significant others emerge as the major antagonistic forces in their works. The majority of what passes for political engagement in alternative comics is imported from newspaper cartoons: funny and/or rude drawings of the guy you don’t like.
in "PayWall" 19 set 2017
E neste ponto introduzimos à vossa atenção o complemento da segunda peça, publicado no dia anterior, justamente debruçado sobre os indies: Small Press Expo 2017, "the Premiere Event for Indie Comics, Cartooning & Graphic Novels". Desta, um outro tom predomina — basta-se o título: "SPX 2017: The year of getting woke" 18 set 2017.
This was going to be a different SPX, I suspected right then and there. The indie comics world that SPX came from has traditionally been — like indie rock — a bastion of white male shoegazing. Woman came storming in a decade ago. The last few years saw the LGBTQIA community embraced with joy. And this time, creators of color were speaking out, getting the spotlight and telling their own stories for a change. That this came at a time of rising hatred and the revelation of attitudes naively thought vanquished was not lost on anyone.
in "SPX 2017: The year of getting woke" 18 set 2017
Entre outras considerações, como uma menção a Ben Passmore, vencedor do Outstanding Story dos inácios com "Your Black Friend," —
One of the most powerful comics of the year or any year. It was a call to action, because, frankly, inaction can mean death.
in "SPX 2017: The year of getting woke" 18 set 2017
— salientamos outra que nos é próxima às teses. Próxima, como em completamente central.
This year’s SPX attendees were really into webcomics, really into online, really into work that reflects, for lack of a better word, the community of comics. This is a very different world than the one where people line up to hear what events Marvel or DC are rolling out, or even what’s happening at Image or Black Mask. We’re seeing the fruits of the participatory world and this world calls for evolving rules.
in "SPX 2017: The year of getting woke" 18 set 2017
Curiosidades, a peça é retirada do Comics Beat, escrito pela já nossa conhecida Heidi MacDonald. No dia que o TCJ lança a sua, Heidi e o também habitual Calvin Reid colocam no Publishers Weekly um reforço, que reforçamos. Título, não tivessemos já sido bastante óbvios com esta selecção: "Politics Take Center Stage at the Small Press Expo 2017" 19 set 2017.
This year’s Small Press Expo, an annual festival of indie and self-published comics and graphic novels seemed influenced more than ever by the current political climate and the comics community's reaction to it.
in "Politics Take Center Stage at the Small Press Expo 2017" 19 set 2017
E, novamente aqueles dois eixos anteriores que não queremos deixar passar em branco: cartoons, tech, politics.
In the wake of Trump’s election (and the resistance to it) there were more than few panels focused on cartooning and the influence of issues of race, diversity and the LGBTQ community and gender identity.
CXC executive director Tom Spurgeon moderated a panel on “The Free Press” featuring cartoonists Keith Knight, Ben Passmore, and Ann Telnaes; while a panel entitled "Genderfluidity, Technology and Futurism," featured artists Jeremy Sorese, Kevin Cazp and Rio Audry Taylor.
in "Politics Take Center Stage at the Small Press Expo 2017" 19 set 2017
Mas não nos era necessário os inserts acima, a própria peça do TCJ apresenta um desses casos de BD afecta ao presente social, o homónimo "PayWall" de Joseph P. Kelly.
It’s this kind of approach, a commitment to observational realism and not the comic book style of it we’ve all become accustomed to, that makes for such a bracing read. It’s as if Kelly is holding every element of his book up to the light and searching for the most direct way to put it. If that breaks the previously established rules of comics, well, he credits his audience with enough brain power to keep up.
in "PayWall" 19 set 2017
Within the Trojan horse of escapist action entertainment is a sophisticated and brutal allegory for the political drama outside our windows — and a warning about what might be lurking inside our phone plans, our employment contracts, our future. The escape on offer here leads not into fantasy, but through the mirror into an attainable reality, one where a mask and a gun and a plan of action is all you need to take on the bad guys.
in "PayWall" 19 set 2017
Uma obra que contextualiza com exemplos de uma cultura igualmente interventiva: comics UK, e a nota fica apenas como rebuçado nosso já que as nossas leituras nessas frentes estão ultimamente quase todas dependentes de filósofos dessa mesma ilhota em modo de engenharia social pré-apocalipse.
Alternative comics in the UK have been better and more interesting. The country’s two leading anthologies, Mould Map and Decadence. Both wear geopolitics on their sleeve as a main motivating principle, and both have solved the age-old comics problem of how to make themed anthologies at all interesting by simply directing their artists to look up from their drawing tables and out at the nightmarish hellscape that corporations and politicians are steering us toward with ever-increasing speed.
in "PayWall" 19 set 2017
Spandex, comics, punx, a resistência et al:
Rather than create his hero as a slightly more ridiculously costumed version of a police officer, though, Kelly looks for inspiration at the real heroes of today’s world: the scared, angry young people pulling on masks and taking to the streets to put their bodies on the line against governmental and societal oppression.
in "PayWall" 19 set 2017
Mesmo se por vezes os heróis de mundo de hoje possam até ser ligeiramente ridículos.
Lembram-se da nossa entrada anterior? Compara com a t-shirt que o Ben Passmore está a usar no SPX. Aquilo das coincidências.
Fim, mas tempo para um segundo riddle:
Everyone agreed you had to know the rules before you broke them, otherwise known as the anticipatory tension of the panel grid.
in "SPX 2017: The year of getting woke" 18 set 2017
No cite anterior muda os conceitos comedianos pelos que se aplicam às competências entre punx? Magia.
