pátio da inquisição
Seguindo de ladrões e quem lhes malha mas agora num universo completamente (não) alternativo, saímos de 1953 para comparar 1939 com o presente antes de terminar no século passado.
I
fa(n)zine de BD: a peça de teatroO Teatro do Montemuro, sediada em Castro Daire, regressa este ano ao Pátio da Inquisição, no dia 17, para apresentar a sua mais recente criação, o espetáculo "Fazine — O regresso dos heróis"
in "Teatro do Montemuro e Alexandre Peroni apresentam espetáculos em Coimbra" 1 jul 2019 (*) Peça da Lusa reproduzido no Diário de Notícias: o Geraldes Lino não lhes perdoaria o (que) fa(zem ao)zine.
Públicos infanto-juvenis e bizarro world full speed ahead — até na notícia. Uma personagem popular da DC que "has traditionally lacked superpowers" mas escuda-se dentro de um "high-tech battle suit giving him enhanced strength, flight, advanced weaponry, and other capabilities" e possui uma "dual identity"? Estás a pensar no Batman mas tratamos de outra careca igual em plutocracias impunes: Lex Luthor,
A wealthy, power-mad American business magnate, ingenious engineer, philanthropist to the city of Metropolis, and one of the most intelligent people in the world. A well-known public figure, he is the owner of a conglomerate called LexCorp.
in Wikipedia
Comics, fanzines, internet, precários, e até um pátio da inquisição porque neste espaço gostamos de atirar pedras: OS POSITIVOS, err, atiramos pedras — com amizade.
O mestre do crime Lex Luthor escapa do mundo da banda desenhada para o século XXI, com a única intenção de fazer estragos. Auxiliado pela sua assistente pessoal Paciência e pela formidável Mulher Eletricidade, Luthor ambiciona vergar a civilização, roubando a Internet. Todos os seus antigos adversários, os Super-Heróis, estão agora aposentados dessa atividade ou desaparecidos. Parece não haver nada, nem ninguém, que o possa impedir. Mas, quando um velho e familiar sinal aparece na noite escura, os antigos heróis deixam as suas atuais vidas como taxistas, alfaiates e instrutores de aeróbica para se reunirem novamente.
in "Fanzine"
Um velho e familiar sinal que aparece na noite escura: a nossa deixa em códigos de BD aos infames e juvenis e milionários gone astray.
II
Republish do texto de Cory Doctorow 15 jul 2019 no "Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman Deluxe Edition" 12 mar 2019.
Ocuppy Gotham
A thousand issues have gone by, nearly 80 years have passed, and Batman still hasn't cleaned up Gotham. If the formal definition of insanity is trying the same thing and expecting a different outcome, then Bruce Wayne belongs in a group therapy session in Arkham Asylum. Seriously, get that guy some cognitive behavioral therapy before he gets into some serious trouble.
As Upton Sinclair wrote in his limited run of Batman: Class War, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
Gotham is a city riven by inequality. In 1939, that prospect had a very different valence than it has in 2018. Back in 1939, the wealth of the world's elites had been seriously eroded, first by the Great War, then by the Great Crash and the interwar Great Depression, and what was left of those vast fortunes was being incinerated on the bonfire of World War II. Billionaire plutocrats were a curious relic of a nostalgic time before the intrinsic instability of extreme wealth inequality plunged the world into conflict.
The scions of these once-great fortunes were almost tragic figures, Gatsbyesque rogues who had been hand-raised on Kobe calves and then pushed out into a world where they were expected to live as paupers, not princelings. The idea of Bruce Wayne being qualified to drive around Gotham beating the shit out of people he judged to be criminals by dint of his having had the enormous good judgment to emerge from the uterus of a person who had married a billionaire was quaint, not sinister.
But 80 years later, it's worth revisiting this situation. Gotham appears to be a hereditary meritocracy, a place where commanding enormous power by dint of birth is somehow compatible with capitalism's supposed capacity for rewarding extraordinary achievements with extraordinary wealth.
In 2018, hereditary meritocracies are no longer quaint. America—a land that was founded on the idea of the intrinsic corruption of hereditary transfers of power—has become a land of hereditary meritocracy, where intergenerational wealth transfers by the very wealthiest 0.1% are considered to be only moral, because "it's their money after all". Consider that the Americans of Earth One elected president a man who describes his humbling beginnings by explaining that he had to confront the New York real estate market equipped with nothing more than a $100.000.000 loan from his father. FCK.
Perhaps this can be ascribed to the fact that America is a nation of "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," but surely some of the prevailing equivocation of extreme wealth with virtue is due to the cognitive dissonance of living in a world where we are ever-more subject to the wills and whims of the super-rich. If we're to be buffeted by the downdrafts of their jets, copters and performance cars, we can at least comfort ourselves by imagining that they are traveling on some wise errand that benefits us all.
Bruce Wayne, whose accident of birth and tragedy of boyhood turned him into the guardian of Gotham, has made no progress to speak of in nearly a century of crime fighting. Gotham is still riven by inequality and super-villainy, in which sociopaths have no trouble finding desperate ruffians to fight on their behalf, nor in marshaling the funds to equip their armies with the most advanced and fanciful weaponry.
To any rational observer it's blinding obvious that Gotham doesn't have a crime problem: it has a corruption problem that expresses itself in crime. Doubtless, there is plenty of skullduggery offstage—zero bid contracts to civil engineering conglomerates to undertake chic projects that are never completed or fall down shortly after their ribbons are cut by mayors whose campaigns are financed by kickbacks from the same contractors.
But Bruce Wayne is only interested in fighting symptoms, not the underlying disease. Can you blame him? Bruce Wayne can look in the mirror and see a scared little boy who will never avenge his parents' murder, but he can't ever see a plutocrat whose comfort, influence, power and impunity is derived from his unearned privilege. It is difficult to get a superhero to understand something when his R&D lab depends on him not understanding it, after all.
Plutocratas cujo conforto, influência poder e impunidade deriva de privilégios não merecidos, wealthy conglomerates de philanthropists que parecem acudir a população mas estão apenas interested in fighting symptoms, not the underlying disease? Justiça aos pobres e oprimidos pela bondade da classe aristocrática? Temos.
III
Dissonância cognitiva da nossa parte e o segway final ao mundo where we are ever-more subject to the wills and whims of the super-rich — e se pensavam que não íamos alinhar todos estes tópicos numa só recta ao inverter DC em CD, é porque ainda não nos conhecem.
