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Rebecca Jansen
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Location: Canada
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| Posted: 16 July 2019 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | 1
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I'm not sure entirely why but I've been made uncomfortable with people examining old comics through an ethnic framework. I'm told there are entire books of this kind and possible academic thesis. To what purpose I'd wonder? There was a '70s creation that was stated to be Irish in the comics but someone wrote that it screamed Jewishness to them (the screamed part definitely rubbed me the wrong way and I'm not usually a SJW type of person though I might be over certain things I find important like say plastic pollution in the oceans or minority rights), also that the character's unskilled profession was typically Jewish, and from there it got to that the two creators were Jewish, like that proved something. Why can't a character written as something just be what it says? It made me see red for awhile and I'm not Jewish. Do some comics scream Italian? Okay, Alpha Flight are Canadian right? Or are they? Are they secretly screaming Irishness or Britishness and I've been oblivious? Sunfire can't possibly be Japanese if a Japanese creator isn't there?
Perhaps it just bothers me to have everything divided up into hyphenated racial origin groupings because it's comic books? On the other hand I like to see diversity reflected with characters, not all generic WASPs (like me). Northstar can be gay and Kitty Pryde has a star of David pendant... that all seems positive and for the good. There are people who have legitimate complaints about pre-existing characters being changed to add diversity, but I think most might be equally unhappy if an existing minority character suddenly became a white man. But I don't know if Spider-Man or Captain America are Jewish or Batman or The Flash are Italian if it hasn't come up in a comic I've read, and I don't care really. It does bother me somehow that someone would need that filled in, would even think of it.
Maybe someone can tell me it's not me taking things too seriously but some of the fans that are? I can't see arguing about it in a Hulk could beat Thor type of sense. So I guess if an Irish character has to be 'really' Jewish for someone else I can just say okay then, you want them to be Jewish, for you they're Jewish? I just don't want to go down a path of if Popeye is some kind of obvious ethnic type, or The Shadow, or Bugs Bunny... I mean The Katzenjammer Kids are what they were but if someone didn't know, so what?
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Brian Hague
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Joined: 14 November 2006
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| Posted: 16 July 2019 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | 2
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Ethnic Studies is but one of the many premises one can use to re-examine older works, and has a pleasant, two-way benefit to those who practice it. One, it helps boost that darling of academic theory, the Death of the Author. Who cares what the author thought or what the circumstances were? The question is, "What meaning can we apply to it NOW?" Many contend the author is the last place we should look for insight into a work. That would only lead to a greater understanding of the author, not the work. To find the truth of the piece itself, one MUST look elsewhere, see? So long as society continues to change, the TRUE nature of a work can never be known, because once a final answer is reached, the game is over. It's a racket, but hey, so is Medicine and the Law. They're just rackets that, in general, pay slightly better.
The other benefit is that sublime feeling you get when the spirit of Dr. K himself enters you as you condemn others for their narrowmindedness and lack of compassion, locked as they were in benighted times, enforcing the rule of the Patriarchy with an iron fist, and keeping all others down. They could not see the evil they did, so the argument might run, and so had no concept of what they were actually writing about. WE, being the superior beings we are today, can, and we can therefore understand what they were talking about better than they could then.
I'm not certain what comic strip the piece you read was about, but there was a very long period throughout history where the Irish were denigrated and insulted, particularly by the British. They were subjugated militarily and kept at the very bottom of the social ladder. Nor were they looked at any better when they came here to America. It took a couple generations before the "No Irish Need Apply" signs came down from the windows.
Whatever job the character held, if it was at the bottom of the social ladder, it may have been as likely to be held by an Irishman as a Jew. That may not fit in with the academic's overall premise, however, and since Authorial Intent is dead, what appears on the page is irrelevant. What is there means whatever the person arguing the point thinks it means. If they can back up their point with some sort of argument, any argument, it is necessarily valid and worthy of publication. Just don't try leaving THEIR name off of it. Then, suddenly the author will matter very much.
Edited by Brian Hague on 16 July 2019 at 9:16pm
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Brian Hague
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| Posted: 16 July 2019 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | 3
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Wading in, however, the ethnicity of comic book, comic strip, and cartoon characters was very much an element of their creation back in the day. Bugs Bunny's voice is a conscious mixture of New York and New Jersey elements, placing him in the role of the big-city sharpie out-smarting and out-toughing all comers. Uncle Scrooge is Scottish because, well, the Scots are a greedy, tight-fingered, parsimonious lot, aren't they?
Or so it went, back when such theories guided society in its preconceptions of "outsiders." The same was "true" of Jews. Buncha' shylocks, the whole lot of 'em, right? That's how they took over all the banks! Of course, they aren't a ton of openly Jewish characters because as Tom Lehrer so aptly put it, "Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Hindus hate the Muslims, and everybody hates the Jews!"
The Shadow, if I'm not mistaken, was a clear-cut, no-questions-asked White guy, who could, in times of danger, assume the terrifying countenance of a narrow-eyed, hook-nosed ethnic type, thus frightening his foes even as he hid his new, hideous face behind his cloak. Why, such a face might be capable of anything! Certainly the film and many of the comics portrayed him that way. I doubt it was much of an issue on radio, but maybe it was.
Popeye is clearly Lithuanian.*
In modern times, society is perhaps over-valuing it's connections to its ethnic history even as those ties dwindle and vanish. Here in the U.S. even if we are Italian, we're not quite as Italian as, say, the people in Italy are. And even there, everything is growing more cosmopolitan. Human beings intermingle and mix extremely well, genetically if not societally, and nature will out. It's doing so everywhere, and that's all to the good. In the face of change, however, some insist on clinging to a past that was never what it was said to be, either out of hate or in the spirit of celebration.
Differences are what unite us, or they should be. That we insist they be used to divide instead, setting this people over here, and this one other here, is the product of fear and a sense of losing control.
Comics and cartoons of the past invited us to laugh with, laugh at, or simply nod knowingly with the stereotypes of their day. We could root for this team and against that one and were actively encouraged to do so. Certainly a study can be made of these stereotypes and perhaps some good can come of it, and if not, lobbing accusations is a sport in which everyone participates these days. It's all the rage, especially within the hallowed halls of academia, where it is written that the hated Patriarchy Will Fall and a new age of benevolence and plenty will reign... for those we decide are entitled to it. So, not really a new age at all. :-)
* No, not really.
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Rebecca Jansen
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| Posted: 16 July 2019 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | 4
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Thanks for the response Brian, it has helped me to reflect on my response to the whole idea of examining ethnicity in comics. I mostly think my mind just doesn't work in some ways others' do whether through their training or my lack of it or something else I don't know. My family has an occupied Holland background to it which involved one ancestor actively openly protesting (by transportation stoppage) the targeting of Jews, and I am probably overly sensitive to situations seeming to single them out. Mostly with a comic story I take it at face value... so Will Eisner's A Contract With God, yes, a Jewish experience is central to that, an Irish named super character though... or Peter Parker... or Barry Allen... not really picking up the supposed Jewish or Italian vibes on them (because I am not the great thinker perhaps). There was a comic and cartoon from Japan called Nausicaa and I found it somewhat Dutch/Flemish with the windmills and an invasion by a neighboring people and the threat of receding lines on maps caused by natural forces... and that's knowing the creator was Japanese. I doubt it would be something to impress anyone with that I saw these things somewhat in it anymore than knowing the name came from Homer's Odyssey.
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 16 July 2019 at 9:57pm
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Paul Kimball
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Joined: 21 September 2006
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| Posted: 16 July 2019 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | 5
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Popeye is some kind of obvious ethnic type
____________
I don't ikonw if this example was a joke or not but Popeye is so strange, He
never reminded me of any group! Maybe I need to travel more but I can't think
of any ethnic group I've ever heard of that sounds anything like him.
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Rebecca Jansen
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| Posted: 16 July 2019 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | 6
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Someone probably has it all figured out based on studying E.C. Segar. I wouldn't want/need to know, don't normally think of it, is all I was saying.
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 16 July 2019 at 10:04pm
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Jeffrey Rice
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| Posted: 17 July 2019 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | 7
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I thought Popeye's mouth, nose, and speech impediment, was a result of extreme alcoholism.
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Brian Hague
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| Posted: 17 July 2019 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | 8
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I thought it was because he's worked like a dog and had strong winds and sea water blasted into his face every day of his life for the past who-knows-how-many years.
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