I haven't done a lot of "year-end reviews" for my blog or for culture generally, but 2020 was obviously a year of big changes. Thus, some ruminations seem in order.
The Year of Covid did restrict some of my activities, and this did result in three of my most extensive re-reviewings. Two were on the NUM blog, where I finished reviewing all the episodes of the third season of KUNG FU, a project I believe I'd let lie fallow for two-three years. More exclusive to year 2020 was my analysis of all of the BATMAN '66 episodes (though I've yet to find time for the '66 theatrical movie). I had started a retrospective of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu books in late 2019, but the majority of the posts appeared in 2020, so I feel like this extensive look at Rohmer's great villain is largely a 2020 project. Nor was my reading completely confined to moldy oldies, since the manga NISEKOI is now one of my new favorites, though it finished up in 2016.
As far as significant critical additions to my always-expanding "theory of everything." notable entries would include all of the following.
I further evolved some of my concepts on "structural length" and the potential, if any, for finding thematic unity in the more episodic categories. This led to meditations like THE MANY MYTHOI OF BATMAN, which in turn generated offshoots like DEGREES OF MASTERY AND BACHELORDOM and DARK GROTESQUES AND COLORFUL ARABESQUES. Both of these were instrumental in answering the question as to whether or not the irony-laden adventures of BATMAN '66 sustained a core of thematic meaning, and if so, what forms that theme took.
The three-part SELF-MASTERY MEDITATIONS, beginning here, should prove fruitful in showing how the two major story-tropes of the combative mode reflect the notion of self-mastery.
I investigated the process theory of Whitehead and the phenomenology of Husserl, finding that some of their formulations might turn out to gloss "myth criticism" literary theory in ways the respective philosophers might not have sanctioned.
I picked up Whitehead's use of the term "vector" and began seeing how it might apply as a master metaphor across many of my conceptual categories.
Finally, I analyzed, in this post, the way in which fears of the Covid pandemic led American society (and possibly others as well) to seek for a sacrificial pharmakon by stigmatizing the entire past history of the United States as racist. And while I abominate the utter corruption of the Left in this respect, I should note that the Right nurtured some similar atavisms with the onset of "mask-hatred," in which the proponents sought to stigmatize health measures as a way of refusing to acknowledge the virulence of Covid.
As to the future, my best hope for 2021 is that possibly the country can muddle through the aftermath of Covid with the help of the Trump Vaccines. I don't think that Biden at his best is anything but a thoroughly average politician, and thus whatever blunders he makes with respect to China and the Middle East will not have any immediate consequences. I believe a lot of people voted for Biden with the idea that he would bring them a measure of normalcy, but his effect will be that of a lid placed atop of a boiling pot: he can contain things for a while, but sooner or later the water will boil over. If it does so during his tenure, I guess we'll see if he's really the organizational "tough guy" he likes to claim that he is.
Happy New Year. I wanted to thank you for continuing to offer a unique kind of comics and film criticism, which is needed when most of the "insights" that critics offer are very politically-minded. (It's strange that the Comics Journal-type of commentary became so mainstream; those guys used to complain about "problematic" comics before it was considered cool.) Hopefully the ultraliberals, as you've named them, will eventually become tired of parroting their list of pop-culture grievances.
ReplyDeleteThe work you're doing in all the blogs is great. I'd be interested to know if you can find some gems in the elitists' canon, "high-brow" indie comics or indie cinema, that contain something mythically significant.
Happy New Year to you as well, and thanks for keeping up with my sometimes elusive ruminations.
ReplyDeleteI tend to think that the liberally-minded critics of the old Journal would have found themselves as stunned by the vehemence of modern ultraliberals as we've seen in the political realm, where junior Libs like the Squad had at times sneered at even the saintlike figure of Barack Obama. I can't prove it though, aside from recollecting that Noah Berlatsky contributed to the online JOURNAL, but didn't play well with Groth and Co for some reason and soon departed.
I've praised a handful of "canonical comics" over the years, or at least stuff from the same creators as the more respected works. I can't remember which EC Comics stories made it into the Journal's canon, but I commented in one mythcomics review that I thought the famed "Judgment Day" was a "routine allegory," and I ended up championing another EC, the Feldstein-Wood tale "The Inferiors."
Similarly, though I've enjoyed a lot of works from the pens of the Hernandez Brothers, I've come to recognize that a lot of their stories are a little too restrictive in the creativity department, and for the same reason: the tendency to depend on allegory to make an overt point. I did find two Gilbert stories that met my criteria as mythcomics, but none for Jaime as yet, even though I think on the whole he's better with complex characterization.
Some talents make a big sociological impact because they capture a specific time, and that's probably why I haven't found a lot to critique in Robert Crumb. I devoted one analysis apiece to Gilbert Shelton and Frank Stack, but I found guys like Spain and Justin Green rather superficial. Did the Journalistas include Watchmen? Seems like they did, but I don't recall if any other Alan Moore got in there. A few nominated CEREBUS but not enough to make the canon-list, and I've done two or three essays on the Aardvark. I find it amusing that I can better remember things they excluded than things they included: I don't think a single DC got on the list, but there was a place for the collected works of DENNIS THE MENACE. I like DENNIS but it was a one-joke strip most of the time, and I can't help but think Fanta was influenced by their packaging of DENNIS-reprints.
I try to sample a few current "alternative comics" from time to time, at least when they've made it to the TPB format. but some of them are incredibly banal. (LUMBERJANES? Yuck.) Of course I find a lot of modern SF banal as well, so the failings I find certainly aren't confined to comics. Yet I have liked a handful of things from the past decade. I gave an approving review to Naomi Novick's UPROOTED, but SPINNING SILVER is even better (though still not yet reviewed), and I got a bang out of the teen-humor manga NISEKOI, though I'm sure that won't make it to any elite lists.
Feel free to suggest any indie comics or cinema that come to mind, and maybe I can check 'em out. Best to you.