Wednesday, September 05, 2018

Continuing to Dangle

With reference to my essay on the non-resolution of the Betty Brant sub-plot in Spider-Man, JHW asked: 

For fans, do these sub-plots to nowhere in particular enrich or detract from the overall experience of being a fan? They seem pretty unsatisfying when considered in terms of the individual stories, but do they make the "comic book world" as a whole seem more real, with their roads not traveled?

I think the following almost entirely fails to answer that question.

Yes: I am reading Knausgaard at the moment. Why do you ask? 



Girls didn't read comics so much as Boys. Girls read Magazines.

Girls' magazines were almost entirely about Boys. Boys' comics barely acknowledged that such things as Girls existed. Girls' magazines presented Boys as fascinating aliens that you might pass on the way to school. Boys' adventure comics were set on football pitches and army barracks and other places where Girls weren't allowed. Girls with names like Minnie and Beryl were sometimes allowed into the funny comics, but they were pretty much the same as Boys, only with skirts. 

There were Girls comics too, about witches and ballet dancers and poor but honest Girls being locked in cupboards for giving too much gruel to the orphans, but the Girls in our sample didn't read them. The Girls in our sample read Disney comics with names like "Donald and Also Mickey", "Goofy and Also Pluto" and subsequently "Donald and Mickey And Also Goofy." The Boys in our sample sometimes sneaked into the bedrooms of the Girls in our sample and read them when the Girls in our sample weren't looking, but the Boys in our sample can't remember if they included any of the classic Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge strips.

While British Boys' comics were unashamedly for little Boys (or at any rate for big Boys who didn't mind admitting that they were little Boys on the inside); the Girls' magazines were for little Girls who wanted to be big Girls. They had names like "Just Seventeen" and "Sixteen Plus" although actual teenagers wouldn't have been seen dead with them. (They read "Smash Hits".) They were constructed to look a little like the Women's Magazines that Mum and Granny still read. Both the Girls' magazines and the Grown Up Lady magazines had recipes and sewing projects in them, although the Grown Up magazines never really went in for photo-strips. But what the Girls' magazines were mostly about was meeting Boys. 

The Girls liked to pretend that they were quite sophisticated and grown-up because they were reading publications that were meant for teenagers. They were no more likely to go out with Boys in real life than Boys were to score the winning goal at Wembley and defeat the Luftwaffe. They were probably more interested in ponies.

I don't know if any of this is true, but it sounds as if it should be. 

What is definitely true is that 100% of the Boys in my survey discovered Spider-Man way before they discovered Girls or dating or s*x. Before, indeed, they had any clear and distinct idea of how human reproduction worked, which was a closely guarded secret until 1978. Our parents' generation learned about s*x by observing farm animals and pets; ours learned about it by reverse-engineering Jimmy Tarbuck punchlines. (The Girls learned about it from the problem pages in Girls' magazines which were far dirtier than anything the Lady's magazines would have tolerated.) I suppose the current generation relies on pornographic YouTube videos which I think is on the whole an improvement. 

Spider-Man grew out of a comic called Amazing Adult Fantasy, although the fantasies it contained weren't adult in that sense. When Jack Kirby and Joe Simon arguably created the genre of "romance" comics in the 1950s, they claimed they were "designed for the more ADULT readers of comics." There was no sex, nor any suggestion of sex, but there were grown ups having relationships. (I recall one which turned on a middle class lady deciding to break off her relationship with a very decent church goin' fella because she has a criminal record for shoplifting. It turns out he knew from the beginning and didn't hold it against her. Awww...)

The adults in my survey all agreed that Spider-Man Comics Weekly was rather too old for the Boys in my survey. (It remained too old for them right up until they turned Twelve, when it became much too babyish.) I suspect that Stan Lee knew exactly what he was doing. Spider-Man was a comic for kids that was superficially designed to look like a comic for adults; just like the dating magazines were aimed at little Girls but designed to look as if they were for teenagers. The target audience for Spider-Man was people a little too young to read Spider-Man. Peter Parker was an eight-year-old's idea of a seventeen year old. He worries endlessly about a thing called "study" but there is no real sense of what he does at school or who his teachers are -- it's all just one mysterious grown up thing called Science. He worries about Gals but there are no clues as to why a superhero would want to spend time with one of these strange beings who stick life sized posters of David Cassidy on their doors and sit down to go to the toilet. Peter and Betty never actually go on a date. (He does on one occasion help Liz with her homework, and in fairness, that happens behind closed doors.) There is no sense of anyone being attracted to anyone else: literally not so much as a kiss. When Ned comes home and takes Betty for coffee, we realize it is all over. Coffee is about as close as we come to consummating a relationship. I suppose that is why the Coffee Bean Bar becomes important once Peter leaves High School. Girls mainly cause misery and complication. Boys fight for the ownership of particular females; females storm off in huffs if "their" guy so much as returns a lost handbag to another Woman. 

We can blame the Comics Code for some of this. There is a persistent oral tradition that the morality clause was so strict that writers were reluctant even to show married couples: if  there was a Mummy and a Daddy then it was hard to avoid the fact that there might also be a Bed. Peter Parker and Mary-Jane are both raised by their Aunts; Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacey were brought up by widowers; Johnny Storm was raised by his big sister. But even if the Comics Code was the proximate cause, the result was a comic that the Boys in our sample could easily make sense of: a pre-pubescent idea of what being grown up must be like. 


In 1974, a twenty page comic was incredibly long; and a seven day wait between episodes was an almost unimaginably long time. (Mary Whitehouse was kind of right about this: a little Boy's imagination can do a lot with the image of a drowning Tom Baker in a week.) This made it relatively easy to accept Stan Lee's confused approach to time and his fluctuating depiction of history. If Peter said "I have been longing for months for Betty to return" we were not inclined to say "Hang on, two issues ago you said you were over her." When you are eight, the week before last is somewhere in the last century, and for every twenty pages in the comic there are a hundred thousand pages in your mind. 

And anyway, if Spider-Man was in the category of grown-up things, I didn't expect to fully understand it. If there was a continuity error or an unresolved plot thread, I ignored it, or made up an explanation on the spot, or thought "I am sure all the Big Boys understand what happened there, and I had better pretend that I do as well or else the Big Boys will realize I am not one of them." Between the ages of eight and sixteen I believed that the word "albatross" simply meant "guilt", and rather suspected it of being a Stan Lee coinage. I was very confused when Monty Python based a whole sketch around people shouting the word for no reason. If anything, I was disappointed when I finally read the Ancient Mariner. I accepted without question that Marvel Comics were the highest form of literature. When Daddy said I could say up past my bedtime to watch The BBC Television Shakespeare (provided I was quiet) I was excited because Stan Lee said that if Shakespeare were alive today he would be writing Marvel Comics. So if Peter Parker's relationship with Betty Brant came to an end without any resolution, well, that was an example of how realistic and serious Marvel Comics were compared with those childish duck comics my sister read and especially compared with the TV Batman which I didn't watch, or if I did, only to remind myself of how much better Marvel was. 

"I think I am missing something here: I will probably understand when I am older" is by no means a bad way of approaching books.

(Church comes into it as well. Church was full of questions which the grown ups simply wouldn't answer.)

I wanted, very badly, for Peter and Betty to live happily ever after; and I wanted, very badly, for Gwen to stop being awful. I wanted equally badly for Dr Blake and Nurse Foster to get it together, because it was obviously what the nice doctor wanted. Yet Betty Brant is a fully realized character, and her relationship with Peter Parker has ups and downs, or at any rate, downs and ups. Jane Foster is not much more than a Barbie doll, a place holder for the love interest Stan Lee can't be bothered to write, a McGuffin for Thor to fall out with big daddy Odin over. Don Blake is barely a character either. But I honestly don't think that, in 1974, I could see the difference. Either I was missing something because I wasn't old enough or else I was filling in the gaps, or both. 

(And Star Wars, of course. Star Wars above all.)

So: in Spider-Man #40 we cut away from Spider-Man's big and long awaited confrontation with the Green Goblin, and listen in on Betty Brant, talking to herself on a railway station. How did that strike me in 1974? Was it a digression; a boring bit of chat which interrupted the Origin of the Green Goblin. But come to that, was the Green Goblin's long, and completely uninformative monologue just something that you had to plough through to get to the fight?

I have a memory of a memory of reading those pages for the first time. I can hear the incidental music that was playing in the background while Betty waited for her train. (I cannot possibly have been aware of Brief Encounter?) I do not know that I was consciously aware that a new artist had taken over Spider-Man, but I do think that I was aware that Betty looked different -- more glamorous, more posed, more like a lady in a film and less like a character in a comic. But overwhelmingly I remember feeling that these scenes referred to something that I had missed, or forgotten; oh yes, there has been a storyline about Betty's travels, how could I have forgotten that, I don't suppose all the Big Boys forgot about it. And almost immediately the issues which I read Long, Long Ago last month shuffled around in my head and it became that they had contained pages and pages about Betty's travels; so that when I came back to the post-Master-Planner issues recently I was surprised, shocked even. Was there really so little of Betty Brant? Did those few frames "stand in" for the whole period when she was travelling round America on a train, like a screen-memory? 

Yes, I did find those parts boring. No, I didn't always understand them. Yes, I liked the fact that my comic had boring Grown Up bits about love and pay cheques and graduation and science because it showed it was superior to those Other comics that had nothing to them but bombing raids and football matches and slipperings. 

And yes, when I say "it was superior" I do of course mean "I was superior". You don't actually have to be Jewish or a Mutant to understand that you are one of the Chosen People and the rest of the world can't really be expected to understand you. We may come onto the Tomorrow People next year.


So. That is what I thought about the Betty Brant subplot when I was a little Boy. But what do I think about the subplot now I am, arguably, a grown-up? 


I think that the treatment of Betty Brant is quite a serious problem. Steve Ditko thinks he is writing a soap opera; but Stan Lee hankers for the endless status-quo of conventional comics. Stan loves melodrama; he loves dramatic break ups, Peter running off, Betty banging on the door, the orchestra swelling as they break into a torch song. But he really wants to put everything back in its place for the next issue, so we can go through the whole thing all over again. He certainly doesn't have any sense of the chronology of his own titles. In #41, Peter and Betty have a tongue tied-cup of coffee. If Stan Lee remembers that this is the first time they have spoken in eight issues (and that they last time they met, they had a shouting row) he doesn't let on. 

Betty could have been written out of the story after the death of Bennet in issue #11. The story tied up all her plot-threads, and it nixed any chance of her and Peter living happily ever after. (I sometimes like to imagine that "beehive haircut Betty" and "brown bob haircut Betty" are two different people.) But then, she could also have been written out after the big symbolic ending of issue #30, when Spider-Man's ghost pushes the lovers apart. And certainly she could have been written out after the big row at the very end of Spider-Man #33. Indeed, I wonder if Ditko had intended #34 to be her last ever appearance? He was writing the stories and drawing the pictures, but Stan Lee was still adding the words. In Stan's dialogue she denies that Peter could possibly be Spider-Man, and decides to leave town for a bit. But what if she had woken up from her nightmare and said "Oh no...oh no... It's true! It must be true! Peter is Spider-Man... It all makes sense now! I must leave New York forever. And I will return Peter's picture so he understands..." Certainly, Ditko didn't ever draw Betty again: and once Ditko has left, almost the first thing that Lee does is re-introduce her to the story. 

The problem is not that subplots are left dangling. The problem is that under Stan Lee's stewardship, Spider-Man increasingly becomes the kind of comic where subplots can't be resolved -- where Peter and Gwen are always on the brink of breaking up; where Flash is always on the brink of realizing that Peter is not the weak sister he always took him for; where Aunt May has an infinite series of almost, but not quite, fatal heart attacks. 

Umberto Eco's great essay The Myth of Superman correctly identifies this kind of narrative stasis as an intrinsic part of the aesthetic of Superman -- of what we would now call the Silver Age, Earth-1, Pre-Crisis Superman. Lois Lane discovers Clark Kent's true identity on a monthly basis; but by the end of each issue, everything has returned to the starting point. It often feels as if the characters have their memories wiped on the final page of each episode. We meet Superman as an adult, who never ages: stories about Superman when he was a college student and a schoolboy and a baby are retrospectively added to the narrative as flashbacks and prequels. Spider-Man, on the other hand, starts out as a school boy of maybe 15 and grows into a college student more or less in real time.

But after #33, his life pretty much just freezes: for a hundred issues at least, nothing happens. Until the Very Bad Thing On The Bridge, Peter will be caught in a love triangle with Gwen and Mary-Jane; he will just barely achieve a balance between college and crime-fighting and Aunt May will have so many heart attacks we won't know what to do with them all. 

But Superman is never presented as anything other than a fairy tale or a sequence of children's stories: of course all the toys are put back in their proper places when we have finished playing with them. Spider-Man exists in a world of contemporary slang, where hippies go on non-specific demonstrations, and Flash Thompson is drafted to Vietnam. Time ought to move forward: but Stan Lee needs Spider-Man to remain a constant brand.

The endless un-resolvable cycle of Peter and Betty's break-up is an early symptom of this disease. 

From the late 70s into the mid 90s, Chris Claremont's X-Men was by far the most popular and beloved Marvel Comic. It was unashamedly a soap opera: stuff happened, but nothing happened; there was change -- characters, good guys even, died -- but it was still definitely the X-Men. One month the huge nothing-will ever-be-the-same-again plot development would be that Evil Magneto realizes the error of his ways, turns himself in, and ends up helping Prof X run the school. We are just barely given long enough to accept this as a status quo before we are told that in the most amazing and shocking nothing-will-ever-be-the-same-again plot development of all time, Magneto is going to become a villain. 

And so on, forever. 

Len Wein who created the New X-Men said that fans do not want change. Fans only want the illusion of change. And I am not saying that he is wrong.

A Close Reading of the First Great Graphic Novel in American Literature
by
Andrew Rilstone

Andrew Rilstone is a writer and critic from Bristol, England. This essay forms part of his critical study of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original Spider-Man comic book. 

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Amazing Spider-Man was written and drawn by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and is copyright Marvel Comics. All quotes and illustrations are use for the purpose of criticism under the principle of fair dealing and fair use, and remain the property of the copyright holder.

 Please do not feed the troll. 

Monday, September 03, 2018

Thank you for everyone who said nice things about my last couple of essays.

Here is a song.

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Actually, It's About Ethics in Doctor Who Journalism.

or
Why I am no longer talking to Doctor Who fans about race
                 

Tom Baker is my favourite Doctor; Philip Hinchcliffe is my favourite producer; Talons of Weng-Chiang my favourite story. That would have been my position this time last week; and it would be hypocritical to pretend it has changed. It's not a controversial stance. A fortnight ago it would have been about as edgy as saying that Sgt. Pepper was my favourite album or Citizen Kane my favourite movie.

Talons of Weng-Chiang was the final story of the fourteenth season of Doctor Who, first shown in 1977. It's a pastiche of Victorian pulp horror, weaving elements of Frankenstein, Dracula, Jack the Ripper, Phantom of the Opera and Sherlock Holmes into a single story. Tom Baker forgoes his floppy hat in favour of a deerstalker: even the giant rat of Sumatra puts in an appearance.

The BBC are very good at historical costume drama, and Robert Holmes is the best script writer that Doctor Who ever had. The story is full of beautiful little period moments. We all remember when Litefoot the police doctor tried to explain the niceties of English tea to Leela:

-- Oh no, only one lump for ladies!
-- Then why ask me how many I wanted?

And the scene in which he and the theater owner try to remain stiff upper lipped in the face of certain death is so good it very nearly spawned a spin-off series.

--I'm not so bally brave when it comes to it.
--When it comes to it I don't suppose anybody is.

At the exact center of the story is a stage magician called Le H'sen Chang, who is the pawn of the evil Chinese god Weng Chaing, who (as is the way with these things) turns out to be a war criminal with a time machine. Chang's appearance and demeanor is based obviously and unapologetically on Fu Manchu, and the story draws heavily on pulp cliches about sinister Limehouse Chinamen. Naturally, Chang is played by a white British actor in yellow make up. 

Doctor Who Magazine has, for a number of years, carried a feature called Time Team in which a group of younger fans give their first impressions of older episodes. The original feature ran for over a decade, and reviewed every episode of the classic series from Unearthly Child to Survival. The magazine recently relaunched the column with a panel of twelve viewers under the age of 22: people who grew up with the post-2005 version of the show. In the new feature, the panel comment on a selection of thematically linked episodes from different eras. In the most recent issue, they looked at three pseudo-historical stories: The Time Warrior (Jon Pertwee in medieval England), Thin Ice (Peter Capaldi in 19th century London) and the first episode of Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Time Team isn't about in-depth criticism: it's about first reactions. "OMG Linx looks like a potato!" and all that that entails. But it's intelligent and nuanced: they are neither saying "har-har wasn't old days TV awful" nor are they annotating sacred texts. When they look at the Time Warrior, they really like the character of Sarah-Jane but feel she is reduced too quickly to a damsel in distress. Some of them feel that the Third Doctor is sexist towards her, but some of them feel that he doesn't really mean it.

Their response to the first episode of Talons of Weng-Chiang is about as uncontroversial as anything can possibly be. They think that it is a really good story, but that it is ever so slightly incredibly racist. They say things like: "I was really engaged. It felt exciting like a detective story. It's just the racist stuff that's like, no." and "The music, the atmosphere, every shot is just beautiful" and  "...It portrays a race of people from the real world as villains...based on derogatory stereotypes... Yeah, not good."

So. Millennials watch Old Who and come to pretty much the same conclusion that Grumpy Old Fans reached decades ago. Great story, shame about the racism. Nothing more to say.

But Marcus Hearn, editor of Doctor Who Magazine has a great deal more to say. He uses his editorial to set the young folks straight. This strikes me as a curious editorial procedure—hiring a young, diverse panel to offer a fresh take on Doctor Who and then warning the readers not to pay too much attention to them. But it's none of my business how Hearn runs his magazine.

Hearn thinks that the panelists were wrong to find a TV show in which a white man yellows up to play Fu Manchu a teeny weeny bit racist.

His reasons are as follows:

1: Talons of Weng-Chiang is not racist because it was made a long time ago.

2: Talons of Weng-Chiang is not racist because it was not intended to be racist.

3: Talons of Weng-Chiang is not racist because the director, producer and writer were not racists.

4: Talons of Weng-Chiang was not racist because it was a pastiche of the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu Movies.

5: Talons of Weng-Chiang was not racist because it was made a long time ago. Again.


Is Talons of Weng-Chiang racist?

This is the wrong question to be asking. Of course Talons of Weng-Chiang is racist: any idiot can see that. You might as well ask "Was the Aztecs filmed in black and white?" or "Did Nicholas Parsons appear in the Curse of Fenric."

The right question to be asking is "Was racism the only thing about it? Does racism obliterate everything else in the story? Is there anything to talk about apart from the most obvious thing?"

I have watched Talons of Weng-Chiang five times at the very least, and enjoyed it every time. I remember watching it (many years ago now) with a college science fiction society, and overhearing people who were not fans saying that they could hardly believe just how good it was...much too good to be a Doctor Who story. (And also the rat.)

What was going on? I can only think of three possibilities.

1: We enjoyed Talons of Weng-Chiang because it was racist. We were like the man who claims to like fine art but really goes to galleries because it gives him a pretext to look at ladies boobies. We may have said "Ha-ha what a tellingly droll piece of dialogue" but what we were really thinking was "Hurrah! At last we can all get together and have a jolly good laugh at the Chinks!"

2: We enjoyed it despite its being racist. We were prepared to forgive or overlook the racist caricatures because the story was so overwhelmingly fun and well made. In some jurisdictions "redeeming artistic importance" can be a defense against a criminal charge of indecency.

3: We didn't notice that it was racist. We just took it for granted that melodramas contain evil men with yellow faces and long mustaches who can't say their Rs, in much the same way that we took it for granted that space operas included mad scientists with Russio/German accents who say "Nuzzink in ze vurld can stop me now!"

We liked it because it was racist; we liked it despite it being racist; and we didn't notice it was racist. There are, logically, no other options.

And all three positions are, quite obviously, racist. It is racist to not care that something racist is racist; and it is certainly racist to not notice that something racist is racist. If anything, option 3 "It didn't occur to us that there was anything racist about it" is rather less forgivable than "Hooray! We get to dis the Ching-Chongs".  

There is a fourth position, which probably no-one reading this blog would take but which people have taken with me in the past: that Weng-Chiang belongs to a special category of art that has to be experienced in a state of mystical passivity.  You must not think about it and you certainly must not articulate your thoughts. You must merely let it wash over you. "Get over yourself, Andrew. This is just a TV programme, a bit of popular entertainment. Stop analyzing it." The more fanatical a Doctor Who fan a person is the more likely they are to invoke the "this is just a bit of ephemeral rubbish" defense.


Yes, as a matter of fact, I did have a Golly-Wog when I was a child.

And two things are true. I loved my Golly, and I never particularly associated him with the black children in my class, of whom there weren't any. I never gave him de funny Camp Town races doo dah voice when I role played with him. Well, hardly ever. My parents were card carrying liberal Guardian reading CND badge wearing lefties. They would have been mortified if anyone had suggested that buying a Golly-Wog for their little boy was in the least bit racist.

And there is the whole problem. 

We are too willing to limit the definition of "racism" to "being personally bigoted", "being directly horrible to individual people of colour." I have struggled with this myself, particularly over gender issues. I have been far too willing to say "It's true he doesn't think you should be allowed to get married, but he himself is not homophobic."

The least bigoted family you can imagine go to the least bigoted toy shop you can imagine and buy a doll that their child plays with in an entirely non bigoted way. No-one sees themselves as being racist. 

No-one is being racist.

And yet the doll is a fucking grinning blackface caricature.

I loved my Golly. I still have him somewhere.


Let us have a look at the Editor's Defense of the Indefensible.

"If you were making Talons of Weng-Chiang today you'd certainly do it differently."

If you were making Marco Polo today, you'd certainly do it differently. You wouldn't cast an English actor (Martin Miller) as Kubla Kahn, and you certainly wouldn't use elastoplast to give him slitty eyes. But there is nothing particularly wrong with the portrayal of Kahn: it's the whole idea of casting white actors in Asian roles we have trouble with. Fix that and you've fixed the story.

If you were making Tomb of the Cybermen today you'd certainly do it differently. You wouldn't make Toberman such a dreadful stereotype. There is really no need for the person who nobly lays down his life in the final episode to be a strong, loyal mute. And even if there is, he could just as well have been a strong, loyal, Caucasian mute.

If you were making Talons of Weng-Chiang today, you'd certainly cast a Chinese actor as Le H'sen Chang. But if the yellow face make-up was the only problem, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We could all just say "Yes, I know! It was a theatrical convention in those days!! What ever were we thinking!!!" and move on.  

But it isn't just the make-up. The sinophobia -- Limehouse opium dens, martial arts, the Tong, sinister laundries, kidnapped white women, funny voices, exotic temples -- run through the story like the word "racist" through a stick of racist rock. It is a major part of the aesthetic. It is -- whisper it softly -- one of the things we like about the story. The cod Chinese aesthetic is one of the things we are talking about when we talk about how superlatively well done it all is. And that isn't something that can be fixed. No one imagines we could say "Oh, let's remake Weng-Chiang, but this time make him, I don't know, Swiss."  In Marco Polo and Tomb of the Cybermen, the racism is a bug. In Weng-Chiang it is very much a feature.

"1976, when this serial began production, was a very long time ago."

This is the only thing in the editorial which I wholeheartedly agree with.

"And you can't judge the past by the standards of the present."

Yes you can.

Really, you can.  

Watch me.

"In 1952, Alan Turing was tried in a criminal court and given libido suppressing drugs as a punishment for being gay. This was wrong."

"In 1900 in the UK, women were not allowed to vote in elections. This was wrong."

"Until 1954 black children were not allowed to go to the same schools as white children in some parts of America. This was wrong."

That wasn't so difficult, was it?


"I'm sure that nobody involved with the production of Talons intended to cause offence to any viewers or the ethnic minority represented by the characters in the serial. And the intention behind the work is to me a crucial factor."

Talking about the "intention" of a work is incredibly problematic. It locates the work's meaning outside of the text, in the subjectivity of a person called "the author" who may not even be alive. Talons of Weng-Chiang is a thing; it exists; anyone who can be bothered to put a DVD in the toaster can watch it; and anyone who has watched it may have an opinion about it. The "intentions" of the writer and the producer are a matter of conjecture.

Marcus Hearne is sure that Robert Holmes, Philip Hinchcliffe and David Maloney were not racists. I am sure he is right.  But in 1977 they consciously and freely decided to make a Fu Manchu pastiche.

The poisonous content of the story doesn't magically go away because "some of my best friends are Chinese". The poisonous content of the story doesn't magically go away because Robert Holmes sat at his typewriter in 1976 and intended really really hard for his story not to offend anyone. If you don't think the content is poisonous, then by all means show us how we are mistaken. Show us that you've looked at the episode more carefully than we have and spotted stuff that we've missed. Be the better critic. But don't appeal to some nebulous idea about what may or may not have been in a dead writer's mind forty years ago.


"In many key respects Talons was inspired by the penny-dreadful booklets that caused a sensation in Victorian England. The spirit of these lurid stories endured in Sax Rohmer's Dr Fu Manchu and elsewhere. Robert Holmes would almost certainly have been familiar with the films based on that criminal master-mind... He was banking on the fact that his audience were too... Quite understandably, many of these films have been locked in a section of the archive marked 'problematic' making it harder for a young, modern audience to appreciate what Holmes pastiche was attempting to subvert..."

This, on the other hand, is an actual concrete argument. Let's not worry about the scare quotes around "problematic" or ask whether Sax Rohmer's pulps really had anything to do with the penny dreadfuls of fifty years earlier. Let's see if the argument stands up.  If it does, then I am wrong, the time team are wrong, Elisabeth Sandifer is wrong and we can all watch our favourite story with a clear conscience.  

Here is Talons of Weng-Chiang, the Case for the Defence

1: Robert Holmes based the sinophobic tropes in Talons of Weng-Chiang on the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu movies.

2: The BBC had shown The Vengeance of Fu Manchu, The Face of Fu Manchu and the Brides of Fu Manchu (in that order) over three consecutive Wednesdays in 1975.

3: The audience who watched Talons of Weng-Chiang in 1977 can therefore be assumed to have recognized the source of Holmes' tropes.

4: Modern audiences are unlikely to have seen the Fu Manchu movies, so they can be assumed to be unfamiliar with these tropes.

5: You have to be familiar with the Fu Manchu tropes in order to access the true meaning of Talons of Weng-Chiang. 

6: Therefore modern audiences cannot access the original meaning of the story.

7: Those with knowledge of the Fu Manchu movies would have been able to perceive that Robert Holmes was subverting racist tropes, rather than presenting them uncritically. Those without that knowledge are unable to perceive that element of subversion.  

I agree that context makes a difference. I agree that lack of context can lead to misunderstanding. I remember seeing An Unearthly Child for the very first time at Panopticon 2 in 1978 and being Totally Blown Away by it. Jeremy Bentham introduced it, asking us to pretend that we had no idea who Susan Foreman was or why her grandfather was so reclusive, and that Police Boxes were so common that we walked past one every day without noticing it. And that's a perfectly useful piece of context-setting. As useful as your GCSE teacher gently explaining that, yes, when Pygmalion was written "bloody" was regarded as a really dirty word. If someone were stupid enough to say "An Unearthly Child is a waste of space because everyone knows the mysterious Police Box is really a TARDIS from the planet Gallifrey" I would certainly write an editorial in my magazine setting them straight.

On the other hand, the original context is never recoverable. You can't watch An Unearthly Child in ignorance of the fact that the Police Box is bigger-on-the-inside; and you do, in fact know whose daddy Darth Vader is. I myself have said that modern audiences can't possibly understand the impact that Star Wars had when it first came out -- how strange and different it was -- and that's true. But if the only authentic experience is that of the first night audience, then the true meaning of most books and movies and TV shows is lost forever and there is no point talking about them.

I suppose that when you say that a movie is racist, or sexist or dirty it is fair to compare it with the background levels of racism, sexism and smut in the culture around it. The original Star Trek is much more racist than the background levels of racism in our present day culture and certainly today's TV. There is only one black character, and all she does is answer the phone! But as we all know, the original Star Trek was much less racist then the background levels of racism in the 1960s: most TV shows didn't have any people of colour in them at all.  

But is that really the best we can do? Talons is more racist than anything which would be shown on TV today but it was less racist than the background levels of racism on TV in the 1970s? (The Fu Manchu films continued to be shown until 1983; and notoriously the BBC only dropped it's black-face minstrel show in 1978) The Young People are wrong to say "Whoah! A white dude playing an incredibly racist caricature of a Chinese guy! Not cool!" What they ought to have said was "Gosh! A white chappie playing an incredibly racist caricature of a Chinese fellow! But it's obviously based on those movies I watched on BBC 2 last year! And the white chappie in those films played an even more incredibly racist caricature of a Chinese fellow! So that's all right then!"

I am not convinced. Are you convinced?

This leaves us with one more possibility. The people who knew the mystical code-tropes would have understood that Robert Holmes was not merely copying the racist imagery from the Christopher Lee movies. He was subverting it.

Fine word, "subverting". Taking an idea and turning it on its head. Making a film where the Sheriff of Nottingham was an honest policeman and Robin Hood was a terrorist; producing a panto where Cinderella leaves the prince and runs away with Dandini. Trying to read Hamlet on the assumption that the prince is really bonkers and the ghost only exists in his head.

So there is the defense, and its a good one. Talons of Weng-Chiang subverts the racist cliches of Fu Manchu. We start out with racist ideas about devil doctors who kidnap white women, but only in order to show how silly those ideas are. It turns out that everyone has been very silly and unfair and jumped to the wrong conclusions about the Chinese community and everyone comes to a better understanding of the difference between European and Asian culture and sits down to fish and chips and chop suey together....

Er... No. It is perfectly true that Chang becomes slightly less two dimensional as the story moves on; and that he is allowed a sympathetic death scene. (Did I mention that Robert Holmes is a very good writer?) But the whole cod-Chinese aesthetic of the story is never remotely challenged or repudiated and sympathetic characters say some pretty racist stuff without the Doctor challenging them. (This is all covered in great and good-natured detail in Kate Orman's essay.) One villain turns out not to be quite so villainous after all -- you don't need any esoteric knowledge of  old Christopher Lee movies to understand that. But one repentant bad guy doesn't wipe out a story full of anti-Chinese cliches.

I was going to conclude with a brief survey of the twitter storm which has blown up around this issue, but I don't really have the heart. It was utterly, utterly predictable. Abuse towards the Time Team panel for being young; accusations of insincerity -- oh, they didn't really care about race or diversity but were just virtue signalling. All the usual whataboutery, oh, but if only yellow people can play yellow roles then we'll have to censure the Time Warrior because Kevin Lindsay isn't really a Sontaran. People who experience the claim "this is racist" as a personal attack on them and jolly well swear to go away and watch some Charlie Chan films just to show us. And unbelievably nasty, attacks on people who defended the original article and took exception to the editorial. Actually, I think that Elisabeth Sandifer possibly maybe sort of overstepped the mark in saying that Marcus Hearn should resign or be fired. But nothing justifies the kind of abuse she was subjected to. Fandom is an all or nothing world. Once someone is on the wrong side of a particular issue, they are sad, failing writers who have never done or said anything worth while in their lives. (It's a very Trumpian tactic.) It wasn't orchestrated; it was people blurting because they felt that a TV show they once liked was being taken away from them. We are still several months from a DoctorWhoGate. But it has the same effect. It drives people off social media. I don't know how I would write a review of Season 11 in the present climate. I wouldn't be talking about whether I liked a TV show or not. I'd be aligning myself with one or other side in a surrogate culture war. And I'd be at risk of people shouting at me. Which ever side I took. It's not fun any more.

Talons of Weng-Chiang is incredibly racist. Talons of Weng-Chiang is my favourite Doctor Who story. I loved my Gollywog. Why are we still even talking about this?

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Libertarian Bell

Some times, at folk music festivals, after the main act has finished, there is a "sing-around" in a pub, where the punters are asked to sing a song of their own choosing. (People like this, because they fondly imagine that pub singing of this kind is where folk music began.) When it comes to my turn, I generally pass and say that I cannot sing. A nice man always says "Come on, Andrew, everyone can sing a little bit." So last time this happened I tried to sing/recite "Don't Go In Them Lions Cage Tonight".
Since then, he has stopped asking me.
A number of my Patreon supporters have said that they wished I wrote more about politics.
So this is me, writing more about politics.
I fully expect it to have the same affect as the folk song in the pub.

1: Introduction
M'learned friend drew my attention to the following essay in the Economist, a right-leaning British periodical.
A philosophy lecturer from Sussex University, Kathleen Stock, wrote an essay for the same magazine. She took issue (from a rather dry, philosophical standpoint) with the proposition that people who were anatomically male could be said to "really" be female. She didn't say they definitely couldn't be; but she thought there could be unintended consequences of re-defining what "female" meant.
Some of the students at Sussex University were outraged by the article, which they felt was prejudiced against transexual people. The Student Union issued a statement condemning the lecturer.
The writer of the present article, one Claire Fox from something called the Institute of Ideas, is outraged by the students' outrage and condemns their condemnation. She thinks that nowadays it is progressives who are trying to police what can and can't be said, and that modern liberalism contains a dangerous streak of authoritarianism.

Matters quickly escalate, and before long things are blasphemous and taboo and everyone is being denounced, vilified and damned.
Here is Ms. Fox:
The Sussex Students’ Union denounced (Kathleen Stock) as a transphobe. In the union's original statement, it declared “we will not tolerate hate on our campus.” “Trans and non-binary lives are not a debate.”

These key tropes —“we will not tolerate” and “this is not a debate”—  are now frequently deployed to curtail discussion of issues deemed to be taboo, invariably to “protect” people deemed vulnerable from speech deemed hateful. This secular version of blasphemy follows a sacred script, written by those who consider themselves liberals. Dare to query it and you’ll be damned.

M'learned friend, who drew my attention to the article, said that he knew I didn't like the phrase "political correctness" but that the state of play at Sussex University was analogous to the situation which prevailed in the UK before the Catholic Emancipation Act — when  only people who were prepared to sign up to the Articles of the Church of England were allowed to study at University.
I felt that this was a little bit on the strong side.

2: Political Correctness Goes Mad In Dorset
You wouldn't say "Jewish Conspiracy" if what you meant was "I'm afraid Mr Levi and Mr Cohen are going to vote together to kick me off the PTA". You wouldn't say "He has a wonderful sense of rhythm" if what you meant was "he is a talented percussionist". And you wouldn't say "elf and safety gone mad" if what you meant was "are you quite sure there is really some regulation which says I can't have a glass of water?" So why say "Political Correctness" if what you mean is "prevailing orthodoxy", "self-censorship" or even "over-politeness"?
There is no such thing as Political Correctness: it is a fictional concept, invented by conspiracy theorists who think that a secret society of Jewish intellectuals in Frankfurt are plotting the overthrow of civilization as we know it. 
Are there such things as prevailing orthodoxy, self-censorship and over-politeness? Of course there are. Just try saying "The Queen is terrible at her job", "There is no need to respect our servicemen" or "I am a big fan of Gary Glitter" and see how far you get.
Are there things which you just can't say nowadays? I seriously doubt it. Most of the things which you just can't say are said all the bloody time. "You can't say that trans women are not women": no; and if you do, you will be asked to write a long think piece in the Economist. "You can't complain about religious dress": no, and if you do, you will be paid a huge sum of money to write a column in the Daily Telegraph and be interviewed in every news outlet in the country. "You can't talk about immigration", no, and during the EU referendum campaign neither side wanted to talk about anything else.
In practice "You will be damned, denounced, vilified and treated like a non-conformist prior to 1829" actually seems to mean "Someone in the Guardian will write a rude article about you, and the University of Sussex Student Union will pass a jolly stiff resolution."
I will not be locked up if I speak against the royal family and the army and in favour of pedophiles. No-one will come and smash my printing press. But the chorus of disapproval would make Sussex University's motion of censure against their philosophy teacher seem like the mild rustling of programmes at the back of the auditorium.

3: The Great Farron Flip Flop
Here is Ms Fox again:
I still consider myself a liberal in the Enlightenment sense of the word. But I have to admit that being a liberal these days is confusing.....
.....In contrast, today’s so-called progressive liberals are often intolerant, calling for official censure against anyone perceived as uttering non-progressive views.
Far from being a challenging paradox, the idea of "illiberal liberals" is a rhetorical cliche, on a level with "if you are so keen on socialism why don't you go and live there?" and "if men evolved from monkeys how come there are still monkeys?"
"Liberal" in the old-fashioned British sense means someone who believes that it is the job of government to make wise laws which maximize individual freedom. "Liberal" in the modern American sense means simply "of the left" or "progressive" or simply "socialist". The extreme right use it as a cuss word to describe anyone who isn't on the extreme right. 
So if I talk about illiberal liberals then I am saying nothing more than "People who are liberal in the American sense are not always liberal in the British sense", which we knew already. The same person might very well want to improve the standards of education for everyone but be prepared in so doing to curtail the freedom of rich people to educate their children privately. Ms Fox's essay is predicated on a piece of word play.

3: Arooga! Arooga!
A cursory look at the coverage of the so-called “Free Tommy” brigade, centered around the alleged censorship of Tommy Robinson, a notorious anti-Islam campaigner, reveals how liberals shun defending the free-speech rights of the unpalatable. Yes, I find many of Mr Robinson’s views odious, but a pick’n’mix attitude to free speech betrays liberalism, not Mr Robinson, and worse, it adds to the myth that “free speech” is a “right-wing” cause. 
This paragraph should set off a major klaxon. A story about a man being sent to jail for contempt of court has morphed into a story about a man being denied freedom of speech because other people don't like his views.

I certainly don't like Tommy Robinson's views, if they even count as "views". He believes in "the right of English people to their own country over and above people from elsewhere" and has a massive bee in his bonnet about their being more Muslim folk in this country than there used to be, or as he puts it "the struggle against global Islamification." But he was sent to prison for taking photographs inside a court, which is not allowed in the UK;  and for live-streaming photographs of defendants in a case where the judge had imposed reporting restrictions. There will be no prizes for guessing the ethnicity or faith background of the defendants in question. 
You could, I suppose, say that "free speech" by definition includes the freedom to make comments which are prejudicial to an ongoing trial after you have been told not to; in which case it is literally true that anyone punished for contempt of court has had their freedom of speech curtailed. Similarly, you might say that a citizen forced to pay compensation to another citizen after defaming them; or a civil servant prosecuted for breaching the Official Secrets Act have had their freedom of speech inhibited. But how is any of this connected with students snarling at a philosophy lecturer about an article they didn't like? Is there some connection between the ancient British law of contempt and the recent emergence of these illiberal liberals?
Ms Fox appears to think that liberals (British sense) should have sided with the Free Tommy campaign because what was at stake was an individual's freedom of speech. She suggests that these liberals adopted a "pick and mix attitude to free speech". This appears to mean that she thinks that freedom of speech is indivisible: that if you defend it in one case you have to defend it in every case. If you believe in the freedom of the press to hold the government to account you must logically also believe in the freedom of a far-right podcaster to make prejudicial comments about a trial  and also, presumably, the freedom to shout "fire!" in a crowded theater. It is possible that Ms Fox, a libertarian, does believe in the absolute and unqualified freedom to say whatever you like whenever you like regardless of context. But this is not something which either kind of liberal has ever been in favour of.  
"The British contempt laws are not compatible with Article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights " might be a perfectly feasible position. "Tommy Robinson shouldn't have been punished for taking photos inside a court because liberals" not so much.
I doubt very much if Ms Fox really believes that Tommy Robinson's imprisonment had anything to do with freedom of speech. I think that the paragraph is best understood as a kind of mating cry to People Who Are Not Liberals (In The American Sense). I think that People Who Are Not Liberals (In The American Sense) will hear "Free Tommy....censorship....Tommy Robinson....liberals....free speech....free speech....free speech." And they will instantly pick up the message: "It's okay. I'm on your side."

4:  Bound to Lose, Bound to Lose, You're Bound To Lose
The writer says that liberals (American sense) didn't defend Tommy Robinson because they found his views "unpalatable". She also talks about free speech being tossed aside "to silence those labelled as intolerant" and says that liberals want to prevent speech which is "deemed" hateful, and to censure views which are "perceived" as non-progressive.

Labelled, deemed, progressive. She cannot bring herself to say that people like Tommy Robinson really are intolerant and hateful; merely that illiberal liberals label them and perceive them as such. And she thinks that "liberals" (American sense) merely find him "unpalatable"  as if disapproving of ethnonationalism were a matter of taste, like preferring Irish whiskey to Scotch. 
But this unleashes a massive can of unstated assumption worms. Are liberals only being illiberal in cases where they try to silence a perfectly harmless person who they have falsely labelled or deemed intolerant? Or are they also illiberal when they try to silence someone who really is intolerant and hateful? Or is there in fact no such thing as intolerance and hatred? Is the claim "Some of the people you accuse of being witches are not witches at all: be very careful before you proceed". Or is the claim "Stop hunting witches, you silly children: there is no such thing."

A case could probably be made that some students at Sussex unfairly took against what was intended to be a dry, logical essay on how we define terms like "male" and "female". But Claire Fox's essay is illustrated with pictures of demonstrators holding up placards saying "No platform for fascists". Are we to take away the message: "Careful now. Perhaps the people you want to de-platform are not really fascists at all?" Or is it "If you would refuse a platform to anyone, even a literal fascist, you are no true liberal."
Not allowing a fascist to speak in your meeting hall; and refusing to appear at a meeting to which a fascist has been invited seems to be a pretty moderate form of censorship. I would not be in favour of saying "no platform for people who supported the bedroom tax" or "no platform for people who think Mrs Thatcher was quite right about the coal mines" or "no platform for people who think Corbyn has it wrong about trade unions." That kind of stuff we can and should debate. But your British National Parties and Britain Firsts and English Defense Leagues? You should certainly be free to join that kind of club. I would take a dim view of anyone who tried to stop you. I disagree with what you say but will defend to the point of mild inconvenience your right to say it. But don't think I am going to help you say it or facilitate your saying it. Don't expect me to appear at your meeting or let you borrow my hall.

And don't expect me to be your friend.

Don't you think it is a little bit suspicious that the Right is saying that it is dangerously illiberal of the Left to refuse to share a platform with people whose views they don't like while at the exact same moment they denounce, vilify and damn the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition because he has, in the past, shared a platform with people whose views they don't like?


5: H.P Sauce is the Great British Sauce
I suppose that at one time "identity politics" had a meaning. It described the kind of thinking which says "I support Labour because I am a Labour supporter; I am a Labour supporter because my father and my grandfather before me supported Labour": your political affiliation was part of who you were. But like Political Correctness and Liberal, the term "identity politics" has become a right-wing snarl word. At this moment, a nasty group of fans are boycotting Marvel and trying to set up their own company because they see comic books like Ms Marvel, Moon Girl and Ultimate Spider-Man as being full of "identity politics". What they mean  — literally the only thing they mean — is that Ms Marvel's parents are from Pakistan and she is a cultural Muslim; that Moon Girl is African American and Miles Morales is Hispanic. The tendency to use "identity" to mean "non-white" and indeed "non-white and therefore bad" reached its ludicrous end point last week when someone literally and without irony said that sales of mayonnaise were falling because young people preferred "identity condiments".

6: Conclusion: In Which The Various Threads of The Argument Are Drawn Together, And Pigs Fly
How far should intolerance be tolerated is a good question.
One answer would be "Always, without qualification, and without question: if you are tolerant of immigrants cooking unfamiliar food, then you must be equally tolerant of newspapers saying that those same immigrants should be put down like cockroaches."
Another answer would be "Never, without compromise: the slightest suggestion that someone has criticized a fellow citizen's dress, religion or sexuality must be stamped on without mercy."
In between there are many shades of grey. Fifty or more. Most of us, whether we call ourselves liberal or not, fall into that grey area.
But the Economist essay is not talking about shades of grey. The Economist essay seems to envisage a situation where the poor reasonable souls who calmly explain to transsexuals that they might want to think a little bit more systematically about the philosophy of gender are SILENCED and PROSECUTED by the intolerant left. And yet only last week I read that someone had taken the trouble to walk along Crosby sea front sticking cocks on all the statues along with the slogan "women don't have penises". Someone stuck a cock on the statue of Colston in Bristol yesterday, although sadly on his plinth, not his crotch. Just imagine: someone took the trouble to draw this thing, and then spent money on getting it printed, and then distributed roles of stickers to all their friends; and then someone must have gone out with stickers in their pocket, deliberately looking for places to display them. Imagine being that person. Imagine caring enough about other people's bits to think it worthwhile.
Statue of Edward Colston, Bristol, 25 Sep 2018

An article that said "Hey! Both sides! Take it down a notch!" might possibly have been worth writing. But anyone whose response to this kind of thing is "Gosh! Aren't liberals a problem!" needs to take a long hard look at their values. 
I think that from 1945 to about 2000, there was a broad "liberal" (American sense) consensus across all political parties. Fascists were no platformed by default. People like Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson existed, but they were mostly marching behind black flags in out of the way drill halls, not being invited to speak on mainstream talk shows and being lauded by the President of the U.S.A. Enoch Powell wasn't prosecuted or imprisoned as a result of the so-called "rivers of blood" speech, but he was kicked out of the Conservative Party and remained on the political sidelines for the rest of his life. But the rise of Trump and Farage has allowed the intolerant and the hateful  the kinds of people who compare refugees with rats and cockroaches and call black people semi-savages, and think that slavery wasn't too bad and anyway the South never supported slavery  to express their views in public.
And when decent folk in all political parties refuse to engage with them we get articles in the Economist saying "why has the left become so intolerant all of a sudden."

7: Conclusion, in which the exegete cleverly deconstructs the article's major premise and leaves the stage to massive cheers.
You probably noted that Ms Fox specifically says that she is quoting from the Sussex Student Union's original statement.
If you go to the Student Union's website, you will find that the original statement is not there.
You will instead find the revised statement, which merely states that the Union is "in solidarity" with trans and non-binary students, and that they "strongly disagree" with the views of Dr Kathleen Stock."
I can, if I wish, read Dr Stock's dull essay on the Economist magazine's website.
I can, if I wish, read Claire Fox's screed about the intolerant toleratti.
But I cannot find out what the Student Union originally said about Dr Stock.
Because someone has persuaded or compelled them to remove it.
I look forward to a future essay in the Economist asking why the Sussex University Student Union have been denied their freedom of speech in this regard.



It is probably too late to stop me from publishing my notes on Boris Johnson and Talons of Weng Chiang, but if you join my Patreon you might be able to divert me into something more interesting next month. 

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

I Think This Getting Needlessly Dialectical

If it is the intention to expose comprehensively the downside of recipients of statues in Bristol, why stop at Colston. To the equestrian statue of William of Orange in Queen's Square could be added "He complied with the invitation from a group of traitors to depose the rightful king, James 2nd." To Cary Grant's: "He was a serial adulterer." To Edward VII's "He was a frequenter of French brothels". To Queen Victoria's; "As Empress of India, she ruled over the oppression of millions of Indians. Of course this will not happen. 

We know our new masters.

Letter, Evening Post, 31/7


"In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man."

Enoch Powell, April, 1968



intrigued but not surprised to find out that the Colston Cultists are Jacobites, incidentally. 








Sunday, July 29, 2018

The Last Days of Dangling Plot Thread Woman

After all, my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?


How do you follow the most iconic scene in the history of comic books? 

Spider-Man has conquered his inner demons; exorcised his albatross; saved his Aunt and demanded fair pay from his boss. So what happens next? Steve Ditko needed to come up with something very special indeed if he was going to surpass the legendary Spider-Man-lifts-something-really-really-heavy sequence from #33. He needed something that would make our collective jaws drop; something which would change Spider-Man forever. He needed something which every previous issue had been building towards, and which would affect every issue to come.

And dammit if, just for a second, it doesn't look as if he is going to pull it off. 

Spider-Man 34

It comes, as all great scenes do, from nowhere. After twenty seven issues of dancing around the question, Betty Brant asks Peter Parker directly: "I know you are keeping some terrible secret from me; you must tell me what it is." And after all the lies and hypocrisy, Peter Parker gives her a straight answer. He calmly climbs up the wall, hangs upside down from the ceiling and rips open his shirt. "Peter?" he says "That's just one of the names I'm known by. I also answer to another name. The name of Spider-Man." He pronounces the last word in blood red letters, Jessie Custer style, just in case Betty misses the point. 

And then she wakes up.


Betty Brant was never meant to be Lois Lane. She drifts through issues #2, #3 and #4 as a background character; only in #5 does Peter Parker notice that she's really pretty, and not until #6 does he ask her out. It isn't clear Peter and Betty ever go on what you would really call a date; but issue #7 ends with them chastely embracing behind Mr Jameson's desk. It's a lovely ending to one of my favourite Spider-Man tales. Geeky Peter has stopped whimpering and found someone he really gets on with.

But a happy relationship does not a story make: and an engagement would have spoiled Peter Parker's teenage appeal. So Stan and Steve set about making the path of true love as rough as they possibly can. First they turn Betty Brant into "the girl with the dark secret". She cryptically refers to a mysterious tragedy in her past; and she appears to be being blackmailed by the Mob. This is resolved in issue #12: it turns out that her brother Bennet was in debt to organized crime. When Bennet is murdered, Betty conceives an irrational hatred of Spider-Man. This defines Peter and Betty's relationship for the rest of the Ditko years. He can't ask her to marry him unless he first tells her who he really is, but if he tells her who he really is, she won't want to marry him. The nice girl who shared Peter's sense of humour has morphed into a tragically unattainable courtly heroine.

From issue #13 onward, Betty is redefined as "the jealous woman." She thinks that Peter is dating Liz (who he doesn't particularly like); she thinks he is dating Mary Jane (who he has never even met); she thinks he is dating the Human Torch's girlfriend (who he kindly returned a lost wallet to); and she thinks he is dating Hollywood starlets (because he is covering a movie for Mr Jameson.)  In fairness, Peter gets to play the role of "the jealous guy" from #18, when Betty's too-good-to-be-true boyfriend Ned Leeds appears on the scene and immediately leaves the country. Just when things seem to have settled down, Ned comes home (#29) and promptly asks Betty to marry him (#30).

When Peter finds out about the proposal, he and Betty have a shouting row, which ends with him telling her to go ahead and marry Ned and her shouting "It's you I love" through the slammed door. They break up all over again in #33, with Betty first running after Peter and then running away from him. In #30 her inner monologue is preoccupied by Peter Parker's mysterious secret; in #33, she is more concerned about his dangerous line of work and apparent hunger for action. 

Peter Parker has a Big Secret. Peter Parker gets himself into dangerous situations. Peter Parker sometimes gets beaten up. Peter Parker takes pictures of Spider-Man. But Betty Brant cannot draw the obvious conclusion even when her unconscious is screaming it in her face. "Oh thank heavens! It is not so! I merely dreamt it! Whatever Peter's secret is...it can't be that!"


*

When Doctor Octopus unmasked Spider-Man in issue #12, the cover copy screamed "Not a dream! Not an imaginary tale!" This is a little bit unfair to Marvel's Distinguished Competition: imaginary stories were invariably announced as such on page 1; they were never used as devices to trick the reader. But Marvel never really went in for Imaginary Tales. In the 70s they had a magazine called "What If?", but there is a philosophical, or at any rate grammatical difference between a story about what "may" happen in some hypothetical future, and a story about what "might have" happened in some alternate present. "What would happen if Lois Lane had Superbabies?" is a very different proposition from "What would have happened if Uncle Ben had survived." 

But dream-endings certainly were used as a means of tricking the reader; and they were always very annoying. In this case the trick only lasts for a few panels, but it is still very irksome. It hurts to be told that something has happened, and then to be told  that actually, it hasn't happened after all. It hurts to be shown something as interesting as Spider-Man unmasking and not to be allowed to see what follows from it. And it hurts a great deal to realize that the only remaining avenue of character development has been closed off. Now that she has dreamed the bleedin' obvious fact that Peter is Spider-Man, there is zero chance that Betty is going to put two and two together in real life. And now that we have seen Peter Parker tell Betty the truth in a dream, there is zero chance that we will see him come clean in the waking world. We thought we were getting a resolution: what we actually got was a declaration that this story-line is never going to be resolved.

Betty is shunted off to the land where subplots go to die. Or at any rate, Chicago. She can't go back to sleep because she is thinking of Peter Parker, and realizes that she has to "make a decision about him...a decision which can't be put off any longer." And that's the last we see of her for seven issues. By the end of issue #34 Jonah Jameson has a new secretary, and Peter is having a good old whinge about the situation. ("She'd never accept me as Spider-Man...but Spider-Man I've been...and shall always be...for as long as I live.") In #35, he goes to the office, meets the new girl, and chucks a framed photo inscribed to Betty in the bin. As previously noted, Peter is childishly obsessed with chucking his toys in trash-cans. Since Ned Leeds is also out of town, Peter assumes that he and Betty left together: the following issue, he actually uses the term "eloped". By #36, he is very much treating Betty as an "ex-" ("I don't want another Betty Brant situation developing again".) Jameson has another new secretary in #37; another one quits in #38. ("That's the third one this week" quips Peter "and it's only Tuesday.")

In issue #38 Ned Leeds comes home. It turns out that he didn't elope with Betty: he went to California on private business and has no more idea than Peter where she went. Ned blames Peter for driving her away, and tells Peter that he has proposed to her, even though Peter knows, and Ned knows he knows. The two guys have a fully fledged shouting match. Peter's internal monologue is even more chauvinistic than usual: he is still banging on about how Betty would never accept him as Spider-Man, and then adds "But I can't be sure. No-one can predict a female's reaction!" He spends the rest of the issue worrying about Betty (patronizingly calling her "the kid") and then punches a shop window mannequin because it looks slightly like Ned Leeds. "You know Why I hate you, Leeds... Because you have the right to propose to Betty! The shadow of Spider-Man isn't standing between you." 



I think that Ditko was going somewhere with all this. Betty has gone somewhere to do a thing, and Ned Leeds is using his Investigative Reporter skills to find out where and what. But Steve leaves the building without giving Stan any clues as to how the story was going to develop; and within two issues Stan has allowed it to fizzle out like a second hand firework.

Is it perhaps even possible that the Ned/Betty plot was supposed to be connected in some way with the Norman Osborn plot?  Steve was laying the groundwork for a Big Reveal about Norman Osborn in his final two issues, fueling the speculation that it was a disagreement about this plot line that caused the greatest partnership in the history of comics to come to an end. Of  course, we now take it for granted that the Mysterious Mr Osborn turns out to be [SPOILERS FOLLOW] the Green Goblin. But Romita's first two issues (#39 and #40) follow awkwardly from Ditko's last ones (#37 and #38). As late as 1974, Marvel's in-house magazine FOOM was claiming that Ditko intended Ned Leeds to be the Green Goblin, while Stan Lee was still wedded to the Aztec Mummy idea... Some people think that there is some significance in Ned Leeds' green tie, and in the fact that the tailor's dummy has a big grin on its face. This is a really big stretch. But I can't believe that two characters would have gone off on mysterious journeys if there wasn't supposed to be some revelation about their destinations.

So, in Romita's first issue, Parker meets Ned again, and they mutually apologize for their row. Peter tells Ned that he's "out of the running" for Betty and tells himself that he will now "put her out of his mind" forever. (Peter may be turning into a hipster, but he still regards women as prizes which men compete for.) In issue #40, Betty gets to do some soliloquizing of her own. Apparently what happened was that she woke up from her bad dream and hopped on a train to Chicago (some 800 miles away) but is going to come home because "a girl can never run away from a decision". But...but...I thought the whole reason for her leaving town was to enable her to make a decision? She says that she still hates to hear Spider-Man's name; but is more worried about whether Mr Jameson will give her her old job back.

"And if he does...what will it be like, seeing Peter Parker and Ned Leeds again? And what will they say when they see me? Will there still be a place in their lives...for Betty Brant?" 


Oh dear. 

This scene carries a Stan Lee qualifier:

"As you've probably guessed by now, the pages you've just read are a typical Marvel device for bringing new readers up to date as painlessly as possible! We just didn't want you to think that you'd picked up a romance book by mistake."

Stan's relationship with John Romita seems to have been much less Marvel methodical than the one with Ditko: there is a much greater sense that Stan tells John what to draw, and John draws it. But six panels is a lot of space to spend telling us stuff we already know; and Betty's soliloquy is more than usually replete with waffle. Did Romita turn in pictures of an enigmatic Betty on a railway station, as part of an ongoing romantic sub-plot, and did Stan then fill it with inconsequential thought bubbles because he was no longer interested in this particular thread? He certainly seems still to be sensitive to the complaints of fans who object to love, romance, drama and mystery....

Betty finally gets back to New York in issue #41, and the romance which has been coming to an end since issue #11 grinds to a resounding nothing. Betty tells Peter that she has had a nice time on the coast. It follows that her business in Chicago was so secret and mysterious that she is prepared to lie to both Peter and Ned about where she has been. Or that she went to Chicago via California, a detour of barely two thousand miles. Or else that Stan Lee has completely stopped paying attention. 

Peter and Betty have an awkward conversation until Ned turns up, and then Peter makes his excuses and leaves. On his way, he performs a short aria.

"All these months I thought about her, dreamt about her, longed for her!! So now she's returned...and nothingsville. Whatever we had before, whatever there was between us...it's gone."



But so far as we know, Peter has not been thinking about, dreaming about, and longing for Betty. Rather the reverse: Betty has been standing on railway stations wondering why the figure of Spider-Man haunts her dreams; while Peter has been basically resigned to the fact that the relationship can't work and has even started flirting with Gwen. Stan Lee has gone for one of his soft-resets: the idea that Spider-Man has driven the two star-crossed lovers apart fades out; the idea that Betty even cares about Peter's secret evaporates. It turns out that they have just outgrown each other.

This doesn't stop Peter having a jolly good wallow, and like all adolescents on the rebound he denies that his feelings about Betty were ever real. 

"Once I thought I couldn't live without her. Now she's just another girl named Betty. Boy have I grown up in these past few months! I realize now we never had anything in common. It's just that she was the first girl I ever thought I loved!" 

And so, no more of Betty Brant. In #42 she is shown working for the Daily Bugle again; and in #43 she is showing off the engagement ring that Ned has bought her. By then Peter is actively courting Gwen Stacey and Aunt May has succeeded in introducing him to his glamorous neighbor Mary Jane.

It would be a hundred issues before Ned Leeds and Betty Brant finally got married. A hundred issues after that, it turned out that although Ned was never the Green Goblin he was the Hobgoblin. Sort of.

He is killed off in in an issue of Wolverine.






A Close Reading of the First Great Graphic Novel in American Literature
by
Andrew Rilstone

Andrew Rilstone is a writer and critic from Bristol, England. This essay forms part of his critical study of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original Spider-Man comic book. 

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Amazing Spider-Man was written and drawn by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and is copyright Marvel Comics. All quotes and illustrations are use for the purpose of criticism under the principle of fair dealing and fair use, and remain the property of the copyright holder.

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Thursday, July 26, 2018

How many dog whistles can you fit into one letter?

So there's a plot afoot to rename the Colston Hall.

OK, he was a slave trader, but he did a lot for Bristol, building schools, alms houses and founding charities. Didn't Gladstone's father make his pile out of the slave trader in Liverpool? What about the Willis Memorial Building at the university, master piece that it is? Didn't the Willis family make their money out of tobacco...

Where do you start and stop this sort of logic. You can't judge the people of the past by today's standards or airbrush unpleasant things out of history.
Marc Hursfield, Bristol Post 25/4