Posted: Nov 23, 2019 9:35 pm
The link to the interview in my previous post seems to be his full comments. The Guardian article and the book passage above both seem to be reacting to excerpts (and obviously providing excerpts). Like I said earlier, his answer to one golliwog question is over a thousand words. The second and third golliwog questions prompted almost 2,000. They are so unabbreviated that the excerpts I've been reading necessarily chop up the meaning. It's probably not impossible to represent those answers using snippets, but most readers I think will have a different impression of some of them once they compare.
A minor example is the book's claim that he compares Golliwog favorably to Uncle Tom and Nigger Jim, in contradiction to an earlier answer in the interview. The first part is a deliberate stretch, I think, and the second part is only implied but probably disingenuous too. In the interview, he mentions those characters in passing, as being "supposedly sympathetic black figures in fiction" at the time of Upton's creation - but not to align or compare, but specifically to divorce. He's saying Upton's creation of the character is separate from these rare characters, and hers is an original creation of a positive character based on a toy whose provenance she was ignorant of. In other words, even as a "sympathetic black figure in fiction" the Golliwog doesn't qualify, because Upton's intentions were more innocent. (His own intentions being legitimated by that isolation, in other words, with Fantasy as the midwife.) The book wants to claim a contradiction where imo there is none. But his answer is so dense, it's easy to distort. This point is minor, but it's at the heart of the controversy, because the issue as I see it is whether or not minstrel-like imagery and symbolism can be expanded or repurposed. I'm pretty sure it can, depending on cultural nuance. The less interesting (but still interesting) issue is whether or not Moore was trying to do this. Based on his full answers, it seemed to me he was.
A weird wrench in that logic is the passage in your book excerpt that claims Galley-Wag is "prodigiously endowed" and "oversexed." Wot? He is? Because that complicates things. Not that his face doesn't already complicate things. (Complicated is ok, and it makes me more interested to figure this out. But seriously, Galley-Wag is "prodigiously endowed" and "oversexed"? That's not touched on in the interview nor expanded on in the book excerpt, which is inconvenient.) (Added: I'm even more interested now to see how Galley-Wag relates to his nemesis, Jimmy Bond, who is supposedly a "misogynist".)
The issue of violence generally, and rape...
The portrayal of violence and killing, in pop culture, as possibly "morally positive" is an aspect of that same bias that treats rape as taboo, I think. It might even explain a number of ugly things about accepted norms in foreign policy, legal defences (such as against prosecutions of police officers who routinely murder civilians, not to mention autocratic wars on drugs), or even comic book collateral damage. In comics/superhero movies, sometimes this internal contradiction is addressed, but it's probably a minor theme. Regardless, although I can't make generalizations about how often violence in comics is possibly "morally positive" compared to morally "negative" (is it about 50/50? If I had to guess, I'd say about 50/50), I don't think that rescues it, since the contradiction is there, and since the real issue is frequency. Of course a "hero" is morally positive, and therefore his violence is usually assumed to be morally positive. I don't think that's a reflection of reality, however, just conventions in comic books. If the aim is to subvert 1-2 comic book conventions, one way to do it is to tweak the dial to more closely reflect reality. I'm not informed enough to conclude that's what Moore has done, but it seems to be what he claims.
The taboo imbalance is kind of grotesque, actually. Something that should be more taboo (the use of violence to "resolve conflict") is whitewashed (no pun initially intended), and something which should be less taboo (the sheer prevalence of violence against women, and rape in particular) is hidden. The de-tabooing is the point, I think.
ADDED: sorry for the wall of text.
A minor example is the book's claim that he compares Golliwog favorably to Uncle Tom and Nigger Jim, in contradiction to an earlier answer in the interview. The first part is a deliberate stretch, I think, and the second part is only implied but probably disingenuous too. In the interview, he mentions those characters in passing, as being "supposedly sympathetic black figures in fiction" at the time of Upton's creation - but not to align or compare, but specifically to divorce. He's saying Upton's creation of the character is separate from these rare characters, and hers is an original creation of a positive character based on a toy whose provenance she was ignorant of. In other words, even as a "sympathetic black figure in fiction" the Golliwog doesn't qualify, because Upton's intentions were more innocent. (His own intentions being legitimated by that isolation, in other words, with Fantasy as the midwife.) The book wants to claim a contradiction where imo there is none. But his answer is so dense, it's easy to distort. This point is minor, but it's at the heart of the controversy, because the issue as I see it is whether or not minstrel-like imagery and symbolism can be expanded or repurposed. I'm pretty sure it can, depending on cultural nuance. The less interesting (but still interesting) issue is whether or not Moore was trying to do this. Based on his full answers, it seemed to me he was.
A weird wrench in that logic is the passage in your book excerpt that claims Galley-Wag is "prodigiously endowed" and "oversexed." Wot? He is? Because that complicates things. Not that his face doesn't already complicate things. (Complicated is ok, and it makes me more interested to figure this out. But seriously, Galley-Wag is "prodigiously endowed" and "oversexed"? That's not touched on in the interview nor expanded on in the book excerpt, which is inconvenient.) (Added: I'm even more interested now to see how Galley-Wag relates to his nemesis, Jimmy Bond, who is supposedly a "misogynist".)
The issue of violence generally, and rape...
The portrayal of violence and killing, in pop culture, as possibly "morally positive" is an aspect of that same bias that treats rape as taboo, I think. It might even explain a number of ugly things about accepted norms in foreign policy, legal defences (such as against prosecutions of police officers who routinely murder civilians, not to mention autocratic wars on drugs), or even comic book collateral damage. In comics/superhero movies, sometimes this internal contradiction is addressed, but it's probably a minor theme. Regardless, although I can't make generalizations about how often violence in comics is possibly "morally positive" compared to morally "negative" (is it about 50/50? If I had to guess, I'd say about 50/50), I don't think that rescues it, since the contradiction is there, and since the real issue is frequency. Of course a "hero" is morally positive, and therefore his violence is usually assumed to be morally positive. I don't think that's a reflection of reality, however, just conventions in comic books. If the aim is to subvert 1-2 comic book conventions, one way to do it is to tweak the dial to more closely reflect reality. I'm not informed enough to conclude that's what Moore has done, but it seems to be what he claims.
The taboo imbalance is kind of grotesque, actually. Something that should be more taboo (the use of violence to "resolve conflict") is whitewashed (no pun initially intended), and something which should be less taboo (the sheer prevalence of violence against women, and rape in particular) is hidden. The de-tabooing is the point, I think.
ADDED: sorry for the wall of text.