Torchwood 1x11: Combat

[cerusee]

I was rendered absolutely unable to take Owen's nihilistic rage-angst seriously by, immediately prior to watching this episode, having read a book of cartoons from 1951 themed on the childishness of men who've been rejected by their lovers. ("Mama, mama!") It doesn't help that Owen's a git. I'm sorry, but nobody cares about you and your pixie angst.

On a side note, I've noticed that the 1950s seem to have been a very good decade for cartooning. I've read quite a number of cartoon collections and prose works illustrated with cartoons from that era, and Im awfully fond of the style. Anybody who is actually under the impression that the '50s were staid and repressed should hunt some contemporary cartoon art down for an eye-opener.

Comments

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

I got tired of him like that, too. The whole white man's modern angst/fight club wore very thin for me in a hurry, except that I had a mental bet with myself that the creepy guy who set the thing up would, in fact, turn out to be an alien.

I should really check out the cartoons you speak of... I adore early Charles Adams and New Yorker stuff, but this sounds a bit different, content-wise.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I do crossword puzzles while I watch television--which I suddenly realize is EXACTLY like my father, wow--and I just stop bothering to look at the screen during the Owen scenes. I did about an extra half a puzzle for this episode.

The book I was reading was Rejected Lovers by William Stieg, copyright 1951. I was looking for books for a paper and ran across this in the library's tiny little graphic arts books, which had a few nice collections I'll forget to look at later. It's not pornography, but there are a smattering of nude women, including some full-frontal nudity, and in general, it's clear that Stieg's subject is mature adult activity, not chaste romance. (Be forewarned: it's entirely about male lovers who've been rejected by their female lovers. Stieg thinks injured male pride is hilarious, and there's not a touch of misogyny in it, but it's very much a book about how men react to women, and in no wise could it be considered a feminist perspective.)

I really love cartoons from the '50s onwards. Maybe it's just the places they were published--magazines, as illustrations in books, or even in artist's collections like this--but they always seem to have a more sophisticated sense of humor than their cousins on the comics page and in comic books. The New Yorker cartoons and Charles Addams are perfect examples of this kind of thing, although Addams, kind of like Gorey, has the added appeal of possessing an extremely twisted sense of humor.

The other day, I was reading a pretty interesting discussion about attempts to structure conceptual definitions of sequential/narrative/comics art etc, and one of the participants was lamenting the way that comics have been lumped in cartoons, which he thinks is just awful because, he implies, cartoons are inherently so shallow and puerile.

While I agree there's great use in distinguishing sequential art from static single images, this is totally a wtf take on it for me, because while sequential art does not have to be cartoonish in nature, it often is for many good reasons having nothing to do with the creator's ability to render, and for that reason, examinations of sequential art should acknowledge and explore the kinship with cartooning every now and then, and also because it's kind of asinine to lobby for more recognition for the potential and strengths of your preferred artistic form while backhanding someone else's. It's like refusing to acknowledge comedy as art because you prefer tragedy.

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

Re: Crosswords. Depending on the show, I knit, although that doesn't always go well if I get wrapped up in what I'm watching. ;)

Re: William Stieg, I keep forgetting that he did more than the children's books I loved as a kid. This collection sounds like all kinds of wonderful, and a bit surprising--like you, I assumed that the '50s were a time of repressed buttoned-downness.

Re: Cartoons. I think people tend to overlook them because of their single-panel nature; the joke only has one chance to work and there's none of the story build-up that characterizes comics. To a layreader, everything seems to happen at once: the drawing, the joke, laughing or not. What most people don't consider is how difficult it is to elicit that laughter in that "short" a space and time. I admit that I love cartoonists whose work extends beyond the single panel--Roz Chast I love, because her work is so well-observed and keeps going for me even beyond the panel. Charles Addams is the same way, primarily because his work is so iconic.

And, yes, building a position of "X is better because Y is not as good" is pretty darn stupid, IMHO. And yet I've seen people base their entire careers/lives on it! Scary.

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

May I also add that your comments on scans_daily regarding "Empowered" and its detractors are made of win?

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say no. ^_^