Scott Garbacz's blog

My 5 Favorite Posts of the Year

Scott Garbacz — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 22:53:48 +0000

It's been a rather rich year at Viz, and it's nearly impossible to choose just five blogs. That said, here are a few I found particularly striking, fun, or thought-provoking:

"Strong is the New Skinny, OR: Why I hate the Strong Female Character" by Aubri. I admit, this subject has been on my mind a lot, and I even touched on it in my discussion of The Lego Movie. The "Strong Female Character" seems to be the newest cliche in every Hollywood film, and for a while the dominance of this trope had concerned me. This post explains, I think, a lot of my objections. As Aubri writes, "By allowing 'strength' to stand in for any positive attribute, we become complicit in a cultural agenda that marginalizes the communal, the vulnerable, the soft." Thus while "'Strength' has such positive connotation that to test its limits feels unnatural, even anti-feminist," we ought to be careful to remember that the way we present strength--especially in terms of Young Adult book covers that emphasize and celebrate character's isolation from social support and self-reliance--is not an unambiguous virtue. But read the article, if you haven't; there's a lot more to it than my summary describes.

"Words, Words, Words: Judging Hamlet by its Cover" by Deb. So, I'm a nerd, and I can't resist a discussion that discusses the cover for The Klingon Hamlet. But re-reading this post as part of my year-end review, I was struck by the way contemporary Hamlet titles participate in a neoliberal marketing strategy similar to that discussed by Aubri above. It is true, of course, that issues of individual identity, social isolation, and death are integral to Hamlet, but so are issues of social corruption ("there is something rotten in the state of Denmark"), political duties, and interpersonal relationships. It is interesting, then, that modern presentations of Hamlet are almost entirely univocal in their presentation of a single character, whether it is the Danish prince himself or his doomed lover Ophelia.

"Big Hero 6 and the Consolations of Violence" by me. In many ways this post echoes my favorite post of last year, "Lilo and Stitch: The Danger of Beautiful Stories." Both articles examine kid's movies that provide painful correctives to the mindless narratives fostered by other works. Lilo and Stitch takes on the pristine body images found in dolls and fairy-tales, while Big Hero 6 provides a more painful, less violent way of dealing with grief and building community than that modeled in Guardians of the Galaxy. What particularly draws me to these stories is both the way they remind us of the pain more conventional genres conceal, and the way they do this without abandoning their roles of providing engaging, kid-friendly entertainment. I found Big Hero 6 to be "less escapist, more grounded in visible human experience, and ultimately more thoughtful" than the adult-targeted superhero film it followed.

"Taste vs. Enjoyment" by Rhiannon. At Viz, we're pretty good at discussing visual culture; it is, as they say, what we do. But what I particularly love about this post is that it contributes to visual rhetoric. The article's infographic presents different book covers on a graph, drawn from 170 anonymous survey respondents, charted in terms of their entertainment value and "highbrow" nature. The post thus provides an interesting, if incomplete, snapshot of the way people perceive "canonicity" and literary pleasure today.

"Moving Targets: Player Choice and the Politics of Bioshock: Infinite" by Casey. Video games are still in a somewhat anomolous position when it comes to cultural criticism. On one hand, they clearly participate in familiar forms of visual and narrative rhetoric; video games often have stories, always have carefully crafted images, &c. On the other hand, their ability to provide experiences and respond to player choice makes them fundamentally different from other forms of visual or narrative culture. This post navigates between the two extremes, looking at the effect of a single, barbaric decision. Choosing rather or not to assault an interracial culture in the game's horrifically racist seting has, in Casey's analysis, at least two different effects. The game can convey "the idea that racism in its most insiduous form is less about villainy and more about institutionalized, systemic, and normalized violence." At the same time, it need not have this effect. Indeed, you as the gamer "are encouraged in your player experience to revel in the implied notion that enough bullets (or baseballs) will rid Columbia of wicked individuals and therefore of wicked ideologies." It is precisely this play between not just different interpretations but also different actions that makes video game narratives such rich and interesting cultural artifacts.

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Strong Female Character

death

Communal Identity

video games

Hamlet

canonicity

Daredevil and Urban Backgrounds

Scott Garbacz — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 21:42:55 +0000

Image credit: The Guardian

One of the interesting (and, at least initially, disappointing) promises made by Daredevil is that it will feature not just a superhero, but also the city in which he dwells. This would be more or less a new thing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Characters may represent regions or ideologies (Thor lands in the American Midwest, Black Widow deals with Russian trauma, Iron Man models a form of urban masculinity), but they never seem to be from a specific, real place. Even in the DC Universe, where the Dark Knight trilogy obsessed over the relationship between Batman and the city he served, takes place in fictional Gotham City, recognizably akin to New York but made bizarre and larger-than-life by its iconography and events.

Daredevil, on the other hand, lives in Hell’s Kitchen, a quite specific location within Manhattan. Admittedly, his Hell’s Kitchen differs from that of modern America, since the events of Avengers: Assemble have de-urbanized the region and transformed it into the “dark, gritty” environment so beloved of contemporary superhero franchises. Still, the real-world environment leaves one with hope that, even in a Marvel film, one might hear a bit of the city’s voice speaking as something other than an echo chamber for the hero’s antics.

Unfortunately, at least with Daredevil’s first episode, this wasn’t the case. After a brief father-son scene establishing the blindness of Matt Murdock (i.e. Daredevil), and a visually-striking opening montage imagining a city (and statue of justice) made of congealed blood, and an scene in a confessional that emphasizes the hero’s alienation from the comforts of religion, the show proceeded to introduce two victims of the city’s criminality. The first victims are an utterly passive group of women who are about to be sold into slavery, the second a beautiful damsel named Karen Page who is framed for the death of her co-worker. Both play along well-trod narrative conventions: the city’s (mostly female) victims are seen as relatively powerless (though Karen, at least, defends herself against a jail-cell attack), and everyone needs Daredevil, the lone hero, to step in.

This ties in rather well with the iconography promoting television superheroes discussed by Deb, with its focus on individual characters abstracted from their environments. But by shifting the focus to the one costumed hero, it silences the rest of the city.

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Desiring Histories in The Wolf Among Us

Scott Garbacz — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 22:34:11 +0000

Image source: N3rdabl3.co.uk.

Earlier this semester, I discussed the way Once Upon a Time, particularly in its first season, played with Disney-inspired costuming to evoke nostalgia for Disney-tinged fairytales even as it valorized the present over the past. As a follow-up, and as Viz moves towards consideration of video games, I want to look at a more recent work with similar themes: the critically acclaimed fairy-tale-noir adventure game, The Wolf Among Us. In this game, the player takes on the role of a reformed Big Bad Wolf (known, now, as Bigby), who solves a series of gruesome mysteries with the help of his potential love-interest, Snow White. Specifically, I will look at three costumes associated with Snow. Like those worn by Once’s Snow White, these costumes each present a different way in which we can view the past. Unlike those in Once, these costumes trouble any clear distinction between our modern lives and the medieval-themed fairy tales that underwrite them. Instead of encouraging us to celebrate our modernity, The Wolf Among Us troubles our neat divisions between the present and the past, asking us how we use the past to think about, or act in, the present. (Content Warning: the discussion below, like the game, deals with prostitution and disturbing sexual power dynamics.)

Image credit: Gamespot

The first—and primary—image of Snow White in The Wolf Among Us balances carefully between the game’s two primary visual referents. Physically, she largely echoes her fairy-tale legends; perhaps more tanned than her namesake, she nonetheless wears white earrings that contrast with her “lips as red as blood” and “hair as black as ebony.” Similarly, her snowflake-decorated blouse coordinates with her blue skirt, perhaps echoing the dramatic blue coloring of the Disney Snow white’s costume, but certainly reminding viewers of her fairy-tale-princess heritage. Over that, however she wears a fitted, short blazer, its tan color and stylings evoking the trench coat of Bogart-era crime films. She thus bears on her body the generic hybrid that plays out over the course of the game’s narrative: fairy-tale characters stuck in a gritty noir universe.

The noir stylings may be incidental, but the snowflake pattern is central to the character’s self-fashioning, since they remind other Fables (fairy-tale creatures) of her high status in their world. Indeed, her relative privilege is one of the game’s central themes. While the game’s backstory posits a general amnesty that allows all New-York dwelling fairy tale characters to live harmonious lives unaffected by past crimes, those of noble birth tend to occupy the town’s upper crust. Snow herself works as the secretary for the town’s mayor, often serving as a gatekeeper determining whose concerns will and will not be heard by the government. Her authority is made more secure by a strict division between those characters whose natural form is nonhuman, and those who can naturally blend in among normal humans. The latter exclusively occupy elected positions, and often demonstrate ignorance of or hostility to the concerns of other characters. Snow’s outfit echoes her status as a recipient of considerable privilege and power, while expressing a continuity between her present position and her fairy-tale nobility.

Image credit: Gizorama.com.

The game’s first image of the medieval Snow White places her in a far less privileged position. Her plain dress hints, perhaps, at a modest income, while her sorrowful gaze at an already-bitten reminds viewers that her original, fairy-tale self is already well-acquainted with evil. Life may have been simpler, the game argues, in the fairy-tale world, but even the pasts evoked in chilrden stories are not immune to violence and sorrow.

The apparent simplicity of the game’s medieval history is closely tied to its portrait of gender. Strikingly, Snow’s outstretched arm serves as a visual echo of the Big Bad Wolf’s snarling mouth. The contrast falls upon stereotypical lines: the Wolf’s powerful, unreflective masculine violence contrasts with Snow’s thoughtful expression. The visually powerful, angry, masculine force of the Wolf is, literally, the flip side of Snow’s contemplative femininity. The modern world, where the Big Bad Wolf wears a collared shirt and Snow is quite capable of playing hardball politics, offers a far more complex vision of gender.

Image credit: fables.wikia.org.

The final costume associated with Snow White offers the darkest interpretation of fairy-tales. In the sort of sordid twist demanded of the game’s noir atmosphere, Snow’s boss (a craven version of Ichabod Crane) has an ongoing relationship with a prostitute, a troll who wears the clothing and (thanks to magic) physical appearance of Snow herself, and who is murdered at the end of Episode 1. The clothing in question is far more complex than Snow’s medieval outfit in the earlier tapestry: its skirts, bodice, corset, and complicated sleeves hint that this is far more the product of sophisticated medieval or renaissance fashion than of an idylic childhood. Yet this dress is explicitly based on an illustrated children’s story found in the hotel where Crane staged his assignations. The third “Snow White” outfit, then, represents the present-day desire of her boss to seduce her, bizarrely re-routed through a children’s book that itself draws on medieval history.

An early interpretation of Snow White by Alexander Zick (1845-1907). Image credit: Wikimedia commons.

If the first two costumes paint a sharp contrast between a fairy-tale prehistory and a relatively muddled, gritty present, this third hints that our real-world uses of the past are similarly more complicated than we might expect. For Crane, childhood fairy-tales and medieval history are not incomplete or innocent ancestors of the present, but rather objects of desire that shape the way he imagines his employee and expresses his sexuality. Crane’s “Snow White” costume is closer to what one might expect of the princess described by the Brothers Grimm, and is very similar to the illustration inserted above, which seeks to evoke medieval aesthetics both in its costume and its mis-en-page. Yet for Crane, historical studies serve not to document the past, but to support the sordid world of his present imagination.

Of course, the game is unapologetic in its insistence that Crane is a despicable coward, and his use of children’s literature is disturbing precisely because it diverges from standard, expected uses of such works. Yet I also wonder how much Crane’s engagement with history reflects that of our own age. On the domestic, premium-cable front, Game of Thrones presents “medieval” female nudity to its audience to great financial success, reinforcing our linkage between the medieval and a male gaze pointed towards female bodies. Abroad, ISIS presents itself as a revival of medieval Islam even as it arguably deploys “profoundly modern” philosophies of statehood and violence. Perhaps the complex interweaving of modern desires and historical imagination that Crane demonstrates, then, is closer to our modern world than we might want to think.

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