Big Brother and Comics

Those apprehensive about whether the fight against
terrorism would lead to the creation of government databases monitoring books we buy or borrow from the library could take little comfort in the recent report from the National Endowment for the Arts noting the steep decline in reading. The report finds that over the past twenty years there has been a steady drop in the percentage of Americans who read books of any sort. The report suggests that should these trends continue, “literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century.” Perhaps, as Neil Postman noted in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), liberal democracy is not so much threatened by an Orwellian Big Brother watching over our reading habits as by a slide into something like Huxley’s Brave New World, where there would be no reason to monitor reading because no one would want to read anyway. It is possible, however, that what we are witnessing is due in part to new literary forms and technologies.

Postman’s focus is our transformation into a culture whose information and ideas are given form and shape by the images and sound bytes of television rather than the printed word. For Postman, television is least dangerous when presenting such junk entertainment as ‘reality television,’ and most dangerous when it co-opts serious modes of discourse by using expert political analysts to provide packaged ideological views in slick news programming. Yet, this commer-cialization of public discourse can have unexpected outcomes. The more powerful the grip of economic forces on an institution such as the media, the more people mistrust it and the more clever they are in creating alternatives. The use of the Internet for specialized news sites, list-servers, and ‘blogs’ is an example of people developing alternative venues for reading about news or ideas, and for engaging in public dialogue. The Internet presents other alternatives as well. I no longer have to rely on the choice of news in the local newspaper thrown nowhere near my front porch each morning, because I can read information and perspectives from newspapers around the world on my home computer. If I were technologi-cally proficient, I could even do this via a wireless connection while sitting comfortably on that porch the delivery people can never seem to find.

The same shift in perspective might be true regarding the decline of literary reading. As Charles McGrath noted (New York Times, July 11, 2004), just as it is impossible to identify when people more or less stopped reading poetry and began reading novels (the latter were previously considered suitable entertainment for “idle ladies of uncertain morals”), it is difficult to know when the novel as we know it will go into decline. The question is no longer when the novel will join poetry on the periphery of public consciousness; it is what the next new literary form will look like. It is best to keep an open mind about this. Although it failed miserably as an economic venture the first time around, I would not discount the possibility that novels may find an electronic distribution format opening the doors to new writers and readers via a more immediate and affordable form. There are, however, other options. One option that is currently enjoying a renaissance and a new found respectability is the ‘graphic novel’ - the comic book.

Although the static visual narrative that we find in comic books is first seen in Upper Paleolithic cave paintings, comic books are only as old as another alternative form of visual commu-nication that was supposed to threaten reading: movies (and now we have movies about comic book super heroes). The term ‘comics’ is derived from the early 20th century comic strips (as in newspapers), originally used to present humor. Comic books developed as collections of previously published comic strips. Despite the name and their previous reputation of being suitable entertainment for ‘idle adolescent males of uncertain motivations,’ the new comic book is a serious alternative to the novel. Graphic novels are what literary novels used to be, an accessible, vernacular form of communication with unexpected mass appeal. The comic book as graphic novel goes beyond anything offered in the adventures of Tintin and Snowy, or Asterix and Obelix, or in Manga (Japanese comic books featuring wide- eyed teenage girls), or anthologies of “Peanuts,” or “Garfield,” or even of the serial installments of the various superheroes still produced by Marvel and D.C. comic factories. Although these serial forms of comic books are still surprisingly enjoyable and have significant research value, the new graphic novel comic books are more substantial single volumes (running up to 582 pages), often in hard cover, with titles that would suit literary novels of the past: “Persepolis,” “Blankets,” “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” This is not the first time serious comics have tried to break into the market. During the mid 1980s, comic books such as “Maus” by Art Spiegelman (which presented a mouse’s eye view of the Holocaust), and “Love and Rockets” by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez brought the medium to the attention of adults. The difference between the 1980s and now is the number of artists interested in the potential of the genre, and a new generation of readers who have either grown tired of the novel or have gown up with television or computer-generated cartoons or games and find them effective methods of communi-cation. Here too the Internet has opened new alternatives with comic sites like Modern Tales, WirePop, and PV Comics.

I admit that other than listening to my husband and daughter discuss European history when they read a copy of “Maus” while she was in high school, I have not given much thought to the potential of comic books. This changed when I returned from China this past summer; the first thing I noticed in my office was piles and piles of comic books. Comic books were also piled on the tables, shelves, and even the floor of our small library. We have collected over 3,400 volumes, and this number increases every day. The growing collection includes comics by DC, Marvel, Archie, Harvey, Black Thorne Publishing, Caliber, and Eclipse and runs from 1919 to the present. Our collections can be divided into 13 genres: Action/adventure, adult, children’s, crime, fantasy, feminist, literary, history, horror, humor, science fiction, super hero, and war. Some will question the potential of the graphic novel form as well as our efforts in collecting examples of its history, seeing it as yet another proof of our dumbed-down culture and collective short attention span. I believe, however, that we should be sensitive to the potentials of whatever form or technological method people use for communication. If the comic book or graphic novel reaches those segments of our culture who no longer care to read novels, then understanding why is important. In the end, people will create venues for ideas and public discourse in the most unexpected forms and technologies. Moreover, they will do this even when Big Brother is monitoring their book. Perhaps even one day Big Brother will monitor their comic book when Big Brother realizes that comic books, too, can convey subversive ideas.

Jian Leng, Assistant Director
The Center for the Humanities

Feeling stressed by the pressures of campus life? Why not slip down to the Center for the Humanities for some creative playtime: cuddle a soft Snoopy toy, dress up Barbie as Wonder Woman or JFK as GI Joe, play a round of Ghettopoly or Kosherland, or listen to an Abe Lincoln action figure in full Victorian costume deliver the Gettysburg address. In the Center’s new ‘museum’ of historical, controversial and political toys, you can at least look at these objects and others like them, even if you can’t actually play with them.

Incongruous as these things might appear in a Humanities Center in the distinguished academic setting of Washington University, they are in fact central to our mission. For the past two years, one of our aims has been to serve as a resource for the study of children’s culture in all its forms. To this end, the Center has amassed a library of children’s literature and books on the practice of writing for children. Our comic book collection, numbering over 3,000 items, is becoming increasingly widely known, and includes extensive children’s as well as adult and non-age specific comics. Our director, Gerald Early, teaches and publishes on children’s literature and culture, and from fall 2004, we will coordinate an interdisciplinary Children’s Studies Minor, involving the departments of English, African and Afro-American Studies, Education, History and Psychology. Our writers’ series features a children’s writer annually, and we are exploring the possibility of a children’s film festival next year. This issue of Figure in the Carpet includes a Young Readers’ calendar of literary events for the first time.

Collecting toys is a logical extension of this commitment. Toys are the material culture of childhood; their history reveals much about the complex social forces that have shaped our perceptions of children, our changing ideas of what childhood is and should be, and the shifting relationship between children and adults. They also mirror the progress of technology, mass communication and consumerism in the modern world, the changing role of the family in society, and attitudes to race, gender expectations and sexuality.

Even more than many objects that find their way into museums as mute witnesses of culture and aesthetics, toys tell a story – and it is never a neutral one. Each toy or game is loaded with meaning, steeped in the values and attitudes that produced, marketed, purchased and used it. Further, as relics of a lost period of (perhaps) innocent play (our own or our children’s), toys can become, for adults, objects of nostalgia, repositories of memory, or powerful emotional emblems. The Center collects toys to record not their design or manufacture but their cultural associations and meaning. This is a fascinating and unpredictable project, as each new toy that enters the collection alters our understanding of the cultural history of childhood and enriches the possible narratives we can display.

We have a particular interest in toys that fall outside the mainstream – that are unusual in some way - and especially those that have raised contro-versy, or that draw attention to topical or contentious issues. We also look for toys with literary and comic book associations, and those with a political theme.

Probably our most controversial object is the board game Ghettopoly, really an adult toy, in which the familiar topography of the Monopoly board is redrawn as a crime-ridden big city ghetto, with black or Latino pimps and pushers vying for stolen property among the crack houses, pawn shops and massage parlors. Meant as a joke, its release in 2003 provoked mixed hilarity and outrage, and it was quickly withdrawn from Urban Outfitters, its distributor. It is now only available on line. But bad taste is not always so deliberate. We also own two Barbie dolls, one white, one African-American in appearance, both dressed and accessorized in an “Oreo” theme. Intended as a marketing tie-in with Oreo cookies, the Barbies inadvertently touched a nerve by their reference to a slang term considered derogatory by many blacks. Mattel, their manufacturer, was forced to withdraw them. More topical (and potentially sensitive) items include Christian and Jewish-themed board games.


Barbie, a triumph of late 20th century girls’ toy marketing, is an excellent indicator of social trends, and we would like to collect more examples. Our three comic book character Barbies – Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Batgirl – reflect our interest in comics as a literary/art form. A beautifully made British board game based on Kenneth Grahame’s classic novel The Wind in the Willows translates more traditional children’s literature into play. The huge popularity of the Peanuts cartoon strip since 1950 is illustrated by a group of toys and games, including a Snoopy jack-in-the-box and an original Viewmaster with several sets of photo reels.

The coming election gives us the opportunity to display some of our political toys and ephemera. Chief among these are several presidential figures: as well as Lincoln we have talking Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan action dolls, and a John F. Kennedy whose dual identity as GI Joe celebrates his wartime heroism. A rare early 1950s set of miniatures of presidents Washington through Jackson uses the genre of boys’ real-life hero toys in an attempt to teach American history. Our General Colin Powell doll serves up a lesson in current affairs for the 1990s. A board game “Hail to the Chief” provides a complicated lesson on the electoral process, while trying to persuade children that the presidential race is just friendly fun. On the lighter side, the board game “Lie, Cheat and Steal: the Game of Political Power”, and Mad Magazine covers visually satirizing presidents (Nixon/Agnew as Newman/Redford in The Sting) inject a note of humorous cynicism. Small disposable items anchor these playthings in the real world: campaign buttons from 1956-2004, election pamphlets from the 1960s Kennedy, Wallace and Goldwater campaigns, bumper stickers, slogan t-shirts and more.

This group of objects is on display until after the November election in our mini-exhibit “Playing Politics” in the Center’s library. It may move to more spacious quarters at Olin library during that time. The exhibit, like our library, is free and open to the public and we welcome all visitors during office hours, Monday-Friday 9am-4pm.

Meanwhile, we continue to collect toys in the hope of one day being able to display them in a larger and more accessible place. Offers of toy donations are very welcome. We are particularly interested in earlier toys, but any plaything with an interesting or unusual story to tell will find an appreciative home at the Center for the Humanities.

Amanda Beresford is Program Coordinator at the Center for the Humanities. She previously spent 18 years as a museum curator.