Last thread spawned really good discussion, let's continue.
OLD: What would a political comics look like? Comfy adventures with superheroes saving the day and solving crimes? More Right-wing version of what we see now? Western manga? Would a company that dedicated itself to an apolitical approach be successful in winning back lapsed fans?
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You can't make apolitical comics because people are political and see political things in everything, whether it has an intended political message or not.
If you make a comic about a caveman who wanders prehistoric times, finds another man who's starving and decides to share a piece of sabertooth tiger with him, some fucker out there will call your character a socialist.
>some fucker out there will call your character a socialist
But that's the reader's interpretation/analysis. That's different than portraying said caveman as a socialist and then decrying capitalism in the dialogue.
Is me shitting my pants political?
I swear only left leaning people say that "Everything is political" bullshit
>Would a company that dedicated itself to an apolitical approach be successful in winning back lapsed fans?
Isn't that essentially what REDACTED is doing? Early days though, who knows if it can last for decades the way the direct market did
So?
Fuckers will tell you that was your agenda when writing the comic.
I'm gonna fuck you in the ass
Only brainlets pretend fiction isn't political by its nature.
So? That's the reader's interpretation, not an explicit portrayal. Why should I care how the work is interpreted as long as as many people as possible purchase it? A Conservative could look at the same caveman comic and see it as a darwinian anarcho-capitalist critique.
And only smooth brains think every damn thing is political
Doesn't matter. The second someone makes that argument, they politicized the situation and the work. If it becomes an object of political discussion it turns political.
I think we hit an issue with today's media. Not enough room for interpretational media and too much "This is what my comic represents and it cannot be seen as anything but that and if you disagree, you're a Nazi"
Satirizing the current American political climate I see.
>Comfy adventures with superheroes saving the day and solving crimes?
Vigilantism is a political action that infers that the current governing system isn't doing enough to prevent crime and police wrongdoing.
Also, the idea that manga isn't political is hilarious. You don't recognize the politics because it's not keyed to your personal cultural identity and context. Why do you think so many manga bend over backwards in making characters half Japanese? Why is there so many people who live on their own, away from their parents despite being minors? These are all cultural things that drive a certain kind of politics: Japanese community conformity and weird insistence of self reliance (Japanese hospitals for example expect your family to part of the patient's care and do shit that in western hospitals is part of the nurses' duties)
I won't go as far as to say everything is political. But you can't deny that writers tend to write their own opinions into their stories. For example, Chuck Dixon mostly wrote apolitical adventure stories for characters like Batman, Robin, Nightwing and the Birds of Prey. But occasionally, his own personal opinions did sneak in. The most prominent example would probably be the story where Stephanie Brown gets pregnant. You could argue that her choosing to give the child up to adoption instead of having an abortion is Dixon's pro-life viewpoint being written in to the story. So while I would say it is possible to make apolitical comics, no matter what there is a chance of the author's own personal viewpoints (Political or not) shining through.
It depends on your definition of intent vs interpretation. One of the reasons I got out of English and into physics is that the truth of the matter is that you can, with enough mental gymnastics, read ANYTHING into ANYTHING. I once wrote a 12 page paper about how "Saved by the Bell" was a complex Christ allegory, just to prove I could.
Because anyone can read anything into anything, you really have to go by intent instead of interpretation, and I would say that in terms of intent, there are tons of things that are apolitical.
>character: *coughs*
>internet philosophers: SEE IT'S A COMMENTARYTO THE CURRENT STATE OF THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM OF OUR NATION AND
This is because they like to make everything political, because it better enables them to censor and attack things they dislike, and defend things they do.
Intent doesn't really count. An author may not have the intention of slipping a political message into a story but if someone else draws a political point from it, the work gets politicized. And the author's intention becomes irrelevant.
Thankfully no right-wing advocates ever censor opposing views or attack them.
My comment had nothing to with censoring though
Also why is it left leaning people always take fiction so seriously? Like whenever they make a comparison to real life disaster or injustice they compare it to Harry Potter or Star Wars rather than actual historical events?
They do, but they generally do it for different reasons, or at least with different excuses. The core is always just "ME NO LIKE!" but how they go about it is different.
Leftist doesn't want big titty because its "Demeaning, holds women back, makes them sex objects, male gaze," etc.
Rightist doesn't want big titty because
"Family values, morality, jesus," Etc.
Rightists don't require a bunch of political buzzwords and posturing to attack something as "immoral" but leftists do, since they're trying to act as though things are objectively wrong, not just subjectively wrong.
>Doesn't matter
Yes, it does. Artists and writers today are explicit in their politics. Take pic related. The white man attacking the black man is wearing a red hat. Red hats are explicitly associated with Trump supporters. When Kelly Sue Deconnick says "you don't like my politics, don't buy my book," she's encouraging anyone that disagrees with her to not purchase her work.
>Intent doesn't count
Wow, this entire explanation is like one massive pedophile diatribe about how much you love fucking little kids in the ass. Least thats how I see it and the point I will get from it. Please die pedophile.
>"Family values, morality, jesus,"
>Not political buzzwords
What the fuck are you arguing? You're proving the point that apolitical comic books don't exist.
>character has a red cap with no insignia
>you read that it's a Trump supporter, assume it's the author's idea to be put there and not the colorist, the artist, simply a coincidence, etc.
The author's intent doesn't matter. If the author didn't want to put a Trump supporter there, you just did.
See
>explicit
You don't know what that word means.
cancer
Depends on your definition of "Political"
How is that an answer to what I posted? The question here is "Can you have an apolitical comic" and that post is about how lots of authors are political.
Just because lots of authors are political doesn't mean its impossible to be apolitical.
The fuck is the political stance of a Garfield comic?
I would like to see a anti-Israel comic from the big two.
The Suicide Squad fought a bunch of Israeli superheroes back in the '90s. Does that count?
>How is that an answer to what I posted? The question here is "Can you have an apolitical comic"
My answer is that if someone can derive a political argument from a supposedly apolitical comment, that comic becomes politicized.
>The fuck is the political stance of a Garfield comic?
Who knows! I never read Garfield. Just for fucking around and friendly argument I'd say... Can you derive any social commentary on the way his owner lives alone with several pets? Is social commentary political?
Wasn't Odin's Father anti-Israel, (for some reason)?
If you fags want to prolong this stale discussion I'd like you to be grown up and learn the difference between non-partisan (what you actually mean) and apolitical.
>The fuck is the political stance of a Garfield comic?
"Work is alienating".
This. So much this.
So, why make it a red cap? Why not a blue cap or a green cap? DC printed it, and at no point did anyone say, 'hey, red hats are usually associated with Trump supporters. Conservatives buy comics too, so maybe we should make an editorial decision and change that.' There is an inherent political bias. Sure, they didn'y go so far as to make it a MAGA hat, but it seems clear to me what they were trying to do.
Yes, I do.
Well the Japanese farting on each other was political.
One problem with apolitical comic books is that current events can cause them to become political.
A movie example is how Lilo and Stich had to be remade after 9/11 because it wasn't acceptable to show a plane being hijacked and nearly crashed into a building.
Is the implication here that if the guy was wearing a different hat, then this page of a man beating another man strictly because of racism, on a background of geopolitcal news, would be apolitical?
You clearly don't. If that white dude had a hat that said MAGA, then that would explicitly mean he's a Trump supporter. Because you can't interpret it any other way, while there's a million reasons a person can wear a plain red hat. Is it IMPLIED that he's a Trump supporter? Heavily.
Is the character EXPLICITLY one? Not at all.
Of course not. It was a sub-discussion on whether it was right-wing-hating commentary or not. Even if Trump was left out of it, the scene would be obviously politically charged.
That's a stretch though. You can be a right winger without being a Trump supporter, you can be a Trump supporter without wearing le trumpy meme hat, and you can be a Trump supporter who wears the meme hat and doesn't randomly attack blacks.
Not every portrayal of an individual is a statement on all individuals who share some characteristics with him. The same way you can (or should be able to) portray a gayfag as overly promiscuous or a Chinaman as sneaky without making broad statements about their socioeconomic categories, That kind of thinking stiffles creativity and pushes people to portray every character as some milquetoast borefest with no flaws, in the event that some faggot on the internet feels personally attacked by the depiction of a fictionnal character (which will invariably happen anyway).
A couple of years ago, maybe. Thanks to Jussie Smollet the red hat is enough, with or without the MSGA logo.
This user said all that needed to be said, the moment normalfags learn that term it becomes a trend on twitter it will be the day all this bullshit ends
>That's a stretch though.
What's a stretch? That a man beating another man strictly because of racism, on a background of geopolitcal news would be obviously politically charged without explicitly naming Trump or any politician?
Two different things mate.
Again, that's a heavy implication, not something made explicit. Not every man, woman and child wearing a red cap is a Trump fan.
How? He was outed as a fake and even if he wasn't I don't get what any of that would have to do with hats.
No, the other part, the "right -wing hating commentary" part. Did you literally stop reading after the first sentence?
That's explicitely the point. Nobody is angry that fiction is politicized, they're angry that it's partisan (and not for their party),
user asked whether we were arguing if the addition of the red cap was what we thought made the situation political. I said. No. That was it.
The right wingers think it's a jewish conspiracy to destroy western society whenever they see a black person in fiction.
I am that user. I was adding that not only does the hat not make it political, but it also does not make it an attack on right-wingers.
Why do there need to be black characters? Fiction was doing fine without them.
>Nobody is angry tgat fiction is politicized
I'm angry that it's politicized. I don't want to SJW politics in comics nor do I want to see Alt-Right politics in comics. Going too far in either direction pushes readers away and that is bad for the industry/medium as a whole. Why can't I just pick up an issue of Batman and read a comfy story about the Dark Knight matching wits with the Riddler? Why does it have to be some commentary on politics and why certain groups of people or beliefs are bad?
Everything is political but that doesn't mean each individual thing's political impact is big enough to warrant the political impact being prioritized when it comes to determining the overall value of said things.
>I'm angry that it's politicized.
I don't get to say that often but no, those aren't your feelings.
And then you go on to say you don't want comics to be overly partisan for either side.
>Batman
Politicized as fuck. It portrays society (politicians, police, tribunals, medical institutions, ..) as incompetent and/or corrupt, and individual vigilante justice as positive.