Sunday ka Funda

Linus: "I am a giant!"

Lucy: "Giants are thirty feet tall!"

Linus: "I'm a giant among lesser men!"

(From Peanuts comics)

Gaga's Gays and Spidey's Black

I never did think about Spiderman’s colour, except for his blue and red costume. So, what does a new half-black replacement mean? Is he termed the “Ultimate” only because he is a hybrid? Miles Morales sounds like one more of those gestures.

Axel Alonso, Marvel Editor in Chief, said:

“When the opportunity arose to create a new Spider-Man, we knew it had to be a character that represents the diversity—in background and experience—of the twenty-first century. Miles is a character who not only follows in the tradition of relatable characters like Peter Parker, but also shows why he’s a new, unique kind of Spider-Man—and worthy of that name.”

Spiderman is supposed to crawl up walls, save people, and lead a double existence. His bane and boon. With the racial angle, he will be politicised. White people, as much as blacks or any other races, can have diverse backgrounds within their fold. Besides, experiences are pretty much unique to individuals. It has been a decade since the 21st century kicked in, so why the sudden need to diversify?

His “half-black, half-Hispanic” origins come across as tokenism. It is true that no business enterprise would risk something only to offer sops, but there is a huge market of African Americans and the others, primarily immigrants, who would be interested for reasons other than mere uniqueness. It could be political correctness, or curiosity, or to see the ‘difference’.

Spiderman is an entrenched hero. They are not following the trend; they have moved Miles into a new category. He will wear the mask, but pajamas. The true test here is not scaling walls, but who he will save and what his heroism will come to denote. I am afraid the possibility of him catering to a niche market is stronger than any universal appeal. Not because he is black, but because he has been planned as that. Truly strong characters evolve. Miles Morales has already been trapped.

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I love Lady Gaga for pushing the envelope and parodying pop culture, but her recent comment is worse than tokenism. She was releasing her line of baby wear and said she’d like to have kids.

"Some day, a long way from now. But I wouldn't love them unless they were gay.”

What is she trying to prove? That she supports alternative sexuality? That she does and has expressed it publicly. With this statement, she has confirmed that love is conditional and she will probably inject some hormones that will ensure the children turn out the way she wants.

A gay infant will not show signs of sexual orientation, nor will s/he when they grow up to be toddlers. Perhaps not until their teens, maybe even later. What will she do until then? Hold back her love? If they turn out to be heterosexual, will she turn them away or inculcate gay values and gay behaviour – if there are any such standard forms – to ensure that they are influenced enough? Or maybe they will just go along to be what mommy wants them to be?

I doubt if the gay community would concur with her views. She makes it seem like they need ‘special’ care.

Business is now comic-al

“Why?” was my first instinct. Why and how can business books adapt into comics? Then it struck me that with the graphic novel gaining currency – fiction has always been considered the hallmark of imagination – showing a ‘How To’ series should be a more natural progression.

The little I have seen of graphic novels, too, does not intrude into the manner in which words are used. It is just a different way of seeing. Being personally more inclined to imagery and metaphor, the idea of a pictorial depiction may take away from the reader’s way of looking at the work. But then, if the work is different from one’s ‘area’ in a manner, then the graphics add rather than take away from what is being conveyed. It is like watching clouds and then you see flashes of the sky that has already been ‘painted’. It gives a different dimension to how we watch the cumulus disperse or words tumble.

Non-fiction of a certain kind lends itself wonderfully to such pictorial depiction. As a report states:

SmarterComics is to produce a line of comic books based on bestselling business, motivational and personal self-help titles. Among the titles coming out next month in graphic novel form are personal motivator Larry Winget's business bestseller 'Stop Whining & Get a Life', sales and marketing guru Tom Hopkins' 'How to Master the Art of Selling', performance psychologist John Eliot's 'Overachievement' and technology magazine Wired's editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's 'The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More'.

I do not read self-help books (ah, whining gives me a chance to dine and wine and, occasionally, shine), but it is a huge market and there could well be titles that I would find cumbersome to read because it just isn’t my territory but would like to know about. Of course, there is pretty much everything available on the Net, yet I would be curious about how a book like I’m Ok, You're Ok would translate in images. It is such a psychological journey and it just so happened that at around the same time I was reading Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, which I think would be an absolute delight as a comic book. I do tend to visualise and even imagine while reading non-fiction, the drier it is the more vividly I think about the characters or ‘players’ or ‘scenes’.

Unfortunately, the publisher’s targets are the “Twitter and Facebook generations” for whom the books will be “lively, visually appealing comics, for a generation of readers who want valuable information in easy to understand bits”.

I think there is no specific generation anymore on social networking sites and the need for valuable information and easy to understand bits need not be seen as dumbing down. Serious issues can be dumbed down, poetry can be dumbed down in the manner in which they are interpreted. It would be quite educative if instead of drab graphs one can watch the more complex works made accessible, rather than easy. And the difference lies in placing before us a well-laid out meal and spoon-feeding.

Even at the most basic level, if the works reach a wider readership, there would be some who might want to explore it in greater detail.

To give another example, I discovered many old folktales in their pure forms after reading comics.

Long before Indian television gave us garish images of mythological caricatures, there was the Amar Chitra Katha series of comics. As a comic book aficionado, I admit that except for the Panchtantra series, there was not much that kept me regaled. It was a simple and simplistic rendition, but so are most text books. However, what these books did was to make children conscious of our epics. Anant Pai, the founder, writer, illustrator kept at it till his death recently, because he noticed that youngsters knew more about the Greeks than Lord Rama. Of course, he did not realise that this would become a household name for entirely different reasons.

From mythology he ventured into stories of real people, the heroes. Again, I can well imagine how much more wonderful it must be to read these with quote bubbles and loud drawings for a mind that is transfixed by butterflies and in a hurry to chase them.

One should hope children grow up and grown ups can retain a wide-eyed wonder.