This episode of Public Broadcasting was brought to you by Private funding.

The story over the firing of Juan Williams from NPR has taken new importance.  Williams' firing was based on his racist comments on the O'Reilly Show in a segment that, in what should have been a red flag, was titled 'Danger From the Muslim World."

In the program he stated that he gets worried when he boards an airplane and sees people "who identify themselves first and foremost as Muslims."

After his firing, he reappeared on Fox News and defended his statements diffusing any claims that what he had said was taken out of context, "I said what I meant to say."

Now, a movement led by Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin are trying to garner support to defund NPR over what they consider a violation of First Amendment rights.  However, Juan wasn't fired for expressing a controversial opinion on NPR's airwaves, he was fired for violating a company code-of-conduct in a public forum, embarrassing both himself and his employer.


The legitimacy of the bigotry of the comments is not the issue at question here.  What's troubling is the form of punishment the detractors wish to enact on NPR.  They are not calling for a fine, or for a lawsuit to be settled by the courts; they want NPR defunded.  They want to take public money away from what is supposed to be a public good.

The public discourse around the defunding revolves around the idea that NPR can support itself, and therefore the government should not be spending money to subsidize it.  One of the comments in the Daily Caller article reads "Public Broadcasting will just have to find new revenue. Private companies have been dealing with this problem for years. Now it is time for public broadcasting to do the same," a most absurd logic considering they would then CEASE TO BE PUBLIC.


I am reminded of a conversation I had with my Mom the other day on the phone.  She mentioned off-hand, "You know, I don't understand how libraries stay in business.  They can't survive solely from fines."
I replied that libraries are subsidized by the government as a public good.  Her answer,

"Huh.  What's the government get out of that?"


We've gotten so used to the government constantly screwing us over and the constant cut of all welfare programs that we've forgotten that it's the governments role to serve and provide for the citizens, not the other way around.  Why should the government subsidize NPR?  Because it's a public good, and we need some form of decent Journalism.  They're not the best they can be, but they're better than almost everything else we got.

Comic or graphic novel? 45rpm or 33?

You always mention that indy media is born out of a lack of coverage of niche markets.  Today we're going to reexamine an egregious attempt at an interview with one of comic's biggest writers Robert Kirkman.

Last night, The Walking Dead premiered on AMC.  It received 3.8 million viewers, beating out all cable competitors and most network shows.  It was based on writer Robert Kirkman's acclaimed comic book, detailing how humanity survives following the zombie apocalypse. 

The comic is Romero-esque, meaning (for the non-horror literate) that the focus is on the human characters with gore provided as a metaphoric distillation of real social issues.

A month and a half ago, Robert Kirkman was interviewed by The Atlantic's Jared Kellner.  What followed was a horrible vortex of pandering, misinformation, and infantilization.

Let's take a look at some of the most offensive moments.


"The past decade has seen a remarkable reintroduction of the comic book into popular culture. The X-Men, Iron Man, Spider-man, Batman, and Superman have garnered millions of dollars at the box office, and planned blockbusters like Green Lantern and Thor are on the horizon. "

It starts off promising enough, Kellner even remembers the hyphen in Spider-Man.
 
"But while Americans have flocked to theaters to catch these comic classics, they've also been introduced to an unfamiliar cast of characters, most without moral compasses or spandex. Films like Watchmen, Persepolis, From Hell, A History of Violence, and Sin City all had their origins in "graphic novels," a middle ground between the conventional comic book and the full-on novel. Comics, it turns out, were never just for kids."
Sigh.  We're just two paragraphs in and we've already derailed.  Interesting that he immediately follows the statement that we're being introduced to a cast of characters without spandex by mentioning Watchmen, a comic that features superheroes...wearing spandex.  But this is just the intro, let's examine his questions.

"If I were to ask a stranger for the definition of a graphic novel, they'd probably tell me that it's simply a comic book. Is there a clear distinction between the graphic novel and the conventional comic book?"

 There is a single word answer to this question, the question he deemed important enough to open his interview with: Binding.  You should never start with a question that can be answered by 25 seconds of googling.

Kirkman does an admirable job though of detailing that there is no real difference in content, and that most graphic novels are just collections of comics that have already been published.  He finishes his response by saying that the delineation between the two is "senseless."

So what does any journalist do in this instance?

"But apart from format, isn't there a thematic distinction between comic books and graphic novels? I know noteworthy graphic novels like Maus, Persepolis, and Black Hole by Charles Burns are lauded because of their focus on darker, more mature themes. Even Watchmen, despite its superhero tint, gets placed apart from publications like Batman and Superman."

He asks the same question...EVEN HARDER!

Is there even an answer to this question by this point that isn't just 'Oh, Kellner, you're so smart.  I should be interviewing you!'?

Also, is there a reason Charles Burns gets singled out as the creator of Black Hole?  Are Art Spiegleman and Marjane Satrapi not important enough for credit? 

And in what manner does Watchmen get placed apart from Batman and Superman?  They're all published by the same company, in the same formats.  Does he just mean alphebetically, they're not placed together?  Because that's certainly...true?

Again, it speaks well of Kirkman that he doesn't just leave the interview right there, but rather tries to steer it away from this asinine line of questioning.

"But because of the light-hearted nature of hero comics, don't they appeal to a broader audience? Comic sales took a nosedive after a speculation bubble in the 1990s. How to economics factor into the decision to publish safe rags like Superman and Batman or move into graphic novels?"

By this point it's becoming more and more obvious that Kellner doesn't realize that *gasp* DC publishes Batman and Superman graphic novels.

 

What would comics look like in a digital format? Plenty of iPad-ready magazines have special features. I'm almost imaging moving panels...

Let me translate this for the non-idiots.

"What would comics look like if they existed digitally, like they have been for the last four years are so.  In fact, I've done so little research for this interview I can't be bothered to even type the words digital comics into a search engine to avoid looking like a jackass.  I'm almost imagining a feature that was invented 50 years ago when Marvel made television cartoons out of their comics by animating characters mouths on already drawn artwork.  It was ridiculous."

In fact, it is estimated that graphic novel sales are down 20%, while digital comics sales are up 1000%.  Do you know how I know that, Jared Kellner?  I Googled it!  It took me 2 minutes, and I'm not even talking to a professional.  I just don't want to look like an idiot on the Internet.  Maybe you should try it sometime.

"It seems as though Image, being a smaller publisher without any legacy publications, is best suited to publish graphic novels about zombies, detectives, and everything else."

What?  What!?  WHAT?!

If only Marvel and DC had the nimbleness to publish comics about zombies, detectives, and everything else...

If only DC's second longest running title was a comic about Detectives...perhaps it could be called Detective Comics!  Oh wait, it is and it's been published for 73 consecutive years.

And if only Marvel could publish a comic about zombies...perhaps labeled Marvel Zombies. Oh yeah, it does, and it was written by Robert Kirkman, also known as the MAN YOU ARE CURRENTLY INTERVIEWING!

Also, zombies, detectives, and everything else is the same kind of weird 'specific, specific, vague' pattern that we see in Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  What is in that everything else category?  Romance comics?  Because Marvel has a pretty good history of those.  Westerns?  Oh yeah, there's Jonah Hex.  Um, monkeys?  Oh no, DC has a comic about a chimp...who also happens to be a DETECTIVE!

"Films have had success in introducing the public to the idea of the comic as a more textured work, mainly through projects like Watchmen, Sin City, Persepolis, and maybe even From Hell (not "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," which was, well cartoonish.) Are there concerns about these works losing their thematic luster in translation to the big screen?"

 Well, if you talk to Alan Moore, the writer of Watchmen, From Hell, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, all the films are absolute rubbish and should not be taken seriously or viewed at all.  And I am curious as to what 'thematic luster' Sin City has.  Are you insinuating that Sin City is a more mature work than Superman simply because it's darker and is allowed to have violence and swear?  Because I'd really consider the comic that represents the most beautiful aspects of humanity condensed into a single character that uses all of his power in this world (metaphoric power being represented here through literal power) to help others instead of advancing his own self interests--and that somewhere beneath the stuffy glasses and ties all of us wear in an attempt to navigate this world, there is a beautiful being of inherent goodness just waiting for us to rip off our shirts and reveal to humanity, is the more mature work than the one wear the dude totally feeds this cannibal to wolves because he ate a hooker he was sleeping with.  Also, the answer is yes...movies totally lose their thematic luster in translation. 

"Do you have any thoughts on Y: The Last Man? The series ended a few years ago, and I know it made quite an impression on many people in Hollywood."

WHAT?!  Do you have any thoughts on this comic that you had nothing to do with the creation of?

This is equivalent to asking Robert DeNiro if he's seen Avatar yet, because 'it's totally awesome.'  You know, it's 9 questions into a 10 question interview, and he's still avoided asking Kirkman a SINGLE question about anything he's ever written.

"We've established an idea of the graphic novel and how it's become successful in the past few years..."

 Wait, have we?  We've established that you seem to be convinced that graphic novel's are 'serious literature' while comic books are all about super heroes who are stupid despite the fact that you're interviewing a man who got his start writing SUPER HERO COMICS.

So the obvious question: what's in store for the future?

That's good, try to end the interview as vaguely as possible.

So things we've learned:

1: Things published serially shouldn't be taken as seriously as things published all at once...take THAT Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens.

2: Superheroes are silly and irrelevant, not like mature works for mature men like me like zombies and detectives and everything else.

3: Comics can be classified into four categories: Superheroes, Zombies, Detectives, Everything Else.

4: Newspapers really shouldn't be allowed to write about comics any more. 

In his latest podcast, Director Kevin Smith spoke with a group of bloggers to celebrate the completion of his new film, Red State, a horror film featuring murderous Christian fundamentalists.  Smith got his start with one of the biggest indy films of the early 90s, and precursor to the mumblecore genre, Clerks.  Almost immediately he sold out to the Weinsteins, former owners of Miramax, and Oscar-Bait producers who understand marketing dramas, but whose grasp on basic film making seems tenuous at best.


Smith's relationship with the Weinstein's soured, and now they've turned down producing Red State. 

His films usually consist of extended dialog scenes and little action, this translates into an easily manageable budget.  2008's Clerks 2 was made for slightly over 5 million dollars, an easily recoupable figure considering Smith's pedigree.  Though his films are divisive and the quality ranges from brilliant to insipid, his persona is still beloved among his fans so much so that they will support him in whatever he does.  However, the Weinsteins, apparent disbelievers in the 'true fan' theory, decided to put up 10 million dollars towards the film's advertising budget in the hopes of recruiting a wider audience, but also tripling the chances that the film wont make back the money it cost to make and market.


Now severed from the studio system, Smith is free to create, market, and release films on his own, important given Red State's potentially divisive concept.