Category Archives: media

Hendrick ter Brugghen, “The Adoration of the Magi” (1619)

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Hendrick ter Brugghen, "The Adoration of the Magi" (1619)

Hendrick ter Brugghen, “The Adoration of the Magi” (1619)

If you would like to see this in more detail, this link is very helpful.

The people in the painting gaze in three different ways: looking down, looking away, looking toward. Our attention is focused, like Joseph’s, on the Magi and their age. His eyes are toward, the only person really engaging the persons of the Magi. He, like us, has something in common with them. The white folds of their garments and turbans remind one of sagging flesh. They wear their age, like Joseph. They have come to see new life. The old one kneeling intently stares at the child, trying desperately to understand what he has journeyed for.

Christ does not look back at him, but his wrinkly flesh mirrors their concern. Ter Brugghen understands why Christ in icons was depicted a homunculus – he is the Son of Man, fully Man. He readies himself for the sacrifice in accepting the gifts. The wonder of the Magi is not satisfied; no one wants to see new life end or begin in tragedy.

Still, the bright colors and sunlight of this painting do not exist for irony’s sake. This is a majestic painting, and Christ is not the only one who understands us. Mary beams and focuses on her child. In loving Him, she sees humanity. I wonder if the silver and gold of the canisters is meant to contrast with her. She stands out, perhaps to show that God’s love for man can become man’s love for each other.

Hendrick ter Brugghen, “The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John” (1624-5)

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Hendrick ter Brugghen, "The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John" (1624-5)

Hendrick ter Brugghen, “The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John” (1624-5)


Please do read what the Met has to say about this painting: this might have been done for a “hidden” Catholic church in an overwhelmingly Protestant city. There is a marked emphasis on suffering, but I think it is leading to a more expansive theme.

For me, the painting divides into two. There’s the symbolism at the foot of the cross. Skull, bones, broken wood and a sapling. There’s the matter of Christ’s flowing blood, His being the lamb. All of that leads to this question: how exactly does a triumph over death lead to new life? It’s a juxtaposition that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The symbolism contrasts with the three figures above it. Mary is stunned at what has been done to her son. Her gaze seems to be on his body, his wounds. Her complexion is the same deathly color as his skin. She steps toward him, in a pose both pleading and ready to embrace. The Mother of God is not some ethereal, spiritual entity divorced from the world. To love the Creator is to love life, to be horrified at the evil men do against life, not just against some abstract concept of God.

Mary’s grief is not quite St. John’s. He’s stunned, too, and his feet are in exactly the same position as Mary’s, yet they are part of a radically different pose. He’s focused on Christ’s head, maybe the quiet glow coming from it. Looking upward, his hands are not in a prayerful position. He’s contemplating the sort of man the Son of Man was, even without seeing his face.

Mary’s and John’s are two aspects of loss, united in the figure of Christ. Christ’s body is pale and looks withered in a way. His blood is still pouring. The symbols at the foot of the cross don’t lead to the question the portraits do: What does it mean to triumph over death? It means you become death, you become the point of judgment. All of humanity is judged by the inhumanity of what occurred. Christ and Mary are divine in their pallor.

The only hint there is something good for us sinners in this moment of overwhelming tragedy is John seeing the glow. The beaten, worn body of Christ did suffer and now wears that suffering. New life was always within Creation. The question always was when we would see it.

Addendum: I should say something more, as I’m surrounded by people who think lashing themselves gets grace and others who think cursing gets people sent to hell. What’s amazing about this painting is how seriously it takes the human, how seriously it takes our suffering in this life. It acknowledges that life is hard: people lose their children every day. It does not do what we do, which is watch the news and then say outright that people could have done something to not lose their children. It does not promise resurrection or mana from heaven as solving all our problems if we follow a bunch of rules. It simply looks at a moment of utter horror and wonders how anything could be redeemed by it. It does not hint at an afterlife or anything in that afterlife. Now that I say that, I do wonder if other ages understood morality better than us. Probably, this much is true: ter Brugghen is a genius, and I’m privileged to view his art.

Trying “Medium” and Failing Hard

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You’re probably aware that one of the guys who brought you twitter has now brought forth “Medium.” It’s a blogging service dedicated to quality, longform reads and other things that readers/media junkies like, such as photojournalism and editorial cartoons.

It should be paradise for me. I love the large, gorgeous font you compose posts with; the headings, subheadings, and subtitles make everything look like its from the New Yorker or Atlantic or something. The notes feature is great for commenting as you read. You don’t even have to read the whole piece to engage the author thoughtfully. For a while, Medium paid professional writers to get their community started at a certain quality. The lure of having someone educated, media savvy, and appreciative critique and read your work is not a small one.

So here’s my first piece for Medium: Blogging Emily Dickinson. Those of you who’ve been with this blog for a while know this may sound like a list of posts with an abrupt, weird tangent at the end if read too quickly. You also know that it is the culmination of 8 years of wrestling with Dickinson and wondering why her thought matters. It’s a lot of experiences, thoughts, and fumbling turned into a compact read so that way someone can get a glimpse of something genuinely different. Of course, the only person who has recommended this piece on Medium is me.

It’s not a “Top 5 ways to destress” listicle or “The Secret to Viral Content” marketing spam, you know, the junk that cluttered blogging at its inception and is cluttering Medium. It isn’t something that has immediate value in the sense of value defined by people who have absolutely no imagination.

Yeah, I’m pissed. I’ve been blogging a long time, and more importantly, I’ve watched new media blossom. You can talk to anyone who wrote a piece you like on Twitter; you can see how events are covered in a way that wasn’t possible before. The openness coincides with a remarkable breadth of coverage. The nytimes is running a philosophy blog, as you all know; video game journalism is some of the most serious and thoughtful writing on the web. And sports journalism has a new life and large objects. Deadspin’s appeal, to take one example, is that it is a tabloid. Its real significance is that it might actually precipitate a cultural change that ends the NCAA.

To put it bluntly, we live in a golden age of journalism, and because we do, my voice counts less. The criticism where one carefully examines the nuts and bolts of reading, of the assumptions one brings to the text, doesn’t count for anything. What matters is telling a story where problems are complicated at most because people have differing interests and won’t/shouldn’t back down. Ours is a purposely unreflective media. We can get the details and the biases logged. To try and make sense of it all, that’s for pundits, all of whom have convenient and profitable ideologies.

That lack of reflection is like a snowball going downhill when we consider the consequences. It’s just taken for granted that you should write and put on the air stories that get eyeballs, no matter what consequence they are. The crass materialism underlying nearly everything we do in society – whether we’re talking about fine artists using “art” to promote a brand, education being more about unions and corporations than creating independent thinkers, people even thinking that God is a way to get stuff – is almost completely unchallenged. Again, we’ve got better writing, better coverage, smooth speech and terrific technical capabilities. And we’re incapable of taking a few sentences by someone and really thinking about what they could mean, really trying to appreciate another opinion in its fullness. I’m not perfect, not by a long shot. But I try to know my faults.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, “An Apodyterium” (1886)

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Lawrence Alma-Tadema, "An Apodyterium"

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, “An Apodyterium” (1886)

We are in public bath, where the woman on the right searching us is supposed to undress in order to bathe. The heart of this painting is her portrait; the ambiguity of her expression is a narrative unto itself.

Much builds to that portrait. The painting divides into quarters. The lower left quarter, which descends, is bordered such that it leads the eye to the upper left. There we see a fusion of exteriority and interiority. A servant and another look to be walking out; some parents are dealing with children near the colonnade? Light and dark are stark, right at the entrances. Clean classical marble and flowing robes attempt to keep sexuality – the obvious – hidden.

The nude woman at the lower right is out of sight of anyone else. She pays us no mind, her clothes will end up in the crevices at the upper right. She is not bashful at all. Perhaps we are not bashful either, and this has taken the young woman looking at us aback. She’s aware of shame – she’s a lot more reluctant to get in the baths than the woman next to her – but this painting isn’t really about her being modest and lovely or some crap like that. Of course she has a demure beauty.

The painting is more about the weirdness of beauty and its concealment. The interiority/exteriority of the upper left suggests we should be thinking about her inner beauty and the soft gaze, but again, that’s just part of the puzzle. The structure of the work and the structure of the building mirror the structure of her robes. The light and dark in arrangement conceal. But that’s the funniest thing of all: how is it possible to conceal when light and dark themselves suggest an inside and an outside? When light and dark actually involve going inside and outside? To truly conceal, something has to be a near-impossible thought, not fully naked right next to you.

The very means of concealing only lead to the object of desire. It’s like we train ourselves to avert our gaze so that way the everyday becomes that more appealing. Modesty is only part of beauty itself. I’m not saying this painting is a subversive excuse for lust. Something stranger is going on; we’re not exactly repulsed by shame or modesty. Nor does it look like this painting is a strictly moral exercise, locating “virtue” in reluctance to get in a bath. It’s something more like this: beauty is the concealment itself, as it is beauty alone which makes us ask who is truly beautiful. If there is a subversion, it has to do with the subordinate position of morality, but that is almost a technical point in this context.

Hendrick ter Brugghen, “The Incredulity of St. Thomas” (1622)

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With thanks to Catherine Volmensky

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Hendrick ter Brugghen, “The Incredulity of St. Thomas” (1622)

This is a really cool painting. Catherine emphasized its everydayness, as this could be right out of 17th c. Dutch life. That’s not a trivial idea: what if a man rose from the dead in the midst of believers? The whole scene is goofy. The older gentleman at the right is both happy and curious. He has some kind of glasses on and may be eager to try the wound himself. Thomas’ eyes are away from us, looking closed; it’s like he’s doubting his doubt while acting on it. The gentleman in the far left, between Thomas and the man looking to heaven, seems embarrassed by the whole ordeal. And then there is the one man whose eyes we see – could be John? – looking upward in a prayerful stance.

He’s the only man whose eyes are visible, but we would be remiss if we said his was the only true faith in the painting. Jesus’ eyes are not shown to us. He’s as eager as Thomas to see where the doubt goes and is not perturbed by the commotion. There’s a gentleness to this painting that says volumes about the various ways people work with belief and disbelief. Christ’s divinity is quiet, even as he is a man who rose from the dead.

John Singer Sargent, “The Misses Vickers” (1884)

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John Singer Sargent, "The Misses Vickers" (1884)

John Singer Sargent, “The Misses Vickers” (1884)

This was painted after “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” and has considerably more warmth. Does it have as much depth? The initial reviews of this painting were savage; the online John Singer Sargent gallery has a great discussion of them as well as the painting itself. For comparison, what the critics found far superior (worth a write-up, too).

This painting uses a lot of handsome, dark browns that can either be seen as creating a dramatic darkness or a more casual, familiar background. I tend to think there is heightened drama in the white dress, bright skin and background porcelain against those browns. Still, if I’m correct, the drama is being heightened for a trivial scene. One girl seems to be daydreaming, looking past the viewer. The other is flipping the page of a magazine with so much “flair” she cannot possibly be reading it. Finally, a chair is crammed next to the two other sisters, and that sister is looking square at the viewer with the look that Harrison Ford gets from that girl in class at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The scene is obviously staged.

I’ll go further than the online commentary I’ve read. Yes, these are three modern women who can do whatever they want; the women here are between 18-21 years of age and are incredibly playful. The key to the painting is whom they’re being playful toward. The art is so staged that we have to think of the painter as part of the picture. They’re teasing him in different ways. One is looking past everyone else, as if she has boys on her mind or something. The other is trying to strike a pose as she reads and might start giggling if provoked rightly. Then there’s one making eyes and leaning toward the painter. None of this is serious and that’s the point. This is a portrait that deconstructs itself, weirdly enough giving us these women at a moment that matters to them. They’re carefree and sisterly, and it is fun to behold.

John Singer Sargent, “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” (1882)

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John Singer Sargent, "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit." (1882) - in the US public domain

John Singer Sargent, “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” (1882)

Lucky enough to see this in person some time ago; wondered at what is going on in it for years. I think I remember the curator – or maybe it was Paul – had a comment that the girl in red to the left is an outcast. The other sisters form a tighter, more conventional triangle in our line of sight. The Boston MFA site helpfully lists the ages of the daughters: “Mary Louisa (eight years old when Sargent painted her), Florence (age fourteen), Jane (twelve), and Julia (four).” It makes perfect sense the 12 & 14 year olds want nothing to do with their 8 year old sister. The 4 year old can obviously get whatever she damn well wants.

The background is not incidental. I confess, I didn’t pay enough attention to it before. The vases correspond to the girls. The two in the center have a big one of their own; the one on the right is set off by red and away from everything else, much like Mary Louisa. Directly behind Julia are two small vases on a dresser, but she doesn’t really need a vase to stake her claim. Her white dress is almost formal and she holds a doll that with its color stands out even in a room full of rich objects. She’s set off by a rug that probably costs more than Air Force One.

Those large vases are not cheap, though. Again, from the MFA site: “The two tall Japanese vases, made in Arita in the late nineteenth century specifically for export to the West, were prized family possessions; their unusual size in relation to the girls makes the interior seem strange and magical.” Not really sure about “magical,” but definitely sure about “strange.” This is Wonderland, with all the darkness of inanity. There are vases, markers of wealth, that are as big or bigger than people; there’s the casual holding of a doll as if it were just another puppet, like some servant that needs lashes for not cleaning the stables after mowing the lawn and fixing the carriage. These daughters seem to emerge from the house, coming out of its darkened corridors or from its sides. The key to the whole thing is that a sister is being excluded because. Nothing here makes any sense, except the territoriality of young girls with wealth. That makes even less sense because there’s nothing they have to fight each other for, unlike some families where one has to fight with siblings to eat. One is tempted to want to give the 8 year old a book and some encouragement, but having been around families like these, we all know better. There’s probably too much cynicism on her part to take any help or attention.

Rembrandt, “Self-Portrait” (1659)

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Seen in person at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Rembrandt, "Self-Portrait" (1659)

Rembrandt, “Self-Portrait” (1659)

This painting stood out when I wandered through the National Gallery with my limited time. The flesh of the face has expressive, rich detail and is by far the brightest part of the painting. The various browns seem handsome in the pictures online, but honestly, the whole of it seemed really dark to me in person. The expression from the picture online looks like it fixes you, like it expresses an “inner strength and dignity.”

That was not the experience I had. I knew, roughly, that Rembrandt painted a number of self-portraits. As he gets older, they show him more and more becoming undone. The expression still seems worried and nervous to me, like he wants to look past himself. An older line of criticism, when the painting had a varnish on it that made it much darker, holds that this is an incredibly sad painting. If you want to read more, Wikipedia has a lot of useful details.

I think it is worth playing with a reconciliation between two different thoughts, as this is a painting Rembrandt clearly put a lot of thought into. I do think we are supposed to be impressed that the brightness of the face will fade into darkness. The dark clothing, the charcoal and gray hair lead the eye to that conclusion. But it is also worth considering that one does not think about death only when one is about to die. We’re at different stages in life when we’re worried. Rembrandt is definitely worn out physically, but an “inner strength” is there – the question is why he may not know it, why he feels like he’s staring death in the face, why it may take a certain vigor to stare death in the face.

On Grand Theft Auto V’s Attempt at Self-Justification

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Spoilers ahead

It took me a while to realize what GTA V was trying to achieve. Yes, there are many statements in game about American capitalism, movies and celebrity culture, and a political system where leaders and bureaucrats think about “getting ahead” more than doing their job. Ricky McAlister pointed out the challenge of trying to keep away from these topics, particularly the first: the “C” ending has Michael talk about outsourcing and putting profits offshore while killing an investor. Franklin mentions that he’s not sure how different the “capitalism” he, Michael and Trevor practice is from the investor’s.

Let’s talk about the basic story before I offer a more developed critique. Franklin is a small-time hood whose girlfriend broke up with him to find someone more established and ethical. Franklin meets Michael while stealing cars. Michael is a retired criminal who through a corrupt government agent got out of the robbery business. His last robbery involved him getting shot, one of his partners getting killed, and the third partner – Trevor – disappearing. A fake funeral for Michael opens the game. Michael has a new name, a family, a lot of money and a lot of issues. Michael ends up taking Franklin under his wing, showing him how to do bigger and better heists, because his anger, obligations to the corrupt government agent that’s protecting him, and want of being a movie star push him to be daring. Trevor shows up when he realizes Michael is alive and wants into the gang. Trevor is a psychopath who will kill anyone over anything. He controls people using fear and anger; his broken logic is a strength that keeps everyone else on edge. Trevor has established a very profitable meth operation outside of Los Santos, the LA replica Michael and Franklin operate in. But Trevor also is very attached to the past, loyal to the old gang to a fault. He’s been sending letters to the old partner, believing him in prison and not dead. He wants to bust him out. The central action of the story revolves around Michael’s betrayal of the old gang when they were about to be caught to protect himself and his family. The old partner is lying in Michael’s grave, and it is just a matter of time before Trevor realizes the truth.

You can see that when the story is told with just the characters involved, there’s a lot fewer “-isms” and more fundamental issues at work. Franklin wants to move ahead, but can he move ahead while letting go? It’s hard to be rejected and invest seriously in a new life. Franklin is dealing with disappointment, and some of the more writerly moments in the game deal with this theme. When about to meet Dom, Franklin talks at length about his issues to a dog that seems to understand his every word. That dog disappears entirely, as if it never existed. It’s a comic but telling moment in the game, that Franklin doesn’t really have anyone to vent to. His disappointment makes him lonely.

Michael has all kinds of anger and guilt issues. At one point, a guy trying to make it in movies explains what hardships he faces. As the bottom of the barrel, he gets a lot of abuse for a mere opportunity. It’s convincing. However, it convinces Michael to irrationally scream “shut up” at him. Those anger and guilt issues stem from the fact that he wanted to live a dream, got what he wanted, and still wants to live a dream. His love of the movies, his escapism, is one half of the key puzzle of GTA V, the one Franklin fits into.

The other half is Trevor. At first, he’s just sick and very difficult to stomach. Later, as Franklin finds himself “straight” with Trevor and even Michael won’t kill him, you realize that he is a sick cartoon. He’s got control over anyone he wants through violence. His special ability is a “rage mode” where he takes virtually no damage and deals out a ton. As ridiculous as GTA is, with Michael and Franklin basically having slow time abilities as well as the typical ability to kill a small army, Trevor is that much more ridiculous. He gets property at the drop of a hat because of his meth operation. Everyone is an enemy to him except some dumb hicks who admire his honesty.

Michael represents an older version of the good life. Family, white picket fences, old movies and heroes. Trevor is about rage, drugs and control. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the game feels like a first-person shooter most with Trevor around. But gamer culture obviously is not exclusive to FPS games. GTA V has something to say about America and sold $800 million on its first day out. The real critique GTA is offering with Michael and Trevor, who are player-controlled, is about itself. American escapism nowadays is continuous with what American escapism was. Before, you’d watch Joe Pesci shoot a kid that mouthed back to him in Goodfellas. Now you have a controller as GTA tells you to plant a bomb to kill the Lifeinvader CEO. What GTA V tries to do is justify the sandbox game, its particular right to parody mass media and industry. To do that, it has to justify gaming metaphorically.

That’s the larger purpose behind the shots it takes at capitalism and government while having you run around with a bunch of murderous psychos who cannot possibly be justified. The critique of capitalism in game is utterly laughable. Each company’s stock has a competitor. Wreck the competitor by murdering their CEO or, in the case of an airline (sigh) by blowing up jetliners, and the stock you own will go up by leaps and bounds. There is no way you could possibly use this game to educate anyone about the financial crisis or mountains of debt we have – you can’t show that the self-interest and good intentions of a number of actors got out of hand, coupled with some greed. It’s all greed and corruption in game, with your murderous psychos being used as tools by even more murderous, greedy psychos. The real reason to introduce capitalism for the sake of critique is to compare its practitioners with our characters, who are player-controlled criminals. In other words, there’s a reason why Jimmy, Michael’s son who does nothing but smoke weed and play video games, saves his Dad and betters himself. In a world where we can be reduced quickly to dog-eat-dog, what’s wrong with escapism through video games?

The critique of government is along the same lines, but has a bit more substance. The private army that is the Blackwater parody is ridiculous. The real threat from mercenary firms in American lives is not that they run around America killing Americans, but that they are invisible to the body politic for the most part. However, the interagency competition between the CIA and FBI parodies in game is much more serious and one of the more convincing storylines. The agents will do anything for promotions and glory, and the willingness to do anything to make it look like one is useful – to torture and kill on rumor as opposed to building a case – makes too much sense. The game goes beyond a shallow libertarian critique. It is very clear the profit/promotion motive can never be a substitute for justice or moderation, which you must have in law enforcement. It is also very clear that we only see utility in terms of getting ahead.

And that’s where the game’s strength and greatest failure lies. In giving the player the chance to make his three psychos work together, the game mockingly hints that some kind of fraternity can exist between gamers themselves even as the rest of the world goes to shit in the name of productivity and accomplishment. Michael’s speech about outsourcing and offshore profits is about placing trust in the people around you. It really has nothing to do with capitalism. But at the same time, this is not a serious ethos. Not in the least. Michael’s complaint about Trevor – a complaint that, in addition to his own selfishness, makes him want to kill Trevor – gets watered down as the game goes on. It isn’t clear it should be watered down; Trevor kills and tortures in excess, even for a GTA game. The very first thing Trevor does in game is sadistically kill a character from a previous GTA game. My brother remarked how that other character couldn’t catch a break. He was part of a fairly serious storyline where he had to kill in order to defend himself and ended up an exile. I get that GTA V is trying to break from that sort of seriousness, but this was a really tasteless way to go about that. It undermines any moral the game might try to consider, including an attempt to justify the sandbox given. It undermines the previous work the company has done well.

That sandbox, as others have noted, suffers from lazy writing. The absolute worst example of this is the “choice” given Franklin near game’s end. The FBI wants Trevor dead; some rich dude wants Michael dead. You, as Franklin, can choose to kill either or neither. Problem: Franklin has, not too long ago, saved both characters in quests you couldn’t choose. And both characters have saved him and his friend even while wanting to kill each other. Franklin verbally admits his gratefulness for all this. It’s cute to say “well, this parallels the choice Michael made,” but that’s not even true as Franklin admits at some point. The choice Michael made was complicated and difficult; the choice you face is the product of bad writing that stays untrue to the character Franklin is. I could care less about the A and B endings that come from killing Michael and Trevor. They’re not products of a serious storyline, of writers that know what they’re doing.

Finally, there’s the misogyny, however unintentional. There is no female in the game that can be taken seriously. I’m thinking this was somewhat intentional, to create a “boys only” club atmosphere might justify gaming even in its stupidest forms. Unfortunately, gaming isn’t justifiable in its absolutely stupidest forms, and the game’s slapsticky attempts to pin misogyny on our media-at-large fall flat given how it depicts women. Giving any of the characters a serious love interest with extended dialogue could have fixed this easily. I was calling Molly, a crooked lawyer working for the investor, with Michael and Franklin, thinking that there might be some kind of plot there. Nothing. Franklin probably has a self-realization when he tells Molly that she should quit being so in love with the investor, that it isn’t going to happen, but that just shows how shallow a character Molly, who has something like 40 words in game, is. Her whole character is known in 2 seconds. And don’t get me started on Maryann or Abigail or the utter mess that is Amanda.

GTA IV was too dark for me and I honestly enjoy the play of V a lot more (however: everyone should read this on GTA IV). Some of the satire – especially the Weazel News bits, the glory that is Bleeter, and “Fame or Shame” – is just incredible. But yeah, too much snark, ridiculousness and cheap jokes hurt what might have been a good statement about our newer attempts to live the dream. We do play games, just not the games that actually run over people to steal their money and leave them dead.

Adrian Tomine, “Go Owls” in Optic Nerve 13

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Spoilers galore ahead

You could say “Go Owls” is Mr. Tomine’s version of Breaking Bad or Weeds, but that would involve looking only at the most superficial element of the story. We have a portrait of a man, Barry, who slips from not taking all moral rhetoric seriously into becoming an abuser. Granted, it’s a pattern that he probably indulged before, but I hesitate to say “reveals himself an abuser,” because one thing Tomine’s stories always treat sensitively is the potential for change. One reader summed up his work thus: “I very much enjoyed your stuff about assholes falling in and out of love or whatever.” I think that’s apt when dealing with complicated characters. Oftentimes, their being assholes is the only thing we can relate to immediately.

Tomine dealt with a similar sort of situation in “Shortcomings.” There, acceptance of cliched Asian wisdom was supposed to be an embrace of an identity. The protagonist, nowhere near the abuser or scumbag Barry is, vehemently rejected this as idiotic – expressing himself in a number of crude, distasteful and terrible ways, of course – and was proved right in the most crucial sense. No amount of moral posturing really grapples with the problem of identity, despite the close correspondence between morality and identity. Further, if one adds “happiness” to the mix – does morality produce happiness? What about having the identity you want? – things fall apart fast.

I originally did not want to spoil the story, but I feel I have to talk about it in order to demonstrate what sets Tomine’s work apart. It was $6 for the issue and my mind was made up to buy it the second I was told it was in stock. Barry, our drug dealing and spousal abusing protagonist, is at an AA meeting when he spots a woman who leaves as the preachiness gets too much for her. Barry is more selective about what he wants to accept as advice and what he doesn’t. He’s open to her about getting the reinforcement he needs to take control and leaving the other ideas behind. The woman ends up living with Barry. Throughout the comic, we hear Barry preach: “you can’t drive forward if you’re always looking in the rear-view mirror;” “best thing to do in this country is stay off the grid;” “[recycling is] another fuckin’ liberal sham;” “just ’cause a ship’s sinking doesn’t mean you fuckin’ abandon it.” The woman seems intrigued by Barry as a combination of being funny and somewhat right (at least initially, he talks about shades of gray). He provides when she’s down on her luck, giving her a place to stay and money, and yeah, we can say that this is all a cynical attempt to take control of her.

I don’t doubt it’s an attempt to take control, but I think Tomine is setting us up to wonder about a few things. The deeper question is why anyone would choose to be an abuser, and Tomine has hit on some truths that should make all Americans uncomfortable. There’s something about our self-help rhetoric and our want of freedom that is dangerous in the extreme. It’s easy to say “you can’t pick and choose your morality,” especially when we’re talking about vulnerable, broken people. It’s a lot harder to recognize that we place enormous emphasis on survival and talk a heck of a lot about people finding what works for them. Some embrace of moral flexibility is a good thing, but how does one make sure one steers away from depravity? Barry provides what seems to be a superficial answer: he’s in complete denial of his past, only focusing on the future. So maybe we should make sure we’re aware of our sins and the awfulness we’re capable of? I jotted down some notes in my journal about how while grappling with what you’ve done wrong can make you better, it is possible to break yourself once again sitting and worrying and wallowing in guilt. “Betterment” might be a long-term solution, but the fun thing about fighting to survive is that you don’t get a lot of opportunity for that.

Barry’s got optimism, too much optimism, which lends itself to Tomine’s home run in this story. Watch what happens with the laughter of the woman he lives with; watch the expression on her face as the story progresses. The things we thought were complementary, the things we thought could give us happiness, aren’t enough. We need a clean slate. The story’s end shows dramatically at what cost that comes.