Just to prove that comics aren’t funny any more:
Frank Miller, an American fascist who glorifies war and violence for its own sake in his Sin City series and in the ludicrously ahistorical 300, has a go at the Occupy movement. Then futurist David Brin has a go at him, but on his Leni Riefenstahl-like treatment of the Spartans in 300:
Frank Miller rails against effete, pansy-boy militias of amateur, citizen soldiers. But funny thing, none of his Spartan characters ever mentions those events, just a decade earlier! How bakers, potters and poets from Athens - after vanquishing one giant invading army, then ran 26 miles in full armor to face down a second Persian horde and sent it packing, a feat of endurance that gave its name to the modern marathon race. A feat that goes unmatched today. Especially by Spartans.
(I’m inclined to forgive the “ran 26 miles in full armor” blooper—I like the man’s sensibility. And he’s right on most of the history.)
More to the point is P.Z. Myers, of Pharyngula:
Apparently, us liberals are hurting America, because we’ve got a war to fight against al-Quaeda and Islamicism, and we need to get out of the way so the investment bankers can fight it for us. I guess wrecking the economy was all part of a secret plan to defeat terrorism.
Anyway, ol’ Frank lives in a cartoon fantasy world where violence solves everything, and all it takes to solve a problem is a bigger gun and the will to use it indiscriminately, which I think we all could have learned from his graphic novels and movies without reading his blog. And now that we’ve read his blog, we don’t need to pay for his commercial products anymore! Miller’s simple-mindedness stands exposed even further.
And via Myers, here’s graphic artist Alan Johnson, even more to the point:
Well, Frank Miller is someone whose work I’ve barely looked at for the past twenty years. I thought the Sin City stuff was unreconstructed misogyny, 300 appeared to be wildly ahistoric, homophobic and just completely misguided. I think that there has probably been a rather unpleasant sensibility apparent in Frank Miller’s work for quite a long time.
And on the #Occupy movement itself:
As far as I can see, the Occupy movement is just ordinary people reclaiming rights which should always have been theirs. I can’t think of any reason why as a population we should be expected to stand by and see a gross reduction in the living standards of ourselves and our kids, possibly for generations, when the people who have got us into this have been rewarded for it; they’ve certainly not been punished in any way because they’re too big to fail.
I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who’s too big to fail. It’s a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it. I’m sure if it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman make-up on their faces, he’d be more in favour of it.
Word!
Of course, the Usual Suspects adore Frank Miller. Eliminationist and Hitler-apologist* Glenn Beck even wants to hire him. No surprises there—just more ideological seepage, as fascism continues to be mainstreamed.
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*
“It’s like Hitler. Hitler said a little bit of truth, and then he mixed in ‘and it’s the Jews’ fault.’ That’s where things get a little troublesome.” (The Glenn Beck Program, Premiere Radio Networks, June 7, 2006.) In other words, if Hitler hadn’t had that bothersome anti-Semitic foible of his, he’d have been one of the good guys.