I am sure you hardly have the time to respond to this, but I figured it was worth my while to ask. I am a student at RISD in my third year studying illustration. I admire your work, and was curious about a few of the notions touched on in your posts and comics. Firstly I was curious about a phenomenon which I have personally experienced, being the exclusion of intellectualism and even higher aestheticism from gay culture. Do you find it difficult to depict a culture that in many ways represents values that are anathema to those of the medium (personally I believe comic art is the paragon of both acroamatic thought and artistic execution). Secondly, I have found that art which focuses on non-hetero sexuality, almost invariably feels simpering. In your work homosexuality is interwoven neither self consciously, nor with heavy handed constance. Did this issue occur to you or was it an organic occurrence? I suppose that is all for now. Thank you in advance.
It’s funny that you asked about those points in particular, because it’s something that I’ve started giving a lot of thought to, where the way I addressed it probably used to be more unconscious. I’m actually in the process of writing a long-ish piece that I’m planning to call Damaged Goods which is about myself in a small way but about the gay community in a larger way and, in maybe it’s broadest thematic sense, about traumatized or repressed cultures in general. At first it’s easy to go to a gay bar and look around and see the shallowness and expensive clothes and hear the bad music and smell the poppers and alcohol vomit in the air and be pretty judgmental of that, and I don’t think you’d be completely wrong, but I’ve started to think of it in terms of this being a culture that’s been so wounded and discarded, that you can see where it comes from. You think about how many of those people were disowned by their families for being gay, or the effect that it has to be a kid or a teenager realizing who you are and then to turn on the TV and see people who are politicians or religious leaders and respected by our society standing there shamelessly telling you that you’re a sick pervert, or if you think in broader terms of the trauma that’s been inflicted on the community by things like AIDS or even Prop. 8 here in California, and suddenly it becomes really really easy to see what an enormous psychological relief it must be just to go out and dance like a crazy person and do a buncha crystal meth and have sex with whoever the hell you find attractive and never for a second allow in any doubt or shame about your desires. As far as the shallowness, or superficiality of gay culture, that’s the context I try to put it in.
It’s also worth noting though that, in spite of everything, there’s a whole lot of gay culture that isn’t shallow at all, and a whole lot of those repressed gay kids out there find escape and self-value in art and performance and other really important outlets. And it’s been that way for a long time. A bunch of Beats were gay. Most of Warhol’s factory. Back to Oscar Wilde or Caravaggio or Michelangelo or whoever else. It’s actually hard to name an important artistic movement that didn’t have some sort of queer input.
As far as how I personally depict gay culture, I don’t know if I’d really describe it as conscious or unconscious. I try to write about it honestly and not hesitate to say things that some gay people might not like, and I don’t pretend that problems exist where they do. A lot of things that some gay authors write seem to be done with an eye on how the heterosexual community will view it and they’re trying super hard not to give those who are critical of us any extra ammunition. I don’t particularly care if heterosexual people are critical of me. If they want to criticize gay relationships as transient, you just have to point to heterosexual divorce rates. And so on. So there’s that. I don’t feel defensive about it.
When DC comics made Batwoman a lesbian, I’d see posts on major messageboards talking about how DC was supporting, “The homosexual agenda”. After these things got said, I’d see people engaging in debates with the posters who wrote them, and gay people getting indignant and defensive about it. My question is this: if DC had made Batwoman Jewish and some freak had went on the Newsarama and scolded Dan Didio for supporting, “The Jewish agenda,” would you engage that person in debate like they had something to say? No! They’re a crazy bigot! You ban the crazy bigot from the messageboard!
So I guess what I’m getting at in general is that the way I would like to see things change is that I’d like for gay people and gay artists in particular to stop thinking in terms of having anything to defend. The crazy bigots out there are the ones who have something wrong with them, so stop worrying what they think.
nice aesthetics.
I am sure you hardly have the time to respond to this, but I figured it was worth my while to ask. I am a student at RISD in my third year studying illustration. I admire your work, and was curious about a few of the notions touched on in your posts and comics. Firstly I was curious about a phenomenon which I have personally experienced, being the exclusion of intellectualism and even higher aestheticism from gay culture. Do you find it difficult to depict a culture that in many ways represents values that are anathema to those of the medium (personally I believe comic art is the paragon of both acroamatic thought and artistic execution). Secondly, I have found that art which focuses on non-hetero sexuality, almost invariably feels simpering. In your work homosexuality is interwoven neither self consciously, nor with heavy handed constance. Did this issue occur to you or was it an organic occurrence? I suppose that is all for now. Thank you in advance.
It’s funny that you asked about those points in particular, because it’s something that I’ve started giving a lot of thought to, where the way I addressed it probably used to be more unconscious. I’m actually in the process of writing a long-ish piece that I’m planning to call Damaged Goods which is about myself in a small way but about the gay community in a larger way and, in maybe it’s broadest thematic sense, about traumatized or repressed cultures in general. At first it’s easy to go to a gay bar and look around and see the shallowness and expensive clothes and hear the bad music and smell the poppers and alcohol vomit in the air and be pretty judgmental of that, and I don’t think you’d be completely wrong, but I’ve started to think of it in terms of this being a culture that’s been so wounded and discarded, that you can see where it comes from. You think about how many of those people were disowned by their families for being gay, or the effect that it has to be a kid or a teenager realizing who you are and then to turn on the TV and see people who are politicians or religious leaders and respected by our society standing there shamelessly telling you that you’re a sick pervert, or if you think in broader terms of the trauma that’s been inflicted on the community by things like AIDS or even Prop. 8 here in California, and suddenly it becomes really really easy to see what an enormous psychological relief it must be just to go out and dance like a crazy person and do a buncha crystal meth and have sex with whoever the hell you find attractive and never for a second allow in any doubt or shame about your desires. As far as the shallowness, or superficiality of gay culture, that’s the context I try to put it in.
It’s also worth noting though that, in spite of everything, there’s a whole lot of gay culture that isn’t shallow at all, and a whole lot of those repressed gay kids out there find escape and self-value in art and performance and other really important outlets. And it’s been that way for a long time. A bunch of Beats were gay. Most of Warhol’s factory. Back to Oscar Wilde or Caravaggio or Michelangelo or whoever else. It’s actually hard to name an important artistic movement that didn’t have some sort of queer input.
As far as how I personally depict gay culture, I don’t know if I’d really describe it as conscious or unconscious. I try to write about it honestly and not hesitate to say things that some gay people might not like, and I don’t pretend that problems exist where they do. A lot of things that some gay authors write seem to be done with an eye on how the heterosexual community will view it and they’re trying super hard not to give those who are critical of us any extra ammunition. I don’t particularly care if heterosexual people are critical of me. If they want to criticize gay relationships as transient, you just have to point to heterosexual divorce rates. And so on. So there’s that. I don’t feel defensive about it.
When DC comics made Batwoman a lesbian, I’d see posts on major messageboards talking about how DC was supporting, “The homosexual agenda”. After these things got said, I’d see people engaging in debates with the posters who wrote them, and gay people getting indignant and defensive about it. My question is this: if DC had made Batwoman Jewish and some freak had went on the Newsarama and scolded Dan Didio for supporting, “The Jewish agenda,” would you engage that person in debate like they had something to say? No! They’re a crazy bigot! You ban the crazy bigot from the messageboard!
So I guess what I’m getting at in general is that the way I would like to see things change is that I’d like for gay people and gay artists in particular to stop thinking in terms of having anything to defend. The crazy bigots out there are the ones who have something wrong with them, so stop worrying what they think.