Go, Read: Last Week’s Mahou Shounen Breakfast Club Thing



If you're old like I am -- or older -- I'd suggest taking the time to read three long articles about a comics-culture Internet controversy from last week. It's the kind of thing that if you're oriented to web sites and blogs and a few social media sites of the kind that get mentioned on the nightly news you might have missed in its entirety. I missed the whole thing driving a u-haul to Ohio.

I'd read Heidi MacDonald's article first, Shea Hennum' response second, and the Deb Aoki Storify, to which both the previous articles refer, third.

I don't really have a strong point of view on this one, at least not one worth declaring on the Internet in summary fashion or unpacking in lengthy essay form. I'm still trying to figure out a lot of the peripheral issues involved, and I'm choked with privilege in a way that makes me a less certain thinker and actor than I might be with another set of broader points and questions. Hopefully, I'll get there.

I think what I find most intriguing in this case isn't the arguments themselves but how the parameters of the arguments seem to have quietly changed in the last few years. It feels like we've gone from discussions of whether or not a specific work art or work of art that functions a certain way should be criticized and how that criticism might be shaped to the idea of whether that art should be criticized (with how assumed), censured or even cease to exist. The latter options seem on the table now in the way they weren't 20 years ago. They no longer surprise me when they show up. I expect them.

As Hennum points out, what happened here doesn't seem to be someone else pushing someone in a stop-doing-your-art direction, which MacDonald argues via criticism of a line of thinking that potential disappointment deserves criticism and perhaps more has dire implications. The result under examination in this case seems self-directed. Artists deciding to stop doing a work because it's not having the intended effect seems a pretty normal part of a lot of artists' process these days. The wisdom of that can be debated as well. I assume has been here.

No matter how you feel, the whole matter strikes me as potentially instructive and well worth one's time. My thanks to those that brought it to my attention.

If anyone has additional thoughts after a day or two of step-back, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
 
posted 10:00 pm PST | Permalink
 

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