Nuns vs bikers with good hair and neckerchiefs, in a battle of words, in the sixties, with an audience of boarding school girls. On a road trip.
That’s my kind of movie, baby! Dig it!
Every now and then my sister comes in and says, essentially, “I’m going to a birthday party, I need you to draw me a card, I have to leave in two minutes”. So, I do it, because why not? It is a challenge.
All her buddies are turning eighteen this year, so, here we go on the one this time:
I don’t know why I am so RUDE
Well, yes I do, I just like drawing nude dudes. Non srs powermuscles ones, I mean. I find it cheerful.
Yesterday my sister was watching a movie where someone went “It’s– it’s so beautiful!” and she said, “haha did you hear that? She was talking about..” And I said, “a peen?”
That was wrong, but I decided that actually, it was right.
So I drew it.
I live in England, specifically in Warwickshire. I have done since I was eight, and I love it here. It’s beautiful. Until recently, I hadn’t heard about the ‘controversy’ going on in another part of my county: Meriden. The ‘exact center of England’. Oh, and also the birthplace of Napalm Death! Nice. What’s happening there right now is that a great many of the villagers have “banded together” to protest a local-living man’s use of the land that he owns; he wants to build a permanent travelers’ camp. The land is green belt land.
You can read more about this here, here and here if you would like. There is also a very good report on the Travelers’ Times here.
Full disclosure: Every now and then, I think about movies I have seen that feature people credited as or referred to as “gypsies” and I think, wow, they were dressed in a way I found really cool. I’d like to dress that way. The fashion industry backs me up; ‘gypsy style’ is a periodical summer staple. And then I feel guilty and callous, for culturally objectifying and potentially appropriating the modes of a classification of people who are treated extremely poorly by people I know (please never say “gyppo” to or near me) and by my country (and just about EVERY country, it seems). Then I go online, and try to find out about the factual histories and present times of travelers.
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This time, I went through here, here, here and here as well as here which sent me to the Travelers’ Times Online, linked above.
In case you didn’t follow the TTO link before to the article about the situation in Meriden, here’s the video report:
Noah’s Ark from Travellers Times on Vimeo.
Natural beauty being bulldozed and planning permission laws being flouted are bad, or at least not good. That’s true. But do you know what is worse? RACISM. YOU FUCKS.
People can say “I’m not a racist” all they like. That doesn’t make it true. Even if, as a white person, having an asian dentist were proof that one had no prejudice at all against any kind of asians, that still wouldn’t be the final word on whether or not one was any kind of racist. I’m pretty sure that there are people who are totally great with, say, ethnic Jews and black Caribbeans but make foul remarks based upon their beliefs about, for example, Pakistanis or the Japanese. “Coloured people” (ouch) are not one monolith of unwhiteenglishness. And ‘being able to pass for white’ does not mean that a person is white, in the sense of being ‘not of another race’.
There’s also the arguable difference between racism and xenophobia and cultural prejudice and ethnic-religious prejudice. Personally I am not sure that there’s much use in differentiating, but as a white person raised atheist-Christian in Church of England schools, I may be missing something important in the distinctions. Is there sense in calling a white English geographically settled person racist for being against, say, white Irish travelers? I would say yes; I think that there’s enough of a similarity in the dismissal of a lifestyle and heritage someone is born to to make racism and ethnocentrism effectively synonymous.
But as - I just checked, I missed it the first time whilst chopping onions - it says in the video, the travelers in question are Roma. They are an ethnic minority here. They are an ethnic inority everywhere. They are members of a race that is not in power. So all quibbles here become moot.
Did you note the sentence structure and inflection in the woman’s interview section, in the video? The “them” and “us”? They should have to follow the same laws as we all have to. That’s some hardcore sub-radar othering, lady.
The first man interviewed really stresses the word “pretty”! He’s implicitly saying, with that and the rest of his speech, that these people will bring ugliness. Necessarily.
The old guy straight-up says that if it were he who had an identical planning permission overstep, there would not be this outrage. One of the news articles I linked noted that the villagers themselves were breaking laws with the placement of their protest - so it can’t be simple illegality which has got their goat about this settlement.
A year or so ago, I had discovered Yahoo! answers, and was going crazy with finding questions I could answer. Then I ran across a boy who was dating an Italian girl, and who wanted to meet her parents I think. Or, no, maybe he had met her mother and experienced a poor reception. His question was, he wanted to know, was it because he was Roma - did Italy have bad history with Roma people? Now I cannot resist the opportunity to help along a romance. So I googled, and I found this, where “Italy’s highest appeal court has ruled that it is acceptable to discriminate against Roma on the grounds that they are thieves”. And I found this; “Gypsies in Italy protest prejudice”. And I found out about the fire that was set to Roma settlements in Naples in 2008.
Later in the year I somehow ended up on ONTD reading through this thread. The subject of the original post is Madonna being booed for preaching equality and acceptance at a concert with Gogol Bordello in Bucharest. The subject of a lot, and I mean a lot of the comment threads are more detailed looks at how and why gypsies face prejudice in various parts of the world; a lot of these threads start or build with someone saying “but no you guys THEY LITERALLY ARE ALL THIEVES, so it is OK!”. Then these people get schooled by wiser members of their community, but often? They just keep on keepin’ on, ignoring the fact that blind prejudice makes you a dick, rather than your opponent a(n un)worthy victim. It’s an interesting thread. Horrifying, but interesting.
The point is, that all this information isn’t hard to find. Roma people (if I’m saying this wrong, please forgive me and if you’re willing teach me better) are subjected to widespread racism. They suffered pretty darn badly in the Holocaust too, did you know that?
Irish travelers are recognised as an ethnic group here and don’t fare well, either.
I have never, as far as I know, met anybody who lives either partially or completely nomadically or anyone with immediate Roma heritage - as I mentioned earlier the only reason I started thinking about their (your?) lives at all was because when I was maybe six I saw a movie where the romantic lead was ‘a gypsy’ I’m sorry - I really cannot tell if this is an acceptable word for me to use or not. I’m trying to use it only when referencing where it’s been used already and he, his sisters and ex-girlfriend all wore outfits that I wanted– and because Gogol Bordello seem like the coolest people in maybe the entire world. Nothing rests on my doing this research. I am not in the dilemma of “should I go and protest against people (who want to have somewhere to live) being allowed to have somewhere to live, or not?”. And yet - I found this information. In one afternoon, using one search engine, I found all of these news items about the victimisation of a race and of a lifestyle throughout the whole of Britain and mainland Europe. It was not hard; a non-computer literate person could go to the library and say “I need to find some information” and the librarian could point them towards google.
There is no excuse for these protesters.
You can’t gather a posse, saying “I don’t want these people here”, ignoring the persecution they and their brothers and sisters face in multiple countries (right up to government level!), and then fall back and say - “But I’m not racist. I’ve got nothing against them personally”.
You know what? I’m just going to go there and say it. If you can’t manage to not express this kind of wholesale rejection at adults? Think of the children. Please.
Do you care more about planning rules and a single field and, I don’t know, a slight potential fluctuation in property value (are you planning on moving? To a new home? Oh, lucky you), than in the right of a child to be brought up in a place that doesn’t treat her like an eyesore, a criminal and an unwelcome nuisance before they see her as a person? If you do, reader: I judge you.
“I don’t choose to live like this. I was born to live like this.” Said the man who owns the land in dispute.
This makes me feel like bursting.
I hope you win Meriden, travelers. I really really do.
Sometimes, you notice patterns.
And even if you don’t mind - or even like - the individual examples..
The trend (inclusivity and exclusivity) can really get your goat.
When this happens to me, I foight tha powahhh by setting up the H.M. Armed Forces: Enemy Fighter I gave my sister for christmas and doin’ this.
All I’m asking for is a little equality, world. I realise I shouldn’t have drawn him white.
—
Doodlebugs! Idle pen-movements whilst watching the StarTV Transformers dub and my X-Men VHS tapes.
For some reason I can only draw moomins if I make them really old and sinister!
“Life drawing” hahaha NOT EASY FROM VIDEO
So what happens if you’re drawing someone whilst gaming..
And then they start to be DEFIED by the controls and endess credits in place of story?
They like you to stop drawing, that’s what. :]
“Naughty schoolgirl” is a concept that has been so porned out that it barely exists anymore. “Naughty schoolgirl”, someone will say to you, and your mind will reply “augmented woman in her late twenties wearing a bandeau “skirt”, fake tan, and white shirt tied so tightly I fear she may suffocate (on the shirt OR the cock you’re implicitly permitted to stick in her, come to think)”.
You know what? That sucks. Schoolgirls deserve to own their own sub-genres.
When I was a school-going girl and a Guide, in my early teens, my troupe picked the theme “St Trinians” for the parade we were in. We all wore rolled-up skirts, and tied up shirts, and ties tied around our heads or inappropriately loose. We wore knee-socks and fishnets and carried hockey sticks, and most of us had never heard of St Trinians before. This was the movie-verse St Trinians. Not nu-movies. The 50s-60s-1980 movies. I wore bunches.
It felt powerful and silly and fun, and I didn’t feel like I was giving anyone the right to touch me or fantasize about me or show me their genitals. I didn’t feel fake, I felt permitted to try out ‘loose’, in a socially permissive and/or “so in control of the situation that I don’t have to be in constant overwhelming control of myself” way rather than the hurrhurrvagina way.
Ronald Searle’s original St Trinians cartoons or comic strips, by the way, are really really good. You should read them.
Actually at the end of said parade, at the fair, a grown-up man I sort of knew (I think he was someone’s dad? maybe someone who knew someone I knew?) said to me, “Oh, I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on”. I don’t know if he meant “those dress-up clothes” or if he was purposefully implying he had seen me naked, but either way I felt like I wanted to punch him in the fucking face. Because whichever he meant, his words suggested that he might have seen me undressed, and I thought: how dare you do that to me. I did not want to hear about sex, in any way, from any guy. Especially an adult. Especially in such a brusque way. Especially when I was wearing an outfit I knew, vaguely, was sometimes used to mean “slutty!”.
If you don’t get this, or if you feel inclined to say I was asking for it, maybe imagine that you’re wearing an outfit you really like and often air, and then you get a CC’d-to-all-your-friends email showing someone who looks kind of like you, wearing that exact outfit, having something done to them that you’d never want done to you. Or imagine that you move to a new place, where you discover that your name is the same word as the locals use to mean “worthless” or “fucking disgusting” or “fart” or “incest”.
I didn’t punch him, I looked hard at the nearest non-human object very hard and pretended I hadn’t heard. I had no power there.
That was probably about ten years ago, and “naughty schoolgirl” has really gained momentum as a thing since then. What are real school girls going to do, when their forays into rule-breaking and cheekiness and physicality and their own relationship to their own sexuality* are already telegraphed, loud and clear, in town centers and internet side-bar ads and on tv and in magazines (I hate you, Nuts and Cosmo and your ilk) and in the general consciousness, as being a message of “yes, you may fuck”?
*No. Just because someone is exploring themselves and the power or effect they may or may not potentially have (and if they like or are comfortable with it or not), it does not give you permission to be a leering douche. If someone is dressed “sexy”, it does not mean you get to say HAY BABY, I SEE YOU HAVE SEXUAL CAPACITIES!!. Act as normally as you can towards them, and that will tell them what they want to know. Be respectful. Don’t assume that they want anything from you. Especially? Especially if they are or might be underaged. Gee whiz.
I started thinking about this because of this picture in the paper:
It’s Hit-Girl, from the film Kick Ass,which I do not think I would enjoy. I don’t like the comic and I can’t get behind eleven year old murderers played for awsums. I do have a soft spot for Nic Cage though. THEY’RE IN MY EYES!. She’s played by Chloe Moretz, who was born in 1997 (and who’s gonna be in the (actually really positive-sounding) re-make of Let the Right One In. Go Chloe!). So she’s twelve or thirteen in this picture. Do you see the differences, between Hit-Girl here and the average current “naughty schoolgirl”? Yes. Yes, you do.
This picture reminded me of another comicbook (as you wish, Stan Lee!) depiction of a schoolgirl gone wrong. Here’s Jenny, 15, from Grant Morisson’s excellent (excellent!) book The Invisibles. She appears on two pages as far as I can tell (does she return? I haven’t read every volume), and she’s pretty darn enjoyable, as a character.
Okay so I said above that I can’t get behind killer kids, true - but forgive me my over-generalising. Hit-Girl’s essentially a real-world fictional kid, albeit a highly skilled one, and she’s gonna have to live with being a people-chopper for the rest of her real-world fictional life. Jenny’s metafictionally one of the last survivors in a post-apocolyptic Enemies Exist world, born of a psychically well-protected mind being tortured. That changes things up. Am I a hypocrite? Bollocks.
The thing here, is that these are two internally enormous, badass, power-reaching characters who know how to do what they’re doing and who don’t do just what they’re told (or what we as viewers know they’re societally told), who are nevertheless currently encapsulated by the school uniform. They don’t fit, level-one semiotically; it’s still understood that school uniform means “be good”. That’s why school uniform, and the “schoolgirl” part of “naughty schoolgirl” matter: the goodness is there to be subverted. Whether you’re talking sex-play, or violence, or anything else.
>>Other objections aside, it is SO LAZY and missing-of-the-point to turn the school uniform into full-on erotic decoration. If you make it into a straight-up string-stripper outfit, you lose the reason you were interested in the first place! You lose the character, you lose the realness, you lose the honesty. All you’re left with is “isn’t screwing hot?”, which, wow. Fascinating.< <
Jenny and Hit-Girl’s skirts are short, and we can see Jenny’s knickers, and knee-socks have enough cultural-sexual baggage already that they can mean ’saucy’ by themselves - these outfits aren’t completely unsexualised or unsensualised. Like I mentioned, we tied up our school shirts and rolled up our skirts in the Guides parade (we rolled up our skirts in school - that’s a pretty culture-wide experience). I’m not arguing for the sterilisation of teens, image-wise or biologically!
I think that the photo of Hit-Girl is a good one, and I can dig those two pages of Jenny in Invisibles. Not in any way because I want to exploit them sexually, but because I can sympathise and empathise with these pictures. That’s a lot of what fiction is for, I think - more than just entertainment and escape. It’s not quite identification - it’s understanding what characters, as constructs before/as well as people, mean; Hit-Girl here and Jenny are about bursting out of your chrysalis - saying YEAH FUCK THAT, WHATEVER! and going really, really fast at your own discretion. Being aware of the body that you’re in, what it can do and what it means to you. Feeling that anybody who wants to appropriate any of that can go blow away to nowhere. They’re about moments of realisation that you’re god of your own damn universe, and you make the rules for you.
It’s easy to see how those sorts of thoughts can segue (for teens or between consenting adults interacting with this sort of imagery) into “let’s do it”. They don’t have to, but they can, and that’s fine! That’s nice, even! Know yourself, enjoy yourself, use symbols that you like or that speak to you (I’m not assuming I need to give permission here, I’m just hopefully making it clear that I’m not trying to somehow deny you permission to do what you want in private. I don’t want to know about what you do in private (or public, if it’s shaggin’)).
But these feelings, grown organically, are too necessary and vital to have them publicly and almost overwhelmingly equated with misogynistic, performative, no-strings intercourse.
‘Sex’, a lot of people seem to forget to remember, is not about what platonic-I can do for platonic-you. It’s not simply about places to put penises or things in vaginas. First of all, it is about what platonic-I can do for platonic-me, and basically, the rest of the world has no rights to that.
It just thinks it does.
No, Jerkface, she can’t. But you can empathise, or sympathise, or just allow her to enjoy it without trying to make it all about you. EMPATHY AND SYMPATHY. Do you speak them?
I kind of like Lady Gaga, maybe. Her costumes are often sexually coded, and then she outright says to her fans “it’s okay not to have sex if you don’t feel like it, no matter how you feel like dressing”. Anti-rape culture. That kind of stuff needs to be said.
So that’s what I think about “naughty schoolgirls”. That people should leave them alone, for goodness’ sake, and let the real ones be able to think that they (re-)invented the trope. Because you know what? If they did, they did.
International Women’s Day! I hope you all had a good one. I wore purple, and green, but no white. I don’t really own white, because it requires you to be so careful when wearing it.
Have you ever read anything about Suffragette Jewelry? It’s very interesting. In political movements, particularly in the push for rights that are denied due to what is perceived as basic inequalities in the people who have and do not have them, image is terribly important. It’s used as a weapon by both sides, of course, but the underdogs are generally cleverer about it, I think. They have to be - if you can intrigue, visually, you have your foot in the door of a person’s opinions.
I’ve got my mind on the Suffragettes at the moment because I’ve been doing some illustration for Sherin and Orchid’s Political Awareness gig’s fliers. The aim is to get people who aren’t that fussed about voting interested and maybe a little bothered - but first things first: my part’s about getting them (you?) to the event in question.
When I asked for a basic brief, they said they wanted a goat motif involved somehow. Gotta have a gimmick, as the movie said! And honestly, the loose guidelines mixed with the one specific (weird) bit of imagery is right up my artistic alley. When I think “votes!”, I think “for women!”, so this was the natural port of call at the head of my list (if you want to see more, and the images in a later stage of ‘finishedness’, keep your ear to this ground):
I figure, that a goat-headed person is unusual enough to catch the eye of an uninterested party.
I allow that it might be taken as an insult to female voters - that would suck. I took pains to depict a benevolent (but not weak!) goatface, and to keep her posture capable. I’d hope that the pagan / faux-satanic air of subversion would keep the image from appearing straight-up offensive.
But to be honest, people who don’t care about voting probably don’t care about showing respect for women who were prepared to die and endanger for the right. When was the last time you heard someone truly, honestly “sing in grateful chorus, Well done, sister suffragettes?”
If you are me, never. So I am singing it now, via blog via youtube via film via book. Well done, sister Suffragettes! Your movement wasn’t perfect, but whose is? You paved a great road for us, and we shall continue to alleviate the tolls.
If you think you might be interested in giving any sort of help to a London multi-band gig that wants to inspire the yoof of today to care about their ability to vote, send Sherin and Orchid a note. Every little helps! Your daughters’ daughters will adore you.
Consequences Creed
Consequences Creed has great hair, especially for a professional wrestler. His body has an unusual chunkiness that looks dependable - I’m not worried for his health, or for the crowd of his opponent - and non-monstrous; he’s not scary thin or scary ‘roidy, he’s not super Hollywood-guy ripped but he looks like he is strong (especially in the thighs!). His costume doesn’t have too many elements to it, but it does have enough, and it makes me think of Wonder Woman a little. He doesn’t look nude like the guys who wrestle in pants, and the short shorts are sporty. I dislike watching matches where people are wearing those long spandexy leggings, because I think about them riding low in the crotch and feel sympathy irritation. The colours of his getup complement his skin tones. He springs about and is cheerful. This is a good wrestler image.
Awesome Kong
I am not impressed with the fact that Awesome Kong’s bodice didn’t fit her boobs properly when I was watching TNA semi-regularly. “Get her a tailor, management!” I shouted. But it looks like they did! I dog the Xena look, and I dig that she is FIERCE not a fuckdoll. She pulls great faces and tends to ignore the crowd, I think. She also has cool hair, and I like how she lets it fly about all over. I like her little wrestler boots! Her NAME is AWESOME. And she really, really does make good faces. Good wrestler image.
Sting
Gothy wrestlers (there are more than you’d think, unless you are a big ole wrestling fan) are some of the funniest things, in my opinion. But I like Sting! He is old, for one thing. Kind of. He has a neat gimmick (the lights go out. They come on.. AND THERE IS STING!!!!!!), and he reminds me of the Misfits I like Vampiro by default. I like that he paints his face, all spooooky and that he used to wear pink leggings with bleached hair. I very much enjoy that he had (has?) a major beef (or whatever wrasslin’ calls it, I forget) with Kurt Angle, who I find one of the most boring Entertainment Superstars around. Sting threatens to bite fingers off! He believes in respect, hence troubles with Angle. I dislike his coats, because great big muscular types need careful tailoring and better fabric and better, non-hideous stadium lighting to look purposeful in structured-flowing garments in my opinion. But I respect that he wears it! Good wrestler image!
Samoa Joe
I liked Samoa Joe because.. OK, I liked Samoa Joe because he had a slight rockabilly bent but mainly because his name had “Samoa” in and one of my favourite moments of Dog the Bounty Hunter is Tim yelling “MY WIFE IS SA-MOAN!“. But! Then I didn’t watch TNA (the only wrestling we get on our TV, which is good, because it is my favourite) for a while. When I came back, Joe had a sleeveless Hokuto leather jacket! And (I think?) different facial “tattoos”! And he went around doing peoples’ bidding, like he had been to the future and come back a badass brainwashed cyborg. Duh, obviously I like that. GOOD WRESTLER IMAGE.
Best of all: Booker T
He has a couple of namesakes to choose from. The musician, seen above, and the political leader Booker T (who you should read about). He wears pants, with massive great boots and sometimes T-shirts, which makes him look so nude that I am simply amused rather than squemish. His use of colour in his gear is skillful He also makes great faces, and pretty evidently has a sense of humour that I enjoy. He uses GOLD and CROWN MOTIFS in his ring-wear. He involves his wife! he wears his hair in a ‘princess ponytail’ sometimes, and his boots look like platforms half the time. I just froze the first video here on a frame that shows him jumping reeeally high, which I admire. He also also has massive thighs, which would alarm me in real life but just make me go wow, really?? when watching on teevee. And he just looks like a “nice man”, silly and subjective as that is.
My beloved adds, Booker T is cool about racism because he called Hulk Hogan NIGGA when he got carried away and then laughed and his wife patted his shoulder! She just pats him and stifles her mirth!
“HULK HOGAN, WE COMIN’ FOR YOU, NIGGA! *bites lip, turns away*”
“A definite challenge there from Harlem Heat~”
Best wrestler image.
Aw, shit, wiki just told me he’s TNA No More. Shucks.
Why do I take this post to get all this opining (is this the correct word?) out? Partly out of frank enjoyment. Partly out of an inclination to let people know about stuff they might not know. And partly because I want to do my part, if possible, in making sure that we never, ever return to the days of..
“Wrestler hair”
That is exactly what “wrestler hair” looks like. Youtube, for example, Royal Rumble 1992. Or I could do it for you! Jake the Snake is a marginal offender, but watch for Sid.
He was NOT ALONE IN THIS.
Bad wrestler image
Picture credits here
here
here
here
here
here
I don’t actually know if there is/is going to be a softcover of this book.
Jennifer’s Body, first-off, was a horror movie out last year. Written by Diablo Cody, starring Megan Fox (jennifer) and Amanda Seyfried (Needy); about a pair of teenaged, highschool friends who give up pretending that they don’t feel like enemies once Megan’s character, titular Jennifer (and no, I’m not taking that pun out - it was accidental and I don’t feel like redacting it to avoid rubbish jokes), becomes some sort of demon. I hated it when I saw the posters, I resented it when I saw Megan Fox being used for sexyface yet again, I rolled my eyes and sneered at it when I heard the “HELL IS A TEENAGE GIRL!” tagline. But when I read the coverage it got on Jezebel - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (’6 reasons to love Jennifer’s Body’)) I started to think it might actually be really fantastic.
I still haven’t watched it, though. I’m a rubbish cinema-goer (I still haven’t seen Where the Wild Things Are, for goodness’ sake!).
I was and am super-keen on the idea of a horror movie about teenage friendships full of resentment and stangancy (not a real word?), about how objectification and patriarchy turn people against themselves and each other, and a deeper examination of high school/teenage problems than “my parents don’t understand or listen to me” or gender-divided court hierarchy. Not that those things aren’t interesting and true and painful, but that isn’t all that sucks so hard about growing up. I was-am also super-keen on examination (& debunking) of sexism within horror movies. And how that comes from, reflects and focusses sexism and gender-based assumptions in ‘real life’.
But like I said, I haven’t seen the movie yet! So I should shut up about it, and talk about the comic which I HAVE read!
They were still shooting when I was writing so I haven’t seen the film but I got to read the screenplay. It was kinda crazy writing characters that were being changed on set and in the editing process. - Rick Spears, author of the compilation, to Atomic Comics
I mentioned that I bought my copy in a regular book shop rather than a specialist comic shop - this meant that I got the Cho-drawn cover:
Now, I twitter’d this before, but the fact that this comic came wrapped in cellophane makes me go HAH and then EWW.
When I started writing this today I decided I should check good ole wikipedia to see if it had any interesting facts I had missed. it didn’t, but it did provide me with this paragraph synopsis of the book:
The novel features less of Jennifer than the film, but does capture her “going in for the kill” several times. It focuses heavily on following her soon-to-be victims and provides information on their personalities not elaborated on in the film so that readers can better conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered. The novel consists of four chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue, with art provided for each by different artists. Each one follows a different boy and what is happening in his life just before Jennifer kills him.
I’ll just day that “conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered” is not what I did when I was reading. Why? Oh! That’s right! Teenage boys DON’T deserve to be murdered! You nutter, anonymous wiki editor.
I don’t actually think that that was what the author intended me to do either though - I got much more of an impression that this was a book written out of a funny sort of sensitivity. Boys don’t deserve to be murdered, but horror movies need victims.. but victims mean nothing if they weren’t people first. I leave the room when Luke’s rebel friends are being burst like fireworks as they’re all assaulting the Deathstar, because it’s sad. Phelous often mention that the films he reviews miss the mark because the characters who get skewered (or whatever) are so irritating or vapid that the viewer doesn’t care or is glad when they pop their clogs - the more a victim matters, the more of a reaction will be gleaned from their demise. Or from any trouble they meet, really.
Just like in Nation X there are four stories, and just like in Nation X the first one is the best.
Chapter One: JONAS follows a jock who vaguely wants to bone Jennifer despite his girlfriend’s presence, and who’s feeling the strain of staying the sports hero he’s always naturally been whilst living the life of sofa-riding and snack-scoffing that he’s also inclined towards. It’s drawn by Jim Mahfood, who is great.
Second-page in and Jonas is getting a Strickland-esque dressing down from the headteacher - Jonas is never going to go anywhere, his life’s peaked already, he’ll end up hating his whole life and his whole life caving in on him. Jonas shrugs it off, but he can’t.. quite.. ignore it..
He gives it a good try though.
Spears keeps adding little extra bits of pending doom onto Jonas - ones that are unrelated to Jennifer.
Then he figures out his girl isn’t quite all his, then classmates are lost to a mysterious fire, then Jonas can’t keep it all in any more when the school’s grief councillor schedules a visit.. Jonas knows his life’s not what he wants. He knows his story is supposed to be better than this. And then, beautiful powerful popular Jennifer appears, and Jonas knows she can make the right things happen.
Jennifer’s not so into making out or hooking up any more though, so she whacks his head off.
Jonas’s story is over, and Jennifer was really only the end of it.
Chapter two: COLIN is about a kid who wears a shirt with an anarchy symbol on it, who has been “in love” with Jennifer since childhood, and who cannot bring himself to buy music from a mainstream record shop in a mall.
He can’t even speak in front of Jennifer, even after they become lab partners (is this really such a romantic appointment as the movies suggest?). Until..
So he can talk to her, but when he decides to overcome the dismissals of his sub-culture peers and ask Jennifer out, DISASTER STRIKES.
Don’t worry! Jennifer isn’t going to let him get away so easily. Romance may blossom after all! In an building site. Nice, Jennifer. But Colin’s not so impressed.
Jennifer looks like she’s hoping for some naked time, and Colin’s thinking of backing out because he’s a kid with emotions, you know? I’m not making fun Colin, I think that’s nice.
Sorry, Colin. Jennifer wants your body.
Chapter three: Ahmet from India made me ask “What the fuck is this?”. Is this dialogue straight-up racist, or is it just me?
What’s up with the sentence construction?
Also, is circumcision that common? Really? Uncommon enough that a team of baseball players will taunt their new expert bowler off the team based upon his present foreskin?
Really??
I don’t know if there was a Bollywood scene in the movie, but either way its inclusion here makes me feel uncomfortable. Ahmet is at the club everyone goes to, a band plays, the music is SUPER AWESOME and Ahmet gets Bollywood vision, rainbows and bare-chest-waistcoat and all. Dance routine time.
???
I liked the character that came through from Ahmet. He seemed like a decent kid. It’s interesting to get a view of a character whose international schooling year goes terribly, what culture shock feels like, and it’s true that food from ‘back home’ can be immensely comforting to someone in a place that feels hostile. For example, I started eating courgettes having hated them previously because I was glum in my uni town, and our crop at home had just ripened. It’s good to be reminded how extremely unkindness can effect people - you really never know how much other stuff someone’s dealing with as well. I am just completely baffled by the way that this section is written. The art’s pretty good - it’s just not used entirely for good, I think!
I considered that the odd dialogue might have been an author’s technique to bring home how culturally out of place Ahmet is or seems to the other kids at school. But if it is it is SO badly applied.
This last couple of panels was smart though, I think; Ahmet starts his story by talking about grasping his own American Dream, and ends (doubly) by quoting an American film classic.. about his ‘foreign’ home.
The last story is Chip’s. Chip is the boyfriend in the movie, Needy’s boyfriend. He wants to have sex with her, a lot, she’s intimidated by her body (Chip’s words) and doesn’t want to do it much. He fantasises about Needy, and sometimes about Jennifer too. Eventually Jennifer kills him and it is sad. I thought this was the most straightforward of all the shorts, which is why I didn’t include any pictures.
The four short stories are bookended by Jennifer, at (I assume) the beginning of her rampage and at the end of the film. The caption boxes show her inner monologue.
Start:
End:
And they say it all, really - there’s zero insight into Jennifer in this book. No more than I got from the trailers, anyway, or the exchange between her and Needy:
Needy: You’re killing people!
Jennifer: No, I’m killing boys.
She knows boys want her, and partly because of that she disdains boys. She knows she’s hot, and partly because of that she disdains her body. This book was about the boys, and it causes me slight to middling pause that they went ahead and called it “Jennifer’s Body” on the cover.
Jennifer’s body wasn’t what killed them, and the stories show that. What killed them was Jennifer’s actions. What led up to Jennifer’s actions were the pressures upon her, and upon the boys. and their reactions to these pressures. Oh, and of course, what caused Jennifer to start “killing boys” was the demonic entity which possessed her, after she was murdered in a misogynist ’sacrifice to Satan”. Thanks wikipedia.
It’s true that each of the boys in these stories are sexually attracted to Jennifer and her body, but in no story does the kid in question simply want to fuck her. They think she’s ‘hot’, but they also want what she (with personality, standing, artifice) represents. Jonas wants the comfort and potential of a partnership with her. Colin wants to spend time with her doing things he likes that it turns out she might enjoy too. Ahmet wants someone to be his friend - a bond, maybe even someone he can share love with. Chip is the only one interested in Jennifer’s body, and even he rejects her because he doesn’t want her body. He just responds with boners to the sexual interaction that she flaunts as a possibility. Maybe all this is why they kept the title, I don’t know.
It’s all over pretty fast, anyway. I was left with that feeling oh “oh.. huh” that I also got from the Buffy season six/seven tie-in comics I read years ago. It does feel like a tie-in, I think is the problem, and I think the psychology of the various attractions to Jennifer (and her reactions to them) are set out a bit simplistically. Or maybe I mean straightforwardly? In Colin’s story, particularly, I felt like I was reading the bad sort of soap opera webcomic, where relationship dramas are settled by enormous speech bubbles of self-help book join-the-dots. This was a really bad comparison to draw, because I can;t link to a comic that I think does this sort of thing because that would be terribly rude. I think what I’m saying is that I felt that some of this book were too neatly drawn. And when I say ‘drawn’, I mean ‘written’.
Apart from the baffling aspects of Ahmet’s chapter, I think I recommend this book. It is, at the very least, an interesting artifact: the “but what about us?” response to a feminist slam of internalised misogyny’s effect on teenage sexuality. What about you, boys? You matter too, of course! And that’s why you should be on our side.
Oh, pee ess, the reason that I actually did turn out to write a review with no mention of the character design or wardrobe choices? Because it was apparently no-one’s priority here at all, and I barely noticed what anyone was wearing ever. Bah.
Sorry this got so long.
Ugh ugh ugh, sorry for the multiple edits! >_<
A thing that has yet to be publically “proven” yet remains a fact is that I am a lady. On account of this having always been the biological case and my having on the whole pretty average genes sans interesting mutations, I cannot grow a beard or any kickass sideburns. This makes me a little sad, but I have found ways to compensate. Also of course, it means I never have to shave, so I feel that the scales remain balanced.
Half the reason I love this Anthony Peto hat is that it flattens the earpuffs of my hair into sideburny face-clingers. As seen here, this allows me to spiritually bump fists with some of my favourite stylish fictional characters. Let’s give it up for Wolverine, The Cap’n and old Wooden Sword*! And Anthony Peto. ‘Preciate it, fella!
*Characters belong to Marvel, World Leaders Entertainment (I think? Publick and Hammer, anyway) and Hiroyuki Takei, NOT ME!
My laptop has died, I hope you are all mourning my absence. In the meanwhile, here is some sketchin’. New characters! And some tamagotchis!
Enjoy, muchachas.
After walking all day, a million miles around Manchester, and staving off trainsleep by reading the Invisibles (Apocalipstick) I start forgetting how to draw as myself. Immediately post-experience of a work of fiction or illustration that I honestly aspirationaly admire is about the worst time I could ever pick to draw anything. On the one hand, the desire to emulate. On the other, a complete and ornery desire to do nothing so humble. Result: mixed up creative (as in, I am creating, not I am being so creative) confusion.
Lunchbag:
I also read the following -
This book is wonderful. I can honestly say that since I started reading this series, via online free stories, previews and then this issue, I have found a blossoming re-appreciation for dogs (which the previous stories featured more largely). I was a Puppy in my Pocket fiend as a littl’un, but real live dogs alarm me and cats are just so much FUNNIER. But! Beasts of Burden (Dark Horse Comics, by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson) is a reeducation.
The stories are great (truly spooky and touching), and the art, well, please observe:
Finally, Marvel Comics’ Models Inc.. Now, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I’ve been a Marvel fan near-on my whole life, thanks to the X-Men Animated Series of the 90s, but recently (or maybe I just didn’t notice before?) they’ve been basically flipping me off. Joe Quesada, Editor in Chief, has said that if people have a problem with the depiction of women in his company’s books, maybe they shouldn’t be reading those comics at all. I’m not going to get into the matter of costumes and sexist illustration in general. I’ve been put off by Event after Event after Event. The series that brought me back into buying Marvel Comics again after I quit on the cusp of house of M, Captain Britain & MI:13 (BUY THIS BOOK IT IS SO GOOD), was cancelled because it’s sales (in America, I believe), weren’t good enough.
They have been putting out the phonebook “Essential” trades (uh, that’s “compilation books”, for non-comics reading readers..) of a lot of seventies books that I love, though, and I was excited to hear that Mary-Jane Watson was going to be heading a mini-series.
Models Inc. was, when it was originally announced, going to be Mary Jane (famous for being the friend, then girlfriend, then Wife (no really fuck you, ‘phisto) of Peter Parker: Spider-Man) heading up an ensemble cast of the various “fashion model” characters Marvel has had over it’s decades. MJ has always been a model herself, branching into acting. A supermodel, in fact. They were going to team up to solve a crime. Detective story? Yes! All-female cast? Yes! Respect shown to models, a famously “female” profession? Yes!! I even saw the pencilwork for some pages, which looked like the artist had done real, true, actual research on the kinds of clothes that models might wear at public events. Yess.
of course, MJ’s involvement was nixed when the Powers That Be decided it was more important to have her character be puked all over in the Spider-Man main book. I have no happy faces here.
Anyway, the book was re-written and re-drawn and released, a four-issue mini series (with a tiny, tiny cameo by Mary Jane). I just picked up all of my copies last week, and it wasn’t actually bad at all. It had some issues, for sure, but on the whole? I’m not sorry I paid for it.
I’m working on a post showing the inside pages and a proper dissection of the plot/art/whole production because I think that this book deserves some recognition actually. But for now, here are the covers! I’m not gonna make more of a comment than “some of the ‘headlines’ are pretty funny, and check out the average cup-size they’ve given these supermodels”, except to warn you that the page art is not the same as the cover illustrations. Oh, and yes, Tim Gunn has a half-issue adventure in issue 1. Hah!
Actually, I haven’t. Bought real new clothes in real new shops, I mean. Today. I sort of have, but then I cheated.
Instead of going in real (by which I mean, original high-street retailers) shops and spending more money than I have on clothes that aren’t as exciting as I want (I looked, honest) I went to Cancer Research:
Skirt: Marc Jacobs
Sweaterdress: Noa Noa
I was looking for things that I’d feel reasonable wearing to work. That is, as well as at home; it actually didn’t occur to me to think of work clothes as separate from home clothes. And I mean, a) this is not official paid work but rather extended work experience (I’m making promotional and educational videos for the good people of the science/university nearby) and b) they have no dresscode, but I thank goodness that I’m not somewhere I have to be so smart that I feel like someone other than me whilst being appropriate.
Better haul than usual, I have to say. Charity: it benefits everyone.
These threads are the bees knees!
I gave in a couple of early sketches to a prospective client whilst I was in town. A place I call the naughty shop* want some themed work done for their sandwich board.. hopefully my ideas will spark favour.
*I’ve been in there about this illustration twice, and both times I’ve found my gaze resting often on the rainbow cock’n'balls lollypops.
This isn’t me being lazy and spewing out any old shite uncaring, just so I can say “I did it, I posted”.
I really do think that it’s super interesting that there is/when there is a difference between what people will wear in and out of the house. Do you have something you’d never wear outside? Or outside of a particular purpose?
If I go outside my own property (’my property’ included the communal areas of shared housing, though not the kitchen when I was in Halls at uni because we were ground-floor and there was no curtain), I put on ‘proper’ clothes. I don’t go out in pyjamas and there are some items that I own that are daytime clothes but not outdoor clothes.
This is partly because I feel it (a small one, but nevertheless) a duty: I have the time and ability to dress with a mind towards certain levels of old-fashioned etiquette and since I love to see people who look smart I feel it’s only right for me to make the effort. I honestly believe in the inspirational power of looking swish; I’ve been cheered up by snappy strangers enough times to want to do my best for anonymous depressives or bad-dayers. This isn’t to say I JUDGE YOU if you don’t feel the same, because I don’t. I don’t say it’s anyone else’s duty. But I can speak for me and it’s mine.
It’s also because I own some things that aren’t understood in the public consciousness (as far as I have percieved) to mean things that I want them to mean. My clothes are a dialogue to the universe at large, it’s true, so if I know the universe doesn’t speak my dialect there’s no reason I should confuse it.That’s not to say that I don’t want to ‘make changes’ - obviously I do - but puking everything out at once is not how to teach or pointedly affect.
Then there are some things that I just don’t want people to see in person: They may not be ‘underwear’ anymore, but the general public isn’t going to see the cotton of my bloomers, thanks.
^This is a mixture of inside and outside clothes (just because I’m inside doesn’t mean I can’t wear outside clothes, of course. That’s the joy of being in charge! I make my rules!). The DIY’d Dracula thermal is outside clothes but so comfortable that it’s a go-to for inside days, the thermal vest underneath is only going to be outside clothes if I’m part of an expedition to Atlantis/fighting the Axis/building and digging all day/a mechanic/still alive after an ‘apocalypse’.
The Le Coq Sportif jacket is inside clothes. This is an example of it doesn’t outright say what I want to say.. I don’t do sports, for one thing (I do exercise!). My mum bought it for me when I passed the Eleven Plus, I was so enamoured with it and she thought it was awful. I just couldn’t believe the COLOURS. I like bright things! And at the time, the brand impressed me. I’ve been wearing it recently because.. I don’t know, I just have. I can, and I wanted to, so I did.
I’m fed up with professional character designers being so boring with home-clothes scenes (I am looking at you, Marvel Comics).
I am not paid - in money or in gifts or favours - to endorse anything here. If I was, I would be bad at it, because lying is ugly.
If you've commented here and it isn't showing up, it's not because I hate you! It's because either wordpress or 1and1 hate me. Give me a shout on claire [at] illustratorclaire.co.uk, or claire [at] britishstylebloggers.org.uk!
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