http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/16/when-will-we-be-transhumanseven-conditions-for-attaining-transhumanism/
When Will We Be Transhuman? Seven Conditions for Attaining Transhumanism
The future is impossible to predict. But that’s not going to stop people from trying. We can at least pretend to know where it is we want humanity to go. We hope that laws we craft, the technologies we invent, our social habits and our ways of thinking are small forces that, when combined over time, move our species towards a better existence. The question is, How will we know if we are making progress? As a movement philosophy, transhumanism and its proponents argue for a future of ageless bodies, transcendent experiences, and extraordinary minds. Not everyone supports every aspect of transhumanism, but you’d be amazed at how neatly current political struggles and technological progress point toward a transhuman future. Transhumanism isn’t just about cybernetics and robot bodies. Social and political progress must accompany the technological and biological advances for transhumanism to become a reality.
But how will we able to tell when the pieces finally do fall into place? I’ve been trying to answer that question ever since Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution was asked a while back by his readers: What are the exact conditions for counting “transhumanism” as having been attained? In an attempt to answer, I responded with what I saw as the three key indicators: 1. Medical modifications that permanently alter or replace a function of the human body become prolific. 2. Our social understanding of aging loses the “virtue of necessity” aspect and society begins to treat aging as a disease. 3. Rights discourse would shift from who we include among humans (i.e. should homosexual have marriage rights?) to a system flexible enough to easily bring in sentient non-humans. As I groped through the intellectual dark for these three points, it became clear that the precise technology and how it worked was unimportant. Instead, we need to figure out how technology may change our lives and our ways of living. Unlike the infamous jetpack, which defined the failed futurama of the 20th century, the 21st needs broader progress markers. Here are seven things to look for in the coming centuries that will let us know if transhumanism is here.
When we think of the future, we think of technology. But too often, we think of really pointless technology – flying cars or self-tying sneakers or ray guns. Those things won’t change the way life happens. Not the way the washing machine or the cell phone changed the way life happens. Those are real inventions. It is in that spirit that I considered indicators of transhumanism. What matters is how a technology changes our definition of a “normal” human. Think of it this way: any one of these indicators has been fulfilled when at least a few of the people you interact with on any given day utilize the technology. With that mindset, I propose the following seven changes as indicators that transhumanism has been attained. 1. Prosthetics are Preferred: The arrival of prosthetics and implants for organs and limbs that are as good as or better than the original. A fairly accurate test for the quality of prosthetics would be voluntary amputations. Those who use prosthetics would compete with or surpass nonamputees in physical performances and athletic competitions. Included in this indicator are
cochlear, optic implants, bionic limbs and artificial organs that are within species typical functioning and readily available. A key social indicator will be that terminology around being “disabled”and “handicapped” would become anachronous. If you ever find yourself seriously considering having your birth-given hand lopped off and replaced with a cybernetic one, you can tick off this box on your transhuman checklist. 2. Better Brains: There are three ways we could improve our cognition. In order of likelihood of being used in the near future they are: cognitive enhancing drugs, genetic engineering, or neuroimplants/ prosthetic cyberbrains. When the average person wakes up, brews a pot of coffee and pops an over-the-counter stimulant as or more powerful than modafinil, go ahead and count this condition achieved. Genetic engineering and cyberbrains will be improvements in degree and function, but not in purpose. Any one of these becoming commonplace would indicate that we no longer cling to the bias that going beyond the intelligence dished out by the genetic and environmental lottery is “cheating.” 3. Artificial Assistance: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) integrated into personal, everyday behaviors. In the same way Google search and Wikipedia changed the way we research and remember, AI and AR could alter the way we think and interact. Daedalus in Deus Ex and Jarvis in Iron Man are great examples of Turing-quality (indistinguishable from human intelligence) AI that interact with the main character as both side kicks and secondary minds. Think of it this way: you walk into a cocktail party. Your cyberbrain’s AI assist analyzes every face in the room and determines those most socially relevant to you. Using AR projected onto your optic implants, the AI highlights each person in your line of sight and, as you approach, provides a dossier of their main interests and personality type. Now apply this level of information access to anything else. Whether it’s grilling a steak or performing a heart transplant, AI assist with AR overlay will radically improve human functioning. When it is expected that most people will have an AI advisor at their side analyzing the situation and providing instructions through their implants, go ahead and count humanity another step closer to being transhuman. 4. Amazing Average Age: The ultimate objective of health care is that people live the longest, healthiest lives possible. Whether that happens due to nanotechnology or genetic engineering or synthetic organs is irrelevant. What matters is that eventually people will age more slowly, be healthier for a larger portion of their lives, and will be living beyond the age of 120. Our social understanding of aging will lose the “virtue of necessity” aspect and society will treat aging as a disease to be mitigated and managed. When the average expected life span exceeds 120, the conditions for transhuman longevity will have arrived. 5. Responsible Reproduction: Having children will be framed almost exclusively in the light of responsibility. Human reproduction is, at the moment, not generally worthy of the term “procreation.” Procreation implies planned creation and conscientious rearing of a new human life. As it stands, anyone with the necessary biological equipment can accidentally spawn a whelp and, save for extreme physical neglect, is free to all but abandon it to develop in an arbitrary and developmentally damaging fashion. Children – human beings as a whole – deserve better. Responsible reproduction will involve, first and foremost, better birth control for men and women. Abortions will be reserved for the rare accidental pregnancy and/or those that threaten
the life of the mother. Those who do choose to reproduce will do so via assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) ensuring pregnancy is quite deliberate. Furthermore, genetic modification, health screening, and, eventually synthetic wombs will enable the child with the best possibility of a good life to be born. Parental licensing may be part of the process; a liberalization of adoption and surrogate pregnancy laws certainly will be. When global births stabilize at replacement rates, ARTs are the preferred method of conception, and responsible child rearing is more highly valued than biological parenthood, we will be procreating as transhumans. 6. My Body, My Choice: Legalization and regulation will be based on somatic rights. Substances that are ingested – cogno enhancers, recreational drugs, steroids, nanotech – become both one’s right and responsibility. Actions such as abortion, assisted suicide, voluntary amputation, gender reassignment, surrogate pregnancy, body modification, legal unions among adults of any number, and consenting sexual practices would be protected under law. One’s genetic make-up, neurological composition, prosthetic augmentation, and other cybernetic modifications will be limited only by technology and one’s own discretion. Transhumanism cannot happen without a legal structure that allows individuals to control their own bodies. When bodily freedom is as protected and sanctified as free speech, transhumanism will be free to develop. 7. Persons, not People: Rights discourse will shift to personhood instead of common humanity. I have argued we’re already beginning to see a social shift towards this mentality. Using a scaled system based on traits like sentience, empathy, self-awareness, tool use, problem solving, social behaviors, language use, and abstract reasoning, animals (including humans) will be granted rights based on varying degrees of personhood. Personhood based rights will protect against Gattaca scenarios while ensuring the rights of new forms of intelligence, be they alien, artificial, or animal, are protected. When African grey parrots, gorillas, and dolphins have the same rights as a human toddler, a transhuman friendly rights system will be in place. Individually, each of these conditions are necessary but not sufficient for transhumanism to have been attained. Only as a whole are they sufficient for transhumanism to have been achieved. I make no claims as to how or when any or all of these conditions will be attained. If forced to guess, I would say all seven conditions will be attained over the course of the next two centuries, with conditions (3) and (4) being the furthest from attainment. Transhumanism is a long way from being attained. However, with these seven conditions in mind, we can at least determine if we are moving towards or away from a transhuman future. Follow Kyle on his personal blog, Pop Bioethics, and on facebook and twitter. Image of psychedelic human eye by Kate Whitley via dullhunk on Flickr Creative Commons.
http://www.fanzing.com/mag/fanzing32/feature1.shtml The Racial Justice Experience: Diversity In The DC Universe: 1961-1979 By John Wells
The revolution began quietly. In the pages of Our Army At War # 113, writer Bob Kanigher and artist Joe Kubert pushed Sgt. Rock to the background (and off the cover) for a character episode entitled "Eyes of a Blind Gunner." The thirteen page story related the friendship of easy Company soldiers Jackie and Wildman, the latter an expert with a bazooka. In the climax of the story, the two men are separated from Easy, with Jackie blinded by the flash of an explosion and Wildman's hands burnt. With only a machine gun between them and advancing Nazi troops, Jackie tells his comrade that, "I'll be your hands -- if you'll be my eyes." Between the two of them, the enemy is held off until Rock and Easy rescue them at dawn. "Bet you'll be glad to get back to your bazooka again," the Sarge joked to Wildman. "Bazookas are only for wild men, Rock," he replied. Jackie added, "We'll stick with something nice and peaceful like this machine gun, Sarge!" It was, as noted, a simple character piece, but one that was remarkable for a story published in 1961: Wildman was white and Jackie was black. The landmark story was made all the more effective by its refusal to portray the friendship of men of different color as anything out of the ordinary. Indeed, the fact that Jackie was African-American went virtually without comment, powerfully expressing the message of brotherhood in that turbulent era without any of the heavyhandedness that was to come in the comics of the 1970s. (And one can overlook the fact that, in the real world, blacks and whites were segregated in the military.) Such a portrayal was, of course, a radical departure from the earliest black characters in DC's history, figures who were almost universally presented as broad comic stereotypes with bulging eyes, big lips and little intelligence.
Later, Johnny confesses "you fooled even me, George! You seemed so angry -- and in a way, you had a right to be!" "I know too well what I've lived and fought for -- and would die for -- to entrust it into the hands of the Japanese military caste. There are blind and thoughtless people in America, as elsewhere. But the seed of tolerance and fellowship has spread to many nations, and is growing." And that brings us back to Jackie Johnson. Although Kanigher and Kubert soon revived Wildman as a regular in the Sgt. Rock series (beginning with 1962's OAAW # 120, which provided his origin), they waited a bit longer for Jackie. He finally returned in 1965's OAAW # 159 and took center stage in # 160 for "What's the Color of Your Blood ?" Kanigher had provided his hero with the last name of Johnson, a nod to Jack Johnson, who'd become the first black heavyweight champion of the world in 1908. Like his namesake, Jackie Johnson had also been a prizefighter and a successful one at that. One off night left him open to defeat by a German boxer named Uhlan and Jackie was still spoiling for a rematch when World War Two began. In OAAW # 160, Johnson and Easy Company crossed paths with "Stormtrooper" Uhlan's paratroopers and the Nazi couldn't resist defending his title. Aware that the enemy would execute his friends if he defeated Uhlan, Jackie refused to fight back, enduring vicious blows and taunts that his blood was black. Urged on by Sgt. Rock, Jackie finally started pounding Uhlan. As expected, the Nazis opened fire the moment that Stormtrooper was kayoed but, ironically, it was Uhlan who sustained potentially fatal wounds. Apprised of the fact that Uhlan would die without a transfusion of Type B blood, a battered Jackie held out his arm. Watching the blood flow through the tube from Jackie's arm to his, Uhlan was forced to admit that "I was wrong. Wrong! The color of your blood -- is red!"
Having faced Nazi racism, Jackie went on to be subjected to the bigotry of his fellow soldiers in the form of a replacement named Sharkey (1967's "A Penny For Jackie Johnson" in OAAW # 179). He derisively referred to Johnson as "boy" and tossed a penny in his hand when Jackie extended a palm in friendship. "Where I come from," he sneered, "we don't shake hands with the likes of you! We just drop a coin in it." Though Rock feared that "Sharkey's like a time bomb," Jackie refused to respond in kind. "The man is entitled to his opinion, sarge. And he can keep it -- until I can change it for him." Inevitably, after multiple insults and conflicts, Sharkey was gravely wounded and, Jackie, seriously injured himself, dragged him to safety. Apologizing, Sharkey asked, "Can I -- can I have my penny back ?" "I've been savin' it for you, soldier," Jackie responded. He and Sharkey finally shook hands as the story closed.
In the face of such stereotyping, the 1944-1947 Johnny Everyman series (Comic Cavalcade # 814 and World's Finest # 15-26, 28, 30) was a refreshing contrast. Produced "in cooperation with the East and West Association," the series was designed to promote brotherhood, often dispelling myths about cultures around the world. The Association's principal mission was to create understanding of the people of Asia but, as seen here, "Johnny Everyman" went beyond that. Particularly of note were the episodes that zeroed in on racism in the United States. Writer Jack Schiff and artist John Daly's story of Ralph Jackson (1945's World's Finest # 17), for instance, explicitly addressed the hypocrisy of fighting bigotry overseas while practicing it on the homefront: In France, Sgt. Ralph Jackson leads his battalion of African-American soldiers in a furious attack on Nazi troops. As messerschmitts strafe their truck column, Jackson is hit in the right shoulder but nonetheless manage to shoot one of the planes out of the sky.
Months later, in the U.S., Jackson, having been awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart, meets his friend George. They are turned away at one restaurant. Informed at a second cafe, that all seats are reserved, their old friend Johnny Everyman spots them and invites the men to his table. "Sure, I'm a 'hero,'" says Jackson. "I almost gave my life to wipe out fascism. So what ? I come back here, and I can't even eat a meal where I want to...what's the use ?" Johnny recalls how, in their college days, his white football team wanted to play Ralph's black team but officials refused. Early one morning, Johnny and Ralph organized their teams on the football field in defiance. The game ended in a tie but all the men on the field had greater respect for one another at its conclusion. Today as then, Johnny continues, there are non-prejudiced people in the world and a growing number of organizations are helping to fight bigotry. "You're right," Ralph replies. "Rome wasn't built in a day. But I wish there were more people like you."
Comic Cavalcade # 12's installment ("Meet Charley Wing") found Johnny trying to change the viewpoint of a group of kids well indoctrinated by their culture to view any Asian citizen as untrustworthy. "All ya have ta do is see some o' them nifty serials at the movies every week," one boy insisted. "Tells ya what goes on in the mysterious underground passages of Chinatown. And lots and lots of books show how Chinamen villains do their dirty work. Always very sneaky ... they work underground ..." Johnny makes a number of different arguments to prove them wrong, including a lengthy account of his work with the Chinese during the war. Ultimately, the detail that convinces the boys that young Charley Wing is no different from them is the fact that his father admonishes him to eat his vegetables ("Ha! Ha! That sounds just like my pop.").
And lastly, there was "George Tanaka, American" (World's Finest # 20), published shortly after the end of the war. In China, an army captain has asked Johnny to find volunteers for a mission behind Japanese lines, noting that, as a civilian engineer, Johnny would be treated as a spy if captured. Johnny acknowledges the risks and presents his list of volunteers: Sgt. George Tanaka and Privates John Sato and Milton Hayashi. "Why, they're Japanese!" exclaims the captain. "Beg pardon, captain -- they're Americans whose parents or grandparents are Japanese! You know how well they've served in this campaign!" Having completed their mission of planting explosives on the Han-See Bridge, the men are confronted by Japanese soldiers as they leave. A furious Hayashi refuses to surrender ("My father fled to America from the oppression of warmongers. Why should I surrender to them now ?") and is gunned down by the soldiers, who declare him "a traitor to his race." The remaining men surrender when they realize the enemy is unaware that the bridge has been mined. If even one can escape, the explosives can be detonated. While searching Tanaka, the Japanese find a personal letter in his uniform. George's sister wrote that, while at a concert hall with their mother, people wondered aloud why "they aren't in concentration camps." As an American citizen nearly all of her life, George's mother was devastated by the comments. "Your father loved America!" she wept to her daughter. "Your brother is willing to die for it! Why should such a thing happen to us ? And those hoodlum attacks we've heard against other Japanese-Americans. Why -- why -- ?" The Japanese ask Tanaka and Sato to join them rather than fight for "a nation that insults your mothers and sisters -- and will never accept you as equals." Sato refuses but Tanaka accepts the offer and is escorted to general headquarters. Sato and Johnny are ordered shot immediately only to have the execution disrupted when Tanaka throws a metal paperweight into a generator and causes an explosion. "Do you think I'm a child, to surrender a birthright of freedom for your lying promises?" The trio escape in a staff car, fleeing across the bridge, which they blow up once they're on the other side. Soon after, an American flag is flying over the camp where Johnny, Tanaka, and Sato had been held.
http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v5_4/pustz/ Review of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books By Matthew Pustz
Gabilliet, Jean-Paul. Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books. Trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2010. Print. At the end of his book Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books, JeanPaul Gabilliet argues that the academic study of comic books in the United States is not as well developed as it should be. He notes that although recent years have seen "a notable growth in works written by academics who bracketed their fannish enthusiasms in order to produce rigorous studies," the field has yet to achieve "institutionalization in the form of textbooks" (304, 305). Given the fact that comic books achieved cultural legitimacy in France decades ago, it makes sense that a scholar from there—Gabilliet teaches American Studies at the University of Bordeaux—would recognize this gap and try to fill it by writing a book-length study that attempts to relate the entire history of this publishing format in a thorough, balanced, analytical fashion. In doing so, Gabilliet takes an important step toward achieving the institutionalization that he noted was missing from American comics scholarship. If Gabilliet is, in fact, trying to create that first textbook for the field of Comics Studies, he achieves moderate success. However, even though this book was originally published in French in 2005, the author might have been beaten to the punch by other works. Most prominent among these is Bradford W. Wright's Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (2001), which covers much of the same ground as Of Comics and Men. More importantly, perhaps, Gabilliet's book is not exactly the "cultural" history that it promises to be. It does, however, fulfill an important role in the burgeoning field of comics studies by putting the existing knowledge about the institutional history of the publishing format into a very thorough, clearly written text that will serve generations of scholars very well.
Of Comics and Men traces the history of American comic books from their beginning in 1842, with reprints of the work of Swiss illustrator Rudolphe Tรถpffer, to more or less the present day. The book is divided into three parts, with the first focusing on this basic historical narrative. The second section of the book examines the producers and consumers of comic books. The last section analyzes how comic books have been the targets of censorship while at the same time moving toward (but not quite achieving) cultural legitimacy. The book ends with an appendix featuring the various regulation codes the industry adopted as well as a useful bibliographic essay that maps out the ways in which comic books have been written about in the decades prior to the translation and publication of this book.
Gabilliet's historical narrative will be familiar to scholars who have studied the evolution of the comic book. There are a handful of things that Gabilliet does, though, that make his book stand out from others with a similar purpose. First, he begins the story of the development of comic books earlier than many other historians who often begin with The Yellow Kid in the 1890s. Instead, Gabilliet argues that the comic book began in Europe in the first half of the 19th century. He goes on to establish the connections between comic books and other 19th and early 20th century publications like newspapers and dime novels. These are the two roots of the American comic book: newspaper comic strips and pulp fiction. Unlike other scholars, Gabilliet emphasizes the pulp fiction element, suggesting that these magazines helped to establish the audience for comic books. One of the major topics addressed throughout Gabilliet's book is the important role of distribution and sales in the evolution of comic books and their readers. This role began to be significant as early as the 1930s when publishing entrepreneurs tried to figure out how they could make money by collecting previously published comic strips into cheaply bound pamphlets that could then be sold to children. Later, during the 1970s, distributor corruption hurt the industry and distorted the sales figures of well-regarded series that were being siphoned off to the early collectors' market. Gabilliet reports that one result of this system was that "in 1974, as little as a quarter of all printed comic books were physically placed for sale at retailers" (141). Distribution was also an issue in the 1950s when censorship codes and laws governing the sale of comics to minors were effectively enforced by the people selling comics. Retail outlets are a central part of Gabilliet's story, too, and by focusing on them he is able to squash some of the
most important fan-inspired myths of comics history, namely those related to Frederic Wertham and the introduction of the Comics Code. From the fan perspective, it was Wertham, his testimony before Congress, and the publication of his book Seduction of the Innocent that ruined comic books in the 1950s. While Gabilliet does not deny that this was an element contributing to the decline of comics sales in the second half of the 1950s, he emphasizes more sociological factors, namely the increasing popularity of television and the growth of suburbs which went hand-in-hand with the shrinking number of retail outlets for comic books.
Developing a complex explanation for the decline of comic book sales beginning in the 1950s is one of the important services Of Comics and Men performs for the field of comics studies, but there are others as well. First, Gabilliet brings together a great deal of fundamental data that will be useful to a wide variety of comics scholars. For example, the book provides readers with some specific statistics as to the numbers of comic book stores in the North America. This information was certainly available elsewhere in bits and pieces, but Gabilliet pulls it all together to give us a clearer picture of the rise and fall of the direct market. Knowing that there were 100,000 retailers selling comic books in 1952 (139) and that there were 2300 comic book stores in 2002 (152) gives readers a clear sense that comic books have moved from being a mass medium to a niche form of entertainment. Gabilliet also creates a balanced portrayal of Frederic Wertham, a person who is normally demonized in more fannish accounts of comic book history. In Gabilliet's interpretation, Wertham was a progressive, much like the turn of the century crusaders who saw corruption and wanted to reform society to help get rid of it, even if that meant, for example, banning the sale of alcohol. Gabilliet is critical of Wertham for sloppy science and for appropriating the rhetoric of people more conservative than he, but he also reminds us that Wertham had good intentions and that the plan he advocated—the labeling of comics to control children's access to certain titles—was essentially what was put into practice years later. One additional strength of Of Comics and Men is the inclusion of a chapter on comic book readers. It is easy to write the history of comic books focusing on the publishers and the creators by emphasizing what title was published by which company with stories by which particular creators. Gabilliet's book does that (in its weakest moments, the historical narrative becomes bogged down in laundry lists of creators and publishers rather than doing real analysis), but it also emphasizes that comic books were made to be read and enjoyed, and that the formation of fandom is an important element in determining what stories are told as well as how and where the comic books themselves are sold. Devoting a chapter to fans gives them the respect that they deserve. He performs a similar service for the production side by devoting a chapter to a detailed explanation of how the industry has functioned since the 1930s up to the present. But while including these chapters is an important step forward, Gabilliet could have made it even more clear that producers and consumers are central to the history of comic books by integrating the discussion of these topics into his main chronological narrative.
Separating topically-related discussions from the historical narrative also causes some awkward transitions, especially in Chapter 4 where the focus is on the post-World War II period when comic books achieve their greatest popularity but also experience their fall from grace. Here, Gabilliet writes about the different genres that were popular during this period and argues persuasively that EC was not really a major player in the industry during the early 1950s. And then the chapter pretty much ends. The next chapter picks up with a discussion of the impact of the Comics Code and the consequences of a "moral panic" that damaged the industry (41). But there's no explanation of what that "panic" was all about or what might have caused it. It feels like there's a chapter missing here where Gabilliet should have discussed Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, and the whole anti-comics crusade of the late 1940s and early 1950s. That discussion shows up eventually, more than 150 pages later, in a chapter that consolidates his analysis of a variety of attempts to either censor or control children's access to comic books. It's a good chapter, and in some ways it makes sense to address this issue all at once, but it really takes away from the linear historical narrative that makes up the first part of the book. In fact, it undermines the chronological organization of the book by suggesting that it might have been better organized with thematically or topically unified chapters instead. Gabilliet ends Of Comics and Men with two chapters on "consecration," or the extent to which comic books have achieved legitimacy both within the community of readers and beyond in the larger realm of the American culture. While these discussions are interesting, and I think that Gabilliet means for all of the chapters of the book to lead up to this analysis, they allude to the idea that "consecration" is the only way of judging or establishing the value of comic books. The tone of these chapters suggests that Gabilliet feels that, without broad cultural legitimacy, comic books cannot be worthy of (or produce) rigorous academic study. Near the end of the book, Gabilliet scoffs at the notion, common in "American 'cultural democracy,'" that a text or material object "can derive legitimacy from its simple participation in the construction of a collective national identity (as an incontrovertible element of the American way of life)" (299). What Gabilliet is missing, though, is that legitimacy and the significance of a text as a cultural document have almost nothing to do with each other. Comic books are, in fact, cultural texts that can "legitimately" teach us about American life and American history. This, ultimately, is what "cultural history" as a field is all about. Or, perhaps it is only what "cultural history" is all about in the United States. This is, after all, a work of French scholarship originally published in France in 2005. It is possible that the scholarly tradition there focuses more on the idea of cultural legitimacy than analysis of particular cultural texts. We get that idea from the tone that Gabilliet takes when describing "American 'cultural democracy.'" He seems appalled at the notion that American scholars of comics (and perhaps of anything else) would give the honor of scholarship to something that they did not see as culturally "worthy" of respect or legitimacy. His focus on the economic forces shaping the comic book industry might be a more standard French historiographical approach, and it's actually a very useful addition to traditional American scholarship about comic books. But for an American scholar looking for a work of cultural history, as the book's subtitle promises, Of Comics and Men is a bit of a disappointment.
From this perspective, one of the biggest problems with the book is that it rarely makes connections to any sort of wider cultural context. For example, he tells us that the hysteria over comic books in the late 1940s and early 1950s "unfolded at the beginning of the cold war," but there's no sense of what the connection is between these two events or why the Cold War would have had any effect on why people were reacting so strongly to comic books during this period (217). Gabilliet does write about the broader cultural concerns about juvenile delinquency and the fact that the opinions of scientific-sounding experts "were held in very high esteem by Americans during the Cold War" (227), but there is still no sense of why these ideas would have come about during this period or what their connections to comic books might be. Gabilliet also simply does not do very much cultural analysis. He almost never does any interpretation of any comic books, characters, genres, or themes. He writes about the boom in superhero comics during the late 1930s and early 1940s, for example, but he never speculates about why they were becoming popular. A close reading of an early Batman or Superman story, for example, would have helped to shed some light on this question, and it also would have helped us to better understand that particular historical period. Doing this kind of cultural analysis of actual comic books—and perhaps even including some images, of which there are none here—might have lengthened his historical survey, but it would also have enriched his cultural history by fully demonstrating some of the points that he is trying to make in the book. A parallel work of cultural history, Robert Sklar's classic Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (1975), demonstrates what Gabilliet's book might have included. Sklar's book is an institutional history of movie studios and film audiences, but it goes beyond this. In analyzing many of the films that he mentions, Sklar gives us a rich understanding of why people would actually be going to the movies in the first place. In contrast, Gabilliet gives us no sense of what has historically attracted people to comics; there is nothing about the connections that readers made with the crazy mythological images of Jack Kirby or the intimate autobiographical stream-of-consciousness of Robert Crumb. Comic books here are just things that people spent money on and time with, for reasons that are never examined. Gabilliet rarely writes about their broader cultural significance, either. This is a particular weakness when Of Comics and Men is compared to its most similar counterpart, Bradford W. Wright's Comic Book Nation. Wright's focus might be on the evolution of youth culture, but his close analysis of specific stories and characters allows readers to see how comic books reflect American culture and can at times even reveal unexpected truths about American life and American values. Gabilliet's book simply does not do that. Considering his focus on the cultural legitimacy of comic books and his discussion of the academic field of comics studies as a means for achieving that legitimacy, it is surprising that Gabilliet does not directly engage with established works of comics scholarship. Although he does include a very useful bibliographic essay, there is little analysis of the work of his predecessors in the main part of the book. Bradford Wright, for example, is mentioned twice— once in a list of works that he praises and once to note that Wright analyzed the ways in which the Vietnam War was portrayed in comics from the 1960s. Amy Kiste Nyberg, the author of Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code (1998), perhaps the most important study of the evolution of the Comics Code, is mentioned only in the aforementioned list and in a handful of endnotes. Gabilliet would position himself more confidently in the emerging field of Comics Studies if he participated in a dialogue with the work that came before Of Comics and Men. As
such, this book may not be the groundbreaking work that Gabilliet and his publisher, the University Press of Mississippi, want it to be, but it is nevertheless an important clearinghouse of information that will be very useful for other scholars who want to use comic books to address questions of cultural history.
References Gabilliet, Jean-Paul. Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books. Trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2010. Print. Nyberg, Amy Kiste. Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. Print. Sklar, Robert. Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies. NY: Vintage Books, 1994. Print. Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Print. Š 2010 Matthew Pustz (all rights reserved). This essay is the intellectual property of the author and cannot be printed or distributed without the author's express written permission other than excerpts for purposes consistent with Fair Use. The layout and design of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons License to ImageTexT; note that this applies only to the design of this page and not to the content itself. Perna, Laura. "Review of Art Spiegelman: Conversations." . ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. 5.4 (2011). Dept of English, University of Florida. 29 Nov 2011. <http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v5_4/perna/>. Note: This citation uses the MLA Style for its format. It should be correct, but since it's been generated automatically, we encourage you to doublecheck. Also, if you require APA or another format, we unfortunately can't provide these citation formats at the present time, but all the information you need should be present in the above citation.
http://www.wonderwoman-online.com/articles/fc-marston.html Our Women Are Our Future By Olive Richard - Family Circle August 14, 1942 (A photocopy of this article was sent in by Joseph Blomberg.)
The war news had me down. I had just been to see a friend whose husband, a naval officer, was killed at Pearl Harbor. Going home, I bought a newspaper with a "Wake Up, America!" editorial spread all over the front page. The general drift of it seemed to be that the country is on the brink of ruin and that we'd better wake up or else. Well, I was awake to the danger, all right, but I couldn't think of anything more to do about it. I'd paid my income taxes, bought war stamps and bonds, volunteered up to my neck for every defense project, cut out sugar and all pleasure trips with the car, and made the decision that I would look awful but patriotic in my old clothes. Then to cap it all I turned on the radio and out blared the voice of an expert war-news commentator telling us in 15 minutes of dismal prediction that we should prepare ourselves for much worse disasters than anything we had yet suffered. Women must do this and women must do that and women must be charming through it all. Usually some everyday incident comes up to stop one going through thought mazes of this kind, and it happened here. On the table where I was about to throw my hat with a Katherine Cornell gesture was a comics book with a brillianthand cover bearing the picture of a pretty girl in a scanty costume leaping aboard a racing motorboat. A memory stirred; this must be the "daughter or the brain of Dr. William Moulton Marston, Family Circle psychologist" that I had seen recently in The Family Circle. "Well," I thought, "If Marston is whipping up comics stories while Rome burns, there must be a reason." So, I clamped the hat on again and made tracks for Rye, New York. The Doctor hadn't changed a bit. He was reading a comics magazine, which sport he relinquished with a chuckle and rose gallantly to his feet, a maneuver of major magnitude for this psychological Nero Wolfe. "Hello, hello, my Wonder Woman!" cried the mammoth heartily. "I was just reading about you in this magazine. You're prettier than your prototype in the story strip, and far more intellectual. Sit down and tell me all."
"I came to be told, and what's the idea of calling me Wonder Woman, and I don't feel like listening to any male sarcasm on account of I've heard too much already." "Your bracelets," said the Doctor, taking up one thing at a time "-they're the original inspiration for Wonder Woman's Amazon chain bands. Wonder Woman's bracelets protect her against bullets in the wicked world of men. Here, see for yourself." The picture was the same that I had seen at home. In the motorboat were several characters of definitely Teutonic cast shooting rifles and machine guns at the smiling girl. The bullets glanced harmlessly off the fair intruder's twin bracelets, which did closely resemble-astonishing coincidence!-the pair of ancient Arab "protective" bracelets that I have worn for years. I opened the book to read, "This amazing girl, stronger than Hercules, more beautiful than Aphrodite," and so on, and I remembered that my sons had argued as to whether she could lick the whole Japanese army all at once or whether she'd have to take them a few thousand at a time. The Doctor beamed when I told him this and said, "Tint's right, the kids love her. Wonder Woman's quarterly magazine outsold all others" "I know, I know. You'll be writing advertising next But I came here to ask you about the war. Women feel so helpless and depressed about it. I wish you'd answer one question for Family Circle readers: Will war ever end in this world; will men ever stop fighting?" "Oh, yes. But not until women control men," he answered mildly. "According to the Wonder Woman formula, I suppose?" "That's it exactly!" The Doctor got up from his chair and began to pace the floor as he e talked a mannerism that betokens extreme interest and enthusiasm. "Wonder Woman-and the trend toward male acceptance of female love power which she represents indicates that the first psychological step has actually been taken. Boys, young and old, satisfy their wish thoughts by reading comics. If they go crazy over Wonder Woman, it means they're longing for a beautiful, exciting girl who's stronger than they are. By their comics tastes ye shall know them! Tell me anybody's preference in story strips and I'll tell you his subconscious desires. These simple, highly imaginative picture stories satisfy longings that ordinary daily life thwarts and denies. Superman and the army of male comics characters who resemble him satisfy the simple desire to be stronger and more powerful than anybody else. Wonder Woman satisfies the subconscious, elaborately disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them." "Hold on" I interrupted. "That's nothing more than the reaction of a little boy to his mother. In this comic strip it must be the same childish feeling-a longing for a mother to protect them-and they'll probably get over it at adolescence."
"Ah, there's where you're wrong." The Doctor continued his pacing. "They don't get over it at any age. Normal men retain their childish longing for a woman to mother them. At adolescence a new desire is added. They want a girl to allure them. When you put these two together, you have the typical male yearning that Wonder Woman satisfies." "Almost entirely based upon theory," I countered. "What if boys do like Wonder Woman they probably like strong men better. It's just the strength that fulfills their wishes. They like her despite the fact that she's a woman!" Dr. Marston gave one of his rumbling whoops of laughter. "Theoretically you might be right. But factually you're quite wrong. A popularity survey was conducted recently among comics readers of all ages by the publisher who brings out Wonder Woman, Superman, and several other superpowerful story characters. Wonder Woman was the only female on the list, yet she corralled 80% of the votes. Even the publisher was surprised. But to a psychologist it's the ABC of subconscious wish fulfillment. The fact that both sexes are beginning to recognize the desire for the supremacy of strong and loving women is by far the most hopeful sign of the times." "Suppose you're right," I said. "Suppose men do long for superwomen to take them over. And assume for the moment that these strong-arm babes are willing to undertake the job. What makes you think they can do it? Do you imagine that we females can develop muscles that big overnight?" The big man ignores sarcasm when he has something to say that he considers important. "The one outstanding benefit to humanity from the-first World War was the great increase in; the strength of women-physical, economic, mental," he stated with conviction. "Women definitely emerged from a false, harem-like protection and began taking over men's work. Greatly to their own surprise they discovered that they were potentially as strong as men-in some ways stronger. Women have more emotional power than men, they have greater endurance and more resistance to disease they live longer, and they can endure pain far better. The moment women began doing things to develop their strength, it increased enormously.
With enthusiasm the psychologist expanded his thesis: "Women now fly heavy planes successfully, they help build planes, do mechanics' work. In England they've taken over a large share of all manual labor in fields and factories; they've taken over police and home defense duties. In China a corps of 200,000 women under the supreme command of Madame Chiang Kai-shek perform the dangerous function of saving lives and repairing damage after Japanese air raids. This huge female strong- arm squad is officered efficiently by 3,000 women. Here in this country we've started a Women's Auxiliary Army and Navy Corps that will do everything men soldiers and sailors do except the actual fighting. Prior to the first World War nobody believed that women could perform these feats of physical strength. But they're performing them now and thinking nothing of it. In this far worse: war, women will develop still greater female power; by the end of the war that traditional description 'the weaker sex' will be a joke-it will cease to have any meaning." "Your enthusiasm is a great build-up," I admitted. "I feel like Wonder Woman already. But when I leave your hypnotic presence I'll lose confidence in myself as most women do when they have to generate their own steam. They're used to regarding men as their superiors, and even if a gal is physically strong and able to earn her own living, she can't cave-woman the man she wants to control or buy him. Now, Wonder Woman has magic powers. You wouldn't claim, I suppose, that we ordinary mortals have any such fantastic weapons as bracelets that repel bullets or her magic lasso that compels whomever it binds to obey her commands?" Seriously the Doctor responded, "Of course all women have those two powers. Wonder Woman is actually a dramatized symbol of her sex. She's true to life-true to the universal characteristics of women everywhere. Her magic lasso is merely a symbol of feminine charm, allure, oomph, attraction every woman man uses that power on people of both sexes whom she wants to, influence or control in any way. Instead of tossing a rope, the average woman tosses words, glances, gestures, laughter, and vivacious behavior. If her aim is accurate, she snares the attention of her would-be victim, man or woman, and proceeds to bind him or her with her charm." "But the trouble is," I objected "that ordinary feminine charm is a bond that is easily broken." The Doctor nodded. "You've a point there," he admitted. "But not a very sound - one. Woman's charm is the one bond that can be made strong enough to hold a man against all logic, common sense, or counterattack. The fact that many women fail to make strong enough lassos for themselves doesn't deprive the lasso material of its native magic. The only thing is, you have to use enough charm to overcome your captive's resistance." "The chains that the Nazis forge on conquered people," I muttered, "seem a whole lot stronger than the bonds of personal charm!"
"Ah, they only seem that way," the oracle replied And he continued with an exposition of the upside-downness of popular thought. Chains of force are always broken sooner or later. No human being can put another's soul or spirit in bondage, only his body. And in the end the inner self triumphs over the outer; mind and personality win back their control over flesh. Nazi chains already are beginning to snap in "conquered" France, Holland, Belgium, Norway, Czechoslovakia, sabotage and killing of oppressors goes on increasingly. But the real turn of the tide will come when Hitler loses his persuasive charm control over the German people. Dr. Marston reminded me that Hitler gained his initial power by stirring oratory and personal magnetism-the magic-lasso method-not by force. When he resorted to force in the famous beer cellar Putsch he failed miserably and spent a year in prison. Mussolini similarly achieved his dictatorship by the magic of his persuasive tongue, and now, when force and military ability are needed in place of persuasiveness and drama, Il Duce is on the skids. Churchill never won a military campaign in his life, prior to the present war, but his political oratory has always been outstanding and the power of his keen mind and prolific pen has been equaled by few modern writers. President Roosevelt has one of the most charming personalities in the world and be casts this magic lasso over the radio with unerring aim. Three times he has caught and bound with his charm a large majority of American voters. And the Doctor asks, "Can you doubt that Roosevelt's control over America is stronger than Hitler's over occupied France?" "So men have magic lassos, then, as well as women," I remarked. "And your own verbal lariat seems to be roping me in today."
"But you mustn't let it hold you," he grinned. "Wonder Woman can break any rope or chain with which a mere man tries to bind her. She stays bound only as long as may be necessary to accomplish her good purpose-then tears off her man-made shackles and goes to work on the man!" At this point I protested. "Women enjoy being bound by men; it's less work and more fun than keeping male captives secure. Girls like to get their man, then surrender to him." "And what happens next?" prompted the psychologist. "The man loses interest completely. No man wants to be freed by the girl who has caught him and no man has the slightest interest in tying up a girl who holds out her hands to be bound. If he takes her as his property, that's a bad day for both of them. The man begins to use dominance, and that's acutely painful for the woman captive. Wonder Woman and her sister Amazons have to wear heavy bracelets to remind them of what happens to a girl when she lets a man conquer her. The Amazons once surrendered to the charm of some handsome Greeks and what a mess they got themselves into. The Greeks put them in chains of the Hitler type, beat them, and made them work like horses in the fields. Aphrodite, goddess of love, finally freed these unhappy girls. But she laid down the rule that they must never surrender to a man for any reason. I know of no better advice to give modern women than this rule that Aphrodite gave the Amazon girls." Hastily the psychological giant added, "Of course, she may let the man think she's helpless. My Wonder Woman often lets herself be tied into a bundle with chains as big as your arm. But in the end she easily snaps the chains. Women can do lots of things by letting men think they're fettered when they're not." "Oh, sure," I agreed. "Women do things like that constantly. Why, just this morning I got myself out of a strait jacket in Sing Sing prison. Then I tore out a section of the prison walls and jogged back to Child's in New York for a refreshing quaff of tea and toast. I often move our house about on the lot to catch the sun at its best, and-" Dr. Marston's laughter reached apoplectic proportions and I was trying to remember if you give stimulants for red unconsciousness when he said with seeming irrelevance, "I tell you, my inquiring friend, there's great hope for this world. Women will win! Give them a little more time and the added strength they'll develop out of this war and they'll begin to control things in a serious way. When women rule, there won't be any more because the girls won't want to waste time killing men. They'd rather have them alive; it's more fun from a feminine point of view." "In all seriousness," he continued, "I regard that as the greatest-no, even more-as the only hope for permanent peace. And as a psychologist I'm convinced that the ever-increasing counterparts of Wonder Woman in real life will lead the way. More power to them! Let them keep their Amazon chain bands polished. And their magic lassos limbered up! Women are nature-endowed soldiers of Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, and theirs is the only conquering army to which men will permanently submit-not only without resentment or resistance or secret desires for revenge, but also with positive willingness and joy!" At which moment I took wing and flew over the housetops to my little nest to spread joy among all the lucky males I could rope in with my magic-lariat charm.
mars MARVEL COMICS’ WORK THE FACE ON MARS (1958) PRESAGES NASA’S DISCOVERY OF THE FACE ON MARS AT CYDONIA (1976)
SEATTLE, WA (MARS) September 19, 2009 − MARS has learned that Marvel Comics published a comic book in 1958 entitled The Face on Mars eighteen years before The Face on Mars was discovered in the Cydonia region that since 1976 has become the iconic image symbolizing evidence of ancient life on Mars.
The Once and Future Face on Mars
Genovese: “I was on Mars!” It was in 1958 that the Italian Narciso Genovese published his Mars memoir I was on Mars, which describes how in the early 1950’s, he was one of a group of explorers sent to Mars in a secret probe to the Red Planet undertaken by the Vatican that was led by the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. “The Face on Mars” published by Marvel Comics that same year may have been based, at least in part, on insider information about Mars provided by members of the Vatican probe to Mars several years earlier. Marvel Comics’ The Face on Mars includes an obscure fact that later Mars “experiencers” would report, namely, that the eyes of statues of humanoid faces found on the Martian surface are used as passage ways between the Martian surface and the inhabited Martian underground.
The Face on Mars at Cydonia (1976)
Since 1976, the search for evidence of life on Mars has been symbolized by the controversy over whether The Face on Mars in the Cydonia region (above) is a natural landform or a built structure. According to official NASA history, The Face on Mars was photographed by the Viking 1 orbiter on July 25, 1976 and later uncovered by two computer engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar, while they were searching NASA archives. Yet according to new information reported by Richard C. Hoagland of The Enterprise Mission, a Marvel Comics work The Face on Mars (right) appeared in 1958.
The Face on Mars by Marvel Comics (1958)
Mars Anomaly Research Society | P.O. Box 2311 | Vancouver, WA 98668 | U.S.A.
mars Marvel presages The Face on Mars − page 2
Basiago: “I was on Mars!”
Genovese’s story of having traveled to Mars with a Vatican team under the direction of Marconi may be highly significant in terms of unraveling the Mars cover-up, because it links secret research undertaken by the Vatican (which included teleportation) to secret probes to Mars.
Andrew D. Basiago
Andrew D. Basiago, 48, president of MARS, encountered an identical situation during his two trips to Mars on behalf of the CIA in 1981. He has described teleporting to Mars via a “jump room” located at a CIA facility in El Segundo, CA, arriving at a below-ground US base on Mars, walking up a concrete stairway, and then accessing the surface of Mars through the eyes of a large skull on the surface. Basiago’s whistle blower account of visiting Mars and accessing the Martian surface in this way was made before he learned of Marvel Comics’ 1958 work containing this highly specific yet obscure detail. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Basiago was a child participant in Project Pegasus, the US time-space exploration program under DARPA. DARPA was developing time travel technologies that included “teleporters” derived from the works of Nikola Tesla and “chronovisors” derived from the works of Vatican musicologists Pellegrino Ernetti and Pier Maria Gemelli. Basiago has described how he learned during his childhood experiences in Project Pegasus that teleportation and other forms of “quantum access” were being developed by the United States government at the behest of the Vatican. His experiences in Project Pegasus resulted in his trips to Mars via teleportation in 1981.
Guglielmo Marconi: Early Mars Pioneer Basiago stated: “In telling the hidden history of visitations to Mars, we are also revealing the hidden history of the US time-space program.”
Acknowledgments MARS wishes to thank Richard C. Hoagland of The Enterprise Mission for uncovering Marvel Comics’ The Face on Mars (1958) and Edward Long for bringing this lead to our attention.
Mars Anomaly Research Society | P.O. Box 2311 | Vancouver, WA 98668 | U.S.A.