Stock up on the brain bleach
Jul. 15th, 2010 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailySo, um. Here's a thing.
As near as I can figure, this is from what started out as a magazine called Rampaging Hulk, later shortened to The Hulk!, that Marvel published in the late Seventies. This particular selection is from a story called "A Very Personal Hell," from issue #23, published in 1980, and was written by Jim Shooter and drawn by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala.
In it, Bruce is on the run following a botched attempt to steal some information that might give him a clue how to reverse his transformations into the Hulk. He checks into a YMCA to spend the night, and, uh...
Perhaps a word of explanation here. This was right around the time of the smash success of the Incredible Hulk TV series, the whole reason for the Rampaging Hulk magazine's existence in the first place, as Marvel tried to use the series' popularity to capture an upscale market. In that vein, then-editor Shooter apparently decided the magazine would be a good showcase for more "grim-n-gritty" storytelling; less Silver Surfer, more Starsky and Hutch. In that vein, he decided to make his first story for the magazine especially hard-hitting and realistic.
So. Bruce at the Y.
It caused quite a commotion at the time: Comic Book Resources reports that the story "lit comics fans on fire...It was all over The Comics Journal for months." Shooter's reported reaction? "If I offended rapists, I'm GLAD." Yeah. Another one for the "no lessons were learned" file.
As near as I can figure, this is from what started out as a magazine called Rampaging Hulk, later shortened to The Hulk!, that Marvel published in the late Seventies. This particular selection is from a story called "A Very Personal Hell," from issue #23, published in 1980, and was written by Jim Shooter and drawn by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala.
In it, Bruce is on the run following a botched attempt to steal some information that might give him a clue how to reverse his transformations into the Hulk. He checks into a YMCA to spend the night, and, uh...
Perhaps a word of explanation here. This was right around the time of the smash success of the Incredible Hulk TV series, the whole reason for the Rampaging Hulk magazine's existence in the first place, as Marvel tried to use the series' popularity to capture an upscale market. In that vein, then-editor Shooter apparently decided the magazine would be a good showcase for more "grim-n-gritty" storytelling; less Silver Surfer, more Starsky and Hutch. In that vein, he decided to make his first story for the magazine especially hard-hitting and realistic.
So. Bruce at the Y.
It caused quite a commotion at the time: Comic Book Resources reports that the story "lit comics fans on fire...It was all over The Comics Journal for months." Shooter's reported reaction? "If I offended rapists, I'm GLAD." Yeah. Another one for the "no lessons were learned" file.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 03:20 pm (UTC)You can personally consider where he might have been coming from, but putting it forth as mitigating circumstances is disingenuous.
Remember that "devils advocate" is advocating, for the DEVIL. The devil: he's no good!
no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 09:36 pm (UTC)The thing is though, and no offence meant, but I don't think you were doing a very good job of it here.
Other commenters were saying "this is bad, and here's why" and your comments seem to be saying "yes but maybe it WASN'T bad, maybe, because theoretically the facts could be like this" - where the true devil's advocate might go into the "visibility is progress" argument, saying that adding more negative portrayals of gay men into the cultural lexicon was building a base for a rehabilitation of the image, and that positive portrayals would just be too sudden in those days - making an argument that debates one of the points actually made by skalja.
What your comment did was fabricate new context in which this scene would be less offensive - and unless you can reasonably suspect that this context exists (and as recognitions points out, in this case you can't), that's sort of pointless. It just ends up with you saying , even if you didn't mean to, "come on guys, don't be so hard on this man who painted gay men as rapists!".
If you're fully committed to offering devil's advocacy and going down those roads with anyone else interested in getting into supposition of intent or circumstance, then I'd say it would be wise for you to start adding something along the lines of "of course, I don't know the context here, and without any mitigating circumstances this is certainly a poor choice of plot direction that I can't condone" at the end of your D'sE comments. Many people will still disagree with the idea that intent has an affect on outcome, of course, but I think it may dispel some of the sour feelings that come up with annotationless maybe the bad guy here's not so bad after all commentary.
As a faceless internet commenter, I like you, but your unqualified devil's advocacy gets you in trouble in some obvious ways!
no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 06:08 am (UTC)