(Links NSFW. Depending on your workplace, I guess.)
Bechdel doesn’t seem too torn up about it, though.
From KSL channel 5 in Utah:
Time Magazine voted it the book of the year, but some students are calling it pornographic and asking it be removed from their curriculum.
Thomas Alvord, with the group “No More Pornography,” says, “The issue is exposing people to pornography.”
The issue is with “Fun Home,” a book assigned for reading in a mid-level English class at the University of Utah. The class introduces students to different literary genres. In the case of “Fun Home,” it’s told in the style of a comic book. The story centers around the author as she comes to terms with her own and her father’s homosexuality.
Drawings depicting sex acts are included in the 230 page novel. A student in the class was offended and approached the group “No More Pornography,” which made headlines earlier this year when it staged a successful protest of music videos shown a gym in Provo. The group has started an online petition in protest of the book. […]
The student in question accepted an alternate assignment but would like to see further changes. The university has no plans make any. It says while a student has the right not to read the book, other students in the class have the right to judge for themselves.
“No More Pornography” hopes to continue talking with the University of Utah and will continue the online petition. The group is also asking that filters be installed on campus computers to prevent students from accessing explicit images.
I’m pretty sure these are Christian anti-porn activists, not Feminist anti-porn activists. But this still reminds me of one of my primary arguments against the MacKinnnon/Dworkin anti-pornography legislation, back when that argument hadn’t yet been made moot by court rulings that the M/D ordinance was unconstitutional: Any anti-porn legislation that isn’t extremely narrowly defined will be used by right-wing Christians to harass queer and feminist cartoonists. ((And other sorts of artists, as well, I suppose. But it’s only cartoonists who are really important, needless to say.))
Fun Home is, for those of you who haven’t read it, one of the best American comics of the last decade. I posted about Fun Home previously here.
Curtsy: Dykestowatchoutfor.com and Journalista.
Illustration beyond the fold is NSFW.
You can take out the “narrowly defined”.
It has also been pointed out that if porn is in fact a message about women–that they’re things, or good only for fucking, or inferior to men–then porn is protected by the First Amendment, because you’re now talking about something other than “it’s just to turn you on” and therefore not obscene.
Whether you want to classify it as porn or not, it’s definitely something that should be labeled NSFW. Perhaps you could have a bit more of a lead in before the pics, indicating that it’s NSFW for those readers who really would get in trouble for having a picture like that on their screens. (FTR, I agree with you, and I think it’s ridiculous to call this porn. Of course, I’m not anti-porn, so I suppose I’m also biased. However, that’s because I’ve seen these pictures (and the storyline) in context. Still doesn’t make it acceptable at work, particularly out of context. And I have no doubt that I’m not the only one in this boat.)
Good point, Eliza. I’ve put the illustration “behind the fold.” Sorry ’bout that.
The images are NSFWITFUS: Not Safe For Work In This Fucked-Up Society.
The class introduces students to different literary genres.
Hm. The questions I have are what the selection of this particular work does to advance that learning objective, and what a more detailed explanation of the learning objective might be. If the idea is to present an example of a graphic novel/comic book whose intent is to cover this kind of issue, fine. If the idea is to simply present an example of graphic novels/comic books in general, certainly there are any number of less controversial works that would do as well, and would keep the focus on the learning objective rather than on side issues. I have no problem with offending people (as something like this is bound to do) if you think you need to do so to make a point, but is that the issue here?
Perhaps the students so offended by the 3 explicit images* in the book could take their personal copies somewhere to have them censored. It’s be a great profit margin for anyone with some spare time and a black magic marker. Everyone wins!
* I read the book. There are about 3 explicit images. And it was an AWESOME book.
I appreciate that not everyone has the same views about sex and graphic representation vs text and it’s great that people are comfortable enough to speak out about things they want to change and blah blah blah…
But my reaction to this is my reaction to the people who took evolutionary bio with me and then wanted to spent all class arguing about ID. Did you not read the course description? This is not a seminar class and the other 500 of us paid for evolutionary bio. You don’t have to be here. That’s the great thing about college. If you have a problem with a class or an aspect of a class, the profs are generally pretty accommodating. If it’s an mid level class, there’s probably a couple they could have chose from. They were given an alternate assignment. What more do you want, a pony?
I’m guessing this student hasn’t taken any art classes or art history classes or anthro classes or film classes or philosophy classes (I watched some really bizarre depressing movies with sex in existentialism.) Probably doesn’t have the class on porn. I’m just sad my ungrad uni didn’t have the class on porn until it was too late for me to take it.
The group is also asking that filters be installed on campus computers to prevent students from accessing explicit images
*rolls eyes* Honesty, are you kidding me? It’s college, not day care. Besides which, you’d have a beast of a time arguing with the varies departments that could have legitimate reasons for needing/wanting to access “explicate” images. Anyway, how long do you think the filters would be on before they were hacked? 30 seconds?
But my reaction to this is my reaction to the people who took evolutionary bio with me and then wanted to spent all class arguing about ID.
Not a particularly apt analogy. If you take evolutionary bio, you should expect that the theory of evolution would be the focus and ID given short shrift, if at all. From what we see here there’s no reason to think that porn was being defined as a literary genre in the context of this course and there’s no reason to expect that porn would be presented as part of the course. And if porn is to be considered a genre and is to be presented (not at all clear from the way this is presented), then common sense would indicate that you’d let people know.
I have no problem with this kind of material being presented in a college course if there’s some kind of rationale for it. But it’s not apparent that there was any such rationale.
But Ron, “Fun Home” is not porn.
Carnadosa is dead on. It was a “mid-level” university course, not something being offered in high school or lower. The texts for the course would have been available in the university book store for the students to review before they ever set foot in the classroom — and if they didn’t want to read the book or participate in the discussions they had ample opportunity to bail out.
And if those students think “Fun Home” is porn they’ve led very sheltered lives.
Ron F;
Fun Home is particularly appropriate for this kind of course as the example of a graphic novel, because it is particularly literary IMHO. Its hard to think of any great graphic novels that don’t include some nudity and/or violence…I’m trying…and failing.
This is controversial not because it is depicting particularly graphic sex, but because it is depicting gay sex.
I don’t know about that. I imagine if it showed a female with an erect cock in her mouth it would also spark controversy. Personally I don’t have anything against porn, but make no mistake the image above is pornographic.
The NOVEL, viewed as a whole, may not be pornographic. The image considered alone probably is–NSFW, obviously–and it’d probably still be so if it was a penis instead or if the person depicted were male.
Doesn’t make sense to cherry pick pages though. It takes me about 0.3 seconds to think of a variety of unquestionably-ok-for-college-reading “literature” which contains isolated scenes that, taken from the text and put by themselves, would look like porn. Is Sophie’s Choice pornography? Is everything by John Irving porn? Is Clan of the Cave Bear porn? I’m in bed reading a lot this week, and the totally normal blase mysteries all seem to have a decent level of sex, blowjobs, etc.; so do a large number of science fiction books, fantasy books, modern fiction, etc. Find the right pages from half the stuff in the library and you could easily brand them as porn.
curiousgyrl, I have to say that I don’t think I’ve ever read a graphic novel, so I’ll have to take your word for it that there aren’t any out there with no sex scenes. There’s certainly non-graphic novels out there without sex scenes, so I’m kind of surprised, though. Amp, I’ll take your word for it that the intent of Fun House is not to be porn. However, I should think it rather dissembling of the instructor if they professed to be surprised that a novel that has as it’s focus someone trying to reconcile themselves to both their own and their father’s sexual behavior and has sex scenes both figuratively and literally illustrating the point wouldn’t be controversial and direct people’s attention away from the objectives of the course. Unless, of course, the instructor had objectives besides the ones stated in the syllabus.
You’re assume “the genre itself” is comics, but it might be that “the genre itself” is actually multiple genres: a professor might value Fun Home because it’s a graphic novel, an autobiographical memoir, and a coming-out story, and thus covers many bases. Plus, it’s an exceptionally “literary” graphic novel, full of references to classical literature (sometimes sincere, often ironic), which would make it appealing to some English professors, I imagine.
If the professor is indeed shocked! shocked! that some folks objected, then I guess she or he is a little naive. (I’m feeling too lazy to go and reread the article). But if a work has merit beyond the controversy — and Fun Home does — then I don’t see anything wrong with assigning it even if it does cause controversy. (I’d feel differently if the work was objectionable in some other way — if it were overtly racist, for example — but I just don’t think that objections to sex deserve as much deference as objections to racism.)
There are other graphic novels that could have been chosen, although I can’t think of any others that share Fun Home’s combo of excellent writing, topic likely to interest young people. literary references, and graphic novelness. But why should we want the professor to choose another one? It’s unreasonable to expect a review of literature to avoid sex; literature sometimes includes sex.
Fun Home is among the best – if not THE best – graphic novels ever produced. It raises the literary and artistic bar. And it is an excellent example of writing and drawing, period. If I were teaching a literature class, Fun Home would be a great choice, because it combines elements of memoir, literary criticism, identity formation, coming of age issues, sexuality, parent-child relationships and other aspects of modern life that can be found in the best lit of the past 100 years.
The students protesting this work should simply drop the class. Or grow up. This isn’t romper room. It’s college. Where you go to learn ideas, experiences and subjects beyond your scope of familiarity – indeed, even beyond your comfort zone. It would be poor education indeed if students graduated having learned little more than what their parents allowed in the home.
I know it wasn’t exact, that’s why I said “my reaction to it”. (My first emotional response, which is often not rational, though I still think it’s born out by logic. I tried to be charitable, but frankly it still reads like whining to me. I’ve had to read and respond to plenty of uncomfortable things in college classes. That’s part of what college is about.)
Because my reaction to the story is the same reaction I had to the people in the bio class that were hung up on the evolutionary part. It’s your responsibly to determine if the class is something you can handle, especially a class that could and should have loaded topics in it, not the prof’s. They got to have an alternate assignment and they should have read the syllabus the first day of class to determine if this class was for them. According to the article, there were four other classes that filled the requirement. Basically the prof did as much as they should have to accommodate them and anything else they want is above and beyond.
Is Clan of the Cave Bear porn?
FWIW, i vote yes. bodice-ripper (very) soft porn, admittedly, but still.
There’s nothing on the organization’s web site or material that identifies them as Christian. They do have links to religious anti-porn material, of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist flavors.
But their main focus (on the main page, nomorepornography.org) seems to be the idea that porn production hurts the people making it, and that porn consumption hurts the people using it. That’s a utilitarian rather than a moral/religious argument against porn.
It’s also the case that many pro-life groups make (allegedly) utilitarian arguments, as do many anti-gay-marriage groups. In my experience, nearly (not absolutely) all the people involved in these organizations turn out to be devoted Christians. (I don’t criticize them for this — I think it’s good for Christian activists to make secular arguments.)
I didn’t mean to say that this group was sponsored by a church; just that it’s a safe bet that most of the folks in and running the group are devoted Christians. The only reason I mentioned it was to distinguish this from radical feminist anti-porn groups, which this group doesn’t appear to be.
And even their overt argument barely seems secular, ending with talk of children who had their innocence spoiled (as measured by the I-meter). Of course, since the website itself does not exist at the moment, I had to go by Google’s cache. It has a few errors. Somehow the saved version added a couple extra words to this sentence: “Let The University of Utah know that provided as Educational Material is not acceptable!”
The fact that they go on to quote Helen Keller as their model made me wonder for a moment, but it doesn’t look like a conscious parody.
RonF, I do think they expected someone might not want to do this assignment or continue. They made provisions for that (more than they would in the case of evolution, I hope). I don’t know if they should have expected crazy people asking for internet filters.
Ok, so they should drop Fun Home and replace it with the complete Dykes to Watch Out For. That should make everyone happy, right? Well, then, they could replace DTWOF with Omaha the Cat Dancer. At which point everyone should be happy to go back to Fun Home and forget all their objections.
If you follow the link “Beckdel doesn’t seem torn up about it though” above and then scroll about a third of the way through the comments on that thread you’ll see a post from Jeff C, who is apparently a good friend of the professor of the class in question.
While at the site have a look at the yard long list of accolades Fun Home has received in the past two years, richly deserved. I’ve been re-reading my copy of Fun Home since this bru-ha-ha came up. It’s even better than I remembered.
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Eaaauuuurrghhhh!
People in real life have sex. Literature represents people. Ergo, people in literature quite often have sex. If they didn’t, literature would be completely non-representative of life.
Graphic novels by definition graphic. Ergo, sometimes graphic novels depict sex, in pictures; get it, kids? If the pen-drawn lesbians get you hot, that’s your issue.
Everybody just needs to get the fuck over it, already. Sheesh.
I’ve read Fun Home. It’s not porn. It’s about queer identity, which has a lot to do with sex. In that sense, it’s a book about sex.
I hate this generation. I totally blame BushCo and abstinence-only education. And also teh terrorists.
Well, there are graphic novels, and there are graphic novels. The term can be considered so broadly as to include plot arcs published in the monthly superhero comics. And it gets confusing when you consider that Persepolis was published as a four-part in France, and then a two-part and finally a single volume in the US. Then there is Gilberto Hernandez’s Palomar cycle which was published in bits and pieces over 20 years, and yet forms a narrative, if not entirely consistent stylistic whole. And arguably you can include Barry’s Freddie Stories.
But at any rate, Fun Home is part of an emerging genre that pulls visually from sequential art, but draws its narrative and thematic structure from biography, autobiography, or literary fiction. Bechdel, Satrapi, Sfar, Barry, Spigelman and Hernandez all talk about sex and sexuality at various levels of explicitness on their way to telling larger stories about identity and conflict. Bechdel uses the few sex scenes in her work to contrast the personal and sexual liberation she experienced in college with the self-repression experienced by her father. It is only controversial if you think there is something about queer relationships that needs to be handled in a different way from Madame Bovary as an example.
Amp, that’s why I’m not all over the top about this; it’s not at all clear what the context of this course is. And last night on my third beer (I’m at a church conference in Vancouver, B.C. this week; I recommend Rodney’s Oyster Bar in the Yaletown neighborhood, great food and it seems to be where the locals go to drink) I came up with a similar idea to Joolya; if you want to show what a graphic novel can do, then you want to cover all the bases, and sex is included. There’s still the issue of making sure that controversy from your examples don’t overshadow the actual teaching points, though.
Actually, I don’t believe that Fun Home would have been considered pornography under the Dworkin/MacKinnon proposed legislation. They defined pornography not by its sexual explicitness but by the political messages attached to it. Granted, their legal definition had a lot of other flaws, but unlike obscenity approaches, mere pubic hair and cunnilingus doesn’t qualify.
That wouldn’t matter, CB. Because D/M was a tort, any Christian who didn’t like “Fun Home” could sue, and the store that sold it, and the publisher, would be obliged to defend it in court. Even if they won in court, the costs of defending from who-knows-how-many such suits would be disastrous, and a major incentive for publishers to pressure artists like Bechdel to leave the sex out.
I agree, Fun Home may be the most literary graphic novel done by an American. Persepolis was neither American nor in the English language. There are other interesting non-US GNs produced in Anglophone and Francophone Africa. Maus I and II is intense and might well be tougher for more students than FH, and also has nudity and violence galore (it’s about a Holocaust survivor and his son, who is recording his father’s story). Maus I was probably the first major effort in this genre, AFAIK, but Amp is the expert here. So, it’s a young genre, and like many other literary productions of the last 20 years, many GNs include sex or sexuality, in-your-face violence, racial/ethnic minority concerns, and other aspects of modern society that used to be unmentionable in polite novels. This isn’t even addressing the manga, US/UK SF/F (Gaiman et al), and traditional comix styles.
Amp, can you do us a big favor?
Please list your favorite (or most significant) 10 or 20 GNs.
I’d like to get more acquainted with the high quality examples of the graphic novel and serial genre. So far, I have encountered Bechdel (FH and DTWOF), Spiegelman (Maus I and II), Satrapi (Persepolis I and II), Abouet and Oubrerie (Aya).
NancyP:
To get you started check out the “Drawn & Quarterly” web site here
http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/artHome.php
I’ve posted the page that lists the artists – they are all fabulous. Abouet & Oubrerie are right at the top of the page, by the way.
My personal favorite on the D&Q site is Lynda Barry. She and Matt Groenig (of The Simpsons fame) are old college friends. Lynda is an early (late 70’s/early 80’s) graphic novelist who is still going strong.
Art Spiegelman is a pioneer in the field of graphic novels with the publication of Maus l & ll in the late 70’s/early 80’s.
Drawn & Quarterly is just one sight, though. There are many more.
Right Amp?!? Have fun!
Sacco, Sacco, Sacco!
I think it’s good for Christian activists to make secular arguments.
I suppose it’s slightly off-topic, but I once wrote a short essay arguing that this can sometimes (not always, but sometimes) lead to intellectual dishonesty in a debate.
I’m enjoying this thread because I’m getting some great ideas of graphic novels to add to my reading list.
Has anyone read Steven T. Seagle’s graphic novel “It’s a Bird?” I found it poignant and clever.
NancyP
Despite that his books are a little closer-tied to the superhero genre, you really do have to include Alan Moore (if just for Watchmen) if you’re going to discuss great, influential, literate graphic novels.
Thanks!
Some folks here seem to have trouble distinguishing between sexually explicit and pornography.
Did you intend to misstate what curiousgyrl said? She did not say that graphic novels all have sex scenes; she said that it would be hard to think of any “great graphic novels” that did not include “some nudity and/or violence”. How you translated that into “sex scenes” I’m not entirely sure. (Maus, for example, has a great deal of violence, and has nudity–given that much of it takes place inside concentration camps–but no sex scenes, as you put it.)
Yes thanks Mythago;
I was thinking of the list that has so far been named here, including Maus. I am unsympathetic to these students in mart because I think college students should be able and expected to handle mature topics.
I also agree that don’t think Fun Home is pornographic. It is not mostly about sex, its mostly about human beings and is not designed as a masturbatory aide. I stand by my sense that the offense here is homosexuality and not a fairly innocuous depiction of sex.
Nancy wrote:
I’m working on a post listing them — it’ll probably go up sometime in the next week.
RonF, it would all be a lot simpler if gay people just sort of faded away and disappeared, right? We’re much too controversial for an upper division lit course. What’s that teacher thinking, acknowledging a segment of hir class!
FunHome is probably the greatest graphic novel ever written. It’s one of the best novels (graphic or not) that I’ve ever read. It’s obvious that if you want to teach graphic novels, you’re going to pick the ones most worthy of consideration. That means this one, it means Maus. It does not mean safe, boring pablum topics. Good lord, what kind of education would that be?
Thanks, Amp! I am looking forward to it.
Yes, I missated what curiousgyrl said. No, it wasn’t deliberate. I don’t know. I plead fatigue.
Dad died two weeks ago today. My brothers and mother and my wife and I were all in the room holding onto him when he passed. It was difficult. He was 83 and had COPD and he finally developed a secondary condition that he couldn’t shake off. We all went back to my brother’s house after that and had a bit of an Irish wake. The next two days were spent trying to straighten out Mom’s financial situation and figure out how and where she was going to live. She couldn’t stay where she was as she cannot live unassisted. I grabbed all the files, planted myself in front of a computer and got on the phone to Social Security, the VA and Dad’s last employer filing insurance claims and getting the right changes made in her SS and VA payments and a bunch of other stuff. We’re still not sure of her financial situation (a lot depends on what the VA decides to do), but for now she’s living decently. Then I went back to work for two days and then left town for a week for a church conference that had been scheduled two months ago. I was making follow-up calls as well and my priest spent the first two days of the week trying to calm me down. Vancouver apparently has a thriving microbrewery industry and I certainly supported it last week. I flew and drove back from Vancouver Friday. Then we had to actually move Mom to her new place and, because space is limited in the assisted living facility, auction off just about all her worldly goods. Mom wasn’t there – God knows we couldn’t let her watch that, we barely could. She’s got her and Dad’s chairs and a few pieces, including a couple of bookcases that Dad made out of kits back in the 50’s – they’d been married 63 years and had known each other well before that. Mom has a bracelet he gave her for her birthday when they were both 3.
Sorry about the off-topic post.
Hang in there, Ron. I helped take care of my grandparents during the last years of their lives, when they required round-the-clock care, so I know how stressful it can be.
I wish you and your family only the best.
—Myca
I’m so sorry about your Dad, Ron.
3? That’s incredible. (My parents started dating in junior high, and I thought that was impressive, but they’ve got nothing on your parents.)
Words are so inadequate, but my thoughts are with you.
good luck Ron, I just got back from a similar situation in my own family. Very sad. Dan Savage is also feelin’ us right now, too, apparently.
http://www.thestranger.com/savage
Thanks, all. Yeah, Dan’s right; I’m having a hell of a time concentrating on anything right now, including blogging. “3” is not a typo, either. That was part of a story I’d never heard before. Mom and Dad were both brought up on farms, in a town that now you’d never guess had farms in it in living memory; Mom’s family’s farm was sold off for housing development, but my brothers and I worked on it weeding, picking, sneaking beers in the back orchard, swimming in the irrigation pond, etc. when we were kids. Mom says that the bracelet was actually a substitute for Dad’s original choice of a rabbit (a live one; they raised them) after her father said “No rabbit”. That was a different world from the one we now inhabit. They were married during WW II when they were both 20 – Dad served in the Marines. Dad’s pictures from that time make him look like Clark Gable (on a good day for Clark) – he was a good looking guy.
So productivity is going to be low out of me for a while, and coherence may be in short supply.
Ron, no need to apologize. I’m sorry for what you and your family are going through and hope things get better.
Thanks. I appreciate it. The alternative to seeing one’s parents die is for them to see you die, a fate that fills me as a parent with horror when I think of it.
University Students are grown azz folks. Gay/straight/transexual/bisexual I would not mind people putting on their clothes and believe some people would be uptight regardless. But to the extent these bands are used to censor LGBT folks that IS wrong!
I’ll be thinking of you, Ron.
Thanks. Fortunately one of my brothers lives 5 minutes away and he and my sister-in-law and my nephews are keeping a good eye on her. I won’t have to solve any short-term problems long-distance. I appreciate the good thoughts from everyone.
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