Ah. I didn’t scroll down quite far enough to notice that last word lingering below the picture so mistook your “glib” to refer to the tone of the previous paragraph. My bad.

And BTW, we should just leave aside the actual content of Tim’s post in which a straight guy challenges gay artists to step up and represent the experience of “homosexual oppression and suffering in as expressive and emotive a fashion” as Spiegelman’s.

Am I missing something here? Is Tim really suggesting that there are no gay artists whose statements on the gay experience of oppression are the equivalent of Spiegelman’s about the Jewish experience during the Holocaust? Seriously? Is he fucking kidding?

I hope he is, because if Tim isn’t parodying the words an arrogant pissant, he is one.

Has Tim really not been paying attention to the art world for the past, oh I don’t know, 40 or 50 fucking years? Let alone the worlds of film, music, literature, theater and yes comic books etc. etc.

And what the hell does he mean by “Who will carry the burden of moving beyond Maus and Maus 2?” I wasn’t aware that Maus was something that needed to be left behind or moved past. Maybe for Speigelman personally as an artist but collectively, culturally? Really? Art evolves and changes and styles and movements which were once liberating can become oppressive and stifling over time, but I’m not aware that Spiegelman or Maus</i?, specifically, have become so monumental that artists, and more over, specifically gay artists, need to free themselves from their domineering influences.

Jesus. Don’t even get me started on this moron.

Uh, Sean, go back and read my comment again, then go back and look at the last word of Tim’s post, the one just beneath Spiegelman’s typically powerful representation.

The representation of Holocaust victims pressed against a death camp fence and the word “enjoy” is not an association I think most sensible people would make, either as a caption or as a sign off to a post about Spiegelman’s work (which I am quite familiar with BTW). Indeed, some people might be considerably offended by it.

I’m not so much offended as curious as to whether Mr. Fuller was at all aware of how his usual sign off might be perceived in a such a context.

Would you say that you “enjoyed” reading the Maus series? I was certainly profoundly moved by it, but I would no sooner say that I “enjoyed” it or that others might “enjoy” it, than I would say I enjoy watching Resnais’ Night and Fog or Ophuls The Sorrow and the Pity.

One of the great challenges for any artist who seeks to deal with the Holocaust is to represent the reality of its horrors without, at the same time, reducing them to some sort of comodified pleasure, something we can passively “enjoy.” Indeed, Spiegelman’s great triumph is that he accomplished in a medium — comics — that most people felt, at the time, was utterly incompatible with, if not antithetical too, representations of such serious subjects as the Holocaust and remembrance. Comic books, they thought, were for pleasure and “enjoyment.”

So here we have Tim essentially captioning one of Speigelman’s typically powerful images “enjoy.” My question is whether Tim was being deliberately glib or ironic, or whether he’s too fucking dense to realize what he’s doing.

Which do you think it is?

Are you self-aware enough to recognize this or are you just a total idiot?

Are you familiar with Speigelman’s Maus and Maus II. Both are, as Tim notes, a very emotional and personal story of the Holocaust. To then use an evocative illustration from the work to accompany this point doesn’t seem out of place to me.

Thanks for the tip, Parthenon, you anonymous bastard!

On a vaguely related, if not quite rotten, note, the other day my wife made this: http://www.japanesefoodreport.com/2008/10/roasted-tuna-collar.html

Oh my god. Best. Tuna. Ever. I urge all fish lovers to try this immediately.

Are you self-aware enough to recognize this or are you just a total idiot?

I don’t think anyone is any more responsible for their own words just because they use their real name than people who don’t. I’ve seen people give out their names and home freaking addresses on these threads in a flame war because they were completely nuts while some of the most responsible, rational and reasonable people here are totally anonymous.

I’ll tell you what’s really liberating, though. Not taking myself as seriously as you do. It took you all of two posts for you to out yourself as a smug, self-righteous, paranoid ass.

Whoever you are.

Enjoy.

Um, do you?

On a side note, Satan won that bet.

And the unsightly skin blemishes.

(That was a joke.)

And three cheers to you for that. While there are certainly people who use aliases online responsibly, there are vast numbers who use them just so they can be jerks. I always have a slightly higher level of respect for those who sign their actual names.

You have the patience of Job.

Does anyone have any idea WTF this Tim person is on about?

Indeed, and yet somehow you’ve endeared yourself to me by not somehow injecting the term ‘crazy bastard’ in your question! You are definitely in the running as my new BFF.

Enjoy.

Enjoy.