No "Coloreds" in Our Classrooms: On Segregating Media

Via Warren Ellis, I learn of this request, made three years ago:

I'm going to be teaching a short course at my college next winter called "Comic Book Politics."  The idea is to have the students read the best comics published since the mid 1980s which raise—either directly or indirectly—challenging political issues. I define this pretty broadly—anything from The Authority as a way of discussing the ethics of intervention to Maus as a route for discussing the Holocaust.  I can't do things not collected into trades—just too hard to get enough copies to 15-20 students otherwise.  So here's the problem: I only got back into comics over the last year after not reading them for a decade or so.  I've been doing my best to catch up, but I'm sure that there are great authors, series, or TPB's that I've missed or else haven't fully appreciated. Here's a tentative list of what I want to include: Cerebus, Transmetropolitan, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Dark Knight Returns, Palestine, [&c.].  Comics blogosphere: tell me what you think I should include in the syllabus, and why.

That sounds like a fine list, but the sales pitch bothers me.  It suggests that funny pages, as a medium, have something particularly important to say about politics.  I don't think they do.  The ideology behind this course seems to be: comic books shouldn't stand alongside the real political novels on a syllabus, because people remember reading them as children.  (Plus, they have pictures.)  That I remember reading Moby Dick as a child is irrelevant.  (As is the fact that it has pictures.)  Any medium with such a low barrier of entry must be inherently inferior and separated from the rest of the books.  We teach "words only" courses. 

We won't stand for having any of them "coloreds" in our classrooms.  That some of those "coloreds" rival the fine words printed on those pristine white pages is immaterial.  This is the way we've always taught courses, all the way back to the days of my great-great-great-grandfather's advisor.  We can't allow these "coloreds" in our classrooms.  They're the last refuge of the most honorable printed word.  We need to honor that tradition.  It's ours.  The only one we've got.  If that means segregating the "coloreds," then it means segregating the "coloreds."  Let them have their own course on the political novel.  Separate but equal's a sound policy.  Only a fool would resist it.

Offensive parallels aside, it seems to me that Timothy Burke's "Department of Everything Studies" offers a better model of how to treat literary phenomenon which aren't (or never were) limited to traditional literary media.  Consider the example of "noir."  In order to present an accurate account of noir as a cultural phenomenon, you might begin with the novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but you'd be remiss if you ignored film noir, as it was not merely a contemporary phenomenon, but a complementary one.  (Many of the early films being adaptations of the novels and/or written by the novelists.)  A serious engagement with works which have enlivened noir's conventions would entail airing the first season of Twin Peaks or having the students read Ellis' Fell more than it would reading novels so formulaic they continue to be written long after the men and women who penned them have died.

Granted, the traditional caveats apply: you're unlikely to find a single instructor sensitive enough to the quirks of each medium to teach the course responsibly.  I'm sympathetic to this line of criticism, but it requires more of an instructor than the current system does.  Example: if I were to teach a course on 19th Century American literature, I'd be duty-bound to include some Melville.  As I said, I've read Melville for pleasure since childhood, and with a month's prep time could pass myself off as a middling Melville scholar.  There are thousands of people more qualified to teach Melville, but since I'm nominally a 19th Century Americanist, no one would bat an eye if I did. 

In an ideal setting, a Melville scholar would teach Melville and I'd glide in to close the century with Wharton, London, and Twain.  In an actual classroom, I teach Melville by proxy, on the basis of what I've gleaned from the Melville scholars no university can afford keeping in the wings.  I'm not the most sensitive reader of Melville, nor would I be the most sensitive critic of a show like Twin Peaks.  But give me a month to immerse myself in the secondary literature, and I'd be sensitive enough to teach it.  This isn't to say I don't sympathize with those who bemoan the teaching of works outside the media of their expertise.  I merely want to draw attention to the fact that we do something analogous all the time with nary a complaint.

Which brings me back to my original complaint: while some phenomenon which are media-specific, "politics" isn't one of them.  Unless you want to teach a course examining the unique contributions to political discourse of funny books as a medium, there's absolutely no need to segregate them from the literary gen pop.

Comments

[Sisyphus]

Hmmm... I don't agree, and I don't think he's doing what you say he's doing. I think it _is_ a course on comic books and how they do things in a specifically comic-bookian way, which the teacher will then relate to politics. But "politics" is here "being defined pretty broadly" --- I would say much more broadly than anything government two-party system blah blah blah, and this expansive definition will allow the teacher to distinguish between what comics intend to do or consciously do, and what sorts of unintentional effects the medium itself might have --- I would agree with the teacher of the course that any genre or medium that claims it is "just entertainment" or "isn't about politics" warrants careful examination to see what politics, what ideologies, it holds as natural and self-evident.

And limiting to a single form or genre can help clear your time for other things, as students will need to get the handle on your approach and the stylistics in addition to not knowing squat about the historical background you'll need to teach them, and having to teach how to talk about tv, and novels, and comics, and films, and paintings, and kumquats, all takes up a lot of class time. In my opinion.

That said, I love teaching Everything and if any departments of Everything Studies would want to hire me I'd love to teach a class on Comic Book Bodies. Which, as I would teach it, could be interchangeably titled Comic Book Politics.

[SEK]

I don't disagree with anything you write, and you're correct to point out that what I'm saying isn't very practical. However, in my defense, I'm patently conflicted vis-a-vis this particular issue. So I may disagree with you presently. But not now. Oddly, I don't think there's any real disagreement here even among me, myself, and you; mostly, it's an object lesson in what we'd ideally like to be able to do and what we think we can at any given moment. I'm feeling optimistic tonight, but'll probably be uber-practical come morning.

That said, the 1) number and 2) content of my posts tonight are indicative of wide-scale grumpiness. I blame late-Twain, the damnable pessimist.

[Sisyphus]

Oh, well if you have a patent on that conflict, then, carry on!

It should be useful protection in your ongoing myspace wars.

(though truth be told, in a fair fight I'd put my money on Onika. Dude, she's a superhero.)

[popsv1]

He is teaching this as a class where it comic books are the focus, so what's the problem with what he is doing? I agree with Sisyphus. I myself am a big comic book fan and like the list he has. V for Vendatta is probably one of my favorites, same with Watchmen.