jonesenstein

Jonesenstein
2001-07-15 23:36:46 (UTC)

9-6-00

Wednesday, September 06, 2000
I know that most of you don’t know who he is, and
chances are, you probably never will, but I believe that
Dave Sim is one of the most prolific visionaries of our
time. If I knew what that meant, it would probably be a
very powerful statement. What I mean is, his work-in-
progress, Cerebus, is probably the best book, comic or
otherwise, that the world has seen in quite a while. Yes,
it is a comic book, but it works on so many levels, I might
have to say that Dave Sim is the new James Joyce. That’s
how much I believe in his work.
The only problem is I don’t think he has all of his
marbles (he’s already admitted that he’s a borderline
schitzo). He takes the minority viewpoint in almost every
disagreeable subject on purpose (he freely admits this as
well), but he has some very good ideas (I’ve been reading
all of the published books since august. I’m on about page
3500).
Here’s Dave’s main problem (I can call him Dave,
you can’t): he believes in the minority viewpoint in any
given situation. Because the majority viewpoint has so
many holes, he takes the road less traveled. What he
doesn’t seem to realize is that the majority viewpoint is
so full of holes simply because it is the majority
viewpoint. So much is written about it and studied of it
and inferred about it that one could find holes in any
situation concerning a given topic.
For instance, Dave believes feminism to be a bad
idea. He believes that it is right that women were denied
the right to vote, and that they should make less than
men. He then goes on and on for pages about the
differences between now and 100 years ago when everything
seemed right. He traces this diversion of a right to a
wrong society to feminism. What he fails to see is that
feminism was created for all to be equal. No more, no
less. The only problem with that is, like men, women want
more than equality, they want superiority. On paper,
feminism looked like a grand idea. Hell, on paper, I love
it.
This is where I start to agree with Dave (although
his black and white views on the subject are a bit immature
to say the least). I’m not sure if he’ll agree with me,
although he says that feminism has infiltrated every corner
of society. What I mean is that the term “politically
correct” could not have existed in a time where all men
ruled. This is a direct descendant of feminism. One can
no longer make tasteless jokes, or even call people what
they are simply because they might get offended; it might
hurt their feelings. This is a female trait, you have to
admit. We now must be sensitive to everyone around us at
all times, another female trait. If feminism had not
gotten off the ground, I honestly believe that we would
have the same progress we have had in the sciences and
social aspects that we have had already. I don’t think it
would be this dumb now.
I’m all for not touching women’s butts in the
workplace; that’s unprofessional. But to get sued because
a joke was said that someone didn’t like? It is
ridiculous. This PC crap is why we have the backlash of
sex and voyeurism and raunch that we have now. We can’t
act like that, so we have to watch others act like that and
feel a little better.
It’s like when I was little. I couldn’t shoot a
big gun or actually turn into a truck, but I watched
Transformers, and for that 30 minutes, I got some violence
out.
Why is Emenem, Survivor, and South Park so big of a
phenomena? Because they do what we can no longer do.
Maybe George Orwell was right.




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