Results tagged “identity” from Uncivil Society

My last post featured a BBC satire of charitable fundraisers typified by a calculus of moral nihilism. Here's an upcoming event that's far more thoughtful: the Disabled and Sexy fashion show for the UK's Jennifer Trust for Spinal Muscular Dystrophy.

Unlike the ersatz porn stars of the Ladies Guild of Kneesley, this Notting Hill event isn't just about doing anything for cash. The fashion show reflects how the charity does more than treat a disease, an effort that itself can make people feel as if they've been reduced to a set of symptoms. Rather, the initiative celebrates the participants' full humanity, an aim that is as meaningful as providing medical care.

The Gap is sponsoring American Woman: Fashioning an American Identity, the latest exhibit at the Met's Costume Institute. The fact that the Gap did not insist on putting its own clothes on display was actually pretty savvy--while physically inserting Gap clothes into a fashion retrospective could call attention to the sponsorship and the gap between The Gap and high fashion, the sponsorship itself reinforces the sense of The Gap as the fashion identity of today, democratic, accessible and at the same time validated by an elite institution warehousing the style of the past.

The complexity of personal meaning in a bottle.

For the Significant Objects project, writers purchase objects, create stories about them & sell the objects on eBay--thereby demonstrating how objects "acquire not merely subjective but objective value." Above: Bar Mitzvah bookends, with a story by Stacey Levine.

Diva, "the UK's leading lesbian lifestyle magazine," takes Superwoman out of the closet with this recent S-shield cover.

Comic books are modern morality plays, and today on a break I re-read a classic Superboy story from 1960: Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister.  In a nutshell, Superboy realizes that his dual identity is just a metaphor for the woman within. He goes to the Fortress of Solitude for a once-in-a-lifetime Kryptonian sex change, but it's all a bit too progressive for Smallville, forcing the new Super-Sister to pretend to be an out-of-town relative. Unfortunately, when Claire Kent rejects Luthor's invitation to the prom, the spurned teen mad scientist reverses the operation.

Nah, that's not what happened. The real story--not a hoax, not an imaginary tale, not a dream (well, sorta not a dream)--is a different kind of study in gender dynamics. Superboy insults an alien woman's driving ability, so she decides to teach him a valuable lesson: it sucks to be a girl in a patriarchal society.

As the last panel shows, it's an ambiguous lesson at best--Superboy learns that he's been a real pig in the way he has treated the women in his life, but when it's all over he's glad that he's a guy--and not in a "I'm glad that I now have the insight and power to make a difference," way, but "Sheesh, I'm glad that's over, wink wink." Ah well. For a more reflective study of the social significance of superheroines & their positive effect on girls' sense of self, check out Peggy Orenstein's upcoming Sunday times essay, Wonder Girl:

In the end, that is the true drama of the superhero: the ordinary Joe who discovers that he has a marvelous gift, something that sets him apart from everyone else, simultaneously elevating and at least potentially isolating him, forcing a series of moral choices about the nature of might and goodness. It's a story writ large about coming to grips with power: accepting it, demanding it, wielding it wisely. Those themes are rarely explored in the fantasy culture of little girls, yet given how problematic power remains for adult women -- in both fact and fiction -- perhaps they should be.

We're all about meaning & community here, but because of massive work commitments I wasn't able to make it to the San Diego Comic Con, where costumes are a standard way of expressing one's identity.

Though let's face it--posting pictures of cosplay is pretty much a convention cliche. Fortunately that's not the only way it's done in the community, so to mark the occasion here are several notable comic & cartoon tombstones!

Richard Morrissey, legendary comics historian & letter column denizen (thanks Michael!):

Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny (among countless others!):

Alfred Harvey, founder of Harvey Comics, publisher of Casper the Friendly Ghost:

Heroclix prototype model of the Joker at Robin II's grave:

Mark Gruenwald, comic book writer, who was cremated & had his ashes mixed in the ink for the first edition of his collected series Squadron Supreme--a copy of which was a standard part of my law school classes on corporate life & personal identity!

It's a classic short story by E.B. White.

Why do I like it so much? I wonder . . .

One of my favorite tropes in the early Superman comics is the astonished reaction to the impossible. What pops out of these scenes is the sense not just that Superman is doing an impossible feat, but that the very existence of the image itself is astonishing. At a time when CGI makes the impossible routine, it's helpful to remember that not too long ago a mere drawing of someone jumping over a wall seemed incredible.

Iranians have reportedly starting protesting the Ahmadinejad regime by going to bazaars and not shopping.

However, that doesn't mean the rest of the revolution is noncommercial.

One popular item: t-shirts featuring Neda Agha-Soltan, the Iranian woman whose murder by Iranian security forces, caught on this YouTube video (more about which here), has made her an icon of the protest movement.

Pictured above: a Neda t-shirt sold on Facebook by an Iranian who pledges to give the proceeds to Neda's family if 400 shirts are sold, though judging from the comments not everyone is on board with this enterprise:

The CafePress blog has also noted Neda tee phenomenon, highlighting a link between commerce and political speech:

While the Iranian government prohibits Neda’s family and friends from having memorials in her honor and tries to locally silence the voices mourning her, the world is talking. And from our end, a T-shirt is worth 1,000 words.

In other words, let a thousand Neda t-shirts bloom!

And yes, the last one really is a "Remembering Neda (Iran) Dog T-Shirt." The photo proclaims "Made in the USA", and y'know, I don't doubt it.

UPDATE:

Here's the PrestijFashion shirt mentioned in the comments!

In a post-9/11 compromise, the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority allows uniform workers to have religious headwear provided that it is colored blue and bears the MTA logo.

Despite a discrimination lawsuit brought against it by the U.S. government back in 2004, the MTA insists that the policy is appropriate, on the grounds that "standardized uniforms assist our customers in quickly identifying employees if they need emergency assistance or just travel directions." The department does not see any problem in requiring believers to brand their religious garb, so it continues to cite Sikh and Muslim employees for failing to follow the policy.

The Sikh Coalition has protested, and a majority of the New York City Council has come out in support of forcing the MTA to end what is truly a stunning example of bureaucratic ignorance.

By Michael Linser for Our Gods Wear Spandex

The Dieline is a killer packaging design site that offers a wealth of useful examples for social-enterprise-types who want to learn about effective branding. Case in point: this behind-the-scenes look at how White Space came up with the bottle design for Thatcher's Organic Artisan Liqueurs, "handmade liqueurs distilled in small batches from sustainably farmed organic ingredients to create honestly great cocktails." Check out The Dieline post for the scoop.

Via the always illuminating Alanna Shaykh, here's a site that's chock full of social enterprise goodness: HijabMan, "the leading Muslim shirt company with a message."

A grassroots Muslim PR campaign, with thousands of people as walking billboards, wearing shirts with messages that make people laugh and frown. But most importantly they make people think. They destroy the messages we receive on a daily basis from mainstream media outlets and even our own religious leaders.

Be sure to check out the entire site--besides the store and blog, the site also features HijabMan's compelling photography, such as this image aptly titled "Allah in the Background."

Was having this as a nickname when I was in elementary school. Yay dinosaurs!

Now back to writing about social enterprise and values . . .

My Esteemed Colleague Susan Scafidi writes on Supreme Court fashion for The Huffington Post.

Over the weekend I posted my thoughts on the Wall St. Journal's lengthy article on Donald Duck in Germany. What struck me most: the stylistic contrast in relation to cultural identity:

The article ascribes the character’s popularity to the strip’s longtime translator, Erika Fuchs, an art history Ph.D. who rewrote Carl Barks’ dialogue to include references to German literature, myth and politics. . . .

Post-war Germany was in the process of restoring its identity after Nazi ideology raised serious questions as to the legitimacy of the country’s cultural heritage. A funny book provided a means for Fuchs to highlight the value of German traditions free from worrisome evocations of the Nazi’s use of German culture to establish ethnic supremacy.

Barks wrote in a radically different context. America’s literary heritage was not morally suspect; to have used Donald Duck to legitimize Melville or Dickinson would have seemed pretentious, if not bizarre. Barks’ visual and verbal rhetoric is instead far more pragmatic–Donald and his retinue are on a perpetual quest to succeed in a world full of baffling new tools and old ways.

As it happens, I'm in the middle of one of my periodic re-readings of Barks, so this stuff is fresh on my mind. Note particularly this observation

America’s literary heritage was not morally suspect; to have used Donald Duck to legitimize Melville or Dickinson would have seemed pretentious, if not bizarre. Barks’ visual and verbal rhetoric is instead far more pragmatic . . .

and compare it to the following scene from Barks' Snow Fun, a story in which Donald and his nephews raise money to buy one of the era's emblems of middle-class success, manufactured skis:

One of my pictures in the Barks post illustrates another dimension of Barks' examination of cultural identity. It's from Donald Duck and the Mummy's Ring, a brilliant (and funny) exploration of the question of whether the West should repatriate cultural objects to their country of origin. The kicker for me in the story is that it's more complex than a reductionistic tale of good natives and bad Americans--the Egyptians themselves are a blend of traditional believers and secular Westernizers, epitomized by a strategic nationalist educated at "Yarvard" in the States.

This may seem a bit goofy, but that's exactly why it works. As I concluded in my previous post,

What both the German and American versions of Barks’ work illustrate is the strategic value of junk media in remaking society. That so many people continue to view comics as little more than trash is not necessarily a bad thing–it frees the medium for creative expression outside the normative constraints of so-called high art, thereby retaining comics’ power as a cultural trojan horse.

I really want to know more about this organization, which, among other things, in the mid-1940s placed comic book ads telling the story of brands & their public benefit. Below: the story of Revere Copper, responsible for America's independence from Britain and foreign imports.

Like I said, it was the mid-40s:

From the giveaway, Donald Duck's Atom Bomb

The heroic myth takes on a new form. A commenter explains:

Ganesha is seen as the Remover of Obstacles, so anyone or anything that takes action to remove obstacles can be seen as exhibiting an aspect of the divine, in the form of Ganesh. The people who made this statue are saying that the heroic nature that we admire in the fictitious character of Spider-Man is an expression of the divine within us all, and should be honored. Also, it’s FUN. Bravo!

Thanks, Deborah Elizabeth Finn!