MARGARET LISS:
A few years ago I scanned all of Dave Sim's notebooks. He had filled 36 notebooks during the years he created the monthly Cerebus series, covering issues #20 to 300, plus the other side items -- like the Epic stories, posters and prints, convention speeches etc. A total of 3,281 notebook pages detailing his creative process. I never really got the time to study the notebooks when I had them. Just did a quick look, scanned them in and sent them back to Dave as soon as possible. So this regular column is a chance for me to look through those scans and highlight some of the more interesting pages.
Last week we looked at Dave Sim's notebook #8 in All She Wants To Do Is Dance. It covers Cerebus #70 through #79. While we just looked at it last week, I'm writing this directly after last week's column. . .Because as this column comes out, I've just got back from a 3 night stay at the Regency . . .I mean the Château Laurier. Well the Fairmont Château Laurier.
Yes, I went to see the Boston Bruins taken on the Ottawa Senators, and the one stipulation on the trip was I wanted to stay at the Regency. I'll let you know if I see an Elf or kid in a bunny suit.
As I was looking at the pages from it for last week's article, I saw a page that looked different. It didn't fit in with the pages around it. I left this one a bit bigger than usual - so you could super zoom in and read the text.
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| Notebook 8, page 27 |
There are some sketches of random people, plus a sketch of someone who looks like Astoria - "that's the priestess". A familiar line reappears but this time with a bit of a twist: "I know things
I don't think most of these lines appear in the finish story, but appear to be talking about Sophia, Cirinists and Astoria.
4 comments:
I like "It's an abomination, that's what it is. A married Pope *AGH*. Sort of girl who'd marry a Pope's the sort of girl who'd do her washing at midnight". For the Cirinists -- this is Cirinist "back fences" gossip that would have surrounded Cerebus being married to Sophia -- a married Pope isn't an abomination because of the Pope: that is, it isn't a theological thing, a violation of the Pope's morals and Church upbringing, it's because of the Pope's wife: the decision to marry a Pope. What sort of woman would MARRY a Pope? Someone who would do her washing at midnight. Well, why wouldn't you do your washing at midnight if that's what you wanted to do? Because you DON'T DO THAT. It's bad maternal mojo or juju. You do your washing during the day because that's the GOOD time to do it. That's why everyone DOES it then. Cirinism and feminism are both about THE ONE RIGHT WAY TO THINK AND BEHAVE. All in caps.
It took me a while to get what I thought was the Exact Right Robert Gravesian WHITE GODDESS form of phraseology on that one: "I know things that have been forgot. I know things what will NEVER be forgot."
"I'm giving you good advice. Anything worth hearing isn't said too often. You remember that." "Yes'm"
That's Cirinist advice. Cirinist (mother) to Kevillist (daughter). Which has mostly to do with the fact that Political Maternalism (like feminism) is a castle built on sand, so the less you discuss anything central to Cirinism the more it retains it's potency. Which just means you can keep the cracks puttied over for much longer than is sensible so you don't have the cracks pointed out to you (making them crack more).
"Don't slouch." said coldly. "Yes'm" (while she fantasizes about being Astoria) (ALL daughters fantasized about being Astoria).
One of my favourite Cirinist lines is the mother in LITTLE MURDERS. "My mother always taught me to take dainty little steps." [beat] "She'd KILL me if she could see the stride on Patsy [her daughter]"
Okay, I have no idea where to put this, so apologies to Margaret and Tim W (and Dave) if I am out of order here.
This has nearly nothing to do with the notebook page, except for, maybe, how it relates to how young girls (apparently) dream these days.
The most recent issue of TIME magazine has an article about their most recent list of "Next Generation Leaders". Among them is a young...
And here's where it gets interesting and germane to this website...
A 29-year-old person named Hanne Gaby Odiele, who is native to Belgium, and who has the most (in my opinion) amazingly, beautifully symmetrical face I've ever seen (at least, in the TIME photograph), is a "supermodel".
"She" was also born a hermaphrodite. Only, apparently, that term is passe. TIME magazine, and others, use the term "intersex".
Apparently, according to TIME, Ms. Odiele was subjected to surgeries without her consent, at age 10 to remove internal testes, and then at age 18 for vaginal reconstruction.
The "supermodel" says that she is proud to be part of the "advocacy group interACT Advocates for Intersex Youth."
Ms. Odiele speaks out for the right to remain "intersex" and to not be subjected to "treatment that is often irreversible and sometimes unnecessary".
The Director of interACT, Kimberly Zieselman, says that Ms. Odiele "is going from supermodel to role model."
All Cerebus did, besides wetting himself first and then later stabbing himself, was the hacking and slashing of others for another 200 or so years.
Draw your own conclusions.
Jeff - My conclusion is that a) it was very farsighted of me to do the first hermaphroditic/intersex comics character since very little of this was on ANYONE's radar screen back in the 1970s and b) the problem is that, in our society, it's the Feminist Theocracy that decides what is "necessary" and what is "unnecessary" when it comes to gender.
If I was a feminist, I think people would be making a Big Positive Deal about CEREBUS. Because I'm not a feminist -- and we're stuck in this Feminist Theocracy -- I could only be voted off the island. Which, I think, is going to, progressively, reflect very, very badly on the Feminist Theocracy as we go along. And I think they're starting, very late in the day, to figure that out. Absolutist choices tend to lead to absolutist pies in the face.
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