On hockey and comics.
First, a question: at what point did it become standard to sing national anthems as sporting events? Does this go back to the Olympics? When you think about it, it's a really weird thing to do in Canada and the US where the rivalry is regional, not national. And what does singing the anthem have to do with sports, anyway? It seems rather suspicious to have everyone sing their nation's official song, itself an act of nationalism, and then play sports that, often as not, simulate a battlefield situation. I have no problem with sublimating our more violent rivalries through sport. Hell, I think that's a great way to work of those kinds of frustration and resentment, but why fuel the fires of nationalist pride in the process? It all seems rather imperial.
Second, an idea about comics. They're not a 'popular' medium anymore, in terms of the sheer number of people reading them. They became 'cult' a long, long time ago. But they might serve as an especially clear microcosm of the audience-to-artist relationship. Almost every comics artist--writer, pencillor, etc.--I've ever read about was, at some point, a fan as a kid, and the vast majority learned to write or draw from comics to begin with, even if they persued it in other ways after the fact. That, coupled with the fact that our childhood heroes stick around for generations, means that we get to write their stories when we grow up, if we make it as professional writers. Comics, as well as a lot of mainstream SF, are essentially fan-fiction approved by a corporate sponser. Does that make them more indicative of the relationship between author and audience? Does that make them more indicative of the basic art-society/cause-effect problem? Does it actually model a feed-back loop, a chicken-and-the-egg relationship, rather than a top-down 'false consciousness' model or a bottom-up 'feeding the beast' model?
Just thoughts.
Posted by orion at May 26, 2006 12:02 AM