Nostalgia Was Originally a Disease

This summer I stumbled across bits of my childhood entertainment on YouTube.

Back when Bill Bixby was getting unlikably angry on CBS, he also hosted a kids’ version of Masterpiece Theater on public television called Once Upon a Classic.

Most of its drama specials and serials from Britain were based on classic (i.e., public-domain, no need to pay for rights) literature. When the supply ran low, however, the show broadcast some original shows, which I vaguely remembered.

There was also a Saturday-morning (or early afternoon) anthology show on one of the American commercial networks that broadcast an English slapstick comedy series called something like “The Jiffy Kids.”

That turned out to be “The Chiffy Kids,” and “Chiffy” referred to the Children’s Film Foundation (later Children’s Film and Television Foundation) in Britain. Financed by a tax on cinema tickets, the foundation cranked out a steady stream of domestic drama and comedy for school-age audiences.

TV Cream explains the CFF films’ place in British culture:

A joint enterprise between Rank Film Distributors and the most out-of-touch government you ever did see,…the Children’s Film Foundation turned out mini-masterpieces of pre-pubescent crime-solving about five times annually for over 35 years. . . .

crooks were foiled, bullies were trounced, pompous council officials were brought to rights and wacky inventions exploded on a regular basis on some waste-ground just outside London in much the same manner for over three decades, with a few, mainly cosmetic, alterations – the widening of the trousers, the democratisation of the protagonist’s accents – along the way.

The CFF films remain one of those odd cubbyholes of popular culture that are fondly recalled almost by default – not because of any inherent greatness in the films themselves, or any general joy to be had in watching them at the time, but more because they were so heavily plugged by local fleapits, the Beeb and well-meaning headmasters at end of term film shows, that they formed a part of the patina of everyday life, in the manner of the Toffo ads or Nationwide. In short, they were always on, we can’t not remember them.

And through 1970s American television’s need for material that might seem vaguely educational, or at least not completely commercial, some of those movies got broadcast here, too.

Then came the 1980s. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher‘s Tory government ended the tax that provided the funding for the C.F.F. In the US, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush’s Republican governments pulled back on standards for children’s television.

The foundation tried to revive itself in 2006 with a new website listing all its productions. But that soon became a cobwebsite.

Before disappearing, the foundation created a YouTube channel with the handle CFandTF to show the first five or so minutes of many of its movies. The channel is no longer active, but the individual shows can be found by their titles. Certain clips last just long enough to trigger memories in my brain: The ominous truck in “The Battle of Billy’s Pond”! The odd politics of “Robin Hood Junior”! And of course “The Chiffy Kids” as interior decorators! (In terms of a compelling plot, that’s rather like, “In this one, the Stooges are firemen.”)

Now if only I could find any mention of the Westinghouse Television special from about 1978 that involved Huck Finn being picked up in a helicopter to participate in interviews with modern troubled youth? He talked with pregnant teens and played basketball.

“A terrible storm”

The opening paragraphs of Ozma of Oz, by L. Frank Baum:

The wind blew hard and joggled the water of the ocean, sending ripples across its surface. Then the wind pushed the edges of the ripples until they became waves, and shoved the waves around until they became billows. The billows rolled dreadfully high: higher even than the tops of houses. Some of them, indeed, rolled as high as the tops of tall trees, and seemed like mountains; and the gulfs between the great billows were like deep valleys.

All this mad dashing and splashing of the waters of the big ocean, which the mischievous wind caused without any good reason whatever, resulted in a terrible storm, and a storm on the ocean is liable to cut many queer pranks and do a lot of damage.

Having sent Dorothy Gale to fairyland by cyclone (tornado), for her second trip Baum turned to this storm at sea. Next, in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, he used an earthquake. And then, since he’d exhausted the range of natural disasters, her next two trips were caused by magic from the Emerald City.

In The Scarecrow of Oz Baum had Trot and Cap’n Bill start their journey via a whirlpool—another type of nautical disaster. As with the earthquake suddenly opening a huge crack in the ground in Dorothy and the Wizard, people in the 1910s believed that such whirlpools existed in nature, but they don’t really. Does that mean magic must have been at work in those journeys too?

Dick Grayson as DC Comics’s First Overt Male Sex Symbol

Earlier this month Thoughts About Dick Grayson considered when DC Comics began to present Dick Grayson as sexy:

I’m just spitballing here, but I don’t think DC really presented Dick as sexy until the 1980s in New Teen Titans, and I don’t think he became an icon for sexiness until the 1990s.

I agree with the first part of that conclusion, but I also think Dick Grayson was the company’s primary male sex symbol in the mid-1980s because he was the first hero frankly shown to be having sex.

That was a big change from the early days, of course. For the first thirty years of his existence, as the most prominent minor in a genre with strict rules about sex and everything else, Dick Grayson was kept far away from sexual feelings. In fact, Batman, #1, ended by showing how Robin was immune to the Cat[woman]’s charms even as Batman succumbed.

In 1963’s the “Prisoners of Three Worlds” story ended with Robin and Bat-Girl going off hand in hand while Batman blushed and gulped at Batwoman’s advances, but Dick and Betty would surely do nothing but kiss. In contrast, Alfred’s imaginary stories in the same era presented the clear possibility of Bruce and Kathy having a child.

Similarly, while there was a lot of flirtatious banter with Wonder Girl in the early Teen Titans stories, Robin never really connected with her, Harlequin, Batgirl, or other possible partners. In solo stories Dick’s college girlfriend Lori visited his dorm room, but he stayed dressed in his turtleneck sweater.

But then came New Teen Titans, by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, in 1980. And that was one sexy comic book, from its very first images of Starfire in her barely-legal and completely impractical armor. Cartoonist R. C. Harvey tried to analyze the runaway popularity of that magazine in The Art of the Comic Book:

Upon first looking into issues of Perez’s New Teen Titans, I was struck by two aspects of his drawing style—how pretty his people looked and how copiously his detail abounded. . . . His people were statuesque hunks and glossy glamour girls, hothouse heroes and heroines cavorting in shapely perfection amid uncluttered and tastefully appointed settings.

The Titans were often working out in skimpy clothing or lounging around pools. Gar Logan’s jokes always drew attention to the beautiful girls, though they also made clear he wasn’t getting any. Even characters who weren’t supposed to be or think of themselves as physically appealing, like Changeling, Cyborg, and Raven, were gorgeous.

Pérez made no bones about designing sex appeal into the magazine in an interview with The Comic Times in 1980:

Starfire…was definitely created for pure sex. The fact is she’s sexy, she enjoys sex, and she makes no bones about it. She attacks Robin in the second issue. You know, really gives him one right across the mouth. The thing is. Starfire is an alien from another planet, but she can learn the language by touch. That’s just the way she chooses to touch. She likes Robin because he’s one of the few guys who's gutsy enough to show his legs. I hate that damn costume of Robin’s. but at least we’re going to have a little fun with it.

In 1983, Pérez repeated to Comics Scene that “Starfire was created as the group’s sex symbol.” Part of the fun of her early aggressiveness came from how Robin was such a straitlaced fellow, both as a character within the story and as a symbol in the larger American culture.

But soon Starfire wasn’t the only Titan to be sexy. In 1983 The Comics Journal’s Dwight R. Decker told Wolfman during an interview: “the Titans aren’t hopping into bed with each other, but there’s still an undercurrent of sexuality.” Wolfman acknowledged that Donna Troy (Wonder Girl) was in a “very healthy sexual relationship” with her boyfriend, Terry Long.

And there was more going on than Wolfman was ready to acknowledge. In New Teen Titans, #28 (dated February 1983), Dick visits Kory’s apartment and on a later page is wearing nothing but his pants while Kory is down to her nightgown. It didn’t take a lot of reading between the panels (or, to put it another way, in the gutters) to figure out what they had been doing. Later Wolfman joked about that scene but at the time he apparently had to be more circumspect.

In 1984, DC Comics launched a new New Teen Titans magazine with better printing and a higher price. This was sold only through comics shops, not newsstands, relieving the creators of worry about what innocent children might stumble across. And in the first issue of that magazine, one panel showed that Dick Grayson and Kory have been sleeping together. (As if we didn’t know.)

In the book Focus on George Pérez, published in 1985, the artist said that panel was his idea:

the simple reason that Dick is 19 years old. I was married at 19. . . . they are both consenting adults, and no matter what—the title says Teen Titans—at 19 years old, those two are legally adult. . . .

And, that one panel, which I did as tastefully as I could, there was no nudity involved, nothing was shown of the act, it’s just the fact that she was in what was established as being his bedroom, because I’d drawn the bedroom before. It’s the bedroom set I have. And, make no question about it, they were in bed together...

The company received “a few letters,” Pérez said then; “about three or four,” he recalled in 1987. But enough that Wolfman as the magazine’s editor felt he should respond on the letters page:

this has become one of the most controversial panels we’ve ever presented. Many readers wrote in saying “Way to go!” and others said “How could you do that in a book about teenagers?” The question cannot be resolved in a letter column. We didn’t mean to use Dick and Kory as role-models. That’s never been our intention anyway, but we realize by their being printed and portrayed as heroes (which they are) the mantle of being a role-model rests on their shoulders.

We acknowledge the problem some of you had with the scene and we apologize if it bothered you. We honestly had no idea there would be any problem. We also acknowledge that premarital sex obviously does exist, end we neither condone nor condemn those who believe or disbelieve in it.

In 1987 Pérez said:

As far as the backlash, it seemed like more only because Marv wanted to deal with the actual question. Even though there were very, very few letters about it, Marv wanted to deal with that and state something about it. I think Marv didn’t go far enough, myself. But again, I have an opinion on that type of thing, or am more vocal in some respects.

Unfortunately, by doing that, it called attention to it, and I think that it probably got more of a backlash of attention brought on by putting it in the letters page than it ever did appearing in the comic, itself.

Indeed, regardless of his denials, Wolfman’s discussion of the characters as “role models” raised the question of what they symbolized. Dick Grayson had been a comic-book role model since his first appearances. He had also symbolized youth, and now the former Boy Wonder was in bed with an alien supermodel. What was America coming to in 1984?! Next we’d be noticing that the President and his wife had gotten married in a secret ceremony eight months before the birth of their first child.

Pérez pointed to preceding examples of comics heroes having sex: Bruce Banner in The Hulk and Charles Xavier in X-Men. But those were:

• Marvel magazines, not the more traditional DC titles.
• characters established as adult.
• not a character America had known as a youth since 1940.

Sex meant more when it involved Dick Grayson. As Wolfman and Pérez had planned, that character’s growth to independence, soon to culminate in taking the new name of Nightwing, was intimately tied up in his leadership of the Titans and his relationship with Kory. And that relationship included sex, even if it wasn’t yet a marriage. As an original reader of those magazines, I can attest that the characters’ behavior didn’t seem scandalous; it seemed natural.

Of course there’s a delightful irony in the fact that the original kid sidekick became the first unmarried male DC hero to have a sex life. I think that made Dick Grayson the company’s primary icon of male sexuality all the way back in 1984.

Within a few years, other DC characters followed. Dick came to represent monogamous values while other heroes of his generation were more freewheeling (providing yet another way for Roy Harper to screw things up for himself). But, just as he was always comics’ first and thus leading kid sidekick, Dick Grayson would always be DC’s first sex symbol.

Quandaries of Proofs and Historical Proof

Roger Sutton of The Horn Book just wrote about Unspoken, by Henry Cole, a picture book clearly designed around the myth of quilt patterns as guides on the Underground Railroad. The magazine was all set to publish a mixed review of the book, praising its art and storytelling but criticizing the perpetuation of a myth. But, just in time, the publisher changed the book’s afterword to remove all references to the myth.

Since the body of the book is wordless, there was no main text to change. The quilt remains a significant visual element, however. Sutton thinks the story remains “terrific and intriguing,” but he can’t help noticing that quilt hanging there.

By coincidence, this week I sent The Horn Book my review of an upcoming picture book about an event during the Revolutionary War, also generally praising its storytelling but pointing out a significant historical error. That error didn’t originate with the author-illustrator; it’s an all-too-common exaggeration of the event. The mistaken line could be removed without greatly affecting the larger story—but with the book already in proofs, it’s probably too late.

Sutton’s posting notes that Deborah Hopkinson and James Ransome’s picture book Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt linked quilt patterns and escaping from slavery in 1993. That was a story about a girl improvising a patchwork quilt to serve escapees as a map. The “quilt code” myth goes further, positing a widely known, prearranged, and yet secret code based on patchwork patterns, some not documented until after the U.S. Civil War.

Leigh Fellner, one of the quilt scholars working to disabuse of this myth, found the earliest manifestation of the quilt code myth to be a “brief statement in a 1987 feminist video” with no supporting citation. Sweet Clara… followed, probably independently and probably doing more to promote the linkage of quilts and escape routes.

After that picture book, a woman in Charleston, South Carolina, named Ozella McDaniel Williams told a similar story to Jacqueline Tobin while selling her quilts. After three years of fruitless searching for confirmation, Tobin went back to Williams and interviewed her at greater length. Based on that one source, Tobin wrote Hidden in Plain View with Raymond Dobard, Jr. One Oprah appearance later, and a new American myth was born.

Sununu’s OIP Derangement Syndrome

In July, Romney campaign co-chair John Sununu said President Barack Obama “has no idea how the American system functions” because, in part, he spent ages six to ten in Indonesia. That same day Sununu told reporters, “I wish this president would learn how to be an American.”

A couple of days later Sununu apologized for “using those words,” but stood by their sentiment. Sununu, incidentally, was born in Cuba.

In September, during the Democratic National Convention, Sununu declared that Michelle Obama’s dress cost more than $1,000 and that her husband’s campaign was lying about that figure. A mechanical engineer by training, Sununu had never shown any knowledge or interest in ladies’ fashion before.

People who do follow that field immediately pointed out that the designer who made Michelle Obama’s dress usually prices her work at well under Sununu’s figure (and that Ann Romney had worn an Oscar de la Renta dress costing $1,990 at the Republican convention). And indeed, the Obama dress has an announced price of $398. I can’t find any remarks from Sununu acknowledging that.

Early his month, after the first Presidential debate, Sununu called Obama “lazy” and said, “When you’re not that bright, you can’t get better prepared.” His television interviewer gave Sununu a chance to rewrite his “lazy” comment, and he endorsed it.

Sununu has even criticized the way President Obama walks onto a helicopter. One might recall that Sununu left his job as George H. W. Bush’s chief of staff because he had used government helicopters and planes for several expensive personal trips.

This week, former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed the President for a second term, laying out reasons for supporting Obama and a detailed critique of Romney’s shifty foreign policy. Sununu told an interviewer he thought Powell had “a slightly different reason. . . . I think when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being president of the United States—I applaud Colin for standing with him.” Today Sununu retracted that comment based on his friendship with Powell, not the obviously racist thinking behind it.

A man can only retract and apologize for comments only so many times. Sununu’s antipathies are undeniable. He displays the symptoms of OIP Derangement Syndrome.

Denslow in Cherokee

While researching a story, I came across this webpage from Western Carolina University’s Cherokee language program.

It uses the art from W. W. Denslow’s picture book Three Little Kittens, originally published in 1904. Those pictures come with a new Cherokee translation to create a tool for teaching that language to kids today. There are audio and PowerPoint versions, plus videos of classroom discussions and sample handouts.

There’s a similar interpretation of Denslow’s Five Little Pigs.

Finally an Explanation for Dorothy’s Strange Dream

Caleb Crain alerted me to the existence of this public safety poster from the Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) Health Department:

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor, and a roof, which made one room. One day after returning from the outhouse, Aunt Em forgot to wash her hands, which caused a bacterial infection to spread among the whole family, including the dog. In addition to severe stomach cramps and a dreadful fever, Dorothy started to have some really strange dreams.

Okay, there are less appealing Oz stories than Dorothy Return to Oz.

This poster was part of an award-winning public health campaign. There are also germ-driven versions of Treasure Island; Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret; and other classics.

Lemony Fish

Yesterday the Boston Globe ran an interview with Daniel Handler, representative of Lemony Snicket, which included this exchange about childhood reading:

BOOKS: What was the first adult book you read?

HANDLER: It was “Fish Preferred” by P.G. Wodehouse. I picked that one for its title…

If young Daniel had expected a story about a liking for fish, he would have been disappointed. Fish Preferred refers to the novel’s male lead, Ronnie Fish, and the ups and downs of his stock—not as in “fish stock” but as in “the stock market.”

When Fish Preferred was published in July 1929, speculating in the stock market was all the rage. Even ordinary readers knew the difference between “preferred stock” and “ordinary stock.” Of course, speculation by ill-informed investors was part of the stock bubble that burst just a few months later.

Wodehouse had originally titled that novel Summer Lightning. That was the name of the serialized versions that appeared in both the US and UK earlier that year, and that was the name on the British edition published the same month as the American.

The British edition includes a preface from Wodehouse that explains the situation:

It is related of Thackeray that, hitting upon Vanity Fair after retiring to rest one night, he leaped out of bed and ran seven times round the room, shouting at the top of his voice. Oddly enough, I behaved in exactly the same way when I thought of Summer Lightning. I recognized it immediately as the ideal title for a novel.

My exuberance has been a little diminished since by the discovery that I am not the only one who thinks highly of it. Already I have been informed that two novels with the same name have been published in England, and my agent in America cables to say that three have recently been placed on the market in the United States. As my story has appeared in serial form under its present label, it is too late to alter it now. I can only express the modest hope that this story will be considered worthy of inclusion in the list of the Hundred Best Books Called Summer Lightning.

That preface also contains Wodehouse’s reply to a common criticism:

A certain critic—for such men, I regret to say, do exist—made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained “all the old Wodehouse characters under different names”. He has probably now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha; but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled this man by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.

And indeed, Summer Lightning/Fish Preferred is a sequel, one of the early Blandings Castle novels. Apparently all current editions have reverted to Wodehouse’s preferred title.

Weekly Robin Historical Extra

Some comments at Scans_daily alerted me to a discrepancy in the corporate memory of Stephanie Brown’s brief time as Robin.

Back in December 2005, scripter Bill Willingham gave an interview to Comic Book Resources in which he said:

The death of Spoiler was locked in before I was asked to take over the series, but it was my idea to let her become Robin for a short time before that. My thinking is that it would be nice to give her at least one moment of glory, accomplishment and success, before all of those horrible things that were destined to happen to her.

Newsrama just transcribed remarks by DC Comics executive Dan DiDio at New York Comic-Con on the same storyline:

You know, me and Stephanie, we go way back. The story with Stephanie Brown goes, they came to me as Executive Editor with the War Games story, and said we’re going to kill Stephanie Brown. I knew Stephanie Brown for who she was, and said, “I don’t know, if this is going to be the big ending to your story it doesn’t feel big enough at the time, because the character wasn't strong enough yet.” So I said, “Why don’t we make her Robin for a short period of time, build some interest in her, and then we kill her!”

Big DC and Marvel superhero stories are the products of many minds working together, and scripter Dylan Horrocks has described bad memories of a weeklong discussion of that crossover plot. Undoubtedly both Willingham and DiDio could have had input into the storyline. But did they really come up with the same idea independently?

Willingham’s recollection came much closer to the event, at a time when that suggestion was still quite unpopular with a vocal set of fans and in an interview in which he was happy to state that other plot points were decided for him. I suspect it’s accurate.

I know this is a political period, but I can’t help but be reminded of how in the last Presidential debate Mitt Romney took credit for recruiting women for his gubernatorial administration:

And I said, “Well, gosh, can’t we—can’t we find some—some women that are also qualified?” And—and so we—we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks?” And they brought us whole binders full of women.

But it turned out Romney was actually taking credit for a women’s initiative, as David S. Bernstein of Boston’s Phoenix newspaper explained:

What actually happened was that in 2002—prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration—a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.

They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.

And ten years later the governor convinced himself that that effort had been his idea all along, that approving an idea brought to him made it his idea. Did DiDio do the same?

“Robin wants to get her to be her superhero self.”

Last year when DC Comics launched its “New 52” magazines, HiLoBrow asked eleven-year-old Max for his reviews. This is late, but I wanted to acknowledge the quality of his responses to the Batman family of books.

Max took seriously his brief to review the books as a kid. For example, on Detective Comics, #1, in which the Joker slices off his face, he said: “I would not recommend it to readers my age.” And DC Comics would be the first to say that many of these titles aren’t meant for young readers.

But of course they’re all linked within the same fictional universe, one has the word “teen” in the title, and another co-stars a ten-year-old. So kids will be picking them up. Some of those young readers would be thrilled to see content not meant for them. But Max has some pretty firm ideas of what’s appropriate, both for comics storytelling and for upright heroic behavior.

Teen Titans #1 [here]: The overall idea was pretty good — Robin looks up all these heroes on his super-computer, and goes to find them. In this one, he finds Wonder Girl — but she’s naughty. She steals. Robin wants to get her to be her superhero self. This chopper starts firing at them — she’s forced to turn into Wonder Girl. Good action scenes. I’m excited to read more issues, especially because its plot merges with Superboy’s plot.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #1: It had a little nudity — Starfire — that I did not like. Great action scene at the beginning, but too bloody. I liked how funny it was, but otherwise it wasn’t that great.

Though Starfire showed a lot of flesh in this issue, and early plans called for a see-through bikini, she wasn’t actually nude. But nudity for an eleven-year-old is different. I thought Red Hood and the Outlaws, #1, was well aimed for males in their late teens who have Maxim under their mattress and think their older brother’s girlfriend is really hot but are scared of trying to converse with her. But maybe I do its core readership a disservice.

Batman and Robin #1: I thought Robin was a little rude to his father. His father is Batman. He kinda reminds of a vampire, how Robin looks — pale skin, and dark lines around his eyes, and black hair pulled back. He’s sleeping in a bed and Alfred the butler is coming to wake him up, and as Alfred is about to tap him, Robin grabs his hand and says, “I’m awake.” There wasn’t a ton of action in this issue, but I’m sure there will be more action in #2. The graphics were OK — more realistic than Batman #1 but less realistic than Batwing #1. I’m guessing this one will get better and better.

Batgirl #1: When she was in her costume, Batgirl creeped me out. But when she moves in with her new roommate, it was realistic and good — because it was funny. I liked how they incorporated Batman a tiny bit in the story. It had a bit of a mystery story, which I think I’ll like. But I don’t like how sadistic the burglars are in the beginning — why does every comic that’s not for babies have to have torture in it?

Nightwing #1: Pretty good. The graphics were appealing, I liked the front cover. I liked how Nightwing looked in and out of his costume. There were a lot of good acrobatic scenes, where he’d do flips and crash through a train window or whatever. There was too much murder.

Catwoman #1: The graphics were like Batman and Robin #1. It was a little gross at the end — between her and Batman. Sex, is what I’m trying to say. There were some cool action scenes.

Some older readers might have found the rooftop climax in Catwoman, #1, to be the sort of “cool action scene” they were looking for. Along with the cheesecake cover, it certainly established that magazine to be on the “adult” side of this line. (Sex is what I’m trying to say.)