And this year’s “Comic Least Likely to Have Been Reprinted” Award goes to…

Cidu Bill on Mar 15th 2010

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Filed in Bill Bickel, Mutt and Jeff, comic strips, comics, humor | 33 responses so far

33 Responses to “And this year’s “Comic Least Likely to Have Been Reprinted” Award goes to…”

  1. chuckers Mar 15th 2010 at 05:53 am 1

    Is this for that category that Mark M referred to the other day?

  2. Cidu Bill Mar 15th 2010 at 06:01 am 2

    Yes, I did think of Mark M’s comment when I saw this.

    Between cringes, of course.

    I mean seriously, how does the guy at the syndicate who’s setting up the comics for distribution not think “Hmm, maybe we should skip over this one”?

  3. chuckers Mar 15th 2010 at 06:12 am 3

    Guess he/she isn’t actually reading them.

  4. Powers Mar 15th 2010 at 07:54 am 4

    Well, aside from the anachronistic language and the standard-issue black caricature, the portrayal isn’t inherently racist, is it?

  5. Nicole Mar 15th 2010 at 08:01 am 5

    Powers #4 … it probably wasn’t considered racist when it was first printed. The artist may have thought himself progressive for using the term ‘colored’ . But by today’s standards the features you pointed out are indeed racist.

    I always wondered about the term ‘colored’ if black people are colored, does that make me transparent ?

  6. Czhorat Mar 15th 2010 at 08:05 am 6

    No, not racist at all, Powers. There’s nothing racist about the wealthy, intelligent white character visiting the stereotypical African-American bum lying about on a street corner while mangling the English language and not seeming to understand that being beaten with a wooden leg shouldn’t be reported to the doctor as “a pain in his leg”. Nothing racist about the African American living in a situation with apparent spousal abuse or at least casual violence. Nothing racist in his eing clearly lower-class than the white people around him.

    I’m hoping that you were joking and my sarcasto-meter is broken today; it might have gotten waterlogged with all of the rain this weekend.

  7. Czhorat Mar 15th 2010 at 08:05 am 7

    Nicole,

    I can see right through you.

  8. Irritated Prof Mar 15th 2010 at 08:38 am 8

    I dunno, Czorat. Mutt isn’t wealthy; in the original formulation of the script, he’s a racetrack tout (Jeff is an escaped lunatic). Jeff mangles the language in the first panel. The whole exchange, with the references to stupidity, confusion, domestic violence, etc., is pretty typical of all the characters in that strip, and, in comics of that period in general (wanna see domestic violence? Check out “Bringing Up Father,” and Maggie’s rolling pin). About the only “colored” reference is the copying of early-1900s black English. The word “colored” was as accepted then as “African-American” is now, there were many ruder things Sam could have been called if Chic Young had wanted to offend. I bet that the only reason “Sam the Colored Man” is being used at all instead of one of the strip’s regulars is that none of the regulars have a wooden leg.

    Context is everything; you can wish that Young had transcended his time but it’s tough to condemn the guy for following the prevalent cultural standards around him. And, really, compared to the portraits of black characters seen in, say, the films of Harold LLoyd and Buster Keaton, also created about the same time, this one’s pretty mild.

  9. furrykef Mar 15th 2010 at 08:39 am 9

    Czhorat — on the other hand, if you changed the character to white (and his use of language to match), the joke would still work perfectly fine; indeed, it wouldn’t lose a thing. So you could argue that, aside from the caricature, the character’s race is incidental, and none of things you mentioned — aside from his manner of speech — has anything to do with him being black.

    And let’s not forget that just because “all black people are bums” is false does not mean that “no black people are bums” is true. Some black people are bums; some white people are bums too. (If Mutt & Jeff did consistently portray black people as bums, though, and white people as otherwise, then that would indeed be a problem.)

    I’m not saying I condone this strip or especially the decision to reprint it; I’m just arguing with the logic here.

    - Kef

  10. mitch4 Mar 15th 2010 at 09:35 am 10

    Hey there Prof — I follow your argument, and have sometimes used it myself to defend some possibly disturbing artifact. But the other part to look for is a vivid counterexample.

    Recently I reread some of the early East Coast (or more specifically New York -based) private-detective series novels, which sort of fell between the English “drawing room” mysteries [badly characterized in that phrase, but so what] of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and the developing U.S. West Coast “hard-boiled” tradition from Hammett, Chandler, and Cain. The big names in detective series from the New York school from the 30s and 40s that continued into the 60s or later with solid reputations included the Nero Wolfe novels and novelettes by Rex Stout and the Ellery Queen novels and stories by the pseudonymous team calling themselves also Ellery Queen. [Yes, Hammett wrote”The Thin Man” which was set in New York, but don’t let that tumble my schema.]

    If you look back at early Ellery Queen entries, there is a lot of apparently racist language and portrayals to cringe at. One’s first response may be a contextual defense — that’s just the way white writers at the time dealt with race. But then when you see that Rex Stout — at the same time and place and in the same developing genre and market — was consistently decent and respectful in his language about and portrayals of African American characters, and the plot developments he involved them in, you may take that contrary example as suggesting that Ellery Queen cannot so readily be let off the hook.

  11. StunnedPotatoe Mar 15th 2010 at 10:15 am 11

    Wow. That comic is wrong on soooo many levels.

    Odd, though. I could totally picture at least one member of my family doing that joke …

  12. Kamino Neko Mar 15th 2010 at 10:20 am 12

    I doubt anyone at the syndicate was actually reading the strips to determine if they were suitable. I mean, it’s an old newspaper strip…what could be wrong with it, compared to what you can get away with today? (… Oops.)

    Note ‘was’, of course - they’re going to get letters…and someone’s going to be filtering them NOW…

  13. Irritated Prof Mar 15th 2010 at 10:26 am 13

    Hey, Mitch4–

    Yeah, I can see that argument– we hope that a writer at the least should try to capture the best and most progressive ideas of his times. That’s why Fagin still rankles. Even though you can argue (I sure do) that Fagin’s evil has nothing to do with his being a Jew, that Dickens was just using Jewishness as a character identifier and doesn’t reveal Dickens as an anti-Semite, any more than Quilp in “The Old Curiosity Shop” indicates that Dickens was anti-dwarf, the character just makes me squirm. So Stout gets points for social progressiveness, Queen doesn’t, and neither does Chic Young.

    Side note: Ever read the original Tom Swift books, published in the ‘teens and twenties? Two black characters right out of “Birth of a Nation.” Unbelievably coarse racial caricatures. And these were books for kids!

    Where would you stand on Jack Benny and Rochester?

    One more note about writers: Conan Doyle lands on both sides of the fence. In the last few pages of “The Yellow Face,” Conan Doyle presents, sympathetically, a white woman whose late husband was African-American. Coming out as accepting of miscegenation in 1893 was about as progressive as you could get. But in 1926, he published “The Three Gables,” which opens with as ghastly a portrait of a black man as you’re likely to find in literature– complete with references to his “horrible lips” and contorted speech patterns. I’m damned if I know what was going on.

  14. nonegiven Mar 15th 2010 at 12:34 pm 14

    Colored people = bad?
    People of color = good?

  15. S.P. Charles Mar 15th 2010 at 12:39 pm 15

    I can accept the strip in its historical context, or even reprinting it as part of a volume of collected strips (Tin Tin notwithstanding) — but letting it go out as the daily strip in 2010 shouldn’t have happened.

  16. Irritated Prof Mar 15th 2010 at 12:45 pm 16

    S.P.–

    Yup.

    We can talk about this as an historic artifact, but fit for daily consumption? Nahhh.

  17. Elyrest Mar 15th 2010 at 12:53 pm 17

    Irritated Prof (8) Chic Young didn’t do Mutt & Jeff. He did Blondie. Al Smith did Mutt & Jeff for over 50 years beginning in 1932. I’m of mixed minds about the comic, but I agree with S.P.Charles (14) that it most properly belongs in a volume of collected strips. The problem with eliminating these type of things entirely from the public consciousness is that people don’t ever realize exactly what was reality for the times.

    mithch4 (10) - I love Rex Stout and the Nero Wolfe world. He does seem to treat people much better in his writing than other writers of the time. I enjoy reading the unfiltered original versions of books rather than the sanitized ones that pop up for the very reasons I enumerated above. The fact that I was a history major might have something to do with this as I am always trying to put things into context.

  18. Irritated Prof Mar 15th 2010 at 01:13 pm 18

    Elyrest–

    I stand corrected. And embarrassed.

  19. ty Mar 15th 2010 at 01:25 pm 19

    Speaking of context - what is the context here? Is Mutt and Jeff currently in syndicated reruns? Was this strip recently reprinted in the newspapers? I can see what looks like a modern copyright notice, but I can’t make out a date. If it was in the papers recently, what was reader reaction?

  20. Elyrest Mar 15th 2010 at 01:27 pm 20

    Irritated Prof - No problem. Just giving credit (and harangues) where they’re/there/their due.

  21. paperboy Mar 15th 2010 at 02:21 pm 21

    I find the “racism” mild, and note that Mutt and Jeff seem genuinely concerned about Sam. And nonegiven#13- I’ve wondered about that, too. (would “person who nigs” then be acceptable?)

  22. Mitch4 Mar 15th 2010 at 03:09 pm 22

    If you really want to get into all the ways this isn’t up to modern sensibilities, notice they seem to have not yet accepted the reality of phantom pains “in” amputated limbs.

  23. John Mar 15th 2010 at 07:00 pm 23

    If it were for current consumption, then the author wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
    I can’t believe nobody’s used that yet.

  24. Mark M Mar 15th 2010 at 07:38 pm 24

    Quite interesting. There was a bit of controversy awhile back close to my area when an antique store had a KKK outfit on display. The owners claimed the “historical context” argument, and I don’t doubt them, but it sure shows there’s a fine line between historical context and bad taste.

    On another note regading this comic, I’m glad to see that being shocked at something caused hats to fly off heads even back then.

  25. Steffen Mar 15th 2010 at 08:00 pm 25

    Czhorat #6

    The black fellow is not mangling the English language, he’s speaking African American Vernacular English, AKA Ebonics - linguists consider it to be a valid dialect, and in my opinion viewing it as bad English is more racist than having a cartoon character speak it.

  26. John Small Berries Mar 15th 2010 at 09:46 pm 26

    To be fair, Sam’s dialect seems closer to standard English than Snuffy Smith’s.

  27. Lihtox Mar 15th 2010 at 09:51 pm 27

    I don’t think the comic is terribly racist by itself, but racism is so often about context: this comic is going to remind people of so many other much worse comics, and it’s not something someone wants to see when they open up the daily comics section. Probably most troubling is the way the black man is drawn, with those huge lips, as if he is actually a white man in blackface. A standard portrayal at the time, but it’s horribly jarring today.

    There’s racism and racism of course: the nasty conscious kind which ends in white supremacism and anti-miscegenation laws, and the unconscious kind where people are offensive without meaning to be, out of ignorance or laziness. It’s a shame that we use the same word for both: calling people out for the second kind of racism is actually doing them a favor by letting them know that they are being inadvertantly offensive, but most people do not respond well to it because they think you’re referring to the first sense. Yes, this comic is racist, but easily in the second sense.

    @Steffen 25: The only problem with using Ebonics is when the black people are shown speaking their dialect, while the white people are shown speaking standard English (which we usually do not do). In this case, however, Jeff clearly speaks with a non-standard dialect too, so it’s all right by me.

  28. Powers Mar 16th 2010 at 07:44 am 28

    Why would this strip be acceptable in a collection of some sort, but not acceptable as a rerun? Are the sensibilities of the American public so fragile that an historical strip with anachronistic characterizations might horribly offend them?

  29. Another BF Mar 16th 2010 at 07:45 am 29

    “I know a man with a wooden leg named Sam….”

    “What’s the name of his other leg?”

  30. Irritated Prof Mar 16th 2010 at 07:52 am 30

    Powers– because there’s a difference between seeking out comics in a collection, which you only do if you’re interested in that strip from that era, and just having a strip presented to you in a collection of contemporary comics.

    As for the fragility of the public– you can argue about whether we’ve gone too far, but our social sensibilities are at a place where certain things are deemed offensive, which means they are offensive.

    Personally, as a Jew, I’d be alarmed to pick up the paper and find a reprint of a 1920s strip with a typical period caricature of, say, a slimy Jewish pawnbroker. We just don’t expect to be jolted that way, and, although this kind of thinking can go too far, by and large it’s probably a good thing.

  31. Tyrone Mar 16th 2010 at 04:41 pm 31

    Well, no it’s NOT too racist at all. However, if that’s what I see in the paper in the morning, I’m gonna do a SWEET spit-take of my coffee right before jetting out the house, going down to the paper office, and probabaly getting arrested for Disorderly Conduct. LoLz Ok, so maybe just a LOT of yelling on the phone, but you get the pic. Just not what I wanna see in the comics section in 2010, k? Now, just to put the term “colored” into persepctive, I have been called that twice in the last six months here in the Pacific Northwest (I’m from VA). Both times, I must say it caught me off guard. However, the two ladies who called me this were using the word in the phase “You are the first colored man I’ve ever kissed” so you tell me where racism is on the word…………

  32. Mark in Boston Mar 16th 2010 at 11:59 pm 32

    The term “colored” goes back a long way too. Henry Fillmore wrote a series of trombone solos named after the fictional Trombone family, including “Lassus Trombone: de Cullud Valet to Teddy Trombone” in 1918. Racist humor was very “in” in those days.

  33. furrykef Mar 22nd 2010 at 01:35 am 33

    My uncle is black, and after speaking with him, I have decided that indeed this comic is racist.

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