Prog 1798: Mecha Death!

[SmallBlueThing]

(cont) sex, and yes, of course naked people having fun is- as representation of an act- far more 'positive' than depictions of violence. Of course. Sadly, this is the real world, and the man with a huge bruce lee/ arnie dvd collection is not seen as weird, while the man with a cupboard full of porn, is. Similarly, if i take up cage fighting, i get a model girlfriend. If i take up fucking strangers for a living, i get my kids taken away.

Society finds sex difficult and we live with that. And i'd rather 2000AD didnt go there.

Im now ready for the usual suspects to come along and bemoan the readership for being so 'repressed' so we can prostrate ourselves before their so well-balanced humanity.

SBT

[The Prodigal]

Don't worry Prodigal, youre not alone. I know for sure that if WHSmith, for example, were to be made aware of 'that panel', the comic would run the risk of being displayed right up high with the FHMs and CLiNTs. They're notoriously touchy about such things.

Currently the prog is displayed on the bottom shelf, next to DWM and The Fortean Times, alongside Empire, Batman, MWoM, etc. Well away from 'the kids comics', but down low where people dont expect nudity and raunchy prod-games.

But the prog doesnt have this kind othing regularly- in fact this panel is (ignoring last week's) only the second i can remember, after Necrophim's infamous 'fucking miss piggy, doggystyle' bit. And that was years ago.

From time to time, 2000AD has a penis in its pages (usually when simon davis is around- he's always lurking somewhere in the prog, ready to surprise you with one of his purple organs) but i think most are okay with that.

The problem we have here is an old one- yes, OF COURSE there's nothing wrong with (cont)

Mate genuine thanks for this. That actually helps a lot and I now know the gist of what I need to say. I actually shared this with a few non comic reading mates and they were busting a gut laughing about my dilemma and my incapacity to articulate an appropriate speech. This really helps and I am genuinely grateful.

I should say i do appreciate this past couple of weeks doesn't represent the norm. While I am a relative newbie I have spent a small fortune on various trades right across the 2000ad spectrum since Christmas and so appreciate the "norm."

Thanks again.

[Old Tankie]

As usual, people like TordelBack are able to articulate things much better than I ever could, I'm just here shouting at the screen, "it's a comic, for Christ's sake, it's not real!!"  The whole publication's full of violence!!  The comic is geared towards adults and, surely, within reason on that basis anything goes.  As I said before, it's not real, it didn't actually happen!!!

The only area where I would agree with the Prodigal is that retailers should be careful where they place the comic on their shelves, I wouldn't want my three year old grandson picking it up and looking through it, but that's because of the whole content of the comic not just one particular story. 

[Mikey]

I take Jame's and Prodigal's point and personal point of view entirely, plus the other reasoned posts natch, but I'll say this; a quick perusal of the board will show that neither Tordels or Dark Jimbo are reactionary, vile or even scumbags. Not that they need my defence, just saying like.

I'll add that the panel got some great debate going. Until that scumbag Jimbo started his nonsense 

M.

[Jim_Campbell]

Jim I know you were not talking to me specifically but its a public board and maybe some of the broader issues raised were not located entirely with James so I just weighed in.

I wasn't raising any broader issues.

Jim

[The Prodigal]

I take Jame's and Prodigal's point and personal point of view entirely, plus the other reasoned posts natch, but I'll say this; a quick perusal of the board will show that neither Tordels or Dark Jimbo are reactionary, vile or even scumbags. Not that they need my defence, just saying like.

I'll add that the panel got some great debate going. Until that scumbag Jimbo started his nonsense 

M.

Since joining this board a few months back I have found it to be one of the most welcoming places on the interweb. Your list of recommended reading has brought untold pleasure, a hole in my current account and several serious breaches of diplomatic relations with my wife. Despite the latter two I salute you.

[The Prodigal]

Jim I know you were not talking to me specifically but its a public board and maybe some of the broader issues raised were not located entirely with James so I just weighed in.

I wasn't raising any broader issues.

Jim

Really? I thought you were alluding to the story-line and how it might be interpreted during the post and that struck me as broad enough to post a reply.

[Jim_Campbell]

Really? I thought you were alluding to the story-line and how it might be interpreted during the post and that struck me as broad enough to post a reply.

No. I was saying that it is possible to read the story in ways other than one which jamesedwards is doing and that such readings are not automatically invalid, so he might want to stop conflating his reading of the story with the fact that rape is bad and equating disagreement with one as disagreement with the other.

Jim

[The Prodigal]

Really? I thought you were alluding to the story-line and how it might be interpreted during the post and that struck me as broad enough to post a reply.

No. I was saying that it is possible to read the story in ways other than one which jamesedwards is doing and that such readings are not automatically invalid, so he might want to stop conflating his reading of the story with the fact that rape is bad and equating disagreement with one as disagreement with the other.

Jim

I getcha Jim-I understand the core intent of your post and who it was directed at. I genuinely do and respect every persons take on this board as perfectly valid and as good as mine. That's a given. I simply weighed at the point of where you gave one construction of the story-line to say where that maybe didn't work for me as it was depicted as it maybe did for others.

That's all. I don't want to start sounding like Mr Contentious on this board either. All the best.

[Jim_Campbell]

That's all. I don't want to start sounding like Mr Contentious on this board either. All the best.

No worries. I wasn't telling you to butt out, I just wanted to clarify that my post was addressing a very specific issue and that issue didn't relate to you!

Cheers

Jim

[The Prodigal]

That's all. I don't want to start sounding like Mr Contentious on this board either. All the best.

No worries. I wasn't telling you to butt out, I just wanted to clarify that my post was addressing a very specific issue and that issue didn't relate to you!

Cheers

Jim

No problem Jim. Thanks and have a good one.

[jamesedwards]

James: you're conflating what you wrote with being the only valid reading of the strip. Whilst I don't necessarily disagree with your reading of the strip, and defend your right to be offended by it, you've made your point repeatedly and at length, and I suspect that it's your assertion that anyone who disagrees is a 'scumbag' or 'vile' that's getting up people's noses.

I imagine it was Andy's intent that the drug causes the judges to shed their inhibitions and give in to their own (albeit repressed) desires in a Rocky Horror-esque orgy of liberation, rather than a grim compulsion to fuck the first thing with a pulse the victim lays eyes on. If that was Andy's intention, then I feel that the execution is somewhat wanting: the scene certainly goes too far for me. Nonetheless, I recognise that this is a text and other readings are possible, and even valid, and you may want to lay off accusing people with views other than yours of being tacit supporters of rape.

Jim

The point, Jim, is that inhibitions are part of someone's personality. Spiking someone's drink,or getting them plastered are both classic date rape scenarios. Kramer (I looked her name up) has to be making the choice to move towards shedding them. In this case she's had her ability to decide - and thus consent - removed, along with the other two guys. The cleavage, porn star poses and one liner all indicate this is not a sudden reevaluation of Lenny As a shithead but more fantasist wish fulfillment. The ability to explore this as anything more than a sick joke has already been lost.

Todel's choice of words... Was pretty shocking to see?

[jamesedwards]

ANDANUTHATHING: if the gas was simply removing inhibitions, there would be varied (and very dangerous) expressions of inhaling it. As it only has one outcome it's pretty obviously a sex gas.

[Jim_Campbell]

The point, Jim...

The point, James, is about you being right and everyone else being wrong. You seem to have missed the part where I point out that what I find objectionable about your posts is not your reading of the story, with which I broadly agree, but your out-of-hand dismissal of alternative readings and your willingness to brand people who disagree with you as rape apologists.

It is this, and not your stance on rape (with which not only I but --I assure you-- everyone else reading this agrees completely) which is marking you out as an objectionable prick. To be fair, this has broadly been my opinion of you for as long as I've been aware of your posts, so you're certainly consistent.

It's a little rich for you to take others to task for not reading your own posts, when you won't extend the same courtesy to me but, for the benefit of the hard of thinking, here is my actual argument rather than the one you seem to believe I'm making:

Rape is bad. If one accepts your reading of the story, then actions depicted are certainly tantamount to rape and therefore also bad. Your eagerness to accuse others of being 'vile' and 'scumbags' for disagreeing with you is only acceptable if one accepts your reading of the story, and of authorial intent, as the only possible reading.

Whilst I broadly agree with your reading of the story, I do not affect to know authorial intent, and I can see there are alternative readings and possible authorial intentions that do not deserve labelling as those of rape apologists or fantasists, and it is your single-minded adherence to your reading and willingness to denigrate those who disagree to which I am objecting.

You may continue to argue with whatever point you imagine I'm making from the comfort of my ignore list.

Jim

[TordelBack]

So let's get this straight.  I am obliged to condemn all fiction in which a fantastical artificial change in personality on another leads to sexual congress, or I'm a scumbag.

This would include, to grab just a few random pop-cultural examples, the legend of the Minotaur, A Midsummer Night's Dream, every version of Star Trek, Stargate and Buffy, Futurama and bloody Harry Potter (Voldemort's mother magically drugs his father).

These are stories.  I don't approve of or condone Lenny's actions, any more than I approve of Zeus' or Oberon's or Parmen the Platonian's. I sympathise with Pasiphae, and Lysander, and Uhuru and Tasha Yar - but I still enjoyed the stories.  In this very same story should I not also be condemning the presence of Satellat, who was responsible for spreading the not-dissimilar Block Mania contaminant? Or do you think I approve of Borrisenko's murdering of 350 million mega-citizens through the mind-altering Chaos virus because I enjoyed that story too? 

I appreciate (and frequently make) the argument that rape as a crime is fundamentally different from murder as a source of humour and entertainment because of the ubiquity of its presence and effects, and its bizarrely contested existence. I question whether drugged rape is what Diggle actually intended to depict in this Austin Powersish set-up of repressed judges taking off their tight boots, but I can appreciate that it can be read that way.

Ultimately, however, Lenny isn't a moral character, the system he betrayed and which betrayed him isn't a moral one, the particular story he's in isn't a moral one.  Why in this one instance must I be expected to approve of this character's behaviour in order to accept this story as entertainment?  I don't look to 2000AD's anti-heroes and villains to set my own moral compass. 

As it happens, I also thought the use of the sex-drug on Kramer was unfortunate, because it was unoriginal and predictable, coming after the exact same thing in previous episode, in a story that otherwise has been fresh and surprising.  I too wish that 2000AD was all ages and didn't go quite so far with the sexual content, particularly as my eldest has just become an ardent fan  of Ro-Busters and (early) ABC Warriors, but right now it isn't for kids, and that's what we get.