Race & faith – part 2

Posted by Guest Blogger on Wednesday, 15 October 2014 23:35.

by Neil Vodavzny

Following the actually convincing win for the Union in the Scottish vote, and the impetus now building with UKIP on the English side of Hadrian’s Wall, we are all now becoming embroiled in a constitutional debate: the resolving of the West Lothian Question, which is also now the English Question. But I’m not sure it’s been lost on people that this particular English Question, with all its talk of English home rule, does not concern itself at all with race and faith. Meaning, not government but the thing governed.

This relate to being in the Heideggerian sense, no doubt. But oblige me for a moment for digressing into my particular field of fantasy! It’s a truism amongst the best epics that Church and State co-exist. Of the ones I’m at least familiar with, there is:

Conan #s18-25, the war between followers of Hyrkanian deity the Tarim and Turanian invaders
Cerebus #s52-63, Church & State (self-explanatory)
Dreadstar, Starlin’s opus informed by his Catholicism
Star Wars the film
StarStruck the spoofy comic

Of those, I’m a close reader of anything Conanesque (still have some of the originals); Sim’s Cerebus started life as an outright satire, with king Cerebus and Red Sophia, so one can profitably compare the two. This is from the penultimate instalment, #24’s The Song of Red Sonja.

conan 1
Conan #24, copyright 1971 Marvel Comics

Notwithstanding the sorcerous elements one expects, the story is redolent with symbolism. A brief rundown is:

High priest Kharam Akkad comes into possession of the mirrors of Tuzun Thune, ancient Valusian artefacts which predict the future, in which he sees images of a lion, eagle and serpent hovering over his fallen form. To cut a long story short, it transpires Conan’s sword is eagle-hilted, his shield is held by snake-strap, and he is destined to be Amra, the lion (on the black coast).

This is pretty formidable symbolism and, actually, the finale in #25 is about Conan, not the Turanian war, which is just a backdrop. With that in mind, how does it compare with Cerebus? Oblige me again, as Clifton (from the Comics Journal of yore) has something apposite to say on Sim’s method (rather than storytelling). Here’s his quote:

The gags at their best had a near Mad or Walt Kelly-like character, often collapsing several puns into single panels.. drawings and balloons just playing around.. That was then. Look at the pages in “The Merchant and the Coackroach” where he steals a horse and gold ... By Tarim Cerebus was moving, man! If Sim had stuck to his cartoony guns ... Cerebus might have evolved into the legend he deserves to be.
The Comics Journal #90, 1984

cerberus 1
Cerebus #11, copyright 1979 Dave Sim

Clifton is talking about facility, the ability to depict movement. Now, actually, this is storytelling. The actual plot isn’t storytelling - the way you tell it is. Clifton’s thesis is that Sim gave up on this in favour of desiccated, rambling palace-intrigues, such as the aforementioned “Church & State”. In terms of being, Cerebus is vastly more aware of himself and his place in the fantasy in the earlier issues. Going back to Conan, the politics is just a side-issue; his self-awareness and his eventual destiny are what the story is really about.

In terms of art, Art Nouveau and the Pre-Raphaelites – influences on BWS style – are also redolent with symbolism. Maybe not symbolist, but Pagan and Christian for sure. This is narrative art, for which the Pre-Raphs were famous. Along with their naturalistic fervour, the high facility for agility, litheness, grace evokes something iconic. You can further say that without these icons of nature, storytelling, in the sense of the facility of telling by way of icons and symbols, doesn’t exist.

Faith is a type of naturalism; its symbols have a complex relation to nature. Belief-systems are complex, and they are to do with being, a quotidian reality. A people can thereby exist in complete accord with a belief-system, whether or not you are a true believer or a hermit on a hillside. Without this, what you tend to get is a desiccated style of government, without the thing being governed, be it village, people, town, temple. These things are there as the handmaidens to the state.

By that means, faith has a facility for race and naturalism which the state does not. Church & State, as with these fantasy epics, co-exist. Actually, the visceral power of Milius’s Conan movie owes much to its exotic symbolism, from the sword of destiny to the double-headed snake-cult of Thulsa Doom. Sandahl Bergman’s lithe, animal gait and the Frazetta-ish quality are nigh perfection. Sometimes words are superfluous.

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Posted by neil vodavzny on Thu, 16 Oct 2014 11:52 | #

Art & symbolism are worth exploring a bit further. Those who are so focused on intelligence forget that no one can explain why Rembrandt, Mozart (or even Abba) are sublime. There are no words. Why is it modern artists can’t do portraits? They’re not tactile, they have no presence.

Anything which is formal has a certain simplicity; it affects us with a palpable sense of being. Let me give an example. Here’s Miriam Makeba’s Pata Pata http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCc61z9IFu4 She’s of the Xhosa tribe (of Mandela) and you can feel the strength of tribal tradition. A similar vibe comes from Andean music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utstvFJC25Q

What we’re talking about is form, ancestral form. DNA and intelligence are part of the same Enlightenment dead-end. It’s lineage, and with lineage you have folklore and everything that goes with it. It’s a simple tree-like relationship defining social status and place, or race. DNA we might understand 1/millionth of. Without simplicity there is no form and therefore no world. You’re in a maze.

Signs, symbols and motifs have a powerful cross-cultural content. Incidentally, there’s something called Folkestone Triennial which stages a series of artworks round town, including Yoko Ono’s Skyladder. Actually, hers is the only one with any symbolism of significance!

A focus on lineage in the social order (which Jews are supposed to do) is ecologically sensible. It gives rise to an established natural order. We fail to appreciate how social mores, sense & sensibility were derived from these ancient regimes. I’m thinking of the likes of Debo http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11124775/The-Dowager-Duchess-of-Devonshire-a-Mitford-writes.html (of the Mitfords), Sackville-Wests, Sitwells..not to mention Byron (quote: Throwing of their masters, Like o’erburdenned asses)
The confident racial profiling of dynasties is also something which does not need questioning as it is established with the piles they inhabit. This lack of questioning breeds minds of a playful nature, free to roam where they will. Of the Mitfords, it’s common knowledge one sister consorted with fascists and another with socialists. Playfulness is quite an essential attribute of being human (or being Cerebus – see prev). Free-thinking is perhaps the foundation of all subsequent development.

As Debo’s quote implies, ones expertise is of a limited order. And yet her mental acumen was such that the transformation of Chatsworth into a profit-making business institution became the model for all other destitute gentry. There is a principle at stake here, I believe. If one has the confidence of ones destiny, one has the freedom to innovate and think in original ways. In this state, one doesn’t question the established order, one learns from it. There is a certain harmony between Man’s order and nature’s. The mind can absorb such things and come to accept them as the natural state of affairs.



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