by Nil Vodavzny

“Cultural outsider” might apply to anyone outside the Establishment from Christ on. The Establishment is now entrenched and intent on remaking everyone in their digital image. Image isn’t exactly the word, though. During an interview film-making outsider Jean-Luc Godard demonstrated his antipathy toward some Jewish film-makers (particularly Spielberg) by classifying their films as “text” not “image”. To the nouvelle vague (1960s), impro and unplanned adventure were operational words, not the dead hand of text.

Godard is an averred admirer of US pulp heroes, Alphaville being une etrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (and Breathless also being a pastiche of US gangster films). I have to admit to a fascination for US adventure serials of the 40s – reissued by ACcomics who also do “no-budget” remakes utilizing digital techniques as the means to their retro-culture end.  There’s a slight connect to Japanese action-based drama in the fluid simplicity of direction. Nyoka, set in colonial era Libya, has all the pulp tropes you could wish for, from chariot chases to hidden valleys, more REH than ERB (eg The Lost Valley of Iskander). Best of all, acting is barely there, replaced by cuteness and crystal clear diction. There’s a lot of “Allah be praised” and “infidel dogs”, effective storytelling and scoring. and the irredeemably sexist cliff-hanger endings are literally tone-perfect.

These B&W episodes are the precursors to Indiana Jones. But I would say they affect the imagination in a very different way – more real and spontaneous. Taking the distinction between “image” and “text” a bit further, pulps have to sell, and a dark maestro like Harlan Ellison is what you might call an image writer equally at home in comic books. There is also a playful spirit, the carefree ability to play with language and sequential language that you see in EC Segar’s Popeye.

Ellison’s forays into film and TV critique, relayed in The Glass Teat and others, speak volumes for a guy who’s written for some of the most innovative TV – Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits – and was finally obliged to switch-off the tube as a threat to imagination by nature of its existence (see What Killed The Dinosaurs). A Val Lewton enthusiast and participant in old radio theatre re-enactments, still tied to the joys of a manual typewriter (see foreshadowing of Keyboard).

Artists need the freedom to breathe outside our stultifying mainstream – an atmosphere less rational and more prejudicial to originality – and this has always been so. Preference or prejudice is indispensible to romance, satire, adventure (Robinson Crusoe, say) so that signs, symbols and stereotypes can live free. Artists have always occupied a Bohemian world in order to prosper, unless they’re prostitutes or pedants.

Pulp fantasy offers a much more honest appraisal of what matters – blood, force and self-belief prevailing over natural travails or inhuman obstacles. To be honest I only read pulps and comic books post-30s, with very odd exceptions like Hemingway, maybe Enid Blyton for kids. That’s why cliques – such as the Texan Junto of REH – approximate more to ancient centres of culture like Mozart’s Vienna. The rational world is cutting-off such escape-routes as we head inexorably into a cyborg future.

Having grown up with Marvel Comics I became overly familiar with the “Marvel Method”, which was basically to give a synopsis of the story to the artist for them to illustrate – ie, instead of a full script – facilitating imaginative faculties to an extraordinary level (as in Ditko’s Dr Strange or Kirby’s cosmic Thor). Another way to put it is pulps and comic books can utilize instinct and emotion and senses before the intellect comes into play. It’s the idea of populism versus elitism. This is a very potent idea, and I refer you to the image of the Mongolian eagle hunter – that one image says more than any amount of text could. It’s right-wing and non-ideological. Photographer Asher is ex-Israeli army – make of that what you will, but the picture speaks for itself, has Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” of emotional release.

It is wilderness fantasy, indisputably right-wing, propaganda for the cause, containing timeless signs that speak of mythos. Like the riddle of steel (Conan) it’s a type of craft, in this case hunting and gauntlet, not forge and sword. Here’s another – ploughing the New Forest soil with a team of heavy horses.

Such images also speak of communion – words, song, emotion, senses. The political right has something in common with evangelicals in that we believe beyond doubt, and use intellect as a supporting device. We’re not blind to signs. Things affect us emotionally through the senses that the political left tend to see as not “huggy-wuggy” enough.

We need to avoid the ideological trap of sensory deprivation, and to have some generosity of spirit. Know your enemy, and also know who is not your enemy. It’s essentially a romantic spirit, not a closed one.  Need I remind anyone of Strauss’s ‘Nazi’ collaborations?