ACTION: LIKE GROWNUPS
BY JOHN CECIL

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Arthur was on TV the other night. The Dudley Moore movie. Sir John Gielgud won an Oscar for it, as did Christopher Cross (the easy listening singer, not the Captain Marvel illustrator). At one point the movie clearly shows Dudley Moore drinking a bottle of scotch while driving an automobile. "Ha ha, ho ho, aren't drunks cute?" was the attitude.

But it was 1980 when Arthur was released. Madd wasn't a force to be reckoned with yet. It was illegal to drive drunk, certainly, but it wasn't the social stigma it is today. To illustrate, I remember a court date I had a few years back, for driving without a license. Right before me, the name of some other guy was called out. I sat there in the court and watched this guy go through his proceedings. Turns out it was his third Drunk Driving charge within five years. His sentence? Five years in prison. He would be on probation for five years after that. He would pay a fine of five thousand dollars and his license was revoked. Forever.

We don't fuck around with drunk drivers these days, but in 1980, it was a winked-at, bad-boy routine in a comedy film. Something marginally innocent twenty years ago is one of the biggest crimes you could portray on film today. Look at Bruce Springsteen's Fire, for another example. There's no way in Hell any company would release that song today, with it's hinted-at acceptance of date rape. And look at the movie Jaws as well. In that movie, a child is shown being violently killed. Before that, such a sight was never seen onscreen, but nowadays it happens with some regularity. The times change.

But close to ten years before Arthur came out, Stan Lee had to release several Spider-Man books without the comics code approval because drug use was portrayed - in a negative light. He had to eschew the code, because, you know, comics can't present certain subjects appropriately. Have times changed, as far as the CCA is concerned? A little, maybe, but don't look for the DC adaptation of Traffic any time soon.

Is this a double standard? We don't giggle at Dean Martin being drunk any more than we burn witches or own slaves or listen to K.C and the Sunshine Band. The Police can get away with a song like Can't Stand Losing because it's adult pop music. Sting was offering suicide as a way to mend a broken heart, something most of us would take issue with. But Sting is Adult. Sing is Intellectual. Sting is Good. Sting doesn't really mean that you should kill yourself, he's using suicide to illustrate how some feel in that situation.

Frank Miller was taken to task by many of his fans for the last page of Sin City: That Yellow Bastard. If you haven't read it, I guess I just ruined the ending for you. Sorry. But my point is more important, I think, so please forgive me. Miller OBVIOUSLY condones suicide, else he wouldn't have written the ending the way he did. Because, you know, comics can't carry meaning the way pop songs can.

The day after Arthur was on TV, I took a walk down to the library. I checked out a book and on my way home stopped in to a local restaurant called The Chirping Chicken. Yeah, I know. So I'm there eating my chicken, and they have a TV on in the corner. The cashier was watching a Lifetime Original Movie, something starring Jane Seymour and a pre-Bond Pierce Brosnon (don't they all?). This movie, on basic cable, showed a rape scene. A very brutal, very graphic rape scene. At two-thirty in the afternoon. See, this is okay. Mike Diana illustrating a rape scene in his book Boiled Angel, however, is Bad. Lifetime gets an Ace Award, Diana gets thrown in jail, because, you know, readers might misconstrue the meaning in a comic and go commit rape.

Lifetime is "Television for Women." Not girls. Not kids. Women. Adults. Using the Socratic Method, we come up with this:

Lifetime is for adults.
Adults can handle rape scenes.
Lifetime can show rape scenes.

I've no problem with this whatsoever. Lifetime SHOULD show rape scenes. They should be graphic, brutal, disgusting displays of one of the most horrific acts humans are capable of inflicting upon one another. If I have a problem with anything, it's that Lifetime's rape scene didn't bother me ENOUGH: I was still able to eat while it aired. Boiled Angel, on the other hand, disgusted me. I'm pretty sure that's what Diana wanted to do, and he did it well.

While this Lifetime Movie was on, I read the New York Post. Don't ask me why. All sorts of exposure on the recent school shooting in California. Editorials on how mass culture tells "Our Children" that it's okay to be violent. Editorials on how there are too many guns in America. A picture of some kid, sitting against the wall with what looks like a bullethole in his head, above an editorial on how the media is too graphic.

The kid who shot up his school in California listened to Limp Bizkit, it seems. Ah, that explains it, say the conservatives, and everyone nods in assent. His dad was in the Navy and owned weapons that he kept in the house. Well, there you go, say the liberals, and everyone claps. He was told that the music he liked was Bad, he was told that there's something Wrong With Him for not being like everyone else, and he was told guns are inherently Evil. His adolescent mind put these things together and he lashed out against his perceived tormentors, says me, and I'm a called a callous fucking prick for saying it.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, better known as the Columbine Gunmen, listened to KMFDM and Nine Inch Nails. They watched The Matrix, The Basketball Diaries and Heathers. They wore black clothes. You can point a finger at any of these things and find blame for what happened. I've seen too many "Experts" telling us on TV that these items are responsible for teen violence, that kids are influenced by this music, these movies, these clothes. Thank Christ Klebold and Harris didn't read comics, or else we'd have seen burnings of The Punisher books in the streets.

But think about this: if you have the talent to catch or throw a football, you have a practical guarantee that your teen years will go smoothly. This ball gives you right to pick on others without fear of retribution, and it can enable you to go to college - for free - without even having to be able to read. Most would say that there's nothing inherently wrong with a football. But those same people attach fictional personalities to CDs, videotapes, and trenchcoats, making them the Bad Guys. I really want to see some douchebag from Harvard sit there on Crossfire and say that organized athletics influence kids towards violent behavior, I really do. But I never will. Because these things are Good, and even questioning them is freakish. You can go on and on all day about how guns make people violent, or about how Ice-T made your daughter a prostitute, but if you even mutter a bit about what the Dallas Cowboys get away with on a daily basis, you're just plain un-American. And if you REALLY want to be shouted down, write a comic about it.

Warren Ellis was not allowed to take a look at school shootings in a manner not agreed upon by the majority. He was told to re-write a story he'd finished because some parents might be offended by his take on the situation. Instead, he refused and opted instead to leave the title.

And this story was set to run in Hellblazer, an Adult Readers book. Just like Boiled Angel and Sin City, it was never meant to be marketed to children. The attitude, however, is, "Come on, it's a COMIC BOOK. Only kids read comics, so only kid's stories should be told in them." Unlike, say, Lifetime, which can air whatever it wants at all hours of the day.

And this attitude isn't just coming from nonreaders. It's coming from the publishers who make them. Asking writers too be more bland, taking writers off titles for explicit stories in Mature Readers books. It's coming from the fans, for Christ's sake. Fans who fear that Preacher being on the shelves will cause the police to raid their stores. Fans who become offended at the notion of violence in an obviously joking online strip about a creator shooting some dumbass kid-- Fans who demand non-offensive, plain entertainment (because they apparently don't get enough of that from network television).

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Comics are The Bitch of all creative mediums. The tone we feel is that comics can never be taken seriously, so we shouldn't even try. The best we can hope for is "Aww, isn't that cute? They're talking about something important, just like a grown-up." Now go make dinner, woman. That beer ain't gonna get itself from the fridge.

We are not taken seriously, and any time one of us tries to BE serious we're all treated like child molesters. Subjects are tackled in other mediums that make us question the nature of our society. Entertainment in other mediums is capable of changing with the tastes of the population. But if a comic even goes so far as to approach such a subject, or if a comic tries to adapt to the culture, it's attacked with vitriol, oftentimes by the very people that should be defending them.

Because, you know, comics are for kids.