Thursday, January 22, 2015

ERIK LARSEN ON THE CHARLIE HEBDO CARTOON MURDERS

Larsen was another comics writer/artist who commented on the case of the jihadists who murdered several Charlie Hebdo staff and 4 people in a kosher supermarket a few weeks ago in France, and he sure doesn't seem to grasp the situation well. Here's his list of tweets:



Here's where he makes his first mistake - comparing the tragedy of humans who murder to animals who can only walk on four legs and have no vocality, and thus aren't held to the same standards as humans are expected. Does he also think Denmark's cartoonists for Jyllands-Posten are scapegoats?

That's right, so why can't he unambiguously condemn the terrorists for their act of savagery, whose victims also included 4 Jewish men in a supermarket that very week by a man who attacked them just for being part of a race/ethnicity, which he doesn't seem to mention?



But he seems to suggest the cartoonists are the ones who have to bear the burden of responsibility, not the jihadists who committed the violent crime. Don't criminals also have to be held to any standards of accountability? It makes no difference whether they listen or not, they have to be told their barbarism is wrong, plain and simple.





No, we get the point, and it's a very unchallenging one. Even if cartoonist Crumb grasps the situation better than Larsen, the latter is still making very weak arguments.




Okay, this is going too far. If Simon, Kirby, Stan Lee and other writers during the Golden Age were attacked by nazi sympathisers during WW2, would he say responsibility is entirely on their shoulders, and not a single bit on those of the enemy? This comes very close to the kind of blame-the-victim tactics used to say a rape victim brought it on by wearing skimpy clothes and/or because she's beautiful. Some Muslim rapists have even defended their obscene acts by saying the victim wasn't wearing a headscarf, even though there's been Muslim women wearing burkas/niqabs who've also been attacked, both physically and sexually.

Oh, now he tells us? But then, how come he hadn't said it before about Charlie Hebdo's cartoonists? Or do just American artists like Simon & Kirby count? Interestingly, Larsen drew a Savage Dragon cover where he portrayed Osama as the filth he was:

But what are the odds he'll ever be willing to draw Mohammed? I guess they're close to zip.

Why should we be bothered? Zoroastrians certainly wouldn't - it reflects their take on life, that there's God and a Devil.

Even if conservatives were offended, the majority know better than to take things to extremes. Besides, Bush was no saint, and he did things that turned off some conservatives too.


The analogy with cars is poor too. Drivers come in many forms, and usually, if somebody gets hit by a car while wading into traffic, it's accidental on the driver's part. A hit-and-run attack, on the other hand, can be very deliberate, and this one definitely was. Seeley's right. And suppose Will Eisner got attacked over his last GN from 2004, The Plot, which was critical of Muslim anti-Semitism? Would he be the scapegoat, and not the jihadists?

And neither should the jihad at the kosher supermarket. But if Larsen doesn't think these tragedies should've taken place, why doesn't he say a word about how abominable the ideologies are that the jihadists are following? Why doesn't he say that a religion that supports murder, slavery, underaged marriage and other sex offenses is something no sane person should associate themselves with? His approach is super-cheap, and epically fails to tackle more challenging issues and facts.
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