12-06-06

So Much Arrogance...
I little caveat here.  The impetus for this rant was my recent backreading of Eric Burns's Websnark blog.  Burns pisses me off for a number of reasons.  For one thing, when he decides to apply himself he's a much better writer than I am, and any writer who pretends that doesn't  piss them off is lying to you or themselves.  Long term hatemail relationships have existed in the past solely because one artist knew (or believed) he was overwhelmingly inferior to another (they actually get longer and more personal if both artists believe the other is better).  So yeah, I'll admit from the getgo that there's a lot of professional jealousy there. 
          That admission does not mean that you should just discount whatever I have to say today (any more than you discount any of the rest of my rants, anyway).  Anyone who truly knows me knows how hard I try to be fair-minded.  If I can slam my friends for what I perceive to be their shortcomings, I think I can be counted on to fairly view this topic.
          For one thing, while Burns was the impetus for what I'm saying, it has farther-reaching implications.   Burns was the impetus, not because I have any particular beef with him, but because he serves as a thumbnail for the larger picture.  As much as he likes to pretend otherwise, Burns is a major mover and shaker in the webcomics world, if not specifically for his opinion, then certainly for what he reflects of the ongoing trends.  So let's look, a little bit, at Websnark, and at the community he reflects.
TMI
Burns has a habit of over-researching and overthinking everything he writes about.  He spends what must be hours researching the private history of artists, writers, dopey events.  Let's take, for example his recent thread slamming Studio 60.  He has yet to say anything artistically substantive on the subject, preferring simply to call out various events in the show and display how they relate to producer Aaron Sorkin's personal life.  It seems to somehow offend him that a writer (or any artist, one might assume) would use his medium as a tool to rid himself of his personal demons.  Because it lessens the power of Guernica to know that Picasso rendered it after reading news and seeing phorographs of the atrocity during the Spanish Civil War.  And the novels of Faulkner and plays of Williams become more trite when seen in the light of the two men's upbringing in the decaying South (to be fair, Faulkner, at least, did trivialize a lot of his own work by holding classes wherein he explained to students exactly why he wrote such-and-such a passage and what made it Classic).
          As I mentioned, if it was only Burns doing this sort of thing, I wouldn't care.  But it's got about, you see.  Even while comickers like RK Milholland and Aeire are struggling at great lengths to hold onto whatever minor vestiges of a private life they have left, still others feel the need to post every detail of every day on an ongoing comics blog, dissecting and relating every panel of every strip as though they were justifying the comic to a doctoral committee.
          I learned pretty early n my stint as a writer for the sketch-comedy group The Houston Underground that a joke—any artwork, really—must stand on its own.  If you feel that people aren't "getting" your humor or your ideas, well, maybe you should consider changing the way you present them.  By the same token, if you can't appreciate a show or a comic without a full dossier on the creator, or if a limited knowledge of that creator's life causes you to view his work through shaded lenses, well, maybe you should try getting a life.
The Wind Beneath My Wings
Burns also tends to indulge in hero worship.  And this is definitely not a Burns-only phenomenon.  Actually, it's kind of funny that he does, because he is often the object of the same sort of Worship.  Mind you, I don't mean the warm and endearing Tuesdays With Maury kind of hero-worship where you just have a soft spot for a mentor; I mean the rabid, destructive, and largely undeserved kind of hero-worship like the kind that results in limp-wristed slap fights between Data and Wesley Crusher fans at Star Trek Conventions.
          The Webcomics world has more than its share of sacred cows.  Artists, writer, and comics that you had better agree with or the wrath of the gods will come down on you like ...err...some sort of ....godly wrath thing.  Indulge me while I list the ones that come immediately to mind.  Scott McCloud, Eric Burns, Megatokyo, Scott Kurtz, Shaenon Garrity, Krahulik and Holkins, T. Campbell, and that guy who does Checkerboard Nightmare, but whose name I can never remember.  These are people you better not cross, not if you don't want your bandwidth overwhelmed with "Fuck You!" tags and your mailbox filled with 100k missives describing exactly how obvious it must be that you are an acephalic crustacean owing to the fact that you hold such australopithecine opinons of their subject.  Mind you, I'm finding no fault with any of these people (or, in the case of Megatokyo, comics), with very rare and isolated exceptions, they almost never encourage the rabid fanboy rages of their proponents, and often try to ameliorate some of the damage that such rages may cause.  Popularity in the geek world, it seems, is its own punishment.
          I can only get away with challenging the wrath of these self-deluded masses because my relative anonymity protects me from notice.  
In My (Humble(?)) Opinion
On a related note, Burns is a bit of an elitist.  Actually, he's a lot of an elitist.  Much of the reason I removed Websnark from my links as a Webcomic Resource is that he long ago stopped being a significant reviewer of webcomics.  Websnark remains focused on a very small segment of the webcomics world, and Burns rarely adds new comics to his trawl, or speaks about any comics outside his ten or so favorites.  A weathervane is useless, if it doesn't turn with the wind.
          However, in this instance I mean he's an intellectual elitist.  I have a problem with intellectual elitism because it is so goddamned stupid for people to pretend they're smart by dismissing out-of-hand possible resources based solely on what they perceive as the resource's provenance.  Burns recently wasted a column deriding Wikipedia for removing Josh Lesnick's Girly from its listings.  His reason?  Girly is seminal because it, and its predecessors are comics that other webcomickers read.  The arrogance of the intellectual is the unfounded belief that his niche is the mainstream.
          I can name several titles on writing, or of seminal prose, all known well to any professional writer worth his salt.  None appear in Encyclopedia Britannica, either on their own, or as part of a greater article on literature and the writing craft.  Why?  Because they're niche, and EB, like Wiki, doesn't have an infinite space to gratify every niche.  It's a mainstream work.
          This, of course, means nothing to the intellectual elite.  Mainstream is a dirty word among our betters.  The unwashed masses have only the right to shut up and enjoy what they're told to enjoy.  In fact, it would be best if they didn't even bother trying to understand such things, and just sent money.
          Because real art should be supported by the unworthy for the benefit of the few.

UPDATE:  Burns commented on the livejournal mirror to rebut the third section of this rant.  He makes some very reasoned arguments.  Go see (click the News button on the front page).