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Negotiating Remix Culture through Steve Oedekerk’s “Kung Pow” ••• By Lissa Heineman

In “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse”, Stuart Hall explains the three ways we consume media texts: dominant, oppositional, and negotiated modes. The dominant model upholds society’s norms. These works don’t break barriers, and often entertain and reassert hegemonic ideas . The oppositional model, as its name suggests, identifies and critiques the dominant notions. Oliver Moore notes that these readings are often met with hostility from those supportive of the dominant framework. Finally, negotiated works lie between these extremes, allowing consumers to choose to accept or reject elements of a text. This mode employs dominant performances without subscribing to them. Negotiation twists popular notions into something new and subversive, while allowing them to be consumable by those in the dominant sphere.

Steve Oedekerk’s Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002) is one of many pastiches of the kung fu genre. The film follows in the footsteps of What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), and the Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973), films famous for their own remixes (here meaning media that draws inspiration and shape from pre-existing works). Kung Pow opens with a production note: 

This motion picture contains some footage from Hu He Shuang Xing aka “Tiger & Crane Fists,” a motion picture made in Hong Kong in 1976, but the voices and soundtrack were eliminated, and new voices and soundtrack were inserted by the producers of this motion picture.

While a bit clunky, this opening does what it needed to do: the Jimmy Neutron and Barnyard creator acknowledges the work of Jimmy Wang Yu (Tiger & Crane’s director), and prefaces the remix and remediation that Tiger & Crane Fists underwent in this movie.

As described within the production note, Kung Pow is a very literal remix. Oedekerk remastered Tiger & Crane Fists: he successfully took poorly preserved footage and had it saved digitally. He then scrambled this footage, filmed himself in front of a green screen, and reshaped the film around him. The process of remastering an old film is incredibly time-consuming and expensive, and yet he did it. Why? This is emblematic of his own fanboyishness. Oedekerk replaces the hero of a film he evidently loves in a very expensive form of fanfiction. Further, as noted in the movie’s preface, the film employs gag dubbing, a controversial redubbing technique used mainly for comedy. In the film’s commentary, Oedekerk notes that when any new characters or stand-ins were inserted into the remastered Tiger and Crane Fist footage, they wouldn’t record the script’s dialogue. Instead, they’d often be filmed speaking nonsense, and then the film’s audio was post-synced once filming and editing was completed. This ultimately made the film cohesively re-dubbed, with the entire film lacking sly lip-synching. Most films look to hide any issues with editing, and it’s clear Oedekerk’s choice was an intentional part of the film’s final result. This is poignant when one recognizes that the entire process of making Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is reminiscent of the production history of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (1954).

Godzilla: King of the Monsters was a heavily re-edited American adaptation, commonly referred to as an Americanization of the 1954 Japanese film Gojira. In the West, the original Gojira had initially only been shown in America in Japanese community theatres, and the re-edited version became the known Godzilla to the Western world. Gojira was a film that was made to cope with the nuclear fallout in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and when it was remixed for American and other Western audiences, this plotline was entirely removed. This process is reminiscent of Kung Pow’s removal of Tiger and Crane Fists’ anti-Japanese colonization narrative. Further, this exemplifies a dominant mode of remix. The hegemonic order of American politics at the time would want a film that could create positive relations to Japan through a fun spectacle, the inclusion of an anti-American dialogue was oppositional to that structure and therefore something that was censored as it was brought Westward. One can see then, in turn, how Kung Pow! Enter the Fist intentionally mimicked the style of dubbing, which could then mock Godzilla: King of the Monsters and other re-dubbed works that remove narrative elements from their stories. This American film is often recognized as the original Godzilla, but it was actually a remix of the 1954 Gojira. In this remix, like Kung Pow, a white savior is literally superimposed into the narrative, suggesting to an unknowing Western viewer that he was in Gojira all along. Oedekerk, in Kung Pow, seems to acknowledge this historical remixing of Asian cinema. The film’s apparent self-awareness and its transparency to the audience gives the film the opportunity to be negotiatory pastiche, and, with that, instead of invoking literal meaning through its more stereotypical comedy, we instead might see the more problematic nature of such performances in mainstream media. This being said, there are then two questions: does Oedekerk take advantage of his window to perform pastiche rather than parody? And, further, why would this film’s stereotyping be more excusable than other works?

On the topic of pastiche versus parody, it is most appropriate to look at scenes from Kung Pow! Enter the Fist. The film opens on an original six-minute scene by Oedekerk that sets the tone of the film: a man, known as the Chosen One, and his sentient tongue, Tonguey, seek revenge on Master Pain, the person who murdered his family and attempted to kill him. The scene uses a CGI baby that has a powerful knack for kung-fu and seeming immortality (displayed by not dying while being flung down a steep hill). This scene explicitly presents what is to be anticipated for the rest of the 81 minute movie: this film is absurd, parodic, hyper-masculine, and hyper-violent. The cartoonish exploits paint the comedy of the work, from the CGI Tonguey to the over-the-top redubbing for the main antagonist. The film is obviously ridiculous, and everything about the over-dramatic, cliched narration and equally contrived action demands the audience to recognize that the film is absurd. There’s no denying that it absolutely is an inherently dumb film—the humor is juvenile, and often much closer to straight-up mockery than thoughtful pastiche—yet the film reveals itself as more deliberate than its surface-level silliness. Across the following scene in Kung Pow, country-rock music mixes with moments of flute-playing reminiscent of traditional kung-fu scenes. This transcultural moment highlights how Eastern and Western action cinema influences the other. Looking at Jimmy Wang Yu’s work, as well as other kung fu films and anime, one can see how American rock-n-roll has become embedded as marker of “the Chosen One” archetype; he’s a badass loner. Similarly, the Western genre plays into the same markers of the solitary hero, often with a tragic backstory.

The scene ultimately continues to an abandoned dojo where the Chosen One encounters other adversaries. The actors, all Asian, are dubbed-over in ridiculous American accents, and perform dramatic Kung-fu style moves. The fighting choreography revels in the extreme. At one point, rather than attacking the main pursuer, the Chosen One speedily tears apart a man’s black robe, resulting in the garb resembling a tasseled bikini, which causes the man, mortified, to run away whimpering. Soon after, the Chosen One literally punches a circular hole through one of his attackers’ chest, the camera peering through the maimed body to see Oedekerk’s fist retract from the man-made cavity, and we see the missing-cylindrical bulge of flesh in the background. It’s impossible not to recognize the scene’s cinematic violence and hyper-masculinity. There is contrast between Oedekerk’s clothed body and how the shirtless or stripped villains are put on display. This is one example of how the film notes that many films promote Caucasian masculinity dominating Asian masculinity. 

Narratively, Kung Pow! Enter the Fist does significantly more to perpetuate problematic Asian stereotypes than many other kung fu remixes. However, the films’ genres are considerably different. Oedekerk’s work is well defined by the term “transgressive”, meaning that the film is oppositional and deliberate in its offensiveness. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Edward Guthmann wrote that “Kung Pow! is the kind of movie that's critic-proof, simply because it aims so low.” Guthmann suggests that the Oedekerk purposefully looked to disgust critics with the film’s exaggerated racism, homophobia, and misogyny. By making it “critic-proof,” Oedekerk reveals the film’s agenda, which is very different from, say, Quentin Tarantino’s art house style of taking lowbrow cinema (self-proclaimed “B-Movies”) and making it tasteful, in his duty as tastemaker. Oedekerk, instead, uses the same kinds of movies but degrades them further, making Kung Pow offensive to the taste of critics.

Despite being reviled by many critics, however, Kung Pow is a quite popular film. Despite coming out close to two decades ago, the film is still engaged by active reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes and Amazon, and is still commented on in Reddit channels and on Youtube videos. Metacritic reviews from the film’s cult following reveal the movie to be, to some, “silly and creative” and “one of the funniest movies [ever]”. One fan even described the film as “unbelievabl[y] hilarious”, stating that Kung Pow’s absurdity:

“...is something to cherish. It takes masterful skill to create such comedic bliss with this spoofing style...it can be a bit childish, but most of the time, I'm laughing harder than I ever have at film... I can confidently say this was the funniest movie of the decade.” 

It becomes clear, from the film’s status as a new-age cult classic, that while Oedekerk doesn’t undermine racist representations of Asians in Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, he does ultimately mock genre and notions of the importance of critical acclaim. Even racist movies many win Oscars, but that was never Oedekerk’s plan. Steve Oedekerk, unlike Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill, didn’t strive to make an art film. Rather, as he notes in film’s commentary, he sought to have fun, and, seemingly, had fulfilled making a “realization of his childhood dream to be in a martial-arts flick.” By taking over director and actor’s Jimmy Wang Yu’s role from Tiger and Crane Fist, Steve Oedekerk fulfills his own dream of being a kung-fu action hero and simultaneously embodying an Asian director. Oedekerk successfully takes over and embodies Jimmy Wang Yu, but then with that power he doesn’t replicate Asian cinema, but rather destroys it in a transgressive act of defiance against the politics of film criticism and connoisseurship. Ultimately, while Oedekerk doesn’t negotiate racist rhetoric, he does do substantial work in creating friction about what it means to be an auteur, and how his cult cinema and others’ art cinema operate deliberately and differently.

Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is a screwball cult film. Oedekerk’s film commentary offers insight into the film production, describing the joy and challenges of its creation. The movie ultimately presents itself as a fan-project, rather than an auteurist work. Yet, it is this structure, as described above, that allows for Kung Pow to mimic practices of problematic remix to then develop a subtextual commentary. This commentary doesn’t undermine racist representations of Asians, but rather reveals the immature-comedy-packed film to be intelligent and aware of the history it partakes in, and use this to critique the nature and importance of “critical acclaim”.

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“Are you rich?” Is Shrill too Economically Idealistic for Its Own Good? ••• By Meredith Salisbury

“Oh My God. What’s happening? I’m afraid that I am feeling myself.” These are the words we here Annie (Aidy Bryant) say to her best friend and roommate Fran (Lolly Adefope) while she’s dancing in a new dress and enjoying some new found self-love towards the end of the first episode of Hulu’s comedy Shrill. The show, which is based off of Lindy West’s memoir Shrill: Notes from a Loud Women, follows Annie as she navigates life as a fat millennial woman living in Portland, Oregon. Shrill has been rightfully praised for its blunt and realistic depictions of everyday life as a fat woman and for its nonchalant handling of abortion. For all the care Shrill puts into authentic depictions of Annie’s everyday life, Shrill does so at the expense of showing the larger and more systemic issues fat women face. The omission of these larger cultural forces makes Annie’s transformation seem idealistic, unrealistic, and impossible for the women watching replicate.

Shrill is set in Portland, Oregon. It makes sense that one of the most accepting and liberal cities in the popular imagination is the setting for televisions first radically positive representation of fat women. Like Portlandia, another socially conscious television show set in Portland, Shrill uses comedy to point out where its liberal audience fails in their liberalness. In Shrill, radical self love, queerness, and anti-capitalist ideals are all casually accepted from the get go. Annie’s parents praise Fran’s, who is a lesbian’s, love life with her rotating door of queer partners and Annie’s ex-punk gen-x boss Gabe (John Cameron Mitchell) vilifies “the establishment” regularly. In a way Shrill feels like it teeters on the line between comedy and parody. It is unclear that the Portland represented in Shrill is different than the one created by the sketch comedy show Portlandia. Carrie Brownstein, the creator and star of Portlandia, even directed the Shrill episode “Date.” The similarities between the shows’ representation of Portland is not necessarily a bad thing—Portlandia did a great job at pointing out to liberal people where their liberal ideologies fell short—and Shrill picks up where Portlandia left off and continues this crusade. The issue is that Portlandia was satirical whereas Shrill is meant to be realistic. Shrill, like Portlandia, does not take into account Oregon’s white supremacist past or the fact that Portland is the whitest large city in America nor does it acknowledge how Oregon is one of the most expensive states to live in and that Portland is experiencing an affordable housing crisis.

The fact that Annie and Fran are never plagued with systemic issues leaves room for the show to explore interpersonal ones like Annie’s relationship with her boss Gabe. Gabe is Shrill’s villain. He is the editor-in-chief of The Weekly Throne, the alt-weekly newspaper Annie works for. At first he frustrates her by passively blowing off her pitches and asking her to keep working her way up, but by the fourth episode, the one titled “Pool” he begins a crusade against fatness. After learning The Weekly Thorn can save “a buttload of money” if the staff can “pry [their] cheese-thighs off the couch more than once a week” he gets rid of the vending machines and requires the staff to do “one heart healthy grouptivity once a month.” At the first “grouptivity” Gabe mutters “lazy bodies lazy minds” under is breath. He goes on to question whether Annie takes work seriously and tell her that “success is about an effort” and that “[she] didn’t [try] today.”

Through Gabe, the show pushes people who believe they are fighting against dominant culture to see that they still have biases they need to work on. Gabe is portrayed as a gen-x, ex-punk, and “feminist” through jokes about being the “original bassist in Bikini Kill,” by wearing band t-shirts for bands like Quasi (Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney fame’s band), and the fact that Gabe is played by John Cameron Mitchell who is an queer gen-x icon in his own right. We are led to believe that Gabe’s work was once gritty and boundary pushing. He claims when he was Annie’s age he was already “burnin’ shit down and fuckin shit up.” But, what we see now is someone who was on the right side of history, but lost his way as he became older and more financially stable. He is a former radical who is hindering Annie’s growth professionally and personally.

The way Gabe treats Annie at The Weekly Thorne is terrible. Shrill uses Annie and Gabe’s work relationship to drive Annie to find self confidence. The thing is for women work is not just another place for interpersonal relationships. It is a place that provides people with an income and (hopefully) benefits. Individuals need these to survive. In Shrill Annie never once thinks about the financial ramifications of her actions. At work she is not very professional. She is seen sitting on tables, hugging her boss when he gives her an assignment, pestering him about pitches, and posts an article to the paper’s site without permission. While some workplaces are significantly more informal than others, Annie’s behavior at work does not make it appear as though she values her job. Gabe is by no accounts a good boss and she has every right to be upset with the way he is treating her, but it is still fascinating to me that Annie never once seems concerned about the possibility of losing her job. She even quits in a fit of rage in the last episode. It is known that fat women face discrimination when they are applying for jobs and full time jobs in any media industry are nearly impossible to find these days. There is never a moment where Annie stops and worries about what the implications of leaving her job would be. Sure she stood up for herself, but at what cost? She walked away from an income and health insurance without batting an eyelash. What other millennial women who works in media could do that?  

Annie and Fran’s financial situation remains a mystery throughout the six episodes. How is it that two marginalized women in creative careers can have very little financial anxiety? The only inkling of concern comes from Fran when she asks Annie “Are you rich? That’s like $50 every time you have sex with Ryan” when she finds out Annie has been taking the morning after pill every time she has sex with Ryan. Annie never addresses this, she is rightfully preoccupied with the abortion she needs to have, but it still leaves the viewer wondering how she is finacially staying afloat.

Annie’s spending on the morning after pill is not the only unexplained expense in the show. A quick google search revealed that Annie and Fran live in a home that last sold in 2016 for $500,158 and rents for similar houses in the same neighborhood are around $2400 a month. It is unclear how they can afford to live there with Annie working for a small alt-weekly newspaper and Fran cutting people’s hair out of her house. It’s even more baffling when you add in the fact that Fran does not even require payment for her work. The only time we see her compinstated for her work she is paid in stolen clothes. How do these two afford a multi-bedroom house in Portland, Oregon, a place that is notorious for unaffordable housing, while working in independent publishing and freelance hair styling?

The walls of Annie and Fran’s home are adorned with art prints like this one that used to be sold at Otherwild and Fran is often spotted in Wildfang overalls and coveralls. Both brands have become trendy in recent years and are recognizable in queer urban circles as marker for a type of queer financial stability. Wildfang coveralls are the velour Juicy Couture track suit of lesbian culture. Rachel Syme explains that the “Juicy’s suit was just pricey enough to radiate status, but attainable enough to become a part of the everyday wardrobes of thousands of high-school girls.” Wildfang’s clothes do the same thing for queer women. Fran’s $188 coveralls signal to queer women watching that she is financially stable, yet still relatable, but it is never addressed how she got this way.

Annie quits her job in a fit of rage after Gabe writes a rebuttal to her article claiming her fatness. In this moment we see Annie stand up for herself. She calls Gabe a “bully” and tells him he is “stomp[ing] over an entire group of people.” We are supposed to cheer Annie on in this moment—she has finally began to believe in herself—but she just walks out of her job without any real concern about her future. This moment is the climax of the season. But what is she going to do now? Study after study has found that fat women face major discrimination when applying for jobs; especially in the media industry. I am proud of her for standing up for herself, but I do not see how any real person could do that without some type of financial safety net.

For fat women and queer women Annie and Fran appear to be wonderful role models. Annie is smart, and stylish, and finding her voice in a way many of us hope to and Fran is strong, and unwavering in her sexuality and standards. Shrill does a wonderful job creating inspiring role models, but Annie and Fran’s lives are impossible to replicate in everyday life. Throughout the season we see Annie strutting around Portland in a collection of adorable and perfectly tailored dresses. It turns out that almost all of Annie’s clothes were custom made for the show by costume designer Amanda Needham. Fran’s strength is a linchpin of the show and she is portrayed as the foil to Annie. In her review of Shrill Emily Nussbaum explains that Fran “specialize in brassy self-assertion, a bravado that doubles as a shield and as a weapon.”  and later explains that it’s Annie’s “niceness ... that fuels the show.” Fran’s self-assertion comes from her ability to opt-out of interacting with straight men, other than her brother or the occasional boy Annie brings home. Shrill leads us to believe that Fran’s lesbianism is what makes her that brash woman who refuses take shit and this is why she is able to empower Annie. Although all women are taught throughout their lives to seek the validation of men; coming out as a lesbian frees you from some of those expectations. Although male bosses, relatives, and friends still exist; there is no longer the expectation that one of the men in your life could be your future partner and this alleviates some of the compulsory need to please them. Annie on the other hand still believes she needs to placate a boy and win over a boss and those needs hinder her ability to stand up for herself. The thing is that queerness does not suddenly alleviate all of those pressures. As much as I would love to exist in a world without problematic straight men and the patriarchal nonsense they bring with them it is not possible. Fran has created a life where she only cuts cute girls’ hair and somehow still has a roof over her head a wardrobe full of $200 Wildfang overalls. Her queerness and lack of traditional employment may allow her to accept herself without pause, but the lack of hardship or pushback she receives is implausible and unlike the experiences of any queer women I have ever known or heard about.

Shrill represents a radical hope for fat women’s futures. It presents a nuanced depiction of the everyday struggles of fat women, but refuses to complicate its narrative with the broader and more systemic sexist and homophobic struggles fat women face. By diving deep into specificities it allows Annie to overcome her personal problems but misses the mark on addressing larger structural ones. In Shrill’s universe, Annie can quit her job without ever acknowledging how hard it is for fat women to get hired in the first place and Fran can live a blissful queer life in Portland without ever facing a racist or homophobic person. And both of them never have a financial care in the world while living in one of the most expensive cities and working in underpaying careers. I wish the lessons taught in Shrill were applicable to everyday life. I wish I could call out a fat-phobic boss on the internet without the fear of losing my employment and possibly my health insurance. I wish I could only cut cute girls’ hair and still have a roof over my head and some of the most stylish clothes in queer culture today. But alas I do not live in the world Shrill has created and I do not think I ever will.

[latetotherant]

The Contention of Voice: Alan Moore’s Reshaping of Mr. Hyde’s Monstrosity ••• By Lissa Heineman

Having now completed The League of Extraordinary Gentleman’s fourth volume, it is possible comic culture’s favorite uncle, Alan Moore, is officially retiring from comics. The graphic novel series is celebrated for its gallery of famous characters from literary history, acting as a new-age compendium for Industrial Revolution-centric anachronisms. It’s both a Lit Degree-er’s nightmare and playground, remixing themes and characteristics from different classic works together. One such example is Moore’s take on the OG, 1800′s Hulk, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published in 1886, a time in which the debate around science and religion was intense. Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species had been released in 1859 and made the Victorians begin to question their ‘infallible’ faith in God’s unlimited control, but also be wary of metaphysical sciences — a phenomena that studies the fundamental nature of reality. The book used its main characters to generate discourse about morality, reasoning, science, and faith, while reflecting upon the growing uncertainties that came with fin-de-siecle, or end-of-the-century, culture. To the modern reader, the basic message of Stevenson’s novel is clear: Hyde wasn’t simply a monster, and consequence of metaphysical practices, but a manifestation of Dr. Jekyll’s repressed self. However, this leaves a question of how human Hyde is in comparison to Dr. Jekyll, if they are one in the same. What is Mr. Hyde’s personhood? It is through the introduction of Alan Moore’s take on the character(s), that Mr. Hyde’s own character takes shape. By integrating characteristics of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murder in the Rue Morgue into Hyde’s storyline, Moore argues for Hyde’s personhood and agency, not allowing him to simply be a figure of the Victorian’s metaphysical anxieties.

In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll is described as having become “too fanciful… [and going] wrong in mind,” practicing “unscientific balderdash” (Stevenson 12).  Jekyll is framed as immoral, particularly in comparison to the book’s protagonists. His ‘science’ is described as “transcendental medicine” (Stevenson 52), ie: metaphysical inquiries. Jekyll’s research, and his addiction to his own chemicals, code him as a heretic. Stevenson indicates that Jekyll, himself, is problematic. Yes, Hyde is young and brutish with more physical capabilities than the older, deteriorating Dr. Jekyll, but he certainly isn’t the degenerative juggernaut illustrated in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Rather, Mr. Hyde is described as “troglodytic” (Stevenson 16), “ape-like” (Stevenson 20), and “a monkey” (Stevenson 39). These descriptions of Mr. Hyde allude to the backwards progression of man’s evolution, as chronicled by Charles Darwin and the likes of Thomas Henry Huxley, reaffirming Jekyll as representative of a bastardization of London’s moral ideals of the time.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen clearly takes some creative liberties with its depiction of Mr. Hyde. In Issue 1, Hyde is seen easily holding Quatermain feet above the ground, close to the ceiling, easily in one hand, fangs barred and tendons and veins practically bursting across his collar and face. Across the same two-page spread, Auguste Dupin attempts to defend himself and Mina Murray from Hyde, shooting the monster in the face. Part of Hyde’s ear is blown off, which only increases Hyde’s anger, emphasized by the all-capitalized dialogue bubbles. Not only does Hyde retain the apishness described in Stevenson’s novel, but it is intensified, as seen via the fangs, flared nostrils, incredible muscle definition, and the overall brownishness of his complexion. He towers over all the other characters dramatically, alluding more to King Kong than how earlier adaptations had illustrated the character, which often emphasized “neanderthal” over “monkey”. Hyde was popularly depicted as an unkempt, twisted, and hunching man across films and drawings. There can be many reasons for this deviation within the comic’s universe, but one of the most obvious links is in how this Hyde is adapted not only from Stevenson’s work, but also Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The murders attributed to Hyde by Dupin in The League are ones that were committed by the Ourang-Outang in Poe’s short story. Even the way that Hyde’s anger increases when Dupin shoots him mirrors how the Ourang-Outang becomes agitated enough to murder the two women, which occured only when one of the women provoked it by screaming (Poe 35). Moore masterfully blends together Hyde and the Ourang-Outang to display the animalistic qualities of the former character.

However, what is most interesting regarding Hyde in The League is his communication -- his literal ability to speak. Never at a single point in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde does Mr. Hyde speak; we only hear Dr. Jekyll himself talk. A large part of Poe’s Rue Morgue mystery is based in “voices in... contention” (first on Poe 11). Witnesses heard the then-mysterious “arguing” of the deep-voiced French sailor and the shrill shrieking of the Ourang-Outang, and found the ape’s voice to be unidentifiable in gender and nationality. Dupin notes that: 

"the voices of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are never found to tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs. Madmen are of some nation, and their language, however incoherent in its words, has always the coherence of syllabification” (Poe 28-29). 

Poe introduces the idea that language is a characteristic of a nation, and therefore language being linked to personhood. It is this argument that leads to Dupin’s logical deduction that the murderer couldn’t have been human at all, as he didn’t have language or nation, and it is this language that brings us to question the boundaries between both Stevenson and Moore’s version of Jekyll, Hyde, and their divide.

Stevenson’s Mr. Hyde is a ‘mask’ for Dr. Jekyll; we never engage in Mr. Hyde’s perspective, and while Dr. Jekyll uses the potion to maintain control over both himself and his alternate-persona, we are never given evidence that Hyde himself has his own perspective. Hyde’s activities across the novel are described as bouts of rage that mirror the kind of blind activity that the Ourang-Outang perform: they are mindless performances of heated passion and emotion. On the other hand, Dr. Jekyll’s role is indisputable. In his confession of the murders in Stevenson’s novel he admits that he “mauled the unresisting body” (Stevenson 60), rather than referring to himself as Mr. Hyde, which would relieve himself of blame or control. This reaffirms Hyde as a costume for Jekyll’s depravities. Even in the final chapter, “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case”, where Dr. Hyde’s body is “in control”, the character still refers to himself exclusively as Dr. Jekyll. Dr. Hyde is never autonomous, and he is never a singular being. These facts create a gap in how to read Mr. Hyde at all, because despite his own embodiment, he is very much just Dr. Jekyll. 

Despite performing similar brutalities to Poe’s monster, Hyde/Jekyll is very human. However, when he’s offered a voice by Moore, Hyde becomes separate. Jekyll isn’t speaking through Hyde, and Moore’s Hyde becomes a near-replica of the dynamics that Marvel’s Bruce Banner and the Hulk engage with, as well as that of Poe’s Ourang-Outang and the Frenchman, who feared being accused as guilty for the crimes of the ape. Such dynamics are further displayed by Moore in Champion Bond’s explanation of Jekyll/Hyde. He describes Dr. Jekyll as “a highly moral individual” who “become(s) Hyde” whenever he is stressed (Moore Vol. 1). Moore and Stevenson’s characters here are distinctly separated. Moore’s choice to depict Hyde and Jekyll as split shifts the blame of Jekyll/Hyde’s actions away from Stevenson’s intended perpetrator: Jekyll, and onto Hyde, transforming Jekyll into a victim. Jekyll even offers a warning to the League as they approach the Limehouse District. With sweat beading across his forehead he admits “sometimes I’m not myself. I’m not sure I can always be relied on.” Stevenson’s writing posed a message that playing with science can drive a man mad and immoral. With Moore’s Hyde having his own distinctive personhood, Stevenson’s message is removed from the Jekyll/Hyde mythos. 

Alan Moore offers an alternative take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Departing from Stevenson’s classic allegory for the anxieties of scientific advancement, Moore uses the classic Poe story to explore Hyde as a separate force. Monstrosity, in the 19th century, was linked to the degradation of character and religion. However, Moore’s transferral of power over to Mr. Hyde, as suggested by both literal narration and the gift of speech, allows Hyde to take up the true mantle as a monster. Moore points to how this form of remix encourages reshaping perceptions of the familiar. This variation on Jekyll/Hyde can easily parallel the Ourang-Outang and the Frenchmen, Bruce Banner and the Hulk, and even deviating examples of both Frankenstein and his monster and The Fly’s Seth Brundle and Brundlefly, who both exemplify monsters with their own senses of personhood and creators who fall victim to their creations. One can see that Moore’s recharacterization of Hyde makes a classic work feel more approachable and non-other.

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Works Cited:

Moore, Alan and Kevin O’Neill. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume One. California: America’s Best Comics, 2000. Print.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Murder in Rue Morgue. Feedbooks, 1841. Online. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/795/the-murders-in-the-rue-morgue

Stevenson, Robert Louis., and Roger Luckhurst. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Other Tales (Oxford world's classics). N.p.: Oxford U Press, 2006. Print.

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Punk Art: How Retrospectives and Reunions are Stripping Punk of its Power ••• By Meredith Salisbury

In her introduction to The Riot Grrrl Collection, editor Lisa Durmas writes “I hope this book will be a manual: a set of instructions for remaking the world. Use it to learn from riot grrrl’s successes and its mistakes. And then go out and start your own revolution.” The Riot Grrrl Collection is a book, published by The Feminist Press, that highlights some of the ephemera of the riot grrrl movement that is kept in the The Riot Grrrl Collection at the Fales Library. A recent exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design (MAD) named “Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die Punk Graphics, 1976–1986” showcases the same types of materials; posters, zines, buttons, and flyers but from the earlier punk scenes in New York City and London. Unlike The Riot Grrrl Collection, “Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die” does not hope for its exhibit to spark social change instead the exhibit “explores the visual language of punk through hundreds of its most memorable graphics.”  It highlights the ways in which punk “transcended music to affect other fields, as visual art, fashion, and graphic design.”

The exhibit spans two floors of MAD and consists of posters, fanzines, buttons, and a few records that visitors can listen to at a table in the middle of one of the main rooms. Most of the walls are black, though some are white, and each is filled with a concofinany of posters. The material is grouped by design element instead of by time period, genre, or band which makes sense in a design museum. There is a room full of posters that draw from pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol and other rooms that are focused on typography or methods like collage. The exhibit’s focus on how the punk “affected other fields” means that the viewer is experience the work, not by the message it was trying to send, but how 40 years later the work is reflected back in our mainstream culture. 

The co-option of subcultural aesthetics and political movements by mainstream culture is well documented in books like Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style and Andi Zeisler’s We Were Feminists Once. While this is nothing new, what is different about an art exhibit, versus a clothing line or marketing campaign, is that what gets deemed art is often what is deemed worthy of archiving, saving, and displaying for future generations. A value is given to objects that adorn the walls of museums and galleries and when cultural moments from the past have their first exhibits what is chosen and how it is displayed sets a precedent for what is saved and displayed in the future.

The day before I visited the Museum of Art and Design I saw Riot Grrrl band Bikini Kill play one of their reunion shows at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, New York. The Kings Theatre is a large ornate theater with velvet seats and a beautiful lobby. It is a breathtaking venue for a show, but it is not a traditional riot grrrl space. In that same introduction Lisa Darms writes “riot grrrl encouraged women to play instruments and start bands, write and distribute zines, and share experiences.” Seeing a show in a theater creates a stark divide between performer and spectator. Everyone around us was seated, watching the show and eating their snacks while Bikini Kill performed on a stage a pretty good distance away. Like “Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die” the Bikini Kill show was a way to experience one piece of Bikini Kill and the larger riot grrrl movement. I got to hear those songs live—which was amazing even before Joan Jett showed up—but what I missed was being part of a community and feeling like I could be up there too. None of that participatory ethos was present at the exhibit or at the concert. Punk is not dead. It is not some cultural fad from the past that we should be casually viewing in museums. It still has the power to bring people together to create social, cultural, and political change. Exhibits and reunion tours have the power to determine what parts of punk culture gets remembered and it is important to not seperate punk’s messaging from its ephemera.