#and it's very apparent in tim

[scintillyyy]

okay okay here's the full essay on my expanded look at understanding classism & conservativism within 90s comics-

okay, so. dixon. dixon has some truly terrible views imo. but. but. sigh. the thing about understanding his biases and how they were inserted into his works means understanding the absolute contradictions and cognitive dissonance commonly seen in conservative beliefs.

because it's easy--very, very easy--to make blanket statements like dixon hates poor people & dixon hates women. but to simplify it into a blanket statement like that is to miss a lot of the less obvious, far more hidden biases in favor of focusing on things that were not necessarily only a him problem specifically so much as they were larger, more widespread problems of the 90s.

the views on wealth or: they hate poor people, but no, not that poor person, that poor person doesn't count

okay, so the thing to understand about conservatives like dixon, probably, is that they do very much hate poor people on a societal level. they are itching to slash benefits & place the blame for the ills of society on the lower classes & in fact feel that poor people are responsible for the fact that they are poor. they hate poor people for having children that will go into the "system" & "leech" off the hardworking americans, & they hate that those children will grow up to also be poor and remain in the system as much as they very much vote for policies that contribute to it. in their eyes, poor people would just choose not to be poor and then will be able to make it happen for themselves, so if you don't, you're just not trying hard enough.

however, despite having a deep societal hatred for the lower classes, when it comes to poor people on an individual level, it gets a little more murky for them. because they don't necessarily hate poor people on an individual level. in fact to them, in this world, there exists the following: the Good Poor and the Bad Poor. and conservatives like chuck, despite their overarching societal hatred for the lower classes, love who they deem the Good Poor. because the Good Poor prove their worldview right. they are proud of the Good Poor. the Good Poor are everything america stands for & deserve everything in the world. so who are the Good Poor? who are the Bad Poor? well, it's pretty clear-cut, actually:

the Good Poor are largely white, but do not discount that the Good Poor, on occasion, will actually include a person of color. conservatives (well, those who will go blue in the face assuring you they're not racist. obviously for the very overtly mask off racist conservatives it is highly unlikely that a person of color can achieve the Good Poor status, but it's not impossible so long as the person in question is self hating enough) absolutely lap up stories of young children of color who rise up from disenfranchised circumstances to do something great (think: the fb news article about an inner city black girl who invented something super cool. conservatives love stories like that. their worldview is so vindicated with them.). the Good Poor do not have to utilize benefits, or if they do, it's only for a short period of time so they can get on their feet and make something of themselves, after all, conservatives love the american dream & they love when people achieve it. the Good Poor are hard at work & uncomplaining because they just have to work hard & be patient & they will be rewarded for it. the Good Poor scrimp & save & don't allow themselves luxuries, but if they do get a luxury, it's because they worked hard for it & saved up & deserve it. the Good Poor are able to catapult themselves into a better standing regardless of help because this is america, where hard work is rewarded & you too can pull yourself up by your boostraps. the Good Poor don't let themselves get caught in the trap of being dependent on the state or having too many babies or having babies too young, but if they do, they make the right decision. the Good Poor try to leave Bad places in order that their children can get a good education so they can avoid getting trapped in the system. the Good Poor do not complain, they just work harder. i guess to really summarize who they perceive as the Good Poor, it's those who reject the trappings of the Bad Poor.

the Bad Poor, to them, are largely people of color, especially those in inner cities (though there is such a thing as the white Bad Poor for them & it usually includes those they deem white trash or methheads) the Bad Poor are those who they see as content to use benefits indefinitely, or are perceived to use benefits without ever paying into them. the Bad Poor include those that are invisibly disabled and unable to work, people who are mentally ill, those that choose a life of crime over hard work (let's not think too hard of societal factors that may contribute to this), those that are homeless (but only the homeless they feel are choosing to stay homeless, those they feel are sufficiently making an effort to better themselves are at least closer to Good Poor), those that are addicts but making no perceived effort to overcome addiction, those they perceive as choosing not to work so they can remain on state benefits, those who have more than one kid (because to them more kids = more benefits, and the first one was one thing, but if you keep doing it despite not being able to afford the first, well. they really don't like that.) the bad poor are content to scam the system, eating t-bone steaks with their food stamps while the Good Poor suffer in their couponing. the Bad Poor are usually more poverty level, while the Good Poor, the True Poor to them, are usually right above that at the cusp of too rich for benefits, so they're the true strugglers.

and like. obviously, there's no such thing as a good poor or a bad poor. there are simply people. the difference between the pictures is that there is no difference & most of their perceptions who they believe the Bad Poor to be are bogeymans they've made up. real life circumstances are not cut and dry, and those divisions are divisions they themselves created and worsened with their policies. but to them, there are differences within that grouo. and those differences are key. because in their worldview, the Good Poor is soemone who does deserve any help they may have to unfortunately receive (though they don't need help & probably dislike the fact that have to receive it) whereas the Bad Poor does not deserve any of that.

take the following two examples:

a young couple gets married at 21. he works as an automotive technician & she's a CNA. shortly after their marriage, there's layoffs at his work & she is 8 months pregnant pregnant. they cannot currently afford health insurance through her job. they don't have enough money saved up in the bank to pay their rent & utilities as well as groceries. they end up being in a position where they have to apply for benefits like unemployment, food stamps, & medicaid for her in order to stay afloat for the next few months while he is looking for a new job. the benefits float them through their time of need and once he gets a new job a few months later, they no longer need the benefits, and stop them. they continue to live paycheck to paycheck, but can afford life's necessities.

a young, unmarried couple are 19 and have two children. he works as an automotive technician, she works as a beautician. he gets laid off at work. they apply for welfare benefits. while out of work, he gets into an automotive accident & fractures a cervical vertebrae that places him in severe pain that lasts long after the break is healed. due to this pain, he is unable to find a new job with the skillset he has & ends up forming an addiction to painkillers. he eventually needs to apply for disability. no longer able to afford childcare, she has to also quit her job. they are dependent on medicaid & disability, WIC & food stamps, for the forseeable future. they scrape together what they can to give their children as much as they can.

so the first one, to them, is a Good Poor, the second a Bad Poor. because the first one to them in an example of the system working as it's intended. the first to them is two hardworking poor people, who deserve help & are a good example of how good, hardworking people can fall on hard times, need a little help to get back up and then go back to being self sufficient. the second is very easily flandarized by them into two people who didn't want to work because if they did they would have found a way to make it work, but they didn't & they decided to stay within the system, so they're Bad Poors who get what they deserve. this is just how the world works to them.

anyways, this is a fundamentally dissonant viewpoint! it falls apart very easily! but it's so very ingrained that there is no amount of logic that can undo it. because they have their examples where their system works, ergo it works & that's how it should be for everyone & if it doesn't work then you yourself are personally responsible for the fact that it doesn't, not anyone or anything else. that is how they conceptualize the world. and like. yes, on a societal level, they hate both Good Poor and Bad Ooor. they aren't going to ever going to want to expand the help they receive. on a personal level, however, their feelings are actually more complicated than all poor people are terrible. because while they're not jumping at the chance to provide the Good Poor help to get there, necessarily, they are entirely rooting for them to work hard and achieve the american dream. they believe they truly like the Good Poor & they want opportunities available to them. they cheer if the Good Poor achieve stability because that is their worldview at work & there's a sense of satisfaction there. they are at peace. they like the Poor who make them feel at peace. they want the Good Poor to get the opportunities needed to lift themselves up, like the founding fathers intended. or something.

(as an aside, wrt them & benefits. in an ideal world, it's not that benefits wouldn't exist it's that they'd be very sparingly used & only for those who deserve/earned it. the cognitive dissonance around benefits like medicare and social security, for example, is that they fundamentally don't see it as a benefit. they see it as something they've earned on account of years and years of putting their own money into it & they are owed that because it's *their* money. if they are using any sort of benefit, it's because they have done their due diligence and put money into the system & are owed it. they get their welfare because they funded it, others shouldn't if they did not.)

(another aside, this is why they don't necessarily see the benefit in them paying local taxes for schools despite the fact that they attended schools funded by their parent's generation. they may be fine with it when their children are attending, but if they are not personally benefitting from it or are childless, they don't see why they should be forced to use their money to pay for something they're not even utilizing)

as for wealth, there is a veneration of the wealthy there. but there is a full belief that you should not punish the wealthy for being wealthy. they, after all, earned it. not being wealthy is a skill issue, to them. the temporarily embarrassed millionaire mindset does ring a bit true, in that they truly believe that anyone can make it regardless of their start if they're skilled & work hard enough, but it's not entirely the correct way of describing it. because they might wish a big pile of money falls in their lap, but they in no way think they're entitled to be rich or have money. people are owed what they are due & get what they deserve. these kind of people would be aghast at having more personal funds with expanded benefits for themselves if those funds came from millionaires who earned it with their own hard work. to these people, the idea of those benefits...that *is* theft from millionaires to them, no ifs ands or buts about it. after all, it's theft of their own hard earned money when it's done to them (money taken out of their paycheck in taxes to be used by people who aren't them.).

so when you're talking about the 90s comics and his conservativism & classism therein, i think this is a pretty important worldview to keep in mind because it's very often there, embedded in the story. & his classism, this type of classism imo, so very often intersects with his racism and sexism it is hard to completely separate them, but it's important to. because sometimes it *is* an almost completely separate issue that actually is it's own unique thing that has this exact mindset behind it.

because the 90s comics are filled with this mindset of Good Poor vs Bad Poor, not just Rich vs Poor. the rich vs poor is evident in the ways he writes bruce, tim, and even dick to an extent. they're hardworking rich ppl who are generous & benevolent & do all the good things rich people should do & keep the city safe from the Bad Poors with their vigilanteism. but like, while he writes certain poor people like that, as Bad Poors, based on his biases, it's also extremely evident that not all Poor people are equal to him. a lot seem to be treated as if they deserve their lot in life. some are treated as if they deserve better.

so we need to talk about steph. and i've talked at length before about how i feel dixon evolved perceptions of steph's class throughout her appearances, but there's a lot about steph's treatment in comics that just gets attributed to chuck dixon hates poor people & while that is certainly is probably true-ish, it's not the whole story behind it. because i need to assure you guys that he probably doesn't actually care too much that steph isn't rich or that she has a criminal father or that she has an addict mother, or that's she's poorer than tim, or whatever, because she's a Good Poor despite that. in fact, her having less money is what makes her the better story to tell. her being lower class and an underdog is the point. the american dream starts from the bottom, right? it's a feature, not a bug. she is a Good Poor. to dixon, steph deserves anything & everything she needs. does she need to beat her deadbeat dad up in the prison? she gets it. he's the one making her life hard, so she deserves to give him payback. does steph need to prove her worth as a vigilante? he wanted to give her the ultimate gift of being robin. like he would give her the moon if he could. he loves her so much. and don't just take it from me, here's some of his own words on her:

(source)

so while there are things like "steph is okay with getting talked down to by a rich person because she's a Good Poor" that are emblematic of this brand of classism, her being poorer is not why he made steph lesser than anyone. (that would be his sexism). in fact, her being poorer wasn't why she was a failure to him at all. it's actually a big part of why she was destined to be a future success & a big part why she deserved future success to him. there is nothing that someone with that worldview loves more than someone who is an underdog & wins all the rewards they deserve through their hard work and grit. it's the world working as it should. there is no surprise in my mind that the vaunted role of robin was something he was desperate to give her as a reward for her hard work. & that she would have excelled so much and only would have failed because bruce can't work with her because he can't help but need to protect the womenfolk. or something.

her story from an underdog to achieving great things is something that many people relate too & they can sympathize with the world being against her. her story as an underdog but succeeding despite nobody helping her is a conservative wet dream, it's their idyllic world in action.

tim & steph and the conservativeness of their stories

so. we get to his two main characters & mouthpieces, tim & steph. and the conservativeness of tim's story is very overt & in your face. everyone is aware of it. it's in the very special episodes, the way dixon has him talk down to steph & be a little sexist, the nature of his origin as a rich kid who went to boarding schools. he sails through life, is respected by friends and family, & gets all the training and education he needs. it's aspirational to the male comic book readers. he's a benevolent rich kid who thinks of others & is oh so humble at times, as rich people should be. it's clear as day that he was written by a 90s conservative dude that believes in reaganomics. it's in your face.

it's also relatively easy to dissociate him from the more overt conservative mouthpiecing because of this. especially as he had the benefit of being written by plenty of other writers including alan grant & dennis o'neil who didn't have him quite so bad as all that. so it's easy to be like "this is just dixon talking vs this is who tim should be".

the thing with steph, though, is she's also very, very insidiously a conservative story as well. one from the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

because conservatives love. love. the idea of the american dream. the idea that you can start from nothing, receive no help, & succeed based completely on your own merits without any help. and that. that's completely and utterly baked into every facet of steph's character. everything from her humble beginnings to her success based solely on her own skills and determination despite nobody believing in her is the american dream in a nutshell. and while again, the overt stuff like the pregnancy story are best thrown in the trash, her existence being tied to the idea of the american dream is a little harder. her story is just one who succeeds based entirely on her own merits! if you make it an easier journey, or have her get more help, she loses the charm of the underdog or its relatability. and it's not that it's a bad story at its heart, there's a lot of good there that people relate to & find happiness in, it's just. a very conservative, bootstraps one at its core. the conservatives are at peace with it. they are happy to see it. it means that the system & world worked the way it should. success comes from hard work & determination after all.

all in all, i think it's very easy to just put everything under one big umbrella of classim, but imo the big thing is that there's a belief system there (not one i agree with, personally, but one that's there) that can explain the writing choices more fully.