The Not Beastmaster Dissents

Marc Singer, who is NOT the Beastmaster dissents from the geopolitical reading of Kingdom Come. He worries that the method, searching for a political allegory and finding one, no matter how forced, is not the most productive way of approaching the text:

"When I teach Invisible Man I try to wean my students away from pre- (and over-) determined allegorical readings and encourage them to focus on the text first. What signals is it sending us? What questions or dilemmas seem to preoccupy it? What recurrences or comparisons or contrasts demand our attention? Once we've identified the parts that appear to work through some theme, then we can start worrying about what they "represent" (although even then, I stress that metaphoric or allegorical representation is only one of many types of meaning at the writer's disposal). That way, we aren't presuming the answers before we even ask the questions.

"It's a difficult struggle with Invisible Man, which courts symbolic interpretations at every turn. It should be much easier with politics in Kingdom Come. Mark Waid and Alex Ross loudly tout a number of allegories - allegories for the comics industry and a particularly blunt, yet almost content-free, appropriation of apocalyptic religious imagery. But the politics in Kingdom Come are so vastly oversimplified (all political institutions are unproblematically reduced to the United Nations, which can apparently authorize unilateral nuclear strikes) that any more sophisticated political readings would have to emerge against the grain, in spite of the comic's overt thematizations. Comic Book Politics makes a good game of it, but while we can certainly read the internal politics of any narrative (his post, for example, examines the reasons why Superman loses his leadership position), those readings won't always translate into a neat allegory about geopolitics.

"I think the cart is driving the horse here. This teacher wants to teach Kingdom Come in a course about comics and politics, goes looking for interpretations that support the claim that Kingdom Come is "about" politics, finds them (some quite interesting, some forced), and, to his credit, reaches the only reasonable conclusion, namely that the politics in Kingdom Come are underdeveloped and superficial. I have to agree - which is why I think Kingdom Come probably shouldn't be taught in a course about comics and politics in the first place."

Fair enough. Three quick self-exculpatory points:

(1) although just because this isn't the Non-Beastmaster's preferred method doesn't mean that it can't be a productive one. Reading Kingdom Come, or any other text, through a "what is the political allegory" lens can lead to some unexpected insights, just as could filtering the text through a gender lens, or a race lens, or whatever.

(2) Particularly since Kingdom Come is only one in a series of texts. Asking the same questions of a series of dissimilar texts seems to me to be a useful way of approaching those texts. In this class, we read KC after reading Dark Knight Returns - which very much conditioned how I (and the students) read it!

(3) Most of the action in the course has turned out, surprisingly or not, to be in the seminar room and not on the blog. Students have been fabulous in the classroom (and keep it up, folks!), but haven't really taken to the on-line forum. In the classroom, we've been doing more the kind of thing you describe - combined with the method I just described in (1) and (2).

All of that said, thanks to Marc for the critical insights on a work in progress. (left as comments on Marc's blog, too - so feel free to continue the conversation here or there!)

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