Checker, the same publisher who brought us the much-appreciated Winsor McCay Early Works series, has just released the first hardback volume of their Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland by McCay. It isn’t quite as impressive as the enormous Sunday Press’s edition of collected Sunday strips the other year, but then it is less than a third of the cost which hopefully makes it more accessible to more readers. I can’t help but note that the back cover has a warning on it to the effect that the book contains “a number of images which do not meet modern Western standards for racial and ethnic sensitivity” before going on to add that in the interests of ‘intellectual honesty’ and completeness they have included them unedited.
After recent events with Tintin in the Congo which was attacked despite a similar clear warning that the work was old and contained viewpoints on subjects like race and ethnicity that would be unthinkable today but which reflect the attitudes of the time I’m left wondering if and when someone will raise similar allegations here. It isn’t an easy subject for publishers – or retailers for that matter – to deal with, but it would be dishonest to simply excise such segments from a historical work, much less to ban the entire work. And you have to wonder about double standards in judging such works, with, it seems to me, books with images such as children’s picture books and comics works being most likely to be singled out, as if words themselves couldn’t insult or offend. Yet most bookstores will have a copy of Mein Kampf in their history section on open sale, author one Herr A. Hitler, a book which is a veritable diatribe of hate and nonsense (and badly written to boot) and yet I recall no large warning on the covers before I had to read sections at school which warned me that it proclaimed views most people would find offensive. And I wasn’t traumatised because that work, odious as it is, was in the context of history, as is any older work and a reader should be able to work that out – especially when given a clear warning and explanation. And if they couldn’t then presumably they would be too stupid to actually read the book in the first place.
But still I’m still waiting for someone to complain about Little Nemo anyway and yes, the warning is accurate and there are some scenes I find very uncomfortable. But if we held back from republishing such works on the grounds of a few panels then we’d also be denied magical, beautiful scenes like this one below. And come to think of it, the fact that beauty and wonder can exist next to attitudes we would consider racist isn’t a bad fact for readers to learn; helps them to open their eyes wider and see more, be more aware. And being more aware and informed is a key weapon in fighting ignorance. And besides, how could we deny readers such gorgeous images as this?
Wed, Jul 25, 2007
Comics and cartoons