New Rewatch Series: Once upon a Time

𝔗his one's going to take a while.

My opportunities to watch things are somewhat limited, as might be expected. Most of them involve time with family, and, since part of that family is a daughter who, as I write this, is seven years old, there are certain...limitations on what I can get away with. The others involve down-time at my workplace, where there are even more limits, despite my being in the position I'm in. (It's outside academe, but even were I still seated in the ivory tower, there would be limits to what I could watch at work, even were I writing about it.) So it should not be a surprise that a lot of what I have been able to re/watch here has focused on family-friendly and children's materials, nor should it be a surprise that it would continue to be so.

It's not a secret from my family that I do translate what we end up watching into such work as I still do; I've said as much to them, and they've seen me at work at it. It's also not a secret that my wife and I met in graduate school; we tell people, and with no small truth, that we fell in love over early English noun declensions, having gotten to know one another as we sat together for a class on Beowulf. Consequently, she knows what I do, and she occasionally makes recommendations for what I might treat next. I value her opinion, of course, and when she started watching again a series she's started watching while we lived in New York City, and she commented that I might look at its mis/use of the medieval/ist, I agreed that it might be a good thing to do.

A few things have happened in the interim, though, and it is only recently that she made the comment again, this time while I am not currently engaged in another project. Thus, moving ahead, I'll be turning my attentions to the ABC series Once upon a Time. As a seven-season series running to some 155 episodes, I'll be on the project for some time, and that's fine; it's good to have work to do. I'll likely intersperse it with other commentaries, because there's a lot of other stuff to attend to, but the main thrust will be on the series until I get done.

As ever, of course, the blog is happy to accept commentary and guest submissions; send them to talesaftertolkien@gmail.com, and welcome!

It's not as clear as other posters, for example...
The series poster from Disney+, used here for commentary.

 Read the next entry in the series here!

A Few Comments about Still Another Comic

 𝔄 couple of weeks ago, I put together a brief piece on Gemma Correll's 5 April 2021 "Serf's Up" on The Nib, working in the same line as an earlier piece on Joseph Faill's punning comic on A Pleasant Waste of Time. I note in that piece an attempt to work toward explicating the joke and likely killing it as I dissect it; I am evidently some kind of a serial killer.

The comic in question,
presented here to facilitate commentary.

A different comic I recently encountered, Humon's "Glow Up" on Scandinavia and the World (the most recent of the offerings on that site as of this writing), suggests itself as the next such victim. I've read the comic intermittently for some years, having stumbled onto it via social media sharing from one friend or another some time ago. (My apologies to said friend that I do not recall who actually pointed me at it.) And this is not the first of the offerings on the site to suggest itself as something worth looking at for its neo/medievalism, to be certain--but the most recent is the easiest to access.

In the comic, a character representing an older Svalbard (the age inferred due to the collar ruff) chastises another representing Norway for use of cosmetics, citing shared "tough Viking ancestors" as justification; another character representing those ancestors emerges and questions the rebuke. Obviously, there are simplifications and inaccuracies to be found in a two-panel comic, in addition to the usual problems of compressing time. The characters have to serve as short-hand for entire nations and attitudes associated with them, and the Viking character, with horned helmet, is a historically "incorrect" presentation whose appearance makes use of a theoretical combination of Scandinavian flags (not unlike the combination of flags that create the United Kingdom's banner) and a device commonly noted as indicating humor because it is known to be both a medievalist trope and inaccurate. (In brief, as I am informed by several Scandinavians of my acquaintance, folks know Vikings didn't wear horned helmets; any presentation of them as doing so is meant to be taken other-than-seriously. It is not hard to read a rebuke of those who adhere to views of horned helmets as practical battle-wear in the assumption.) As with earlier commentaries on comics, though, the inaccuracies seem to be occasioned by concerns of medium; while it is the case that jokes can inhere in small details (as argued here, for example), jokes that aim to address broad audiences generally do better to make them in broad strokes.

The crux of the joke, that the Vikings adorned themselves, does proceed from historical accuracies, however, and some that are often disregarded by the same kinds of folks who will proclaim loudly, following one ideologue often and appropriately subjected to ridicule, that "the facts don't care about your feelings"--all while disregarding emergent facts to suit narratives they maintain only because they make them feel good (most often about maintaining execrable ideologies as some means to cover their own ample and abundant inadequacies). As attested here, here, here, and elsewhere, the "tough Viking ancestors" were greatly concerned about their appearances, taking time and care with them unusual--and, again, remarked upon--in the region. They wore jewelry; they styled their hair and beards; they wore makeup. In brief, they did many of the things often associated (derisively, unfortunately) with femininity--even as they are often held up as exemplars of "real manhood" by ill-informed, worse-aligned people.

I know it's "only a webcomic." I know "it doesn't matter." But I also know the comic stands in opposition to that which ought well and always to be opposed, and I know that it grounds itself in authentic detail about the medieval--as well, yes, as inauthentic detail deriving from the medievalist or neomedieval--to do so. And I believe that that kind of thing ought to be encouraged.

A Follow-up on Another Piece

𝔑ot too long ago, I had a piece pop out on The Public Medievalist regarding the medievalism of the Knight Man stage and robot from Mega Man VI, an 8-bit NES game. As it happens, Knight Man is not the only Robot Master to borrow from the medieval, nor is Mega Man VI the only one of the Blue Bomber's games to pull from that sourcing, to get some things right and some far less so. Another example of such things that comes to mind is Shade Man from Mega Man VII, a 16-bit SNES game; like the Mega Man VI example, some things are right, some things are not, and the correct and incorrect both matter.

The man himself...
Image from the
MegaMan Knowledge Base, here,
used for commentary.

Like Knight Man from the previous game, Shade Man inhabits a castle that makes much of medievalist imagery. Crumbling stone columns support high-ceilinged rooms hung with chains and sporting stained glass, as if in some strange medieval cathedral. It is replete with suits of armor, too, and hosts enemies who come charging at the heroic character with lances at the ready--and both speak to medieval tropes that pervade both history and literature. Indeed, Mega Man pressing through the castle and defeating a series of knightly foes rings of the kinds of things described in Le Morte d'Arthur and any number of other chivalric romances, so that much is in line with antecedents both in the game series and in the medieval/ist work from which the stage and robot borrow.

Unlike the earlier game, though, Shade Man does not borrow quite so much from the perceived medieval as from the overtly medievalist. Yes, there is something of the demonic in his appearance, but in function he is more the bat-like vampire of Dracula and its borrowers than he is some medieval monster--and his castle, shrouded in gloom under the light of a full moon, seems to borrow more from the Gothic motifs of Castle of Otranto than from more "truly" medieval work. (Indeed, one of the foes faced in the stage is a small robot that falls as a helmet from above, echoing the death of Conrad early in that novel.) And there are other borrowings of medievalist presentations, as well; among the more notable is the invocation (via music) of the medievalist Ghosts 'n  Goblins games in the stage, which games feature the spear-throwing, armor-clad Arthur as he quests against evil. So there's that, as well.

To be fair, the conflation of the medieval and the medievalist is nothing new to the game. After all, the medievalist sources form which it borrows are themselves such conflations, and they are hardly the only examples of such things to be found. (This webspace attests to no few of them, among others.) For better or worse, the ideas are firmly linked in popular conception, and failing to acknowledge so much is a wilful omission that does nobody any good. That said, however, my comments from the end of the Public Medievalist piece remain true:

Popular media presentations like the Mega Man games inform much public understanding of what the medieval was and is. If nothing else, repeating information sets up expectations of what is real or realistic. As such, every iteration of wrong information, every instance of inaccuracy, perpetuates misconceptions and closes off avenues of understanding that much further.

Furthermore, games like Mega Man were openly geared towards children. When people are taught early on that things are a certain way, it is all the harder for those who will teach them later in life to ensure that, as they grow up, they proceed from a sound and solid understanding of what was as they work toward what they will be. Even such idle pastimes as video games can have a deep and lasting effect on their players.

The shallow and clumsy use of the Middle Ages in Mega Man isn’t an obvious problem. But, like the issues within Game of Thrones, it forms a foundation for more troubling portrayals and abuses of the medieval world. Perhaps by addressing the formative misunderstandings presented by Mega Man and other games, we can go some way to countering such bigger issues.

There is clearly still no small amount of work to do.

#Kzoo2021 Report

𝔗he Tales after Tolkien Society continued its work at and around the online International Congress on Medieval Studies hosted by Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. For the 2021 iteration of the event, the Society sponsored and presented one paper session and conducted an online business meeting. Notes about each appear below.

The Session

The Society was pleased to sponsor session 77--Deadscapes: Wastelands, Necropoli, and Other Tolkien-Inspired Places of Death, Decay, and Corruption--at 4pm US Eastern Daylight Time on 10 May 2021. Society Vice-president (USA) Luke Shelton presided over the session; member Brian J. McFadden and Society President Geoffrey B. Elliott presented papers. McFadden, an associate professor of English at Texas Tech University, delivered a talk titled "'Beorhtnoth we bear, not Beowulf': Descriptive Restraint in The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm’s Son." Elliott presented "Sites of Memory in Robin Hobb's Elderlings Corpus." Discussion of both papers was lively and engaging, and attendees at the session were invited to attend the business meeting that followed.

The Meeting

Per §5.1 of the Society Constitution, an Annual General Meeting of the Society was held during the 2021 Congress, taking place online as hosted by Society Vice-president (USA) Luke Shelton and called to order at 7:10pm US Eastern Daylight Time. Society President Geoffrey B. Elliott presided; Rachel Sikorski, Society Secretary and Social Media Officer, took minutes. In attendance were the aforementioned officers, Brian J. McFadden, and Kris Swank.

Formal agenda items to be considered were

1. Election of the Society President for the term 2021-2024,
2. Determination of session offerings for the 2022 Congress, and
3. Concerns for general Society attention and consideration.

Regarding the election: there was one candidate, incumbent Geoffrey B. Elliott. As no other nominations to the position were offered, the incumbent was acclaimed to continue in office.

Regarding the session offerings for the 2022 Congress: three ideas were considered--Unconventional Medievalisms, Medievalism and Diversity, and Twenty-first Century Neo/Medievalisms. Discussion led to a focus on the latter two, with the decisions made to present Medievalism and Diversity as a paper session and Twenty-first Century Neo/Medievalisms as a roundtable. (Clarifications have been helpfully provided by Kris Swank.) The Society President will draft and submit required paperwork to the Congress; fuller CFPs are forthcoming.

Regarding the general concerns:

1. The Society President reiterated a call for submissions to the Society blog, exhorting attendees to submit and to recommend submission by others in their acquaintance, including those typically excluded from academic discourse. 
2. The Society decided not to attempt presentation at SWPCA in the coming year, membership having noted that the conference in question focuses in other areas than those typically treated by the Society.
3. The Society noted an opportunity to form a cohesive panel for the coming Tolkien Symposium. Vice-president Shelton noted that a call for papers is forthcoming; information about composing a session or pitching individual papers will follow after the call is made.
4. The Society encourages its members to submit papers for the coming online Mythcon. Information is available online.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:37pm, US Eastern Daylight Time.

A Few Comments about Another Comic

𝔄 while back, I opined about Joseph Faill's punning comic on A Pleasant Waste of Time, commenting on the joke upon which the comic depends and, it might well be asserted, killing it in the process of dissection. Even so, I stand by the comments I made then; the point of the comic was to elicit a laugh from a broad audience, and it succeeds at that, although it is lamentable that it has to do so the way it has to do so. We can and should do better.

The comic in question this time around:
Gemma Correll's 5 April 2021 "Serf's Up" on The Nib,
used here for commentary.

A different comic I recently encountered, Gemma Correll's 5 April 2021 "Serf's Up" on The Nib, attested in the caption of the comic I reproduce for the sake of commentary, does appear to do better than Faill. Its situation would seem to circumscribe its audience a bit more than Faill's comic--The Nib has a decided political slant, and it is not one that aligns with as much of academic medievailsm as might be expected (as attested and endured by such folks as Mary Rambaran-Olm, Dorothy Kim, Kavita Mudan Finn, Jonathan Hsy, and Adam Miyashiro; the list is not exhaustive)--and it is perhaps one with that that the comic is able to partake to a greater degree of the usage and visual conventions of the time. The inclusion of what looks like mimicry of an insular majuscule, the ð, and the æ, along with visual cues (hairstyles and some clothing items) and literary references (Chaucer, twice) appear to ground the comic more firmly in the observed medieval than Faill's comic does. In effect, the comic appears to assume a more informed audience and gives that audience more information to make its joke.

That said, the comic gets things wrong in its attempt to make the joke land. The "older" letters, ð and æ, appear to be presented in lowercase or miniscule, inconsistent with the all-caps lettering of the rest of the comic. It might be that the capital forms, Ð and Æ, would not read well in the medium, and a visual medium has to attend to such things; a webcomic does best when it scans easily and quickly, and the lowercase forms do scan quicker than the capitals. So, there might be justification for the seeming error, but it still attracts attention to itself, and that attention distracts from the joke. And there are concerns, as ever, about the flattening and compression of the Middle Ages, as though the several centuries were a constant bloc--but I've spoken to that kind of thing before, and at length, including in materials linked in this commentary.

Even so, the central thrust of the comic--the complaints voiced now are much the same complaints voiced throughout history--is well received. It's true enough; Malory comments aspersively on anticipated lewd interpretations of Lancelot and Guinevere--remarking that "loue that tyme was not as is now adayes"--as well as upon those who sought to cleave to Mordred rather than Arthur, calling that group "newe fangle." His are but two examples, easily found; there are others, all speaking to the theme of "cildas þissum dægum" or somesuch thing. People are people and have been people as long as there have been people; there is no golden age, whether in the pre-Classical or Classical periods, or, maugre the heads of white nationalists, in the medieval; we do well to remember it, and cartoonists such as Correll do well to remind us of it.