So you do disagree with me. Why on earth do you suspect that making the presentation more palatable to BD is an unintended side effect? Given the strip in which BD is trashing the prof as a whiny liberal ivory-tower elite, and the punchline of the strip is the prof declaring himself to be a vet, your suspicion seems to me to be unambiguously unfounded.
It’s too pat and perfect, and that’s the entirety of my complaint. Trudeau has put BD–and by extension the reader–in a box where questioning or challenging this wonderful professor (and the author) is not an option. BD wasn’t convinced by the professor’s presentation alone, because Trudeau didn’t have enough confidence in the presentation alone to give it without making the professor a vet and a conservative. He loaded the dice. This is why I’ve been calling that character a cheat.
At this point, I’m not expecting to convert you to my POV; this thing that strikes me as an aberration is perfectly okay for you, and I get that. But satire and storytelling do have rules, and this undercuts a few of them and not in a good way.
I think you are the only person who has trouble questioning or challenging this comic strip character, and your frustration is causing you to project your issue onto the cartoonist. Krok, take a deep breath, change the names to protect the innocent, and see if you are arguing based on principle, or you just don’t like this particular message.
Fair enough.
:rolleyes:
I continue to disagree with your interpretation of this week’s strip, but I’ll say that you’ve done an excellent job of presenting your case. Well done.
Until the quoted line appeared. I get that you’re doing it for effect. But you’re wrong about this too. 
Let’s put this on the other foot, Tri. If the cartoonist in question were someone less exalted than GBT, would you entertain the possibility that some sloppiness in craft and execution had occurred? 'Cause it seems to me that I’m the only person here with NO trouble questioning or challenging this comic strip character, or the cartoonist.
I don’t think a true Doonesbury fan should just take what’s offered and chuckle out of habit or politeness. This is a strip that invites a slightly more critical interaction with the reader. And I’m questioning a handful of strips out of a forty year run.
Heck, I questioned the professor back in post #13. If I was in such a lecture for real, I’d raise the same issue.
That’s exactly the opposite of what you said before. I don’t interpret or deconstruct comic strips that way. I realize they are whatever the artist wants to do, for whatever reason, and I don’t find moral authority in the characters. I don’t hold Trudeau all that highly, it’s been decades since I found Doonesbury relevant or important. This is just another message in another form. It’s just a comic strip, visual rhetoric. I expect editorials to quote Lincoln, when it serves their purpose, even if the entirety of Lincoln’s life runs counter to the point. In this case, I can’t even find your objection. I think there are plenty of respected conservative war veterans who hold these same views. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that traditionally American conservatism railed against the Democratic* wars, and war veterans who had experienced the horror of war were there strongest critics as well. You just have no real point. Again, I ask you to apply your argument to different circumstances, with different characters and messages.
*It’s the name of a political party for those who may have forgotten.
This doesn’t make any sense to me. Of course he loaded the dice: he’s the author. Authors don’t randomly determine what’s gonna happen in a story. And of course he didn’t have confidence in the presentation alone, because he knows BD, and knows that BD won’t deal with the presentation alone (again, as indicated by the storyline’s setup with BD’s bitter speculation about the prof’s background). If he did have confidence in the presentation alone, he’d be going against BD’s well-established character.
But if you’re talking about his not having enough confidence in the presentation to the audience, what on earth is your evidence for this position? Is this the first time Trudeau has used the strip to make comments about the war? Of course not–and most of the time before when he’s criticized the war, he’s done it through liberal characters, or through conservative characters saying stupid things.
Stipulating that satire and storytelling do have rules, what specific rules do you think are undercut?
And lemme re-ask a question from earlier, underlining the key word: “Why on earth do you suspect that making the presentation more palatable to BD is an unintended side effect?”
Really? When did I ever say I had difficulties with the prospect of critiquing Doonesbury? Are you sure you phrased “I think you are the only person who has trouble questioning or challenging this comic strip character” to say what you intended to say?
That’s a perfectly respectable position to hold, and the polar opposite of my own.
My issue isn’t with conservative commentators; it’s with commentators who preface their statements by claiming to be the exact opposite of what they are. Usually, these are left-of-center types who affect a toe-scuffing, “shucks-ma’am” persona to lull the audience into accepting their message right before they start advocating seizure of the means of production (See: Pete Seeger).
Nor do I have anything against war veterans; living 60 miles from the Korean DMZ has given me a sharp new appreciation for their service.
So when Garry Trudeau, a big hero of mine since 1971, has to preface his views with a hand-puppet that claims to be a conservative war vet, it makes me worry about how much actual confidence he has on the merits of those views. It reeks of a kind of smarminess I associate with much lesser cartoonists.
As for taking a deep breath: There might be some merit to that. Between the vitriolic tone this thread has taken and the shitty wi-fi in this hotel (Did I mention that I’m touring the Philippines this week?), I’ll likely be taking a short break from the SDMB for a few days. I’ll sure be contemplating all these opposing viewpoints, but don’t count on my being swayed by them.
I don’t understand. Would the existence of real-life conservative veterans with low opinions of the Iraq War affect your opinion? Is it your contention that such people either don’t exist or are so vanishingly rare that Trudeau’s use of a character is an unacceptably strained contrivance?
Left Hand of Dorkness: Sorry, but if you’re gonna hit me with that many questions in one post, I really need to exercise my discretion at whether and how many to answer.
What’s wrong with loading the dice? It’s the classic definition of cheating, both in gambling and writing. Peppering the message with more than the facts equals adding something other than the truth. Satire is ultimately about speaking truth to power, not presenting it with a viable alternate line of bullshit. That’s a rule of satire.
Storytelling involves presenting a world with an internal consistency, one that makes sense on its own terms. Changing those terms in mid storyline is a cheat. That’s a rule of storytelling. Giving BD a political epiphany at the hands of a less-than-believable character is not in keeping with the strip’s prior tone and history. It’s a slippery slope from this to whatever Funky Winkerbean turned into.
While you may be reading this on your lunch break, it’s 2 am here and I’m done for the day. I’ll check back in with you in a few days to see if this thread hasn’t been mercifully terminated yet.
I must be missing something here.
No, Bryan, I know they exist in the wild. I know some. They reach their conclusions in a different manner than GBT, though, and they don’t speak in his particular voice. Most of his characters don’t speak in his authorial voice, but this one speaks in GBT bullet points with the occasional reminder that he’s a conservative and a war vet. If that’s good enough for you, nothing I say will convince you differently.
I am very confused by your position Krok.
Is it
a) that you do not find the character believable (for whatever reason), or
b) the character is not fleshed out enough yet to allow his use to express Trudeau’s editorial agenda (which we all agree many characters, liberal and conservative, have been used to do, either by directly expressing the ideas, or by mocking a set of ideas), or
c) that only a liberal character can be used to express an idea that you believe Trudeau holds, because you identify him as liberal, and using a character with a label other than your own to express your idea is, in and of itself, “cheating”?
Have fun in the warm!
Well, it’s a comic strip, with all the limitations that implies. If you want a conservative veteran character with a rich and detailed backstory, I’m sure there are some novels that would fit the bill.
Anyway, all the conservative war vets you know reach their conclusions differently than GBT? I’m sorry, but your circle of acquaintances is not universal. In any case, your criticism of Trudeau isn’t falling on deaf ears so much as “yeah? so?” ears.
You seem to be expecting Trudeau’s character to spring fully formed from the first panel in which they appear. The plot line of BD going to class with his friend is only recently introduced, and he hasn’t had time to return to it yet. If the professor never appears again, you might have something vaguely resembling a point, but I pretty strongly suspect that this guy’s going to be a recurring character who’s going to have more interactions with the rest of the cast than standing at a lectern.
I also don’t get where you’re coming from with this “morally unassailable” argument. Nothing about being a conservative vet makes his argument morally unassailable. It makes it impossible to dismiss as the product of political bias, as BD tried to do in the first classroom strip, but it doesn’t mean that his arguments are unimpeachable.
I mean, hell, there are two conservative vets in that room: the professor, and BD. They disagree about the war. They can’t both be speaking from a morally unassailable position. One of them’s got to be wrong.
Which brings us back around to the point that this character being a conservative vet means absolutely nothing to the readers. Giving him those characteristics doesn’t make him any more believable to us, because we know that he’s just a vehicle for (liberal, not a vet) Trudeau. It adds nothing to the editorial content of the strip. The only reason it’s at all significant is that it makes him like BD, which makes it harder for him to write off his ideas.
The content of the professor’s speech is purely Trudeau’s editorializing. The professor’s character traits, on the other hand, exist solely to further BD’s dramatic arc.
To Krokodil:
~VOW
I wanted to make that point while I was reading page 1 of this thread this evening, but I had to read the whole thing to make sure I wasn’t reiterating someone else’s statement.
And then you had to go and post THAT, just as I was about to start typing…
Yes! I do that three more times, I get a free toaster oven!