ComicBookHarriet

Khan Do No Wong

Malcolm is now pouting like a child, which I guess fits one of the two ages he claims to be.

It’s okay Mal, you won’t have to feel seventy and seven for much longer. Because you’ll soon be completely forgotten. As a Westview student who isn’t a child of a main cast member, you were always cursed to be swallowed by the memory hole. I’m just sorry you had to go through this awful plotline first.

It could be worse. At least you weren’t initially created with sermonizing in mind, and then forced to linger in the background long after you were no longer wanted.

Commenter Bad Wolf had this to say yesterday:

I’m going to pin a lot of it down to his dismissing any of the (potentially) interesting characters he’s thrown in over the years—like that couple from Hong Kong he was so proud of—so that they aren’t around when he does want to use them for some social message. If he had built up Westview into a little Springfield of different quirky characters he could bounce back to whenever he wanted I’d be a bit more generous in how i looked at the strips.

I talked a couple days ago about culture as opposed to race, pointing out that any of the recurring non-white characters in the Funkyverse are culturally indistinguishable from anyone else. That doesn’t mean Batiuk hasn’t tried to introduce culturally distinct characters. He is just completely unable to sustain them. We’re seeing it happen in real time with Adeela the Iraqi immigrant. She was introduced for a big prestige arc in 2018 and was given the typical Montoni’s nepotism position.

After that she had nothing more than sporadic appearances for months. Appearances where she was a non-character, interchangeable with anyone else. She got another prestige arc in 2020 so Batiuk could preach at us about ICE. Then she showed up ONCE and said NOTHING in all of 2021, and is yet to appear in 2022.

Introduced as a prop in service of a ‘message’, then pointlessly kept around in case he wants to use her again. She’s walking the same path Kahn the Afghani immigrant walked before her. The same path Zhang Li and his wife Liu Lin trailblazed years before.

I don’t have access to the actual 1997 prejudice arc that Batiuk talks about in his blog. The incompetent misers over at Comics Kingdom only have Funky Winkerbean going back to October 1998. Maybe Billy The Skink can fill us in on the details. But what is clear from looking at 1998 and 1999 is that for a while Batiuk intended for Zhang Li and Liu Lin, along with their grandmother La Choi San, to be integrated into the crew.

And what’s more, the integration of the Chinese family was supposed to allow for a different culture to be presented, and positive cultural exchange to take place. (I’ll leave it up to you to decide if this presentation is offensive or not.)

*Accurate or Magical Asian Trope? You decide.*

But after the arc where La Choi San offers her herbal remedies, and the arc where La Choi San coaches the Montoni’s Little League team to a championship, the Chinese family falls into the background. Literally. They do nothing more than show up in the background of various parties and social functions for the next six years.

*Party for Lisa’s roommate, Allison, 2001.*

*That one time John got arrested for selling Hentai to Becky’s Mom. 2005.*

Lin gets one maybe almost arc in 2004, when she watches men move a desk for a week and then walks all over Crazy Harry.

*One arc in six years. And it’s to massage a male character.*

And then, early in 2006.

They’re gone.

Within a week of Li and Lin leaving, Montoni and Funky hear of someone interesting in moving into the Jade Dragon’s space.

*I heard you had an opening for ethnic boondoggle?*

Why does Batiuk keep doing this?

Because, as a writer, in order to sustain interest in a character of a different culture beyond the initial introduction you have to make them deeper than their surface level identity. You have to give them goals, interests, and problems that aren’t related to them being black, or asian, or middle-eastern. And you have to be able to understand both the parts of the character that are different from you, and the parts that are the same. Star Trek TNG and DS9 were great at this. Worf was Klingon. Quark was Ferengi. Riker was a slut. But all of them had more going on than just their species.

But in the Funkyverse only a very select few are allowed to have unique personalities different from Tom’s. And most of those are muted hold-overs from Act I, like Cindy’s vanity or Dinkle’s ego. I don’t think when Batiuk sits down to write the next pointless Westview student body he’ll be saying, ‘This one will be fiery and intelligent but too brash, and interested in sports and action. This one will be level headed, but often hesitant and aloof, and interested in music and poetry. And this one will be Captain Kirk.’

He just decides which cheap flash clone of his own brain will be the nerdiest nerd.

In other news, I guess Westview did still have a mall in Act II. At least through 2002. Because Lisa and Lin go shopping there on Super Bowl Sunday.

Worming Out of the Bait Shop

Link to Today’s Strip.

Whooo boy! Y’all are getting spicy in the comments! Not at each other, which is just a beautiful thing to see. But at Batiuk’s gutless little morality play. Which puts me in a weird spot, because while I think this all is bad and stupid and cheap and self-serving. I don’t find it uniquely infuriating.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in the 90’s, when this sort of cheap pandering to social issues was omnipresent? But I’m guessing that stretches back into the 80’s and earlier. There has never been a time in my life where I haven’t been blandly preached at by media makers looking to mould my young mind and make a few bucks off of the process.

Many of you in the comments are baffled as to why Batiuk had Malcolm move the sweater. This muddles the issue by giving Kashier Klerk Karen a kernel of something to base her suspicion on. Why is Batiuk giving her this out? Epicus thinks this was to keep the K.K. Karen from doing or saying anything overtly racist and thus invite controversy. And he might be right.

I have a different take. When I was poking around doing my ‘shopping while black’ research, I stumbled across a YouTube video. It had been put together by a young black man filming himself in stores to catch cashiers following him around. He walks around the store with his phone held out in front of him loudly talking about the cashiers and where they are. Then he calls out and laughs at the cashiers who are surreptitiously keeping an eye on him.

Most of the comments were people apologizing, commiserating, and laughing. But a few pointed out that, by having his phone out, he was probably raising the suspicions of clerks. Some even pointed out several tiktok memes that had involved filming yourself doing stuff in stores, and wondered if the clerks were on the look out for that.

We saw that Karen deKlerk, (Kudos to William Thompson for that,) was giving these two the stink-eye the second they walked in. Malcolm, angry at being treated like whatever the “…” trail off was supposed to signify, decides to bait her. For the very first time since he’s been introduced he acts like a stupid teenager.

Batiuk is actually saying something much more likely to get him in trouble than just having the Karen the Krazy Kleptospotter be overtly loudly racist. He’s saying that provoking a confrontation is wrong. That Malcolm’s anger is justified, but his actions are not. He is opening himself up to a whole army of people calling him out on ‘tone policing’ from his privileged position; people who think that the color of your skin, or your gender, or your place of origin bars you from commentary.

Kommadant Karen is not going to change in this story, she’s just a bitter force of nature ala Roberta Blackburn. Malcolm is going to change through the interventions of wise old Cayla. And Cayla is the mouthpiece of Batiuk.

If people other than us were actually paying attention, Batiuk could get in trouble for daring to preach at young blacks.

Some would say that he shouldn’t do this because he’s white.

I would say he shouldn’t do this because he’s really really bad at it.

Getting Heavy Here.

Link to Today’s Strip.

Yup, like I said yesterday. Conflict is over. On to the fallout.

And, just like the first strip of my shift where Malcolm asked Logan out, today we’re given a reaction from Cayla that would seem normal, human, and understandable. If this one day existed in a vacuum. Which is in stark contrast to yesterday where, as Banana Jr 6000 pointed out, no one acted like a normal human being.

Today shows realistic empathy, concern, and compassion on Cayla’s part. And also a certain motherly wisdom with ice cream bribes. Offering food activates a primal, bond-building part of every human’s brain. Unfortunately, this is all in service of these three sitting down together so we can spend the rest of the week blandly talking about racism.

This entire arc is a slap in the face. Tim Negoda style. Just as Batiuk was about to shove these two kids he had hardly bothered to name down the memory hole, he realizes he can use them for their race. And then he drags Cayla into this. Cayla who, in the nearly fourteen years since her introduction, has yet to have a single arc to herself that wasn’t about Les Moore. She gets to be here now, because he made Cayla black. Something that, up to this moment, was only used for a single throwaway joke.

People have pointed out, numerous times, how Cayla’s ethic characteristics have been leached from her over the years, leading to the nickname CauCayla. Though, this really was only a visual bleaching.

*Lighter tone. Maybe this was done for how it appeared in newsprint?*

*She tries dreads or braids when competing with Susan for Les’ attention.*

*Right after this love confession goes south, she decides on a hair change.*

*For this scene, where they both confess love, her hair is covered. It could be that she’s combed out her braids or dreads and is deeply moisturizing to prepare it for relaxing.*

I call this a visual bleaching, because Cayla herself really hasn’t changed in personality, goals, or interests. She’s black, but she’s never been portrayed as culturally different. Some of you noticed this.

Speaking of Derek, he was one of the guys, but he was cool and had his own style. Junebug, who came along later, had spunk and did things her way. These characters were black, and Batty had the balls to write them that way. They were unique and believable. That brings us to Logan Church and Thatsnought Hewmore. All the black characters in the class of 2022 act exactly like the white characters. Awkward, glasses-wearing, brainy, wimpy white nerds. *Yawn*
be ware of eve hill

I’m going to start throwing around the words culture and race. Of course, the definition of these two words and their very reality as concepts is constantly being changed and bickered over by social scientists trying to earn their paychecks and gatekeep intelligent conversation by changing the rules faster than Calvinball. But for the purpose of this week I’m going to say race derives from the place of origin of your ancestors and culture is the way of life of a group of people.

For the purposes of this discussion. Race is immutable. You cannot change who your biological parents were. Culture is given to you as a child by the people around you. As you get older you can keep what you’re given, or change it by your behavior and who you choose to associate with.

Just like any racial group in America there are all kinds of black cultures, subcultures, and expressions. There are plenty of black people who are just like Cayla, Logan, Malcolm, and Principal Nate. That they exist, and act this way, isn’t a problem.

But there’s not a single non-white character currently in Funky Winkerbean who acts culturally different from the main cast. Even Adeela, a first generation immigrant, doesn’t act appreciably different.

In vintage FW Derek and Junebug were subtly different, both in the way they dressed AND the way they spoke. But nowadays portraying a character of a different culture can be a dangerous game. Where one person sees as an accurate representation, another person will puff up with outrage at a harmful stereotype. There’s the general consensus that some stereotypes are off limits to outsiders. A white person couldn’t, and probably shouldn’t, be writing something like The Boondocks.

But before you get to a Key and Peele sketch on Civil War Reenactors, there is a massive field of grey where a thousand people with ten thousand agendas are scribbling all over trying to make their line the line no one crosses. Apu gets cancelled. Ben gets taken off his box of rice. Everyone has a big old twitter meltdown over if a white woman should have written The Help. They yell if everyone is the same race. They yell if a culture is portrayed wrong. And what ‘wrong’ is is undefinable and ever changing.

And you know what is safe? You know what is easy? Visual diversity with cultural homogeneity. Race without culture.

It’s also boring, unchallenging, and it only tackles one type of prejudice, while potentially leaving the other standing tall.

If you look at this week’s premise it’s easy to come away saying, “Racism is bad because we are all the same inside.” Malcolm and Logan are ‘good kids’ just like any other kids in Westview. They dress the same, act the same, talk the same.

But what happens when people aren’t just the same? When they’re louder or quieter, colder or warmer? When they dress different, act different, talk different? When they value different things? Those are all learned behaviors, but they are also all choices. And so the previous way of thinking can make a person viciously prejudiced. Because these people can choose to believe something else and they don’t deserve respect until they do!

Real diversity isn’t a bunch of people who all look different and think the same. But Batiuk has only very rarely even attempted to tackle a cultural divide.

Down the Escalator.

Link to Today’s Strip.

Whooo boy, today is a parade of crazy, rage eyes. You’d think someone had put a greasy slice of Montoni’s finest atop a priceless Starbuck Jones issue.

Cayla says we all know what is going on… but do we? Why is the cashier still grabbing after Logan’s bag if the sweater is accounted for? Why doesn’t Logan just let her look inside and then skewer the suspicious sourpuss with righteous innocence? Why are all of them risking an assault charge over this? This reedy, prim, Maris Rogers faced clerk doesn’t look like the kind to physically attack or restrain potential shoplifters. It isn’t like they’re being accused of pocketing oxytetracycline from the Farm and Supply and 6-foot Davis from the stock room is gonna tackle and hog-tie them.

Cayla says they can escalate things, but that is such a lie. None of these characters are capable of escalating things. Not only are they Batiuk creations in the Funkyverse, but they are, at best, tertiary characters. This is the most negative emotion we’ve seen any of them ever convey. And now it’s done. Off to fume and muse and pout.

Batiuk burnt himself out on melodrama decades ago and now the precious few strong negative emotional moments he can muster are reserved for his A-tier. If Linda Bushka didn’t get to break down sobbing at her husband’s degenerative disease and suicide, if Adeela stoically faced deportation with nothing more than a concerned look, if Marianne blithely listened to Les blather about his dead wife while Hollywood burned in the background…then you don’t get to escalate this.

The Charlie Brown Cosplay Caper.

Link to this Sunday’s Very Special Episode of Funky Winkerbean.

Most of you in the comments seemed okay with me at least touching on the subject of this arc.

*I wish the subject of this arc was this amazing article of clothing*…

What Batiuk wants this week to be about is racial profiling and ‘shopping while black’. Which is why Cayla, of all people, has been called in to interfere. (At least her being at the mall fits one of her two known character traits.)

Racial profiling in retail is, of course, a real thing that does happen. Like this case in Missouri in 2018 where cops were called on three black teens shopping for prom because a customer had accused them of shoplifting. The teens calmly let the officers check their bags and receipts and were let go. (The store later formally apologized.) So I’m not going to argue with Batiuk that what he’s depicting today is something that never happens. This isn’t a legal immigrant with a pro-bono lawyer on her side being deported immediately without recourse only to be saved by Bill Clinton.

But today is extremely muddled, because it isn’t clear that the cashier is racially motivated.

When I’m not working on the world’s ugliest tan, I work part time at a gas station to earn fun money for robot conventions and my raging caffeine addiction. During my shift, I am the only cashier in the store, and I have to watch for shoplifters. You know who I watch for? Kids.

And I won’t even be egalitarian about it. I’m especially sharp-eyed, right or wrong, when it’s a group of three or more boys between the ages of 12 and 16 unaccompanied by an adult. The only people I watch closer than a group of unchaperoned adolescents, are the few poor ghost people every town has, no matter how small. Scraggly familiar faces, just coming down off a high, who scrape together cans and change for just enough to self-medicate their demons with high-gravity beer and bargain cigarettes.

Is this kind of profiling wrong? I don’t know. Maybe. I try not to be too harsh with it. I try to joke with the kids, and smile kindly at the tweaked out.

But nothing puts me on guard faster than the kid who is always looking over his shoulder to see if I am watching THEM. That’s when I watch them even closer. And I have seen, many times, that my stare makes the kids act weirder. And I’ve known in the back of my head, that maybe they never were intending to fill their pockets with Twinkies. That maybe they’re acting weirder now simply because I’m watching them.

So what do we have here? Actual racial profiling, or a feedback loop of suspicious stares?

If Batiuk wanted to make this clear, he failed. Big surprise. But I’m guessing in most real cases of this scenario there isn’t someone shouting slurs and saying, “You people!”

But if Batiuk wanted to leave it ambiguous, to tackle the issue as it really is: Where it’s often unclear where racism ends and justified surveillance and suspicion begins… well, that might be a bit too ambitious for old Tom here.

He should just go back to thugs nonsensically hating on Chinese food.

Another story that appeared in 1997 was inspired by a completely different source. A Vietnamese couple had moved to our town and opened a restaurant on the site of a former Red Barn. Cathy and I enjoyed stopping in there, and one time while waiting for an order, I read a yellowed newspaper article that was framed on the wall by the door. It told of the young couple’s escape by boat from Vietnam and the harrowing journey they undertook facing pirates and being stranded and abandoned at sea until finally making it to a hoped-for life of freedom in the United States. I started getting some ideas for a story. One of the advantages of getting ahead on the strip like I had at that juncture was I could take the time to let an idea have a longer gestation period. I could keep rolling it over in my mind, examining all of the facets and considering various possibilities until I felt it was ready. And when it was, a young Chinese couple moved into the space next door to Montoni’s and opened a restaurant called the Jade Dragon West. Zhang Li and his wife Liu Lin were political dissidents from Hong Kong who, fearing a crackdown when Great Britain handed Hong Kong back over to China, made the decision to escape to America. They met their good neighbors Tony Montoni and Funky Winkerbean, but soon the couple also experienced the racism that lurks in the American shadows. In the course of telling their story, I made use of a number of elements of the tale I found in the yellowed newspaper clipping (I seriously doubt if that would have happened with Grubhub, and I’m glad that the nascent internet hadn’t grown big enough to ruin that opportunity for me). Go out to dinner . . . come home with a story. Nice when life works that way.
From The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 9