I was asked my opinion of this strangely engrossing drawing titled “Man Thru History”. It’s one of those huge multi-paneled works with lots of little details that draw your eye in—I looked everywhere for Waldo but couldn’t find him. Anyway, here’s one panel out of 23:
While the details are fun to pore over, I can’t say that I’m impressed with it overall. There are too many distortions.
- Start with the title: “Man thru history”. That’s actually accurate, in a sense. It’s an illustration of a particular man’s perception of history.
- While most of the figures are just standing, men are either committing violence, having violence done to them, or having sex. The only active women are having sex.
- There’s an awful lot of pink. Should it have been titled “White Man Thru History”?
- Everyone is conventionally attractive: slender, curvy women and muscular, athletic men. They’re also all clean and youthful. Where’s the variation in body type and age and race?
- It’s actually not very representative. There should be more people suffering from disease, more women the target of violence, and lots of dead babies.
Anyway, it’s got next to nothing to do with history. Maybe it should have been titled “Comic book artist practices figure drawing.”
It’s off topic (sort of), but have you seen this really interesting website – http://www.geocentricity.com/
“This site is devoted to the historical relationship between the Bible and astronomy. It assumes that whenever the two are at variance, it is always astronomy–that is, our “reading” of the “Book of Nature,” not our reading of the Holy Bible–that is wrong. History bears consistent witness to the truth of that stance.”
I like it: also there a are a few active women dancing and about the variation in age: look at line six! Socrates (an old man) is molesting a boy! And there are some people of different races… being killed by white men and being enslaved.
:(
I’m sad now.
If you look at the whole sequence, it resembles the line at the Renaissance Fair. Except with a little more sex and a little less violence.
And less obesity. I guess they didn’t have giant turkey legs and monster cookies in the real good ol’ days.
I very strongly suspect these drawing are by Manara, a famous erotica author. The slender legs-up-to-navel type or women is quite typical, and so is the coloring.
So I suspect it’s more about sex than historical accuracy, and the point of wiew is clearly of the Occident :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Manara
http://www.milomanara.it/
Furthermore, the posting is done without any kind of credits of references, and I suspect the title “man thru history” wasn’t the original one.
Yeah, it’s Milo Manara all right. I enjoy his art, but accuracy isn’t something he’s interested in. I wound up getting rid of a graphic novel he did because his pictures of corn showed one ear growing from the tip of the stalk and it got on my nerves… His real claim to fame? Asses.
What’s the deal with the cow/bull in the last frame? No animals elsewhere, so why put one in the modern times?
By costume-period clues, it seems only to bracket the portion of history when religious myths were forged and honed. We still have the myths but have upgraded the togas and chariots.
A very incomplete picture.
The bleeding bull, represents the new “animal rights” I guess.
The bleeding bull, represents the new “animal rights” I guess.
Yes, and also all of these figures seem to be made up of lines and pigments, instead of being real people.
I don’t understand why everyone is so critical of this picture; it seems to be a playful commentary on man’s inhuman progress, that’s all. I would understand the outcry if this was displayed in a museum, but I mean, come ON!
Yes, it’s not a representation of all humanity.
Yes, there are inaccuracies, heck, even the clothes are probably not right.
But no, these don’t stop it from effectively conveying its message. NO artwork is 100% honest to reality.
I thought the bull was meant to represent the ‘bullish’ stock market, and it bleeding was the crash in the late ’80s.
Time and again I’m amazed at the under-developed senses of humor around here. Whether it’s a complete blindness to satire, a tendency to take humorists literally, or the inability to recognize a joke after it’s taken a chunk out of your ass.
It’s MAN Thru History because it’s the history of MALES. That’s the joke. It’s not trying to depict “Humanity Thru History.” The women are supposed to be nothing more than sex objects and eye candy. Again, that’s the joke.
“The Websense category “Tasteless” is filtered.”
heh. awesome
I think the dying bull is a reference to Apocalypse Now and hence Vietnam.
Note how well-shaved those prehistoric women were.
What’s really disturbing are the avatars of some of the commenters over there…yikes
Yeah, we definitely didn’t need a rendering of “The March of Progress, Part II (now with more boobs!)”
“The women are supposed to be nothing more than sex objects and eye candy.”
Yeah, because that’s so different than any other bit of media we see on a daily basis.
It’s hilarious! If hilarious means tedious and vapid.
Interesting that no one is shown taking a dump. I’m guessing we probably do that, oh, maybe twice as often as we get laid.
Good thing you’re here, Max–maybe you can explain this for us.
Because I personally don’t get why an article on PTSD in female vets requires the photographs of the women to be posed like cheesecake, in contrast to photos of male vets. But since you clearly get the joke where women are nothing more than sex objects and eye candy, perhaps you could explain it to us in a little more detail? Then we could all share a laugh, if you explain it right.
I was mad that everyone kept calling it a depiction of human evolution. It’s even worse a depiction of evolution than it is of human history. My bet is the author just wanted to say “all we humans ever do, and have ever done, is have sex and kill each other,” which is totally accurate. (/sarcasm)
I think of it as a WPA mural that got out of hand. As I recall, the cafeteria at the L.A. Natural History museum had a wall-sized depiction of the settlement of California. The painting was so dull that nobody would have noticed if it showed a Franciscan schtupping a Mitwok in the backgound. Lotsa stylistic similarities to this effort.
Darnit, Cleek beat me to it!
And Max Udargo, just because someone else thinks something’s funny doesn’t mean anyone has to agree. There’s lots of “jokes” that are “meant” to be funny, but are offensive to people. But you know what? I bet you’re one of those guys who makes the offensive jokes, and then gets all upset when nobody thinks it’s funny, and then probably (just guessing here) calls them all a bunch of humorles liberals, or maybe feminazis, or ooh — overly PC hippies. Luckily, you’re not in charge of what people get to find offensive, and you’re not in charge of humor. So there’s that.
Yeah, this is Milo Manara’s Bolero. Or most of it, anyway. I think there are some bits missing.
This is a fine piece by Manara, as many have already discovered. The point of the piece is, however, a sarcastic take on the traditional “historical timeline” or “history of man” portrayal that took this kind of strip form (I’m a historian, and I’ve seen plenty of these things over the years in 19th and early 20th century textbooks.) This used to be a kind of standard form for this sort of thing, and contained all the racist, sexist, etc. assumptions many here have read into it.
I don’t think, given Manara’s general work (erotic to pornographic, mostly very loosely based on legendary themes like his current work on the story of Pandora) that you can say he’s really that kind of guy (yes, he has that typical sexism of many men, but that’s not quite what we’re talking about here.) It helps when you know that the original title was “‘Evolution’ of Man” and was meant to convey how little we’ve changed over the centuries. Manara portrays us still killing, raping, enslaving, oppressing, etc. right on down to the present as a counter to the kind of Social Darwinism nonsense that the original kind of this timeline so unconsciously (or even consciously) accepted. That’s why everyone is so lily white (except those being oppressed or killed) and women are little more than sex or procreation objects in this portrayal. It’s an essential part of the sarcasm.
So cut Manara a break here, no matter how inaccurate this otherwise is in a historical sense (let’s just say that there are a few recognizable civilizations that are a bit out of place and leave it at that.) History (and biology) weren’t his subjects here at all. It was our own social failure to grow up and stop doing these things that he’s really addressing here. It’s subtle sarcasm to be sure, but none the less effective for that.
It’s “Adolescent Boy Daydreams through Mediocre World History Class.” Interesting age structure: one baby, one small child, everyone else post-pubescent. We get Egypt, some generic middle eastern empire, then everything else is western European or New World. There are the weird non-western fashion show panels, but the people there aren’t even doing any sex & violence–and the only colonialism we see seems to be the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Still, why didn’t our adolescent boy at least notice the Black Death?
#23
I think that this interpretation is reasonable.
Seems much more plausible than Max’s to me. But maybe that’s just because Max started out insulting everyone and made his arguments less effective.
I feel the same, his art and manuscripts can be both interesting and repulsive. His strong women manipulate men with sexuality, he can pervert physiognomies (for example his Aztecs here) and glorify violence (for example his burning woman here). It is a ride, and as often disgusting as beautiful.
If his intentions is to be individual and memorable, I think he is somewhat successful.
I feel the same, his art and manuscripts can be both interesting and repulsive. His strong women manipulate men with sexuality, he can pervert physiognomies (for example his Aztecs here) and glorify violence (for example his burning woman here). It is a ride, and as often disgusting as beautiful.
If his intentions is to be individual and memorable, I think he is somewhat successful.
I think the correct title would be “History of Western Civilization”. You see nothing of any of the other great civilizations (China, Japan, etc.). Africans and Americans are only portrayed when they are getting the crap kicked out of them. Muslims show up to be killed by the the Crusaders and then exact revenge as terrorists. It is very familiar to us white folks, but I imagine it would be seen differently in other parts of the world.
“That’s why everyone is so lily white (except those being oppressed or killed)”
The same flaw is present in both triumphalist Western-centric history and what is too often the standard critique of it – nonwhites have no agency, except as brutish savages to be crushed or noble victims to be oppressed. In this hazy morality play, these Arcadian nonwesterners do not have stratified societies of their own, no indigenous imperialism, no slave trade networks, no nature-despoiling technologies (e.g. the Chief Seattle speech hoax), no social-climbing shopkeepers, no quasi-capitalist systems, no domination of other nations, ethnicities, or castes.
It’s always a morality play about us – that is, Western Civilization. The lesson of the commentary is either ‘Look at how amazing we are, marching forward, casting aside or civilizing benighted peoples’ or ‘Shame on us – look at how wicked we are compared to the wonderful nonwestern peoples in Edenic harmony with each other and nature.’ In either case, only Westerners have agency – and a story – and nonwestern people are reduced to static caricatures. Or more precisely, projections of our fears or desires.
The objective of the ‘noble savage’ genre – whether produced by ancient Greek historians, French leisure class intellectuals, or Utopian social philosophers – is always to editorialize about the shortcomings of Western societies, never really to understand other peoples or the complexity of world history. Often, nonwestern peoples, especially non-state peoples, are insultingly reduced to pacifistic, primeval communist, proto-Burning Man types.
The more we understand nonwestern peoples, the more we realize that many features – both good and bad – that we conceive of as being uniquely Western are actually universal, or at least widespread. This is especially true of the would-be world power civilizations – East Asia, South Asia, the Islamic world. (In the case of the Islamic World, we see a very close sibling, with a partially shared history – faith, intellectual, technological, and political traditions etc.)
More like “The History of White Colonial Western Heterosexual Imperialism”….
“It’s hilarious! If hilarious means tedious and vapid.”
I was just pointing out the joke. I didn’t say it was a GOOD joke.
“But since you clearly get the joke where women are nothing more than sex objects and eye candy, perhaps you could explain it to us in a little more detail? Then we could all share a laugh, if you explain it right.”
Again, it’s not my joke. And I never said it was a good joke. But I can see it is a joke, and I can deal with it and dismiss it as a joke without using it as an excuse for knee-jerk outrage as if I’m shocked to discover some adolescent comic artists objectifying women.
An article in the NY Times about women vets suffering from PTSD is something else, though. However, I don’t see the “glamor” in the photo being discussed in your link. I think the idea was to capture the woman looking pensive and worried because she doesn’t want to go back to Iraq. I don’t see any sex in that picture, only pain.
And the other examples aren’t very convincing either. I don’t see the “dainty” angles and “ballerina-like” twists of the ankles. I just see women posing for photographs looking worried and hurt.
But some people love outrage. In fact, outrage is all the rage these days. So instead of focusing on the very real and disturbing problems raised by the NYT piece, we indulge our narcissistic impulse to make it all about us. All about our offended righteousness.
“I bet you’re one of those guys who makes the offensive jokes, and then gets all upset when nobody thinks it’s funny, and then probably (just guessing here) calls them all a bunch of humorles liberals, or maybe feminazis, or ooh — overly PC hippies.”
Nope. Wrong on all counts. I’m a liberal and a feminist and probably would have been a hippie if I were a few years older. But enjoy the outrage. You’re welcome.
There are sites devoted to that – and the combination of the two too. Here’s a page from one to which I happened to refer someone just the other day:
http://www.toilet-related-ailments.com/childbirth.html
All that sex and not one gay coupling. I call shenanigans.
Nice comment, Colugo.
Now, Max:
Joke? What joke? That’s the reality.
I get your point, Max – that the artist was making a point – but if, as even you admit, it’s not a very good joke why are we supposed to laugh? Why is our collective sense of humor underdeveloped if we don’t laugh at a bad joke?
Would not this be a sign of a more highly developed sense of humor? That is, to be able to tell the difference between a good (clever, pithy, inventive, telling, hilarious, whatever) joke and a thinly-wrought social/historic comment on the violent imperial and patriarchal history of Western Man, conveyed in part through the oh-so-ironic inclusion of idealized pin-up girls as sperm receptacles, all rendered by an artist whose entire career is built on the shallow objectification of women as lithsome or voluptuous sex objects?
I don’t see satire there. If the artist is satirizing anything, it’s his own oeuvre. Otherwise I agree with Stwriley’s take.
I’m not outraged. I’m not offended. It is what it is. In the broadest possible terms, Humanity has been Woman’s work, while History, in all its glory and brutatily, has been is Man’s. Manara’s piece captures that, without the benefit of subtlety or the burden of pretension. So on that level anyway, I guess I agree with Max and Stwriley.
But it’s really not a very serious work, and I don’t find that it demands much serious thought or emotion from me as a viewer. My reaction to it, in a nutshell:
“Oh yeah – this.”
Jeez, youse guys. “Why are all Manara’s women slender and white?” Why do all the characters in Peanuts have big round heads? Why do the characters in Doonesbury all have those peculiar long, rectangular noses? Why does Garfield talk incessantly? Cats can’t talk! Because they’re cartoons!
But you did say the sense of humor around here was underdeveloped. So why is our not finding a not-good joke–which is isomorphic to other ubiquitous forms of sexism* in our culture–not funny somehow indicative of an underdeveloped sense of humor on our parts, rather than just the failure of a not-particularly-good joke?
* perhaps you are right, and there is nothing sexist about the way the women were photographed for the article, compared to the way men are photographed for similar pieces. Perhaps it is entirely coincidental that all the women in that piece are posed in glamor shots that have nothing to do with PTSD, while men aren’t, and that the eye candy aspect, while isomorphic to your identified “joke”, really has nothing to do with it at all. Since you are so certain the null hypothesis is correct, what was your p-value in determining that?
I’m disappointed that it turns out to be satire.
I’ve only got a few more adjustments to make on my time machine and was totally stoked about cave women having shaved legs.
I wound up getting rid of a graphic novel he did because his pictures of corn showed one ear growing from the tip of the stalk and it got on my nerves…
Might that have been teosinte and not maize? Teosinte is the ancestor of maize, and it actually does grow only one ear from the top of the stalk, I believe.
It’s still a fairly common crop – often by accident, since it looks so much like maize – throughout Central America.
Am I just sheltered? I didn’t remember so much double-penetration action in the 15th century.
Well you know what they say: if you can remember the 15th century, you probably weren’t there…
Don’t know jack about the artist, but this piece screams satire to me.
This is obviously a satire because any accurate historical depiction would have had considerably more anal sex.
The burning question remains: does Milo Manara provide better evidence for Evolution or Intelligent Design?
Probably evolution, since his drawing of the space suit, a prime piece of intelligently designed technology, is horrible.
“I wound up getting rid of a graphic novel he did because his pictures of corn showed one ear growing from the tip of the stalk and it got on my nerves…
Might that have been teosinte and not maize? Teosinte is the ancestor of maize, and it actually does grow only one ear from the top of the stalk, I believe.
It’s still a fairly common crop – often by accident, since it looks so much like maize – throughout Central America.”
Hey, Chet
I doubt it was teosinte. The setting was Colonial New England and the ears of maize were the size and shape of sweet corn from the grocery store… Remember, this is the same guy who did the illustration for a Marxist adaption of the Chinese folk novel Voyage to the West, based on an Aurthur Waley translation that covered less than a quarter of the original material. Fun, but laaaazy. As I said, I enjoy his work, but it’s kind of, uh, intellectually unambitious. Is that the correct term? I’ve never met the man, so I’m reluctant to say ‘booty-obsessed dumbshit.’ And to be fair, it would be unusual for a genuine dummy to achieve his level of draftsmanship. I guess I’ll settle for intellectually unambitious.