Havelka[1]
by Marty Steven
Marianne: Ah, affirmative, the man's an artist. I viewed the art. Havelka let me have one of his pictures.
Eddy: To what things are they similar?
Marianne: The pictures are unusual, in reality. (Marianne gestures at a gibbon drawing upon the interior.) Unlike this, I inform thee.
Eddy: Not a bit incorrect in this drawing. Obtained the thing from the home of my mother's mother pursuant to her passing; yeah, really as the old woman was in the process of passing. Monkey on a chifferobe. Mist. Pulchritudinous.
Hawking: This I observe not.
Eddy: But describe your insight then, renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking.
Hawking: It is my desire to investigate deeper. Notice that the gibbon is drawn large, dominating the furniture and climate. Therefore I intake "the might of the large beings above the environment." To myself, the significance is what infuses the painting with virtue.
Bastion: [dismissive] By Jove! Gibbon. Chifferobe. Mist. Punctuation.
Spaneesh: Trouble exists.
Hawking: How?
Spaneesh: Hell, to this girl it appears that when you rate a drawing only by what it signifies, a lousy drawing would be just as great as a well-drawn drawing if they signify similarly.
Hawking: Females!
The selection above raises an interesting question, but Hawking’s reaction is even more telling. If art is important only insofar as it means something, then what does it matter whether art is expertly or ineptly done? Does not a given statement carry the same truth-value whether it is written sloppily or in beautiful calligraphy?
Hawking reacts to Spaneesh’s question with dismissive name-calling. He somehow knows that poorly drawn pictures are worse than well-drawn ones, but he can give no reason why it should be so. If he hadn’t acted dismissively, the questioning might have gone further: if art’s only value is in meaning something, how is it superior to a simple statement of the intended meaning?
Clearly, if an artists intends only to communicate some clear message, he/she needn’t be concerned over minute imperfections (like distracting word repetitions). But, if an artist intends only to communicate some clear message, he/she might as well write it down. A drawing of a gibbon that signifies "the might of the large beings above the environment" could easily be replaced by the statement, "The might of the large beings above the environment."
Of course, great art rarely has as its subject a single message, and the messages it does contain are rarely clear. Pokey the Penguin works with bad drawing because its characters are largely iconic; in any given comic, Pokey the Penguin might represent a certain philosophy, Mr.Nutty might represent the bourgeoisie, or Skeptopotamus might represent gangster rap. In such cases, they characters do not need to be detailed or beautiful. They are part of Pokey’s basic grammar, and communicate ideas as directly as words. Pokey the Penguin succeeds with poor artwork because of the meaning of its characters and environs; however, its messages could not be replaced by simple statements, as they are often ambiguous, mysterious, or inexpressible outside the Pokey grammar.
Instructions on how to understand two Pokey strips[2]
by June Cortazone
My Brain Is Swelling (191)
This comic depicts a sudden ascension to the intellect of the genius. Very rarely has the cynicism of an artist portrayed more hatefully mankind's absurd longing for knowledge; missing from the comic are the envious millions, Skeptopotamus emits dull radiance in the barren embrace of the arctic wasteland, while the agent of punishment come to catalyze the downfall awaits happily the foolishness of genius. It is superfluous to explain that the agent is the colorfully garbed penguin presenting himself as a friend, naming himself Wally Wonka, jester of jesters, while the true friend, Pokey, is elsewhere (and as we have seen, has already met with genius).
The man in Skeptopotamus' thrall is Scott McCloud, or maybe the public. Of the coriacious confection most have said it represents the endless search for meaning in a nihilistic world; but the confection is never seen and reminds some of the very concept of nihilism, or a ping-pong paddle.
Nothing To Salvage (369)
King Minos thought he saw in this comic a confession of treason. The geometer, the colleagues, the obscene block of pewter that pretends to be a computer, and the image of Miles Johnson fixated on an absent plane where some kung fu battle or Matrix showing might be: Steve Havelka here lied his most terrible truth.
The intense smearing of the faces of the characters has been attributed to the depth of hatred or the urgency of now. The ninja geometer, an aphalic entity, has sterilized them: in its corners lie the mediocrities of the world. Then they realized that they had missed the layered connection among the two enemies of Havelka: Scott Vandehey and Miles Johnson. It is easy to find here the triple-sided symbol of the cube: ninjitsu, geometry, porn. How often Miles Johnson grasped pop icons and twisted them in his caricatures, making them deflate like an Underdog balloon, or a corndog in a microwave. But it was too late and the cube had become the target. Havelka sensed it and hoped it was dying. To create it truly, then, he added Vandehey, symbol of resigned obscurity that will take leftovers from a superstar, Havelka and Johnson at once. But he created the cube in their image, and the pornography humiliates the colleagues; it denigrates the principles of all process. What these creators hold in their hands is the banal faucet from which we all drink occasionally, thirst that we satisfy with other mouths, that flat and pale champagne from which comes Dennis the Menace, Hagar the Horrible, and The Born Loser.
Cortazone’s interpretations are, perhaps, a little stretched. However, I fear that many readers lack the information necessary to understand her allusions. Thus, I here list the pertinent facts concerning Cortazone’s interpretations, and allow you to draw your own conclusions about their relevance.
· “The child in Skeptopotamus’ thrall…” Scott McCloud is the author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. His books attribute to comic books an almost divine status, and his aesthetic theories give much credit to things Steve Havelka despises. In other words, McCloud represents the status quo, which Havelka is eternally resisting.
· “The geometer, the colleagues…” Miles Johnson is the author of Isometric (http://isometric.spaceninja.com/ ), a web-comic hosted by Fojar, the same company that hosts Pokey the Penguin. Scott Vandehey’s Hammerspace (http://hammerspace.fojar.com )is the third and final Fojar comic. Johnson, Vandehey, and Havelka are the operators of Fojar, and all good friends, but Havelka often speaks quite hatefully about the other Fojar comics.
Chao Te Thing
by Luce Shoo
2
When all the world recognizes ugliness as ugliness, this is in itself beautiful.
When all the world recognizes evil as evil, this is in itself good.
Truly, the inept and the adept complement each other.
Sincerity and sarcasm exhibit each other.
Piss-poor and flawless set measure to each other.
Creation and destruction harmonize each other.
Sanctimony and ridicule follow each other.
The old and the new give birth to each other.
Thus, the artist destroys his enemies without compunction,
And promotes new ways without revealing them.
It grants nothing to the lowly things.
It steps on them, but does not scrape them from its shoe.
It creates, but invests no pride in creation.
It creates greatness, but moves quickly onward.
And yet, because it moves quickly onward,
Nobody can step on it.
5
Art-and-truth is not sentimental.
It treats all things as mud bricks.
The artist is not sentimental.
It treats all things as mud bricks.
Between art and truth
there seems to be a funnel.
It is ever-working, yet it is exhaustible.
The more it works, the less comes out of it.
No amount of books can contain it:
Better look for it without.
15
The ancient masters of the past were obvious and rigid, shallow and narrow.
Their art was too simple to be studied.
Because they were simple,
One can describe them vaguely and completely.
Hesitant like one on the edge of a cold pool,
Timid like one afraid of critics and mobs,
Polite and conformed like a newly-wed amidst in-laws,
Yielding like butter in a sauna,
Simple like an Australian rock song,
Hollow like a chocolate rabbit,
Confused like a virgin with a transsexual prostitute.
And yet, who else could begin the evolution
from the muddy to the clear?
Who else could provide the inert from which
Others could animate life?
One who serves the past does not want to know greatness.
But precisely because all are ignorant of greatness,
Others can arise from hidden sprouts
That are not rushed to early ripening.
The Chao Te Thing is an ancient Chinese booklet meant to instruct artists and kings. These selections overlap with the ideas of Rudger Beerglass and Dr. Zinchief. I will emphasize here those ideas that have not yet been discussed, and apply them to Pokey when the connection is unclear.
· 2: This section extols the virtue of recognizing ugliness. Pokey the Penguin does much to expose ugliness, by imitation and parody. More importantly, Pokey is a deconstructive art, and makes no implicit claim to greatness and importance; it displays the mechanisms of irony and humor, often showing how ridiculously simple-minded art can be. Pokey “steps on” other art, but cannot be effectively attacked by others, because it “invests no pride” in itself.
· 5: Beauty cannot be contained by theory; art must hold nothing sacred. The artist should ridicule all things indiscriminately. Furthermore, attempts to represent truth through art are fruitless; the more truth that “goes in”, the less art that comes out; and, oddly enough, vice versa.
·
15: This section describes the evolution of art itself (as
opposed to evolution of the artist, as discussed in Chapter 2). No time frame is
given for these insults to the past; the artists of the past inevitably seem
primitive in future times. The works of the past provide some material and
inspiration to new artists, who will continue the “evolution from the muddy to
the clear.” Artists must experiment in new areas without working in the genres
of the past, although one cannot know a
priori what will work. Accordingly, Pokey the Penguin is a continuing experiment, quite unlike
the efforts of the past, but influenced by its achievements.
Ecclesiastes 1:10
Is there anything of which it is said,
"See, this is new"?
It has been already,
in the ages before us.
At the time that Ecclesiastes was written, the above selection was blatantly false. However, the sentiment seems all-too-true today. The avante garde revolutions of the last century branched out into so many strange mediums and methods that new artistic creations are always assigned to some older category (or a new sub-category of some older category). People tend to resist artists that claim to be new and original, because such claims always fall flat. We have seen everything, heard everything, read everything. What interests people now are creations that are like older works, but larger, or louder, or longer, or funnier, or shorter, or simpler, or slower, etc. “New” ideas are generally bizarre and ugly messes made to appeal to arthouse crowds.
People naturally categorize art according to what they have already experienced, but the recent state of affairs gives us two broad categories: old hat, and artsy-fartsy bullshit. When people see Pokey the Penguin, they cannot explain it, and quickly relegate it to the latter category. It is difficult to appreciate Pokey until one accepts that not everything has be done.
[Editor’s summary: at this point, Watkins revisits every one of the chapters of his book. He assures the reader that he/she has now received a powerful education in Pokey Studies, and is well-equipped to begin novel explorations into the field.
For those of you reading my edition, I can simply say that you have received a light introduction into Pokey Studies, and if you are at interested, you may either purchase Watkins’ unabridged tome or do independent research in the Pokey Archives. However, Pokey the Penguin is, first and foremost, a work of art to be enjoyed; you needn’t study it to enjoy it, nor need you understand every comic to laugh out loud occasionally.]
Pronouns 25:2
It is the glory of Art to conceal things,
but the glory of Woman is to search
things out.
Despite the time I have spent in Pokey Studies, I cannot claim to have uncovered all of the secrets of Pokey the Penguin. Nor do I intend to end my research here. As long is there is more treasure to unearth, I will continue digging. As the Book of Pronouns (so named because so many of its sentences begin with “it”) says, it is the glory of [humans] to search things out.
[1] Steven, Marty (1999). Havelka and Other Plays. Hollywood: Dumpster Grease Inc.
[2] Cortazone, June (2000). His Stories, Day, Crone, Opium, and Farmers. Delaware: Tex Mex Grill.