today's pick is the Constitution Illustrated by R Sikoryak. Published by Drawn & Quarterly in 2020.
Content note for american exceptionalism.
While I've been sort of intrigued by the concept behind Sioryak's work over the years, I finally decided to pick this particular title up because I felt like (given current events) ragging on the constitution a bit. Even if it took me several more weeks and many headlines to actually make the time to finish this mental dump. I will also be reviewing this volume, but if you can't take me not liking the american constitution I suggest you move along, although hate watching, down voting and leaving negative comments boosts me in the algorithm just as good as anything else I suppose. Do what you will.
Keywords that came to mind reading this very compact volume: Diversity washing, comics history, copy and paste.
The publisher's summary (minus a short bit about all his other works) is "[Sikoryak] employs his magic yet again to investigate the very framework of the country with Constitution Illustrated. By visually interpreting the complete text of the supreme law of the land with more than a century of American pop culture icons, Sikoryak distills the very essence of the government legalese from the abstract to the tangible, the historical to the contemporary.
Among Sikoryak’s spot-on unions of government articles and amendments with famous comic-book characters: the Eighteenth Amendment that instituted prohibition is articulated with Homer Simpson running from Chief Wiggum; the Fourteenth Amendment that solidifies citizenship to all people born and naturalized in the United States is personified by Ms. Marvel; and, of course, the Nineteenth Amendment offering women the right to vote is a glorious depiction of Wonder Woman breaking free from her chains. American artists from George Herriman (Krazy Kat) and Charles Schulz (Peanuts) to Raina Telgemeier (Sisters) and Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For) are homaged, with their characters reimagined in historical costumes and situations.
We the People has never been more apt."
Before digging into what I thought of the writing and art I would like to highlight that I really really really am a huge fan of graphic nonfiction and its potential to help people understand complex topics more easily via visual language. And while the summary I just read tries to say that this volume does that well, I would like to argue that it is at most a very shallow rendering. Because nothing about this book made anything about the constitution of the so called united states of america any easier to understand, and I truly feel like it was actually more difficult to understand being broken up like it was between so many tiny pages that were mostly illustration.
Even trying to integrate the timeline of how the current constitution came together over the past 200+ years, instead of tucking it way back in the final pages, would have been mildly helpful.
As it is, Sikoryak thinks he's doing some sort of heavy lifting by juxtapositioning lines from the constitution and vaguely related comic book icons. Albeit skillfully rendered on a technical proficiency level.
Some pages felt particularly egregious when one is not a fan of Hamilton's style of diversity washing the so called founding fathers. Did you know that Toni Morrison hated the musical Hamilton and helped fund the production of a play entitled "The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda"? If not, I suggest you look into it.
Moving onto the constitution itself... Actually I don't know what to say. Because honestly, to the average person who I imagine watching this video who may not have realized that the constitution is not going to protect us. I don't really want to be rude to you and I am certainly not gloating.
As far as I know nothing in my star chart says anything about how perfectly they aligned in order to inoculate me from patriotism. But they somehow did. I've never been good at keeping a diary but I probably believed in some sort of american exceptionalism at some point, but that was a long time ago if at all. I honestly feel lucky, because it's certainly not something based on me being better or smarter then anyone else. But here we are. All cats are beautiful and all that jazz.
I'm going to make some statements now. Conclusions that I have come to over the years and you can agree with me or not. I don't have any receipts because I'm only now trying to collect them when I find myself learning new things. Thank you Obsidian. These ideas are certainly not unique to me, but I feel like saying them. I might let people disagree in the comments I might not. The youtube comments sections on my videos have never been a free speech zone that's for sure. Because I don't actually believe in free speech lol. But that's another video I've been meaning to make for years...
Anyway:
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People who used to talk about going back to the original meaning of the founding fathers when it came to interpreting the constitution were almost never actually engaging in good faith. It was just words they could string together to sound smart, patriotic and get their way. I suspect that much is pretty obvious at this point.
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The idea that the american constitution is the best is the stupidest idea on planet earth. So many constitutions have been created and amended since the american one. It is a ludicrous idea that none of them improved on the concept at all.
Point 2.5 would be if you've never engaged with any of those other constitutions, go check one out. You might learn something about a place other then so called america. most of which manage to survive without free speech don't ya know.
- Biden trying to say that the Equal Rights Amendment was ratified in basically the last ten minutes of his presidency was the dumbest attempt to salvage a legacy any of us has probably ever seen. I didn't think I could be madder at Biden at that point but he really went above and beyond in this very limited useless case.
- The American revolution was instigated so a slightly different ruling class could take more land from Indigenous people and keep owning slaves. It should never have happened.
- class reductionist accelerationists gleefully dancing over the present and future graves of poor, queer and disabled folx just because the president is dismantling the american empire in the most self-destructing way possible are still (as you might have guessed already from my word choices) some of my least favourite people.
- Go burn a flag or something.
And with that, I guess I shall wrap up this very unusual review. Apologies to people watching this at some point close to its original publication as my posting is very sporadic. What can I say, there are many IRL things to be doing and never enough time in the day to do them all. But don't worry, the likelihood of my next video being more of the norm and nothing like whatever you call this mess is statistically very high.
Take care and remember all colonial settler states are a lie.
