Friday, August 15, 2008
More hot air about the so called DWA controversy.
:: Posted by max @ 8/15/2008 03:33:00 PM
With all due respect to Robert, and due warning to future commenters. I don't have time to manually post comments for you.
That's why we use an automated blogger system for the site, so I don't have to do things like that. It's password protected so that we don't get spammed to death.
If you want to participate sign up.
And if you waste my time with poorly thought through crap in my Email, If i do anything, it's more likely to be this - post you on the front page of the site to tear it apart.
Don't get your hopes up, not doing it again for this subject. This one time to make a point, USE THE COMMENTS.
Hello Max, I do not have a blog account and so I am unable to comment directly at Sequential. Please post this comment as found below:
I'm glad to see Sequential address this issue and not run away. I think you are ignoring the truth about how the DWA's advertise themselves. Place the words 'Canada's premier comic award' or 'the country's premier comic award' into google and see what comes up (don't forget to look at the cached results, also). There can be no debate that the DWA's refer to themselves this way.
So, Bryan Munn is deeply involved with the DWA's and Sequential? That might explain his Sequential post on June 27, 2008: "... the 4th Annual Doug Wright Awards, the country's premier comics awards ...", though that was lifted right off of the DWA's website. Or on The Comics Journal message board, Brad MacKay wrote, "...Canada's premier cartooning awards meets Canada's best-known cartoonist" and, "...the 4th Annual Doug Wright Awards, the country's premier comics awards...". Check The Beguiling's website, as well as the TCAF site, to see the same sentiment. Brian and Brad are both deeply involved in the DWA's and they are the ones writing these words. A lot of people don't see any difference between being 'Canada's premier awards' and 'THE Canadian awards'. In fact, the DWA wording of 'premier' is probably more pretentious and self serving than 'THE'.
Herve may have been over the top with some of comparisons, but he certainly brought a long discussed topic out into the open. I cannot speak for Herve but it would seem to me that the issue really is that the DWA's are self described as 'Canada's premier awards', while containing no French Canadian content.
Further, your suggestion of having the Wright's merge, or work alongside, the Prix Bedelys is an strange suggestion. There is another, much more obvious, pairing. But we all know that would never happen, and only because the DWA membership meeting would resemble a scene from Cronenberg's Scanners at the suggestion.
Best,
Robert Haines
Bryan is deeply involved? I said closely involved, he helps organize at the events. I didn't characterize it as deep. I'll leave that for him to comment on if he feels inclined but it's truly irrelevant to the charge of discrimination. What this was about primarily.
As for the the Prix Bedelys/hypothetical solution i proposed - I just suggested a collaboration, a sharing of resources, not a bloody "merger"!
And how the hell is 'work alongside' any different from my 'trade for mutual benefit' or your 'pairing'. Don't be a prat.
NOTHING comes up for the solid phrase "Canada's premier comic award"
"Canada's premier comics and graphic novels awards" gets two hits, one is a TCAF/DWA site, the other is Dave Sim talking about the same auction as the first.
To get anything else you have to take it out of quotes, and what you end up proving is that they are in fact well known in Lit circles, and have courted an elite profile from the start.
Not THE.
Take a look at the Jury Lineups. The press they get. The critical awareness of the work the nominate and awarded.
Look up "Doug Wright Awards" in the news search.
EXCLUDE us. EXCLUDE Brads past day job work at the CBC. what do you have?
Along with many other sites, Walrus Magazine, Quill & Quire, Editor & Publisher, Publishers Weekly, Globe and Mail, etc.
Not all nice long articles at all but some good coverage in some very prominent, NON comics media. The first two being Literary in fact.
Do the same of ANY of the other awards currently in Canada. In the News search I ran on "The Shusters", not even "The Joe Shuster Awards" which draws a blank - I got one hit today, in an article about the DWA. It's a short reference about how the ONE thing they do, "nominally" better is award french language books....! hah! I love irony.
Hey, I love that they are out there too, doing what they do. It's great they put together a special comity to nominate FR language books. I haven't got one bone to pick with any of the awards. But no others are an elite award with anything like a national profile!
O_o [ <-this is me giving the hairy eye] The Shusters are a fan pick. And that's great, and different.
Populous.
Not elite. Not critically Primer. [ed: seems they switched, from their site-"Although these awards were chosen, in their first three incarnations, by a public vote, the process changed in 2007 to decision by a jury of individuals [not listed anywhere] to ensure each nominee is given adequate consideration" They don't provide the Names of these individuals or their credentials, so if anything, it's gone from populous to anonymous! Ok, got ahead of myself, here's their list now, and it' was along side this "Creator nominees are nominated for their BODY OF WORK during the previous calendar year, not just for one specific work, although they may have only had one specific work published. Winners are selected by a jury."]
For the DWA, the Past Jury list includes Bruce McDonald, Mark Kingwell, Judy MacDonald, Lorenz Peter, Jessica Johnson, Ho Che Anderson, Marc Glassman, Katrina Onstad, Helena Reckitt, Mariko Tamaki. Chester Brown. Rebecca Caldwell, Nora Young, Jerry Ciccoritti & Don McKellar.
Every year a film maker, at least one prominent member of the media if not two, someone from the Arts or Academia, and a critically significant cartoonist.
With it's Jury's CV's on it's sleeve, and a purely Critical standard, ED: nominating a SINGLE book per Creator, The DWA are currently the most prominent, critically elite, highest standard bearing Award that ANYONE and EVERYONE in the country can be eligible for assuming they can fit into what is still, JUST TWO AWARDS CATEGORIES in ONE language. Because for now, it's a small operation despite it's critical standing and they do not have the time and money to do more! Would love to, but nope.
ED: The Shusters have never had a Literary profile, it's not how they present themselves, or how the books they choose come off exclusively as a rule, as it pretty much is for the DWA. Great that they got a kick ass Jury now, but it's just true. Even the prize is a lot more classic comic book humble. Compared to this? The JSA don't promote an elite image, it's just a fact. They are not intentionally Literary at all.
The DWA does, and is. And I don't think they are going to apologize for that. It's how they started, it's what they are all about.
All of this only proves they have one front
on which they truly discriminate, QUALITY.
You can call it a small operation. Call it elitist. You can point out how incredibly small the community is leading to some very close associations that are frankly unavoidable. This is true for all awards let alone the all the comics awards in Canada.
You could suggest we should sit around and wait for someone outside of the community to notice the work - which would be stupid. Far better we got off our asses and brought the outside in to see the work.
Hey, you can even talk about how funny it was when Seth was given the very trophy he built himself the first year, and turned bright red and said himself how someone should have stopped that from happening as the jury sat and chuckled at him. Darwin Cooke also i suspect was bright red, when he stormed out of the ceremony yelling 'this is bullshit' and went to drink some more at the bar.
That was pretty funny.
But excluding Seth's book from the list, given it was the most wildly reviewed and lauded comic of the season hands down even without the nomination! Would have made the DWA claim to be for the Best Book false. It would have been the best book, barring having to compete with Seth's.
He was asked to make the trophies before his book came out and was eligible for the list, or the list had even been drawn up. What ya' going to do?
It's a small fucking scene people, thousands of creators but the cream is a thin skim on the top of it. And as it turns out a few creators of that caliber are amongst the ones who thought recognition for this kind of achievement was lacking in Canada and took it upon themselves to begin to do something about it.
I personally cant thank them enough, even know I also personally felt out of my place at times being nominated that first year.
Yep, that's right, I was nominated and here I am, dyslexic and too damn busy but still the guy running the ONLY web site so far dedicated exclusively to Canadian comics coverage and who cant get any of you other geeks to contribute unless it's to try to tear down shit.
When if ever are more people in the 'community' going to work towards something instead of against?
It's a FUCKING small scene and a lot of it is bloody lazy or superficial. Pardon my french.
And you can complain all you like about that stuff. I, and I'm sure the DWA organizers will shrug and say, what's your point? Do you suggest it would be better not to have the DWA at all? 'cus these are the options for now.
No one else was stepping up to do the job, to put an award like this together at all! The Shusters started around the same time and have very different goals. Before that, ZIP for a dog's age.
So a group of Journalists, Critics, Super Fans and a couple of creators got together and made it happen with the help of the Wright family and some amazing volunteers. What have you done Robert? Better be good trying to pull this one. And I mean outside of being Deeply Involved with the Shusters yourself? That's great you doing that, but it brings your critique into some light don't it?
Course line of it's a small world after all goes here.
Calling the DWA anything else is BS. Calling it pretentious is redundant, and calling it, or suggesting it's bigoted against French comics or French creators is not only steaming hot BS, it's also offensive, dirty politics gaming, confrontational, and unsubstantiated. AND TO BE CLEAR, that was what Herve charged the DWA with.
100% FAIL
Good day sir.
Max Douglas, aka Salgood Sam.
PS: want to comment on this? USE THE COMMENTS.Labels: awards, blogosphere, can-con, events, festivals, Letter to the Editor, publishing, tcaf
-  Stumble It! -
7 comments
Thursday, August 14, 2008
The Doug Wright Awards' so called 'Canadian' language controversy
:: Posted by max @ 8/14/2008 06:00:00 PM With a charged OP ed piece by Herve St-Louis, the publisher and editor for comicbookbin.com has kicked off a pretty intense conversation over the question of whether or not The Doug Wright Awards has the "right" to call itself a Canadian award.
Tom Spurgeon has started to act as something of a neutral presenter of the issue, posting several responses to the first posting from St-Louis on The Comics Reporter. And there's alot of back and forth in the comments of PW The Beat. So far i've found the debate very interesting.
I have a problem with the tone taken at the start by St-Louis myself; I feel he was pretty wildly hyperbolic in his analogies, and presents a basically false premise. And he seems upon a little asking around, to be speculating a lot about the intentions of the DWA organizers without information. There was a small amount of communication with our own Bryan Munn informally as a DWA representative on the subject, but it seems St-Louis cut that short and ran with his story.
But from a purely rhetorical point of view, many have made some very good points on the broader subject.
Bryan, who is responsible for most of the posting here on Sequential now, is bowing out of commenting on the debate on our site as he's closely involved with the Doug Wright Awards, so I'm going to try to keep on top of this for Sequential, work schedule permitting.
I will be thinking on it and perhaps posting my own perspective more in the future but at this time a few things seem clear to me.
First I think that it's clear the DWA's present themselves as A Canadian award, not THE Canadian awards. A point made by Brad MacKay but also consistent with my impression of their promotion of the awards. St-Louis's argument seems to be build a lot on the idea that something other than this is true.
The About page's first short opening paragraph from the DWA site.
About The Doug Wright Awards
The Doug Wright Awards were established in 2005 to cast a spotlight on the range of cartoonists and comic artists working in Canada.
And, the very relevant last one...
Language of work
[SeqEd:accepted for submissions]
For the first year at least, The Wrights will only consider works that are available in English or are wordless. (French-language works that are translated into English will be eligible.)
And if testimony is required, going back to the first year of the awards, I can confirm from my own discussions with the organizers, that what Brad MacKay says in his official statement as true; That there has all along been very active discussion of how eventually to address the question of, at some point, bringing in a french language category. But that for now they lack the resources to do so. There has been no active discrimination against french creators in anyway, or a flat refusal to address the issue. Only a recognition that they are unequipped to review french language submissions at this time in a manor suited to the standards they set out for the DWA.
And far from being presented as THE Canadian comics award, they are more like A Literary Canadian Comics Award in affect. And yes we could be really precise and call them The Doug Wrights, A Literary English Language Canadian Comics Award, but frankly as precise as that would be, it would be a terrible, terrible name!
OK yes I'm being a little dramatic, but The Doug Wright English Canadian Comics Awards is truly not too much better. So it's the The Doug Wright Awards, period.
As Hervé points out; hyphenation, and over qualification is a pain in the arse.
The idea is to make the awards appealing, and interesting. Not boring and didactic.
Now It's all very fine and well to say they could make the contacts here in Quebec, associate with a local award or start a parallel operation.
But it takes two to tango, and speaking as an Anglo, living in Montreal, I have to say the French community here at least, when not too busy with their own things to be bothered, is seldom very welcoming or enthusiastic of this kind of collaboration over all. Nor do they reach out often themselves in a collaborative manner to make such things happen. It's like herding cats here on both sides of the language divide.
Maybe in Alberta where Hervé lives now, he's unaware of this. He started out here so he should know. It was true more so when he lived here!
It's true that in their own language sphere many people have done amazing things to promote local French work to an international French audience. But making the effort to promote their work to an audience that overwhelmingly won't be able to read it is never appealing to any publisher. Frankly I for one can't fault them for that.
And far from generally being ignored by English Canada, I and many Anglo's have come to Montreal thinking we would be able to connect and build bridges with the french community, only to find a wall of often disinterested backs turned on us because we speak French as poorly as many of the Quebecois speak English.
For those who are more engaged and welcoming - and there are many now - it's shrugs and a lack of interest in general. Not to say it's always cold, but I have not experienced a culture in a hurry to be embraced by it's English neighbors. They want more than not to be admired in their own language in their own region or in the EU. For those few desiring more English attention, they look south, like a lot of us here, were there are many many millions more in the audience than here. A practical issues more than not.
I would put it to Herve that this often kind of insular approach, and a love of confrontation and conflict expressed to me by many of my Francophone Montreal peers, and as exemplified by the rather inflammatory examples in his post - Is as much if not more a problem than any active bigotry in the English community...
"If the Harvey Awards, were to refuse all comic books by blacks or women, until they bleached their skin white or undergo hormone therapy to change their gender, it would be clear to everybody that their policy and the support of those awards was morally wrong"
Really? Comparing asking for translations to bleaching skin, AND forced gender reassignment. Was one over the top inaccurate analogy not enough? Hmmmmm.
Numerous times have I inquired locally in Montreal, as to why more effort is not made by French creators and publishers to translate the huge amounts of work produced here into English for the larger North American market. Or why there are so few sites promoting the Quebec community outside of the Francophone sphere.
Coverage and effort has improved, yes, far more of both things happen now than just 5 years ago. But it's been very, very slow.
And my said inquiries are more often than not responded to with shrugs and the refrain that they rather someone else do the work. They are too busy, it's as simple as that. No bigotry, no conspiracy, no surprising undercurrent of hate.
I've done my own best when I've had the time to do so to promote local work, regardless of language, as has Bryan who is I'll repeat an active member of the DWA organization.
I have tried at some length to recruit contributors for this very site to help cover the Quebec scene, as well as trying to find people on the coasts and in the mid west.
I have constantly failed to find interested parties on all counts.
Even Herve's own site spends most of it's time reporting on American, English comics. On the site's menu there is not even a way to filter the posts to view QC or Montreal stories. Just Cunuck. And I invite you to look for yourself to see how many are for French Language books....
It seems to me Herve is asking, demanding, others to confer praise for work he seldom promotes himself. No he does not call himself THE Canadian comic news site anymore than the DWA call them selves THE Canadian comic awards, but then this only furthers my point.
I can understand that there are a lot of bruised egos, as I'm always reminded when I talk to my peers here in Montreal about this sort of thing. It does not come up nearly as often as Herve's article would suggest but sure, some feel a little left out.
But I have a hard time giving too much credit to said egos, when they do so little to change the situation themselves through constructive positive actions. But rather it seems - when bothered to do anything - prefer to rant at supposed arms length about it. In this case at Provincial length, and without foundation or information speculating in an overwhelmingly demonizing way about the intentions of the 'Others' they think someone may perceive themselves slighted or ignored by.
So what do I think they should do instead?
How about this; I've not talked to anyone about this so I don't know if the will or means can be mustered, but say they do and could be. Say someone in QC, or the french community outside of QC cares about this all that much, and wants to do something.
Say maybe the Prix Bedelys have any interest in this, that they take the initiative to put together a jury and reading list for a French language award to spotlight Original French books to the rest of Canada and the English comics reading world and any French readers who may be paying attention, to be presented at The Doug Wright Awards.
They can also help raise funds locally for the prize and to pay for the trophy, and The Doug Wright Awards in turn give them the additional press and attention. The DWA orginization have the current problem of a lack of resources and means on their side addressed in this way.
Maybe as a way to make this a mutual trade - not to besmirch anyone's best intentions; but the Bédélys trophy is not, well, all that impressive. Perhaps they also might be able to persuade the Doug Wright Awards rather famous trophy builder to help them out as well?
Call it a trade for mutual benefit, and fix the problem by doing something about it, rather than making over the top and inaccurate analogies to civil rights abuses and the intentions of others you don't actually talk with before speculating on publicly.
But in the mean time, until the French Comics community is willing or wants to be bothered to take on the task of promoting their own work to the rest of the world regardless if it's Francophone or not, I think it's a little disingenuous for someone in the to cry discrimination in this manor.
A lack of means does not equate a intentional bigoted refusal.
Labels: Alberta, analysis, awards, bd, blogosphere, can-con, cartoonists, comics history, francophone, furries, Montreal, news, people, Quebec, tcaf
- Stumble It! -
4 comments
|
|
