“Mothers and Daughters Part 3”

“I’m not here to make you feel good. I am here to make you think. And to make you think, I have to make you see.” –Dave Sim

Reads is at the same time a spectacle of literary genius and a philosophical minefield for the politically correct. Sim entangles the reader in a series of different narratives that direct themselves toward one goal: Truth. Or truth. Or even “truth.”

You may certainly not agree with Sim’s views on creative/intellect vs. destructive/emotion--and especially the allocation of gender to either--but the phenomenon he discusses is worth thinking about.

The structure of this ninth book of Cerebus is radically different from previous volumes. More than half the book is comprised of prose, and much of the sequential art is silent. Furthermore, the narrative is separated into three separate journeys.

The first is continuation of the “Mothers and Daughters” storyline wherein Cerebus, Astoria, Cirin, and Suenteus Po quarrel over the “truth” of the Ascension. This narrative continues throughout the book, becoming less and less central to the major thesis of Reads.

Yet, Po puts much of Cerebus’s adventures thus far into perspective. The aardvark’s quests for money and power have given him neither the control nor the peace he desires. Paradoxically, the closest he ever came to having either was when he was catatonic and sat beneath a beautiful blue sky--not by being Pope or Prime Minister. The “illusion that absolute control can be equated with absolute happiness” is a striking summation of this series.

Having what you want isn’t akin to being happy. The more power you have over others, or the more wealth you accumulate, the more you will suffer. Freedom from suffering, or the relinquishment of control--this is the path that Po will take, and maybe he’ll find that happiness: The placidness of being beneath a big, blue sky.

This philosophy is the direction of the two prose narratives. The first comprises the tale of Victor Reid, a writer in the world of Cerebus who produces popular illustrated fictions. It’s a story of having a dream and the tenacity to fulfill it--and what it costs to buy it off.

Reid is a man who chooses success over truth--to himself, to his project, and inevitably to those around him who know the importance of this truth. To choose is to lose, and when Reid chooses what he “wants” (i.e., money to buy cognac and expensive things) he loses the opportunity to choose writing the story he really wanted to write. He writes what the market wants, and he ends up empty and devoid of happiness.

The second prose section deals with the spiritual outcome of Reid’s “selling out,” and it also follows the reflective meandering of Viktor Davis--the fictional author of “Cerebus.” He moves in and out of real life anecdotes and prognostications on how this volume and series will end.

The pensive journey of Viktor Davis is tantamount with that of Sim in that Davis and Sim must write the “truth.” Or truth. Or even Truth.

Davis leads the reader around through many ideas: “All stories are true;” the accuracy of language in describing phenomena; the difference between actuality, reality, and story (and the validity and possibility of all three); and intellectual power over emotion.

In this section, the reader is literally pulled into the story with Davis as a guide through the aforementioned concepts. Much like the scene from Spaceballs in which the characters actually watch the movie they’re appearing in, Davis describes the reader reading the very paragraph he or she is reading: “And now the reader is looking at the page of typesetting the reader is looking at. The reader reads these words. And now the reader reads these words. Just below the reader’s line of sight a decorative flourish appears.”

The technique is simultaneously amusing and enveloping. It brings an intimate relationship between the author and the reader that allows Davis (Sim) to be honest and frank.

Inevitability, this intimation leads to Sim (as Davis) sharing very personal and controversial beliefs--namely his views on intellectual power over emotion and the relegation of femininity to the latter.

He explains that emotion is “animalistic, serpent brain stuff.” Animals react to occurrences in their environment by how they “feel,” ot on a conscious rational level (i.e., “When my fur is wet and I am cold, it makes me Sad.”). Rational thought, on the other hand, requires one to view a given problem in the environment, examine its structure, and posit a solution.

Davis/Sim provides many examples of how feeling is vile--the best of which will ring true to anyone who has ever been in a relationship:

Reason, as any husband can tell you, doesn’t stand a chance in an argument with Emotion. There are no rules to Emotional Argument. You simply wander around in rhetorical circles until you feel Happy again. And then the argument is over.

He then applies this same argument to culture and how emotion destabilizes the rational examination of societal problems, providing a hasty and insubstantial “feeling” as the solution:

Political positions are judged on the Emotional Basis of whether they are Popular or Unpopular. Popular is good. Unpopular is bad. Most political positions based on Reason are Unpopular. Most political positions based on Emotion are Popular--provided that Emotion provoked is happiness; if the Emotion provoked is unhappiness or anxiety or uneasiness, then that political position is Unpopular and therefore bad.

I agree with this assertion. So much of American politics, and media coverage of it, is belabored in what one “feels.”

How do you feel about overturning Roe V. Wade? How do you feel about having a black man as candidate for president? How do you feel about a women serving as vice president?

Replace the word think in any of those questions and see how your answers differ.

I found myself examining the very vapidity of the questions in the first place. What does it matter how I feel about a given politician? Doesn’t it matter more what this person will do in office? Yet, the political scene is waist deep in this baseless analysis of how society “feels” at the cost of relevant thoughtful examination.

The build up to the Iraq War is a current example of emotion destabilizing intellect. The majority of Americans, including the ones whose jobs it is to examine political phenomena, were swept up in the positive feeling of unleashing their anger over events of 9/11 in support of a unilateral invasion of a supposed enemy.

Yet, to place the blame solely on women and feminism, as Davis/Sim does, is a little harsh. If you ever heard of Dave Sim, you probably heard the word “misogynist” connected to him. This is the volume of Cerebus (and the specific section of the book) that many refer to as inexcusably offensive to women. Case in point:

Behind this Lesser Void of White Collar Male-Work Programs, the stultifying sameness of ass-covering and ass-kissing, the endless postponement of decision-making in favor of ‘further study’, ‘further discussion’, lies the Greater Void, the Omnivorous Engine which drives every committee, every study group, every institutionalized waste of human time and energy, in point of fact, our entire degraded society. The Wife and Kids.

The void that Sim refers to is emotion, which is feminine. He goes on to describe women’s emotional control over men graphically: the man smiles submissively as the woman laps up blood and brain tissue from a gash in his head.

It’s difficult to take any of these particular assertions seriously as they seem to come from a place of personal anguish. I surmise that his relationships with women have jaded Dave Sim. I have no proof of this save the text itself and what little I know of his personal life. However, we can ascertain that there is as much emotion in these passages as there is in what he is analyzing. Nevertheless, he does acknowledge that some women can and do have the Male Light of creativity and intellect--such as Coco Chanel, Colleen Doran, and others.

Sim could have easily skipped over this section in the narrative in favor of some appealing continuation of the actual story of Cerebus. He could have simply disregarded his views on how the hegemony of suppliant emotion has deteriorated the bastion of reason and thought--and he didn’t have to label either side the “Female Void” or the “Male Light.” However, where would Dave Sim be after 300 issues if he had NOT written any of these ideas down? Would he be as empty and unfulfilled as his character Victor Reid?

Say what you will about this section of the book, but be sure to read it. Don’t have someone summarize its aims or characterize it as baseless venom. Read it for yourself!

Although Sim poses thoughtful and pressing questions through his “Victor Davis” persona, he does so with flaws in his philosophical construction. He loads, begs, and meanders from the question too often. For example, he asks, “What do you think of a women sleeping with a potential boss to get a job? What do you think of that decision/action?”

The book is not misogynistic. It’s the most challenging graphic novel I’ve ever read, and it certainly caused me to think more than any other work I’ve read in the comic book medium. Literarily, Dave Sim is somewhere between Oscar Wilde and Sam Kinison. He is bright and entertaining, but he’s not going to please for the sake of making you “feel” good. He’s writing what he knows to be true, as in “all stories are true.” He may or may not have found happiness in writing Reads, but at least he has intellectual integrity.

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