09.04.22 In the Shadow of No Towers Comic 7 & 8 Notes
April 22, 2009
Comic 7
Pox Americana sign: Pax Romana was the period of peace under Caesar when the Roman Empire conquered countries and then enforced “peace;” pax Americana the same thing?; pox Americana means “the American disease”- criticism of American imperialism
The “Down Upside” world: alternate reality; Bush with a toy sword walking hand in hand with a capitalist pig carrying a pirate flag; deformed figures following them carrying flags and weapons; looks like a crusade, with a false prophet or false idol; the fascist figure is shouting “redemption” (we will be saved) while the priest is shouting “pre-emption” (we must strike first); who is right side up?; unthinkable has become reality; red for “bad” guys; whole panel is in red white and blue- red for vitality (monsters) blue for perseverance (sky) white for purity (Spiegelman)
Flags in the middle look like 2 halves of a broken heart OR one flag that was on 2 poles and has been ripped
Red and Blue groups
Doves (peace, not real americans, alienation) versus hawks/eagles (Americans, warlike)
Comic 8
Conspiracy Theory Man- Spiegelman playing up how stupid/gullible people were, but he also looks like the figure who feels the need to prop up the Leaning Tower because he feels afraid that it will fall; wife’s snoring is sawing the towers rather than sawing logs; media and government both seem to keep the trauma fresh but in a way that makes it hard to recover and exploits the public’s fears;
recurring image in every comic= image of the glowing skeleton of the towers, seems like all Spiegelman can see/remember, thye’re almost literally burned into his memory, they replace his eyes and become the lens through which he sees everything, the words that are over these glowing towers from strip to strip connect together into one extended thought
war as a hypermasculinity thing
media furthering terror and unpleasantness- in the comic at the bottom, the media the character sees drags him down into further paranoia, idea of “news poisoning,” so many 24-hour news channels and everyone is inundated/saturated with it from TV, radio, newspapers, blogs; even what you do to relax can be flooded by it (TV at the gym, posts all over Facebook, etc.); image of him jackhammering goes back to comic 6 (“he no longer knows which holes were made by Arab terrorists … and which were always there.”) but he’s also doing it to himself; horrible image of his head seeming to break open, and it doesn’t matter where he’s looking because all he can see is the Towers
Destroying the Statue of Liberty- destroying liberty itself, reflection on the statues of Saddam Hussein which were torn down, feet of clay (?)
Old comics- thematize something, recurrence of the past
Un/reality is becoming hard to ignore.
