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Home , Gekiga, Sandra Bernhard

14 書香人物 P E R S O N A L I T Y & B O O K S SUNDAY, APRIL 19, 2009 • TAIPEI TIMES

[ HARDCOVER: U s ] SUNDAY PROFILE Humans, your animal’s animal Hannah Holmes puts mankind under the microscope and argues cross-species empathy and morality set us apart from other creatures

by Elizabeth Lopatto Bloomberg My father was a proctologist and What makes people different my mother was an abstract from other animals? It’s not language: That’s shared artist, so that’s how I see the world. by all kinds of social creatures, from prairie dogs to dolphins. It’s — , comedian and actress not agriculture: Some ants also farm. It’s not tools: Our primate  photo: AP cousins use them, and so do dolphins. Not medicine: Again, primates self-medicate. The aim of Hannah Holmes’ The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself is to remind us how integrated into the natural world we are, and she succeeds on most counts. When scientists encounter something new, they describe its qualities: preferred food, physical Sandra Bernhard: no holds barred traits, habitat, mating habits. Holmes cleverly applies this type The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural of description to humans. History of Myself Sandra Bernhard dazzled in ‘The King of Comedy,’ befriended , We begin with a tour of the body — what colors and shapes berated Sarah Palin — and now she’s taking her acid tongue to the UK By Hannah Holmes one can expect a human to come in, what the differences are 351 pages By John Patterson between men and women. She Random House The Guardian, Los Angeles peppers her exploration with cocktail-party-ready factoids: Pale skin is probably an adaptation to make sense: “If the jaws of our andra Bernhard shows up after a face that startled more than it soothed, black culture from Flint. People in of that first movement, in terms of allow for more vitamin D to be ancestors can only mumble that a session at her gym in West she was totally assured as the bratty, were very freaked out by fighting for basic women’s rights, but produced. Our mouths are toxic, I’m equipped to eat anything, Hollywood, relatively subdued, obsessive stalker who eventually kidnaps people of color, otherness. It hasn’t I was strongly influenced by it when I and a human bite can kill. then I’d at least like to know S dressed for anonymity, no the object of her desire. But rather than changed that much, but that also made was young ... Not that we haven’t had Though we aren’t the fastest how much — of whatever — I makeup in evidence. Her not-so-secret making Bernhard a household name, the me more compassionate.” to continue to work and fight — the sprinters, there aren’t many should consume today.” weapon, that angry slash of a mouth, film established her as a woman to be At 19, Bernhard split for Los Angeles, patriarchy still rules the world. And marathoner species besides us, I think this is supposed is metaphorically holstered today. On feared; an antic, unsettling presence. intent on a musical career. “But I find it survives in all the other cultures, in Holmes says. Our strange, two- to be a reflection on how the screen it’s usually highlighted, glossed there’s all these comedy clubs. So I Africa, the Middle East. I constantly legged body is ideal for distance shape of our jaws allows us to in souped-up, self-satirizing shades of with friends like this ... started performing and eventually remind people that there’s no place running, and few animals can eat omnivorously. But it just scarlet or vermilion. But what’s most Over the last 25 years Bernhard’s public put songs into my act. Even though it that’s absolutely safe for women except keep going for as long as we can. interrupts a perfectly interesting outrageous are the words it spits out. persona has been diffused across wasn’t the right atmosphere, I forced it the Western cultures, where we’re able And then there is our strange examination of the human diet. Late last year, the mouth landed her stage shows, TV talk shows and guest in anyway and it really made me strong to get away with basically anything — trek up the food chain. We This is particularly in trouble again, after reporters picked appearances on TV series such as as a performer.” She was surrounded well, except when [former US president started as cat food, hunted on frustrating because Holmes’ up on a scathing riff on then US vice- . She was famously friends with by a generation of great : Robin George W.] Bush was in office, when it the savannah by tigers and lions. sharp observations can easily presidential contender, Sarah Palin, in Madonna in the late 1980s; Bernhard Williams, Jay Leno, Arsenio Hall. Her was all threatened again.” Once we got good with the tools, stand alone. For example, it Bernhard’s stage show Without You I’m claimed to have slept with both Madonna breakthrough came when she was Even with Bush gone, there are we started killing our former certainly is weird that we, as Nothing. Bernhard, who is loudly and and then husband Sean Penn. That cast in The Show. It battles to fight. On the day US President predators for fur. We’re the apex a species, tend toward body proudly Jewish, told her audience that friendship went south soon enough and only lasted four episodes, but it raised Barack Obama was elected president, predators now — and it might be modification: hair dye, makeup, if the Governor of Alaska showed up in Bernhard has remained blisteringly funny her profile. “Richard was totally cool. Proposition 8, outlawing gay marriage, the best anti-predator adaptation tattoos, plastic surgery. It makes , she’d “tear her apart like a on Madonna’s shortcomings ever since. He was a very, very reserved kind of was passed in California. Bernhard the world has yet seen. sense that the invisible hand of Wise Natural Kosher Chicken.” She then Last year, the New York Post reported person, but he was not distant, he was is bisexual, and has a 10-year-old There is, too, our propensity evolution is at work, and yet I hit her stride, calling Palin a “turncoat on a withering five-minute demolition not arrogant. He encouraged the young daughter. How did she feel? “I wasn’t to guard our territory. Holmes hadn’t considered it. bitch” and — with typical, eye-popping prompted by a heckler asking, “Are you talent to really go for it.” devastated,” she says. notes that guests often indicate So what makes us human? overkill — praying she would be “gang- still friends with Madonna?” Bernhard Ever since, Bernhard’s arrival in “I just felt like the gay community submission before entering an While other social animals seem raped by my big black brothers.” Outrage — “in a mad, dark, five-minute freestyle” anyone else’s project has brought dropped the ball on this. The Mormon apartment: By knocking and to show some moral tendencies, duly ensued. — robotically repeated the phrase, “We with it a clear set of associations church was pouring millions [of US waiting to be received, they few reach the level of people. Today, Bernhard is in a more only got four minutes to save the world” — the loudmouth with a sweet side, the dollars] into this fight, so why the show that they understand Rather than being nasty and reflective mood as she prepares to take interspersed with screeches of “My ceaseless provocateur, the trouper with gay community wasn’t out there, whose domain it is. brutish, we’re remarkably Without You I’m Nothing to London. chicken is raw!” Pause … “Does that a fizzing brain. She may be cast as Nancy I just don’t understand. But when Our relationship with food is empathetic — not only of each She says that she’ll “try to add a little answer your question?” Bartlett on Roseanne — the first gay something’s almost taken away from also worth considering. About other, but toward other animals. local color and commentary — I try to As Bernhard often says, “My father TV character to be played by an openly you, then you roll up your sleeves and six million children under the Environmentalism is uniquely keep it as relevant as possible.” Expect was a proctologist and my mother was gay actor — or in a recurring guest part get back to work.” age of 5 die of malnutrition human, Holmes suggests. She Sapphic reworkings of Me and Mrs Jones an abstract artist, so that’s how I see the on The L-Word, but it’s always Sandra Bernhard’s public persona remains every year, but in developed notes that there are few animals and Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover, world.” She is also the product of two Bernhard who shows up, trailing all that of an in-your-face woman, proudly countries, slenderness is an that would allow their former alongside sulphurously tart demolitions starkly contrasting communities: Flint, those familiar traits. urban and cosmopolitan, contemptuous indicator of desirability. This predators — big cats like of celebs, divas and homophobes. , and Scottsdale, Arizona. The of rubes and racists. The squirming might have something to do with cougars — back onto their land “I may not have fucked much with former is the cradle of modern American POST-feminist reactions to her from the super- our obsession with status, an in order to preserve the habitat. the past,” Patti Smith once said, “but I’ve unionism, the site of the 1936-1937 strike She was even offered the role of straight and uptight always remind obsession we share with most Perhaps this seems like a fucked plenty with the future.” Bernhard by United Auto Workers that broke Miranda in , but “the me of the way Little Richard — black social animals. politically expedient answer. has occasionally borrowed the line to General Motors. “What I got, growing up in original wasn’t very good and and unashamedly flamboyant — must Given all her quirky I’d suggest religion, art and express her own sense of being ahead Flint,” says Bernhard, “was a work ethic.” they weren’t paying much! And nobody have appeared to suburban American observations, I wish Holmes had long-term abstract thought are of her time. She first burst on to the In 1965, when she was 10, Bernhard’s liked that character — bitchy, unhappy, parents in the mid-1950s. They didn’t resisted over-writing and trusted also unique. Still, empathy, international scene in the early 1980s, family moved to Scottsdale. “It was curmudgeonly. I’m not sure that show understand what he was saying either; her material more. Sometimes, particularly cross-species starring as Masha in ’s The definitely an alien atmosphere. Very, has done a lot for women.” She defines they just knew in their bones that, in a quest to be poetic, she empathy, isn’t a bad contender. King of Comedy, a role that should have very white — and I already was her own work as post-feminist “because whatever it was, they didn’t like it. writes sentences that don’t even It’s certainly a flattering one. made her a star. Still in her 20s, and with greatly respectful of the influence of I’m too young to be an active part On the Net: www.sandrabernhard.com

[ HARDCOVER: U S ] A rebel’s manifesto In the late 1950s, started a movement that changed the face of — and made him one of Japan’s most important artists

By DWIGHT GARNER illustrators, Tatsumi introduced book’s marathon 855 pages, them from stores and then He wanted to produce narrative truth there, to the extent that the NY Times News Service, New York in the late 1950s a bolder form which chronicle his career from returned them like video rentals. comics instead of “manga with relationship between illustration Underground comics took root in of manga he called gekiga 1945 to 1960, the period of its Publishing houses cranked out wild characters jumping about” or and prose, in long-form comics, America in the 1960s and ripened — darker, more realistic, often greatest ferment. rental manga like so much spicy “manga that concerns itself with is symbiotic: You wouldn’t with the counterculture; artists violent. The name stuck. And Tatsumi was, he explains sausage. To get the work done, ‘humor’ and ‘punch lines.’” necessarily want to pry one from like R. Crumb, Kim Deitch and he became one of Japan’s most here, a geeky comics genius publishers sometimes crammed After watching Shane, he was the other. Art Spiegelman discarded the old important visual artists. from the time he was in short their writers and illustrators into taken with the vividness of Jack Tatsumi’s prose has been funny-page formats and themes Tatsumi’s work, long pants. He began to draw manga communal apartments for days or Palance’s cruelty. And he fell hard translated from the Japanese, — beat it, Blondie — like so unavailable in English, has begun in seventh grade in Osaka. Soon weeks at a time. In one scene in A for Mickey Spillane’s hard-boiled fluidly, by Taro Nettleton. The many desiccated cornhusks. In to be translated and issued by the published widely, he formed Drifting Life, a publisher delivered phrasings. Tatsumi drafted a occasional banalities of the Japan, however, there had already Canadian publishing house Drawn a groundbreaking group, the a watermelon to one such apart- Gekiga Manifesto and, along with language are, you suspect, not been a comics revolution, and the and Quarterly in an annual series Children’s Manga Association. ment to “keep up your morale.” a group of like-minded artists, the translator’s fault. But I wish man at its rowdy vanguard was of books edited by the The form’s masters were like gods Tatsumi does not deny the started a movement that ultimately Nettleton hadn’t continually Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Adrian Tomine. Now comes the to him. “Stories that capture the pleasures of this kind of quick- changed the face of manga. saddled Tatsumi with long-winded Tatsumi, born in 1935, came big kahuna: Tatsumi’s outsize minds of children all over Japan,” and-dirty work. His comics were As progresses, verbs like “utilized” instead of of age alongside Japan’s postwar autobiography, A Drifting Life. his character says to himself. being devoured by a wide and it becomes clear that Tatsumi simple ones like “used.” obsession with manga, serialized It’s a book that manages to be, “How amazing it must be to be the eager audience, and he was is not content merely to tell his Tatsumi’s art is more sophisti- black-and-white comics whose all at once, an insider’s history of person creating them.” honing his craft. “For this 19-year- own story — or just the story of cated, retaining the form’s strange characters have a distinctive manga, a mordant cultural tour If success came quickly, old boy with no guarantees for gekiga. He charts Japan’s small sparkle even at gloomy moments; iconography: big, dewy eyes; of post-Hiroshima Japan and a confidence did not. Tatsumi’s his future,” he writes, “the only cultural milestones in the wake he definitely does write manga that tiny mouths; piles of spiky hair. scrappy portrait of a struggling family was poor. His father, a place where he felt alive was in of the war. This book begins isn’t quite manga. The genre can be Most manga takes place in a artist. It’s a big, fat, greasy tub of philanderer, was barely and the realm of imagination.” There with a panel depicting Emperor a difficult one in which to portray bright alternate universe where it salty popcorn for anyone interested sometimes shadily employed. was “no freedom in reality,” Hirohito’s surrender but soon aging. Tatsumi looks just about the seems as if any problem might be (as Americans increasingly are) in Tatsumi’s mother and his three he continues, but “any kind of moves on to topics like Japan’s same here at ages 10 and 25. resolved with a cute-off: batting the theory and practice of Japanese siblings made do as well as they transformation was possible in first domestically manufactured A book like A Drifting Life eyelashes at 10 paces. comics. It’s among this genre’s could. Drawing manga was the the imaginary world.” washing machine, its Miss Universe is fairly easy to pick apart on a Tatsumi began drawing signal achievements. author’s ticket to ride. A Drifting Life All along, however, Tatsumi contestants, maritime disasters and drawing-by-drawing or line-by-line manga as a child, but he quickly Manga, like rock ’n’ roll, is Once he was finished with was also dreaming of something taste for Coca-Cola. It’s ground- basis. Don’t make that mistake. rebelled against the form’s fundamentally a young person’s school, Tatsumi began toiling in By Yoshihiro Tatsumi better: experimental work, level pop history. Its pleasures are cumulative; aesthetic limitations. Manga was game. Tatsumi, 73, was born the the cheesy, exploitative and highly 855 pages “manga that isn’t manga.” He The rap against graphic novels the book has a rolling, rumbling aimed largely at children, and its same year as Jerry Lee Lewis; A competitive field of “rental manga.” became obsessed with movies, or memoirs is that they’re a grandeur. It’s as if someone emotional and intellectual palette Drifting Life was 10 long years These books were grab-bag Drawn and Quarterly both American and Japanese, bastard form that guarantees that had taken a Haruki Murakami was circumscribed. Along with in the drafting. But no strain of collections that printed the work of Publications and took note of their stylized both the art and the writing will novel and drawn, beautifully and a cohort of young writers and composition shows in this several artists; readers borrowed visuals and their cool realism. be second-rate. There’s a speck of comprehensively, in its margins.