Английская Википедия:Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary
Шаблон:Short description Шаблон:Good article Шаблон:Infobox graphic novel
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary is an autobiographical comic by American cartoonist Justin Green, published in 1972. Green takes the persona of Binky Brown to tell of the "compulsive neurosis" with which he struggled in his youth and which he blamed on his strict Roman Catholic upbringing. Green was later diagnosed with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and came to see his problems in that light.
In the story, sinful thoughts that he cannot control torment Binky Brown; to his alarm, phallic objects become literal penises and project what he calls "pecker rays" at religious objects such as churches and statues of the Virgin Mary. He develops an internal set of rules to obey and punishments for breaking them. The torment does not subside, and he comes to reject the Catholic Church in defiance as the source of it. The work combines a wide variety of visual and narrative techniques in a style that echoes the torment of its protagonist.
Binky Brown had an immediate influence on contemporaries in Шаблон:Not a typo: such cartoonists as Aline Kominsky, Robert Crumb, and Art Spiegelman soon turned to producing similarly confessional works. Binky Brown has gained a reputation as the first major work of autobiography in English-language comics, and many aspects of its approach have become widespread in underground and alternative comics.
Background
Justin Green (1945–2022) was born to a Jewish father and Catholic mother and raised Catholic.Шаблон:Sfn As a child he at first attended a Catholic parochial school, and later transferred to a school where most students were Jews.Шаблон:Sfn He rejected the Catholic faith in 1958 as he believed it caused him "compulsive neurosis"Шаблон:Sfn that decades later was diagnosed as obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).Шаблон:Sfn
Green was studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design when in 1967 he discovered the work of Robert Crumb and turned to cartooning, attracted to what he called Crumb's "harsh drawing stuffed into crookedly-drawn panels".Шаблон:Sfn He experimented with his artwork to find what he called an "inherent and automatic style as a conduit for the chimerical forms in Шаблон:Interp own psyche".Шаблон:Sfn He dropped out of an MFA program at Syracuse UniversityШаблон:Sfn when in 1968 he felt a "call to arms"Шаблон:Sfn to move to San Francisco, where the nascent Шаблон:Not a typo scene was blossoming amid the counterculture there.Шаблон:Sfn That year Green introduced a religion-obsessed character in the strip "Confessions of a Mad School Boy", published in a periodical in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1968. He named the character Binky Brown in "Binky Brown Makes up His Own Puberty Rites", published in the 17th issue of the underground comic book Yellow Dog in 1969. "The Agony of Binky Brown" followed in the first issue of Laugh in the Dark, published by Last Gasp in 1971.Шаблон:Sfn
At the time, comic books had a reputation in the US as low-brow children's entertainment, and the public often associated them with juvenile delinquency. Comics had little cultural capital and few American cartoonists had challenged the perception that the medium was inherently incapable of mature artistic expression.Шаблон:Sfn
Synopsis
Green (the cartoonist) takes the persona of Binky Brown,Шаблон:Sfn who opens the story writing a confession of the neurosis that has tortured him since puberty. In Binky's childhood, he knocks over a statue of the Virgin Mary and feels intense guilt over this affront to his mother and to God. Binky is raised a Catholic and undergoes the religious indoctrination of nunsШаблон:Sfn at a strict Catholic parochial school that commonly employs corporal punishment.Шаблон:Sfn He forms an image of a vengeful God, which fills him with feelings of fear and guilt.Шаблон:Sfn
Binky's intrusive thoughts bring him to believe that his body is trying to lead him to sin and eternal punishment. He develops an internal system of rules to cope with these thoughts and punishes himself for violations. He wards off thoughts and fantasies he could not control, and that gives him guilt by silently repeating the word "noyatin" to himself, a contraction of the repentant "not a sin".Шаблон:Sfn
As he approaches adolescence and becomes aware of his sexuality, he begins to see common objects as phalluses—phalluses that project unholy rays. These objects include Binky's fingers, toes, and his own penis, and he obsessively tries to deflect their "pecker rays" from reaching holy items such as churches or statues of Mary. Binky finds his anguish all-consuming as he imagines the destruction he cannot avoid and spends hours praying to God for forgiveness. Eventually Binky comes to the conclusion that he has sinned so much through his thoughts that he is bound for hell no matter what, and decides to experiment with a variety of activities considered sinful, including beer, speed, self-harm, Hesse novels, and acid trips. The narrator tells us that bad acid trips were like "water off a duck's back" to Binky, since everyday routines were already potentially traumatic experiences. As an adult, as the effects of an acid trip are beginning to wear off, Binky encounters a statue of the Virgin Mary in his path. Expecting to be tormented by his neuroses, he tries to dissolve the tension by facetiously singing "Lady of Spain". Binky is shocked when he walks by the statue and no distressing thoughts occur. Emboldened by this, Binky confronts his faith and by smashing a set of miniature statues of the Virgin Mary, he declares himself free of his obsession with sexual purity. Noticing that one of the statues in the pile has survived unscathed, he puts it on his mantel and says to himself "Mother of God, eh? Guess I'll build up some new associations around you now... Let bygones be bygones!" Шаблон:Sfn
Composition and publication
Green spent about a year working on the 44-page Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. He took a few months making cards of what he called "factual incidents or neurotic habits"Шаблон:Sfn to incorporate. During the seven months he drew the work Green received a monthly stipend of $150 from Ron Turner, the founder of underground Шаблон:Not a typo publisher Last Gasp Eco-Funnies.Шаблон:Sfn Last Gasp published the story as a one-shot comic book in 1972Шаблон:Sfn—Green's first solo title.Шаблон:Sfn It went through two print runs of 55,000 copies eachШаблон:Sfn with a "Youngsters Prohibited" label on the cover.Шаблон:Sfn
In 1990, Green had an essay published entitled "The Binky Brown Matter" in The Sun.Шаблон:Sfn In the essay, he describes the OCD with which he was diagnosed years after completing Binky Brown.Шаблон:Sfn Last Gasp reprinted the story in 1995 in The Binky Brown Sampler, a softcover anthology of Binky Brown strips with an introduction by Art SpiegelmanШаблон:Sfn and an expanded version of "The Binky Brown Matter".Шаблон:Sfn
Green sold the original artwork to the strip in the 1970s; McSweeney's staff contacted the owner of the artwork, Christine Valenza, to make fresh scans for a standalone reprinting in 2009,Шаблон:Sfn overseen by McSweeney's editor Eli Horowitz. It had a print run of 5,000 copies and reprints the artwork at the full size of the originals; the page reproductions mimic the actual pages, including marks, smudges, and corrections.Шаблон:Sfn In 2011, the publisher Stara published a French translation by Harry Morgan titled Binky Brown rencontre la Vierge Marie,Шаблон:Sfnm and La Cúpula published a Spanish translation by Francisco Pérez Navarro titled Binky Brown conoce a la virgen María.Шаблон:Sfnm
Editions
| Year | Title | Publisher | ISBN | Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary | Last Gasp Eco Funnies | Comic book | |
| 1995 | The Binky Brown Sampler | Last Gasp | Шаблон:ISBNT | Softcover collection |
| 2009 | Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary | McSweeney's | Шаблон:ISBNT | Deluxe hardcover |
Style and analysis
The story takes the form of a guilt-ridden confession.Шаблон:Sfn In the opening, the adult Binky hangs over a sickle, bound from head to toe and listening to Ave Maria as he draws with a pen in his mouth.Шаблон:Sfn He declares his intention: "to purge myself of the compulsive neurosis which I have served since I officially left Catholicism on Halloween, 1958".Шаблон:Sfn He justifies the work to communicate with the "many others Шаблон:Interp are slaves to their neuroses" and who, despite believing themselves isolated, number so many that they "would entwine the globe many times over in a vast chain of common suffering".Шаблон:Sfn
Though Green built Binky Brown on an autobiographical base he fabricated many scenes—such as one in which Binky is bullied by two third-graders—"to suggest or convey a whole generalized idea about some subjective feeling, such as order or fear or guilt".Шаблон:Sfn To critic Charles Hatfield Binky Brown displays a "radical subjectivity"Шаблон:Sfn that calls into question the notion of objectivity in autobiography.Шаблон:Sfn The presentation is insistently subjective and non-literal in its visuals.Шаблон:Sfn
Despite the heavy tone, humor is prominent.Шаблон:Sfnm The work is conscious of its own creation—Green's drawing of it frames the narrative proper and there are constant reminders of it throughout.Шаблон:Sfn Green patterned the opening after those featuring the Crypt-Keeper in EC Comics' Tales from the Crypt series from the 1950s. Green used the adult Binky as the narrator of the captions and as a way to tie together the past and present timeframes.Шаблон:Sfn There is a disconnect in that the narrator refers to his younger self as "he".Шаблон:Sfn Other references to comics include a Sinstopper's Guidebook, which alludes to Dick Tracy's Crimestopper's TextbookШаблон:Sfn and a cartoon by Robert Crumb in the background.Шаблон:Sfn
Green employs numerous Catholic symbols, such as a word balloon adorned with symbols of Christ's martyrdom to represent the depth of Binky's desperation. Catholic works such as a catechism and Treasure Chest parochial comics appear throughout the work.Шаблон:Sfn
Despite strict censorship in other media in the US, explicit sexuality was common in underground Шаблон:Not a typo. Binky Brown was the first work of autobiographical comics to depict explicit sexuality: penises appear throughout, and Binky masturbates in one scene.Шаблон:Sfn The central symbol of the penis recurs sometimes subtly as in the images of pencils used to craft the work,Шаблон:Sfn and more often explicitly, as every phallic-like object Green sees becomes a literal "pecker ray"-projecting penis in Binky's mind.Шаблон:Sfn
Art Spiegelman described the artwork as "quirky and ungainly".Шаблон:Sfn Though it appears awkward, Green put considerable effort into elements such as graphical perspective, and draws attention to his craft by depicting himself drawing and by placing the drawing manuals Perspective and Fun with a Pencil in the backgrounds. In contrast to the mundane tales of Harvey Pekar, another prominent early practitioner of autobiographical comics, Green makes wide use of visual metaphors.Шаблон:Sfn In Binky Brown symbols become literal, as when Binky imagines himself becoming a snowball hurtling into Hell or as a fish chased by a police officer who wears a crucifix.Шаблон:Sfn The work displays a wide array of visual techniques: diagrammatic arrows; mock-scholarly documentation; a great variety in panel size, composition, and layout; and a range of contrasting mechanical and organic rendering techniques, such as screentone alongside dense hand-drawn hatching.Шаблон:Sfn The symbolic and technical collide where the Virgin Mary becomes the vanishing point of Binky's converging "pecker rays".Шаблон:Sfn
Critic Joseph Witek sees the shifting between different modes of traditional comics representation at times presents a literalist view through "windowlike panels",Шаблон:Sfn and at others "representational, symbolic, allegorical, associative, and allusive", an approach analogous to "Binky Brown's massively and chaotically overdetermined subjectivity".Шаблон:Sfn Witek finds roots for the fractured psychological landscape of Binky Brown in the comics of earlier eras: the unrestrained psyches in the dreams of Winsor McCay's Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, the irrational, shifting landscapes of George Herriman's Krazy Kat, and Superman's obsessively contrarian nemesis Bizarro.Шаблон:Sfn
In Binky Brown Green blames the Catholic Church for his psychological troubles; years later, he was diagnosed with OCD, and came to see these episodes in that light rather than as the fault of the Church.Шаблон:Sfn He nevertheless continued to blame the Church for contributing to his anxieties and maintained that religion has a magnifying influence on the condition. He said the abandoning of both religion and recreational drugs made it easier to cope with his condition.Шаблон:Sfn In 1990 a Catholic priest raised concerns that Binky Brown may be harmful to minors; Green countered that he believed it was the Church that was harming minors.Шаблон:Sfn Green likened his OCD to a "split vision" which made him "both the slave to the compulsion and the detached observer".Шаблон:Sfn
Literary scholar Hillary Chute sees the work as addressing feminist concerns of "embodiment and representation"Шаблон:Sfn as it "delves into and forcefully pictures non-normative sexuality".Шаблон:Sfn Chute affirms that despite its brevity Binky Brown merits the label "graphic novel" as "the quality of work, its approach, parameters, and sensibility"Шаблон:Sfn mark a "seriousness of purpose".Шаблон:Sfn
Reception and legacy
Green recounted "a strong energy" that Binky Brown drew from his readership, the first significant response he got from his work.Шаблон:Sfn The story has had a wide influence on underground and alternative comics,Шаблон:Sfn where its self-mockingШаблон:Sfn and confessional approach has inspired numerous cartoonists to expose intimate and embarrassing details of their lives.Шаблон:Sfnm Under the influence of Binky Brown, in 1972 Aline Kominsky published her first strip, the autobiographical "Goldie: A Neurotic Woman"Шаблон:Sfn in Wimmen's Comix Шаблон:No..Шаблон:Sfn Other contemporary underground cartoonists were soon to incorporate confessional autobiography into their work.Шаблон:Sfn Robert Crumb followed the same year with "The Confessions of R. Crumb" and continued with numerous other such strips.Шаблон:Sfn Art Spiegelman, who had seen Binky Brown in mid-creation in 1971,Шаблон:Sfn went as far as to state that "without Binky Brown there would be no Maus"—Spiegelman's most prominent work.Шаблон:Sfn The same year as Binky BrownШаблон:`s publication, Green asked Spiegelman to contribute a three-page strip to the first issue of Funny Шаблон:Not a typo, which Green edited and was published by Apex Novelties. Spiegelman delivered the three-page "Maus" in which Nazi cats persecute Jewish mice, inspired by his father's experiences in the Auschwitz concentration camp; years later he revisited the theme in the graphic novel of the same name.Шаблон:Sfn Comics critic Jared Gardner asserts that, while underground Шаблон:Not a typo was associated with countercultural iconoclasm, the movement's most enduring legacy was to be autobiography.Шаблон:Sfn
Binky Brown went out of print for two decades after selling its initial print runs, during which time enthusiasts traded copies or photocopies.Шаблон:Sfn Green made his living painting signs, and contributed occasional cartoon strips to various publications.Шаблон:Sfn Green used the Binky Brown persona over the years in short strips and prose pieces that appeared in underground periodicals such as Arcade and Weirdo.Шаблон:Sfn "Sweet Void of Youth" in 1976 follows Binky from high school to age thirty-one, torn between cartooning and more respected forms of art.Шаблон:Sfn Aside from occasional one-off strips, his more regular cartooning appeared in the ongoing strips The Sign Game, in Signs of the Times magazine, and Musical Legends in America, in Pulse!Шаблон:Sfn Such later work has attracted far less attention than Binky Brown.Шаблон:Sfn
Though autobiographical elements had appeared earlier in the work of underground cartoonists such as Crumb, Spain, and Kim Deitch,Шаблон:Sfn Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary has gained credit as the first important work of autobiographical comics in English.Шаблон:Sfnm To Charles Hatfield Binky Brown is "the ur-example of confessional literature in comics";Шаблон:Sfn for Paul Gravett Green was "the first neurotic visionary to unburden his uncensored psychological troubles";Шаблон:Sfn Douglas Wolk declared Green and his work "ahead of the memoirist curve";Шаблон:Sfn Art Spiegelman declared: "What the Brontë sisters did for Gothic romance, what Tolkien did for sword-and-sorcery, Justin Green did for confessionary, autobiographical Шаблон:Not a typo Шаблон:Sic";Шаблон:Sfn and Publishers Weekly called the work the "Rosetta Stone of autobiographical comics".Шаблон:Sfn
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary has appealed mostly to comics fans and cartoonists, and has gained little recognition from mainstream audiences and arts critics. Spiegelman has speculated this neglect comes from the nature of the comics medium; in contrast to explicit works such as Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, the penises in Green's work are visual.Шаблон:Sfn
According to underground Шаблон:Not a typo historian Patrick Rosenkranz, Green represents a break with past convention by being "the first to openly render his personal demons and emotional conflicts within the confines of a comic".Шаблон:Sfn Green denied credit, calling confessional autobiography "a fait accompli, a low fruit ripe for the plucking",Шаблон:Sfn examples of which abounded in literary works he had read by James Joyce, James T. Farrell, and Philip Roth. He has accepted credit for "anticipatШаблон:Interp the groundswell in literature about obsessive compulsive disorder by almost two decades",Шаблон:Sfn for which he knew of no precedent.Шаблон:Sfn Chute sees major themes of isolation and coping with OCD recurring in autobiographical works such as Howard Cruse's Stuck Rubber Baby (1995) and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home (2006).Шаблон:Sfn Hatfield sees echoes of Green's unrestrained approach to dealing with a mental condition in Madison Clell's Cuckoo (2002)—about Clell's dissociative identity disorder—and in David B.'s Epileptic (2003).Шаблон:Sfn
To cartoonist Jim Woodring, Green's autobiographical work "has never been surpassed".Шаблон:Sfn Woodring's own autobiographical work in Jim draws from his dreams rather than his waking life.Шаблон:Sfn British-American cartoonist Gabrielle Bell sympathized with Brown's approach, which she described as "talking about his feelings or his emotional state when he was illustrating it with striking images that were sort of absurd or a weird juxtaposition".Шаблон:Sfn Green's influence extended overseas to cartoonists such as the Dutch Peter Pontiac, who drew inspiration from Binky Brown and Maus to produce Kraut (2000), about his father who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.Шаблон:Sfn
The story ranked No. 9 on The Comics JournalШаблон:'s list of the best hundred English-language comics of the 20th century,Шаблон:Sfn and featured as the cover artwork for the autobiographical comics issue of the journal Biography (Vol. 31, No. 1).Шаблон:Sfn Artwork to Binky Brown appeared in an exhibition of Green's work at Shake It Records in Cincinnati in 2009.Шаблон:Sfn
- Autobiographical cartoonists inspired by Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary
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Robert Crumb took to putting himself on display shortly after reading Binky Brown.
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Art Spiegelman stated there would have been no Maus without Binky Brown.
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Jim Woodring stated Green's autobiographical work "has never been surpassed";Шаблон:Sfn his own autobiographical work depicts his dreams.
References
Works cited
Books
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Journals and magazines
Web
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Further reading
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