Paper/Proposal Title
Comic Books, Satire, and the American Police State: Lessons from the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
Location
Room S2006, Curran Place
Start Date
12-2-2021 11:30 AM
End Date
12-2-2021 1:00 PM
Keywords
Capital Hill Automous Zone, Black Lives Matter, Comics Studies, Affect Studies, Defund the Police
Abstract
In the spirit of the #DefundThePolice and #BlackLivesMatter movements, protestors in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) declared sovereignty over 5½ city blocks. Emboldened by the potential for mass mobilization enabled by the COVID-19 pandemic protestors attempted to establish a racially egalitarian society that would exist without the police, the traditional enforcement mechanism of the white supremacist American state.
This paper explores how Alex Graham’s Dog Biscuits (2021) and Simon Hanselmann’s, Crisis Zone (2021) portray the ways CHAZ protestors utilized absurdity in the face of extreme violence to enact indiffernation—a unique affect comprised of indifference and determination. This affect functions as a psychological defense mechanism, enabling protestors in the comic to resist a political system they view as unjust yet inviolable. Drawing on affect studies, comics studies, and democratic theory, this paper frames the comics’ conflicts between hegemonic American police state and the Autonomous Zone. These texts show CHAZ to be inherently more democratic and racially just than the American state that will eventually destroy it. Applying Scott McCloud’s work on the comic reader as “a willing and conscious collaborator,” the reader has the opportunity to be implicated in the characters’ affective states. Characters in the comic express indiffernation through a variety of comic specific devices such as spatial juxtaposition, dialogue-free panels and background-foreground contrast. This affect not only affords protestors a mental protection against the likelihood of failure, but also lends itself to performative activism. In turn, this performative activism generates public interest in the protests, furthering the cause of the activists. Although these activists remain unable to challenge the state directly, their work generates civic conversation through which the existing state is able to examine and change its constitutive values. The medium itself further replicates the intentions of its fictional protestors, exporting the values of the Free Zone in a popular format while simultaneously highlighting the absurdity of the American white supremacist police state.
Author/Speaker Biographical Statement(s)
Jamie Michaels is a critically acclaimed writer and educator from Winnipeg, Canada. His most recent graphic novel Christie Pits unpacks the tensions between immigrants and proto-fascists in 1930s Toronto that culminated in the Christie Pits Riot. Jamie is a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow and Killam Laureate at the University of Calgary. Jamie’s creative work has been recognized by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Winnipeg Arts Council, Bell Media’s the Harold Greenberg Fund, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. His literary and academic writing has been published widely in Canada and internationally. His work has been featured in The Times of Israel, i24News, Canada’s History, CBC, Haaretz, CTV, The Comics Beat, The Georgia Straight, The Canadian Jewish News, Spacing Toronto, and The United States Library of Congress.
Included in
African American Studies Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Graphic Communications Commons, Social Justice Commons, Visual Studies Commons
Comic Books, Satire, and the American Police State: Lessons from the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
Room S2006, Curran Place
In the spirit of the #DefundThePolice and #BlackLivesMatter movements, protestors in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) declared sovereignty over 5½ city blocks. Emboldened by the potential for mass mobilization enabled by the COVID-19 pandemic protestors attempted to establish a racially egalitarian society that would exist without the police, the traditional enforcement mechanism of the white supremacist American state.
This paper explores how Alex Graham’s Dog Biscuits (2021) and Simon Hanselmann’s, Crisis Zone (2021) portray the ways CHAZ protestors utilized absurdity in the face of extreme violence to enact indiffernation—a unique affect comprised of indifference and determination. This affect functions as a psychological defense mechanism, enabling protestors in the comic to resist a political system they view as unjust yet inviolable. Drawing on affect studies, comics studies, and democratic theory, this paper frames the comics’ conflicts between hegemonic American police state and the Autonomous Zone. These texts show CHAZ to be inherently more democratic and racially just than the American state that will eventually destroy it. Applying Scott McCloud’s work on the comic reader as “a willing and conscious collaborator,” the reader has the opportunity to be implicated in the characters’ affective states. Characters in the comic express indiffernation through a variety of comic specific devices such as spatial juxtaposition, dialogue-free panels and background-foreground contrast. This affect not only affords protestors a mental protection against the likelihood of failure, but also lends itself to performative activism. In turn, this performative activism generates public interest in the protests, furthering the cause of the activists. Although these activists remain unable to challenge the state directly, their work generates civic conversation through which the existing state is able to examine and change its constitutive values. The medium itself further replicates the intentions of its fictional protestors, exporting the values of the Free Zone in a popular format while simultaneously highlighting the absurdity of the American white supremacist police state.
