Very interesting dissertation on Dick Tracy from an Objectivist perspective. (Highly complimentary towards Chester Gould.) This was written by Rodney Schroeter ...

http://www.comicsfun.com/tracy.htm

>> The premise that a person has a right to his own life, the right to sustain his life through productive work, and the right to keep the results of that work, is the basis for the Tracy strip, and a great deal of other popular drama.
The conflict between "good and evil" is between the pro-life and the anti-life; those who hold life as the standard of value and recognize the existence of individual rights, and those who act against their own lives and the lives of others.
(I hasten to clarify that my use of "pro-life" is definitely not meant for the anti-abortion movement.)
The dividing line between these two types of character in the Tracy strip is absolute--as distinct as black and white. (There are characters in the strip's history that are mixed, or cross over. I'll discuss them later.)
But it is not popular to treat moral matters as black-and-white issues. There are no absolutes, it is said, where morality is concerned. There is some bad in the most virtuous of us, and some good in the worst. This attitude is based on two premises: first, that a person is not in control of his own thoughts and actions; and then, that it is wrong to pass moral judgement on another person ("Judge not, that ye be not judged").
Gould challenged both of these conventional beliefs.
It's amazing how widely dismissed and attacked the concept of volition is. From the religionist claim that man is depraved by nature (original sin), to the secular claim that he is not even conscious (behaviorism), very few among those who study man take free will seriously--or even grant its existence. But if there is no choice, there is no morality.
The villains in the Tracy strip chose to be what they were. Each made a decision to act against reality, to achieve values he or she hadn't earned, by violating the rights of those who had produced those values. In presenting these evil characters, Gould did not shrug his shoulder and say, "Who am I to judge?" He was presenting them for the reader's moral condemnation.
Generally, Gould drew the good characters to be attractive (in a cartoony way), and the villains--well, the villains in the Tracy strip are legendary. They spanned the spectrum of the grotesque, from the dopey Joe Period, to the slimy Influence, to the nauseating Wormy. Ugly, repulsive, detestable--even sub-human, in some cases.
Critics say, "That is not how life is! Good people are not all good-looking, and not all bad people are ugly! Er--ahem, that is, assuming there is a difference between good and evil people, in the first place!"
But this complaint misses the point. Gould's work was a successful mix of accurate realism and stylization. An artist must choose carefully when composing, and a great deal must be said with very little. His villains were visual metaphors for what they were. It was Gould's way of saying, "Evil is ugly."
The evil, anti-life premises these villains held led to evil actions. The results could have been nothing other than evil; from an evil cause can come only evil effects. This is shown time after time by the terrible deaths these villains, and their victims, meet. Shakey freezing to death; Dr. Plain scorched by his own flame-thrower (remember that closeup of his charred corpse? Ugh!); Jerome Trohs dying of those steam burns. Shudder!
(It's interesting to consider that, of all those protectors of innocent youth in our world, who would demand that newspapers not subject children--or anyone else--to such horrors, some of these same people would eagerly shove photos of rotted stomachs, tumor-encrusted lungs, or abscessed brains into the faces of six-year-olds, hoping to frighten them into refraining from drinking, smoking, or using rusty needles.)
Now, if the evil only destroyed themselves, only violated the rights of other evil people, things would not be so bad. But, as Ayn Rand pointed out, evil is impotent without the good. If it were not for the values produced by the good, the evil would have nothing to take by force. The good has nothing to gain from evil; the evil, however, is like a parasite on the good, and couldn't exist by itself.
It is evil to initiate force against another person, but proper and moral to use the appropriate level of retaliatory force against the attacker. But two problems arise. First, a physically weak person who cannot operate firearms has the same rights as a strong person who is good with guns. Second, if retaliatory force were the responsibility or each citizen, there would be gang warfare, anarchy.
This leads to the need for a police force, backed by objective law; courts to determine what the facts are in complex cases; and a military, to protect the country from aggressors.
Two errors regarding force are common today. The first is equivocating between initiatory force and retaliatory force--to believe that a policeman using force is no better than the criminal he is arresting. The second error is to protest against "violence," in comic strips and in real life, implying that at issue is the form of force being initiated, rather than use of force as such. Non-violent methods of initiating force, such as fraud and censorship laws, are just as evil as violent forms. To condemn Tracy's character because he is as violent as the villains he fights, is to combine these two errors.
The cops who protect the individual rights of the innocent, and capture or neutralize the villains, are the moral good guys. Tracy, and all the cops uncompromisingly dedicated to the principles that a police force properly operate on, are heroic figures.
So we have an absolute demarcation between good and evil, the "black and white." Is there nothing in between? Or, can a person go from one side to another?
Gould populated his strip with various characters who seemed to be neither quite as contemptible as the main villains, but still on the shady side of morality. This does not weaken my view that morality must be judged in terms of absolute principles--rather, it strengthens it.
There were different types of this character. Consider the Summer Sisters, or Charlie Yenom, or the Jenkins kid--the punk who blackmailed Flattop into giving him hush-money, and who drowned with his expensive new skates. This type of person believes he can benefit from the evil. Not by going to extremes and actually becoming evil--oh, no! They think they can make a compromise, or "judge not," just for a little while, and come out untouched by evil. But this is a false, and therefore destructive, idea. Gould has given us many examples of this kind of person who corrupted himself by deliberately blurring the line between black and white.
Then, there is the villain who realizes that evil leads to destruction, and makes the choice to reform. For this, three things are needed. First, he must face reality and recognize what he has done, renouncing evil and choosing to be virtuous. Second, he must serve whatever punishment he has earned, and make whatever restitutions possible. For a proven murderer, this would not be possible; a life cannot be restored. Otherwise, the third step is to demonstrate over a sufficient time, by words and actions, that he has truly reformed. Steve the Tramp is an example. Contemptible when first introduced, he made a heroic effort to become good. Tracy treated Steve with justice (identified Steve for what he was and acted accordingly) in both situations. When Steve chose evil, Tracy threw him in the slammer. Years later, after Steve's touching radio speech, where he vowed to go straight, Tracy lent Steve an amount of support that was as strong and as heroic as Steve's own efforts to choose the good.
Another type of character Gould used was the person who aided the evil through ignorance. Nellie, the little farm girl who assisted 88 Keys, is a memorable example. Infatuated with the piano player, excited by his suave manner but not mature enough to look beyond it, she helps him escape from the law. But when she discovers his true nature, she thinks, "He--he's a real crook, and I didn't know it! What can I do?" She is to be applauded for being honest with herself and discarding her illusion. But she makes another mistake, an innocent one. Her "What a fool I've been" is misdirected. She attacks herself for not knowing everything--for making an error. Later, we see the source of that thinking. Her father says something that, unfortunately, many children undoubtedly hear. "Why, it's a wonder you're not in reform school! You--you've disgraced us--that's what you've done." Would it be surprising if a child who heard that enough, were to conclude that morality is beyond his
control and cynically stop caring what type of person he is, that he "can't help it," and blindly drift into self-destruction?
Morality is an issue of choice. Choices that are made honestly, with full attention to the facts, are still subject to error. And when an error manifests itself with whatever degree of harm it causes, an honest, moral person takes steps to correct it. <<

The original Little Orphan Annie, by Harold Grey, had a similar philosophical slant, as I remember it; Art Spiegelman once even referred to its "Calvinist credo."

This is interesting. I'm not all familiar with Gould...did he ever comment on anything along these lines? The only history I had heard of the Tracy strip was that Gould had tried a bunch of strips, but the crime strip was the one that took off.

(Edited cuz I can't type)

"The original Little Orphan Annie, by Harold Grey, had a similar philosophical slant, as I remember it; Art Spiegelman once even referred to its "Calvinist credo"."

I've always been more of a "Hobbesist Credo" man, myself.



frank :-{>

I'll just link it...

http://www.quarterbin.net/politics/pol13.html


DAD

See now, I should have read all of this thread before I wandered off into my own. [Remember this as an example in later discussion relevant to the topic of Objectivist heroism].

We are coming close to making the Objectivist hero an impossible ideal -- something Rand finds both noxious and obnoxious, and a crime of theism.

Elsewhere I noted that "redemption" seems impossible in Rand and irrelevant in most of Ditko's singlehanded work. I find it necessary, otherwise Objectivism offers nothing to imperfect me; I therefore find value in Ditko's collaborative work on Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, as well as the less magnificent Destructor.

Linda more cleanly uses the term "reform" to describe bad characters recognizing their evil foolishness, making restitution, and committing themselves to a strict rational pursuit of happiness.

Rand used prose, which allows more elaborate exposition than comics. Steve Ditko recognizes that id Objectivism is true in prose, it must likewise be true in comics somehow. He creates Objectivist comic-book heroes by pursuing the noblest creative question: "How must my convictions play out if I pursue them honestly in the medium I choose?" Reason is the sole justification in Objectivism. Therefore, in Ditko's stories, reason MUST lead to the good. For Ditko's stories to do otherwise would be to ignore his thesis and his creative challenge: whether Objectivism can stand up in a comics story honestly told.

On the Byrne board, someone offered an urban myth that Ditko acknowledged Alan Moore's Watchmen without going for Alan's throat. HOW COULD THAT BE? many ask. Me, I'm sold; I buy that myth completely. In *Watchmen*, Moore examined the Charlton characters with much the same creative thesis as Ditko: "How must my convictions play out if I pursue them honestly in a story about the Charlton characters?"

In WATCHMEN, Moore cannot find heroic characters such as those at Charlton to be possible. In the world as he knows it, those heroes would be impossible or absurd. He finds it very unlikely that The Question could live as an upstanding, law-abiding citizen -- and Moore calls it like he sees it, lays it out and invites further discussion. Ditko would disagree of course -- MUST disagree, if Objectivism is truthful. Still, I trust Steve would appreciate the honest debate.

Maybe not. I'm no mind-reader.

How does "reform" occur in Ditko stories?

[ I am including his collaborations as "Ditko stories" since I cannot read his mind and since he did participate. ]

It is very important to observe the exact moment Peter Parker, Stephen Strange, and the blond kid from THE DESTRUCTOR become heroes. Uncle Ben's murder did not make Peter a hero; the murder made Peter a vengeful vigilante, not a hero. The movie gets it wrong! Peter becomes a hero after capturing Ben's murder and after recognizing the bad outcome of his own previous irresponsible behavior. Two steps: experiencing hero-like behavior, then recognizing his previous folly.

In other words, the Peter Parker who captures Uncle Ben's killer is just an emotional kid in funny pajamas weilding power. Only AFTER he recognizes that his irresponsible behavior precipitated tragedy does he become a hero. That rational discovery is what makes him a hero, not guilt.

Stephen Strange similarly "discovers" the rational necessity of heroism by happenstance. He loses his surgical skill (and its advantages). He pursues ancient mysticism in order to regain his advantages. He accepts power from the Ancient One (as did Mordu [sp?], a bad guy), and observes the old man as a heroic example. He supports the Ancient One in battle out of emotion (still not a hero). Only after he sees the Ancient One's example, only after her performs hero-LIKE action, only after he sees tragedy as the logical outcome of the abuse of power does he make himself a hero.

I find this completely consistent with my experience.

Has anyone every read Arthur Iberall's *Toward a General Science of Viable Systems"? It dovetails with this discussion in ways so profound a little guy like me gets all dizzified.

Or maybe I'm having insulin issues.