What really happened when Mr Rogers testified

Fred Rogers testifies before the Senate Subcommittee (1969)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6wSjINly88

What really happened when Mr Rogers testified 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODlErshr_Ic

Latency and inertia

I was trying to become an adult when Bone became popular in the late 1990s. This was not easy for an average kid who was awkward with words and preferred to express himself through pictures. In fact, I preferred this form of expression enough to consider working in the visual arts.

Like many kids I read a lot of comics at school then gave them away when I started taking on adult responsibilities and upskilling for a future career. Growing up, unfortunately, eats up time and occupies a lot of brain space. Sure, many of us still dipped into Calvin & Hobbes (Bill Watterson), The Far Side (Gary Larson), Leunig (Michael Leunig), and other comics that were quick to read and impactful. Transitioning to adult life still required punctuations of insight, levity and humour. Few of us had the time to take a deep dive into a comic book series like Bone.

Jeff Smith never wanted his magnum opus pigeonholed as a children’s book but only kids (and comic book aficionados) had the time to actually read it. Introduced as a small, self-published series Bone was not readily available until Scholastic backed it and libraries stocked it*.

Now available on eBooks.

Bone is an epic adventure of three Bone cousins - Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone -  after they are chased out of town and fall into a fantastical valley filled with rat creatures, a big red dragon and, among others, a young girl named Thorn, her Grandma Ben who races cows, a sinister “Hooded One”, a tavern owner called Lucius, and a leafhopper called Ted. If that isn’t weird enough the cartoony Bone cousins are literally and visually out of place amongst the more elaborately drawn characters of the valley. Like Pogo, and Scrooge McDuck and his nephews (early influences for Jeff Smith) none of the Bone cousins wear pants. Yet this only enhances the unravelling narrative of an incredible, immensely compelling world.

In my opinion the raison d’être of a good comic book, or graphic novel, or animation, is its ability to celebrate the absurd without getting too philosophical about it. 

Spider-Ham meets Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Fone Bone, Thorn and Grandma Ben in Bone issue 19.

The John Wick franchise was more a cartoon series - albeit a live action cartoon series - than the Bone graphic novel ever was (and I mean that in a good way).

Much has been said about Jeff Smith’s Bone from its immersive storytelling to its impeccable pacing. It is a masterclass in composition and visual narration whether you read it in the original B&W or in colour (Steve Hamaker did a brilliant job colourising the series for Scholastic and both are excellent). Grownups argue whether the subsequent prequels and sequels were any good (I have no idea) and whether the series should be removed from the reading list for children (proving, once again, that some adults should never be left in charge of kids). 

In short, if you haven’t read Bone then you should. And, if you have, then consider reading it again. Better still, let your kids discover it, read it, and talk about it. It is a riveting yarn, the characters are sincere and endearing and, best of all, it comes in a comic book. What’s not to like? It also contains two tropes common to many great stories caricatured in the sub narrative of the two main characters: Fone Bone and Thorn.

Let’s see whether I can discuss them without too many spoilers. 

First, "latency". As a character trait latency is hard to pin down. Like potential energy it signifies energy stored up in a body ready to unleash at the right moment. But, unlike potential energy the amount of latency in a character cannot be easily measured nor aliquoted. It’s not necessarily physical. Nor is it simply strength of personality. It is courage when it is needed and strength when it is required. It is knowledge and understanding, inquiry and analysis, and action. It is timing. And it draws from a deep well.

Latency is neither good nor bad. But it is most memorable when it has a valence that leans heavily in one of either direction.

Michelangelo’s “David” (captured in marble before he slings a rock to take down Goliath) is one of the finest examples of latency in art.

From the contrapposto..

.. to the penetrating gaze..

.. terminating in the latent energy coiled within the right hand.

The second theme is "inertia". Like latency, inertia also has an analogue in the measurable, physical world. Indeed, the term "momentum" gives it a direct relationship to force. But it too cannot be rigorously defined. And semantics matters. Momentum places the focus on a body as it moves through space and time. It is forward looking and asks questions about the body’s future. Inertia, on the other hand, places emphasis on the environment as a body moves through it (or remains static within it). It is backward looking and asks questions about the body’s history. 

If a body in space and time is a character in a story then momentum is the character’s development and inertia is the weight of a character’s history as it meets the force of environmental and situational factors that impact upon it. 

Momentum and inertia are two sides of the same coin. Yet the distinction is important. Regret has history. Pain has a history. And, in the case of Thorn, innocence has - or rather hides - a history.

If you find this funny then you know what I mean.

To be sure, comics and caricatures are simplifications of a complex world. This makes for easy reading which is great for kids. But that doesn’t mean grownups aren’t allowed to enjoy them. In the hands of a good storyteller they are a stonkingly splendid way to pass time. Fone Bone is smart and resourceful. He is also very small and doesn’t make a big deal of himself (even if his initial relationship with Thorn is the very definition of over reach). Yet he is strong - sometimes incredibly strong - when he needs to be. He is reliable and people turn to him for for help. He allows his relationships to mature organically. And, as such, Fone Bone is a caricature of latency. Thorn is given the most development over the course of the series. She is the youngest of the main characters and her growth is driven by the dramatic change in the world around her. Like many other characters in Bone she is also strong but her trajectory is a caricature of inertia. In other words, her character development is a response to powerful inertial forces. She resists them and she allows herself to be moved by them. She responds by growing up.

As the glib statement goes, “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.” Typically said by a winner who overcomes a minor challenge it has salience when things could really go either way.

All part of growing up.

For a comic book Bone gets pretty dark. The same is true for a lot of graphic novels. But for all the violence and supernatural stuff Bone does not lose any of its warmth and charm. The Bone cousins are introduced in the first three issues with a sincerity and relatability that endear them to the reader. It is through the Bone cousins that the reader enters the narrative. Fone Bone is the youngest and the most considered of the Bone cousins, and the principle point-of-view for the reader. Phoney Bone is the oldest and most scheming of the Bone cousins yet he cares deeply about the welfare of his two other cousins and his self-serving, whacko plans always have unexpected consequences. Smiley Bone (the middle Bone, ha ha) is the biggest and strongest of the Bone cousins and is depicted as the least intelligent. The subtext is that Smiley is also the only character with the quiet confidence of someone with nothing to prove.

For a comic book Bone also hits hard. It is a children’s book with its cartoon format, it emphasises friendship and interpersonal bonds and the actuality of what these relationships entail, and all the characters - even the baddies - are sincere and mean exactly what they say. But it also expands into adult themes like power and duty, fear, herd and mob mentality, violence, war, death, a pervasive presence of a supernatural forces that lie beyond human control, and the aforementioned latency and inertia. It would make a great subject for a book club.

I too want to know. 

As a person who doesn’t read much fiction this is about as sophisticated as I get. And, if you dear reader, have blundered onto this post then that’s your problem, not mine. I think the comic book provides a marvellous format for expression and communication and the choice of simple cartoons to represent the Bone cousins maximises the flexibility and dynamism of these structures. The Bone cousins can be stretched and compressed and twisted in all manner of ways. This aids in the depiction of movement and force as well as dramatising the entire range and scale of emotions. Fone Bone and Phoney Bone are very different caricatures but structurally identical cartoons. Their expressions differ and Phoney wears a shirt with a star on it. Fone Bone wears nothing at all (but often carries a pack when travelling). Smiley Bone is just a stretched out version of Fone and Phoney Bone. He is a lot taller, wears a vest, and variously takes on the accoutrements of a hat, cigar, and stringed instrument. The simple, manipulated forms of the Bone cousins add a lot of visual zest and energy as well as a hearty dose of slapstick.

As the Bone cousins split up and rejoin throughout the book their demeanour and the few accessories on them makes them easy to distinguish and their narratives effortless to follow. The fantastic valley that the Bone cousins fall into is explored through their eyes and their caricatured personalities. This childish probing of a new environment works very well. It takes the complex history and personality of the reader, boils it down to three simple, narrative components, and allows a frictionless slide into a fictional world. By issue four Jeff Smith has you hooked and there is already a sense of foreboding.

As the mythical world of the valley unfolds the reader drifts into the narrative of the other characters. We meet the leafhopper Ted, two rat creatures, a red dragon, a possum family, a hedgehog, Thorn, Thorn’s Grandmother Ben, Kingdok, more rat creatures, Lucius, various townsfolk, the “Hooded One”, and we hear about the “Lord of the Locusts”. The focus, however, is on the relationship between Thorn and Fone Bone. Thorn is introduced as a young, unassuming girl who is kind, gentle, and considerate. Fone Bone, who is also thoughtful and considerate, immediately becomes infatuated with her. Like other relationships based on trust and decency the relationship matures and strengthens over time. As we leave the first story arc and enter the second we find out that the “Lord of the Locusts” is a nightmare from the spiritual world and is the boss of the “Hooded One”. The “Hooded One” is the boss of Kingdok and Kingdok is the boss of the rat creatures and they are all looking for a small, bald creature with star on its chest. 

Phoney Bone is small, and bald, and wears a shirt with a star on it. 

Materialistic Phoney is not the spiritual type and blows them off.

Fictional stories carry a huge advantage over their nonfiction kin in that what is implied but not explicitly explained carries weight. The implied sometimes carries more weight than that made plain. Reflection also reveals as much about the reader as it does about what has been written.

Jumping ahead 26 issues (4 story arcs) and the first named person to die happens to be the weakest and the most bewildered. Make of that what you will. Two story arcs earlier in “The Dragonslayer” Smiley Bone asks Lucius Down why he has always denied the existence of dragons even as he knew that dragons were very real. Lucius tells Smiley that he was taught that denying the existence of dragons allowed people to discover dragons for themselves. While denial is not a recommended teaching methodology this brilliant, simple page of words and pictures reveals a deep, simple truth about discovery, learning, and understanding. Positive or negative valence can be applied to almost anything that isn’t pinned down to the strictly objective and measurable. Phoney Bone plays on the idea that dragons are to be feared (when he knows that they are not) and whips the township into a frenzy to gain material wealth as their saviour. His megaphone is a big speech in the town square. Dragons are big and powerful. While fear and anger can be channelled against dragons action can only be taken when people act as a group. Make of that what you will. 

Jeff Smith’s Bone largely hews to the storyline pioneered by J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings with its detailed world-building, heroic journeys, and an epic quest to save that world. Like The Lord of the Rings, Jeff Smith sets Bone in the western medieval period but draws inspiration from Australian Aboriginal mythology. What the people of the valley call “The Dreaming” and the animals call the “hum-hum” has roots in the Dreamtime (also called The Dreaming) of indigenous Australians. The idea that there is a certain balance and harmony and an underlying interconnectedness between all things past and present is intrinsic to Aboriginal language and worldview. Time for them has an eternal quality quite different from our modern concept of sequential time. My understanding of this worldview is that time is treated like a vertical stack with a past-present-future bonded to place (the land), cycles of nature, kin, and to lived experiences. An individual cannot have a past-present-future separate from its surroundings. In the world created by Jeff Smith “The Dreaming” is the spiritual realm, an interconnectedness of place and time - an everywhere, past and present - accessible to dragons and to certain gifted humans who inhabit the world of the living. Time, however, in the world of the living is treated in the standard manner of past→present→future. For many people, whether they call themselves “spiritual” or not, there is something about this that just feels right. That trees communicate with each other (through micorrhizal networks, soil microbes, and organic compounds) and a revolution in our understanding of time and locality lends some real world evidence to folklore and mythology.

Rainbow Serpent, Mt Borradaile, Arnhem Land, Australia

There is much to like in this comic book. It is warm, funny, exciting, scary, violent, and very readable. It has stereotypical heroes and villains. And it can be peeled apart like an onion without making your eyes water. The “good guys” are relatable and resilient and - if you will allow me - possess an element of “latency”. I prefer latency to terms like “inner strength” or “strength of character” as those terms suggest that the quality is something intrinsic to a character - you either have it or you don’t. In my experience that is not the entirety. As defined above latency is a human potential that is not easily measured nor aliquoted. It is a latent quality that can be drawn upon when needed and, critically, is as much about timing as it is about potential. Latency describes the person within the environment and engaged with a particular situation at hand. It embodies internal elements and external factors. The bigger the challenge the more it is called upon. It is also about knowing when and where to strut and swagger - an understanding that strength and size should be kept in check when the situation at hand requires neither. Latency is caricatured most evidently in Fone Bone because he is physically small. Thorn also has latency. But she is bigger and stronger than Fone Bone. And Thorn has more to grow and has far greater challenges to overcome. Jeff Smith also gives Thorn a history and - if you will indulge me again - a significant amount of “inertia” to overcome. On the other hand, with the “bad guys” we meet the “Hooded One” who needs to be filled with evil and malevolence from the “Lord of the Locusts”. The dark energy that is the “Lord of the Locusts” wants to be freed from the spiritual world and to walk amongst the world of the living. To that end the “Lord of the Locusts” and the “Hooded One” control Kingdok and the rat creatures through fear and loathing and the Pawan generals through greed and a desire for retribution. 

And there’s the rub. 

Jeff Smith’s Bone, like JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings relies on the stereotypical use of “othering” to characterise the enemy. I’m good with stereotypes. Obviously. I am, after all, paying homage to a comic book. I see stereotypes as a useful simplification, a heuristic shortcut, identifying pattern amongst noise in order to navigate a complex environment. Stereotypes, however, are defined as widely held, rigid oversimplifications of people and things. I agree that stereotypes are widely held and oversimplified. I’m just not sure that they are as fixed as people think they are. I’ve had my fair share of stereotypes flex, bend, expand, dissolve, and u-turn as I discover them for myself.

Othering takes the stereotype a step further. Othering is exclusionary. While stereotyping assigns generalised traits to a group, othering defines a group as fundamentally different. While stereotyping (in my mind) has flexibility, othering is inflexible - or at the very least, very resistant to bending or change.

As I said at the start I have always had trouble expressing myself with words. I don’t read much fiction and I miss a lot of nuance. When the true meaning of a word hits me it often carries a lot of baggage. I don’t believe I am alone on this. This unfortunate situation allows words like stereotyping and tribalism to be weaponised. I see no problems with these words. Indeed, for me, they carry a positive valence if any valence at all. If people were all the same then we wouldn’t have the variety of food, nor the diversity of creative expression, nor the expansiveness of thought and ideas that we have today. But, as always, context matters. Body language matters. Groupthink and social media matters. 

I think I understand it. But mostly I choose not to think about it.

It helps me to pin down the difference between “stereotyping” and “othering”. 

In Bone we meet two rat creatures early in the story who interact with each other and with Fone Bone soon after he falls into valley. We get to know them and their presence continues throughout the series. Yet the interaction between the two rat creatures is limited to the attainment and preparation of food (small mammals, often dead; making and eating of quiche vs quiche being unbecoming) which is cutesy for what are supposed to be monsters. They work as sidekicks throughout the story but are never given names. In fact, the only rat creatures to be named are Kingdok, their leader, and Bartleby, a baby rat creature that joins the side of the “good guys”. The interaction between the two rat creatures is never permitted to expand beyond a group generalisation for rat creatures. The narrative does not allow them to display latency (it delivers almost the opposite) nor provide them the benefit of inertia. They are not given a history. Morals, motivations and ideology are not their own and dictated by a higher authority. They are given the pejorative term “rat creatures". And they don’t look like humans.

That, for me, is the definition of othering. 

But they are funny.

Latency can have a negative valence. 

Just don’t give it the inertia a reader needs to get on board.

Damn..

Jeff Smith’s Bone is a comic book and a very good one at that. It tells the story of a crazy world in the throes of a heroic quest to save its future by restoring the past. It is a world full of heart, mayhem and intrigue.

I wouldn’t read too much into it. 

It is meant to be fiction.

* created by Jeff Smith - ably assisted by his wife, Vijaya Iyer - there were 55 issues released irregularly from 1991 to 2004 then collated into 9 story arcs. Scholastic published the colour version of Bone in 2005.

A free copy of the first issue is available here: 

https://www.scholastic.com/readingcampaign/challenges/prizes/bone.pdf