I suppose proof may be required of the possibility that humans are becoming convincing copies as opposed to original spawn? If so, I give you the uneasy alliance of creative talents from Pilote circa 1979.
One of the first recordings of 'MeToo' shows two animal-like office-drones ambushing and despoiling her pristine body.
A few years later saw the launch of Métal Hurlant by Gir, Druillet and a couple of others, including Dionnet. However, Bretécher is notable for forging her early path by resolutely tracking-down those she admired from the school of Tintin.
'That was how I got to know Delporté, Jijé and Franquin. This was 1967 and it put me over the moon; Spirou was a totally mythic magazine.'
The venerable Belgian comic accepted her Gnagnan (adult-talking babies). 'Ligne Claire', as TCJ dubbed her, is highly appropriate as this quote suggests..
Franquin..might sketch a pig three hundred times before, in the end, he had something that satisfied him.
Bretécher dealt in 'types' that require a tactile line, an animalistic dexterity that was taken for body-positivism in women.
Her teen, Agrippine, premiered in 88, has been compared to the 'texto-speak' of modern teens.
These dialogues, half overheard and half made up, were Bretécher's invention. Yet now they seem uncanny - a preview of our texto-speak. (TCJ)
Yet, equally, her idiosyncratic dialect is the opposite of something that makes everyone the same. Even her feminism is not formal, since,
'I've always hated militants. The people who are sure they're right, who think they're the only ones equipped to right the wrongs.. It's they who embody the wrong and that's the end of the story.'
What I want to get to is that 'texto-speak' is machine-speak, whereas Bretécher speaks for the body. Texto-speak is designed for quickness, not for expressive acts.
The female body expresses itself elegantly, as Bretécher herself is elegant. While social-media makes people the same, Bretécher's line identifies foibles of the female anatomy.
'Whatever I do, it's not actually observation. It's more like assembling an arsenal.'
Her females are somewhat animal-like, forging connections to chimps and free-swinging ways. Possibly not coincidentally, one of her first strips was for an ecological monthly called Le Sauvage.
What is called body-positivism in women could also be seen as a desire to return to nature and away from the follies of suburban man and his over-eager ego. A return to nature implies something archaic and deadly, tactile and erotic in a Weird Tales way.
One only has to think of the first writer of a parallel world in The Heads of Cerberus, Francis Stevens (see prev.) There are the deadly plants of queasily tactile suckers in The Nightmare; the luridly spectral white wolves of Citadel of Fear; the salty and sultry sea-maiden of the lake of fire; horses gone to sea in Claimed.
The unreality of these scenes has the effect of amplifying the cosmos as an animated circus of tactile types that swirl around humankind. Unreality is something that one is not literally going to see except in dreams, but is true on a cosmic scale.
Being one with nature one can imagine being inside the belly of a whale (as in Pinocchio or Jonah). The unreality of the lyre in the mythical quest of Orpheus for Eurydice in Hades only to find
J'AI PERDU EURYDICE (Kozena)
Classical music is unreal because it pulls the strings of the lyre in an original way, harking back to beginnings (the difference between KT Tunstall and Ed Sheeran.)
What is real is also unreal for the reason everything has an origin. Instead of going even more inside the head as modern Man is wont (see Zuckerberg's 'Meta'), one should recognise that this so-called reality has no basis in psyche.
The psyche is expressed in tactile gestures that express the will of a commune. Going back to Bretécher, the joke of 'MeToo' is that modernism tends not to get the joke! A commune is made-up of various types of feuding, more or less resembling a school class. You may recall I mentioned my days at Newtown School in Ireland as a kid, and it was a wild time. As a coed, mock-copulation was not unheard of, and the boisterous goings-on gave clues as to how to respond. It’s called a free psyche with coordinated action that one is not told but has to learn. Boisterousness and tactile responses are the order of the day at that age. Have women forgotten how to slap men?
Communes are feudal, tactile, they do not work on pure information. They are much more organic and visceral. The question with a 'Meta' future has to approach the basic problem that without unreality - that is to say, the inaccurate imagination - then reality is not psychically real. A mere façade.
This is even more apparent in the communal organs like Argosy that Francis Stevens wrote for in the 20s. There is a culture of savage squalor and salty maidens/mariners.
The psyche is above all tactile, and this can also be seen in the 30s Junto and Robert E Howard's play-acting with swords (prev?)
Without the coordinated activity of the body, the psyche cannot express itself except in terms defined and restricted by that of a Meta-system that is itself a façade.
So, the links between these two women from almost a century apart are clear, as are the links to the imagineers and adventurers (Disney, Howard.)
Bretécher's bizarre faces can convey any feeling or any mixture of feelings and her expertise at using a minimum of background to situate the strips perfectly is evident throughout. (Kim Thompson)
In a word, unreality penetrates reality. The real problem with a 'Meta' reality is that it cannot penetrate beyond what 'they' set-out as the limits to perception- namely, the head.
But the head is nothing without the psyche, and this is expressed through the tactile freedom of the body (historically in country pursuits such as hunting, or even feuding!) This in itself is an adequate argument against the Meta-tyranny of tomorrow, since it's clear its aim is to indoctrinate with false stories read by expressive algorithms (see prev.)
In a world filled with Smileys and Likes there is now a bit less room, a bit less taste, for truths that bite. (TCJ)
The body requires freedom of expression, and this frees the mind. The imprisoned body enslaves the mind. The feisty Bretécher - for all her Bardot-pout - is clear on this.
..what counts is how you feel.. Whenever some guy tried to pay me a compliment I would think he was making me into a joke. I'd respond aggressively and he would think 'What a bitch!' What all that depends on is your frame of mind, and what creates that? It's created by Elle, by Marie Claire, by all those shitty papers and magazines. Publications that, instead of telling girls 'Make the best of what you've got, you too are beautiful', want them to spend eight thousand francs on some charlatan who sticks needles in their thighs to fight their cellulite!..I'd like to have their hides..
