I'm trying to push the idea of hero as protector, and the idea that a soft, warm sweater also protects.
--Mark Newport
"What did you do in the Islamic War, Daddy?" asked Mark Newport's children.
"I knitted," he answered.
--Apocryphal
by Jerome du Bois
There's an Arizona State University (ASU) professor of fabric arts named Mark Newport who knits superhero costumes, using himself as a model. He also embroiders comic-book covers, makes quilts from comic-book pages, and will soon be featured in a series of digital images of himself in his costumes "in the role of protector."
Meanwhile, we all have a scimitar at our throats. You want to call this twinkiedoodle for help? Think he'll protect you? He can't. He'll hand you something soft and pretty, though. He is impotence personified, even glorified. Knitting is his kryptonite for us all. He knitted and sewed right through 9/11 and probably didn't drop a stitch. He says,
his work represents "how I see the world, instead of how the world is supposed to be seen, or tells you how to be . . ."
Damn that pesky reality! Knit a sweater for Osama and maybe he won't chop your head. If I close my eyes, you can't see me. It's a super-power.
Oh, wait, it's just art, it's not about real life. No need to get angry.
The contrast between the masculine icons and the soft, knitted suits provides a provocative visual, says curator John Spiak. "It opens a broad dialogue on gender identity --more specifically, characteristics of masculinity and how they are perceived in our society. Newport's use of knitting and embroidery, combined with superhero imagery, provides an unexpected surprise [what other kind is there?--CK] that immediately engages the viewer."
The only broad dialogue this opens is series of wide-mouthed yawns. Spiak's buddies have been undermining masculinity for years. See Jon Haddock, for example, who has paintings of himself and his wife in superhero costumes.
This is an old, old story of envy. As a teenager and young adult, I speculate, Newport gazed for long hours upon the pictorial forms of well-formed men, fictional and real, from the Marvel Heroes to the real marvels, whom he collected in sports trading cards. He spread them out on his floor and gazed at them and felt . . . small and inadequate and unable to measure up. (Perhaps, in a household of women, he had few male models and maybe too many earfuls about untrustworthy men.) He studied the heroes, the powerful and competent heroes. For years, apparently.
And then he started poking holes in them with pins and needles. I don't know why, but he did.
And poking and poking and poking, with his long needles, for many years now.
Then he fills the holes, covering up these heroes up with various materials --beads, thread, cloth, ribbons-- transforming them, emasculating them, redefining them, obliterating them. They're gone, the way they were, the way they were supposed to be. They're his now. He's safe. It's all about you, Mark.
And he hasn't stopped. He created beaded sports trading cards back in the early 1990s, and now he's graduated, so to speak, to entire knitted jumpsuits, which are just tightened-up holes held together by knotted geometry. Holes helpless against any sharp steel.
They offer no practical protection whatsoever. So why does he go on about protection? I could say:
Because he wants to undermine and ultimately destroy the notions of protection, masculinity, femininity, integrity, courage, human dignity, and all the other components that distinguish us from the knuckle-draggers and sycophants.
Maybe --at the beginning, and maybe these motives still apply, but they're secondary now, part of the package. You see, his voodoo worked, and he worked his gimmick --the high-touch, labor-intensive, feminine craft, pop culture mash-up-- through school and college and graduate school. So now I don't think his motivation even rises to that level of sophistication. It's stupider and uglier than that.
It's all about his career. Nothing more. No world exists outside of that orbit. It's either that, or, in wartime, he wants to suffocate courage with his stinky blankie. Either way, I can't let either get by without comment.
"Turning the superhero inside out is a way for me to present an understanding of masculinity . . . Superheroes suggest strength, but knitting them or covering them with embroidery provides a softness that is contradictory to their image."
And? So? Just because you begin a thought, Mark, doesn't mean you have followed through. And he just betrayed his shallowness. I haven't picked up a comic book in forty years, I think the first Batman movie was the only Batman movie, so I'm no expert; but I can say that superheroes do not suggest strength, they embody it. And that many of them are no strangers to softness, heartbreak, conflict, or fear. They have no problem acknowledging weakness. That's what makes them interesting, and not just seamless robots. It's a continuum, not a contradiction. People are complicated, and even one-dimensional comics can communicate that fact.
But Mark Newport doesn't want to go there --too complex. It's got to be simple --hard / soft-- because he's got the soft part covered, doncha see, so to speak. Like Spiak, he thinks he's making some kind of strong social comment, as if the definitions of masculinity (especially in art) haven't been a dynamic topic in the social conversation for fifty years. We even have room for metrosexuals now, a category fit for Newport and Spiak.
[I pity both of these two young fathers' children. Or perhaps they already have the little t-shirts that say, "It's all about me."]
Even I can predict some of Newport's next "career" moves. (But if he dares to poke holes in Pat Tillman, I hope someone will tie a knot in his nose.) Like Beverly McIver with her various painted racist faces, like Heidi Hesse with her gumball Humvee and comfortable anti-American shtick, these academics or institutional artists are as safe and coddled as little puppies. The world and its roiling is just material for their advancement and comfort. They keep reality at a distance, and insult our pain in the process.
Or maybe I'm wrong, and Mark Newport just wants to help us, people, help us all understand more about what it means to be a man in the new millennium. But despite Spiak's big promise of a broad dialogue, Newport has very little to say about what kind of man we need to face the future. Instead,
"I've been making work related to gender issues for fifteen years or more, and a lot of that has to do with my background," says Newport. "When I said I wanted to pursue art, my family encouraged me, and it didn't matter if it was painting, sculpting, crafts, or if it was supposed to be a boy or girl craft."
More fluff. "Work related to gender issues." The guy sewed and knitted, but not in order to explore gender issues. It's his talent, but of course he needs to tuck this theoretical dickey into his wardrobe.
And he has nothing to offer the man of the future except an adult-baby jumpsuit.
I'll pass.
[Update: Catherine reminds me that when it comes to standing up and facing reality, the 11-year-old babysitter she used to be, not to mention the single mother she became, could kick both Spiak's and Newport's asses with both hands tied behind her back. I concur.]
Posted by Jerome at June 30, 2005 08:10 AM | TrackBack