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Jesus among the Bobos

One might note as one of the most endearing, or obnoxious, aspects of the underground comics their loose ways with what other men deem sacred. However, bashing the saints and icons of others requires little courage, regardless of what people may think; gathering like-minded people together to agree that they hate something involves no particular risk of having one's peers ostracize the critic or iconoclast. Courage, rather, shows when one dares take on the sacred cows of one's kind.

One piece from the heyday of undergrounds such a parody distinguished itself for the absence of a the bias of self-congratulation. Frank Stack, writing as "Foolbert Sturgeon" (some kind of rib at his fellow cartoonist and University of Texas alumnus Gilbert Shelton), once dabbled in the ludicrous Adventures of Jesus. In the process, he not only crossed well over into the terrain of the blasphemous (for how else can we regard reducing the central figure of Christendom to a comics character, specifically a well-meaning but frequently clueless bumbler like Sturgeon's Jesus?). The sixties had so many slights of this sort that one more hardly deserves numbering. No, the real courage showed in Sturgeon's merciless depiction of the bohemian bourgeoisie in enhanced versions of their native colors.

What some today call the "bobo" (short for bohemian bourgeois) today has a more consistent face than it did back in the sixties. The man who vents with spite every time he uses the term "the rich" (and for him this expletive plays a central role in his lexicon of profanity) yet pays 200 dollars US for a pair of imported European sandals, presumes racism in everyone who dissents from his own politics while living in an all-white suburb, and would complain more if forced to drink Folger's Coffee (rather than some pricey imported coffee that smells like potpourri and has some name like Bobo Hills snob-berry) than most people do when they die of cancer, very likely, belongs among the bobo culture. He fancies himself different since he adheres rigorously to the standards of a culture that proclaims itself individualist even while policing its own number for little deviations for which a wayward bobo risks denunciation and shunning.

This crowd - or rather their equivalent, circa 1967 - provides the target of an exceptional story from Adventures of Jesus. For in this work, Sturgeon somewhat targeted elements of the very countercultural crowd that the underground comics served. We have one of two remarkable things here: either a courageous (or self-destructive) talent willing to hold up an unflattering mirror to people who did not care to see truth, or an audience of a generation ago that had the rapidly-vanishing ability to laugh at themselves.

The Pretext

Culture shock played the role of central drive of Adventures of Jesus, with an innocent main character confronting the downside of then-modern times. Typical stories involved the kind of trouble a cartoon version of the Savior might encounter while wandering around a city in the 1960s, including the hustlers, scumbags, and bloodthirsty club-wielding police.

A longer series of stories centered around Jesus taking a position at a university, a position from which he might stand at the front lines of the up and coming generation of silliness and human folly. So, then, from this starting point, we find Jesus invited to a university faculty party, which, given the tone of previous tales, we can expect to go terribly wrong.

As in such tales where some clueless figure wanders into and out of some brewing catastrophe brought on by those who arrogate to themselves a presumption of superiority, we find a complete absence of the mundane kind of common sense among the culturati, even as circumstances suggest that just such a facility could prevent the crash-and-burn phenomenon. You can see the like in Tolstoi's "Ivan the Fool" stories and other pieces about supposed idiots who nonetheless possess a rare moral and practical wisdom. Here, however, you have a gaggle of judgment-impaired college professors who evidently lack the good sense of a pet dog that knows better than to run into traffic.

The Vapid Posturing

In the tamer, earlier portion of the party a number of conversations shed light onto the character of the partygoers. Two sixtyish professors, for instance, grumble resentfully about youthful claims to have discovered vices they remember as widespread during the 1920s. Having gone there and seen those things a generation previously, however, these purported grown-ups fail to make the necessary connections: What failed in 1925 could very well fail again in 1965.

One could justify reservations, rather than resentment, on more solid grounds, such as concern that the up-and-coming crowd risked, through their rediscovery of the inability to defer gratification, a variety of unpalatable consequences. Or one could expect simple disapproval of the reappearance of the bad sense one might remember from one's youth.

Here, though, we see a disturbing reaction to the notion that the younger generation had begun attracting attention for their escapades, and, in the process, taking credit for enthusiasms which this crowd of bohemian bourgeoisie feel a proprietary interest.

The one-upmanship begins at this point. Little transpires between guests without some kind of calculation of position - a roshambo of drinking prowess, racial enlightenment, willingness to fornicate, or other required aspects of the counterculture of the day. And, as the guests at the horrible party Poe described in "The Masque of the Red Death," all remain oblivious as they spiral towards their own undoing.

The Jim Problem

At an early stage in the party, the guests welcome Jim, a loud, crass, inconsiderate buffoon who nonetheless speaks in the language of phony insight and pop psychology and thereby knows how to pass himself off as The Honest Voice Unbesmirched by Pretention. Jim lays down a relentless series of ill-considered insults, physical abuse, and out-and-out vandalism at various points in the party. Yet his hipster clothes and jargon represent a considerable countercultural credential that, to a certain point, renders him above censure.

Jim's contrived image conceals a complete emptiness of personality. Representing shallow sound bites as deep insight, he dispenses his wisdom in precisely such doses as bring trouble to others while leaving himself mostly untouched, until the point where he attempts to intimidate one of the fifty-plus professors via fisticuffs. The older professor lays a more aged, more solid, and more wise foot precisely where it can inflict the most pain, just in time to ease the suffering of the reader by a little overdue justice.

However, nothing can stop the man, and he variously incites arguments; insults everyone; breaks the chandelier; suggests the hostess wishes to give him a venereal disease; talks the hostess into making love with the gardener in front of everyone; and breaks almost any conceivable rule one might expect a textbook gentleman to follow, then departs long before the whole dysfunctional party comes crashing down around the ears of the remaining participants.

Jim, in some ways, reminds me of certain guests I've seen at parties where large numbers of bobos congregate. Frequently one guest whom no one likes will appear, but no one dares admit to disliking him, lest they undermine their own impeccable postures. Like Jim, such figures frequently serve as entertainment while guests on the periphery watch the trouble that develops around them.

Militants as Ornaments

In a remarkable sub-plot, this tale tracks the events surrounding a series of Black militants invited to the party not so much because anyone knows or likes these people - one might doubt that anyone could hold much affection for such a blustery and obnoxious menagerie of pathetic caricatures - but as a manifestation of the hosts' notions of brotherhood. These militants, throughout, insult, threaten, and fleece everyone they can manage to, including, at times, one another.

To some degree, their presence shows up the plight of the middle-class Black faculty members getting the treatment at the party. On the one hand, the ignorant white professors and their wives prattle on about the details of a street culture that these instructors know little or nothing about; on the other hand, the militants berate them for their lack of Blackness (as they, for their own convenience, choose to define it).

And, as the evening goes on, the acid humor aspect becomes more potent even as a rather racist undercurrent develops in the story. While the faculty members dispute about position, tenure, and various ways of one-upping each other as phony bohemians, the militants quietly remove anything of value, leaving, in the late stages of the party, little more than a series of empty rooms with vomit-stained floors upon which to stage the compulsory orgy in which the remaining guests seem inclined to participate more out of duty than desire.

The Reinvention of Hedonism

The self-designated avant-garde of the sixties entertained a formidable set of pretentions, some of which would not pass muster among people given to honest self-criticism. Countercultural claims to having discovered - or invented - hedonism belong among some of the more remarkable, insofar as we can trace the doings of hedonists in pieces like the Satyricon from the times of the Julio-Claudian emperors.

Given the amount of quibbling, fighting, and vomiting that ultimately occur at this party, however, one might speculate that this crowd frolics not out of a sincere impulse but more as a matter of form - to establish or defend a bohemian credential.

So, then, out of duty they drink to self-destructive levels; similarly, they dabble in whatever illegal substances (or visual analogs passed off as such) as opportunity allows; and, again, in pointless games of sexual excess which one can observe, without enthusiasm, going on in the later stages of the party. An unspoken undercurrent of "I dare you!" connects all such activity in the tale. And, with dares, we can note that one does not dare someone to do something because we expect him to want to do it - we dare him because we know he doesn't want to do it.

The Inevitable Crash

The last stages of the party - the point at which all should have left but the remainder lack the sense to get out while they still can - represent the ultimate degeneration of the event. Flabby, middle-aged professors half-heartedly attempting to participate in an orgy in a furniture-free house, on floors coated with spilled drinks and the occasional puddle of human sputum from the guests who got sick after drinking too much, provide all the details that one need know to understand the scenes in the absence of some of the more graphic panels from this story. Then, ultimately, in a desire for some heat, two participants turn to the kitchen stove, which, when they light it, blows the house to cinders.

Finally getting it, Jesus decides to take his leave, and, in one last ironic touch, the out-of-control and clueless partygoers avail themselves of the opportunity to denounce him behind his back. As the one partygoer with some kind of clue how people should behave, we need show no surprise that the crowd of demented professors view him in the same kind of regard as they might hold for, say, a comics fan.

Slouching towards Decadence

Viewed in the whole, this crowd presents a face we might describe less with the terms it would choose for itself - such as intellectual or enlightened - and more with the simple and pejorative term decadent.

One crosses the line between the inspired and the corrosive when one sacrifices the benefit of common sense in order to promote a simplified version of a genuine principle. Thus, the enlightened stance that rejects racism becomes the blunt idiocy of allowing a crowd of hoodlums to fleece party guests and rob the house rather than risk accusations of bigotry for throwing the bums out and/or having them hauled away by the cops. The notion of an open mind - meaning one that attempts to judge things on their merits rather than on inherited formulas that tend to preempt the decision process - becomes the idiocy of claiming the merits of anything for its newness or ability to affront the conventional. A healthy appetite for pleasures of the flesh, furthermore, crosses into decadence where unenthusiastic participants allow others to drag them into an unwanted orgy to avoid accusations of one of the crimes that hedonism postulates (prudery, frigidity, and the other mortal sins that offend the party crowd).

Here, then, we see the line that distinguishes the comic-book Jesus from his hosts and fellow partygoers. Perhaps he remains innocent or ignorant of the supposed great ideas of his day. However, the taint of the contrived ignorance of ideology also remains beyond him; he lacks the cynicism of an ethos that assumes the truth of an idea simply because some disliked parent culture believes in it; and he remains above the self-destructive activities that the ethic of gratification requires.

Even from a position of cluelessness, then, our ink-and-paper caricature of Jesus shows a higher sensibility in remaining above the sordid and messy fray that ultimately reduces the site of a party to no more than a charred ruin. And, as he marches on, essentially unscathed but for a coating of soot, the blackened forms of his critics congregate to bemoan how sorely they see Jesus as departing from a standard of all things "with it."

All in all, we have a fairly merciless criticism of a crowd of people made far to recognizable by characteristic features some might argue that Sturgeon barely exaggerates at all. In this, we can consider the story to have provided meaningful commentary; and, in doing so, this piece succeeded as effective political comics.

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Email the author at ouzomandias@mailexcite.com.

Column 252. Completed 25-May-2001.