Ghostly fundamentals

[bjorn-are.davidsen@s.televerket.tele.no]

Being rather heavily religious biased myself (I like it) I will try to make some 
fundamental comments on ghosts and fundamentalists.

 In general, I think much of the problem is outside the area of "fundamentalist 
beliefs supported by the Bible" and very much more into "cultural prejudices 
supported by a  puritan tradition". This is not made any better by the main 
cultural prejudices concerning comics (both in the US and I guess in all of 
Scandanivia, at least in Norway), such as

1) They are for children and those in their early teens only

2) They should be sound and harmless and confirm in every part to the 
    American way of life

3) They can't - and shouldn't if they could - deal with serious issues like     
 life and death (and what comes after)

Dwight wrote:

>The lady seemed sincerely convinced that if children saw
>witches in popular media like comic books, they would be
>softened up for any Satanist recruiters who came by.

It always puzzles me when someone seems to mean that witches (or other 
beings into or of  the supernatural) could influence anyone negatively, just 
by being shown.  Had they been shown as neat and nice ladies I could 
have understood it better, however it's long and far between positive 
portrayals of witches, ghouls, demons or pagan gods in literature. And 
when they are shown as good they seldom convinces anyone, although in 
children's literature there has been some nice kid vampires lately, without 
vampirism growing much in Norway.

> I exchanged a couple of letters with a fundamentalist Christian fan
>who was extremely upset about pagan goddesses appearing
>in a comic book he wanted to like...

How sad! He wil be missing a lot if not being able to enjoy Sandman, Lord 
of The Rings, Silmarillion, the Narnia series, the Dive Comedy, Arabian 
Knights or Norwegian Fairy Tales (highly recommended!) to mention but a few

> This is my comic book and what I say goes. And what I say is that 
>she's a goddess. I almost hated to disappoint the guy, since he was 
>trying so hard to like my modest little funnybook, but I can't please
>everybody.
>And Don Rosa doubtless feels the same way, so there you have it!

Keep on with your godesses! I think every author has the right to make stories 
about any kind of character! And that every reader,  critic and other author have
just as much right to critisise it (and try to make better stories) when those 
characters or stories does not ring "true" or may give a false picture of reality, 
paganism, godesses, cats or whatever.

Wilmer  wrote:

 >As for thefundamentalists who object to supernatural elements in Disney 
>comics,they should be forced to watch all the witch cartoons such as Snow 
>White and Sleeping Beauty, the fairy cartoons such as Peter Pan, the ghost
>cartoons such as Night on Bald Mountain from Fantasia, ad infinitum.
>Then, when they write their protest letters to the Powers That Be in
>Disney, they won't single out the comic books as the root of all evil.
>Anyway, these people probably regard the very concept of a talking
>duck as blasphemy.

I agree with you in full, except for the last sentence. My experience  is that they 
tend to really enjoy duck comics ("Donald Duck is so funny"), and to hate 
people comics (except for Asterix, Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, which all 
perhaps more are in the vein of cartoon comics).

Don:

I think I (or at least Geir) commented upon this when Lo$ 5 appeared in Norway, 
however just to repeat myself (or Geir) I would like to say that I really enjoyed 
your story! It's great fun! And convenient for talking about death and the afterlife 
for one's children (who BTW are exposed a lot to these kind of things in other 
comics, children books, fairy tales and real life)! And I guess noone (except any 
Rosa fundamentalist camp) will take your portrayal of heaven serious (golfing 
and all that). To me it's the CONCEPT that's important. It's Heaven or not 
Heaven. It's not WHAT KIND OF which is being shown that makes my mind 
wander and wonder. Heaven is one of those things (like life) where it really is 
hard to say what it's all about, but where everyone has the right to think for 
themselves. Which of course, also includes the right to think as fundamentalists, 
or even as a  none fundamentalist Christian, which incidentially is by far the most 
common kind of Christianity...

I think (to go back to my historical lectures of last year) that art bashing has been 
very seldom in the Christian world the last couple of thousand years. I think the 
very few  exceptions have been the iconoclasm in the Eastern Church in the 8th 
century and the puritan movement in the Protestant world in the 17th century. 
Now, where would USA have been without those Puritans?

Bjo/rn Are

Bjorn-Are.Davidsen at s.televerket.tele.no