{"id":50572,"date":"2016-12-12T16:52:03","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T16:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=50572"},"modified":"2016-12-12T16:52:03","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T16:52:03","slug":"what-was-the-source-of-krazy-kats-comic-genius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=50572","title":{"rendered":"What was the source of Krazy Kat\u2019s comic genius?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What was the source of <\/strong><\/em>Krazy Kat\u2019s<\/strong> comic genius?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2016-12-06<\/p>\n

Glen David Gold<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Tisserand<\/a>, Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White<\/em><\/a> (New York: HarperCollins, 2016)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Genius is simplicity. A dog, who is a policeman, loves a cat, who loves a mouse. The mouse throws bricks at the cat, and the policeman jails him. Some aspect of this, more or less every day, for more or less 30 years, was the comic strip Krazy Kat<\/em><\/a>. In isolation it seems as though it dropped out of the sky, and when its creator<\/a> died in 1944, to the sky it returned. It has since been recognized as one of the greatest American comic strips, a mix of surrealism, Socratic dialogue<\/a>, low-rent vaudeville<\/a>, jazz improvisation<\/a>, Native American motifs and, as it turns out, a subtle \u2014 so subtle no one seems to have noticed at the time \u2014 commentary on the peculiar notion of race.<\/p>\n

\u201cKrazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White<\/a>,\u201d by Michael Tisserand<\/a>, skillfully returns context to \u201cKrazy Kat,\u201d revealing that it could have come from no other time or place than during the accelerated rise of the American media empire. To his peers, Herriman<\/a> claimed to be French or Greek, among other things, to explain away his kinky hair and dark skin. But his New Orleans<\/a> birth certificate called him \u201ccolored,\u201d and Tisserand is especially good at parsing the politics of pass\u00e9 blanc<\/em>, or \u201cpassively passing for white<\/a>\u201d in Creole<\/a> culture.<\/p>\n

Herriman had a longer apprenticeship than most, working on dozens of strips that never caught fire during the spectacular publication battles between Hearst and Pulitzer that led to the birth of full-color comics such as \u201cThe Yellow Kid\u201d and \u201cLittle Nemo. \u201d He was learning his form at the same time that jazz, animation and slapstick comedy were likewise getting their cultural feet under them. Also boxing. Boxing had obeyed \u201cthe color line\u201d until 1910, when, in defiance of racist attitudes, the country demanded that black Jack Johnson<\/a> and white Jim Jeffries<\/a> finally take the ring. (It\u2019s of course ironic that overcoming racism involved allowing people of different races to beat each other up, but such is our way.)…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What was the source of Krazy Kat\u2019s comic genius? The Washington Post 2016-12-06 Glen David Gold Michael Tisserand, Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White (New York: HarperCollins, 2016) Genius is simplicity. A dog, who is a policeman, loves a cat, who loves a mouse. The mouse throws bricks at the cat, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[9929,25698,9930,25524,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-50572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-george-herriman","tag-glen-david-gold","tag-krazy-kat","tag-michael-tisserand","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50573,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50572\/revisions\/50573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}