Petite interview de Terry Moore à 2 issues de la fin (snif). Y a pas à dire, c’est un grand feministe… C’est un peu orienté, afterellen étant apparement Le site lesbien, mais bion ça reste dans le sujet du comic :tigre:.
interview sur afterellen (désolée, c’est dans la langue de shakespeare).
Interview With Terry Moore
by
LeeAnn Kriegh
, Contributing Writer
April 16, 2007
Katchoo loves David, but she’s in love with Francine, a mostly straight woman who returns Katchoo’s love just enough to break both their hearts. The tangled relationships among these three characters are at the center of Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise, the award-winning comic book series that concludes its 14-year journey next month.
The end of SiP is an unfortunate loss for the comic book industry, where queer characters are usually nonexistent, marginalized, closeted in subtext or reduced to the simplicity of after-school specials. From the beginning, SiP was different. It featured a number of lesbian characters who played out real-life situations, not fantasies — at least not fantasies of the magic spandex and invisible plane variety. Like Moore’s other characters, the lesbians are well-rounded: flawed, occasionally unhappy, often physically and emotionally strong, and sometimes deeply in love with the wrong person. Most importantly, they’re real — or as real as any medium could render them.
Moore took a break from creating Issue 89, the next-to-last issue in the series (available in stores on Wednesday), to talk to AfterEllen.com about being kicked out of church, the anger that fueled his creation of Strangers in Paradise, and the beauty of two women finding love in the midst of chaos.
AfterEllen.com: As someone new to the genre, I was in awe of what you accomplish in so few pages.
Terry Moore: It’s amazing how powerful the comic book format can be because it incorporates the best of both film and prose. Novels and movies or television are creative vehicles that rely on something moving in order for you to experience them. The film has to roll, your eyes have to run across the page to get the experience … whereas in a graphic novel, you’re looking at the scene. It stays there on the page all day, and you experience the moment for as long as you want to experience it. It’s just an amazingly powerful medium.
AE: What kind of reactions have you received from lesbian fans of SiP?
TM: Well, I think I may have become an honorary lesbian through the series. The work has a very strong following in the gay and lesbian community, which is ironic since I’m not gay. I think if I were gay and was doing this work, I could be making a real signature piece here and just run with it for the rest of my life.
AE: But because you’re not gay, things are different for you?
TM: Well, there’s part of me that realizes I will never quite get it. It’s like … the new episode of South Park last night was about some white guy using the N-word and how it offended the black people. The black kid in school kept saying, “You guys will never get it; you will never understand what it’s like to have that word said to you.”
It’s kind of like that for me, although I still suffer a lot of the bigotry and the prejudice that’s leveled against gay people because my work is gay. I defend it; I’m proud of it, so I take a lot of grief. I got kicked out of my church and all this stuff as if I was gay, and I have all those prejudices against me in the comic book industry — people who will not touch it because it’s about lesbians.
I’ve suffered a lot of that kind of prejudice, and that’s still only a taste of what it must be like to go home and tell your family and be out and open and struggling with it. You never know where you’re going to find your next bad experience, whether it’s in a café or wherever, and then there’s the struggle for legal rights.
Really, I’m kind of doing the very safe journey into what it’s like to be gay. I’m suffering some of the consequences of it because of my signature work, but at the end of the day, I can put it on the table and go back to my straight life and shake my head and go, “Wow, you know, that’s a lot to deal with.”
AE: Tell me about the experience with your church, if you don’t mind.
TM: Well, I was raised mostly in the South, and my parents were Church of Christ, which is very conservative. When I started this comic book series, I started the gay theme as a loving tribute to my first cousin Ben who was gay and died very early on when AIDS came along. That’s what I was thinking of and dedicating my work to. … I had very, very strong convictions about this. I wasn’t doing something for the titillation factor.
People in my church, my acquaintances, would say, “What are you doing?” I’d say I was doing a comic book, and so they’d go read it and come back to me, shocked, and say, “What are you doing? There are gay people in here!” Well, yes. [Laughs.] “Well, why are you doing this? Where are you going with this?” And I’d say, “I’m going to write a story about what it’s like to be that way and all the prejudice, and these people have hearts and feelings, and look at the damage that’s being done here.”
They’d respond, with “but, but, but” and all those reasons and excuses. Well, I wouldn’t back down, and eventually I was asked to step aside: “This is not appropriate; you’re not welcome here.”
AE: That was more than a decade ago, just as the book was starting.
TM: Yeah, and it affected me permanently. I have never been able to look at church the same way since. At least on that level, I understand the struggle between gay people of faith and finding a place to worship.
AE: Religion and the church affect the characters in different ways.
TM: Yes, I have openly slammed the church and its bigotry many times. Francine has shut the door, but Katchoo is stronger in being able to handle debate and controversy. Francine has just been hurt over the years by a conservative upbringing that proved to offer her no comfort when she became an adult and had crises and questions.
It’s been rewarding to pursue two people with two different approaches, two different sets of issues, and see how they orbit each other in the story. Katchoo and Francine — they have their own issues, but the two circulate like the moon and the Earth, and it’s just amazing the picture they paint between the two of them on these issues.
AE: I understand you based Katchoo and Francine on archetypes, if you will, of modern women. Can you explain that a bit?
TM: The basic idea for Strangers in Paradise hit me when I realized how angry women were. I grew up having women on a pedestal and being turned off if I saw blemishes. Then as I matured, I slowly realized women were full-blown people with a full range of emotions, but having to live on a planet full of predators.
I began to see men and women as two different species trying to share the same planet. I began to see men as thick-skinned, unobservant, self-absorbed and giving nothing back to women on the level that women needed. The two really just do not complement each other. I guess it’s supposed to make a yin-yang, but most often it just makes a lot of friction.
Once I started to look at things that way, seeing women as — every one of them — as a walking volcano just ready to erupt over this frustration, just sick of the fear and miscommunication … once I got that in my head, I came up with the idea to write SiP, where love is a war, and here are two of the casualties: One of them is very brave and is going to be a survivor, and another one is just getting the hell beat out of her: Katchoo and Francine. Here’s how they handle it, all the damage that love and relationships do; here’s some examples of how men can be oblivious and inflict damage. I took a very radical view.
AE: It’s a really dark view of modern life.
TM: It’s the opposite of a love story. Everybody was looking for the mushy point so they could dive in, and I was more taking the attitude of, it’s every man and woman for themselves, and if you can find some partner in the middle of this chaos, God bless you. In my story, there’s an undercurrent that love is an incredible thing, and you never know where you’re going to find it. It may be found in your best friend, and if you can find it, you’re damn lucky.
To me, it does feel like everybody’s on the run today and trying to find someone who has been able to keep their bearings and build a loving home life. My story is about two people trying to do that — just build a loving personal life and home for themselves in the midst of all this chaos.
AE: Do you feel males are also casualties of the social system built around them?
TM: When I began, I was very one-sided because men screw up relationships and marriages and all that, but also they’ve screwed up the world. It’s men who build cities and bridges and bombs and .44 Magnums and rape and become serial killers and are most of the drunk drivers, et cetera. Once I started looking at things that way, it was just awful, so I had an agenda when I was writing.
But it didn’t take very long before I realized a lot of the readership of SiP is male, and the men I’ve met over the years who read the book and are pulling for the characters and really get it and really sympathize — they’re wonderful people. They’re out there; you just have to get involved with people to find them. If you just sit at home and watch the media, you’re going to think we’re doomed, but if you go out and get involved with people on a one-to-one basis, the good guys are out there.
AE: Hatred of men is a really strong lesbian stereotype, but it seems like you and Katchoo move beyond that as the story continues.
TM: Well, David kind of changes things. David allowed me to explore that position of a person who is going to try to walk with peace and some sort of faith, and how this person can actually affect people of all types and all walks. When I wrote David, I was thinking of this Hiroshima survivor who was an artist. After the war, he dedicated his life to his artwork, making art that would never hurt anybody but always bring peace and tranquility. I thought, this is a beautiful thing, and that’s kind of how I wrote David.
AE: Did you hear the collective groan from lesbians around the world when they turned the page and found David entering Katchoo’s life?
TM: Oh, I got death threats. Maybe one death threat. I’d get letters, people saying, “Don’t you dare make this a straight-guy-turns-lesbian story.” I knew in the back of my mind that wasn’t what I was going to end up with; it was just a provocative beginning.
There was one nasty letter I got from a lady in Seattle, so I tracked her down and called her at work one day. Scared the hell out of her. [Laughs.] “Hello, this is Terry Moore. I want to talk to you about your letter.” [Laughs.] I said, “I just want to assure you, the story’s not really that way, and just give me time because I’m kind of throwing down gauntlets. Stick with me.”
AE: I imagine those problems died down as people started to trust you more.
TM: As the characters became more well-rounded, and readers began to know the characters more and more, we got way, way past all that. The characters are really complicated, the relationships become very complicated. It makes sense if you take the ride with them and read every single page. My whole point, right from the beginning and in the end, was love is bigger than genres and what type of walk you take in this life. Love is well above that. That inspired me, believing that.
AE: Francine seems at the center of the SiP world. Men adore her. Katchoo lives for her. She’s the girl next door, but she’s also running this whole world, in a way.
TM: Yeah, she was the character the story was built on initially, though by the third issue, Katchoo took over because of the power of her personality. It’s always been a dual story line as they come together, drift apart, come together; it’s kind of a dance between two lights.
But, yeah, I did begin thinking I was writing a story about Francine and her wacky roommate, and then it turned out to be the other way around. But Francine is centric. She’s the nexus of these people in the same way the mother is the nexus of the family. She may not be the most dynamic character, but she is the hub, and they all revolve around her for one reason or another.
AE: I find it interesting what that says about modern life, that the woman who may not be noticed or stand out for her personal characteristics is running the show.
TM: Absolutely. There are a lot of clichés to describe that, but I tried to think in terms of, if we removed this person, everyone else would spin off in their own directions — and very quickly. Francine has always been the matriarch of this cast, and Katchoo has been the patriarch — she has taken the aggressive role in so many ways, but she’s never been able to be the bond that holds them all together. That’s just some sort of innate, matriarchal thing that Francine fulfills, and there’s nothing flashy about that role.
AE: Music plays such an important role in SiP. Could you tell me who in the music world is inspiring you these days?
TM: The most gifted musician I’ve come across in the last 20 years is Desha Dunnahoe. I got a sampler CD of hers, and it’s the CD I’ve listened to the most in the last two years. How pathetic am I listening to a sampler CD? But there’ll be something so gorgeous on there. … I’m working on this beautiful scene, and her beautiful voice comes in and just brings tears to my eyes. It paints the picture for me and paints the story for me. I’m listening to Desha Dunnahoe constantly as I work on the final issues of SiP.
AE: As you come to the end of SiP, are you pulled in different directions in terms of which genre you want to work in next?
TM: Yes, I am pulled in different directions. I know in my heart that SiP, in one version or another, would make an excellent TV show. Even if they took some side story like the Parker girls, it would be good television. I’ve talked to Angela Robinson about that, and we’re both looking for the time to put toward it and see what we get.
AE: How do you hope SiP is remembered?
TM: First of all, I hope that it is remembered, period. I hope that a hundred years from now, Strangers in Paradise is still relevant on some sort of timeless level, because it is a story more about people than the times they lived in. I think it is possible to write something that will be read a hundred years from now, if you write about people and what it’s like to be a lonely soul looking for another … if the story has something to say about life and reflects the courage and beauty of the human heart. I hope I’ve accomplished that in my stories.
AE: And yet, you know, I have to say I hope parts of the story are irrelevant a hundred years from now.
TM: Amen.
Edité par gexian le 17-04-2007 à 23:27
