Author: elftorp

Who still gets surprised?

The news (Sydnytt, Sydsvenskan, Aftonbladet, DN, VG, SvD) have been interesting today. It’s about a recently released video made by the police themselves during an event last December, where the cops turn out to be violent racists.

Big surprise.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7URXWvvslY]

They talk just like I imagined they would in a situation like that. I can understand that they need to let out some steam. But when you picture yourself being on the receiving end, being the ones confronting the police, it’s not really the kind of people you want to have to meet. Even if it’s just talk (which, of course, it isn’t, as we’ve seen over and over), it’s downright scary (and scared people make their job easier, of course, but do we want to make their job easier?). Anyway. That’s not the point I wanted to make. The situation is so obvious this time that you only need to see the clip to know what it’s about. The thing I want to talk about is the media.

Swedish media, swedish politicians and swedish police representatives talk almost exclusively about how damaging this is for people’s confidence in the police. As if “we” (ethnic swedes watching the news) all have an interest in keeping “them” (immigrants, ie criminals = not ethnic swedes) friendly and respectful towards the swedish police force. Because it’s important that people trust the police. I think I’m supposed to feel at home in this “we” and share this concern about “their” respect for the forces of Order, but that won’t happen. I’m one of “them” any day.

There’s also been a lot of talk about whether what can be seen on the video is legal or not. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck about that either (although it is a concern that if there was a video of someone talking that way about cops I’m sure it coule be turned against them in court).

Very few, if any, express some kind of worry that this kind of people is the only group in society who are allowed to use violence. That these are people who get away with almost anything, simply because that’s how we organise society. There needs to be a group of people who we all agree are a little better than everyone else, a little bit more trustworthy and noble. Infallible, almost, no matter the evidence to the contrary.

If we were to appoint someone today to a position like that, would we chose these persons, who talk about violently sterilizing people, calling them monkeys because they come from somewhere else or live in a certain area or whatever? I don’t think so. I don’t hope so, at least.

I think I wouldn’t even like to put someone in that position in the first place. It seems kind of dangerous.

Maybe that’s what the discussion should be about?

Best of the Year 2008…

Johanna M Beyer – Music of the Spheres.

Forbidden Planet asked me to write something about what I thought about the comics year of 2008.

This is what I wrote.

Hiroyuki Onogawa – Metal Dub Soup.

Tonight is when we make the selection for C’est Bon Anthology vol. 7. We got a lot of good material to chose from, so it looks promising. The deadline for C’est Bon Anthology vol. 8 will be June 1, so if you’re a comics artist reading this, don’t hesitate to send us your stuff!

Con-Dom – Master Speaks.

And in the Gaza strip, people keep being massacred…

Deleted scenes…

Autechre – Sublimit.There’s quite a lot of material for an alternative version of the dream sequence in the beginning of book 004: Copies and Originals. That scene was meant to be much longer from the beginning, but for different reasons it didn’t turn out that way. One day I’ll get around to scanning it to show the sketches at least…

And here’s an old character sketch, from 2002(?):

 

Phylr – Far and Away (Circuit Redux Remix).

By the way, I am as good as finished with the script for Violence now. Will start drawing next week, if not tomorrow…

 

There’s an ever-growing pile of papers with notes for Piracy is Liberation that I have to go through during the writing process for every new script. An assortment of ideas that either have been used already, are meant to go in future books or are not going to be used at all. They’re lying around on no particular order right now, so I have to go through all of it to see if there’s something I had planned that I want to use for Piracy is Liberation 006: Violence.

Some of the unused stuff is interesting. These things may make it into stories that have nothing to do with the Piracy universe. Some of them will show up on the Infotrip site as the equivalent of Deleted Scenes. I just put some stuff up there (on the pages for book 001 and 004). Filed under Story.