James Marshall Week Day 3: Research Journal

Madeleine asked in my last post if I could talk about my research process and my experience looking through the James Marshall Papers at the University of Connecticut. In response, here’s an excerpt from the journal I kept at that time:

“I hope all the pictures I am taking turn out. I feel like I could have the flash on. I am shooting in RAW format which should allow me to adjust the white balance later. If I ever do. I want to document as much as I can but I also want to be present with the work. I want to strap a Go-Pro to my head and film an unboxing but I also kind of don’t want to share this with anyone.”

Yeah, remaining present during my week in the archives was a top priority. If my handwriting seems particularly tidy in that photo, it’s because I forced myself to take my time with every part of the experience. Looking back, I might have just dived fully into the work and immersed myself in Marshall’s sketchbooks (I sometimes wish I did) but I am glad that I have this record of my research. The reason I’m excerpting that portion above is that bit at the end about not wanting to share the experience with anyone. If you’ve followed me on social media or watched any part of my livestreaming, you know I’m very open about my process, inspirations and perspective. I tend to be a lot more closed on the subject of James Marshall, at least on the part that involves ME, because talking about it sometimes feels self-serving. I’d rather the attention be on Jim himself.

There’s another part to that line that may sound slightly covetous, that I wanted to keep the experience to myself. And I did, but not for the reason you might think. I’ve always had this feeling, when hearing creators talk about their work, that at some point their story becomes an anecdote. Maurice Sendak describing, for example, for the thousandth time the editor who wanted to change the temperature of Max’s dinner from “hot” to “warm”. At what point does it change from Sendak talking about the importance of staying true to yourself to Sendak reciting a cute story he knows people love to hear? Is there even a difference? To me there can be, I do know that the week I spent with James Marshall’s original works was incredibly special to me and I didn’t want to dilute the experience by turning it into a series of 140-character one-liners. This attitude softened two years after my time in Connecticut with Kai-Fai Steele’s turn at the Fellowship when she shared a whole lot of photos on social media and I saw how much richer the experience could grow when you opened it to other people.

So that’s where I’m at. I feel more open to talking about my personal connection to Marshall’s works and to some degree my connection to Marshall himself. And I think ultimately this will give me a deeper understanding of the story I want to tell. That I’m telling. Sooooo… yes, Madeleine, I will happily share excerpts from my journal and talk about my research. It’s going to have to wait until tonight, though, because I have a whole bunch of donuts to make right now.

Illustration of “Buddy McGee” the bulldog in Marshall’s Beacon Hill studio.

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James Marshall Week Day 2: Gorey Details

Alright, I asked you yesterday which Edward inspired James Marshall. You had the choice of Edward Gorey, Edward Ardizzone, and Blake Edwards. The answer?

photo by Julie Danielson from Bill Gray’s scrapbook

The gentleman on the right is none other than Edward Gorey. And, yes, Marshall considered him a master (alongside Maurice Sendak) of picture book illustration. You can see Gorey’s influence in Marshall’s earliest work. Here’s a page from PLINK, PLINK, PLINK (Baylor, Marshall, 1971).

You can see Marshall’s working hard to capture the atmosphere in Gorey’s work and in some places he’s successful (that tree, especially) but his crosshatching isn’t there. Lines in crosshatching are often oriented to follow the form of the object they’re decorating. Marshall accomplishes this in some places (the sloping bannister and the ball top) but in a rudimentary way. Crosshatching can also be used to denote the illustration’s light source but the shading is indistinct and, in some cases contradictory, (the ball at the top of the post is shaded on the left, the post itself is shaded on the right). Mostly, he’s using crosshatching to fill space.

Marshall would later find his strengths in shape, form, and composition to give his characters volume.

GEORGE AND MARTHA ROUND AND ROUND (1988)

But he’d never give up using at least a slight bit of crosshatching. Or in the following example, a lot. Here’s three attempts at filling in Old Mother Hubbard’s skirt, none of which were used as the final art (please excuse the dim quality of the first two pictures, I took these in a low-light archival setting, the last photo is darker and triggered my camera’s flash… if the original should suddenly dissolve, you know who to blame).

from the Thomas J. Dodd Library JAMES MARSHALL PAPERS, University of Connecticut

from the Thomas J. Dodd Library JAMES MARSHALL PAPERS, University of Connecticut

from the Thomas J. Dodd Library JAMES MARSHALL PAPERS, University of Connecticut

The final? It’s wonderful. That drapery is a hard effect to achieve in any technique. James Marshall absolutely nails it here. It’s incredibly intentional (as is my jeans folds being kept in the image).

OLD MOTHER HUBBARD AND HER WONDERFUL DOG (1991)

Oh, incidentally, today (the tenth) is James Marshall’s birthday. Maybe I’ll dip my pen in ink in honor of the occassion. As for the rest of the week… I’m playing it by ear, I’m not sure what else I’ll talk about. If you have any Marshall questions you’d like answered, let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them. See you tomorrow!

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James Marshall Week Day 1: Happy Birthday, James Marshall!

If you ever doubted a person could talk about paper donuts for three hours and forty minutes, I will point you to my last post and perhaps change your mind. If you ever doubted a person could talk about James Marshall for a five days, I will invite you to join me in a celebration of James Marshall’s life this week.

October 10th is James Marshall’s birthday, October 13th marks his passing. I usually acknowledge one or both of those days on Twitter where I’ll share some kind of Marshall-related resource. It doesn’t make sense to do that there any more, so I’m going to bring the party here instead.

It’s So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House (Allard, Marshall, 1977)

Today, October 9th, is Indigenous Peoples’ day so it feels fitting to open with my own article about Marshall’s appropriation of Native American headdresses in his art. You’ll find that post here (don’t be frightened off by that title, it’s actually a quick read):

To tease our next post, I have a question for you: which of the following Edwards was a young James Marshall’s artistic inspiration?

Edward Gorey
Edward Ardizzone

Blake Edwards

Put your best guess in the comments. See you tomorrow!

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Cowboy Hegemony and Casual Cultural Racism As It Pertains to Texan Humorists With a Special Focus On the Works of Tex Avery and James Marshall

I was scrolling through the Fuse 8 n’ Kate archives to see if they had done a book I hope to recommend when I noticed I missed a recent episode. It was the one following their review of The Stupids Step Out and if you listen to it to the end, you’ll hear Betsy refer to an email she received which talked about James Marshall and his frequent use of Native American headdresses as a costume for his characters. That email came from me, and that topic—what was Marshall thinking when he drew those headdresses?—is something I’ve meant to write about for a while. It wasn’t until February 26th of this year that my thoughts came together and I compiled them in a follow-up email to Betsy. So, if you heard the letters segment of the Laughing Latkes episode and was left wondering what exactly my incendiary thoughts were, this post is for you.

Why did my thoughts click on February 26th? February 26th is Tex Avery’s birthday. Tex Avery, in case you didn’t know, is the famed Looney Tunes director and creator of Bugs Bunny (though he’d became more famous later in his career for Droopy and his work for MGM) and if you’ve ever watched one of his cartoons, you’ll notice they come with more gags per minute than any other cartoon director’s work. A number, perhaps unsurprisingly, are problematic but he was by all accounts a highly sensitive and empathic person and I’ve often wondered about that disconnect: how did Avery view those gags? What blinders did he have on? And then I read a review of one of his shorts by SWAN BOY cartoonist Branson Reese:

This part:

One of the problems with making a gag a second cartoon in the early fifties if you aren’t an especially sensitive man is that some f***** up racial and cultural stereotypes get in there. You can almost imagine Tex Avery directing his own direction here: a man shoveling every joke he can get his hands on into a furnace. He pauses and looks down at his shovel to see a blackface joke. He looks up at the camera and shrugs before throwing it into the short. I don’t think it was malicious, just indifferent. But I also don’t think that’s better.

https://letterboxd.com/film/magical-maestro/

I think Reese put his finger on it here. Avery was mostly indifferent. A gag is a gag is a gag and he’s cramming as many as he can into the 600 feet of film that make up one of his cartoons.

Now, that said… Tex Avery has this one cartoon set in an Native American village (BIG HEEL WATHA, 1944) and it opens with the main character looking at the audience and saying “Hello, all you happy tax payers”. This is a play on Droopy cartoons where Droopy always opens with “Hello, all you happy people” but it very clearly points to a political opinion which (except for Hitler-bashing) is a rare thing in a Tex Avery cartoon.

Where this connects to Marshall? Marshall, like Avery, was a born and bred Texan and I think Native Americans, in his day in Texas, were a visible minority in a way they weren’t in other states (except maybe Arizona and New Mexico). I have no doubt both he and Tex Avery grew up surrounded by strong prejudices against their respective local tribes. How could they have not? I, myself, in third grade in Jakarta, Indonesia, half a world and a generation away, went as an “Indian Brave” for Hallowe’en, wearing the costume my older brother was given for his performance as “Lonesome Polecat” in a high school production of LIL’ ABNER.

I think the argument can be made that, like Tex Avery, Marshall was first and foremost concerned with gags. An efficient storyteller, Marshall relied on a number visual shorthand devices. The headdress, ultimately, was one of those—a convenient costume, a quick way to say “this character is playing dress up”. That he landed on the headdress and not, say, a pirate’s eye patch or a real estate tycoon’s top hat, is no accident. But like Reese in his appraisal of Avery, I don’t think it was malicious. Just indifferent. And I agree there as well, that this doesn’t makes it any better.

To me, the question of whether James Marshall was racist or not is immaterial. On the balance of intent versus impact, the impact of Marshall’s choices clearly outweighs his intent. This iconography remains harmful and I think acknowledging that is important. Beyond that, though, I don’t know. Frank Asch’s Bear received an update (as described in Debbie Reese’s blog here), maybe George and Martha could use one. If the question comes down to “would Jim himself approve of the change?”, I can only offer that Marshall, also like Avery, is remembered as a kind and extremely sensitive person. When I interviewed Marshall’s agent for the biography, he said Jim was one of the two kindest people he had ever worked with in all his years in publishing (click through for the other person). You take that, Marshall’s great respect for his young audience, and the fact that the man liked having his books out there (and loved) and you probably have a pretty convincing argument for updating any future editions of the books.

And if you’ve read this far and you have the inclination, rights and means to produce an updated version… (ahem) I do a pretty good Marshall.

UPDATE: a big thank you to Betsy Bird for suggesting the title for this article, a much better alternative to mine (sung to the tune of that Gene Autry song): The Hippos Wear Feathers in Their Hair (clap clap clap clap) Deep In the Heart of Texas.

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