Jacob Yeates

Physical copy for scale.

Physical copy for scale.

Great Red Dragon, Page One Rewrite; minicomic edition

Great Red Dragon, Page One Rewrite

By Jacob Yeates

I.

Upon recommendation by a friend, I’ve started watching the 2013 FX Hannibal series — acknowledging the first season has more than a little of “monster of the week” silliness, Ben nonetheless cited compelling cinematography, distinct sound design, solid acting, and, ratcheting up season by season, indulgent portions of violent homoeroticism.

True to Ben’s word, Mads and Co. deliver. For all of my leeriness of depicting particular forms of spectacular and cruel violence, the show knows what it’s doing, and it is a welcome binge I gladly take. But. But. But.

II.

“His mind was dissected by psychiatrists and as a surgeon he is applying his own skillset.”

“This killer can’t accept her reality.”

“This is an apology.”

There is another show here that didn’t get made and doesn’t get made and won’t get made for the same reasons that any sort of wide-release COVID movie set in the U.S. doesn’t get made and won’t get made. Interwoven plot lines or reverberating disasters are only exciting when viewers are expected to participate in guessing the hows and whys; when we have the possibility of discovering something new or unknown about ourselves and others; when change actually takes place over the course of a narrative.

II.

“This is a skilled musician trying a new instrument.”

“He isn’t mocking them, he’s transforming them.”

“He’s telling us how to catch him.”

You cannot make a film that features hundreds of thousands of people dying every single day from unspectacular, flu-like symptoms for several years while the hundreds of millions who do not die grow quietly or less quietly more and more unhinged: contradictory policies, widespread refusals to adopt new social norms, the crushing stupidity of the slow violences forcing millions into unnecessary and dangerous spaces to keep an economy disconnected from human existence “running” — a compelling antagonist these things rarely make for the silver screen.

II.

“He admires their ability to connect, the way human minds can’t.”

“This isn’t shame, this is celebration. He’s marking his achievements.”

“She’s looking to form a family.”

We know the answers and have known the answer for long enough to prefer, to fantasize, that instead someone occasionally feeds us alive to their pigs, or to make us into a human tree or for a rough, ten-horned, seven-headed beast to slouch towards Bethlehem or heave itself out of the ocean and be coronated by a dragon, rather than be reminded of these answers any longer.

III.

The show that did not get made did not get made because Special Agent Will Graham’s first draft dialogue tired us test audiences out the same way Detective Olivia Benson’s and Detective Elliot Stabler’s first draft dialogues tired us test audiences out:

[He runs his hand over his forehead and takes a deep breath. Will Graham Cont’d]

“It is prohibitively expensive to live in many of the places people find themselves forced to inhabit, while simultaneously other spaces individuals find themselves in without alternatives have been actively abandoned or divested from, and this is an example of how, when enough intersections exist between institutionalized inequity, individual trauma, State neglect, and unaddressed local prejudices, sooner or later an ugly, cruel and/or thoughtless killing will take place.”

[He runs his hand over his forehead and takes a deep breath. Will Graham Cont’d]

“Comprehensive rehabilitative services and their requisite social systems are not supported, and this is an example of how, when enough intersections exist between institutionalized inequity, individual trauma, State neglect, and unaddressed local prejudices, sooner or later an ugly, cruel and/or thoughtless killing will take place.”

[He runs his hand over his forehead and takes a deep breath. Will Graham Cont’d]

“Gendered, racialized and sexualized violence is normalized, if not actively encouraged, in both micro and macro contexts, and this is an example of how, when enough intersections exist between institutionalized inequity, individual trauma, State neglect, and unaddressed local prejudices, sooner or later an ugly, cruel and/or thoughtless killing will take place.”

[He runs his hand over his forehead and takes a deep breath. Will Graham Cont’d]

“For the entirety of its nationhood, the United States has engaged in genocidal practices and has geopolitically endorsed other nations doing the same, with little to no concrete reparations for the victims of these actions, and this is an example of how, when enough intersections exist between institutionalized inequity, individual trauma, State neglect, and unaddressed local prejudices, sooner or later an ugly, cruel and/or thoughtless killing will take place.”

[He runs his hand over his forehead and takes a deep breath. Will Graham Cont’d]

“When a building is unstable, it will collapse. When a well has been poisoned, a population will sicken. When people are endemically alienated, scared, dehumanized, desperate and angry, sooner or later somebody will kill somebody.”

IV.

[He runs his hand over his forehead and takes a deep breath. Will Graham Cont’d]

“When we live like this, sooner or later somebody will kill somebody.”

Physical copy for scale.

I won’t sugarcoat it: things don’t seem altogether ideal for Russia from a P.R. standpoint.

Dead white kids at the hands of a DEVELOPED, European nation? Families murdered at blockades? Media blackouts and mass arrests? I mean, please: it ain’t a great look.

But fear not! Viable options yet remain. Most notably…

SHOWBIZ, BABY!

That’s right! With just a little of the ol’ Hollywood razzle dazzle, a few excited producers to throw some money around, and a historically fragmented public body who believe that vague, undirected feelings of “sad” are the same thing as structural redress, reparation and human accountability for brutalized populations, the Russian Federation is more than capable of getting back on their feet in the eyes of NATO and remaining Best Frenemies with the You Ess of Ay!

For a problematic nation’s next contribution to the cultural canon of cinema, consider employing the following movie magic as a near-guaranteed fix to all of one’s geopolitical woes!

Plot Film Accordingly:

1. Good Soldier (Complex Soldier, if vying for Oscar) goes to Unsafe/Bad Land feeling Good.

2. Ungrateful Natives and/or Bad Soldiers make Good Soldier feel Not So Good for being in Unsafe/Bad Land.

3. Good Soldier leaves Unsafe/Bad Land. *Note: It is critical Good Soldier cries either before or after this.

4. Lastly, following “The Cry,” Good Soldier either self-actualizes or is tragically destroyed by the Not So Good feelings all those Ungrateful Natives and/or Bad Soldiers make Good Soldier feel.

After all, if Russia were to stop shelling Ukraine to pieces sometime within the next week — actually the United States is nothing if not magnanimous in its acceptance of geopolitical acts of aggression and war crimes, so let’s just go ahead and say the end of the month so the rascals can go and get it all out of their systems — given the Federation of Russia’s current murdering rate (estimated 48,000 Ukrainian dead as of August 7th, so an average of 293ish killings per day since the February 24th invasion), the Ukrainian death toll would be a rough 55,200.

Comparatively, by calculations of the Iraq Body Count project, the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq has since caused some 186,000 civilian deaths alone, and that’s on the absolute lowest end of “letting you still sleep at night” estimates here. That golden oldie, the Vietnam War, has numbers ranging from 1.2 million Vietnamese deaths to 3.1 million. Hell, those two famous bombs we dropped on Japan on August 6th and August 9th, 1945 alone in a bare, bare minimum 129,000 human beings (but almost certainly closer to that other, uglier guess of 226,000).

Is the U.S. regarded as an unhinged embarrassment-of-a-state-project? Sure. But an utter embarrassment doesn’t necessarily have to be the same thing as a pariah, and certainly not when that embarrassment still has a greater degree of impact on global markets than a handful of racist uncles at a dinner table. Take it from us: as far as geopolitical consequences go, we here at the U.S. seem to be getting along just fine (longstanding psychic malaise and/or unsustainable civic strife notwithstanding, hyuck, hyuck, hyuck!). Besides, in the grand scheme of things what’s an obliterated country next to Grandpa George’s paintings? That rueful smile, like a puppy who know’s he’s a real bit of a rascal but he’ll try to do better.

So go ahead, Russia! Play your cards right and you’ll probably come out of all of this just fine.

Might even nab that Oscar.

Iowa Pigs

Margaret Yapp, Jacob Yeates

Iowa has 99 counties // & a population of around 3,000,000 people

Iowa has 99 counties // & a population of around 25,000,000 pigs



Around 1/3 of the pigs // in the United States of America // live in Iowa

In 2019, Iowa farmers slaughtered 39,000,000 pigs



Around 30-35% of pigs // in the United States of America // die before slaughter

In April of 2020 // Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds signed a $26,000,000 contract // to increase coronavirus testing in Iowa // with Utah-based startup Nomi Health

When asked why she didn’t consider // an Iowa-based institution or company for coronavirus testing in Iowa // Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds said she learned about Nomi Health // from Iowan-born actor Ashton Kutcher // so the contract has an Iowan touch



Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds is close with actor Ashton Kutcher // Ashton Kutcher is connected to Nomi Health // through a tech executive friend



Iowa’s 25,000,000 pigs produce an estimated // 5,000,000,000 gallons of shit per year // the equivalent of what an estimated 83,7000,000 people shit per year

Iowa has around 86,900 farms



Around 70% of Iowa land is in corn-soybean rotation



33% of Iowa own goes directly into livestock feed



One bushel of corn needs 4,000 gallons of water to grow



In livestock feeding // one bushel of corn converts to around 15.6 pounds of pork



One bushel of soybeans needs 10,000 gallons of water to grow



20% of Iowa soybeans are eaten by Iowa pigs



Iowa’s legislature hasn’t passed any new zoning laws // for the construction of livestock buildings // since the early 2000’s

Iowa’s legislature hasn’t passed any new zoning laws // for the construction of livestock buildings // since the early 2000’s



Since the early 2000’s: // Iowa’s stream nitrate has increased 83% // & the fastest growing segment can be traced // from the expansion of new livestock buildings



Increased nitrogen levels // end up in streams & rivers // & Iowa’s tap water // & watersheds within the Mississippi River Basin



Iowa Select Farms is the largest pig producer in Iowa // Iowa Select Farms has 800 farms in 50 counties // Iowa Select Farms employ 1,850 Iowans, not including contractors // Iowa Select Farms markets over 5,000,000 pigs per year

69% of Iowa’s land drains into the Upper Mississippi River



The Mississippi River // provides 90% of fresh water flowing // into the Gulf of Mexico



In November of 2020: 

Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds // said that there were 26 Nomi Health testing sites // also known as Test Iowa // and that they could test 6,000 people for coronavirus per day



Test Iowa testing sites // in Linn, Scott, Black Hawk, and Polk counties // had no time slots available



Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds // defended the shortage of coronavirus tests // by reminding Iowans // they may get a test in places other than the free Nomi Health testing sites // such as Costco or Costco’s website

The owners of Iowa Select Farms // are a married couple // who are among the l largest campaign contributors // for Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds // having donated around $300,000

In July of 2020 // Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds’s administration // arranged a coronavirus testing site // at a West Des Moines administrative office building // for Iowa Select Farms



32 employees of Iowa Select Farms were able to get tests

In the Gulf of Mexico // with increased nitrogen input:

countless algae blooms develop. // countless communities of species // are thrown off balance // & the food chain is altered

marine ecosystems // home to many fish, plants, & microscopic species // are rendered lifeless

Abolition asks what we can reimagine, rearrange, deconstruct and build from the ground up to create more equitable worlds. However, in order to thoughtfully move towards these futures we must always be aware of our individual and collective histories. How have we been led or forced to where we find ourselves currently, and how can we choose a different path in the here and now?

“Field Trip to the Museum of Human History,” written in 2015 by author Franny Choi, offers a poetic glimpse into an abolitionist future, where a group of children view a museum exhibit featuring instruments of policing and prisons from a bygone era of punitive justice. Confronted with guns, cages, handcuffs and other devices, the children reflect on the implications of living in a society viewing such tools as necessity, as well as how their world has since changed. The following drawing series, “Objects from the Museum of Human History,” takes its cue from Choi’s work, as a collection of five renderings and didactic notes of possible objects contained within Choi’s speculative exhibit. Attending to both critical histories and imagined futures, these images and voices from a different world examine what such devices were used for in the carceral past and, as such, asks viewers to consider their use in our present, and what it could mean to live without them.

A sigil of office. Both a statement and a promise: a statement of immunity, a promise of violence soon to come. Contradictory claims of secular nations aside, it is not difficult to locate a sort of talismanic, deified quality granted to the majority of those associated with “The Badge,” an adulation just as likely to be motivated by terror as by hate. Garrisons of armed children simultaneously self-righteous and fearful, always in allegiance to the highest bidder, and, always, destructive.

Since rehabilitated, a perversion of the eagle frequently seen from this period, mutations of wisdom to paranoia, strength to brutality and protection to predation.

“…and our palms were slick with some old recognition, as if in some forgotten dream we did live this way, in submission, in fear, assuming positions of power were earned, or at least carved in steel…”

Watchtowers from a time in which “surveil” was claimed to be synonymous with “protect,” “comprehend,” and “care.” Also may be understood as the vehicle for a slow acting poison: the means by which violent fears may reproduce and one of many methods employed to turn communities against themselves.

It is important to note that while victims of theses devices were rarely spared, users, often as institutional policy, were granted an immunity to their effects, unless said institutions viewed it as pragmatic to do otherwise.

“…scanning fingerprints like cattle ears, grain shipments…”

Silencers. Though The Badge [ID. 05/45] provides the credentials to brutalize a world, and identifies the custodians of empire and capital, these instruments, in form and function, lay bare a key element to the carceral nations’ philosophy: a monopoly upon, and management of, violence.

Within these spaces, imagination always began and ended with methodologies of harm. Barbed metal and electricity to stop hearts; explosives to blind, stun, poison, choke and maim; projectiles to collapse chests and snap bones; and, always, the bullets for limbs, the bullets for backs, the bullets for hearts, for minds.

Now implicit, but supposedly unclear — or possibly hidden — to many at the time of their use, are the profound limits and paradoxes of these objects and their programs.

If the most common sources of pain and death within the carceral nations had, even at the time, been casually linked to an inequitable access to food, to medical care, to shelter, to education, why swagger sticks, chemical sprays, and gunfire were believed to be the most sanctified means to protect their populations can only be viewed as hypnosis or subjugation.

“…a ‘nightstick,’ so called for its use in extinguishing the lights in one’s eyes…”

Fright masks and assorted carapaces. Provides users physical protection from the otherwise inevitable consequences of repeatedly terrorizing a community as well as acting as a spiritual salve: can a cruelty committed nay a body that is no longer yours be truly attributed to you? Each added layer, alien and anonymous, an additional distance from a shame that could otherwise never be hidden or denied. The sheer presence of such objects may operate as an admission of a particular kind of guilt.

Depending on circumstance, certain makes and models were worn to additionally protect users from chemical compounds frequently deployed against popular uprisings. Said chemicals, known at the time of their use, were often as foreign and dangerous to the human body as were their users dangerous to the spaces they forcibly occupied.

“…But what if you didn’t want to? And the walls snickered and said, steel, padlock, stripsearch, hardstop.”

The foundation of the carceral nations. Mobile sites of alchemy and disappearance, of enslavement and subjection. A construction of bolt, chain, and metal arranged with the intention to transform any bound individual into something less than human: a resource to be exploited or an inconvenience to be disposed of.

The near immutability of the designs of these devices, surveyed over centuries of varied rhetoric and subtle appeals by rulers, belie the true desires of their parent empires.

“…We stared at the diagrams and almost felt the cold metal licking our wrists, almost tasted dirt, almost heard the siren and slammed door…”

Pg. I : It’s not to say there aren’t any other things that I’d like to be drawing.

Pg. II : As if I’m above what I read, reread and am forever rereading in Ligotti and Lovecraft, Barron and Barker. That I wouldn’t be thrilled if asked to reproduce the designs of Cronenberg, Giger or Carpenter. The hyperbolic dystopias of worlds populated by Chaos gods, by splicers, by gun-handed, mechanically-hooved Cyber Demons.

Pg. III : There is an honesty in all of this; and, in that honesty, a love I joke about needing to justify, but frankly have no intention of doing so. After all, long before I had any formal awareness, much less understanding of anything of any greater consequence, I was aware of these images and these stories. And with that awareness came an excitement, an honesty, a love for all of these things that made me want to draw, to create, to contribute towards in the first place, in all of its pulped-out glory. This is in no way a denial of how much I’d enjoy spending most of my days drawing Slaaneshi Noise Marines, all baroque armor, grills, tubes and teeth or the psychosexual bulk of Ito’s inevitable Red Pyramid.

Pg. IV : And this is in no way a value judgment towards those who feel similarly and carry out that honesty in their own images.

Pg. V : But as present as that love is, the moment I set pen to paper there arises a near-identical revulsion, a compulsion towards everything else I could be learning about, talking about, and have done so for years with little change: cages, black sites, sanctioned and celebrated murder, my complicity and that of others like me, the decades, the literal generations of institutional fuckery.

Pg. VI : And I can’t prove that any of this work that emerges instead as a result of my headspace succeeds in truly contributing, in generating thought, in shaping any lasting effects or any real function beyond the process of my making it, as much as I’d like it to — but here we are and there it is.

Pg. VII : I understand this is a me problem.

[Front]

Who doesn’t love a classic Original Sin narrative? After all, seems reasonably accurate to say, with the exception of the “impossibly” naive, cynical, and/or wealth —scare quotes because in each case it turns out it’s not impossible, it just should be — that anyone with any ties to any sort of imperial legacy, incidental or intentional benefactors and victims alike, probably recognizes there appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way the world seems to shake out for a lot of folks.

According to Hesiod, Pandora opens her jar in the Golden Age, which sets the stage for degeneration into Silver, Bronze, Heroic, and then, contemporary to Hesiod, Iron. Turn over the postcard and read Ovid’s take on said Iron Age: you don’t have to be a hack analyst to find some pretty uncomfortable parallels between Empire’s “Then” and Empire’s “Now.”

For the time being, we’ll glaze over Hesiod’s point that Pandora’s creation, as the first woman, was a punishment for men in of itself, regardless of her namesake jar. Patriarchal scapegoating aside, as far as I’m concerned the real sauce is the relief that comes with an origin story that allows for the fundamental failures of creators in the first place. The Greek pantheon are, by their poets and orators own admissions, a squabbling collection of outlandishly powerful, fickle, and petty schemers, murderers, gadflies and rapists who would eat their children as soon as look at them (and, more than once, do). If these entities are the source of all creation, is it any wonder things shake out like they do? I wish my nation at least had the decency to craft a Founding Father mythos into something that provides some sort of explanation for a failed state. Oh, you mean this place was made by a collection of aristocratic slavers, socialites, weirdos and ghouls? Now this makes sense.

[Back]

Into that age of lesser metal burst ever sort of crime. Shame and truth and faithfulness fled, their places taken by frauds and plots and treachery and violence and a shameless lust for having.

The iron race raised sails to winds which the sailor had never before known; keels which previously had been trees standing on high mountains now danced in unexplored waves. The earth which before had been held in common like the light of the sun and the breezes, was now laid out in long tracts by the careful surveyor.

Men made further demands on the earth, not for crops and needful sustenance this time but to burrow into her bowels. The riches she’d hidden in the Stygian darkness were dug out, incitements to evil. Harmful iron and gold more harmful than iron came to the fore. War arose, fed by both, and rattled weapons in its bloody hand.

Men live by rapine. Neither is the guest safe from his host nor is the father-in-law safe from his son-in-law; friendship between brothers is rare. The husband threatens death to his wife and she to her husband; horrible mothers-in-law grind pallid aconite, and the son plans an early end to his father’s life.

Failure issue

Laws issue

Travel issue

Phobia issue

This book and the corresponding writing and recording of E.T. was created on unceded Dakota land, and is also likely being read and listened to on land belonging to communities who were forcibly removed and have continually been disenfranchised by white supremacist, settler colonialism. While our ancestors come from what is now known as central Mexico as well as various regions of Europe, we enter into our work with decolonize, abolitionist, anti-racist, trans-feminist, and queer of color praxis in our hearts.

Track: Look At Me

Tracks: Who Do You Know and A Machine That Can Feel

Track: A Longer Leash

Track: Geography of Power

Tracks: Monuments and Think Again

Track: Take Me

Track: Cyber Bully

Tracks: Ghost and De-Generation

Track: Salt

Tracks: Bodies and Mask

Track: Anymore

Track: The Answer to a Question That Nobody Asked

These men could be the fathers of our five-year-old selves — woken up, shuffling through unlit halls to deliver glasses of water, sloping bodies in cotton shorts, rubbing eyes, goosebumps on hairy arms, legs and feet. These men could be our lovers — we watch their half-dressed shapes from our beds, from our chairs, from our kitchen counters.

We love these bodies and their vulnerability. We love these men.

This is convenient.

This is convenient — after all, who has not had this dream? Near-naked — but then, what’s a tee and underwear provide in this situation if not further embarrassment? One of my earliest memories: in school using the bathroom when two other boys push the door force the door open the door and they scream with laughter. Here near-naked is naked — naked in the mall, naked in school, naked in the parking lot, terrified and terrorized.

This is convenient in that so much fo what is done to these men who we could love and have loved is so true: Home invasion with masks and automatic weapons and words we do not understand and demands we cannot possibly meet.

We want this knife stabbed through that forehead again and again.

Empire consistently succeeds in that its highly effective methods of highly aggressive reproduction are only paralleled by its ability to reconfigure language and imagination. Individuals, groups and systems deemed incompatible with its MOs are so often rendered impossible by all the ugly ways so many people designated as impossible have become personally acquainted with. And once so many impossibilities have been made, what other solutions to the ills of Empire can there be other than greater Empire? Think a sort of semiotic, linguistic hobbling. Think a mutilation. How could there ever be anything before Empire?

Describe a color that does not exist. Describe a color that can never exist. Other possibilities, they are not recognizable.

And sensationalized analogies do nothing if not prove their own points via their implicit failures of imagination. After all, what parts of a tongue have been lopped off, what areas have been trepanned and lobotomized — ideally done at birth or early adolescence to mitigate the trauma of it — so that an institution of harm can only be recognized with the assistance of monstrous precedent, viewed through the lenses of failed-but-nevertheless-attempted genocides, indexes of involuntary surgeries, of limbs, of blankets and bulldozers?

Stab this knife through that forehead. It is a horrifying thing, but we are led to believe 25:20 is the closest thing to triumph that will be experienced in what we are led to believe are our homes before we lose all control, so stab this knife through that forehead. It is a fictional thing.

It is true Yossef Romano wounded one of this captors with a kitchen knife before being shot multiple times and castrated — possibly before death, hopefully after — but what we see, clenched fingers, the bunched muscles of a forearm slamming this knife through that forehead, balaclava-clad head lolling, gun dropped, hands spasming, surely this captor, not all of them, but at least this one, is sad, it is a horrifying thing, but it is a moment of defiance, a kindness granted to an individual and an audience who want to die with dignity.

This is convenient, this horrifying, fictional thing serving as the only moment of dignity when forced against an overwhelming tide of impossible demands and never-ending violence. This is convenient, that the stakes are framed in terms of sudden domestic violation and spectacular deaths by TT-30s, AKMs and eventually exploding helicopters, because were a film to run for just under a century audiences may be forced to contend with the inevitable moments of humiliation accompanying inhabiting a world that slowly shrinks and not living as a person but existing as a refugee to contend with other nations requiring those distinctions via state policies of pity, disgust, exploitation or rage.

This is convenient, because of course we are in the hotel, the apartment, the house. We are not combatants. We are hopeful. We have negotiated land deals and mineral rights. We hope to do so again. We own these things, and if not now, we expect to soon.

Stab this knife through that forehead.

What other options remain? How would we ever placate these strange, violent men, their guns, their masks, their lack of subtitles?

Stab this knife through that forehead, and that forehead and these foreheads.