Since attending Columbia University for college, Rall has worked and lived in cities around the country, from New York City, to Los Angeles, to San Francisco, but he hasn’t forgotten his roots. You may or may not have seen his hometown cartoon, “The Gutting of Dayton, Why My City Is Gone,” which details the challenges the Gem City has faced after years of economic downturn and subsequent demolition projects that destroyed some of the city’s most beautiful buildings. It’s a piece that tugs at the heartstrings of any Daytonian who wants to see the city rebuild itself, and it will be on full display at the Dayton Music Art and Film Festival Sept. 18-19 for your viewing pleasure.
While Rall, who is currently based in New York, was in town for a signing of his new graphic novel, Snowden,we chatted about his childhood in Kettering (born in Massachusetts, his family moved there when he was six months old), the state of Dayton's renaissance, and the life of a political cartoonist.
Describe your childhood for me throughout the late ’60s and 1970s
Ted Rall: The sense that I always had —and I don't know if other people shared this —was that this was a city that was constantly on the decline. There are so many people who live in the suburbs and who don't even think about downtown — it's kind of like a doughnut — and so the city would be decaying, but they would say,' what are you talking about? It looks great here in Kettering!' But the city, the center, the core, the reason this suburb is here, is decaying.
And for people who were aware of downtown, there was still the overall shakiness of the economy. It always felt like factories, stores were closing. It became a good idea to call the store before you went to make sure that it was still open before you made the trip.
I used to joke that Dayton was a city that had never recovered from the Great Flood, and that it had peaked out in 1913. And I think there’s some truth to that, but that it peaked out in the 1950s and ’60s. I knew early that it would be very unlikely for me to find a job here post-high school when I graduated in 1981. And that’s pretty much how I felt until just a few years ago.
So what changed for you a few years ago?
TR: I came home about five years ago to visit, and I went down into the Oregon District, and I just noticed that there were early signs of hipsters. And I thought, this is great; this is how it starts. I saw the same thing happen in Williamsburg and Brooklyn in the early '80s — now it's hipster central and trendy, but it was dangerous back then.
And then I saw the first few galleries and cafes open up in the late ’80s, and now, it’s changed. And then five years ago with Dayton, I thought, it’s hit rock bottom, prices are cheap, now it’s all about young people, and it’s on the upswing. But it still has a long way to go.
What fond memories do you have about your childhood in Kettering?
TR: I appreciated being able to bike everywhere, and Kettering was a very easy place to be a kid. You could bike to the pool, be gone all day and your mom's not going to worry about you. But even when I think of my schools, there was a process of disintegration. I went to Dorothy Lane Elementary School, whose building was the original high school from the 1920s, and then they closed it due to declining enrollment, and in third grade I had to go to the new, cookie-cutter school. Everything was on a constant decline. As a kid, I kind of hated it, but I feel more connected to it now in retrospect.
Kettering was a very new suburb back then: The trees were still small; all of the houses still looked exactly the same, and now the trees have grown, the houses are modified and there’s more character. Kettering’s a million times better now than it was when I was growing up. But downtown, there were things like used book stores, and creepy venues where you could see amazing funk bands. I was always drawn to urbanity. I like cities and I like country. Either give me nature or give me the concrete jungle.
When did you first start drawing political cartoons?
TR: I was first published in the Kettering-Oakwood Times, which is funny because I probably couldn't get in there now. I was 15, and it was super exciting to be in the local paper. By the time I left, I had a mini local syndication with eight publications, drawing about local politics, City Council, and international politics, while drawing for the high school paper. I was inspired by (longtime Dayton Daily News cartoonist) Mike Peters. I got to meet him around that age, and I just decided then that I wanted to be a political cartoonist.
It must have been difficult to keep up your knowledge of local and international politics as a 15-year-old at that time. You didn’t even have the Internet.
TR: Well, you read the paper. And understand, I was 15. I was naive. I didn't know what I was writing about. I don't know why they ran me; I think they thought it was cute. But I continued it into college, and when I got out of college, I went years without being published. It took a while to figure out my own drawing style, my own approach.
What are some of your cartooning approaches?
TR: I try to draw a cartoon that I would want to read myself in the paper. If you see someone else draw a political cartoon from one perspective, then it's done. You should not touch that point of view. It's been expressed; you don't need to express it yourself too, because that's just being redundant. There are too many ideas out there. If you have nothing interesting to say about a topic, you shouldn't say it just for the sake of saying it. But most people feel the need to feel redundant.
You write columns as well as draw cartoons. How do you decide what material works better for a column versus a cartoon?
TR: For me, it's about the texture and complexity of an issue. If an issue requires a lot of exposition, a column is a better medium. A cartoon is best for a topic that has already been widely reported and you can reasonably assume that the reader or viewer is aware of it, that has already been tee'd up so you can comment on it.
But now with the diversification of media, you and I may not read the same things, so it’s not reasonable for me to draw a cartoon for you and assume that you’ve read and watched the same news outlets that I have. I can’t assume that the news I’ve read has appeared in the venues that you’ve read. So in a cartoon, more and more now you have to preface it with a caption. But for a column, I like to assume everyone comes to a topic cold.
But then that would also depend on the length of the cartoon?
TR: Yes, like that cartoon I did for Dayton, that's more like comics journalism. It's explanatory and you don't have to be from Dayton to understand it; in fact, it's for a national audience.
How did you come to write a graphic novel about Eric Snowden?
TR: My publisher came to me and asked, what do you think about doing a graphic novel autobiography of Eric Snowden, and I loved it, because nobody has done a biography of Snowden. It had been a year already, and I couldn't believe that someone else hadn't done one yet. I had read the Glenn Greenwald book — an excellent book — but I felt it was too granular for people to follow. And I said I need a book — where you read this book, you come away and you'll know exactly what the National Security Agency is doing, you'll know why it's important, and you'll know who Snowden is and the conflicting motivations that he had. And now I'm working on a sequel, a graphic novel about (Vermont Senator and presidential candidate) Bernie Sanders, and possibly a third biography trilogy.
I wanted Snowden to be an authorized biography and unfortunately, he refused to be interviewed. But the good news is after I did the book, I sent it to him through his lawyer, and they sent back a bunch of edits, and they signed off on it, so it's kind of the best of both worlds. I am very happy with the way it turned out.
Keep tabs on Ted Rall’s work and order Snowden on his online RallBlog. See his comic “Why My City Is Gone” on exhibition Sept. 18-19 at K12 Gallery & TEJAS in downtown Dayton.
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