honestly, i can probably count on my one hand the number of texts (poetry collections, memoirs, novels, stories, etc) i've read that focus on the lives and experiences of elders, which is both pretty sad and points to a definite issue of ageism and limited/exclusive representation when it comes to art and literature. in this way, i really appreciate special exits. also because i imagine this memoir must've been really grueling and taxing to create. i know that it was often very difficult, emotional, and triggering to read (because it so pointedly refers to the inevitability of death and the complex emotions involved when family and loved ones age and are facing mortality).
one thing i have to say about style and the technical: i very much appreciated the detail and texture of the drawings, but also felt that, sometimes, there was so much detail, shading, and crosshatching that the images in the frames felt dark, cluttered, and really busy. sometimes this fit really well with the content/story/scene: it makes sense for the visual representation of rachel and lars's house (both inside and outside) to feel really messy and chaotic.. because it is messy and chaotic, but at other times, i felt the built up markings distracted me from processing the entirety of the image. and also sometimes it felt inconsistent in terms of what the light source would theoretically be in some settings (when outdoors, when it was daylight inside or outside, etc). the contrast was sometimes off in this way.
something that i was turned on to right off the bat was the way identity and class were marked through food items. it's an interesting choice and points to how food items and brands act as visual markers of class and also how food choices point to stratified consumption and access. i was just talking today and yesterday with friends about this: folks essentially need to be of a certain class to have easy access (both in terms of affordability and knowledge) to good, healthy, balanced foods. it's not only about price, but also about location. high end grocery stores typically aren't even built in low-income neighborhoods. but i digress... in terms of rachel and lars, the food depicted (cheetos, sizzler, junky canned stuff, tv dinners, no veggies) coincides with their status as older adults and not particularly well-off: these items are quick to make and require not much effort--their health problems would make it difficult for them to spend a lot of time preparing and cooking meals, cheap, keep for long-- helpful because they can't get themselves to the store often, etc). i was immediately keyed in to these food depictions because it reminded me of my own working class family and food choices... what my grandmother used to prepare for herself, what my mom keeps in the house, etc. it also brought me back to sailor's drawing a few weeks ago when she did the two different perspectives on the low-income family buying food at the grocery: the working class woman sees her choices as healthy, the class-privileged person sees them as disturbing, caricatured, gross, etc.
riffing off of this, a lot was resonating with me around mobility, access, class, health, etc. though partially lars and rachel's health problems and their worsening were influenced by their denial (or maybe inflated belief/hope that their bodies would persevere and recuperate without help), farmer pointed to how class, their escalating inability to get around: walking, driving, etc. contributed to their worsening health. they couldn't get themselves to the doctor when they had problems, they couldn't get themselves to the store to get food and other necessary items, they couldn't properly bathe themselves, etc etc.
one of the most profound and honestly somewhat disturbing (disheartening? sobering? saddening?) quotes that stuck out for me from this memoir came from lars when he was discussing how he dealt with rachel's bathroom needs in relation to her couchridden-ness: "things get worse in such small increments that you can get used to anything." it seemed like the crux/tuning fork of the memoir. their health deteriorates slowly and incrementally, slowly and incrementally the house becomes cluttered, dusty, dirty, routines that seem abnormal and unexpected and unsettling become run-of-the-mill (especially bathing and bathroom related ones), health problems and pain become tolerable/unnoticed/accepted.
this quote seemed especially poignant in relation to what was going on with the aging body and mind in this memoir. the body and brain are incrementally deteriorating, breaking down, malfunctioning, becoming weaker. the body and mind are coming up against failure, even when lars and rachel believe in their own resilience. however, despite their remembrance of their bodies as more functional, they kinda adapt to the changes (they "get used to anything.") it feels so sad because it is a kind of resignation. an acceptance. but then again, what else are they supposed to do? spiraling into self-loathing and deep depression isn't a good look. though they all (laura included) seem to function under a veil of mild depression. i wouldn't say anyone in this text is happy... just resigned, blank, etc.
memory was really interesting in here, too. time collapses when we're brought into one of the characters' memories. not only does time collapse, but the character (rachel or lars) goes so into their own head and becomes so keyed into the memory, they become disconnected from what's happening in real time... and that's when the car crash happens or someone fails to care about what's going on around them. there's also the issue of rachel's memory both deteriorating and remaining very vivid. her sense of time, memory, and reality become confused. she believes her dead cousin is visiting the house. she forgets to take her eye drops for stretches at a time. lars's sense of time, memory, and reality become confused, too. he forgets what day it is, etc.
i was really interested (slash sometimes confused) by the way time plays out in this memoir. i wasn't sure i trusted farmer's chronology and time lapses. i wondered if her choices were hyperbolized because it felt impossible that some time frames were correct. like, is it possible that rachel really didn't wash herself since her fall when, if you go back and look at how long ago that would have been, it would've been more than seven months earlier? maybe this is true, but it seems like a lot. that was a consistency issue often, but also i felt like the way she represented time as trudging along as well as seemingly stagnant was effective and fitting: their lives have become routinized, not much changes from day to day (until their are blowouts-- the car crash, the fall, the rodney king riots, etc). their lives/days are pretty predictable until minor hiccups happen-- the ant invasion, the poisoned hand, the blown out microwave, etc. then the major ones-- the glaucoma turning to blindness, the mite issue, the fall, the blisters, the riots, etc-- cause a bit more drama and a stir, but eventually, they get used to them, accept them, move on. (depressing)
um, okay, also everything that was going on on pages 26-27 pissed me off re: the representation of black people, in relation to caricature, stereotype, and character depth. violent black male who is scary! white people save the poor whorish black woman from angry black male! feel sorry for this family!
and the visual representation of the woman and her boys is so part of the caricature canon dating back to slavery-- the coiled crazy hair of the mother, her lips and expressions (panels 7-8 on 26, panel 6 on 27). the boys are very picaninny-esque, also quiet and docile looking and distorted facial features-- lips, eyes, facial profile (frame 5 on 26, frame 2-3, 7 on 27). i am tempted to post a million links to problematic imagery antebellum south to now, but i won't.
i will just say i was really disturbed and the connections are obvious. not to mention the lack of depth of all three of them and also the woman's pleading, hopeless, uninformed way, etc. this situation may very well have happened: a woman with an abusive brother needs an abortion and is struggling. sure. but there is definitely something problematic about the way it is visually and textually represented. i don't think white people inherently cannot positively represent people of color, i think white people need to challenge the stereotypes we embed about people of color and definitely be clued into how people of color are and have been represented visually, artistically, and in media historically and contemporarily. this particular instance of representation is a massive fail. i don't necessarily get the sense that farmer was depicting it this way to show that rachel and lars have a covert racism embedded in them and that, from their perspective, this is how this woman appeared to them. it didn't feel subjective like that or particularly from their eyes... it was still kinda omniscient. so, i dunno. i kinda didn't want to read on after those pages because they so rubbed me the wrong way.
Damn I just lost the great comments i was making, anyway. I appreciate Rex, how thorough you were and how you found the craft and narrative moments in conjunction with the heavy-handed drawing, to create a claustrophobia that makes us engulfed in this experience. In addition your examples were helpful; for instance, when you show how the racism is still in the omniscience that makes it emanate from the book and not from a particular set of experience or perspective.
ReplyDeleteBig ups on your shout out for literature about elders where they are central; and fyi, there are communities in this town where the only place to buy groceries is the liquor store (not far from whole foods, don't cha know)
e
Rex, I deeply appreciate all of your reflections.
ReplyDeleteI similarly thought that the moment when Lars said "Things get worse in such small increments that you can get used to anything" was the key to the memoir and was in a sense a call to readers to consider what "abnormal" conditions we become resigned to - in our individual lives and more broadly.
As someone who has watched, and is currently watching, the decline of elderly relatives, I found Farmer's depiction of this resignation to be utterly accurate, and painfully honest. ie. I've offered (threatened) and then cut my mother's own matted hair which she refuses to cut.
Great comments about the omniscience of racism within this text. I look forward to the conversation about this in class.
Hi Rex,
ReplyDeleteI also want to compliment you on starting with the strong point about the lack of elderly narratives in literature. And your observations about class and access to healthy food were so true and possibly another one of Farmer's subtle crusades with this book, along with exposing the abuse and murder that occurs in nursing homes.
I also agreed that often the frames were too cluttered. I felt that at times there were no decisions about wich frames to make cluttered and claustrophobic and which ones to let open up and breathe. Perhaps that was the point, but I could have used some air.
Great Post,
Margaret Seelie
GO. THA. FUCK. AWF. REXXXX.
ReplyDeletethat is all i have to say.
but before i go...
i LOVE your analysis of the panels' lighting and shading. some of them were so hard i just disregarded them and went to the next one, but found myself wondering what they were about. double KNOCK KNOCK to going IN on environmental racism and access to food in communities like South Central/South LA and how this points to their failing health and accessibility to good foods. (also to elmaz: living in every neighborhood i ever have, and esp. notable in west oakland, there are three lovely liquor stores waiting to feed me corned beef hash and banquet tv dinners).
i TRIPLE appreciate you indeed for highlighting the depictions of Sharalee and her sons in this. For whatever reason, I guess my subconscious was so used to these images that it didn't even occur to me that they harkens back to minstrelsy. (i often do a twitch whenever i see black folks depicted in white imagination, hoping it does our features justice, often it doesn't).
in addition, it really was a jarring encounter for it being the first time we see Sharalee, and you're right, there is no proper context for the situation they find themselves in (namely, jumping the fence). as the stereotype goes, life is always lived under extreme circumstances, it seems, if you're black and in the hood (*blank stare*). so much happened in those two pages in terms of safety, self esteem, black women's sexuality, possible incest?, i now wonder if joyce could have gotten the same point across without such an extreme example. but i guess then it wouldn't be south central...(another blank stare). even when Sharalee returns years later, she is but a glimpse in the ever churning last days of their lives, to give thanks to Rachel for -- you called it -- "saving her life", a brief moment to mention that she bettered her life, only to disappear, once again. these stock images of black women in literature do make me continuously uncomfortable, and most of all, scream "come ON! is that ALL we are?"
however, i didn't discount this moment entirely, because it made me more curious about joyce farmer's choice to address abortion in her comics, in a way that no comic by a male-bodied writer would do. there was a sympathy, as opposed to a beat-you-over-the-head-and-tell-you-how-promiscuous-you're-being/blame the victim mentality that often populates the space where race/class/gender intersect in the mainstream. true, there was also a white savior element beneath that, but it did open up space for dialogue where there is often silence...
why did i really just write an entire second blog as a response
it's all yer fault! but no really, i loved this :-D
-uni