I was most struck by two elements in Special Exits: Repetition and representations of Race/Racism.
Repitition
While we hardly get any sense of the protaganist caregiver, Laura's internal process or emotions, Farmer uses repetition to make readers feel Laura's struggle as a caregiver, a laborer. Repetition is also a way to represent the passage of time.
Everything is in black and white, almost the whole book is eight panels to a page, there's not much variation in tone.
Repetition of phrases:
"What color dress do you want?"
"Is there anything to eat or drink?"
"I don't want to go to the hospital"
Repetition of images:
Laura bathing Rachel's naked body (becoming weaker and weaker)
Rachel's dolls
Laura driving to and from her parent's house Lars and Rachel lying on the couch
Laura brushing Rachel's hair
Ching scratching Laura
Lars picking up the morning paper
Laura grocery shopping
Laura cleaning
Laura telling Art "Thanks for being there" (even though we don't see him doing anything)
Laura getting Rachel Dr. Pepper
Laura grimacing
Rachel's frazzled hair
I imagine these images and phrases were what Farmer saw and heard when she went to bed at night after a long day of caregiving. I was exhausted midway through this book and I think that was Farmer's intention; for us to feel a bit of the exhaustion that she felt.
Race/Racism
Through Margeaux's teachings I've learned a lot about the concept of constructing unlikeable characters and how that's different than being an unlikeable narrator or author. And this is memoir, so Farmer is telling her truth. Farmer makes the characters who are in positions of power and appear white: Doctors, the funeral home director, out to be shady crooks and I thought it was amusing at first and then began to expect it. A doctor on the phone looking at the racetrack scores? Sure why, not?
I never got used to the representations of people of color in the book though. Lars and Rachel live in South LA in what appears to be the epicenter of the riots after the Rodney King beating. It starts with a neighbor mother, Sheralee, and her twins on page 26. Sheralee tells Rachel she needs an abortion and follows it up with, "But my brother says no. I think he wants the extra welfare payment." Rachel tells the mom about Planned Parenthood and tells her not to tell anyone she "helped" her. (A woman's right to choose comes back later when Laura and Rachel share a moment) The chapter ends with Rachel giving Sheralee PP's number, making Rachel out to be the savior. So let's say Farmer's stepmom told her this story. And let's say it was true. Farmer still chose to keep in material that would perpetuate stereotypes about a group of people that she doesn't come from.
The TV tells the family how to be scared regarding the rioters and Laura and Art decide they need to get Charles (presumably a person of color they know) to drive them in a van through South LA while they hide in the back. Despite all the fear, Lars and Rachel actually aren't harmed.
Then there is the incompetent nurses aide (page 138) who lets Rachel fall out of bed, "No Ma'am. They was down. I just left her for a minute!" and the other illiterate aide on page 146: Laura: "She's blind" The nameless aide: "I didn't know that". (There's a sign above Rachel's bed taking up half the panel.)
Then on 154, a KKK statue arrives in the picture. Long enough for me and Rachel to say, "What?" And then disappears.
On 159, Lars starts getting Meals on Wheels and enjoys the ribs and cornbread muffin, telling Laura she can have the greens. She says, "A balanced meal, South LA style!"
On 168, Laura points out Lars' ignorance about Greek cuisine to her friend: "Don't worry, he thinks "Greek Food" means greasy burgers and fries, further locating them in an urban-immigrant community.
I find myself saying to myself that Farmer was born in the 30's. That she's was less overtly racist and more creative than my granny was. And I want to hold her work accountable to what it represents. Her parents are presented as two white people "from a bygone era" who were there before the neighborhood got "scary". Their house is an island. This is the same issue that we come up against time and time again, I don't want Farmer to rewrite her family's history, I just want equal representation for the other people in South LA so that they aren't just minor, unnamed characters in Farmer's graphic novel.
Showing posts with label sailor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sailor. Show all posts
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Guilty of Judging a Book by its Cover
Judging a book by its cover (and formatting and font choice and incorrect punctuation) Mother's Urn is the type of book I would normally run away from as fast as I can. But I trust Margeaux and so I read it twice.
This book is made up of four stories, four stories that repeat themes and images.
The images did not invite me in. They pushed me to go away and the only place to turn was the text. The text scowled at me with it red color on black page, its italics, its sans serifs. But then the text invited me in with its content, its talk of drugs, its talk of kids on drugs. Those little blue pills.
The images from the story, "Somebody's Mother" are different than the rest of the book. It looks like the artist uses pencil (grey and color) and lots of crosshatching. This creates a more refined look and I am able to see the detail that the artist attempts on the other pages. Maybe something was wrong with my eyes but I couldn't really see the detail in the other stories. Being able to see the details in "Somebody's Mother" causes me to trust the collaborators more. In all the other stories, I relied on the text to 'tell me what was going on", but in "Somebody's Mother", I think you could just see the pictures and figure it out.
I'm moved especially by the image on page 32. Look at it closely. On the left side of the page, there are two children, a child and a smaller baby, slumped over, I assumed from ingesting pills. Upon second glance, the children make up the hair/brain/thoughts of a mother body who is ingesting blue pills down her gullet. The mother's gaze goes past a smaller repeating image of the child and baby slumped. She's not looking at the kids, she's looking at the pill bottle. On the right, there's a gutter of chaos. Objects strewn from the domestic violence the text refers to: "in walks domestic violence stage left." And its even stage left, cool!
With this reading, I think maybe the kids didn't take pills themselves but were affected by their mother's pill taking: "...eating disease on her brain craving knowledge". What are those little red dots that float between the mother's head and the kids' heads? Dots to show us how the mother's thoughts and actions affect the kids'?
Reading this book in whole brought up the "post-therapy memoir" concept Margeaux introduced last week. I see "Are you My Mother?" as a post-therapy memoir, that book couldn't have been written without therapy. It was about therapy, not therapy itself. Mother's Urn rides that line. I propose drafting makes the difference. The more we rework a story the less it becomes about us and the more it becomes about our characters.
This book is made up of four stories, four stories that repeat themes and images.
The images did not invite me in. They pushed me to go away and the only place to turn was the text. The text scowled at me with it red color on black page, its italics, its sans serifs. But then the text invited me in with its content, its talk of drugs, its talk of kids on drugs. Those little blue pills.
The images from the story, "Somebody's Mother" are different than the rest of the book. It looks like the artist uses pencil (grey and color) and lots of crosshatching. This creates a more refined look and I am able to see the detail that the artist attempts on the other pages. Maybe something was wrong with my eyes but I couldn't really see the detail in the other stories. Being able to see the details in "Somebody's Mother" causes me to trust the collaborators more. In all the other stories, I relied on the text to 'tell me what was going on", but in "Somebody's Mother", I think you could just see the pictures and figure it out.
I'm moved especially by the image on page 32. Look at it closely. On the left side of the page, there are two children, a child and a smaller baby, slumped over, I assumed from ingesting pills. Upon second glance, the children make up the hair/brain/thoughts of a mother body who is ingesting blue pills down her gullet. The mother's gaze goes past a smaller repeating image of the child and baby slumped. She's not looking at the kids, she's looking at the pill bottle. On the right, there's a gutter of chaos. Objects strewn from the domestic violence the text refers to: "in walks domestic violence stage left." And its even stage left, cool!
With this reading, I think maybe the kids didn't take pills themselves but were affected by their mother's pill taking: "...eating disease on her brain craving knowledge". What are those little red dots that float between the mother's head and the kids' heads? Dots to show us how the mother's thoughts and actions affect the kids'?
Reading this book in whole brought up the "post-therapy memoir" concept Margeaux introduced last week. I see "Are you My Mother?" as a post-therapy memoir, that book couldn't have been written without therapy. It was about therapy, not therapy itself. Mother's Urn rides that line. I propose drafting makes the difference. The more we rework a story the less it becomes about us and the more it becomes about our characters.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Upcoming exhibit: I See What You Say: Visual Stories and Narrative Art
This upcoming exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum is right up the alley of this class: http://cartoonart.org/2013/03/i-see-what-you-say-visual-stories-and-narrative-art-2/
Friday, March 1, 2013
Bechdel: The prodigious daughter
There's a lot to talk about with this book, Are You My Mother?: Dreams, Freud, Winnicott, the highlighting of text, writing a book about writing a book/meta-memoir, the changing of the seasons during therapy sessions, the self.
To analyze this book is to further analyze the self, the self of the author, but mostly MY SELF. Why do I pick what I pick to focus on? Is psychoanalytics its own pathology?(150). Through analyzing, does something salient become more salient or fade and integrate into the self?
At peace with either result, I'm going to focus on Bechdel's inclusion of Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child.
At the risk of sounding like just another narcissist surrounding Bechdel, Are You My Mother? spoke to me. I saw my mother in December for the first time in five years. It'd been four years before that. During her visit, she said, "I love you."
"I love you too," I responded. Her response then was, "Mission accomplished." Like many of Bechdel's exchanges with her mom, including when Bechdel's mom asks, "Do you love me?"(86) this statement, "Mission accomplished" sounds simple and innocuous, but in context it's unsettling. My mom was implying that her life's work was to have me love her, and now that that was affirmed, she could rest. My mom's mom didn't love her. As a kid, anytime I complained about the abuse in my family my mom responded with gory details from her childhood to show that she'd had it worse and that I was lucky. Decades later, I've come to realize it must've taken a lot for my parents to not beat me nearly as much as their parents beat them.
On page 208, Bechdel quotes Miller saying, "The child, an only one or often the first-born, was the narcissistically cathected object. What these mothers had once failed to find in their own mothers they were able to find in their children: someone at their disposal who can be used as an echo, who can be controlled, is completely centered on them, will never desert them, and offers full attention and admiration." Certainly my mom's parenting style fits into this description. I wonder if her mother (my grandma's) did too. I know my Grandpa beat my Grandma, but was my Grandma beat by her mother? What are the alternatives to this behavior, especially for women abused as children like my mom, and all the women in my family besides me, women without access to birth control, let alone therapy?(Like Bechdel, my sex life with women has served, among other things, as good birth control.)
Both Bechdel's mother and my mother talk to us about all the details of their lives without asking us about ours. I have been known to set the phone down for a minute or two to take a breather from my mom talking about the new color she painted a room or what she had for dinner.
Even after ten years of therapy (or maybe because ten years of therapy) this book made me feel like if I was going to keep reading, I needed to have Jocelyn on speed dial. Or in my case, Luana Rodgers, my therapist from 2002-2005. Luana stood in for my narcissistic parents. When I published my first piece of Creative Nonfiction in 2004, which told my truth about the poverty I was raised in, I told Luana I was afraid of my parents reading the essay. She was never afraid to tell me things straight.
"They don't care enough about you to find it," she said. And she was right. Until 2007, when my mom found the internet. She read the essay and proceeded to tear each line apart, in a less civilized version of Bechdel's portrayal of her mom's reading of Fun Home.
And maybe still, underneath her rage and shame, my mom can feel a sense of being witnessed, that her kid survived something she herself is still unwilling to name.
If there were one panel in this book that meant to serve as a key, it is the last panel on page 233. Bechdel has just described to us how babies look into the face of their caregiver to see themselves. "When I look I am seen, so I exist." -Winnicott. Bechdel says, "The day I hung up the phone on mom was the last time she made me cry." We see Bechdel hunched over her desk with her hand on the phone. In the last panel, the banner says: "Things got easier after that" and we see the same image of Bechdel hunched over at her desk, presumably the same moment, but there's a camera that she's set taking a photo of her. Those who know about her artistic process know that she is saying that she took the image-making of herself into her own hands. She sees herself; she doesn't need to rely on her mother to see her. BRILLIANT.
Gloria Steinem says on the back cover of Are You My Mother?, "Many of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers." I didn't internalize this quote until writing this blog post. "Unlived"/living doesn't have to mean your mom was a housewife and now you are an astronaut. I think Steinem means inhabited. That my life is solely mine to inhabit. Bechdel shares this inhabitation with her mother (she cohabitates with her). I wish for the courage and patience to model this possibility with my mother while there's still time.
To analyze this book is to further analyze the self, the self of the author, but mostly MY SELF. Why do I pick what I pick to focus on? Is psychoanalytics its own pathology?(150). Through analyzing, does something salient become more salient or fade and integrate into the self?
At peace with either result, I'm going to focus on Bechdel's inclusion of Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child.
At the risk of sounding like just another narcissist surrounding Bechdel, Are You My Mother? spoke to me. I saw my mother in December for the first time in five years. It'd been four years before that. During her visit, she said, "I love you."
"I love you too," I responded. Her response then was, "Mission accomplished." Like many of Bechdel's exchanges with her mom, including when Bechdel's mom asks, "Do you love me?"(86) this statement, "Mission accomplished" sounds simple and innocuous, but in context it's unsettling. My mom was implying that her life's work was to have me love her, and now that that was affirmed, she could rest. My mom's mom didn't love her. As a kid, anytime I complained about the abuse in my family my mom responded with gory details from her childhood to show that she'd had it worse and that I was lucky. Decades later, I've come to realize it must've taken a lot for my parents to not beat me nearly as much as their parents beat them.
On page 208, Bechdel quotes Miller saying, "The child, an only one or often the first-born, was the narcissistically cathected object. What these mothers had once failed to find in their own mothers they were able to find in their children: someone at their disposal who can be used as an echo, who can be controlled, is completely centered on them, will never desert them, and offers full attention and admiration." Certainly my mom's parenting style fits into this description. I wonder if her mother (my grandma's) did too. I know my Grandpa beat my Grandma, but was my Grandma beat by her mother? What are the alternatives to this behavior, especially for women abused as children like my mom, and all the women in my family besides me, women without access to birth control, let alone therapy?(Like Bechdel, my sex life with women has served, among other things, as good birth control.)
Both Bechdel's mother and my mother talk to us about all the details of their lives without asking us about ours. I have been known to set the phone down for a minute or two to take a breather from my mom talking about the new color she painted a room or what she had for dinner.
Even after ten years of therapy (or maybe because ten years of therapy) this book made me feel like if I was going to keep reading, I needed to have Jocelyn on speed dial. Or in my case, Luana Rodgers, my therapist from 2002-2005. Luana stood in for my narcissistic parents. When I published my first piece of Creative Nonfiction in 2004, which told my truth about the poverty I was raised in, I told Luana I was afraid of my parents reading the essay. She was never afraid to tell me things straight.
"They don't care enough about you to find it," she said. And she was right. Until 2007, when my mom found the internet. She read the essay and proceeded to tear each line apart, in a less civilized version of Bechdel's portrayal of her mom's reading of Fun Home.
And maybe still, underneath her rage and shame, my mom can feel a sense of being witnessed, that her kid survived something she herself is still unwilling to name.
If there were one panel in this book that meant to serve as a key, it is the last panel on page 233. Bechdel has just described to us how babies look into the face of their caregiver to see themselves. "When I look I am seen, so I exist." -Winnicott. Bechdel says, "The day I hung up the phone on mom was the last time she made me cry." We see Bechdel hunched over her desk with her hand on the phone. In the last panel, the banner says: "Things got easier after that" and we see the same image of Bechdel hunched over at her desk, presumably the same moment, but there's a camera that she's set taking a photo of her. Those who know about her artistic process know that she is saying that she took the image-making of herself into her own hands. She sees herself; she doesn't need to rely on her mother to see her. BRILLIANT.
Gloria Steinem says on the back cover of Are You My Mother?, "Many of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers." I didn't internalize this quote until writing this blog post. "Unlived"/living doesn't have to mean your mom was a housewife and now you are an astronaut. I think Steinem means inhabited. That my life is solely mine to inhabit. Bechdel shares this inhabitation with her mother (she cohabitates with her). I wish for the courage and patience to model this possibility with my mother while there's still time.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Light and dark
I didn't take in the message that we were supposed to write a blog for "But I Can't". Sorry for lateness! Please find my response below:
When I first printed out "But I Can't" I didn't take note of its order so when I went to read it, I didn't know what sequence the comic was in. It was fun to read the content trying to put the puzzle pieces together. Ultimately, I put the pages in the same sequence they can be found in online, but I decided it could be read in whatever sequence you like. I do recommend the online version though, or a color printer as the richness of color is not to be missed.
This comic stands out in its layering of color and overlapping of panels. Internal monologues and external dialogues dominant the rest of the story. The fifth and sixth panels are joined by a dialogue bubble that connects them. On page 2, we see a dialogue bubble in gibberish that the protagonist ("I didn't understand it all at first") and us don't understand, but it bleeds into the next panel.
When executing his internal monologue panels, Corban Wilkin uses bold colors behind black ink. In fact the most striking thing about this work is the use of India ink outline and watercolor. These materials and his use of them bring a depth to the work. We see a lot of different angles of light as well, from streetlamps and moons but perhaps they also suggest beams from an alien spaceship.
I was struck by how the protagonist looked like an older person throughout the piece, especially panels on page 1: 3,4, 6, 8; page 3: 6, 9; page 4: 6. It's as if the author is showing a protagonist who has visually aged that is still wondering about the whereabouts and howabouts of their friend.
I wasn't "struck" per say, but want to point out that the artist only mentions Harriet's name once on page 1, at the top of page 3, twice on the bottom of page 3, and once on page 4. Everything else is, "She", "I ", "Us". This can lead the reader to feel that Harriet is missing.
Additionally, the narrator says on page 2, "She was too boyish and weird for everyone". The protagonist looks boyish and weird so I wondered what the meter for weird and boyish was, or if we assume that Lucy is too boyish and weird for everyone too and this is partially why they were friends. In the article below, I perceive the artist as "male" and he talks about how this story is based on his childhood so there's some gender variance in the storytelling going on here as well. Cool beans.
How I know the artist's name, what the artist looks like and that it is watercolor and india ink for sure: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/04/observer-graphic-short-story-2012-winner
When I first printed out "But I Can't" I didn't take note of its order so when I went to read it, I didn't know what sequence the comic was in. It was fun to read the content trying to put the puzzle pieces together. Ultimately, I put the pages in the same sequence they can be found in online, but I decided it could be read in whatever sequence you like. I do recommend the online version though, or a color printer as the richness of color is not to be missed.
This comic stands out in its layering of color and overlapping of panels. Internal monologues and external dialogues dominant the rest of the story. The fifth and sixth panels are joined by a dialogue bubble that connects them. On page 2, we see a dialogue bubble in gibberish that the protagonist ("I didn't understand it all at first") and us don't understand, but it bleeds into the next panel.
When executing his internal monologue panels, Corban Wilkin uses bold colors behind black ink. In fact the most striking thing about this work is the use of India ink outline and watercolor. These materials and his use of them bring a depth to the work. We see a lot of different angles of light as well, from streetlamps and moons but perhaps they also suggest beams from an alien spaceship.
I was struck by how the protagonist looked like an older person throughout the piece, especially panels on page 1: 3,4, 6, 8; page 3: 6, 9; page 4: 6. It's as if the author is showing a protagonist who has visually aged that is still wondering about the whereabouts and howabouts of their friend.
I wasn't "struck" per say, but want to point out that the artist only mentions Harriet's name once on page 1, at the top of page 3, twice on the bottom of page 3, and once on page 4. Everything else is, "She", "I ", "Us". This can lead the reader to feel that Harriet is missing.
Additionally, the narrator says on page 2, "She was too boyish and weird for everyone". The protagonist looks boyish and weird so I wondered what the meter for weird and boyish was, or if we assume that Lucy is too boyish and weird for everyone too and this is partially why they were friends. In the article below, I perceive the artist as "male" and he talks about how this story is based on his childhood so there's some gender variance in the storytelling going on here as well. Cool beans.
How I know the artist's name, what the artist looks like and that it is watercolor and india ink for sure: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/04/observer-graphic-short-story-2012-winner
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Bechdel video about how she made Fun Home!!
Here's exactly what I was hoping there was a video of. Bechdel talking via a presentation about how she made Fun Home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cumLU3UpcGY
And here's a lengthy interview with Bechdel. She was a studio art/art history major: http://www.tcj.com/the-alison-bechdel-interview/
AND a video on The Bechdel Test, regarding women in meaningful roles in film. Do two women who both have names, speak in a film to each other more than about a man? Then they pass the Bechdel Test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH8JuizIXw8
Enjoy!
And here's a lengthy interview with Bechdel. She was a studio art/art history major: http://www.tcj.com/the-alison-bechdel-interview/
AND a video on The Bechdel Test, regarding women in meaningful roles in film. Do two women who both have names, speak in a film to each other more than about a man? Then they pass the Bechdel Test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH8JuizIXw8
Enjoy!
Monday, February 18, 2013
Calling Out for Plain, two-fisted Sinew
Opening the hardcover edition of Fun Home, the inside front and back covers are the same wallpaper we see later in the tiny panels showing the funeral home. The dust jacket is gilded like I imagine the floor-to-ceiling curtains or the plush inside of one of the coffins. The cover displays a silver tray with a business card from Fun Home. We enter the book as if we are entering the funeral home. Someone has died. We are visitors in this house, maybe even prospective customers. Or are we a ghost behind the walls?
By compressing herself between literary classics and holiday movies on TV (10), Bechdel catches everyone in her net of reference. Analyzing stories that were dear to her father helps her understand this most elusive character, pushes the narrative forward, and makes her story a universal one, something belonging simultaneously to the literary canon and to the human experience. She does this throughout the book, also using her mother's scripts from plays to elucidate her mother's character in the home and her parent's troubled marriage.
"I employ these allusions to James and Fitzgerald not only as descriptive devices but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms"(67)
Adding to her extensively researched bibliography, is Bechdel's use of her own childhood diary. We believe the child Allison because the adult Allison is decoding/mediating the diary and saying, "Here's what I remember, this diary is spurring my memory." She interprets the text like she would Camus, but with Camus she layers Camus on top of her experience to make connections, meaning, push the story forward, and most of all, to build up a socially relevant story that needs to be reconciled. With the diary she layers her current self and perception without the diary on top of the diary to make sense of her current self and past self, her selves. It becomes a practice of reconciliation.
Bechdel relieves us from our wonder when she says on page 196: "Or maybe I'm trying to render my senseless personal loss meaningful by linking it, however posthumously, to a more coherent narrative." And she succeeds in linking her story to many more narratives than she could imagine.
Some things I'm interested in:
Bechdel uses photographs both explicitly (35) and implicitly (32). Much of Fun Home was rendered by Bechdel posing, photographing herself, and drawing from the photograph.
How much research went into this book. Not just internal, familial and literary, but historical.
How Bechdel alternates between a literary text, dialogue, and internal thought (84)
How Bechdel jumps ages on page 74, from 13 to 19, to back to 13.
How each panel is drawn from a different angle, a different point of view.
There's much more and I'm curious what you think.
By compressing herself between literary classics and holiday movies on TV (10), Bechdel catches everyone in her net of reference. Analyzing stories that were dear to her father helps her understand this most elusive character, pushes the narrative forward, and makes her story a universal one, something belonging simultaneously to the literary canon and to the human experience. She does this throughout the book, also using her mother's scripts from plays to elucidate her mother's character in the home and her parent's troubled marriage.
"I employ these allusions to James and Fitzgerald not only as descriptive devices but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms"(67)
Adding to her extensively researched bibliography, is Bechdel's use of her own childhood diary. We believe the child Allison because the adult Allison is decoding/mediating the diary and saying, "Here's what I remember, this diary is spurring my memory." She interprets the text like she would Camus, but with Camus she layers Camus on top of her experience to make connections, meaning, push the story forward, and most of all, to build up a socially relevant story that needs to be reconciled. With the diary she layers her current self and perception without the diary on top of the diary to make sense of her current self and past self, her selves. It becomes a practice of reconciliation.
Bechdel relieves us from our wonder when she says on page 196: "Or maybe I'm trying to render my senseless personal loss meaningful by linking it, however posthumously, to a more coherent narrative." And she succeeds in linking her story to many more narratives than she could imagine.
Some things I'm interested in:
Bechdel uses photographs both explicitly (35) and implicitly (32). Much of Fun Home was rendered by Bechdel posing, photographing herself, and drawing from the photograph.
How much research went into this book. Not just internal, familial and literary, but historical.
How Bechdel alternates between a literary text, dialogue, and internal thought (84)
How Bechdel jumps ages on page 74, from 13 to 19, to back to 13.
How each panel is drawn from a different angle, a different point of view.
There's much more and I'm curious what you think.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Animated graffiti film by artist Blu and David Ellis
There's a lot of cool stuff on this site but I thought you all would enjoy this:
http://vimeo.com/6555161
http://vimeo.com/6555161
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Interesting project on perspective
http://www.petapixel.com/2013/02/11/woman-photographs-herself-receiving-strange-looks-in-public/
This reminded me of the activity we did at the beginning of class
Stop saying you liked it or didnt like it.
I enjoyed this article on critiquing comics, by which I mean I found it useful:
http://www.dylanmeconis.com/how-not-to-write-comics-criticism/
http://www.dylanmeconis.com/how-not-to-write-comics-criticism/
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Back with a Style of Her Own
Unlike Laurie Sandell's The Imposter's Daughter, Gabrielle makes Lucky's words and pictures work in tandem. Imposter's Daughter could have been read without the images, and as stated in class was a completed 300+ page manuscript prior to becoming a graphic memoir. Bell makes Lucky's Images integral. I don't think she could do it any other way. While Sandell is a writer using pictures and text to tell a story, Bell is a comic artist. Okay, more comparisions to Sandell later.
Mostly I want to point out the call and response technique Bell employs. She often begins with a heading. This is so prevalent, I'm just going to open up the book and find one. Ok, third panel on page 30: "I applied for a job at a high-end clothing store. I had to start somewhere, although I felt like something the cat dragged in." Then she will follow the heading up with dialogue, an image of the action that illustrates what she was just describing, or an image that decodes or complicates what she said in the heading. On page 30, she picked dialogue: "Now tell me, why are you interested in working for Ann Taylor?" "Well, I particularly like their clothing line. I can't afford to buy it new but I always look for it at thrift stores." The narrator comments on her word bubble by writing "pathetic lie" next to it with an arrow. This technique made me look at the text and images of Lucky equally, like I was stumbling forward. Each item under the heading, be it a picture, some dialogue, pictures with dialogue, serve as punchlines, following through with more than we expected, and after the first few pages, knowing there will be more calls and responses, I'm hooked.
The way Bell draws her faces with just beady eyes and a line for a mouth requires Scott McCloud to be brought in. In his book, Understanding Comics (I recommend reading it, yesterday) he spends a lot of time talking about realistic drawing vs. cartoon drawing and the different affects they have on a viewer. One tidbit: "When two people interact, they usually look directly at one another, seeing their partner's features in vivid detail. Each one also sustains a constant awareness of his or her own face, but this mind-picture is not nearly so vivid; just a sketchy arrangement, a sense of shape, a sense of general placement. Something as simple and basic-as a cartoon. Thus when you look at a photo or realistic drawing of a face, you see it as the face of another. But when you enter the world of the cartoon, you see yourself"(36). He goes on saying more awesome stuff. But this is what Bell does, I IDENTIFIED with her, and I hardly know anything about her.
It isn't until page 39 of Lucky that we get any information about Bell's upbringing: "I was reminded of the times when we hitchhiked to school because our parents were too hungover to drive us". We don't know if she relayed this memory to her brother or not, but his text responds to the idea of what she told us: "You know, considering our upbringing, we did pretty well for ourselves". This makes a dialogue between her internal monologue and his external one.
Throughout Lucky, Bell shows how important comics are to her, which takes on a meta quality, something she likes to do a lot, something that gives her ultimate control over her world, which from the outside she could be perceived as a victim of. On page 50, in a modern art museum, she divulges that she would have liked "some pictures to look at on the way. Particularly pictures arranged in a sequential order that would tell a story". She eats and breathes comics. She draws herself into her own comic. Maybe she's more of a self as a comic.
In closing, comparing Lucky to The Imposter's Daughter again, I noticed there's no sex in Lucky. (Maybe I wouldn't have noticed if there hadn't been so much sex in ID!) I don't realize this until page 98 when Bell is wrestling with how to greet people in French and she seems so uncomfortable. Will she ever get an opportunity to utilize these skills? Yes, she will. Read The Voyeurs.
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Addicted to Truth-Sailor Holladay
This book opens with a carrot. The Imposter's Daughter: A true memoir. This can be read at least two ways: a true memoir unlike all those false memoirs you've read recently, and: a true memoir, as opposed to my life prior to writing it, which was a big lie. If the subtitle isn't enough of a clue on how little lying will be displayed or tolerated during the duration of this book, the dedication reads, "For all the truthtellers" AKA: "Narcissistic liars, for once this is not about you."
Sandell describes her dad in such sociopathic detail, detail which closely resembles my own dad's patterns, I couldn't help but be pulled in to the crazy; I read the book in one sitting.
Each section (or chapter) has its own title, making it seem as though these sections could have been published separately as mini-comics like Gabrielle Bell has done, but I don't think they were. Without any white space on the page, I didn't notice the illustrated headings until the second reading.
Starting on page 18, Sandell inserts drawings from her childhood. This builds her authority as an artist (see, she's been doing this drawing thing for a long time) and as a truth teller (look, her dad's been acting weird for even longer). She may have even used her old drawings to jog her memory on what her homelife was like back then.
Until page 27, Sandell illustrates herself as a naive child, but Sandell masters narrator/character split here. We have to see little Laurie as naive in order to build empathy and healthy adult Laurie fosters this bonding.
Starting on the very first panel of the book, by no mistake titled "Secrets", we know something's coming. Something lurks behind these brightly colored pages and culdesac'd suburbia.On page 27, the naivete ends with the panel titled, "Signs", illustrated with guns.
In "Relative Imposter" (p. 78) Sandell stands up to her father and ends that section with what I think is the most important page in the book, page 82. It's drawn by little Laurie and takes up the whole page. Little Laurie stands in front of a giant bust of her father. Her speech bubble reads: "This is Mt. Rushmore?" Through the inclusion of this drawing, big Laurie tells little Laurie her dad is no longer monolithic, he has no power over her. We could end here, but big Laurie's demons take longer to transform, or at least manage. Love trouble with a stable man, addiction to Ambien and alcohol, ,living vicariously through famous people she interviews, and of course, Dad.
By ending the book with an image of her writing down the first page of the book, she shows us what recovery work needs to be done before one can recover their memories enough to tell a cohesive story. Whether it's accurate or not, she's telling us she had to get sober before she could write it down. And I believe her.
Sandell describes her dad in such sociopathic detail, detail which closely resembles my own dad's patterns, I couldn't help but be pulled in to the crazy; I read the book in one sitting.
Each section (or chapter) has its own title, making it seem as though these sections could have been published separately as mini-comics like Gabrielle Bell has done, but I don't think they were. Without any white space on the page, I didn't notice the illustrated headings until the second reading.
Starting on page 18, Sandell inserts drawings from her childhood. This builds her authority as an artist (see, she's been doing this drawing thing for a long time) and as a truth teller (look, her dad's been acting weird for even longer). She may have even used her old drawings to jog her memory on what her homelife was like back then.
Until page 27, Sandell illustrates herself as a naive child, but Sandell masters narrator/character split here. We have to see little Laurie as naive in order to build empathy and healthy adult Laurie fosters this bonding.
Starting on the very first panel of the book, by no mistake titled "Secrets", we know something's coming. Something lurks behind these brightly colored pages and culdesac'd suburbia.On page 27, the naivete ends with the panel titled, "Signs", illustrated with guns.
In "Relative Imposter" (p. 78) Sandell stands up to her father and ends that section with what I think is the most important page in the book, page 82. It's drawn by little Laurie and takes up the whole page. Little Laurie stands in front of a giant bust of her father. Her speech bubble reads: "This is Mt. Rushmore?" Through the inclusion of this drawing, big Laurie tells little Laurie her dad is no longer monolithic, he has no power over her. We could end here, but big Laurie's demons take longer to transform, or at least manage. Love trouble with a stable man, addiction to Ambien and alcohol, ,living vicariously through famous people she interviews, and of course, Dad.
By ending the book with an image of her writing down the first page of the book, she shows us what recovery work needs to be done before one can recover their memories enough to tell a cohesive story. Whether it's accurate or not, she's telling us she had to get sober before she could write it down. And I believe her.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)