Bayou’s Simplicity

Bayou uses a technique we’ve seen many times throughout the semester (Maus, Jimmy Corrigan, Exit Wounds), where the simplicity of the art (or masks in the case of Maus) is used specifically to endear the reader and enhance specific aspects upon which the comic is commenting.  For instance, in Maus we saw the cartoon-like overly simplified mice masks offer a door through which the reader was able to connect more strongly with the characters and surpass the atrocities of WWII in order to see the story of Maus.  I won’t go into Jimmy Corrigan, because I still don’t think I understand that one.  Bayou seems to do a similar thing, both in its form online, and in the art itself.  The simplicity of navigation and straightforward instructions, along with the ability to zoom-in (Josh, I think there was something wrong with however you were looking at it, I could zoom in just fine) made my experience of reading the comic easy and enjoyable (as opposed to Shooting War, where my eyes were completely exhausted by the time I finished because I couldn’t zoom in without distorting the images.  I know that comic doesn’t have a lot of money, but there’s something to be said about a comic that doesn’t let the reader zoom in perhaps not really caring about the reader experience.  I digress.)

My point is that the simplicity of the drawings in Bayou and the way such simplicity has been used in what we’ve seen parallels the story of Bayou itself.  The first chapter seems pretty typical of the societal norms of the time (segregation, racism, hangings), but there’s something else going on that we don’t yet see.  Lee sees some sort of fairy under water, while her white friend has her necklace stolen by a overly large dripping hand that comes out of the swamp. In the first three images we have a similar thing happening: First we see a house in the background with flowers in the foreground in an extremely picturesque and perhaps romantic rendering of a place.  Next we see a pickup truck, very cute rabbits and a sign, “welcome to Charon, Mississippi” with the confederate flag as its background.  We still have a hint of the picturesque in the bunnies, but the confederate flag diminishes said picturesque-ness.  And finally we have a hanging of presumably a black man (feet dripping blood with flies around it, we don’t actually see the face) and a group of white men in the distance.   It’s as if the comic is telling us not to necessarily believe what we first see, or understand.  Lee’s friend’s bruise underscores this point, playing with reader expectations.  For me, at least, I assumed she was rich and educated and generally had a good life thus far, except that her mother beats her and she has bruises under her clothing.  The simplicity of the art also underscores this point because we only see a surface and easy art style that has few details and very little background.