Here, in an interview conducted by the BBC, Rutu Modan talks about her novel “Exit Wounds.” She talks about why she set the book in Tel Aviv and speaks about the inspiration for her book. She speaks about how when she was living in Israel, she was dating a boy for a while and then she didn’t hear from him in a while and so she thought he was dead. This interview gives a lot of insight to the Israel that Modan was writing about.
Christopher Robin and Tom Taylor
As I was researching what inspired Mike Carey to write this comic book and stumbled upon something quite funny. Mike had claimed in his interview with Nicholas Yanes, from Scifipulse.net, that his most important reference point was the autobiography of Christopher Milne. The man who is famous for Christopher Robin in Winnie the Pooh. On Wiki, it says that Milne had grown up believing that his father took away his childhood from him. So to get revenge he made profit off it by making stories and then giving it back to his father in a way that he was not able to use it. After I read that and looked back at the book I could see how he used that information in his writing. When I tried to find that interview on Scifipulse.net I could not find anything on it, but I did find some information on the newest release of The Unwritten Vol 23. On the page it talks about how great the story is and what it goes into this time for the newest volume. Another review that starred the newest book 4 out of 5 was on CBR (comic book resources). It is a website that writes reviews on all new release comics and then at the bottom tells you when the next ones come out.
Exit Wounds, A Love Story, A Wild Goose Chase
The first thing I was drawn to when I picked this graphic novel up was the artwork. I really appreciated the style. It was simple but was able to show the action of the novel. I like the cover because of Numi’s hair and how it looks just like it was blowing in the wind. I also appreciated the subtle references to the political and social issues of the country. The way the story flowed was very interesting to me. You were suddenly immersed into the life of Koby and are taken on an adventure as he assists Numi in finding his father with whom he had become distant. I like how the story was lifelike and how the emotions shown by the characters were believable although I can’t understand someone being so hateful towards their dad. I wish I had known more of a back story but at the same time it wasn’t needed.
One problem I had with the story was the fact that it seemed jumpy at times. The scenes would jump around making the story feel less linear to me at least. I do think it felt like a movie but at times I had a hard time moving from picture to picture. I also had a hard time with Koby’s character. One moment he was fine and the next minute he was acting like a teenage girl. I don’t know if that was on purpose or not but it bothered me as I read the story. I also wondered how such a wild goose chase started as it never seemed Numi had much evidence at all but that was mentioned in the story. I enjoyed Exit Wounds but think it could have flowed better.
There’s More To This Love Story Than Boy Meets Girl
One of the things that surprised me while reading Exit Wounds was how good of a job Rutu Modan did in capturing modern day Israel. Even though this book turns out to be a love story the author excellently portrays the political turmoil in Israel. In very subtle ways she hints at some of the political issues in Israel. She shows how desensitized and accustomed Israelis have become to violence. Pages 46-50 are an excellent example of this nonchalant attitude towards death and the suicide bombings. Another example would be when Numi mentions that Koby’s father might have died in one of the attacks and Koby isn’t even sure of which one she’s talking about. In Exit Wounds, Modan also hints at illegal immigrant workers in Israel and the troubles that they have. The way that the owner of the stationary shop talks about the Filipino cleaning lady, Del, speaks volumes about the issues of immigrant workers. He says that Del probably didn’t even bother going to the hospital after the bombing because of her fear of the immigration police. Its quite disturbing how easily the Filipino cleaning woman switches with another and goes undetected. Another place in the book where Israeli political issues are brought up is when Numi and Koby visit Koby’s mother’s grave. The separation of the graves of Jews and non-Jews in the book speaks to the larger issue of segregation of Jews and non-Jews that can still be seen in Israeli society today. In the very back of the book there is an interview with Rutu Modan where she speaks of how she attempted to capture the reality of this separation between the Jews in Israel and the non-Jews. In my opinion her attempt was a success.
Kid’s Just Don’t Understand
One of the aspects of this novel that stuck out for me (besides the dead bodies, bombs, sex, and the illustration style) was the relationship (or lack thereof) that Koby has with his father, Gabriel. Because the novel focuses on Koby, we are initially left to hear how much Koby resents his father– he doesn’t listen, we was never there, he’s a jerk, etc. At this point, readers might be left rolling their eyes, thinking that it’s going to be another novel about coping with daddy issues and moving on.
As Gabriel’s disappearance becomes more involved, however, we see that Koby’s version of events is unreliable and that he can only tell half of the story. When he talks about his bar mitzvah, for example, he is angry that his father arrived halfway through the ceremony– which is a valid response. As he reads from the Torah, Gabriel began to cry and Koby, rather than feeling touched or proud, wants to die of embarrassment and calls his father a jerk (58-59). And when Gabriel took the time to get him a shirt signed by a professional soccer team, Koby whines that it’s not the right team (he describes them as “worse than Satan”) and that his father doesn’t listen to him (79-80).While Gabriel might not have been the most perceptive father, Koby wasn’t exactly the best son either. The novel may start off depicting Gabriel as a distant father, contributions from other characters finish the picture and reveal that their relationship was based on misunderstanding and not neglect or hatrid. Although Koby blames Gabriel for their miserable relationship, he only exacerbated the problem by not trying to understand his father’s actions.
Exit Wounds
Upon reading this graphic novel, I had no clue what to expect. My first reaction was to the use of bright colors and cartoonized characters. Despite the “semi-serious” subject of an unidentified body of a person who was killed in a bus station cafeteria bombing supposedly being the distant father of his distant son, Koby, I found the colors to be quite interesting to use because of the nature of this story. This graphic novel, I compared to WE3 in the ways that I felt as though I was actually viewing a movie. At one point I even had to shake my head and take a second look to remind myself that I was reading a book with pictures and not watching a film. I found this aspect quite entertaining however. I also thought the character of Koby was very developed and “real,” in a sense that he held nothing back in his emotions and you could actually relate him to a real person because of his sometimes indifference about his father’s whereabouts and safety. I also found the romance that grew between Koby and Numi very intriguing. Numi’s discovery that her thought-to-be deceased lover Gabriel (Koby’s father), had been having relations with other women during their “relationship,” pushed her into Koby’s arms because he was also used to his father disappointing him. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this story, more so after I found out Koby’s father was not killed in the bombing, but actually lived so that he could actually come to explain his actions or in-actions, to not only his son Koby, but also to Numi. I did hope that in the end Koby and Numi would have tracked down Gabriel together and come to terms together, but I finally understood the significance of the final scene in which Koby is stuck up a tree in Numi’s backyard after jumping the wall in attempts to tell Numi that he loved her, and how Numi tells Koby to jump and that she will catch him, and despite his crippling fear of jumping, he does. Koby lets his guard down, for once in a very long time.
A Little More on the Bechdel Test
Since one of Bechdel’s major legacies is the Bechdel Test, I decided to shed a little more light on it in this Weekly Roundup.
The rules were discussed in class and in a previous post, but to recap: at least two women/who talk to each other/about something other than a man. At first glance I thought this was kind of silly, but upon further examination it’s actually a well thought out rule that would disqualify a lot of movies, but certainly not all. The Bechdel Test has a strong presence on the internet, and a quick google search turns up many interesting blogs and even a video that scrolls through just how many movies fail the Test.
The Test also raises some interesting questions, such as: how would the Sex and the City movies fare? Clearly there are more than two women, and while they do talk to each other it is often about men, but not all the time. Add to that the fact that the women in the movies are often materialistic and (in my opinion) petty. On the other hand, many women loved the TV show and the movies. It would be interesting to hear Bechdel’s verdict on this and other similar movies.
Personally, I’m not about to stop watching a movie because it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, but I’m hardly the target audience for it.
Weekly Roundup on Fun Home (March 22-24)
If you’re in group 5, you’re responsible for this week’s weekly roundup. Each student in the group will highlight one key moment from the previous week’s online and in-class discussions. To recall the syllabus:
Follow this formula for the highlights: describe the moment (provide the context and the facts about what you saw, read, or heard), interpret the meaning of the moment (what does it mean?), and evaluate its significance (in other words, why was the moment important?).
You can post your highlight in the comments below (or in a separate post).
Bechdel’s desk
Bechdel\'s desk
This random clip of Bechdel reveals her desk in her present life. Or recent past. We talked about the contrast of her desk/ work area with her father’s in the book and how they differ. Here, it looks like Bechdel has sunken into a claustrophobic work space like her father used to have.
Yeah kind of a weird clip of her but I dunno.
The voices that speak out and the Test
I’m not sure why I initially decided to choose her Facebook fan page. I googled her name, and when I came across it, I felt impelled to check it out. Perhaps, it is because Facebook connects so many people. And when I read Fun Home, I think about the lesbian community, specifically their voice, and their beliefs. Since Facebook can bring everybody together, I wanted to hear what people, gay or straight, had to say about Alison Bechdel and her work. On the fanpage, there are some really cool photos of the author at her home. It gives me that same kind of feeling I had when I looked at her house in the novel. I think it’s fascinating to see how strong of an impact this writer has on people. Just check out the posts on her wall.
I know I’m not supposed to post two online resources, but I think Gender Across the Borders: A global Feminist Blog is a very interesting blog that focuses on the lack of prescence that female characters have in most Hollywood movies. Alison Bechdel created this test that raises a very strong point about the topic. The test asks, “Are there two or more women in the movie who have names, do they talk to each other, and do they talk about things other than men?” These questions make me ask myself how movies don’t provide a real female presence.
Literature in Fun Home
The characters in the graphic novel Fun Home are greatly influenced by various works of literature. The mother in the household is enthralled by the art of acting. In Chapter 6 of the graphic novel, the mother figure spends her time rehearsing for the play The Importance of Being Earnest. After helping her mother rehearse lines, the protagonist becomes interested in the play as well. The same thing happens later in the graphic novel with the literary works The Odyssey and Ulysses. Both she reads for school, but help her to create a connection with her father, much like Earnest did with her mother. Below I have linked the sparknotes for all three pieces of literature. By reading the overviews and summaries on the sparknotes page, it can help make some of the references in Fun Home easier to understand. Rather than the references going over your head while reading, you can read the sparknotes of the three literary works and understand things you wouldn’t have without reading Earnest, The Odyssey, or Ulysses.
Sparknotes for The Importance of Being Earnest
A glimps into how she made it
Here is a clip of Alison Bechdel talking about how she wrote the book. We touched on it a bit in class on Monday, but I thought it was an nice video clip to watch of her actually talking about how she went through the process of making the book. You can see her posing for the panels and then how she makes every panel through photoshop and drawing.
Viewpoints of Fun Home
The subject matter in Fun Home was definitely not what I had expected from the title or the cover. I would have guessed from the book cover that this was a story about a kind of hilariously dysfunctional family with the narrator being the one cliche misunderstood voice of sanity. This story seemed to be 7 chapters of the same exact story told a little bit differently each time.
Each story was told in a past tense voice, and involved the narrator’s struggle with her identity, and with her relationship with her father. The 1st few stories gave a really harsh portrayal of her father. He seems to be very short tempered and abusive towards the children. He also seems very withdrawn and emotionless most of the time. Later on, especially in the last chapters, the father seems to be very connected with her and they seem to have a genuine appreciation for each other.
I also noticed that there were several stories being told all at once. There was the diary, which was mostly in chronological order. There was the childhood tale where she was actually growing up in the home. There was the college story, which was sort of mixed up chronologically. There was the story of her evolving relationship with her father, which I assumed was the main story. And there were a lot of little anecdotes like the father getting stuck in the mud, or the bulldyke scene that were thrown into the mix. This made the story a little hard to follow timewise, but (in my opinion) was effective at showing milestones in her relationship with her father.
Literature and Funhome
It seems interesting that Funhome includes a number of allusions to different works of literature, most notably so far, Albert Camus’s work and f Marcel Proust and F. Scott Fitzgerald. These stories all help to show the different things that are occurring throughout the story. I think that Alison Bechdel uses this very well because it helps to show a connection and reverence to other works of literature but also how they affect other people. Her dad was distant and cold most of the time but held a special reverence for the books and authors that he wrote. The authors seem to have a place for the Dad that is comforting and can be something that he seems content with. He identifies with the characters and the authors themselves when he writes to his future wife and is seen reading a different book each time that he is presented in a scene. I think too that some of the stories themselves have a special connection to Alison who saw her father through eh lens of the novels and not necessarily through what he was really like. The use of books and literature help to show how the power of words and a good story can help explain things in our lives that we can’t explain ourselves. The discussion about Camus and absurdity and death/suicide is especially interesting because it develops from one story to another and to another medium through the graphic novel. It is also somewhat engaging when they reference something in literature that I have read but frustrating when they mention works I haven’t read but it makes the reader connect and identify characters within the graphic novel memoir to the other literary works.
Ms. Mouly
While reading Maus, I was oddly fascinated by Art Spiegelman’s depiction of his wife, Francoise Mouly. She’s not exactly a central character to the novels, but her involvement in shaping Spiegelman’s art really compelled me to research more about her. I found a really neat interview she did with one of my favorite websites Big Think, where she answers some questions that are particularly pertinent to our class, such as “are comic books good for kids?” and “Francoise Mouly’s Recommended Comics” (which includes some of the comics we’re reading in this class.)