I thought the most rewarding part of reading these two volumes of Sandman was the fact that we got a script of Gaiman’s at the end of volume 3, for “Calliope” which is actually the particular story that I found the most intriguing of that volume. After reading the Comic Book Creators chapter for this week’s reading, I found myself even more interested in the process of collaboration that occurs between the writer and the artist(s). In Gaiman’s example, I found it refreshing that even though he had a full, formal-ish, script for the comic, there was still obviously room for the artistic input of Kelley Jones.
The structure of Gaiman’s script is fairly formal, in my opinion. He gives a panel by panel summary of what he expects to happen. When I had read up on collaborations, I thought the idea of a full script would be stifling for the artist, but as Gaiman’s script shows, his tone and execution of the script can be informal, while his expectations for the panel can still be fairly detailed. I think that has to be one of the most effective ways for a comic marriage to work between the creator and the illustrator, when these two are separate entities.
I also found the sequence of collaboration to be a telling element about how the story can come together. When you read the script, the explanation of the panels reads in the present tense, followed by the actual dialogue of the comic. Then, in red we see Gaiman’s notes on how Kelley took the script and penciled it. Yet, seemingly before the images are actually drawn, we also have Kelley’s notes on how the images should be handled when they actually are drawn. My understanding then of how the script becomes the comic would be that Gaiman writes the script, gives it to Kelley who writes notes about how the images should be accomplished, and then we have Gaiman’s notes about the process and how it is carried out by Kelley and then Malcolm who inked the artwork in. An example of this can be found on page ten of the script where we have the text of the script and Gaiman’s comments on the comic process for how Calliope is drawn when we are first introduced to her.
All in all, I found the script to be illuminating. I could see Gaiman’s appeal in the way he can make the script portray a visual that the artist can then execute, while also letting the artist have license with the work as long as the overall point of the panel is displayed.
As a smaller unrelated side post, I found myself liking Dr. Destiny from the first volume, which worries me some, honestly. Yes, he’s crazy and the things he makes the people do in the diner are haunting enough to stay in your mind long after you read/see the pages, but I still enjoyed him because he was memorable, problematic, and well…crazy.
I’ve come to terms with Gaiman’s Dr. Destiny though an analogy. It’s like he’s a balloon (a red one if I had to guess). Sure he makes kids run after him into oncoming traffic and he’ll pop in your hands causing you to lose both your eyes (Freud reference), but at the end of the day and at the ends of the deaths, Dr. Destiny is still a balloon, and he needs to be put back with all those other crazy balloons that could and would wreak havoc on humanity if set free.
I also found the peek behind the magician’s curtain quite enthralling. To be honest, I was particularly intrigued by the directions re. Calliope’s rape…a segment that, frankly, I found troublesome on every imaginable level. Be “fairly subtle,” Gaiman instructs in his script, “what we’re really looking at are bare wooden floorboards,” with just the hint of “Calliope’s left arm and hand…Rick’s right arm; his hand is clamped around her wrist….” Sounds bad enough, right?
However, what we get on page 18 is anything but “subtle.” Rick Madoc’s muscular form is darkly shadowed, it’s true, but Calliope’s face is sharply illumined, her legs spread, bare breast heaving on the flesh-toned altar of “an old camp bed.”
Why?
Surely the feminists in our class have something to say to this. I find no easy answers. On one hand, this is vivid re-imagining of ancient mythic tradition, stripped of any cultural artifice—much as Gaiman later did so dramatically in “American Gods.” It IS intellectually interesting (maybe even important) to consider the true horror of many of the sanitized myths common to western civilization. But is that the end point? Or maybe it is a disturbing condemnation of those who sell their souls in exchange for fame…
It may be. But as of right now, I can’t get past the fact that I’m looking at a rather…well, graphic depiction of a young girl being raped. It’s hard enough to read about this kind of violence. It’s even more jarring to see it drawn on the page. Is that kind of shock-jockery the point?
If so, that makes me more than a little uncomfortable, especially since I’ve known people who are the recipients of domestic violence. Sneer at my cultural hang-ups all you want, but both this and the “24 Hours” episode of Volume One haven’t really endeared Gaiman, or his team, to me.
Sure, Madoc gets a rather nasty come-uppance at the end, thanks to the justice of a Sandman that obviously would go on to inspire the Marilyn Manson and a whole generation of 90s goth rockers. (Hell, I even share their love for Burton and dark clothing, for layered power chords on a down-tuned electrical guitar and for grimy daubs of eyeliner.) But when it comes to violence and rape in Sandman, as of right now, on a certain level it seems to me like Gaiman’s team is just doing it because they can. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s a pretty artistically shallow reason and not that different from the exploitation comics of half a century ago that we love to deride.
But let me know—am I missing a vital meta-point? Am I just a wuss? Or does this indeed smack of exploitation in some uncomfortable ways?
@Josh, I definitely appreciate your hesitancy toward these graphic aspects of Sandman, which strike at the heart of a longstanding debate regarding the representation of violence. How do you represent the reprehensible?
Reduced to a simple binary, the argument is whether the representation of violence reproduces the violence in some way, or whether the representation of violence can have a positive impact. We’re given enough evidence to know that Gaiman believes in the latter, and it’ll be worth it in class to examine how he tries to convince us of this line of reasoning.
Josh,
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this content making you feel uncomfortable. Like you, my first instinct was that the rape panel in “Calliope” was really abrupt, and not in effective way. And I’m not against graphic depictions in comics or any other medium – in fact, I personally thought “24 Hours” was really powerful and that the disturbing content added a lot to it artistically.
But as for the rape scene…granted, it’s very much in keeping with the mythological tone of the story etc, and I think that lends an interested aspect to it; but I nonetheless felt that it was a sort of gimmicky device to implicate Rick as a guilty party who must be punished. That is to say, like in the very first Sandman comic, Gaiman is consciously writing a “classic English horror story,” in which an unpardonable offense against supernatural forces is dramatically punished. So it’s necessary to the narrative, to the genre, in a way…and yes, much like the “Crime” comics we talked about.
But the story doesn’t really pursue the psychological implications of the rape in enough depth to make it feel TRUE. “It never happened; yet it is still true. What Magic art is this?” says Puck…that’s what it should feel like, but instead it feels like it’s just there for shock value. If Rick felt remorse later, or if there had been more development leading up to the rape, or if Gaiman had explored the whole “she’s not even human!” rationalization in greater depth, maybe it could have worked. Obviously, though, it could have also worked without the rape scene.
Now, to Gaiman’s credit…you’re very right, Josh, that the panel is WAY off the script, to the point where Kelley Jones should be considered every bit as guilty for any artistic failure here. While I still don’t think the story emotionally “earns” the rape scene, it would have felt way less sensationalist if we had the PG-13 version Gaiman wanted. Of course, rape is still rape no matter how you depict it, and if it’s there it should be there for good reason. But the graphic depiction makes you stop, and then it’s more obvious that the subject is being treated in a cursory way.
Funnily enough, I actually liked “Calliope” decently well anyway. I’m not a fan of using extreme violence in such a cheap way, but I liked some of the other stuff that was going on – the metafictional implications about art, and even some of the (cheesy?) horror elements in his punishment. Although I do think he got off pretty easy in the end, and maybe that’s another (in this case, perhaps, unfair) reason I didn’t think the rape worked – that the comeuppance wasn’t proportional to the crime.
Anyway, Josh, I’m glad you shared your opinions about that panel, because it really got me thinking about violence in art (in general) and about “Caliope” in particular.
@ Josh: I had only just finished reading “Calliope” when I logged on and read your post. Needless to say, you made me feel pretty justified in my mild outburst while reading the rape scene. Like Jay said, it was abrupt, it just kind of comes at you out of nowhere. In some ways I found it even more shocking that Ric takes her home and rapes her, when on the page before when he’s wrapped her up in the blanket and walked her home almost cradling her. The artwork on the bottom of page 17 didn’t prepare me for the horror on the very next page. But now that I think about it, his cradling of her could have very well been interpreted as clutching her, grasping his “property,” which could perhaps have prepared me for the rape. Additionally, the mere fact that Eramus Fry keeps her locked away naked could have been a tip off that she wasn’t merely an intellectual muse, but something of a sex slave, as well.
But I don’t know, I guess the mythological aspect of the story washed over me and the fact that she was naked seem more like her natural state, and that clothing her was merely for passersby sakes when they’re walking home. On that same note, the mere fact that the archetype of the muse was so perverted in this story was also shocking to me. Calliope, as a muse, is meant to be wooed and her inspiration giving freely; however, in Sandman she is abused, imprisoned, and raped of her gift. (My brain just made leaps and bounds to connect the rape of a muse to plagiarism [“the theft of ideas”]).
I guess like you and Jay, I just wasn’t sure what the inclusion of a rape did for the story. If it is Gaiman trying to put his two sense in on the matter of representations of violence (like Professor Sample suggests), I feel like that in itself is a little grotesque, maybe a little cavalier to include something so horrible and so unnecessary (in my opinion) simply to add to a larger academic debate. I don’t know that the rape reproduced violence within me or had a positive impact. If anything, it simply turned me off from the graphic novel for a couple hours.
But I guess this leads me to a couple questions I have for everyone else. Was the rape necessary for the narrative? Wouldn’t imprisoning Calliope in a cell have been enough? Especially when the word most associated with Calliope’s strife is “imprisoned” (page 20, 24)?
Also, I have a few thoughts on this, but what is the function of imprisoning her in “a tower” (page 20) instead of the more stereotypical basement/dungeon? Another allusion to combine with the “Repunzal” reference on page 11?
There’s no doubt some parts of the texts are extremely disturbing. I read Volume 1 on vacation at the end of August to get a little leg up on the semester, and “24 Hours” stuck with me for a while (looking back, probably not the best vacation read!).
I think the creative team does have a purpose behind it (trying to say something about the dark side of human nature in a very Cormac McCarthy-ish way), but the visual images are very jarring and understandably off-putting.
I’d agree that the creative team has a purpose behind it—and also, I want to point out, a history behind it as well. That is, the Sandman series was initially conceived as a horror series, building upon the long history of horror comics (EC in the early fifties all the way up to DC in the seventies), and much of the off-putting imagery is directly indebted to the style of these earlier comics.
I think there’s also part of Gaiman the artist which is attracted to pushing at boundaries – teasing in the cracks of what’s considered decent or beautiful. In my experience of his work, he tends to teeter on the edge of my ability to accept what he’s saying past the abrupt cruelty, brutality, offensiveness, or disgust he returns to consistently, often in exactly the kind of mild, seemingly banal or matter-of-fact narrative voice he uses to describe Calliope’s rape. (For the record, I usually can swallow it with a lot of effort, though his short story “The Problem of Susan” goes way too far for me).
From my perspective Gaiman is probing at what would be called theodicy, or the problem of evil, in a post-God world. The ancient Jewish and Catholic and Protestant theologians tried over and over again to answer the question of why there is evil if a good God created the world. Gaiman, lacking solid confidence in a traditional God, uses a world where our stories become godlike figures to try to tackle the same question – if we desire happiness, why do we create misery for ourselves and others?
The discussion of Calliope led me to think about the role of women throughout the stories and the portrayal of the power of women. Calliope is presented as a strong woman given her influence as a Muse, yet her imprisonment and abuse turn her power over to Erasmus Fry, then Madoc, and finally The Dream-King. I think the explicit rape scene, though difficult to read/view, is essential to fully develop Calliope’s powerlessness and physically manifests the theft of her essence. However the most striking detail from page 18 is Calliope’s blank eyes in the middle panel, which to me shows how hollow her imprisonment has made her – she has become unreal and objectified, while Madoc’s dream has become a reality.
However, the character of Death as a woman contrasts to the powerlessness of Calliope. I was taken aback when Death was a woman, but does making Death a woman play into Gaiman’s portrayal of Death as a “garden after sickness” (229) and a friend (with Dream and then Rainie)? At the end of Volume I Dream states his befuddlement with the human fear of death above dreams, but does making Death a woman actually help us as readers put aside out natural instinct of death? And as I write this I view less power in Death because of how she is used to enhance the darkness and lasting power of dreams. Even having her wear the ankh necklace, a symbol of life seems to add some lightheartedness to her character.
So is the most powerful woman from the stories we read Dr. Dee’s mother? She powers her way into the asylum, she had the amulet, and she gave Dr. Dee the ruby – and more importantly her manipulation of the Order of Ancient Mysteries and as a mistress to gain possession of the amulet and ruby. Her power influences much of the action of volume one, and she is human. Death and Calliope are mythical figures, yet I see Ethel Dee as more powerful. Ethel Dee gives weight to the power of humans and reality over dreams and magical figures. But why does she stand as such a powerful woman? – is it because she is human?
I’m not sure why having Death’s power being in compassion, kindness, and friendship makes her lesser. Could you elaborate a bit?
Death is lighthearted, yes, but I don’t think that discredits her. She is acknowledged as a powerful force by the way Sandman/Dream is so upset by the idea that she could have been captured, let alone the fact that she can strike fear in so many by simply being Death. I think I would have found her less powerful is she had been a stereotypical (besides the gender) portrayal of Death. She’s shown as doing her job well enough to keep the world in order while still retaining her own personality.
Agreed – and especially in the Sandman world, where true power takes time to work, I’d say the subtle, long-linking compassion of Death is seen as very significant.