Author: deb56

Suffering in Context

I found the descriptions of Will and Nat in both the blog and the comment to be deeply perceptive, particularly Kay’s military leader analogies.  I see Ian’s summary of Will’s exit as Frank Miller-esque as a juducuous incorporation of two dramatically different topics within the graphic novel genre, showing us how nonfiction and fiction collude and collide to make text and illustration the tantalizing connections with which students can readily engage.

While compelling, these portraits are, as is all literature, only a slice of the whole we continually try to make of anecdote and information.  To understand the spark behind the true story of the Rebellion, we need to include those aspects of real life that are alien to us today:  the actual social, political, physical, and economic status of slaves in 19th century America.  The illustration posted here is from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain published in 1883 from the online North Carolina History Project in Chapel Hill (13).  In it, we see what looks like a friendly enough scene.  The fellow in the foreground is comfortably expressing himself with one hand, and, with the other, he lays a proprietary yet amicable hand on the left shoulder of the slave he is about to sell.  The three comfortable-looking while men in the picture have appropriately fitting, probably clean clothing, good boots, and hats to protect them from the hot sun in the south.  The slave is wearing overalls that are too short, a long-johns shirt, no hat, and heavy shoes.  The two men in the background are probably the potential buyers for the slave and want to be convinced of his merits.  The conversation probably includes humiliating details like how many hours he can be worked without food or rest, how he has either never run away, or preferably how he did so once, and after a severe beating, has been compliant ever since, and the most devastating weapon to hold over the slave’s head, his family either lives with him or nearby and the loss of which can be held over him to force him to remain in his position.

After taking the emotional resources into context I think I can agree with the characterization that Nat was more of an organizer than Will, and that Will’s strength became his greatest weapon in participating in the Rebellion.  They were both using their survival skills to take the best advantage of the situation in which they found themselves.

Can political correctness and self-esteem get along?

Response to post by

Josh,

I am familiar with the angry student’s reaction to being blamed for deeply immoral acts in which they did not participate.  I don’t think any of my students were initially guilty though, in fact, a feeling of entitlement toward the separation from acts of their ancestors or ethnic group is what I have encountered.  I completely agree with your stated dilemma:  “Do we have to ignore history and responsibility to move on?”  Between political correctness and worries about self-esteem, it’s hard to put an idea out there that doesn’t offend someone and still makes a point.  In a much lighter take on a serious subject the Marjane Satrapi book Persepolis, mentions this phenomena in relation to how Iranians are viewed outside of the Middle East.

The protagonist is a bright, outspoken girl who grows up during the Islamic Revolution and the War with Iraq.  Her family sends her to Vienna to attend school where she would be safe.  Marjane makes two trips back to Iran and always feel like an outsider no matter what culture she is in, Middle Eastern or European.  Once Marjane and her mother are ridiculed by their own countrymen in a supermarket for having taken in refugee friends at a time when the food supply in Tehran is sparse.  Later, when Marjane is in a French convent, a nun shows contempt for her because she ate pasta out of a pot instead of putting it on a plate first, “It’s true what they say about Iranians, they have no education.

Responding, “It’s true what they say about you too.  You were all prostitutes before becoming nuns,” gets Marjane thrown out of the boarding house to live on her own, while the Mother Superior writes a letter to her parents that she left voluntarily because she was caught stealing a fruit yogurt.

Marjane’s method of survival is to endanger herself.  When she is in Iran, she constantly flaunts Islamic dress codes and behavior norms.  Once she tries to commit suicide by drinking vodka, cutting her wrist, and taking pills, and laying in a hot bath.  Alone is Vienna, she spends about two months on the streets in the middle of winter, eating out of trash cans and smoking dropped cigarette butts.  Imperiling her health, yet, she luckily ending up in the hospital, she tries again to make a go of it in Iran.  There she goes to a therapist and takes antidepressants make turn her into a zombie.

While talking to psychologists she realizes she has tremendous guilt because, as hard as her life was on the street was, it was nothing compared to the political murders and bombings her family was experiencing at home in Iran.  She will never forget the terror of being arrested on the street or having her favorite relatives executed.  Marjane sustains the collective trauma of the Iranians who lived through that period and the burden of personal family trauma going back several generations to the family of the shah.  She, like Spiegelman, uses writing to convey the times as they were, leaving a detailed and generous view into something I can only imagine.

-Deb

Dystopia in Chicago

I agree with the majority of the posts that point to this graphic novel as an unappealing set of characters held hostage in a mind-numbing emotional and cultural miasma.  However, there’s a lot of decoding to be done here, much of it linguistic and psychological.

One point I’d like to bring up is the “human capacity to survive and adapt…  [that goes beyond a person’s ability to contain the “memory of one particular event [that] comes to taint all other experiences, spoiling appreciation of the present.”  Kolk, McFarlane, and Weisaeth discussed this in the “Traumatic Stress” article we read for Maus I.  The authors conclude that extreme trauma is not necessarily indicative of a severe and prolonged psychological or biological response, what we now commonly refer to as PTSD.

Some individuals can integrate the damage into their lives without focusing their lives on the trauma and replaying it in their minds.

To me, knowing this assessment – that some people get over the same or worse damage as another person, puts a great deal of stress on the individual to deal with the suffering and get over it.

In a yellow-washed section of the book, towards the end, we hear a balding man with university degree on the wall behind him explain SSRI’s effect on neurotransmitters on the brain during pharmacological treatment.  Does he complete this therapy?  Does Santiago see this as a possible answer?

Omar appears to be survivor of childhood sexual abuse who was confused between fear and enjoyment, and was never able to sort out his feelings.  Is Omar the individual who continues to relive the trauma?

In this respect, I think Santiago’s work succeeds as semi-autobiographical fiction.  Omar drinks every day, he is insecure, he is obese, his personal relationships are shallow, and he dulls his conscious with full time television whenever he is alone.  Yet, he is inventing his own strategy to deal with his depression.  His nature of trying to survive even is his ‘nurture’ doesn’t have a clue.

The Mythical Builder

While Greek and Roman themes are heavily referenced throughout this book, the most whimsical mythic icon appears to the left.  It is a section of the Cyclopean walls, still extant in Greece and Italy.  While not the circular face with two cut -out arcs of Asterios, the center stone in the middle column, middle row does mimic in style and ‘humanity’ the protagonists’ image and demeanor.

Almost top-heavy with dualities, Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp presents both Greek and Roman mythology (Polyp’s Greek father and Italian mother), the yin and yang of relationships (Asterios and Hana curled in bed together), and the contemporary paper verses scissors bilarity (cerebral architect and actual designer/builder).

Here’s the dichotomy of the plot:  In 1927, E.M. Forester wrote in Aspects of the Novel that the central suspense depends on the difference between flat and round characters and the believability that round characters must embody to produce tension, and hence, a book worth reading.  We have the story of an architect (with one effective eye) who never built any structures compared to  the Cyclopes race and members of a Tracian tribe of skillful architects who built the Cyclopean walls of “unhewn polygons, sometimes 20 or 30 feet in breadth”  (Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology).

Unnerving me further, after the Cyclopes were hurled into Tartarus, a prison of the underworld, they became followers of Zeus and made lightning bolts for him.

Here’s the punch line:  Forester also believes the protagonist often has to be sacrificed in order to end the book on the proper note of released tension.

The nuances and depths of this novel are many and the complicated layers provide a rich quest and odyssey.

Masked Identity

I’m sure the use of cultural identity in the mice masks can be taken in several ways.  Spiegelman’s use of the anthropomorphized animals certainly put a distance between the reality of World War II and the cushioned world in which we read a book to experience suffering.  However, the basically blank faces of the mice (using only eyebrows and wrinkles for facial expressions) reveal, as Professor Sample said, the meaning of an image entirely apart from the original context.

In addition to this view, McCloud emphasizes that a simple, basic cartoon drawing allows the reader to see himself reflected in the image (36).  In that way we can empathize with, although as Lindsay pointed out, not enter, the world of Nazi Germany.  McCloud further considers the point of being able to relate information on a more intense basis when there is so little interest in the iconic form:  “Who I am is irrelevant.  I’m just a little piece of you.  But if who I am matters less, maybe what I say will matter more” (37).

Comments about Anja’s pills for nervousness, her postpartum depression, the loss of her first child, and witnessing the slaughter of her family led me to see her as she was depicted when she was young – small and petite.  I thought she would just have looked thinner and weaker.  When I saw her as Artie did for the last time in “Prisoner on the HELL Planet”, I was astounded by her bulk and by her dark, heavily lidded eyes.

This juxtaposition illustrates how much the word choices and tone of what Anja said influenced what I attended to – I took her appearance for granted and focused on the events and effects of her tragedy.   In this way, I think we can accept the Jews as mice, the cats as Nazis, and the Poles as pigs in an allegorical way, while imputing all the evidenced characteristics the story straightforwardly lays out.

-Deb

Longing and Survival in the Fun House

Fun House is my favorite book by far this year.  As many blogs have mentioned, each chapter was like going to the library to read the work of a favorite author.

The illustrations are drawn with a friendly touch and the dual combination panels are hilarious (35, when “the family business” is mentioned as the father looks down indifferently to talk with a gravedigger, the two older children R.I.P. laying down on the ground behind a tombstone, one of them holding a flower).

What I most appreciated was the way Bechdel opened up her private memories and put them into a publically accessible format.

I think in this way, she made sense of her life.

Although her wry witticisms and socially adept ability to put humbling circumstances in a bright yet detached light, her family life was seriously embedded with dysfunctional characters.  I don’t want to focus on her limited explanations/excuses about her father not being understood because of his gender identity crisis.  Bechdel explains early on that he was a manic-depressive.  Her illustrations tell us of abuse.

Children who come from families with major emotional problems or addictions are damaged two ways, once when they live through the trauma of  not knowing their parents’ moods from one moment to the next, and then again when they are trying to set up the parameters of their own adult lives.  This is known as generational trauma.

I thought she beautifully explained her longing to be close to her father when playing airplane for the sheer physical contact, sneaking a kiss before bedtime and ending up kissing his hand, and treasuring his detached letters as he communicated not with her, but about her curriculum while she was away at school.

In a way, she lost her mother as well as her father because it was him she emulated subconsciously as a child.  While looking into the bathroom mirror Bechdel’s mother tries to show her how she would look with long hair pulled into a ponytail (116).  This, of course is the way her mother wears her hair.  There is no identity or modeling in this panel.  Bechdel simply wines “MOMMM!”

As I said in the beginning, I also admired Bechdel’s illustrations, something she calls comics.  In these, the words bubbles allow her to be a metatextual narrator.  Both the illustrations and text come from a 1st person, limited POV.

Since her drawing process using tracings, I thought I might list some of the many steps Bechdel uses to come up with graphics:

  1. Draws panel outline or storyboard
  2. Using a digital camera and tripod, takes pictures of herself in poses she thinks she might use for herself, family members, and characters
  3. Scan these photos into Adobe Illustrator
  4. Using plain paper, sketches outline of panel
  5. Layer tracing paper over page and add detail
  6. Layer again with tracing paper, adding more detail each time, doing visual research to authenticate scenes -(1976 Google image search of her rooftop)
  7. Draw a pencil sketch of the panel
  8. Ink the drawing
  9. Erase the pencil marks
  10. Scan into Photoshop (using mouse clicks to blacken large areas (fireworks background)
  11. Shade with watered-down ink
  12. Scan above into Photoshop
  13. Combine those two drawings and shade again
  14. Click word panels into place on the computer
  15. Combine illustrations and text

http://www.mindtv.org/styles/mind/www/index.html Alison Bechdel – Creating “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic”Fun

Alan’s War Told With Unaffected Ease

Emmanuel Guibert’s bio narrative Alan’s War is about a regular guy who embodies decency whether surrounded by stupid, stressful, or inhumane conditions.  It seems to me that his expectations in life are minimal and his appreciation for considerate treatment, gracious.  Even though his tastes and outlook mature throughout the novel, Cope basically remains the down-to-earth individual who trusts his instincts rather than what people tell him.  I consider Cope a reliable narrator; he reports on his numerous successful encounters with strangers and servicemen and well as his secrets such as looting a watch (145) from an evacuated home in Germany, and contracting crabs (34).  His style is direct, his vocabulary escalates, and his affinity for languages is clear.  Comments about his personal adult life are either censored or not included.

This week’s tweets seem strongly dissatisfied with Alan Cope’s voice, hearing it as boring.  What I found remarkable in reading Alan’s War was the substantial ability to take boring or potentially inane topics and treat when with careful attention, making them read as if the subject was talking or reading aloud.  This is a skill.

The comfortable cadence of Alan’s narrative demonstrated genuine voice.  The further along I got into the book, the more I appreciated the tone and point of view.  It was evident that throughout the timeline that Alan did not take himself too seriously and remained perpetually optimistic that the result of his unintended actions would be seen from an objective perspective.  From the beginning, Alan’s normal behavior netted him good results.  After his train to Fort Knox leaves the newly drafted servicemen idle and without a commander, Alan goes along with some buddies in search of something to eat.

Returning to their train car they are surprised to find it gone (19).  The stationmaster steers them to a train to New York City where they can catch a connection south.  This mundane explanation is not remarkable nor are men’s expectations of getting back to their destination.  However, two spontaneous depictions during that interval stand out.

Cope tells an anecdote about how they spent their time in New York climbing 102 floors to the top of the Empire State Building, eating for free at a servicemen’s club, and seeing a jazz band at Radio City Music Hall (22).  The illustrations depict the show’s electric sign pretty much as it looks today and the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building is drawn prior to the installation of the glass guard walls.  Chronologically, it ends up to be a lucky day for the soldiers told in an unsophisticated tone with brilliant ease.

In three panels, one with an aspect-to-aspect transition, Cope simply outlines the logistics of current train travel (20).  With a brief six-line explanation lettered in white on a black background, Cope demonstrates his sincerity and skill writing about the “electric pen.”  Logically and thoroughly he lays out a who, what, when, where, and why account of technology he had never seen before.  I admire the mental flexibility that enabled Cope to concisely explain this early version of the ipad-like device in simple terms.  His candid ability to relate those extraordinary moments in his life (burrowing deeper into a foxhole and holding this rifle so the barrel would not snap off and impale him, as tanks drove over the road above (25-26)- during peacetime) with unaffected ease is what I enjoyed most about Alan’s War.

Deb Kogon

Is It An Escape?

This graphic novel reads like Modernist fiction.  The way Chris Ware fragments time from the minutia of table settings to the unlimited scope of time travel produces such a complicated narrative that I’m not sure I can describe it coherently.  Maybe that’s the point.  It’s written (drawn) in free and indirect discourse.

However, the two aspects of the work that stand out to me are the obvious psychological markers of child abuse and low self-esteem, and the various time frames in which the “Jimmy” character lives and relives generational patterns.

Jimmy comes from a long line of dysfunctional men who evidently marry narcissistic women.  He is vulnerable and without normal self-protective behaviors.  Basically, any of the horrible stories relived by the older men could apply to the lives of his father, grandfather, or great grandfather.  These thick nightmares are so deeply layered into the story that I could see any of these men telling their son to go out and shoot his pet horse because the horse tried on the father’s pants.  Obviously, the horse turns out to be a miniature horse so small it can fit inside the palm of a boy’s hand.  It represents what Jimmy thinks of himself after years of violent physical and mental abuse – a small, weak vulnerable animal exposed to the dangers of unpredictable insane individuals.

Further complicating the plot are the time fractures.  The earliest setting takes place at the 1893 Columbian Exposition held in Chicago to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America.  It was highly regarded compared to other fairs and expositions of the time, more like Epcot.  Industrialism and classical architecture were the themes.

Comparing the Expo to any part Jimmy’s or his family’s life is unfulfilling.  It represented the best achievements (on Earth?).  Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, is essentially the opposite of the achievements the Expo represents.

The choice of setting the grandfather and great grandfather’s background in this White Palace of perfection is puzzling.  Jimmy’s motifs of the peach orchard, only seem like escapism and why write a book in which your protagonist escapes?

Referencing Dreams

I liked the feel of the eight chapters in Preludes and Nocturnes even before I read that Norman Mailer called Neil Gaiman’s work “a comic strip for intellectuals.”  Imagine my amazement when I realized Gaiman was the kind, precise voice challenged in the most controversial petition ever considered by the American Library Association.  When asked to purge a children’s book of a prestigious award, common sense and appreciation for literature prevailed, and Gaiman’s 2009 John Newbury Medal-winning The Graveyard Book was allowed to keep its gold seal of approval.  Now the author had my attention, admiration, and sympathy.  After all he is considered a hero in the world of education.

This work is thick with classical references.  Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, alternately know as Dream, is captured and imprisoned in a plot twist of mistaken identity.  Imprisoned in his crystal cell for 70 years, Dream first appears to be a space alien with a skull, spinal column, and yards of flowing royal blue fabric.  Gradually we see that he is a thin, attractive young man with longish black hair and determined eyes.  Yes, I’d say that is a good depiction of the Greek god of dreams.

Alluding to Greek mythology of the Fates, Gaiman introduces three women who appear as Hecate:  maiden, mother, and crone.  These characters are also prominent in the opening scene of “Macbeth” as the weird sisters; they are central to the actual play as well as to the supernatural element that is disturbingly able to bridge both worlds: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” (1.1.11-12).   Preludes’ Fates present as confusing a motif as does Macbeth’s sisters.

Again classical mythology is referenced when the King of Dreams finds himself in Hell.  He had earlier carved the gates of Horn and Ivory.  Dream tells us that “DREAMS that pass through the gates of IVORY are LIES…The OTHER admits the TRUTH” (65/11).  This Odyssean imagery refers to Penelope’s dream in which false dreams pass through ivory gate and the true “ones that come to pass” enter through the gate of polished horn.

Avant garde poetry is the source for the Sandman’s prophetic line “and I have shown him fear” that references T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, Part I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

The origin of this fear in Preludes and Nocturnes combines with actual sand and relates to the method the King of Dreams uses to escape from imprisonment.  As his guards dream of girl-filled beach volleyball vacations, The King reaches into their dreams, scoops up a handful of sand, and, at the crucial moment when the crystal cell is unlocked, blows a puff of sand onto the guards (39.5-7).  They never knew what hit them and Dreams is released to show fear to the unjust and grant sleep to the just.

What are Superheroes for?

As I read Watchmen, I kept trying to figure out who the heroes were. It was, after all, originally a comic book, so didn’t it have to present a morally enhancing solution or lesson to the thematic dilemma? The more I read, the more apparent the paradox became: Did the crowed frames reflect intense involvement or overuse of plot? Was there loneliness or just isolation?

Then the answer came from the source itself, in Elizabeth Rosen’s article on “Nostalgia.” In it Alan Moore considered the effect of violence on the genre and concluded “‘Look, you know, get over Watchmen, get over the 1980’s.’ It doesn’t have to be depressing, miserable grimness from now until the end of time. It was only a bloody comic. It wasn’t a jail sentence.”

So why do we take the Cold War/exploding alien invader story to heart? Well, “Superheroes are still an excellent vehicle for the Imagination…” (Moore). And, while implausible, the multilayered personalities of the Minutemen, Crimebusters, and friends, do present as a modern-day pseudo/psycho drama as warped as today’s headlines and crime shows.

Except for the easy going Hollis Mason and Dan Dreiberg, Nite Owls #1 and #2, these characters are conflicted as a result of their childhoods and the experiences in the terrifying, bloody streets of American in 1985. Here Rorschach play right into the Social Services Department in any big city. Through choice, but mainly chance, come into the system as children and remain in it, maybe forever, from welfare to rehab, and eventually to the criminal justice system. Abused as a child, Walter Kovacs careens from a 10-year old who bites another child in the face to an uncompromising vigilante.

Maintaining the blade-sharp insight, but turning from the position of victim to avenger, Rorschach commits some of the most horrendous scenes in the novel as he is fighting against crime. He and the Comedian became notorious examples of why 1977 Keene Act had to be passed in order to preserve the rights of the yet unconvicted. The shifting mask on his face is ironic as Rorschach is inflexible and while he knows submitting his journal will finish humanity’s faith in himself, he does it anyway and meets his own gory end. Really? Would you tell?

Endearing Menace

Breathing life into the only dynamic character in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Miller allows us to “hear” Bruce Wayne’s first-person narrative as an insightful running dialog between the person he once was and the person he has become. Wayne’s metastatic attitude toward the conditions of Gotham, a city he must both love and hate, keep him from focusing on the moral dilemma of sacrificing the few to save the many . Wayne’s metatextual comments assist the narrative as much as they reveal his provocative thoughts toward the criminals he seeks to annihilate. Wayne’s thinking is self-centered, and, of course, more appealing as the unconventional superhero. Gordon and Superman’s characters’ embody compassion and remain static throughout the novel. This is not a bad thing.
Dictated by the violence of his past and by the fierce rampage of helplessness he feels for the loss of a functional, loving world, Wayne is looked at as either a “crusader or [a] menace” (49). After the Joker kills over a hundred people in the audience of a night time talk show, Wayne expresses the futility of trying to take on criminals and the public together: “Every year they grow smaller. Every year they hate us more” (129).
Paradoxically, Commissioner Gordon has tremendous concern for the public safety, but he does not blame society as a whole. In fact, he worries repeatedly that after he retires his lack of influence and power will result in more chaos, violence and destruction to Gotham. Here we see the difference between Batman and Gordon. We readily recognize that authorial intention is aimed at keeping the city safe; the dichotomy of how Miller represents these two points of view on method and outcome complicate the characterization of Batman and foreshadow violence for the future.