One thing I really love about graphic stories is the ability to expose deep emotional weight through surreal, fantastical or exaggerated representation. In many of these stories, not a lot really 'happens', but what lingers is the potency of experience, of looking at something (seemingly) mundane as signifcant, twisted or weird.
In 'Catsitter' for example, a man gets a phone call, takes a train and feeds a cat. Its an extreme close up of an everyday situaiton. The lack of captions or dialogue made the story seem outside of time--it is a representational exploration of the power dynamic between human and cat. The cat becomes a business man, and a king to show who is in charge.The collage-y imagery gives kind of a captive/ransom note/muffled undertone. It's also super bizarre and funny.
Laurie Proud's story is a meditation on a moment in childhood. She shows the way that she and other children turned a boy into a supernatural monster. The majority of the images themselves in this story are pulled from her imagination, breaking down the boundaries of what is real and what is percieved. The story focuses on the fear of a lurking creature--but the undercurrent of her depressed father post-WWII--gives it meaning. The images in this story are especially revealing--the house they move into is dark and lifeless, there are no people. The feeling of isolation and alienation that comes from the dark, foreboding images adds another layer to the children's cruel fascination and alientation with 'Aubery'.
The author is very present in the graphic novel because we are drawn in psychologically through both text and images. As a reader, the boundaries of perspective and its constructed nature are evident in the graphic story. Personally, I feel like there is a kind of a safety for the reader in the graphic novel--we are witnessing the dialogue of word and image that is both resonant and contained. The narrative distance is apparent. I don't know about you guys, but I think that reading graphic novels/stories is such a pleasant and satisfying experience, even if the material is difficult or heavy. To me, it feels like I am entering a world parallel to this one--where the rules and possibilities skewed. The impact of this world is explained through a metaphorical, parallel one. That just feels so cathartic and complete.
In these stories the author narrows in on a moment, gets so close up that the only way to explain the emotional truth is through vivid, jarring imagery outside what is expected. In Room 208 by Stephen Collins, a pretty normal honeymoon becomes fantastical and grotesque when the couple stays in bed, becoming bloated, transforming into a landscape with a graveyard of teeth. The stark black and white imagery clues in the reader, from the beginning, that the story has an ominous tone. Because the 'believable' scenes (checking in to the hotel) continue into the 'unbelievable' scenes (people looking in on the huge world's laziest couple) with the same quality and tone, they are given the same weight of 'realness'. But, when something happens outside the constructs of normality in such a matter-of-fact tone it forces the reader to question its meaning. Is the narrator representing what the rest of their relationship felt like? What does it mean that they seem to be transversing their own bodies? I think there is a lot of room for nuance in the graphic story.
In 'Paint' by Vivien McDermid, the surreal element comes at the end when the narrator and her child paint the entire house. There was an undercurrent of nostalgia, of feeling 'trapped' or stuck throughout the story. I felt like the ending spoke to the image earlier where the narrator says "its nice to have nice things but they are like anchors". She and her child are irreverently destroying/reimagining/transforming the aparatment. Again, I feel like the ending leaves open a more than one reading. Is it sweet? Sad? Beautiful? Crazy? All those things? Overall, I think that the use of magic realism allows for many possibilities to exist simultaneously, representing the complexity of being human.
I enjoyed your comments of the narrative distance in graphics. I definitely feel both really connected to the author of graphics and also very distanced. It is a surreal feeling that allows for great creativity on the authors part. This distance allows for the magical realism to happen because the reader feels like they are merely viewing something out of their control. The author can use this control to create fantastical situations that would seem out of place in straight prose story.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I totally agree that Collin's graphic becomes fantastical and grotesque. I like the questions you bring up: Did their enormous bodies and motionless lives represent their marriage after the honeymoon stage? Did the couple revel in each other's gluttony while both of their lives remained stagnate? Maybe both husband and wife lost their ambition once they married. Good questions.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your graphic novel comments and agree that there is this safety for the reader. It is safer and somewhat easier than reading text because there is art involved. Also, graphic comics and memoirs take less time to read than written novels and memoirs and they resonate with the reader differently. There's more visual symbolism embedded and it can be more abstract than regular text, especially if the art is collage (like in "Cat Sitter") or haunting like the stories by Laurie Proud and Stephen Collins.
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