La. ...again.

[napoleonherself]

Beyond the cut is the essay that goes along with the project what I did for comic book class. I hate it a bunch, especially the conclusion which I had to do in negative five minutes (no, literally) since class had already started, but. Toes.

Themes of isolation and estrangement from others are not uncommon ones, be they represented in comics or in some other genre of artistic expression. They can be through the genre of comics in a number of ways – for example, the scripted situations of Love and Rockets or the nigh-expressionist art style of some alternative comics. At the risk of being pretentious, I elected for my final project to attempt to also address this subject through comic work. Through both scripted narrative and rendered visual aspects, I have attempted to portray the theme of detachment even amidst one’s own kind as best as I could.

The characters themselves are essentially faceless, both in terms of revealing very little about their individual personalities through their dialogue, and in the much more literal sense that they are merely stick figures, with no actual faces physically present. They talk amongst themselves in the small groups they choose to travel across the “stage” in, the snippets of conversation heard as they pass serving as short forays into their individual narrative threads. These threads very seldom cross, creating little interaction for the reader to observe and thus giving little cause for involvement and interest in the characters themselves. Similarly, the content of their conversations was written to discourage involvement by the viewer – their topics of discussion are generally shallow and self-centered, painting them as individuals who care to think of other people no more than they care to interact with them. Mention of people not in the speaker’s clique is always callous and negative – the co-worker whose scheduling ruins party plans, the child whose nasty death in a traffic accident is “cool,” the unnamed man who is described as needing to “keep his … mouth shut.” The intent is for the reader to feel isolated from the passers-by due to the conversation that is overheard; when all that can be heard is crude, shallow, and thoughtless, it is hard to empathize at all with the characters speaking. Thus the people passing by discourage the reader from reaching out emotionally, since if they were aware of such a disposition they would no doubt scorn it.

Similarly, as the characters are distanced by the writing, an attempt is made to distance through visual means. As discussed previously, every character is quite literally faceless – they are simple stick figures, multicolored for ease of distinguishing them but otherwise devoid of visual distinction. They walk back and forth across a setting that seems almost flat and unreal, the entrance of two people from around a corner being the only sign that the bland row of buildings is not some completely artificial backdrop. The world is simplistic and shallow just as the characters are, both in rendering and in personality as revealed by their speech. Because the viewpoint never changes from one tier of panels to the next, the simple appearance of the background becomes even more evident as the piece progresses; there is little to look at in a shallow, flat-colored world after it has been repeated identically a half-dozen times. As the strip progresses, the setting may even become claustrophobic to a certain degree, no longer seeming to be blandly pleasant but instead somewhat empty and forbidding. The row of buildings is merely there, uncaring as to what goes before it. The viewer, however, is trapped with this same angle of viewing, which forces observation of those who happen to walk by even as it aids in discouraging involvement with them. Even if something spoken by a passing character does spark the interest of the reader, there is no way provided to follow the character and hear more of their conversation. Once players have wandered away from the fixed stage of the comic, there is no possible manner of returning to them unless they happen to return to the scene themselves. And this is unlikely, given that the vast majority of them are far too wrapped up in their own concerns to give much thought to their surroundings, or the thought of returning to them later.

In addition to being separate from the reader, the various groupings of characters are also separate from each other; they have ample opportunity to interact with each other as they pass each other by, yet they consistently decline to take advantage of that opportunity. Indeed, interaction between various cliques is not merely neglected, it seems to be actively discouraged. A character who wonders “What’s with that guy?” is shushed by her companion; a man who does make a connection to another group, by accidentally bumping into a member of that group as he walks by, is berated angrily by the other party. The vast majority of the characters appear to have no interest in reaching out to others, and no tolerance for others who attempt to do so. Only one character makes purposeful contact, and that is the panhandler – the same character who was previously noticed and then deemed unworthy of interest by a pair he passed earlier, and a character whose place in society causes the average passerby to desire even more isolation from him than from the others. It may be his already-separate social position that allows him to feel free to attempt communication with another individual, but the result is no more positive than that of any other interaction observed by the viewer. He makes a simple request, and is met with uncomfortable refusal from one who has perhaps learned from his recent reminder of how unwise it is to risk interaction. Though the panhandler may have been willing to reach out, there needs to be a second party willing to do the same, and none makes itself known in the span of time shown by the strip. In the end, the various groups of characters and the reader are still isolated from each other, and all the more alone for having had and lost any number of chances to remedy that.

The concepts of alienation and isolation are complex ones, and not easily expressed with the verbal and visual languages because of this. However, it is perhaps the complexity of these notions that make them so fascinating, and that leads so many artists of different stripes attempting to express them through their art. Through the narrative and visual choices I’ve employed in creating this project, I hope I’ve succeeded to some degree in my own attempt to communicate these themes through comic art.

Comments

[darnn.livejournal.com]

I would have also added that the person who the panhandler approached could have at least picked up the coin on the floor and given it to him, if he simply didn't want to give him any of his own money, but he didn't even bother doing that, and the bum (who must have been aware of the money on the floor and not have picked it up intentionally) was left with no choice but to take the coin himself.

That was a run-on sentence, but you get my point. Lack of time sucks.

[napoleonherself.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of the bit where the guy could've picked it up to give it to him. But I had been thinking the didn't-pick-it-up-'cause-he-thought-he-could-do-better thing, even though it doesn't show up in the paper.