Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The Dramatic Entrance--Revised Feelings Toward Stuck Rubber Baby, Blankets, and Grey Owl

I had been complaining in an earlier post about the corner that the story of Stuck Rubber Baby had been putting me in, and how I hate being placed in a corner, no matter who's writing it. However, I actually think the story line evolves to a point in the end where the characters have far more nuance than I'd given them credit for. And the nuance really wasn't that subtle. It has a lot to do with the flaws in human nature. And the thing I get upset about is when characters are presented with flaws, but the flaws are either enduring, or stressing the point of how they are actually really great people because of their flaws, as if the flaws we have just don't simply make us flawed people. And I think the fact the Toland is kind of an asshole throughout portions of the book is what made me reconsider my feelings about him as a character, and most of my early dislike of the book stemmed from him. It went from seeming like a book about a confused gay man living in a very rigid and strict environment--and my point earlier about being conned into feeling something for a character stemmed from this, because who doesn't sympathize for someone in that situation. There was a certain fuck you that Toland exerted on his own character, which developed throughout the book, which I liked.
Other than that, something I had been thinking about was the opening panels for a lot of the chapters, or really, the creative panel designs, which I really liked and have been trying to do with my mini-comic, although not being able to draw has really slowed the process down. I actually think it serves as a far more dramatic device than a historical device, but that doesn't discount the idea that the historical element serves to heighten the dramatic experience. Using the historical, which comes with preconceived notions that the writer doesn't need to explain, serves the openings well. As many of the convoluted pages show, there is a whole lot going on, both on the high historical abstract level, and emotional human level. And I think the only pitfall to this is that the reader may only get out of the comic what he brings in to it.
I would say that because of the way the paneling was done, and I really did like a lot of it, that I have had a renewed appreciation for Blankets, which to me is still the best artwork we have seen yet. And on a storytelling level, from writing out a mini-comic, I have a renewed appreciation for Portraits From Life, because I think that book dealt with real stories in a way that did not cheat the reader into feeling something. There was also something bout the monotony of the stories that I felt more connected to. Like he was saying this is fucking reality, and sometimes it's boring, and sometimes our most dramatic moments in life will be someone yelling us to shut up as he's driving on the freeway. And with the Grey Owl story, which I had built up in my mind before reading the book perhaps a little too much, I think the message that I took out of it, that perhaps the bullshit someone tells to make his message more believable may be ignored in order to appreciate the message, and that the life he lived was a sort of postmodern performance art, where identity is perhaps interchangeable and not an absolute.

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