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The comic ends with Ben flying back home, and my first reaction was “well that was sad, but so what?” So my question is, so what? Why was Ben so mopey the entire time? He had three relationships, was he ever in love? He went back to Miko, but was he really ever in love with Miko? Was Ben just dependent, maybe addicted to pity? What is the driving force behind all the silly things Ben put himself through? I say sex, but the ending communicates to me that Ben doesn’t even really know why he does what he does, but do we know? Is there a way to somehow logically rationalize Ben? Pretend you’re his therapist and give him a diagnosis.
All these characters seem to be the least animated characters we’ve encountered in our comics so far. Why make this story a comic? What did this piece express through it’s composition that is uniquely comic?
Maybe Ben’s situation is an embodiment of that clichéd “You cannot love others until you can love yourself” because I do not think he was ever really in love with any of the girls in this book. He was simply hyper-critical of them and lied to their faces about being interested in the things they cared about. If they were ever rude to him in parting it’s actually kind of warranted, considering his lack of sincerity.
ReplyDeleteWe know him to be really insecure and I really don’t think he’s comfortable in his own skin. He’s painfully awkward with the Lesbian girl and second guesses everything he says with her. When he has sex he’s really unsure about it. He lashes out when people reject him or when his pride is hurt—perhaps he longs for someone to love him despite everything.
You ask the question “so what” and I think in a lot of ways this piece is a sort of reverse coming-of-age. Every other character in this book seems to be self-aware enough to move forward in their lives when they are stuck: Alice realizes she can’t please her parents and puts off school and finds a (steady?) partner, Miko realizes that she deserves better and does so. Ben can’t and we as readers have to ask what it is that is really shackling him and I think it’s this deep rooted ambivalence about his identity (racial or otherwise).
There’s a lot of things unspoken in this piece and I think that’s one of the advantages of the comic medium. At the very end when we see Ben staring out the plane window as it takes off, we know he is in pain and we know he is thinking things—what are they? The narrative doesn’t spell it out for us, and I think that is one of the strengths of the image here. We’re asked to be very hyper critical of these characters, and even here the character doesn’t even have the liberty to defend himself via text.
I definitely agree that Ben never learned to love himself. It comes from his depression and therefore makes it hard for him to love others.
DeleteI feel as if Ben was the type of person to consistently believe that he was better than everyone else. He had a girlfriend who left him, he had two failed relationships after his first one, his closest friend was leaving him. He was really hard on himself after he left New York. I assumed that he was feeling like he had nothing left. This sort of feeling is relatable. It's a feeling we all have at one point or another. He lost these people because he doesn't see people as people but as basic caricatures based on looks and origins.
ReplyDeleteBen is quick to jump back into the dating game after Miko left for an "internship" in New York. I feel like after she left, he was then more interested in the "act" of a relationship instead of the "feelings" side. He acts out pretty irrationally at the end of each, but that's because he is stuck in the act. I somewhat think that he is trying to one up Miko by having these relationships. He wanted to try something new because he was in a relationship that seemed like it was going nowhere. Ben's journey to New York was him deciding to go after something he never fully understood. Did he really love her and did he have another chance at love. The way he responded to Miko's lying was a glimpse into his overall feelings for her. He loved her and she meant a lot to him. I don't think that he was ready to really "move on" with life once she was gone. His journey home was his journey to nothing. No job, not friends, no "future" to be seen.
I believe that the driving force for his interaction with people is the way he overthinks things. He looks at people and things with a critical eye. He even looks at himself as not really good enough for people. He has no desire to keep moving forward. He has no career. It's hard for him to really change his opinion of things and people because of his frivolous diagnosis of things. A white man is going after a small asian girl or a friend who only has an interest in sex. Ben lacks the ability to be critical of himself. I feel like, if he met himself, he would be somewhat disgusted.
Shortcomings use of imagery makes it much more interesting in a comic form than if it was a short story. As a comic, Ben's lifestyle and the way he comes in contact with people would lose its impact without the visuals. I would have a hard time understanding his artistic first fling. The scenes really set a feeling for the story that you can't fully describe with words. The performance art, the way characters look together, the difference between who these characters are visually. Character design is important and as a comic, you get an impression of them that is like a real life first meet-up.
I’m not sure if we can tell for sure if Ben was in love with Miko. She would be the one he was in love with before any of the other girls he was with. If anything, he was ‘trying out’ the other girls to see if love is even possible with him, if it wasn’t working out with Miko. His depression tendencies are other reasons it was difficult to love himself and then to love others in return. Even his resentment toward Miko and how she is a ‘trust fund’ baby translates his confusion and regret that he can’t love her. He takes it out in moments like those (money related ones). And we will never know if he starts to love himself down the road. All we know is where he left us on the plane, he was the most lost we have every seen him.
ReplyDeleteHonestly Ben seems to be Bi-Polar. He is so angry, but it seemed like the only time he found peace was when he was in the presence of a girl he had interest in. His relationship with women was constantly strained because of the ideals he had made up in his head. Not loving himself or his culture made his girlfriend leave him and caused all of his other attempts at love fail.
ReplyDeleteI think he is so immature that he valued pity more than honesty when it came to speaking with people. When someone is so stuck in their ways it is hard to level with them because they don't listen to advice. Ben was given plenty of advice from various people, but he looked past the good and focused on their flaws. I really can't think of someone in this story that Ben saw as a good influence. Not meaning they weren't, but there was always so much anger towards others when he should have looked for answers in himself.
The comic expressed reality in such a brutal way, but still portraying it in a "fantasy world" that one of the characters created. Ben's attitude and outlook on life may be viewed by others as so ridiculous because he is so cold. If Ben had taken the time to open up and accept himself and love himself he would have been able to mend his relationships with his lovers and friends.
Shortcomings plays out very similarly to many tragedies, where we see how a protagonist’s defining characteristic, some fatal flaw, constantly undoes him and eventually leads to his own downfall. What’s interesting about Ben is that Shortcomings seems to leave his fate somewhat open. We’re left with him leaving New York to return to Berkley, and that’s just about it. Does he turn himself around, start living life with a little more purpose, a little more verve? Tomine is reticent, letting us decide for ourselves. However, it’s worth pointing out that while Ben is left with less than what he started with, hence his story being a tragedy, the two people he feels closest to, Alice and Miko, are moving on and growing, staying in New York. Ben is returning home, where he knows no one, and has no real job. I think Ben’s problem can be best understood as a stagnation, an unwillingness to change or let go. Ben can’t enjoy what he currently has, or even appreciate what he thinks he wants. He is self-centered, and it is this that makes it so difficult for him to grow.
ReplyDeleteThis second question ties in well with an earlier post of mine (how convenient.) Comic books handle the passage of time in a singular manner. With the blending of words and images, comics afford their creators a great deal of flexibility with how time is handled. This is why I believe that Shortcomings is particularly effective as a comic book. Tomine sets out to capture a certain feeling in his work’s atmosphere. He provides a glimpse into the lives of the listless, directionless souls that make up his generation of post-college, post-dropout thirty-somethings. With little going on in their lives beyond dead-end jobs, loveless trysts and sarcasm, time, and their perception of it, becomes far less structured. What passes for events or occasions blur into each other, with little to no regard for days of the week or calendars. Of course Shortcomings is arranged chronologically, but as far what makes up the time in between these set pieces is anyone’s guess. In the ambiguity of the comic’s gutter, Tomine deftly draws us into the “timeless” world of his characters.
I completely agree with these questions coming to mind as they all occurred to me as I read this comic but I couldn't come to any real conclusions. It didn't seem to me like there was much rationalization at all considering all the hypocritical characters doing their hypocritical things, and in the end I lost all respect for pretty much anyone and had no further incentive to try to figure out the "whys". So when Ben flies home alone, I don't care at all since he's done nothing to deserve any better. Over the course of the book we've only developed bad relationships with all the characters (or at least that's the way I took it) so when it came down to an argument between two hypocritical unflattering characters I didn't care who came out on top since regardless they were both wrong for being crappy boyfriend/girlfriends. I think this way strongly, but I fond it really weird I was inclined to read the whole book in one sitting. This makes me feel like I cared, so the plane ride hope should've meant something, but when I got to that page I felt just like Ben, unsatisfied by my own expectations. And the book fell apart for me. This should've ended more like Aesterios Polyp where the plane blows up or something. Then I would've second guessed the lack of feelings I have for any of the characters. But that's just me.
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