1. As mentioned by professor Glaser, King is a more
challenging work than we have seen in our previous texts, where visual clarity
is not Anderson’s primary concern. With stark shading and skewed shots of the
action, there is a remarkable amount of ambiguity, particularly in characters’
faces. Do you think this ambiguity is intentional on Anderson’s part? If so,
why do you think he made his characters harder to immediately identify? What
impact does this have on the story?
2. Anderson uses a number of distinct visual styles in King,
maintaining a consistent tone and emotional background between them. What kind
of trends can you see in Anderson’s multiple styles of representation? How does
he implement these different visual aesthetics (including the usage of color
and photographs), depending on the context of the scene?
3. We haven’t touched on this a great deal in our previous
books, and since King provides so many wonderful examples it would be a crime
not to acknowledge it. A defining characteristic of Anderson’s work is its
disarming usage of experimentation with time frames, as touched on in McCloud’s
Understanding Comics. King jumps abruptly between scenes from panel to panel,
making it difficult to know when we’ve entered a new context or timeframe in
the story. Why does Anderson do this? How might this influence the telling of a
historic, biographical narrative?
I have to admit that this is a rough read. No only is it hard to recognize characters or images and places, the tiny text with minimal punctuation makes it difficult to read and often understand the thread of the speakers thoughts. Even when King is in the White House on page 98 it is hard to follow who is speaking and then jumps to a scene in his own home.
ReplyDeleteThe people outside of the story - those remembering Dr. King skew the interpretation of this biography and forces the reader to question what they believe they know of the history and this forces the reader to question the authority of the author. Can we trust him?
The stark black and white of the pictures is obviously intentional referencing the division of the race line. But the Picasso-esque drawings are difficult to place. I get lost in the who's who of these pictures and especially in whole page frames.
What would change if these pictures were more accurate and even if they were in color. I think it would make this a more readable and reliable text. - But this is just my opinion.
The art style is certainly polarizing. Do you feel like it’s unnecessarily challenging, or is it just obtrusive? I feel that the difficulty works well with the book’s theme of moral ambiguity, how Martin Luther King was just as human and imperfect as us. What kind of impact do you think Anderson’s artistic choices may’ve had on the tone of the work?
DeleteOur professor talked a lot about the Greek tragedy style of conveying the narrative, and how this speaks to an ambiguous truth, especially in regards to what we have established as a black and white historical or biographical truth. I don’t want to get TOO off topic, but it reminds me a little bit of this movie that we studied in a film course called Citizen Kane. A lot of it touched on issues of truly *knowing* a person who is in the spotlight, and how we can draw conclusions about who they were and where their hearts were. We make assumptions based on the accounts of others and even from the person themselves, but are these reliable? Because the just of the film is a group of journalists trying to get at why Kane’s dying action was him looking into a snow globe and saying “rosebud” and everyone trying to figure out who he really was and what he stood for. And we do this in literature all the time for interpretation! We look at quotes and clues from other characters. I think it’s really interesting to play with this in a visual form with a biographical novel because it points at the problematic nature of “truth” in the first place. And dubbing it historical makes it all the more high stakes. So perhaps this makes me think that the hope of this work is to complicate, not necessarily affirm the cultural hero as we know him. I've seen this book on the curriculum for a lot of high schools, and getting through the first half I feel so much why this is a perfect text for historical fact and critical observation of it.
ReplyDeleteAnd this isn't to say that great things didn't happen-- but like all things in history nothing is ever so clearly cut.
I agree that the very nature of truth is always brought into question when dealing with art, and that this is all the more true for biographical works. Anderson seems to bring in a certain vibe or “atmosphere” of realism to his work, with harsh dialogue and high levels of facial detail. This is all despite the fact that much of work plays out as a dream-like experience. This is in stark contrast to Maus’ style, obliquely symbolic yet presented in a straightforward manner. As far as their atmospheres go, how would you compare these two works?
DeleteKing
ReplyDeleteOne major thing I noticed in this graphic novel is the way that the story is presented. The imaged, most of the time, mimic old black and white photos mixed in with real life photographs. It’s really jarring to see. It’s beautiful. It feels like a book that someone put together by cut and paste. The story is presented in a way that makes it seem like a film. The layout of the scenes, the dialogue. There is a lot to be said, and most of it is being told by the imagery. I love the way that these characters are blending together. In the scene with eh sit in, for a bit, I thought that the people sitting were white because of coloring. Making this story in black and white opens the story up to the world. It takes away a focus on one single look and puts focus on character facial emotion and their features.
Anderson constantly switches artistic styles. Most of the piece is set for more of a realistic look rather than one with a more cartoonish design. It puts focus on these characters. It pushes for what really happened. Changing up the look, it sort of showed certain situations. I remember a change in style when we see MLK’s home life when his daughter wanted to go to an amusement park. This slowed the piece down and made it more focused on the calm and slow days. After the scene where MLK was stabbed, we get a few pages of bright orange. It was really beautiful. It delved into his mind during these moments. He was target by someone and he felt like he was returning home. The warm colors were a sort of break from the cold black and white. It was sort of a break period for the stories constant turbulence.
I felt that it was sort of hard to tell the flow of time in this piece. Things either moved quickly in respect to the story, or they were dragged out. I believe that this jump in time was necessary because it shows specific points in his life that would be important in his tale, but might not have time to talk about. His marriage for instance. It was mentioned and shown, but fairly rushed. It slowed the story down, but was important to MLK’s life. Having these jumpy time periods, I feel like it gives an open flow to the story. His life was complicated and these jump cuts show that without taking away the importance of his movement for complete freedom
So you find that the varying time frames provide a certain amount of freedom with the story? I was always thinking about King’s time frames in terms of how they influenced the work thematically, but it did not occur to me to think of their impact on the work’s symbolic flexibility. That said, I think you have an excellent point. By playing fast and loose with the passage of time in King affords us, as an audience, greater interpretative authority when piecing together King’s content. I notice a lot of people in the class decrying the chronological presentation of King, saying it provides ambiguity. I think it just needs a more open mind set, where rather than thinking of a “correct” interpretation, we’re free to connect them in any way we see fit.
DeleteAmbiguity plays a big part in King, and unlike most of the other works we have read, a lot of the story in this book is non-linear. I think that Anderson assumes that everyone who would be inclined to read a 200+ page comic book biography of MLK has at least a little bit of knowledge surrounding MLK and the civil rights movement. Therefore, it's not necessary for him to be 100% faithful to exactly how things went down and in what order. We already know the story for the most part, so why not mix it up and make it more unpredictable? This is why I have really been enjoying King so far, it's delightfully unconventional.
ReplyDeleteAnother benefit of this unconventional mode of storytelling is that it enlightens us to the man behind the myth. MLK is a man who is drenched in mythology. Even today there are movies made about him, books still being written, people still inspired by his story. However, in focusing too much on his work and his legacy, we lose the sense of who the real man is. MLK has become almost like an American saint today, much like how we treat our founding fathers with reverence. When we focus so much on the legend, we forget the story of the real man, and I think that King is doing an excellent job at showing us the real man.
An interesting observation! It did not immediately occur to me that Anderson might consider his reader’s prior knowledge of Martin Luther King. Do you think that Anderson made any similar considerations when working on King, such as the possible demographics his work would face as a comic book?
DeleteI also think it’s valuable to consider the humanity that exists behind legendary figures. Some of the moments in King that I find most enthralling are where we see King’s moments of weakness, when he is at is most human. I feel this characteristic of King’s representation is captured by Anderson’s visual style, as well as the narrative. What do you think?
Actually I had the same thought as to Anderson expecting the reader to have previous knowledge about King. It's the only way he could get away with not explaining the more background knowledge. So yea, I was actually thinking that the whole time too!
DeleteAnderson used a lot of interviews with people who were there, and stories from the people close to Martin Luther King, Jr, in order to tell this story. The ambiguity of the characters makes for a more compelling story and more attention to the darkness of the south during the Civil Rights Movement. He also made the flow difficult to follow at times because of where he placed the panel across the page.
ReplyDeleteIt makes more sense to use a photograph then redraw the scenes where the most happens in those scenes, such as when King is making one of his epic speeches or the photographs of Emmitt Till’s body and funeral. Those images are dark and cannot be reproduced through drawings and have the same effect on the reader as the photographs. Using multiple styles shows the more graphic nature of the Civil Rights Movement.
There is a lot of information that Anderson had to cover in King. Some information may have been seen as superfluous or unnecessary for the final product. I always tell my tutoring students that it is always better to have too much information and cut out some, than it is to have too little. Anderson’s jumps through time cut out the information we don’t need, like finding out Coretta Scott King was pregnant with their first child, or more about his arrest after the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. These things are important and they are important to the life of Martin Luther King, Jr, but they are not important to the Civil Rights Movement.
That’s an interesting observation on the balance between the relevance of a detail and the flow of a work. It’s always important to consider whether a scene or panel in comic is really contributing to a story, and how well it fits in with the rest of the piece. It’s easy enough to say that every scene should be necessary, but this belies the complexity of any story’s organization. Not only thinking about how much time is spent on a scene, but how much interconnectivity it provides for the rest of the work.
DeleteThe ambiguity of the story and the style of the images used just makes it harder to be in the moment. The previous novels that we have read depended on the ability to bring the reader into the story, as a way to further the experience of the content the author wanted to display. One of the major goals of cinema, literature, and music is the suspension of disbelief. If a movie has too many continuity errors it makes it hard for the viewer to watch. King suffers a similar problem to me personally. The contrast of colors, hard angles, and the general art style makes it hard for me to read. The content of ambiguity to show the greater message that Martin Luther King was just as human as anyone else is interesting but to the idea of not having to be 100% faithful to events then the suspension of disbelief is just as important in this piece as it would be to a film. The flow of the book seems disheveled, but overall King provides a good reference to events that are usually taught various times throughout school, and the more pragmatic look at an icon makes the rough read worth it.
ReplyDeleteThe breaking of immersion is always a valid criticism of a work, and I can definitely see how that is relevant to King. But as you continued to read through King, did you feel yourself getting any more comfortable with the visual style? I found that after a certain point I found myself getting increasingly more comfortable with the aesthetic, where all I needed was a warm up period of sorts.
DeleteI don't think this story works. Like, I think that MLK is an important figure and I don't think this comic does his story justice. I don't this story needed to be told in this way. Also, it's really frustrating to read because it feels like the visual/narrative complexity is done for its own sake. It feels like Anderson is trying too hard to be visually interesting and unique -- and the narrative suffers for that. It is physically painful for me to read King. It hurts my eyes. Stuck Rubber Baby pushed the limits of how much junk you could cram in to one frame, but the contrast and "form" in King just keeps me from enjoying or retaining anything. It's hard for me to find anything other to say about king. This is the hardest story we've read not because it deals with any especially complex themes or ideas -- it doesn't, especially not compared with some of the other pieces we've read this semester -- but because Anderson seems to do everything he possibly can to make his story artificially complex. If King presented a story that hadn't already been told -- and told much better and much more truly -- I think I'd be able to forgive its overly-complex visual style for the narrative it tells. Maus, for example, tells a story that we've heard lots of times. In that piece, though, its story and art offer something new. Unfortunately, the story of Martin Luther King has been told and told much better.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the late post, I really struggled with finding something to say about this novel.
I feel the same way. I mulled over what I could say about the story, and just felt that most of what I thought may have been too harsh.
DeleteWoof, well I can’t fault you for mincing your words there! It’s nice knowing I’m not the only one who’s willing to voice a dissenting opinion on the course material. While I appreciate you may not be a fan of Anderson’s heavy stylization within King, let me offer an alternative view on the topic of, for lack of a better phrase, the relevance of King, as a graphic novel. It is true that there have been plenty of stories that have covered the life of Dr. King, and there may even be other graphic novels out there that have touched on his life. However, would you say that the perspective on Martin Luther’s personal life that Anderson’s work provides is in no way fresh? I am unfamiliar with many works that focus on King as a relatable, flawed human being, and to my mind, Anderson puts a lot of effort into reflecting this visually and verbally. Of course, when it comes to how effective a particular work is, it will always come down to personal preference.
DeleteBam. Responded to every comment in an intelligent, engaging and humble manner. How's *that* for class participation!
ReplyDeleteSo, there is good conversation going here. What I would like to ask is, we know and have pointed out why this is a difficult read, but is it as effective and as memorable as the other books we have read? Some of the easier reads are more memorable for me since they were easy to comprehend. Does the complexity of this book make give it higher ratings in the world of comics? Or does it hinder itself?
ReplyDeleteDid Anderson have purpose to making it illegible in some places? Does that depict some of the turmoil of the time? Or is it just poorly illustrated? These are just more generalized questions to put the book's purpose in context. These were questions I had after reflecting on the book at the end.
King is certainly far from what you’d call accessible, and I think this was pretty intentional on Ho Che Anderson’s part. I think a lot of King’s existence is based on the fact that the majority of works on MLK are straightforward in their presentation and message: Martin Luther King Jr. was a brave and kind leader who deserves are respect. And he is. But with this work, I think that Anderson wanted to present an opposing yet complimentary view of Martin Luther King, to let us understand him on a more human level. And so while the style of King may prove challenging and off-putting to some, I believe that in no way does it hinder the comic memoir’s intention or message.
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ReplyDeleteIn all honesty, this book was very different than the ones we have read so far, and I agree with my colleagues it was a lot harder to read than what we have so far, but nonetheless it was a great experience. Yes, I do believe the ambiguity was intentional on Anderson’s part. I believe he wanted to leave space for the readers to think about the characters identity in their own way, as well as making it easier to identify with them. I think this makes the story a even better one and conveys an important message through the ambiguity of the story.
I do agree with a few of my colleagues, on his use of distinct visual styles, the white and black- always lets people envision historical movements or moments. It made it more realistic, that we can actually imagine this moment happening in history, even if it didn’t necessarily happen exactly as it was told. I also liked what one of my colleagues had said, as if someone had cut and pasted a bunch of photos and made it into a book, which gives it a spin in the sense it’s not a “typical” comic, because it is not just sketched work but actual photos.
This threw me off a bit in the book, I got lost going back and forth and trying to follow along, when he was relaying moments in his past, and when he switched to present tense. I think it enables the reader to think within the time frame they’re in, which makes it easier to relate to and understand what King had endured.
In any memoir or similar narrative, I think that an appreciation or recognition of the passage of time helps with our understanding of the events or people we are exploring. Like you said, it helps us think within the story’s own time frame, as well as our own. Great post!
DeleteThe ambiguity of the art style and range of impressionistic to graphical high contrast depictions of characters and events creates a flexible visual language, that creates a unique separation of events in this lengthy comic, where there are no traditional chapters. Patterns are created in the form of repeating themes such as the witnesses after each of King's developments through dialogue and action.
ReplyDeleteColor is used to intensify events such as the stabbing of King. Color helps portray emotional impact to the reader.
Experimenting with time frames gives priority to the impact of events later recalled and discussed by the order of the comic itself. The witnesses allow for a deeper understanding of King's actual influence outside of his more personal struggles.