Hi, everyone! I apologize for the delay, I got the schedule mixed up!
As we leave the “Fun Home” and it’s themes of sexuality,
secrets, and self-discovery, we enter the world of another female artist and
her feminist musings. My first thought when I opened up “One! Hundred! Demons!”
was how reminiscent it is of a zine. For those of you who are not familiar with
zines, read a little about them here.
Now that you know a little bit about zines and their
connection to the feminist movement, how do you think Barry’s art and topics relate
to this medium? Consider her collage style art, hand written speech bubbles, and
DIY “lonely girl in her bedroom” feel to the piece. How did these things have
an effect on how you experienced the stories? How do you think these aspects
enhance the stories?
Honestly, I don't see a big similarity. The art work reminded me more of Mary Englebreit's calendar art...so more of what is call a folk art style - very colorful and very busy. And I don't see Barry as trying to push a feminist agenda. I think she is just trying to express what it felt like growing up in a place where she didn't fit in.
ReplyDeleteIn the first 150 pages we do not see a father figure, only a mother and grandmother. The father is possibly alluded to, an ominous figure offering to go for a ride, but we are still in the dark. She is raised in a family of women from the Philippines, but is obviously also of Irish ethnicity. How would her life have differed if she looked like a Philippine? Would she have been able to navigate into a crowd more easily? Could things have been different?
Englebreit is fabulous, that's a great comparison. I guess what I was getting at was not that I see Barry's art as *similar* to what many zines end up looking like, per se, but the feeling and intention of being a girl, trying to navigate one's environment, working through insecurities and limitations, etc. Barry doesn't "push" a feminist agenda, but she does use race and class in the same way Bechdel used gender and sexuality to discuss the concept of being limited from becoming one's self by one's society.
DeleteI would have to say that she almost seems to avoid gender as an issue. She has no problems with it to the point of at least page 100. She plays kickball with the boys. There's no patriarchal undertones about her being denied anything due to gender. They are not topics she has dove into, she has interest in the opposite sex, sure. She touched briefly on class, as being the "ghetto" girl but it doesn't really ring full of her struggle in a poor family. She even seems to avoid the issue of race, only really mentioning the fallout she had in jr. high. I had no idea from the start of the book as to why she was a pale red head with a Philippians parent, until I searched her biography and found that there was a divorce between her father and mother at the age of 12. Her father was Irish. Why not take on this issue? She is surrounded by race, but it never seems to be anything more than a point in some nuances of her living conditions, family sayings, or quirky traditions.
DeleteOh wow! Okay I was not familiar at all to this movement, so I'm glad you were able to draw it into the discussion.
ReplyDeleteI suppose on one hand it can be Barry's mutable sense of identity. She talks about recreating herself often-- in a sense her character is a DIY project. She draws inspiration from things she becomes passionate about (from hippies, to her peer drug culture, dancing, wanderlust, etc) and revamps herself, throwing away incongruent pieces and pasting on new ones. The style of the text feels kind of kitschy, and I guess a lot of the elements that she takes on are similarly mass-produced sentimental qualities and traits-- e.g. wanting the hippy lifestyle and banding with the two travellers selling the phony products out of their bus, and how she consumes and becomes passionate about radio songs, or how she wants to be "cool" to that boy so much that she hides her identity of her ethnicity and home and puts on a guise as a tripping drug user.
I guess in a similar way there's always this active negotiation culturally with the feminist movement about what it means to be a woman, female sexuality, and acceptance. Bits and pieces are tossed around, pasted onto already existing models, and as a movement are corrected and redone.
I think the style really adds to the themes of identity because it really emphasizes an active PROCESS of creating-- oneself, a comic, an understanding of why we do what we do. She approaches each topic as a "demon" and I find that very interesting, because it relates these moments that were part of her as something very alien in a sense-- foreign invaders wreaking havoc. So there's a sort of alienation of self at the same time that the entire work feels very expressionistic. But there's this sense of clutter like junk accumulated from a yard sale. In a way it feels very melancholic.
And I think the panel at the VERY beginning (see picture link below) speaks a lot to this sense of not really knowing who one is, and what is genuine self vs. what is external influences pasted overtop. We see these trends early on as she strips away parts of her more "authentic" self (e.g. talking a lot, dancing freely) as she get negative feedback from others, such as being bullied in school, being made fun of by the talented dancer, and getting chastised by her mother.
http://bookcandy.typepad.com/.a/6a00e553cdd11e883401a3fcbc7cba970b-pi
"...active negotiation culturally with the feminist movement about what it means to be a woman, female sexuality, and acceptance. Bits and pieces are tossed around, pasted onto already existing models, and as a movement are corrected and redone." YES, this is beautiful.
DeleteHer demons are her insecurities, things about herself that she doesn't understand, or is scared of, or wants to love but doesn't know how.
I think it's useful to look at Barry's vignettes through an intersectional lens; her race, gender, class, sexuality, geography ... it all ties into how she sees the world and digests it as she grows up.
This theme of the genuine self vs external influences that you mention is very interesting and I definitely see this as a theme in One Hundred Demons. For example, on p. 48, when Barry is talking about dancing and says "The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool." I think this is a great way of looking at the self-doubt that seems to have an impact on everyone growing up.
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ReplyDeleteI definitely see the similarity between One Hundred Demons and some of these zines. Looking at the zines and this comic, I think they both have a sort of doodle or collage style, where it seems like the words and illustrations are pasted together in a way that sometimes seems a little haphazard, but I find the overall effect very cool. I also see a connection between this comic and some of the other ones we’ve read so far - in the sense that they involve the narrator depicting various scenes from their life without appearing to hold much back. I see this comic as feminist in the sense that Barry is a woman speaking about her own life with the perspective that she is a human being with experiences that are as valid as a man’s.
ReplyDeleteI looked up Barry and found a couple of things that I thought were interesting - this webpage: http://emmatinker.oxalto.co.uk/downloads/barry.pdf where I found the quote “...Lynda Barry does identify herself as a feminist, and the development of female identity is the central preoccupation of her work.” I also looked at a couple more of the comics Barry has written, and I think “Girlhood through the Looking Glass” looks particularly good, here is a short article about it: http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1461. I am very happy that in this class we’ve been reading comics that focus on a variety of different backgrounds, genders, races, identities, etc.
One! Hundred! Demons!
ReplyDeleteI feel like this piece has less to do with the feminist movement and more to do with a young woman’s life growing up. It’s very personal and direct in her past. It presents information that might be embarrassing for anyone else to talk about. That’s what most biographies are. They uncover the truth of a person’s existence. This piece is definitely the strangest and complex looking piece we have read so far. The other stories seem to be visually similar throughout. This one expands outside of the border of storytelling. It’s harder to see this as a comic and more as a diary/scrapbook.
I love her art. It’s very bright and interesting to look at. I would of loved to see her process. There is so much direction in what she is saying and the speech bubbles below each panel obviously connect to the above panel, but lay separate. It feels real and understandable. I understand the character because of the way she writes and tells her experiences. I thought that the use of this type of art made the stories easier to read. I felt like I was listening directly to a woman talking about her past. She seems to directly connect the look of her story to her youth. It’s colorful and complex. Each “chapter” represents a part of her she seems to have uncovered in her storytelling process. The use of real images really put her character in perspective. The photo of herself and Ev didn’t look like the person she drew for herself. I feel like the way she drew herself, and even others, was the idea of herself she had through years of life between these experiences. Her self-images are very personal and represent how she truly pictured herself.
The art style is certainly intended to make the audience feel like it is being written by the child version of Lynda. Not in quite the layout of the zines in that article you posted which feel more so like someone given a piece of computer paper with the goal of sharing their thoughts to the world. Contrasting Lynda's whose feels more personal, like it was written in the style of a journal. I had thought that the work we covered this semester was extremely candid, but certainly none has been as candid as One Hundred Demons. The courage shown to write about some of the things reminded me of "Mortified Nation".
ReplyDeleteFor anyone who hasn't watched any of Mortified Nation, I would recommend watching the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3DmdV9XByY . While this does not fall inline with the feminist undertone, I think it is a fantastic piece for anyone who found some joy in candid art.
To this point at page 100 I have not seen much in the way of social pragmatism, or feminism. Just Lynda sharing a story of an awkward childhood. Please watch that youtube link as it is at this time in line with how I feel toward One Hundred Demons.
I agree, One Hundred Demons has a journal feel to it and it does seem like not only is she telling stories from her childhood, but showing them from a child's point of view. I think Barry does a good job of that.
DeleteI just published a huge response and I can't see it on the page anymore.
ReplyDeleteAssuming Google deleted it I'll just quickly recap what I said. I haven't heard of the movement and don't really see this comic as feminist but more like a collection of short stories explaining how life just has its demons. We can pick up on personality quirks like how Lynda won't take her husband's last name, but none of that is overbearing. It's also interesting how the imagery used is 100% secondary to the text in this comic. We could remove the images completely and still have the identical story. The weird thing is the text is written well enough that I don't mind at all but that's just my opinion.
It was much longer than that but I'm worried my first response is gone again. This happened before because Google switched accounts on me as I posted.
Barry's style is pretty similar to the patchwork, scrapbook type style that is prevalent in a lot of these feminist zines. It shares the same punk do-it-yourself ethos and handmade fashion. Both of the works feel very personal to the reader, as if they are holding a special object made just for them. I don't think that feminism plays that big of a role in One! Hundred! Demons! however, other than the fact that the stories feature mostly women. I don't believe that Barry is trying to push an agenda, she is just trying to tell her story how she sees it, which happens to be shaped by a lot of women. I was interested in the way she reveals information, I haven't read all the way to the end, but in the first 150 pages, there is little to no mention of a father, and only brief mentions of her brothers. On page 72 however, there is an allusion to a troubling event. It hasn't been elaborated on yet, and I don't know if it does by the end of the book (no spoilers!). The frame on 72 has Barry explaining that it was the closest she could come to feeling whole since an event she can't remember, alongside the visual of her as a little girl being approached by a headless man who is asking her if she wants to ride in his car. This makes me think that there was some sort of molestation or sexual assault, which would partly explain why men are so lacking in the text so far.
ReplyDeleteI can see where one might draw similarities between the largely homemade zine movement and the sort of homegrown feel put forward in one hundred demons. I do feel that the style has simultaneously made it easier and more difficult to accept the message under the art work. Difficult in that the first few pages and between chapter transitions are jumbled and difficult to read and the hand written cursive can sometimes be difficult to decipher, and easier in the very straightforward panel progression and structure.
ReplyDeleteI can see the similarities between the zines and One! Hundred! Demons! But this seems more autobiographical than the traditional zines, which seemed to be more activist and radical. The artwork in this is very similar to some of the collage art that I've seen for portfolio work for Art School admissions (my own and my niece). I found the flow a little difficult to follow because the images seemed to be shoved into the narration boxes, instead of the narrations fitting into the artwork.
ReplyDeleteI feel like this author is a quirky artist that found a new medium to experiment with. Her content was telling stories of her as a young girl. She picked chapters/stories based on those simple words and wrote about the first story that came to mind. (It could of happened the other way around) If those stories are important or impactful in her life then she just chose simple titles for each chapter.
ReplyDeleteI guess I can make it a feminism comic but that wasn’t my first take on it. The way she used the collages and different materials in the comic made it feel rustic and honest. It really felt like she was making these things in her art room, sitting by the window, drinking tea with her cat rubbing her leg as she drew. Her choices made it feel real and it was her way of telling her stories. How it enhanced the stories were by making us feel sympathetic towards her and witnessing her in her situations.
One thing that struck me about her art style and the autobiographical aspect of her writing as a "lonely girl in her bedroom," was how terribly tragic looking, physically, she portrays her childhood self. I think It has a lot to do with self esteem and issues of self esteem and conveying how her childhood self felt she looked at the time, or how she remembers others thinking she looked, but it is affecting how I experience her story to think about the reasons she would draw herself like that, that meaning terribly tragic looking. I mean Bechdel's self-portrayal was not unflattering, and neither was Satrapi's although she described herself as mostly unattractive during her teen years. I think this story has a particular underlying concern with how child-Barry looks, that also relates to her having red-hair and looking different than her Filipino family. I looked it up and her father is Irish and her mother is Irish and Filipina, which is why she looks so different but I get the feeling from the book that she identifies mostly with her Filipino family because it seems that is more she has been raised. At least when she is at home, school seems to be a different and uncomfortable experience for her. I don't really understand the zines but I do see how Barry is trying to express through various ways what it was like to grow up looking different and feeling different from everyone around her and being a girl at the same time, which I think the zines also are concerned with. Also this book focuses on issues of class that I don't think the others have really focused on, although Satrapi and Bechdel both point out they were from relatively higher classes than the people around them (I mean Satrapi's grandfather was a prince or something). This book makes outright comparisons of Barry's class to that of other girls and how that affects her and her appearance, which is also really interesting. Also something I think is unique to the graphic medium, not even a movie could make comparisons in the way she does on page 184, which is farther ahead than we were supposed to read, without imitating a comic book with a split screen or something.
ReplyDeleteWhoops I just realized my first post didn't get posted. So here is One Hundred Demons post 1 take 2. One Hundred Demons definitely stands as one of our most unique works of the semester. The doodle style art makes for an interesting pacing as the book progresses on. Though Barry is feminist, what I took from the book was more of a story of persevering through hardships, and how rediscovery/reinvention is a lifelong process. The life of an outcast, raised in an borderline abusive household, is the theme that takes center stage. One hundred demons follows Fun Home's bluntness in message but does so in a more fluid, easier digested way. This story resonated with me as someone who had few friends, and spent many days trying to figure yourself out. The greatest part of the narrative so far is the authors way of connecting to the insecurities that are innate in everyone. At some point or another everyone has been bullied, bullied someone else, felt alone, ignored, persecuted and misunderstood. Barry's art style and story is one than anyone can relate to in some way or another.
ReplyDeleteI think Barry's style in One Hundred Demons is a perfect marriage of form and function. Her doodle-like drawings are fitting to depict some of the childhood themes throughout the work. She uses bright colors reminiscent of a child's coloring book, and her characters remind me of some of the cartoons I used to watch as a kid. The entire comic has a nostalgia feel to it. The drawings are through the eyes of a kid but her writing at the top of the panels is reflective, she is looking back on her childhood. The character drawings aren't realistic at all (similar to a lot of character drawings in children’s books/comics/cartoons), and the bright colors would make you think happy thoughts but there is also something about the characters that is kind of disturbing. Their movements aren't natural, when Barry talks about dancing you can see that the characters are bent at odd angles and it looks like they don't have joints. This seems to be a common way to draw characters in children's art but I always find it a little disturbing. Compared to some of the other comics we've read this year, I would say the layout is kind of simple and easy to follow/understand. The top half of the panels are used to show Barry's stream of consciousness but there are still dialogue bubbles in the drawing as well so we can see the context of her thoughts. This sometimes gets jumbled and messy but that often reflects the themes she is trying to communicate. The text in the drawings often crowds around the characters, making the panel look claustrophobic. This is perfect for her stream of thought type writing style, everything is crowded together. It also works for her themes of loneliness and oppression.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I have to say I agree with the majority of my colleagues, I didn't really see it as a feminist piece, or that she was taking a feminist approach, just that she was trying to tell her story. I liked the imagery and the graphics and how she tries to communicate things to the reader, but it does seem like we're following a complex and confused train of thought, which may in itself just be one of the themes she is trying to relay. I also agree in regards to the themes of loneliness and oppression, that is a very important aspect as well.
ReplyDeleteWell, I think that while One! Hundred! Demons! May possess a similar style to riot grrrl zines, this may have less to do with overlapping ideologies, and more about the kind of emotional and economic spaces these works came from.
ReplyDeleteOne of the more prominent vibes I received from this work is a pervading sense of isolation, the feeling that, like Lynda in her own life, we are outsiders looking into another world. Her colorful background, coupled with her life in the suburbs, made it all but impossible to assimilate, with an overarching source of conflict in the work being her separation from her peers. She's an outsider, and the book's own eclectic style and substance reflects this perfectly.
Zines emerged as another need to express one's self, though I think the sense of isolation they voice come from a different kind of marginalization. While still maintaining the earnest, personal collage of imagery seen in One! Hundred! Demons!, zines are more focused on a internal conflict that is more widespread than the Lynda's own "autobifictionalography."
I think it's interesting to compare the two, but I wouldn't say the resemblance is intentional. Both zines and One! Hundred! Demons! wanted to express something personal, frightening, trying to reach out to its readers, voicing their feelings of loneliness.