Stitches, for me, stylistically, was like many mediums in one. The story read for me like an old silent movie; actually, if you go to David Small’s website for Stitches, he has instrumental music that is eerie and goes nicely with Small’s art. Respond with your thoughts on art, music, and mediums and how it influences/aids adolescents, and Small’s adolescence specifically, in how they respond to pain and powerlessness.
With young adult novels trending towards darker themes as of late (Hunger Games, Divergent, The Fault in Our Stars), how do you think Stitches compares to these popular works of fiction?
What did you think of how the memoir ended? (“I didn’t”) How did it affect you? How do you think it affected/affects small?
I definitely agree about the music on David Small's website being eerie. It has a haunting, dark quality that I think really suits his style of drawing for Stiches. It seems that art had a strong impact on Small's adolescence, not only because it became a way for him to communicate when he couldn't speak, but because of the way his family was. He described listening to his mom in the kitchen, slamming cupboards and called this her "music." Similarly, he talked about his dad hitting the punching bag and his brother playing the drums, and how all of these things sounded to him. It reminds me a little bit of Fun Home (how Bechdel talked about living in a colony of artists) because all of the family members are isolated from one another and engaged in their own pursuits. In terms of comparing Stiches to novels like Hungers Games and Divergent (I haven't read Fault in Our Stars), this might be a little bit of a stretch but they could be similar in the sense that Stitches is about a dysfunctional family, whereas Hunger Games and Divergent are about dystopian societies and both show a social unit (the family or society) that has gone bad. These novels and Stiches also share the characteristic of showing young people having to confront very difficult obstacles and living in bleak environments. Overall, I enjoyed Stiches and I thought it was very well drawn and written. I think the style of the drawings worked very well with the text and it was an easy and quick read. I was surprised by how much Small was able to communicate, despite the fact that there is relatively little text and the story itself is short, because his drawing style conveys a lot of emotion.
ReplyDeleteI really loved the music from the site. It really added to the world set in the graphic novel. There are so many dark and cool colors. I feel like I understand who Small's was in this period of his life. The music and images presented gave off this paranormal feel as well as made it reminiscent of some works by Tim Burton. His thinly drawn characters as well as shifts into his mental games made me think of cut scenes in movies where a character would imagine a scene going a different way. Small's seems so free and aware of the world around him even though he is somewhat caged by his family and inability to speak. I feel like Stitches is far from the works of the Hunger Games and Divergent. The tone of the story feels trapped and inescapable. The Hunger Games has a trapped feel, but the story seems far from inescapable. Most of the story Stitches gives off a very surreal tone. I questioned what was real and what wasn't. For some reason, the music on his site made me think of A Series of Unfortunate Events. The pain of the Baudelair orphans seemed endless, but with each other and their internal machinations, they found escape. That and the overall tone and style of art gave off their similar feel. The end of the story had so much control. Smalls entered into his mind and met with his mother pushing him down the same path as her. His will to ignore that direction and choose to not follow in her footsteps was perfect.
ReplyDeleteAddressing questions one and three:
ReplyDeleteIt did feel VERY cinematic to me. It’s strange that a silent film came to you, because the characteristic trait of those films is a lack of spoken dialogue and Small ends up losing his ability to even speak voluntarily after his surgery.
My only qualm with that (despite its potent subjective expressiveness) was simply the fact that it felt like it went way too fast. My eyes would simply skim boxes upon boxes of images without texts and without much going on within the panel and I feel like I needed some kind of weight to pull me back and make me linger on the images. Mind, that did happen a few times to great effect. In the images where the graphics were more creepy/eerie/jarring and surrealist I found myself slowing down to really digest the image. Another example is the scene with the therapist where the tears turned to rain motifs for about six pages— that was very powerful and well done, I believe. It signified such a release to me for his character, and that he paired it with this long, melancholic rain drew this release to something that was painful, yet nourishing (e.g. rain that quenches the soil and allows for things to grow).
There’s a sort of cycle that occurs in abusive households— disorder and disfunction that is passed on from generation to generation as people cannot find healthy ways to adapt and live maladaptively. And I think this passage speaks to a kind of defiant resilience for his character. We have to realize how close he really came to losing himself to this sort of disorder: he gave up, he was skipping school, he spent the night in jail. But it was through flat out resiliency that he was able to overcome severe circumstances and nourish a healthy identity at a very young age with little to no social support whatsoever. This was a very powerful passage for me. And while it’s not the WHOLE story, we know that to a degree, Small ended up successful despite everything. He wasn’t one of those painful examples in which people try so desperately to end up NOT like their parents that they end up falling right into that same trap. We see him suppressed in every aspect throughout the narrative, so it was really liberating to see him unconfined in the pages of his own story. That in itself is poof that he didn’t follow the silent route to the asylum.
I used the website you shared to listen to while finishing the rest of this book, it certainly added something to the story. So thanks a ton for sharing that, it really did add something to the book. Due to the lack of pacing and the breakneck speed I find myself reading it despite my best efforts the music seemed to get me to slow it down somewhat.
ReplyDeleteI think it is certainly different. The hero here inside of stitches is more real, not something to be aspired toward. A story of strength against very real dilemma. It does not serve the same purpose in my opinion. However I find it profound in the way the story is conveyed. It is not something I would have enjoyed as much at a younger age than I do now.
I didn't made a proper ending to the novel, it tied it all together. He was more than content to stay away from that part of his family. No matter what aspects tried to drive him there, by interest or otherwise, he would stay content on the inside, away from them. It's a story of a boy distancing himself from an abusive household. It doesn't really expand on how his disadvantages benefited him in the long run, which I found lacking to some degree as I'm certain they did. That being said he wraps it up nicely that he is strong and in control despite the world of issues against him.
The music is really interesting and it makes me wonder if Small would've preferred to have music during his comic. Which being time based would make it an animation of sorts. The comic does feel ambient in and of itself but music does add another dimension to the atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually not familiar with those novels (accept I've heard of hunger games because of the films. Haven't seen any though) so I can't really add to this conversation. But I do see a movement toward darker tones in fiction today to relate to the audience of the typical emotional teenager who thinks the world should bend to their needs of an introverted loser turning into an extroverted hero. Stitches is semi related to that idea I see in popular media, but this seems to be more self driven than open to fitting a cookie cutter target audience.
This is my second go around with Stitches so I knew the ending was coming, and now in context to the other comics I reread, Persepolis 2 comes to mind. The ending just kinda drops off. But it also seems like Small made the entire comic to just get to this point and justify why he would have made this unconscious decision. It's definitely the most memorable part of Stitches for me though. After a few years it's all I remembered. But I think it also made the book feel like a cry for attention, and less like an honest autobiography. Though I totally believe Small that his mother could be so cruel. A wicked woman on the news was just convicted of putting fecal matter in her son's IV at Children's in order to keep getting money from her friends and family. People can be horrible, and maybe this comic was cathartic to Small. But it feels to me like a cry for attention by the ending since he didn't wrap it up in a way that made him the hero of moral character, but instead a victim to his mother's character.
I agree that Small's novel was totally different from all the other comics we have looked at this semester, with the possible exception of King. I also agree that in places the art and full page pictures could almost make a flip book of sorts which indicates movement and space.
ReplyDeleteThe general movement toward darker fiction is a trend much like any other trend - Vampires, Ghosts, Werewolves, and let us not forget the Zombies. Distopian novels are the current rage beginning with Harry Potter which is the cult focus of your generation therefore it makes sense that the people now writing the fiction would be branching out in that direction.
The end of the book was just the end. If you read the blurb after the comics ended you find out that he has an okay life and that he has adjusted. Perhaps the ending was just that an end to being his mother's victim, which in reality he was.