A few weeks ago I saw Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. I was so excited to see the movie that I read the book for the first time in probably 10 years over winter break. Maybe it was because, after reading numerous articles about the end of the movie being a revolutionary feminist twist, I had hoisted my expectations to the moon—I did not love the movie. I liked it! I just did not love it like I expected to. If you’re reading this and have not seen the movie, stop here! Because I am about to spoil the ending. In the book, Jo, the protagonist among the four March sisters, gets married and has children like all the other women she knows, after spending the entire novel claiming she will never get married. I was disappointed by this ending and eager to watch Jo escape marriage and live out her literary dreams in the movie. But she still gets married! The twist is that the movie’s ending is ambiguous—even as it shows her getting married, there seems to be an alternate storyline running alongside the marriage one where she sees her book published and opens a school. These two threads are interwoven, and the distinctions between them blurred, so it is not clear what really happens, allowing moviegoers to choose which ending they like best. But I did not fully understand this dynamic until reading articles about the ending afterwards. When I walked out of the theater, I felt let down, because the storyline most visible to me was the marriage one, and it seemed like Gerwig simply followed the original story after all. I bring up this anecdote to make a point about art making a point: Art, be it painting, literature, film, or something else, usually aims to present content that can be interpreted in multiple ways. But sometimes, in pursuing ambiguity, artists may send a message they do not want to send, or send too many messages that end up getting tangled and confusing the audience. I am not necessarily suggesting Little Women was confusing in exactly this way; but the movie serves as a good example of art that intended to present itself ambiguously but in reality ended up strongly conveying the very message (that women should stay at home) it hoped to subvert in using that ambiguity.
I found this phenomenon to some extent in Özge Samancı’s Dare to Disappoint: Growing up in Turkey, but not in Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. In some ways, movie adaptations of books are like graphic novels, because they put something originally meant to stay on the pages of a book into visual form. In the process of illustrating literature, which on surface level would seem to clarify the words rather than muddy them, sometimes the images and words can convey different stories or create separate threads that do not intertwine quite right (as in Little Women). (I also want to note that I have only ever read one or two graphic novels before I read these two, so I might be biased against them or ignorant of their form.)
First, I want to discuss how each of these authors uses art to make their words come alive. Satrapi draws simply, consistently, and in only black and white. Her style remains largely the same throughout the book. But I love the perspectives she takes in different scenes, zooming in close on someone’s face or out to show an entire street or building, and often relying on images rather than words to further the story. Samancı draws with a completely different style, incorporating mixed media and colors instead of sticking to black and white. Some of her designs are incredibly creative and beautiful, such as the representation of the TV show “Dallas” on page 63; or page 156, which reads “everything changed in a flash,” and depicts vibrant sunlight bursting forth from clouds on a watercolor blue background. Yet others seem a bit contrived, like they are trying too hard to send a message artfully when the same message could be sent more subtly using simpler images, or words alone. On page 92, for example, she writes that Pelin “left all the things we loved behind,” and then pastes cutouts of words from different magazines or books such as “kite,” “bicycle,” “par-ty,” onto the page. I feel like she could have activated those words more, perhaps by representing them as objects, or drawing little remembered scenes of Pelin flying a kite, riding a bicycle, or dancing at a party. On other pages, too, the artistry seems like overkill, but perhaps I get that impression because I am comparing them directly to Satrapi’s very neat, pared-down style.
Of course, these details of Dare to Disappoint are minor and do not significantly affect the overall message of the book; but some of Samancı’s artistic choices do affect the message, and somewhat like Little Women, the book sometimes tangles the threads of its own storyline. At different moments in the story, it is hard to tell which voice to pay attention to. Since the format is more freeform than Persepolis, onto which Satrapi imposes a fairly rigid grid like more traditional graphic novels, the order in which readers of Dare to Disappoint should proceed through speech bubbles and asides by other secondary characters is not always clear, and some of the meaning can get lost in the process of hunting for the “correct” next step. Characters like the bird narrator further confuse the story. I was not sure if the bird was its own character or supposed to represent the author’s voice in the present making judgements about her past life. The bird educates readers with facts like, “At the end of WWI, Greeks invaded Izmir, and Atatürk and his soldiers took it back” (32); but it also makes mean remarks such as “She dropped the ball. Again.” after Özge gets suspended (128). I also was not sure whether the square boxes that hold explanatory information and point at characters are the author’s voice in the present or the past, or some third party. One on page 96, pointing to a boy whose mother brags he scored very well on his secondary school exam, states apparently objectively that he “has no friends, no hobbies, no social skills.” Is this judgement passed by the teenage or the adult Özge? Since the distinction between these voices is unclear, this box simply comes off as a mean, petty dig at the boy’s success, as if the adult author is still bitter this unpopular boy scored well and she did not. She may not have intended to send this message, but it is sent anyway.
My observations sound like criticisms of Samancı as an artist, but I really enjoyed reading Dare to Disappoint and generally appreciated its unconventional format. I merely mean to point out that well-intentioned artists can skew their own message by making certain stylistic choices. Satrapi is much more successful in this regard, as she keeps the voices of her narrator and the characters all distinct.
Since I have spent most of this post talking only about the form of these books, and not their content, I want to highlight a few themes or moments in each that I appreciated. Aware of her own privilege as a member of what appears to be an upper middle class (if not upper class) family, Satrapi deals a lot with class hierarchy in the book. She notes that her father has the financial stability to bribe the police officer about to search their home (110), and that her aunt, “who [knows] some bureaucrats in the education system,” secures Özge a spot at a new school after she gets expelled from her old one (144). Some part of me wishes she had addressed her own high social status a little more explicitly (she claims “it was a real struggle to find another school that would accept me,” but a lower-income family with fewer connections would undoubtedly have struggled much more), but, unlike Samancı, being explicit is not her style (144). I give her credit for at least bringing up the topic of class often throughout the book. And she makes sure to introduce lower-ranking individuals, such as her maids, by their name, and to tell their story, so readers get a sense for experiences in this place and during this time period outside her own. Samancı more explicitly addresses themes such as gender, and I appreciate her educational project about women and Islam. Like the BBC video we watched last class, “Things Not to Say to Someone Who Wears a Burqa,” Samancı appears to dismantle myths about Muslim women, but I like her approach more. She demonstrates that some people within the Muslim faith call other Muslims “radical Islamists,” as the girls at Özge’s science high school label the boys there (113). Furthermore, Özge’s roommate Merve still wants to veil but cannot because the practice is forbidden at school, and Özge expresses her support, stating, “We should all be able to do what we want” (114). This scene sends the dual message that not all Muslim women want to be unveiled, and that Muslim women do not always impose their choices onto others (in fact, many do not!).
Told through the lens of girls who grow up Muslim, these two books explore many of the themes we have discussed in class: gender, Islam, bourgeois values, feminism, nationalism. I want to reiterate that although I have some reservations about Samancı’s artistic choices, my criticism does not prevent me from enjoying Dare to Disappoint. I recognize that books like these, addressing the subject of “Muslim women” (and revealing all the diversity that seemingly monolithic phrase actually entails) for a Western audience, often come under stricter scrutiny because there are fewer such books. Dare to Disappoint and Persepolis are thus held to higher standards than other graphic novels, simply because they deal with subject matter about which many members of their target audience are ignorant. Expectations were similarly high for Greta Gerwig, as she has directed several female-driven movies in the past two years and thus was expected to create a feminist retelling of a classic novel. Overall, both Samancı and Satrapi strike a good balance of storytelling, autobiography, and education, and I look forward to discussing them in class.
No comments:
Post a Comment