Deconstruction in the Realm of Graphic
Literature
Abhik Ganguly
M.A. (English)
Department of English
Jamia Millia Islamia
New Delhi, India
Abstract:
Graphic Literature, as a genre, was born in the European continent. In
1833, the first such piece dawned upon the readers in French, ‘Histoire de M. Jabot’ by Rodolphe
Töppfer. Yet, taking nearly a hundred years to catch the fancy of
mass-readers. The Belgian cartoonist, Hergé’s Tintin
comics and American superhero comics like the Batman, Superman brought about
the revolutionary change in the sales of comic books. In India, mythology and
folk-lore inspired graphic literature like the Amar Chitra Katha and Raj
Comics existed. This paper will trace the parallels of history of Graphic
Literature in the West and India and how some creators deconstructed the genre
with their phenomenal works. For example, Moore and Gibbons’ ‘Watchmen’
(deconstructing the myth of American superheroes), Jodorowsky and Moebius’ The
Incal series (deconstruction of sci-fi tropes) and Orijit Sen’s ‘River
of Stories’ (deconstructing the hegemonic media’s reports of tribals
displaced by dam projects).
Keywords: Graphic Literature, Deconstruction,
American superheroes, Science-fiction, Hegemonic media
Telling lore of yore has been known to man-kind since the dawn of
civilization, when the Greek god Prometheus brought fire to the mere mortals.
Myths, gods, stories were often one of the binding factors for the earlier
communities, who’d invoke these legends. Although, the gods and goddesses
themselves existed or not is disputable in itself. What’s not disputable is the
fact these stories gave these early humans a ‘hope’. A ‘hope’ when the mere
mortals didn’t know where to look for the answers to their problems.
Many of these stories were in forms of oral narratives and
cave-paintings. Soon, these oral narratives and cave-paintings evolved into
being written on papyrus documents. The oldest papyrus document is ‘The Diary
of Merer’ (otherwise called Papyrus Jarf). (1)
As publishing got revolutionized with Johannes Gutenberg’s The Gutenberg
Project in 1450, suddenly masses in Europe could now afford to read, what was
earlier available as a ‘commodity’ only to the elites. Soon, writing became a
profession for the middle-classes and a reading audience also emerged. It took
slightly long but the first piece of graphic literature came along in 1833.
Rodolphe Töppfer’s ‘Histoire de M. Jabot’ dawned upon French
readers, chronicling the antics of a middle-class dandy, who tries to move up
the ladder of social mobility and enter the upper-class circle. A Swiss
educator, he was influenced by the movement of Romanticism and used that
influence in his paintings.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (a key German Romanticist) was the one who
pushed Töppfer to get all the seven of his comic strips published in
newspapers. Yet ironically, he didn’t live long enough to see them get
published. Goethe praised the mass-appeal of what was then considered as
“picture stories” (2),a nomenclature for the prototype version of the graphic
literature that was to come later. Töppfer is considered today as a father of
art style for the Modern Comics.
The birth of the nomenclature of ‘graphic literature’ happened only in
the latter half of the twentieth century. Although, comics came into existence
earlier in the form of Hergé’s Tintin comics and commercial comic book heroes
like Superman, Batman (DC) and Spider-man (Marvel), among a many, from the
1930s itself.
The shaping of ‘Graphic novel’ as a marketing phenomenon began during
only in the 1960s. One of the major reasons for the push for the usage of this
term stemmed from the fact that crucial underground publishing circles wanted
their work in the realm of graphic literature to be considered as a ‘high and
serious art’.
The comics culture has been around in the Anglophone world for a far
more relative time than it has been there in India. India has had four major
strains of comic/graphic literature aesthetics. The graphic novelist, Bharath
Murthy in ‘Graphic Novels in India: A Critical View of Artistic Styles’ (3)
explores the background to how the realm of graphic literature came to life in
India in the form of illustrated stories for children.
The first strain of graphic literature in India was inspired by Raja
Ravi Varma's realist paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses as well as figures
from Hindu epic literature like Shakuntala from Ved Vyasa’s Mahabharata.
His works were a fusion of Hindu religious iconography and European oil
painting.
Amar Chita Kathawas
founded in 1967 by Anant Pai. Their illustrations and stories are rooted in
legends of religions and sages, slightly revisionist memoirs of historical
figures, folklore, among a many. Their aesthetics are caught in a flux between
Tradition and Modernity, just like Raja Ravi Varma’s aesthetics were.
The second one is how commercial cinema of India followed into the
footsteps of utilizing mainstream aesthetics and visual tropes from Hollywood
cinema and the same was ended up being done by Indian Graphic Literature
creators. ‘The Adventures of Amitabh Bachchan’ (a ten-part series) was helmed
by Pammi Bakshi of then India Book House in 1984. She fashioned the alter-ego
of the Bollywood actor, Amitabh Bachchan (calling it ‘Supremo’ and leading a
dual life like DC’s Clark Kent) on the likes of “Robin Hood, Phantom,
Superman.” (4) The series was written by Gulzar and illustrated by Pratap
Mulick.
This played into the Indian culture of hero-worshipping of commercial
actors and ‘larger than lives’ these actors often had. Subsequently, such
phenomena haven’t been noticed again in Indian pop culture. But increasingly
tie-in comics have been released as PR materials for Bollywood films like
'Agent Vinod' like ‘The Jungfrau Encounter’.
The third strain looks at the attempts at making an Indian version of
American comic book heroes. Stan Lee created an Indian Marvel Superhero called
'Chakra' and Jeevan J. Kang created a ‘Desi Spiderman’, with costume of
traditional Spiderman infused with dhoti (a traditional Indian lower
male garment) called Pavitr Prabhakar, to cater solely to an Indian market.
There have also been attempts by leading Western comic creators of
taking a jab at recreating Hindu epics like Mahabharata, like Grant Morrison's
18 Days (2014). Morrison said of the piece “Although it has fantastic, mythic
trappings, this is a very modern story of real politik and the failure of
ideals in the face of harsh truth.” (5)Hence, a recontextualizing of story is
visible here, where an old Hindu epic is being brought out for a Western crowd,
who probably won't be aware about the source material at all.
The fourth strain as Murthy points out from the aforementioned essay is
how the “Indian Modernist art inspired attempt to create a new language of what
defines 'Indian' idiom, aesthetics that draw from Bengal school of
appropriating traditional arts that Baroda artists drew from.” For example, the
usage of Gond Tribal Art to create the seminal biography of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar,
‘Bhimayana’.
Now, coming back to Anglophone world, DC’s character of Superman is the
archetype of a comic book hero. Somebody who wears a costume and uses an alias
for bettering the world with their superpowers. The character was created by
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938, both sons of Jewish immigrant parents.
They used their own experiences to craft this alien immigrant character from a
fictional planet called Krypton, which got destroyed.
Though both the creators never confirmed if they were inspired by the
philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the ‘Übermensch’ (the
superior man or a superman). (6) Yet undertones of that Superior Man from
Nietzsche’s ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’, of believing in a universal
grounded ideal and being an example for the human race for somebody to look up
to,were evidently there in DC’s Superman, who stands as a beacon of hope for
the world.
Similarly early renditions of Graphic Literature answered questions of
the cultural problems posited by their generation and expected the elaboration
of classifications and the combination of high and low modes we perceive in
present - day fiction. From 1950s to the 1970s, comics reflected the seismic
social movements in experimental phase of artistic and visual innovations of
American Pop Culture.
Most of these superheroes were made to fight elements like those that
belonged to Communism, Nazism and intolerance that mostly ethnic white
minorities and immigrants experienced. This was largely done to give
individuals new expectations and hopes, an opportunity for an entirely
different world of security and a reward for their hard-work in the land of
milk and honey.
As the relevance of characters like Superman, Batman decreased in the
1980s, many comic creators started deconstructing these characters known to
public for at least five decades. Alan Moore turned the inside out of entire
comic genre with his phenomenal work, ‘Watchmen’. Similarly, Frank
Miller took apart the usual narrative tropes of Batman and instead turned him
into an old figure who makes a comeback from retirement with a morality, which
is extremely questionable.
The methodology used to dissect and analyze the three pieces of graphic
literature in this paper is called ‘deconstruction’. Deconstruction as a
concept was given by the French continental philosopher, Jacques Derrida in his
book, ‘Of Grammatology’. As Derrida himself admitted that deconstruction
happens to be an "anti-structuralist gesture" for "[s]tructures
were to be undone, decomposed, desedimented". (7)
Deconstructionism contends that structures in this
world exist in the form of binaries and end up being the bones of language and
society. A binary comprises of two ideas that are introduced as being in
conflict with one another, automatically getting placed in a hierarchy. Models
that, for example, incorporate good/bad, mind/body, heterosexual/homosexual,
hero/villain. In examining these pairs, deconstructionists find that the line
isolating these contradicting terms in reality helps in connecting them, thus
making them related.
The line that isolates both the contrasting binaries is
the grey zone that Moore explores in Watchmen. Where all the superheroes
suffer from moral dilemmas, differing from the overtly good characters like
Superman, Batman or completely bad characters like Joker, Brainiac. Watchmen is
a group of superheroes in an alternate America where Richard Nixon never lost
the elections due to Watergate scandal and the US won the Vietnam War with the
help of one of the watchmen called Dr. Manhattan.
The novel begins with a superhero called ‘The Comedian’
getting murdered and an outlaw superhero, Rorschach investigating that case. In
this parallel America, Keene Act is passed in 1977 which outlaws all
superheroes except for Dr. Manhattan who works for the US Government and the
Comedian. This eventually leads Rorschach to discover the plan set up by Adrian
Veidt alias Ozymandias, who wants to unite humanity of the world in the veil of
an ‘alien attack’ and kill a couple of millions in order to save billion.
Rorschach falters in stopping Ozymandias and gets murdered by Dr. Manhattan.
Ironically nobody else possesses superpowers except Dr.
Manhattan, who possesses God-like powers of invincibility, growing in size and
being able to see all of past, present and future simultaneously unlike humans
who experience time linearly. A deconstruction of his character shows that he’s
completely aware of Ozymandias’ plan yet he doesn’t stop him as he feels it’s a
bigger necessity to unite the opposing powers of the USA and USSR.
Dr. Manhattan eventually gets detached from humanity as
he sits on the planet, Mars and realizes the futility of living. For him, death
doesn’t hold any meaning as the realizations hits him that he’ll end up losing
everybody he loved once. Yet he’ll live on as an immortal god. In one panel, he
admits “I am tired of Earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the
tangle of their lives.” (8)
The character of Dr. Manhattan appears like a
deconstructed version of DC’s Superman. He’s somebody who wants to help all of
humanity in world peace but doesn’t mind a million innocents getting killed off
as a means for achieving that. Unlike Superman, Dr. Manhattan gets detached and
is a far cry from being the ‘morally supreme figure’ inspiring hope, truth and
justice that the entire human race could look up to.
Moore took inspiration and deconstructed DC’s Batman
into two characters in his world, where one was the superhero Nite Owl, who has
all the first-world gadgets and technologies of Bruce Wayne yet lacks the charm
of Bruce Wayne. Whereas the other character is Rorschach who has the detective
skills of Batman yet violates Batman’s rule of ‘no killing’ and kills his
nemesis.
Rorschach is like a traditional comic book superhero in
following the binaries of good and evil to death. Yet, he doesn’t realize that
he’s violating his own humanity by stooping to that extreme low where his
villains belong. He’s also a deeply misogynist and homophobe at heart. Moore
created the character to satirize the Ayn Randian philosophy of ‘objectivism’
and how much harmful and immoral it can be.(9)
The graphic series’ narration is that of a
postmodernist one in a non-linear style. It is also characterized by the use of
metafiction of a story within story, marked by its own self-reflexivity when
one of the characters in the series reads an in-story pirate comic called ‘Tales
of the Black Freighter’. Moore uses the story to deconstruct not only the
‘superhero genre’ but also uses the space to reflect upon the socio-political
anxieties of the 1980s like a Cold War led nuclear attack.
Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius’ ‘L’Incal’ (The
Incal) published originally in French from 1980 to 1988 is a sprawling
space-opera set in a dystopian future. Jodorowsky is a noted Chilean French
film-maker. Surrealism and psychedelia were two common themes in his films like
El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973). Critics like Peter
Schjeldahl described El Topo as "a very strange masterpiece"
and added “surreal and crazy it may be, but it is also (one realizes the second
time through) as fully considered and ordered as fine clockwork." (10)
Jodorowsky was supposed to adapt and bring Frank
Herbert’s Dune to celluloid in the early 1970s. He’d even prepared the story
boards yet the funding for the film dried up and he eventually had to abandon
the project. He ended up using those story boards for ‘The Incal’ series. Jodorowsky
essentially deconstructed the genre of science fiction narrative tropes with
the infusion of a strange spirituality and mysticism.
There are a lot of binaries in the series for example,
the binary of rich and poor. The rich, which are mostly well to do people and
aristocrats, live at the top of the planet Ter21 whereas the poor, mostly
minorities of all sorts, live at the lowest pits of the planet. A standard TV
program is played at the top, a sort of panopticon dystopia.
The presenter Diavaloo guides the audience through
filmed violence that is for the public to consume till the point they’re
rendered useless with indoctrination, even their dreams being controlled. The
deeply opposing binaries are made to connect by Jodorowsky. Despite the
extensive brainwashing of state propaganda and control over the agency of
individuals, rebels are there on this planet as well.
There’s a recurring binary of masculinity and femininity
in the series as well, the line connecting them of androgyny is the grey zone
that Jodorowsky explores spiritually. DiFool becomes more androgynous when he’s
getting enlightened and remains ruggedly masculine when he’s still drowned in
hedonistic pleasures.
The binary nature of the Anima is present in the Incal
story: Di Fool realizes like other male characters Anima is his external reason
for being and that ‘they have met her before’. She is a manifestation of
Jodorowsky’s inspiration of Carl Jung’s concept of 'every man carrying a
woman within himself’. (11)She’s the internal, grounding voice of reason and
she alsohelps the protagonist concentrate on his spiritual journey.
The multiverse created by Jodorowsky delves deeper into
this binary of masculinity and femininity by exploring the dualism of
patriarchy and matriarchy. The depiction of the grand androgyny figure,
‘Emperoratrix’ shows how the creator dabbles in the interplay between the
binaries of masculine and feminine.
The Emperoratrix’s pronouns are ‘He/She’. They are the
ruler of an alchemical planet of gold and preside over a parliament of the
human universe. The bound together parts of masculine and feminine is likewise
one more reference to the mysterious 'synergy of the contrary energies'. The
significance of the equilibrium of the masculine and feminine to attain wisdom
is shown with the setting of the androgyne, as the leader of this realm.
Orijit Sen’s ‘River of Stories’ (1994) was perhaps the
first Indian graphic novel to be published which differed from the usual
hegemonic tropes of superheroes and mythological literature instead talking
about the issues faced by tribals due to dam projects, thus acting as journal
of sorts which instead of entertaining tries to educate its readers. The
eminent sociologist, Amita Baviskar hand-lettered the book.
Sen’s own participation in the ‘Narmada Bachao Andolan’
gave him a ground perspective of the large-scale displacement and loss of land
the tribals were facing. (12) Sen managed to deconstruct the binaries of
mainstream culture of technology, modernity at the expanse of nature
conflicting with the way of life in close harmony with nature led by the
Adivasis.
He further delves into it by using the character of
Malgu Gayan using his ‘rangai’ to sing the songs of creation of rivers
and the need to protect them, for they are life-sustainers. Another binary that
Sen manages to take apart with extreme nuance is the issue of social class of
the mainstream and that of the Adivasis.
The journalist Vishnu asks his domestic help Relku
(herself an Adivasi) about her family life, who tells him how they were
displaced from their lands and suffered discrimination by police authorities.
Media often plays into this by ‘otherizing’ tribals and the mainstream never
gets to know how the tribals have had their own traditions of knowledge and
culture of conserving ecology.
The model of ‘development’ offered to the tribals
doesn’t even help them in long run as depicted by characters like Relku where
tribals get trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty and wither away their life,
doing menial jobs in cities. One Sarkari Babu at the beginning asks the
Adivasis the meaning of development, he responds to his own question — “…your own
son can get education...” (13) and earn money to become modern.
The contrasting binaries of social class of the two
groups is quite evident here as one group believes it's got a higher moral
ground because of the ‘formal education’ they got and is rather trying to
‘civilize’ the tribals who are apparently without any knowledge or culture. Relku
sees in her childhood, how modern ways and their vices get introduced as alcoholism
and gambling, ‘the Sarkari people and Thekedars effectively take away their lands
and livelihoods’. (14)
Once the Adivasis lose their lands, they also lose a
part of their hearts, their culture, stories, mythologies as their communities
fall apart and they get displaced like Relku and her brother. Thus, Sen shows
the readers how movements like ‘Narmada Bachao Andolan’ eventually end up
becoming a battleground for the survival of the soul of these tribal
communities in face of ‘development’.
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