Magical Realism, Tough Issues, and the Graphic Novel Form
In
this brief essay, I would like to share about two books that have recently been
published that struck my interest. I love how, in the middle of a perfectly
mundane narrative that initially feels like a typical text, creative authors
and artists interject unexpected characters and moments to take the story to
new places.
One
example of this is the graphic novel, Lizard
in a Zoot Suit, written and illustrated by Marco Finnegan (Graphic
Universe, 2020). The book is set to be released May 5 in the United States and
features a canary yellow motif that carries through its panels. The story is
set in the early 1940s and brings the sense of place to the read, in part by
the way characters are depicted, but also in part by the way language takes
shape around ethnicity. This includes what the author calls “animosity toward
Mexican Americans,” (p. 137). In the midst of this racial tension, a character
enters the scene who serves as a kind of help or guide.
Of
course, given the title of the graphic novel, that character happens to be a
lizard, who is often drawn in a zoot suit. The fanciful addition to the story
helps the author take on a critical topic and do so in way that is illustrative
and unexpected.
Working
in a similar yet different fashion, artist and author David Jesus Vignolli has
recently published the book New World (Archaia,
2019). The color scheme of this book begins in a style that almost resembles parchment
and alludes to a historic time period and realistic figures. When a character
encounters the new world, we see it blazing in green in his eyes in a series of
panels that close in like camera frames.
By
the time we reach the next page, the colors of this new world have exploded in
a rich spread and soon enough we realize that, though the themes of captivity
and imperialism are present in the book, the inclusion of elements like a giant
parrot which the characters can ride on lends a fanciful sense to the text.
Ironically,
both of these books take on issues of tension and racial oppression, and do so
in a way that invites elements that open the reader up to the central message
of depicting a history of ill treatment of groups of people. What is accomplished
with the inclusion of magical realism does not, at least for me, deaden that
message, but rather seems to say:
See what a world this is? See how
people have treated one another, and continue to treat one another? This world
is different, but it is also our own.
It’s
a message that I appreciate in this visual medium, and it is both textually and
ethically compelling.
Monday, March 2, 2020, Mary and I walked one block down
McKnight Road to where the 74 bus runs.
We caught the bus around 8 am and made it to the airport to catch the
direct flight from MSP to Puerto Vallarta… a good friend was getting married
there on Friday, March 7, and we wanted to spend a few days enjoying the warm
Mexican sun… we stayed at a small hotel
near downtown that wound up being a lot of fun…
it had lovely clean and well maintained rooms and a nice bathroom… the reviews on line said the beds were
comfortable and breakfast was included, so in the morning before we left for
the airport, we booked the hotel…
Puerto Vallarta is in the same time zone as MSP, even though
it is on the Pacific coast of Mexico and flying in over the green and lush
looking Sierra Madre mountains, the big jet swoops down over the coastal plane,
over scattered squares of fields and lands at the smallish Puerto Vallarta
airport… leaving the airport is a mad crush of people, nervous tourists,
intense time share sales people, taxi touts, bus touts, and assorted waiting
people… turning to the left from the airport building, it is just a five minute
walk to the bus stop… for ten pesos
(about $.50), the bus goes the short 4 or 5 miles, past the cruise port, past
the fancy shopping mall, past Walmart and Sam’s club to the area where the
fancy resort hotels start… and after a
half hour or so of bumpy cobblestones, we got off the bus two blocks from our
hotel… the hotel had a tiled lobby with
a small reception desk… we got to our
room with the help of an ancient bell person and found it very nice if a bit
small, just as the reviews had said…
we strolled around the area a bit and looked at the shops on
our way a couple blocks to Pepe’s Tacos which was said to have excellent tacos
al pastor… we found Pepe’s to be a small
unpretentious local eatery with a huge al pastor roll on a rotisserie in front
of a fire and so, we got the tacos al pastor which were delicious along with a
plate of onions grilled in a salty sauce (soy sauce??)… the young men serving were friendly and full
of good humor and it was a super fun meal…
we went back twice during our visit…
as we have gotten older, travel sort of wears us out, so we were ready
to sleep after our amazing dinner… the
next day, we did some shopping and walked to the fancy hotel that we were
moving to on Thursday, just to see what it was like… nobody seemed to care, so we spent the
afternoon sitting in their beach chairs looking at the ocean…
in the downtown area, restaurants were everywhere and every
one we tried was very good… Mexican food
is one of the world’s great cuisine and even in modest restaurants, the Mexican
people seem to enjoy making and sharing their specialized spicy and delicious
dishes… one night, I had a lovely red
snapper fresh caught and grilled over a wood fire with rice, vegetables and
amazing fiery salsa… and we spent one evening on the Malecon which is a
waterfront embarcadero that faces the sea and runs for about a mile across the
front of the downtown area… locals and
tourists mingle to watch the sunset and patronize the many bars and restaurants
that look out over the beach…
on Thursday, we moved to a much larger and fancier resort
hotel and our two daughters joined us…
from the eighth floor room, we had a gorgeous view of the entire Bahia
de Banderas which is a large semicircular bay bounded by blue green mountains
with Puerto Vallarta in the middle… the
fancy resort hotel was a large beige tile, open air lobby leading out to brick
paths through the landscaped grounds of rich tropical plants and palm trees to
an enormous sprawling series of swimming pools surrounded by very nice
restaurants and bars and ending with a couple dozen large thatched umbrellas in
a roped off area for residents (like me LOL) to lazy to do anything else, to
sit in the shade, watch the surf roll in and read, or in my case work on
drawings… I have been told that all of
the beaches in Mexico are open to the public so that the hotels cannot have
their roped off, private grounds extend closer that about 67 feet from the high
water mark… so, as you sit there in the
shade, there is a constant parade of people with all kinds of trinkets and
souvenirs to sell… but they are not
allowed on the hotel territory, so they
walk along outside the ropes… many of
them will have cases full of fake silver jewelry and you will see hawkers
holding up all kinds of table cloths, blankets, sarongs and sombreros…
on Friday, we walked to the even fancier hotel where the
wedding was… we had arranged a day pass so we could attend the wedding
and hang out with our friends who were there…
the wedding was beautiful, on a paved courtyard next to one of the
swimming pools and looking over the beach…
the bride was lovely in a creamy dress and the groom seemed calm in a
blue guayabera shirt… we then had a nice
dinner at the buffet topped off with tres leches wedding cake… the next day we also spent at that resort
visiting with our friends although I actually slipped away to a shady spot on
the beach to finish my drawings…
Sunday, we spent back at the resort where we were staying
with a meal at another amazing restaurant just a few short blocks from the
resort… on Monday, we flew back
home…
this is a week where all the news in the US is about the
spread of the Coronavirus… we did not
see any sign of it during this trip…
usually, I avoid political comments altogether… but, this pandemic seems
to have such a large political dimension, that it requires comment… also, I
worry about all of the workers in the US and around the world who are losing
their incomes due to the spread of this disease and the lack of tourism which
is the main income for people in many parts of the world…
whatever the outcome of this particular pandemic, it seems
to me idiotic that it caught the United States so completely off guard that as
a I write this, all the news is about how we are scrambling to get together
materials and resources which we may need if the epidemic gets seriously worse
in the United States… it seems to me
that our governmental priorities are pretty much wrong and that a few simple
changes would make this a much better place to live and vastly improve our
ability to deal with threats to our health and well being… they say that you get the kind of government
you want and deserve and neither party in the USA seems to me to be headed in
the right direction…
if it is true that our public money is limited, as most
politicians claim it is and must be, then the roll of our elected officials is
mostly to determine what that limit is and then allocate the public money
available to our prioritized needs… the United
States’ military budget is in the neighborhood of eight hundred billion US
Dollars per year… people seem to have no
problem with spending this vast amount of money to see that we have an enormous
military force available if we should need it…
even though, generally, we do not need to use much of it and what we do
use of it is often wasted on controversial and not very productive
campaigns… forty million dollars of that
military budget is now allocated to a space force, on the vague possibility
that we are somehow militarily threatened from space…
I could do a long and detailed analysis to show that three
fourths of this budget is totally unnecessary in today’s world and seems to
exist for no other reason than to give military contractors big fat
contracts… indeed, we spend more on
military than most of the rest of the world put together…
presumably all of this military readiness is to protect us
if a war should come… and we are willing
to pay for it even if there is not a big war going on and hasn’t been one in
seventy years because we somehow believe that this bloated military prevents
war (I would argue that military spending leads to, if not big wars, at least
endless small wars)…
anyway, I would suggest that most of this money wasted on
the military be diverted to spending on domestic projects to make Americans
happier and healthier… including a
vastly upscaled medical establishment to provide extra capacity so that when we
are again threatened by medical catastrophe, we will be able to mobilize a vast
army of care givers to fight against disease and the privations disease causes
around the world… we can do better and
we should do better…
amidst the horror of a World War I battlefield, a poet named
Wilfred Owen wrote a poem about the soldier’s acquaintance with death and
finished on a hopeful note that I think we should take to heart…
Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier’s paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, – knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
(Wilfred Owen was killed in action 7 days before the
armistice that ended that horrible, brutal and unnecessary war) the “greater war” is here now… we have had 101 years to learn the lesson
taught by Mr. Owen’s poem… can we rise
to the challenge? can we put aside greed
and fear and proudly fight together as human beings against our old enemy death
“for lives, not men for flags…”
I had moved
into my own beautiful apartment… the cleanest and the most modern I ever had…
Finally my own place…! as I dreamed to have.
It was spacious with great natural light… and often a quiet place.
Silence,
silence was my companion after every busy work day…
Silence,
Silence, silence began to invade my emotions creating a sense of loneliness
My dream
apartment! My favorite place without people… and without animals… Surprisingly,
it became occasionally a place of sadness!
Then came Tito…! And soon later Chiquis…the
most playful and noisiest Chihuahuas I ever met… the silence, the seldom
sadness and the sense of being physically alone soon disappeared.
Si…! Animals are companions and a special
gift… Silence… became none existent… and after 8 years silence is often a
wonderful opportunity.
