| Intro to Media Studies final paper |
[Dec. 13th, 2004|09:27 pm] |
Hey kiddaroos, this is one of my final papers that I had to turn in last Friday. Why would anyone be interested? BECAUSE IT'S ABOUT FREAKIN' DICEBOX, Y'MOOKS.
Oo! Put on your Snotty-College-Pretentious-Paper caps, 'cause ol' Erika's got a real treat for ya tonight!
Dicebox, by Jenn Manley Lee, is a comic that takes place over the course of one year following the lives of Molly Robbins and Griffen Stoyka, two homeless middle-age female itinerant factory workers in the distant future. They pick up jobs when and wherever they can, hopping from spaceship to planet on an unpredictable schedule. While a sci-fi story, it is impossible to lump it into any of the common stereotypical categories. It is not an adventure, it is not a hero’s story, and while futuristic gadgetry is present, it is hardly relevent. With most sci-fi stories the location and time are just as integral characters as the protagonists; the audience is there to be swept up in the exotic future. Manley Lee places the chronicle of Dicebox in a science-fiction environment not because that setting is pertinent to the development of the story but because it gives her the freedom to break her characters out of modern day gender stereotypes and rules without having to justify her decision to her audience. Molly and Griffen are the stars of this tale and while they are living in a futuristic world, it is their personalities and interactions that keep the reader’s attention, driving the story forward. In fact, it is easy to forget their science fiction settings entirely, until they specifically have to interact with something unique to their universe; such as being startled by a flying transport’s take-off, having to bring out their futuristic ID cards, needing to locate a high-tech beacon.
Out of her scheduled 36 chapters, Manley Lee has so far produced three over the course of three years. Each chapter is composed of several scenes, much like the set-up of a movie. She began publishing weekly installments on her website in 2001 and in 2003 moved to the subscription comic site www.girlamatic.com. Her reasons for the move were two fold; firstly, it would provide her with a wider audience than she was receiving on her personal, free website, and second, girlamatic.com could provide better storage and bandwidth—a very important factor to consider when putting a work as enormous as Manley Lee’s on the internet. Maintaining space on the internet gets expensive for popular webmasters very quickly, especially when there is a lot of content and a lot of readers. Rather than continually losing her money because of internet fees Manley Lee now earns a profit every time a girlamatic.com subscriber reads her latest installment. Eventually the entirety or her saga will be collected in four complete traditionally published books.
Manley Lee’s choice to use comic storytelling directly assists her goal to discuss topics that would not necessarily be expressed or paid attention to in other mediums. While not impossible, Dicebox really wouldn’t translate well into straight prose. For her to take time out of the story to describe all the science-fiction inventions and settings in novel form would be distracting from her true purpose of telling a story about the interactions of two women; the story would become one about a science-fiction universe. By relying on both image and dialogue, she is freed to tell Molly and Griffen’s story and have her readers accept her depiction of genders.
Animating or producing a live-action version of Dicebox would still not give justice to the story in the way that it’s current comic does. True, both of those previous mediums are also combinations of visuals and dialogue, but to use them would dramatically change the power of the work. Dicebox is a story that needs to interact with its readers. Animation and movies transform viewers in passive receptors, with very little interaction between them and the medium. Sometimes the audience is presented with the opportunity to fast-forward or pause during movies, but that is a very limited relationship. Every one of Manley Lee’s drawings are important and more often than not filled with subtle nuances and details that, while easy to miss initially, are very important to the development and understanding of the story. In the form of comics the viewer can read the text at his or her own speed, picking up Manley Lee’s hints and details in their own time. Her layouts invite the reader to observe her work closely in a pace that is tailored to whatever they desire- since they are the ones controlling it. Molly’s entrance on page one is a panel focusing on her hand touching Griffen’s leg; her right hand is the first depiction of Molly that the audience is compelled to focus on, and yet a majority of readers did not notice that she is somewhat obviously missing a finger. Through this freedom to explore what is present, Dicebox interacts with and even teases its readers. This would be incredibly inconvenient to do in a moving medium where the audience must pick up subtleties at whatever speed is dictated by the camera. Manley Lee would also have to work as part of a group if Dicebox were to be a movie, and in incorporating other people into her project so too would she have to compromise elements. Dicebox would be diluted from its original storyline and goals; which may not necessarily create a bad story, but it would not be the one Manley Lee set out to build. As it stands now the author has complete control over all creative developments, it is entirely her work. Naturally this creative control extends to the visual construction of Dicebox. Manley Lee depicts her comic in painstakingly intricate detail, opting for a much more realistic than cartoon-y depiction. Comments Joe Zabel,
Their realistic rendering gives them credibility. It puts their sexuality in the context of real bodies with anatomical flaws. We flinch at the scar on the back of Molly's leg, and some of us wrinkle our noses at the blonde hair in Griffen's armpits.
Typically, the less defined the lead character’s design is, the easier it is for the audience to identify with and live vicariously through his or her adventures. Fone Bone, from Jeff Smith’s graphic novel Bone, is a perfect example of this practice; the world and characters of Bone are lavishly illustrated except for the three main characters, Fone Bone and his two cousins. These three are extremely simplified because the reader is intended to follow the adventure through their eyes. The more precisely drawn a character, the more likely it is to not resemble the viewer, therefore keeping the two as distinctly separated identities. Dicebox is not meant to be experienced as a first person fantasy, the viewer is instead an anonymous voyeur. The distinct design of Manley Lee’s characters maintains that wall between her audience looking at her work and feeling that they are actually taking part in it.
In distributing Dicebox online she also has access to a much broader audience than the very limited one to be found in comic book stores. Traditionally comic book stores cater to the readers of the superhero genre, and in so doing have an extremely narrow variety of material. Manley Lee comments, “I realized that what I saw as my audience for Dicebox has probably never even stepped inside a comic book store.” Even if Dicebox were to be carried in these specialty stores, the buyers who come in are more likely to not be interested in that type of story, since it has nothing to do with the genre of superheroes. And then there is the cost of producing Dicebox as a series of individual issues to take into consideration. In her own words,
Dicebox always demanded to be a color work--something that is untenable for the average self-publisher, and I couldn't see a publisher that could afford color being at all interested in Dicebox. And by publishing on the internet, I felt I had the chance to figure out how to do the type of art and rendering I want, to explore and play around. When I finally decided the direction I wanted to take the art, more specifically the color rendering, I could always just adjust all previous pages and re-upload them. Which is what I'm planning to do with Chapter 1 and some of Chapter 2.
…
As for the story, I felt free to build the story as slow as I please as long as I keep my audience entertained. And I can treat each chapter as a chapter, as part of an entire story instead of a stand-alone issue. I can let the page count be what it needs to be, not what works with a printer spread.
The internet provides flexibility not available with any other distributor. Online Dicebox is easily accessible to a wide audience, Manley Lee retains full creative control of the story and layout, and she even has the option of modifying her earlier work to make it flow better with later installments.
By placing her storyline in the space-traveling future, the audience already expects and accepts that they will be immersed in different cultures and societies than the one’s present in modern day reality. If Manley Lee were to keep the dialogue and interactions the same, but instead place her work in Portland 2004 she would have to specifically incorporate an explanation to her readers about why she depicts her characters interacting in ways that contradict what is socially expected and considered ‘normal’ by today’s standards. Dicebox begins with Molly and Griffen bickering after getting off an ordinary looking bus and crossing through a meadow to reach a Terminal; from their clothes to their bus to the way they are interacting with each other, nothing implies that they are anywhere other than present-day America. Only on the final page of the scene does a futuristic flying transport burst onto the landscape. Because of the ‘normal’ setup that the viewer was introduced to the story with, the appearance of the spaceship is a shocking departure from where and when the audience assumes that the plot is taking place. Through this selective appearance of a science-fiction device that is not actually necessary to the development of the story, Manley Lee has informed her readers that they need to accept the world of Molly and Griffen as ‘normal’, even though it will be defying their everyday expectations, as well as prepared them to accept the ‘unusual’ ways in which her characters will interact on a sex and gender plane. People travel in space ships. There are no rules for gender or sex hierarchy. Elaborate space stations are stopping points when traveling between worlds. All these statements that currently do not apply in real life are accepted without question when put in the context of a science-fiction setting, allowing the reader to skip the explanation of ‘why are things like this?’ and jump into the actual story development and character interaction. Manley Lee wants to tell Molly and Griffen’s story, not waste time justifying why they behave outside of today’s gender norms.
Molly and Griffen are not the kind of lead women you’d expect to find in the science-fiction genre. Griffen is abrasive, skinny, tall, reactionary, and appears white, while Molly is short, heavier, level-headed, and looks black. Pairing these two visual and personality opposites explains to the reader who they are through their natural interactions with each other; the characters define each other through the course of their conflicts. Visually Molly and Griffen require a second glance (and a third and a fourth), otherwise the viewer is likely to miss vital physical characteristics that, while distinct and even obvious, are easy to overlook on account of their subtly. Comixpedia Reviewer Kim Smuga best describes most readers’ initial impression of Griffen’s unconventional character,
With her angular body and strong facial features, not to mention her abrasive personality, more than one reader – myself included – has mistaken her for a male.
Griffen contradicts today’s popular gender standards. Commonly that kind of ‘masculine’ personality is paired with a body that is obviously female, such as Princess Leia from the movie Star Wars. Or, vice-versa, a character that acts ‘feminine’ by cultural and societal standards will physically appear ‘masculine’, such as the matchmaker from the Disney movie Mulan. This combination of gender balancing within one character paints him or her in easily distinguishable portraits of male or female. In reality, there is a whole gender and identity spectrum filling up the space between those two categories; a spectrum that is regularly denied or simply ignored by popular entertainment. For clarification, “sex” refers to the biological establishment of a body, while “gender” applies to the socially constructed identity(ies) a person connects with (or doesn’t). As an extreme example, someone can be born with a biologically female body and identify as a man. More subtly, someone can be born with a biologically female body and feel that they encompass both male and female qualities as well as something else, identifying with their own unique gender that does not necessarily apply to socially dictated norms. Character development is just one way the author challenges her readers to re-evaluate society’s gender constructions.
Just as societies that adhere to a strict male/female dichotomy revolve every social aspect around those two classifications, so too do all subtle aspects of Diecebox’s fictional world include the defiance of easily classified gender roles. Manley Lee introduces the gender neutral pronoun “peh.” Where “she” refers to women who identify as female and “he” refers to men who identify as male, “peh” is the word for all categories in between those two identity poles. For example, Kari’s sex and gender are impossible to determine based off of a strict male/female split. Kari, the bartender from chapter 1: scene 6, is attractively sex neutral; sporting a soft face with a delicate nose, a black mustache and goatee, and mid-back length flowing hair. Kari’s colorful, elegant clothes are no help in pinpointing a male/female gender either. The use of “he” or “she” would clear this gender ambiguity (from a male/female orientated social perspective, that is.) but Manley Lee never intended this character to fit exclusively into either of those two categories as is proven by Molly and Griffen referring to Kari as “peh.” In Dicebox’s universe, everyone accepts the use of the word “peh” because gender and sex are not expected to fit into easily defined categories, nor are they indicators of status. Manley Lee loves to include lots of extra details in her story; she regularly plays with her audience with cute background details such as naming two of her gender-bending characters “Donny” and “Grae”—an anagram for “androgeny.” Manley Lee makes several references to Molly and Griffen as married, though it is very clearly established that they do not have a sexual relationship. Though it has not yet been clarified in the available three chapters whether they are joking or serious, during a conversation Manley Lee revealed that they are, in fact, legally married. They are married for reasons of convenience (primarily having to do with the care of their bodies when they cannot be responsible for them), but this is not to imply that they do not love each other deeply—if not in the erotic sense of the word. This interpretation of marriage is particularly interesting in light of the political and religious movements taking place currently that are striving to define and defend it as the union between a man and a woman for the production of children. Manley Lee instead depicts an officially recognized union as fundamentally a partnership for each participant's mutual benefit. From her portrayal of Molly and Griffen, Manley Lee obviously respects the role of marriage and approves of it for any people who are consensual, regardless of their motives. Though the sexes are equivalent in terms of power, Dicebox is by no means about a utopian communist society of equality. Classism and poverty are very immediate issues that Molly and Griffen must cope with. Nationalism and race (but in this universe of planet traveling, that may not necessarily be skin color centered) will possibly prove to be other social divisions, but these issues have not really been discussed yet.
In summary, Dicebox is a science-fiction comic because of the freedom it grants Manley Lee to follow her creative agenda and the empowerment it grants to her readers as active participants. She has already delivered an outstanding performance in her first three chapters and gained a very devoted following because of the quality of her work and it can only be assumed that she will continue to develop her theories on gender and sexuality, among many other topics that will require numerous other papers to discuss them. |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
erikamoen's journal
