Damian Duffy & John Jennings, The Hole: Consumer Culture Volume I – A graphic novel (Chicago: Front Forty Press, 2008), $30.00, 168 pages, ISBN 0977868923—Georges-Claude Guilbert, Université François Rabelais – Tours
Front
Forty Press is an independent publisher based in Chicago. Its founder
and director, Doug Fogelson, is well-known for publishing original,
daring products. Short Stories Illustrated by Artists (2007)
is a good example. The people of the (very) creative team at Front
Forty Press have set up a tradition of double blind collaboration:
pairing “writers and visual artists together […] without
ever having the artists interact with one another at all.” They
also finance very “noble” projects, “pro-bono,”
such as Inner City Lights (2006), “a group of dedicated
teachers who give urban youth a chance to develop their creative process.”
Rarely
has a graphic novel been more worthy of the label. This book is an
ambitious piece of work which tackles an inordinate amount of issues.
Gender, sexuality, economics, class, race especially, it is all there
for the reader to enjoy and leisurely process. Food for thought if
ever there was any.
A
book of this sort should not be summed up, supposing such an undertaking
were at all possible. Suffice it to say that as an academic I would
not hesitate to include it in an African American Studies compulsory
reading list. If forced to provide but two words of description, I
dare say “postmodern voodoo” might do. It deals notably
with the avatars (very much in the proper sense of the word) of Papa
Legba (from Africa to the Americas, complete with linguistic idiosyncrasies),
and with the way the “social, economic, and racial politics”
in / of the US have resulted in a negative representation of voodoo
in popular culture.
Entirely
in black & white and various shades of grey, the vivid, crude
drawings jump out of the 168 pages to aggress the reader, in the best
sense of the verb. In terms of narration, anything goes: intradiegetic,
extradiegetic, homodiegetic (sometimes autodiegetic), heterodiegetic
narrators, experimental dialogue, etc. The most interesting feature
of The Hole: Consumer Culture in that respect is the play
on frames. The authors cleverly frame—or seemingly
refrain from framing—the action by taking all sorts of liberties
with the usual conventions; obviously this has been done before, but
they still manage to renew the device.
As
far as influences are concerned, one has to go back to the 1960s and
the underground press of New York or San Francisco to find some elements.
But there are also shades of 1970s alternative French comics. As far
as today’s production is concerned, this book has more to do
with the Avatar school than Marvel or DC comics, except that Avatar
is Disney compared to The Hole. But the overall aesthetic
choices clearly mean to invoke hip hop visuals. It is, incidentally,
very violent, and the sex scenes are entirely uncensored, so perhaps
one should insist on the “mature reader” tag.
What is most
interesting is the way the theme of transformation is treated. Every
natural or supernatural character undergoes transformations. From
the most (apparently) minute alteration to the most spectacular transmogrification,
reincarnation—often in the most (deliciously) horrendous literal
sense—rebirth, regeneration, etc., the way people are swallowed
up and spat out again, through variously disgusting natural or supernatural
orifices, is fascinating. One feels very much as if one were witnessing
an attempt by voodoo practitioners and victims to literalize all sorts
of Freudian tropes, while simultaneously acting out Jungian ill-digested
myth rewrites.
As far
as genre is concerned, The Hole: Consumer Culture could be
seen as horror, or Science Fiction. It definitely qualifies as a satire,
as well as a treatise on Media Studies, I suppose. In more ways than
one it functions as a political denunciation of the commodification
(and recuperation) of African American culture (including voodoo?),
whatever “African American culture” may mean. It is not
altogether clear, however, if the Caucasians who buy (into) it are
more targeted than others. Some of us, for example, frequently question
the political implications and / or social effect of the purchase
in massive numbers of gangsta rap albums by middleclass white boys.
The authors
are “eggheads,” evidently. Damian Duffy is the editor-in-chief
of Eye Trauma Comix. John Jennings is an Assistant Professor of Graphic
Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a
co-founder of Eye Trauma Comix. As a Cultural Studies exponent I thoroughly
approve their creed: “The group is committed to adding its critical
and scholastic efforts to the efforts of other comics advocates who
encourage academic respect for the medium and keep it in the consciousness
that comics is an art form.” (<http://eyetrauma.net>)
Duffy
does not pursue a career in academia. He is a writer, a letterer,
a curator of comics art shows. As “eggheads” with avowed
interests in educational enterprises, they have helpfully provided
paratext with The Hole: Consumer Culture: biographical notices, bibliography,
short essays, glossary; it is all there. There is even a lesson plan
of sorts. In fact there is a Gender Ad Project that is disturbingly
similar to some assignments I myself have been known to dole out:
Are gender roles sold to us? Do we buy them? Go to the bookstore, pick up a men’s magazine and a women’s magazine. Compare and contrast the advertisements in the two different magazines. Choose a product (e.g. toothpaste, hair gel, a candy bar) and make two ads for that product, one to sell to men and one to sell to women. What do the ads say about their target genders […]? (162)
I do hope this is “for real,” and not meant to mock us
poor Gender Studies specialists. It sounds terribly dated, so one
cannot be entirely sure. But when it comes to such problematics, there
are not so many new schemes one can conjure up to help one’s
students develop a healthy distance from the essentialist chow they
have been fed all their lives.
I was
expecting to find bell hooks somewhere and I am glad to say she is
indeed referenced, especially, of course, her indispensable We
Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinities (1992). As a matter of
fact, many aspects of the book really do make it a work of Gender
Studies, or more particularly of Men’s Studies, and indeed more
specifically of African American Men’s Studies—a textbook,
practically, and that is meant as a compliment.
©
2009 Georges-Claude Guilbert & GRAAT
