9/11, image control, and the graphic narrative: Spiegelman, Rehr, Torres

Abstract

This essay examines three graphic narratives – Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers, Rehr’s Tribeca Sunset, and Torres’s American Widow – as individual responses to the events of September 11, and, more importantly, to the dominant reconstructions that emerged in the ensuing months. The depersonalization of the event – inevitable in the (re)presentation of a limited set of images – is countered by those presented in the graphic narrative. These authors re‐appropriate sometimes iconic images to speak of their own experiences of 9/11 and its aftermath. In the interplay of images and text (and the blank spaces between) meanings multiply.

Keywords:

• graphic narratives
• representations of trauma
• testimony
• image and text
• counter‐narratives

Notes

1. Tellingly, in the first chapter of Torres’s American Widow, an entire page depicts people all around the world telling others “Turn on your TV”, emphasizing the manner in which most people first experienced the events of that day (5).

2. Of the (at least) five graphic narratives written on the subject of 9/11, Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers is the only one to have garnered any critical attention (aside from the odd book review). In fact, even in the extensive discussion of No Towers, reference is seldom made to these other texts. As the product of the author of the much‐lauded Maus, it is natural that more attention would be paid to his text, but this disparity also indicates a general turning to perceived “experts” to best explain the trauma to us. But Rehr and Torres offer us very different texts, highlighting the possibility of numerous responses to this tragedy. It is worth noting that aside from the three works examined here, two others have been published in France: Revel’s Le 11^e Jour, and Colin and Cilluffo’s World Trade Angels.

3. Spiegelman is not alone in creating this conflation; see, for instance, Michael Vinaver’s libretto 11 September 2001, particularly the final pages when the voices of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are intermingled and often seem to communicate similar messages.

4. Rehr’s “outsider” viewpoint is perhaps best communicated in a series of drawings entitled September 12. In one of these, for instance, an Arab man sitting in a reading room addresses the reader in three consecutive panels: (1) “To the people of America, 9‐11 was horrible, traumatic, and unprecedented”; (2) “For most Arabs, it was just another day of hijackings, violence and random murder of innocent people”; (3) “Now you know how we feel.”

5. Sandrine Revel, a Frenchwoman, also uses an emotional touchstone to connect with trauma in Le 11^e Jour [The Eleventh Day]. She depicts the ghost of her dead brother appearing to her at key moments during the day.