“Is it manipulative? Sure. But that’s how you tell stories”: The graphic novel, metahistory and the artist in The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye

Abstract

Sonny Liew’s graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye has become a cause célèbre in contemporary Singapore. Much popular discussion of the novel has, however, been reductive, often describing it as simply presenting alternative histories in contrast to a hegemonic historical narrative celebrating Singapore’s rise as a developmental state. Close reading of the novel’s use of both graphic and textual elements reveals that The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye does not simply counterpoise other histories to a dominant national narrative, but rather asks questions about the historical memorialization of decolonization and storytelling in a postcolony such as Singapore. While the medium of comics provides Liew with an expanded toolbox of metafictional techniques, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye also celebrates the redemptive possibilities of narrative. In doing so, and through its status as a fictional biography, it also asks uncomfortable questions regarding the agency of the artist, and, by extension, the individual, in a society marked by postcolonial processes of neo-liberal subjectification, questions that resonate beyond the city state of Singapore itself.

Keywords:

• Singapore
• graphic novel
• biography
• metafiction
• historiography
• Lim Chin Siong

Notes

1. I am grateful to Liew for explaining the genesis of and public reactions to the text in an email on September 4, 2015. All details and perspectives provided by Liew in our email exchange are acknowledged as his.

2. Osamu Tezuka (1928–89) is widely regarded as the most significant figure in the post-war development of Japanese manga as an art form.

3. I owe this suggestion to Deborah Shamoon.