![Sample our Arts journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110799/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Arts.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This paper contrasts two opposite approaches within the presently booming field of comics on migration, namely Paula Bulling’s German documentary comic book Im Land der Frühaufsteher (In the Land of Early Birds or Early Risers) and Shaun Tan’s wordless fictional narrative The Arrival. Both engage with the topic of migration and aim to (re)create a sense of foreignness and alienation for their readers that mirrors the experiences of the characters portrayed in the comics. However, the paper suggests that The Arrival leaves readers with a sense of strangeness mastered and enjoyed while Im Land der Frühaufsteher elicits a sense of constant confusion. Drawing on research on the rhetorical effects of narrative beginnings, the paper demonstrates that the reader’s initial experiences with the text foreshadow the reading experience of the entire graphic novel. It then discusses two aspects of specific relevance to the theme of foreignness: first, the relationship between different points of view and the depiction of communication and second, the use of visual strategies ranging from a visual mode to specific symbols. It also reflects on the autobiographical background of both comics and the ethics behind the authors’ different uses of the theme of foreignness.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Nabizadeh (Citation2014) traces the effect of ‘visual melancholy’ back to the use of visual codes an aspect basicially expanded and confirmed by Groensteen (Citation2015), while Banerjee (Citation2016a, Citation2016b) interprets the function of specific elements within the narrated world in the light of recent cultural theories. The three scholars engage in detailed analysis and express their admiration for Tan’s artistic achievement. In contrast, Boatright (Citation2010) compares the usefulness of three graphic novels, including The Arrival, for teaching critical literacy in classes of immigrants, and dismisses Tan’s work as escapist fairy tale. This notion is challenged by Gross (Citation2013), who places Tan’s surrealist world in the tradition of wordless graphic novels in the early 20th century that present dystopic rather than utopian modern mega-cities (further discussed in the second section of my article). My approach is similar to that of Nabizadeh in that it explores the artistic and narrative devices leading to a certain effect, but also interested in the potential of influencing political attitudes on immigration.
2. ‘As any reader knows, a book can offer a vast amount of information before the “first” page. But why, one wonders, do some books display the title no less than three times in succession? None will dispute the cover: printing the title there seems obvious and right. Even the title page, listing the title, author, and publisher, passes with little argument. But why this in-between page, this unneeded repetition between the two? Why, in the words of old-fashioned bookbinders, this bastard title?’ The answer can be found in the following sections of ‘A History of the Bastard Title’ by librarian Andrea Koczela (Citation2013); the terminology of ‘old fashioned bookbinders’ is codified in De Vinne (Citation1904) (here: 30, note 1).
3. After a first reading of the book, one might recognize that the third person from the right, wearing a checkered cap, is the author, and that the third person, a woman with long hair wearing pants, is a German friend who goes with her to visit the asylum seeker’s home (cp. 26).
4. All in all, however, I agree with Nabizadeh’s interpretation: ‘The first page only contains a narrative flow in retrospect’ (Citation2014, 373). Her analysis of this sequence is much more accurate than the vague comments in Johnston (Citation2012), 427–428.
5. For an analysis of material culture in The Arrival see Banerjee (Citation2016a); Johnston interprets the relation between opening and closing sequence convincingly in terms of a ‘chronotopos of threshold’ (Citation2012, 435–436).
6. For a thorough analysis of this aspect in the context of posthumanism and animal studies, see Banerjee (Citation2016b).
7. Nichols (Citation2001, 99–100) identifies five dominant modes for film documentaries, namely the ‘poetic’, ‘expository’, ‘observational’, ‘participatory’, and ‘performative mode’; Lefèvre (Citation2013) applies them to documentary comics, observing that in comics, ‘we can only speak of a pseudo-observational mode, because there is no camera to register directly the world’ (56).
8. See her comments in Bulling and Heywinkel (Citation2012) and the interpretation offered in Kesler (Citation2012).
9. Paula Bulling was born in West Berlin in 1986 and started studying ceramics and applied art in Halle, Sachsen-Anhalt in 2008.
10. She lives in Aziz’ home, see two paragraphs below.
11. Image cited on: http://paulabulling.net/projects/im-land-der-fruhaufsteher/.
12. E.g. ‘Wir leben hier in eine Knast, der seine Name nicht sagt’ (32): ‘We live here in a jail that doesn’t say its name.’
13. As Heidemann (Citation2011, 38) observes with reference to Moffat (Citation1979) and Rosaldo (Citation1993 [Citation1984]), a self-reflexive attitude is a basic requirement of postmodern anthropology. Consequently, anthropological documentaries tend to employ the ‘participatory mode’.
14. Exceptions occur at the beginning and the end, where the mother’s and girl’s perspectives are taken into account and in the tales of three other immigrants. However, all these perspectives are those of future emigrants or recent immigrants and thus variations of the main protagonist’s experience, with no fundamentally different perspective.
15. Kesler (Citation2012) ignores this development when he states that the photographer’s racism reduces Faríd to his contours.
16. Other examples: the use of fruits from a slot machine (17) in different contexts (21; 42); the optical fusion between the drawing Paula and the portrayed girl (22); the empty space around Fatma watching television (35); Farid’s silhouette over the interior of a railway station (74).
17. A formulation by Nichols (Citation2001, 130/131), cited by Lefèvre (Citation2013, 57).