Images With(In) Books

I was looking up more information about The Arrival and found a wonderful animation adaptation of it (below). I think it does justice to Tan’s story, although it only focuses on the main character and loses some of the other stories that are embedded in the book (specifically the parts that have different colored gutters; some sacrifices probably had to be made when going from book to animation). I particularly liked the use of sound in the animation — did anyone read the book with sound? Below are some points in the video in which sound was particularly effective for me:

• 3:50, when the main character is with all the other newcomers, getting his information taken for his ID. The constant murmur of people in a large, echoey space while you’re trying to get something done is familiar to me (reminds me of when I pass through Grand Central Terminal).
• The cacauphonous sounds at 1:02, which made me uneasy and indicated the uncertain journey the main character had ahead of him, and the one at 1:23, which indicated to me how this new place might be scary
• The rustle of bed sheets when waking up (7:32), of wrapping photos (0:33), and of tying shoes (7:44) bring to life the details of the main character’s daily life

The animation, from its zooming and panning, also really brought my attention to the grainy photorealistic technique that Tan utilized in his images. Additionally, I appreciate how the animator organized the images, shuffling through the square snapshots of the main character’s experiences and spending more time on splash pages. I think these approaches mimicked the pace of the book well.

The Arrival feels like something I can read over and over again, especially if I’m feeling lost, like I don’t fit in, or when I’m in a new place (job, city, etc.) that is brimming with unfamiliar stimuli. I think without words, Tan’s sole use of images both allows me to sort of know what is going on and affords me greater connection with the story because if I want, I can interpret the images subtly in a way that resonates with me. Or, I can see the story playing out in other people’s lives as well. In other words, The Arrival has a universality from demonstrating a wide array of experiences (which may have been lost in the animation).

One of first thing I thought of when I began looking through Shaun Tan’s The Arrival was Dr. Seuss.  This mostly came from the fantastic designs of the creatures and Tan’s alternate industrial style, vividly expressed in The Lost Thing.  This has the odd of affect of combining a sometimes whimsical artistic style with a much more grim subject matter.

This has an interesting way of recreating the immigrant experience in The Arrival.  All of the fantastical beasts, structures, and strange symbols create the feeling of an alien and mystifying world that is difficult to decipher at first glance.  Like the protagonist, we are put into a strange place.  However, in some ways the new city is not entirely unfamiliar.  Even if the shape of the specific objects is unfamiliar, they often still serve recognizable functions and one can guess their analog, such as the flying steam ship-like vehicles and real world blimps.  The landscape is thus not completely incomprehensible.  There’s a layer of familiarity that lets us read what we’re seeing while only making it seem all the stranger with the way it deviates from expectations.

I wanted to mention the white, creature-thing in my last post, but I forgot/it didn’t really fit in with the theme. Again, this isn’t going to be the most literary critique, so sorry about that. But what the hell is that white thing!? Maybe I’m reading into it too much, but when I originally saw it, I thought it was some kind of rodent. The way it moved around his new apartment, or at least the way I imagined it moving (yay closure), seemed very rat-like to me. Later, however, it seems like it started behaving much more like a dog than anything else. Dog is what I’ve settled on for now, but I’m still confused by why it looks the way it does. Obviously Shaun Tan wasn’t just going to draw a regular-looking dog in this book, but it’s also hard to deny that it looks quite a bit like a certain type of human reproductive cell was just given a mouth, eyes, ears, and legs. Also gills. Why the hell would a dog have gills? Maybe it’s not supposed to be any real type of animal at all, but I was hung up on it for a little bit.

So this may not exactly be the most literary of blog posts, but it was something I found interesting as I was reading The Arrival. I totally get that the arrival is a depiction of life as an immigrant and how difficult it is to adapt to a seemingly different world. It dramatically depicts the struggle to adapt to a new culture and the process that many immigrants go through of going to the new country before the rest of their family. At the same time, I found myself losing that narrative a bit and being swept up into a bit of a sci-fi, fantasy, post-apocalyptic narrative. I think the panel that really did this for me was the one in which giant men are sucking people up into vacuums with spotlights honing in on the fleeing crowds (I forget which page this is). I think it was a combination of the perspective of the image as well as the vacuum hose and spotlight, but for whatever reason, this panel really reminded me of the film War of the Worlds. Specifically, it reminds me of the scene in which the giant alien tripods are collecting people. Ultimately, it was really cool to have these two readings side by side, and I often found myself switching back and forth between the two interpretations.

I really enjoyed Shaun Tan’s animation “The Lost Thing.” The way he uses fantastical, science-fiction-like characters to talk about serious themes of belonging and diversity worked perfectly to send a profound message in a light-hearted and enjoyable way, as most children’s books and animations do. The Lost Thing is lovable with its awkward motions and overall clunkiness. It never speaks and goes unnoticed by almost everyone, which enforces Tan’s message regarding the hardships immigrants face as they struggle to find a sense of belonging in a new country. The imagery of the advertisements and building for the Federal Department of Odds and Ends, which render it a frightening, impersonal and cold place, create a statement about the nature of immigration law enforcement. The end of the animation also brings the narrative full-circle. The narrator explains that he doesn’t see many lost things anymore–but maybe it’s just because he doesn’t notice them anymore. This statement reflects his initial comment about how others failed to notice the Lost Thing that he noticed and took home with him. I appreciate Shaun Tan’s adherence to a constant theme in his narratives, which he continually reproduces in unique and creative ways.

As I understand it, Shaun Tan’s work is meant to be optimistic. “The Arrival” is a good example of this sort of mindset in which everything gets better eventually and “once you hit rock bottom the only way you can go is up” etcetera etcetera. So am I the only one who thinks that “The Lost Thing” was exactly the opposite of optimism for the future of humanity?

Let me explain. The short starts out optimistic enough, with the narrator actually noticing the lost thing that no one else notices, taking it in and trying to help it find the place where it belongs. But once he finds it a home the sad reality sets in. Despite his encounter with the strange thing that should have led him to question his life and perhaps the society he lives in -for instance, why is the government trying to get rid of these “lost things”? It’s honestly a bit sinister if you think about it- his life continues on as always. He even states that he has begun to see these odd things less and less, perhaps because he “has stopped noticing them.”

To put it bluntly, nothing has really changed. In fact things have probably gotten worse…

In summary, it seems to me that there are two messages here:

1. If you try to break away from the conforming masses, you will fail.
2. People have narrow focuses -they can see what is in front of them but do not understand the greater implications of what they are seeing.

Pretty pessimistic if you ask me… like something out of 1984…

When reading Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to another graphic narrative that happens to be childhood favorite of mine: Dinotopia. For those unfamiliar with the book, it follows a similar plot arc, in which human characters are thrown into a new world with strange and unfamiliar customs and practices. There is a language barrier, so the protagonists struggle to understand their novel environment, and they are aided by those around them and their dinosaur companions. There are a handful of narrative parallels — adjustment into a new home, the frustration that follows culture shock, fantastical companions (creatures and dinosaurs), and ultimate assimilation — but what really stood out to me was the similarity between the art.

For reference, here is a page from Dinotopia

While it lacks the sepia hue, I feel that it is aesthetically similar to Shaun Tan’s illustrations. In the background, one can see a grand and uniquely constructed city; in the foreground, one sees a wordless exchange between two delegates, each with an interesting creature attending them. There are bizarre and unrecognizable insignias throughout the book, much like the signs in The Arrival. In both graphic narratives, the human characters are dressed more or less abnormally.

While Dinotopia has accompanying words, I feel that The Arrival‘s wordlessness offers a different perspective on an identical sentiment. I feel that the protagonists in each are in awe of their surroundings — in a sense, they are “speechless”. The Arrival takes this speechlessness literally and excludes text altogether, while Dinotopia channels this awe through scarce dialogue and annotated diagrams. Both books relate the tale of very human characters in very inhuman (as we know it) environments. In this translocation can be found the tension (and resolution) of the two texts.

Shaun Tan’s style of near-wordless or mute storytelling is definitely very close to animation. I find it is something that I particularly enjoy. In terms of The Arrival, it is definitely something that employs the themes of homelessness, belonging, and immigration. This brings the book to another level. When themes are reinforced in this way, it means that the artist is thinking on multiple levels of how to communicate the idea. Illustration, especially when there are no words involved is essentially all about communication, and this was something that I fully enjoyed seeing realized in The Arrival.

It was harder to tell with The Lost Thing, because we didn’t see the book, but I think that the work was not as fully realized. I also didn’t really appreciate the CGI animation- Shuan Tan’s handrawn, sentimental style didn’t translate well enough.

In class we have discussed how The Arrival mimics immigration photographs from the early twentieth century because the use of sepia, and the snapshots of daily life. These glimpses into everyday life give us insight to the world immigrants lived in not just from their actions but the emotions portrayed. Of the photos we looked at in class, one that really sticks out to me is the one of the female cell at the police station. The one woman crying out is particularly powerful because she is not posing for this photograph, she is revealing the struggle she is experiencing at that moment.

Shaun Tan does a wonderful job of showing the candid moments in his work. It helps evoke motion from panel to panel but it also expresses the emotion the father and other characters feel. Tan even includes the poised family portraits to contrast those ‘picture perfect’ moments and the natural ones. Their are a lot pages that have these natural moments but I particularly think the page when he getting his picture taken is gut wrenching. There are other sad moments in the story but that last panel on this page to me is the essence of sad anxiety. No words are needed to see how lost and uncomfortable the father is. As he looks to the left of the page you can tell he isn’t just looking to the left, he is looking to the past, to his home- longing to go back. Tan’s ability to express emotion so well makes the book incredibly sad but also happy at times, and it’s also why this book needs no text to express the story.