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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
The Drawing of Reality: Truth and Artifice of Comics and Animated Cinema
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
10
Thematic issue / Section thématique
2010-10-01
2022-12-09
2010-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Lawrence Thomas Martinelli
2010/10/01
Università di Udine
2036-461X
14-15
en
The Drawing of Reality: Truth and Artifice of Comics and Animated Cinema
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19329/17201
10
THE DRAWING OF REALITY: TRUTH AND ARTIFICE OF COMICS
AND ANIMATED CINEMA
Lawrence Thomas Martinelli, Università di Udine




   Can drawn representation of reality complete and sometimes replace photographic documenta-
tion of the real? In the absence of official information and of photographic documentation, or in
instances where such data is concealed, in a paradoxical context of overdose of seemingly objec-
tive, complete, updated “24 hours a day” information that produces a rising feeling of frustrating
indifference, the popularity and need of reality expressed through comics and animated cinema
grows increasingly. Almost as if there were more truth in the reconstruction by strips of less
exposed or more hidden pages of history. In animated or drawn narration, where the artifice is
manifest, the manipulation of the image is obvious, and hand-made subjectivity is not confused
with supposed mechanical-photographic “objectiveness,” which can provide the relish of telling
and visualizing political and social issues in total freedom. By studying some cases in which
drawn testimony is made explicit – animated documentaries, graphic reporting, drawn recon-
structions – we try to find cues which help us understand how such forms of hybrid expression
can contribute in establishing a truth that derives from the pluralism of notions and also from the
approaches that strive to come to terms with them.
   In my previous paper on Objective and Subjective Documentation of the Contemporary by
Animated Films 1, I examined the motivations that could induce authors to prefer the use of ani-
mation in the presence of authentic material, but in the absence of real live action footage. We
have seen how in such cases visual documentary for completeness of information goes through a
various range of processes of recreation and reconstruction, according to the aims of the anima-
tor-documentary-maker. Taken for granted that animated cinema and documentary film have def-
initely merged into what is commonly defined as animated documentary, or as a form of expres-
sion in the spirit of current times, we focus our attention on the credibility and authenticity of
“artificially” reconstructed accounts of facts, on the balance between objectiveness and subjec-
tivity, on the amount and means of exposure of such a subjective approach and the presence of
the author. In a similar way and with the same aims, we shall also take into consideration the use
of graphic novels and comic art in general which can provide an account of reality in different
ways. We are speaking of that widely developed part of graphical narration produced in the more
recent decades that falls under the categories of carnets de voyages, biographies and autobio-
graphical narrations, reportages, graphical journalism.
   Both in animated documentaries and in what we shall here call “non-fiction comics,” the
moment of visualization of reality is openly artificial. Especially with “hand-made” techniques,
namely by drawings (but also by cut-outs, modelled clay and puppets), the artificial recreation of
reality is manifest. While the use of digital animation or digital illustration may straddle a wide
line of ambiguity between the real and its recreation, the use of drawings is no doubt related to

CINÉMA & CIE, vol. X, no. 14-15, Spring-Fall 2010                                               33
LAWRENCE THOMAS MARTINELLI

the hand of the artist. To the hand and, more obviously than in all the other cases, to the point of
view of the author. Nevertheless, especially when dealing with narration, the rhythm itself of nar-
ration, the layout, the involvement of the spectator-reader, the visual and sound effects may
induce the receiver to forget the presence of the narrator and thus the narrator’s point of view. The
belying subjectivity of the narrator may be therefore overshadowed by the other elements that
make the story credible and authentic. To some authors such a result may be desired (the need to
make it seem or feel real). To others, surely among those who draw their accounts themselves or
have them drawn, to have the presence of the artist exposed is a much more desirable effect.
  So, we are taking a closer look at those works of documentary animation and non-fiction
comics where the presence of the author-narrator is totally exposed, as is the narrator’s point of
view. Mindful of the fact that the reality reported has been recreated artificially on the basis of
the narrator’s choices, we propose to consider three main categories:

  1. The drawn representation of reality (which may or may not include the presence of the
     author as a character within the narration). One example for all: Waltz with Bashir (2008)
     by Ari Folman.
  2. The drawn representation of reality with the evident presence of pictures recreating reality
     (along with remediation) 2. Examples: Little Bird’s Diary (Čiža acīm, 2007) by Edmund
     Jansons, Yellow Sticky Notes (2007) by Jeff Chiba Stearns.
  3. The drawn representation of reality including the representation of the author in the act of
     drawing/recreating reality. Examples: Maus II by Art Spiegelman 3, Carnet de voyage by
     Craig Thompson 4, Il Re bianco by Davide Toffolo 5, Rural! by Ètienne Davodeau 6, È pri-
     mavera by Claudio Calia 7.


The drawn representation of reality
   We shall not insist too much on the simple drawn representation of reality, as it appears to per-
tain to the most common type which is easy to perceive, both in the field of animated documen-
tary films and of non-fiction comics. As an example for all, let us take the animated feature doc-
umentary film Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman. The successful film, included in the official
competition at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival among a number of live action movies, has pro-
vided great support to the consolidation of the animated documentary as an established canon of
cinema. The truly animated documentary film on the 1982 war in Lebanon powerfully exempli-
fies this hybrid expressive form as a means of documenting reality. Not just narrating or invent-
ing stories, but actually documenting them through the use of authentic material, the reconstruc-
tion of facts and proof of what is being presented.
   Though the author-narrator himself is represented as a character within the narration, as he
investigates into the past – his own personal past and the repressed collective recent history of the
massacres in Sabra and Chatila – we never see him as an artist. He is seen as the main character
who is talking to friends and former military comrades, as he gradually uncovers the horrible real-
ity hidden in his subconscious, but we never see him in the act of drawing or the drawings pro-
duced within the drawn story presented. Ari Folman, who is the protagonist in this autobio-
graphical enquiry (though his name is never called) therefore never appears in the act of recreat-
ing reality within the narration itself.



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                THE DRAWING OF REALITY: TRUTH AND ARTIFICE OF COMICS AND ANIMATED CINEMA

The drawn representation of reality with the evident presence of pictures
recreating reality
   We shall focus our attention instead on the evident visibility of the manufactured pictures in
two short animated documentary films. The open revelation of the artifice used in representing
reality is declared from the title itself in Yellow Sticky Notes (2007) by Jeff Chiba Stearns. It is a
visualized meditation of the author’s filmmaking journey, where his internal reflection on his role
as an artist merges into a consideration on the major political and environmental events that
accompany his personal development. The technique 8 used, besides considerations of stylistic
and “economical” 9 order, also implies the manifestation of the artifice in reproducing and recon-
structing reality. In fact Yellow Sticky Notes was animated using over 2,300 yellow sticky notes,
drawn and written with nothing but a permanent black fine-tipped marker. Openly artisanal in its
making, it is a representation of interior and exterior reality with the evident presence of pictures
and handwritten words in animated sequence that are shown in their function of recreating reali-
ty, besides remediating animated film-making. The fact that the technique used is all but high-
tech, with a brilliantly fluid and warm soundtrack 10, highlights even further the “confessed”
manipulation and claim to being subjective when going through general subjects ranging from
9/11 terroristic attacks against the Twin Towers in New York to the Katrina hurricane and aligns
them with his own personal course from his college years to his professional activities.
   With Little Bird’s Diary by Edmund Jansons the presence of hand-made drawings takes on an
added meaning. The first Latvian animated documentary is built upon the original drawings of
Irīna Piļke’s diary, going from World War II to the early 1980s. The live action close-up on the
weary face, intense yet calm, then on to eighty-year-old Irina’s fingers moving the cut-out draw-
ings, open this declared “documentary animation film.” The serenely playful music by Girts Biss
accompanies the film throughout to better serve the emotional reality that is exposed. “I’ve been
drawing my diaries for most of my life, since 1947,” says Irina’s real voice recorded on tape, as
we see the cassette recorder drawn and animated and the protagonist who is visualized with the
young woman interviewing her by use of animated cut-out drawings. “For you these are just pic-
ture books. For me, it’s my life:” the thumbed sepia drawings come to life as Irina narrates her
own past as a fifteen-year-old girl with her mother, when in 1942 the Germans took her father
away. From Southern Germany to Berlin, the war, the sirens and the bombing, and then Katyusha
bullets shooting, images drawn directly on location find again their dynamic context. But Irina
talks about her tragedy in a light-hearted way, with some laughter: “At the end of the war we
were like two birds forced out of their own nest.” The metaphorical comparison with two spar-
rows facing the Reich’s eagle is the eloquent, indelible sign of a “little bird’s diary.” All is sur-
mounted with ironic lightness: the hard work, two marriages, a hospitalization and Stalin’s death,
the British and French empires, the USSR, the DDR, the secessions and the reunifications, as life
flies.
   As we can see, in Little Bird’s Diary the original drawings are remediated in order to relocate
them in their original context, thus documenting more truthfully the reality they represent. Reality
to the narrator Irina, whose voice leads us on, is not only an “objective” registration of facts and
events, but mostly their subjective perception and how they relate to her personal life. This is
probably always true, however objective the documentary-maker tends to be, but here it is more
so as the facts are mediated more or less in real time. Showing such drawings within the film and
showing the act of turning them into the basis of the film’s scenes themselves may be accepted
as a mark of further truth and insight of the reality documented.


                                                                                                   35
LAWRENCE THOMAS MARTINELLI

  Summing up we therefore point out the following specific markers in Little Bird’s Diary:

  a.   Metaphorical imagery.
  b.   Direct mediation of facts through original drawings.
  c.   Remediation of drawings into animation.
  d.   Subjectivity of narrator through voice, private facts, light tone and music.
  e.   Exposed making of film (interview, drawn picture albums).

   Though not strictly connected to the main point of this paper, I think it is noteworthy to high-
light the way in which the structure and use of drawings and animation in this film is even more
complex, particularly in the way colours, techniques and styles are used. So we can see that the
present dimension of the narration is fully coloured, whereas the images drawn in and from the
past are sepia and “oldish.” In several parts the animation exalts the original diary form, which
is iconic. The transfiguration of people into birds is sometimes used as metaphor or irony, as is
the final scene that represents Irina and her friends as a variety of animals toasting to the success
of the film as they wait for the television premier (and so in a future time compared to the mak-
ing of the film itself). In the film there are also sequences of animated pseudo-photographs. As
time passes, and modern cars and bikinis are shown, the drawings become more coloured and
focused. Little Bird’s Diary effectively bridges our previous second point to the following third
one.


Drawn representation of reality including representation of the author in the act
of drawing/recreating reality
  This is the case where we can see in a very explicit manner the total reality including the author,
and thus the mutual effect of the object documented and the documentary-maker in the act of doc-
umenting is conveyed. We can easily perceive how the subject also becomes object and how the
objective merges with the subjective. So the author in several non-fiction comics of the last
decades is part of the narration while drawing or taking notes, often discussing issues concerning
the medium used itself, but also relating to the reality documented of which he or she – during
the moment of observation – is part. By exposing the act of documenting through drawings with-
in the medium used, an act that here means non fiction comics, the authenticity of the reality doc-
umented is completely restored in its objective and subjective components.
  Let us examine this aspect in a few significant works of non-fiction comics. When Art
Spiegelman’s Maus was issued in 1986, a pointed question was raised: can a comic book repre-
sent the Holocaust? A special Pulitzer prize six years later, among other important recognitions,
would settle that controversy for good. Maus is a true reconstruction, based on research and inter-
views, about the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. It re-enacts a part of history made of
concentration camps, crematoriums, gas chambers with the medium of the comics and – what’s
more – it resorts to a typical style and characterization of the medium, through the use of anthro-
pomorphic animals. By representing the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats and those in uniform
and boots as Nazi soldiers, the Americans as dogs and the Polish as pigs, Spiegelman vindicates
the metaphorical validity of the classical comics’ legacy which wavers between fables and reali-
ty. Nevertheless his masterpiece is generally considered as a fine example of authentic historical
reconstruction.

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                THE DRAWING OF REALITY: TRUTH AND ARTIFICE OF COMICS AND ANIMATED CINEMA

  Summing up we therefore point out the following specific markers in Maus:

  a.   Reconstruction based on authentic sources (papers, interviews).
  b.   Re-enactment of history.
  c.   Metaphorical imagery “typical” of the medium.
  d.   Subjectivity of narrator.
  e.   Exposed making of non-fiction comic.

 The narration, where the author pictures himself and his family as mice, develops on three inter-
weaving levels:

  a. On a personal level with the relational tensions between Art and his old father.
  b. On a historical and documentary level based on the tale of his Jewish father’s memories as
     a survivor from Nazi Germany.
  c. On a critical and reflective level concerning the problems of the artist in reporting the true
     history collected from his father.

   Maus testifies the work done to recover his own historical memory, which is personal as well
as collective. The autobiographical elements (the difficult father-son relation, the emotions
expressed by the author-protagonist) add to the subjectivity together with the reconstruction of
the facts experienced and revealed by his father. Spiegelman also draws himself in the act of dis-
cussing his role as an artist and of drawing the story as he collects and edits it. By exposing the
act of documenting through drawings within the medium used, he gives a total possibility of
authenticity. This approach also includes his own active part in the building of a true story, expe-
rienced in person, but regarded at a sufficient distance to turn it into useful material which can
lead to further elaborations, by bringing to the fore personal and political causes and effects.
Thanks to the father’s testimony and to the graphic-narrative re-elaboration of the son, the read-
er is able to know a particular truth about the Holocaust. Though a story of “mice and cats,” the
violence of the SS, the anguish of the victims, the tragic dimension of a story that is not only per-
sonal and that we know to be true, appear in all their reality. Enforced and not belittled by those
aspects of “truly” human defects and contradictions (the father is even a racist against blacks!)
that draws a perhaps less heroic picture, but surely more credible and closer to home.
   Étienne Davodeau is a French author who draws and tells true stories that are inspired first of
all by inquiries and meetings that draw him out of his atelier and enables him to confront the
world outside. To set up his stories, Davodeau reconstructs the facts in their original environ-
ment, gathering information from newspaper scraps and other authentic material, in order to
fully penetrate the reality he describes, relating to it to the utmost degree of direct involvement.
Such is the case of Rural!, a serious graphic reportage done in 2001. As a graphical account of
a real experience lived in the French countryside, it is a vivid testimony of the actual conflict of
ways of thinking and contrasting economical interests between local inhabitants making a living
on their lands and public and private national managers ready to upset their balance. To assure
that all the issues are brought to light, Davodeau physically delves into the situation, and actu-
ally mingles for some time with that social texture, at the farms and houses with the people that
live and work there. He thus manages to provide a real insight of life on the farm today, in par-
ticular of the daily work of three modern farmers, devoid of any ecological rhetoric or superfi-
ciality, though taking a political stand in their favour and of the movement of renewal they
belong to.

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LAWRENCE THOMAS MARTINELLI

  Nevertheless Rural! is not an ideological propaganda pamphlet (yet supported by José Bové’s
Confédération paysanne), but rather the point of view that Davodeau has been able to have by
relating himself to that reality. He shares with the reader the point of view of an insider, by draw-
ing himself within the graphic narration, revealing his direct involvement and depicting himself
in the act of drawing that reality. “Which author – questions Davodeau in the preface to this book
– can assert for sure, once his story has come to its end, that neither his tastes nor his personal
opinions have interfered with his work? Not I.” And to those readers who, in presence of such
warm black and white drawings produced with the fine tip of a pencil, are uncertain on how to
label these 144 pages – documentary? reportage? comic book? – the author answers the latter:
“Finally it is the narration of a piece of dear old reality... It is also, and most of all, a true story.”




1  Lawrence Thomas Martinelli, Objective and Subjective Documentation of the Contemporary by
   Animated Films. Case Studies, in Catherine Naugrette (ed.), Le Contemporain en scène, Proceedings of
   Arts et Medias, Penser/Chercher/Écrire le Contemporain (Florence, 2-7 June 2008), L’Harmattan, Paris
   2011, vol. 2.
2 See Jay David Bolter, Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media, The MIT Press,
   Cambridge (MA) 1999.
3 Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began, Pantheon Books, New York
   1991.
4 Craig Thompson, Carnet de voyage, Top Shelf Productions, Marietta-Portland 2004.
5 Davide Toffolo, Il Re bianco, Coconino Press, Bologna 2005.
6 Étienne Davodeau, Rural! Chronique d’une collision politique, Delcourt, Paris 2001.
7 Claudio Calia, È primavera. Intervista a Antonio Negri, Becco Giallo, Padova 2008.
8 The technical notes to the film inform: “Yellow Sticky Notes is a classically animated film that was
   entirely hand drawn. The entire film was animated directly onto 4x6 inch yellow sticky notes with only
   a black Staedtler Permanent fine-tipped marker. 2300 yellow sticky notes were used to complete the film
   and the process took 9 months to complete.”
9 Andrew Farago reports “a budget of $100.” See Andrew Farago, “Fresh from the Festivals: April 2008’s
   Reviews,” in Animation World Network, http://www.awn.com/articles/festivals/fresh-festivals-april-
   2008s-reviews/page/2,1, last visit 6 June 2011.
10 The soundtrack is written and performed by Genevieve Vincent.




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