Perception and Propaganda

In this week's readings, Stegall-Amour does a fine job of giving her views on what librarians think about graphic novels (she thinks they don't like them or respect them). However when her views are not backed up by her survey, she infers reasons for this disparity, hooray for anecdotal evidence.

Goldsmith rehashes the discussion of how misleading the term "graphic novel" is, while still bringing something new to the conversation. I liked her point that libraries often call formats by different names than public consumers do. Her suggestion for a replacement term, pictonarrative, is not the kind of word that will catch on. She does mention that comics and manga as current language catch-alls, although these each present their own problems. Maybe we could look to other cultures and countries for inspiration. Bandes dessinées, though seems like a longer term without much appeal for our shortened word culture. Personally, I like the term comics, but could see graphic narrative or sequential art being used in libraries as format types.

With the recent North Korea nuclear testing and aggressive threats in the news, I was very interested to read Guy DeLisle's Pyongyang and get an inside view of this society. While DeLisle's account is almost 10 years old, it doesn't seem like much has changed in the "Hermit Kingdom." He depicts the fakery of the city's operations very well. Every time he saw someone doing menial labor, his guides said they were "volunteers." Each time volunteers were brought up, the word took on a more chilling tone. I never was completely sure if volunteers were normal citizens working out of fear or loyalty, or if they were being punished in some way, like prisoners.




Another thread of the narrative that stuck with me was this panel:

Each time this panel showed up another person (or two) had disappeared. This drove home the idea that if you did something just a little bit wrong, you were risking your life. There were instances of this theme throughout the book, from the pressure put on the students to perform, to the panic DeLisle's guide showed after losing him for a short time. This state of constant fear and pressure is so far removed from my own experience, but something that needs to be thought about. 

This travel account is much more than a travel story, it is also an informational guide to the socioeconomic state of North Korea. DeLisle's political views start out relatively subdued, but by the end of the book, he has spoken out to his guides against the totalitarian laws of the regime.

This was an interesting and fast read, and I look forward to reading Jerusalem.

Edited to add: Since we are reading travel comics now and web comics for next class, check out Luck Knisely. She has created a lot of comics content over the years, much of it online. 

French Milk is a travel comic that she was able to publish traditionally, but she also has a few others available for purchase digitally.