How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses? by Tahneer Oksman

Author:Tahneer Oksman [Oksman, Tahneer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LIT017000, Literary Criticism/Comics & Graphic Novels, LIT003000, Literary Criticism/Feminist
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2016-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

3.7 Miss Lasko-Gross, first page from “Of Little Faith II.” In Escape from “Special, p. 115. Images copyright © Miss Lasko-Gross. Courtesy Fantagraphics Books.

While the final image in “Of Little Faith II,” with Melissa sitting isolated at her desk, thus seems on first glance to mirror the resignation she frequently feels among her peers, as in her early art school experience, a reading of the illustration in the context of the page as a whole casts the depiction as a moment, instead, of defiance. The spotlight surrounding Melissa in this panel additionally inflects the image with a sense of mediation, of the narrative “I” recalling this past moment from her singular perspective. What the reader witnesses here is not simply a testament to Melissa’s early sense of isolation and difference; instead the portrayal potentially functions as a kind of portal to that incident, a space where its emotional impact can be opened up, prodded, and reoriented in relation to other occasions and reflections from the past.

The oval spotlight in this image, for example, visually connects it with an earlier, imposing, and memorable representation, a self-portrait of Melissa likewise sitting alone at a desk. The full-page illustration is the title panel of a comic, “(Special),” which traces Melissa’s experiences in secular school when she is placed into a “special education” classroom, a move that once again distinguishes her from those around her. In the depiction, which is set against a black background, Melissa is pictured at the center of the page, sitting at a desk with a pencil in her left hand while her entire figure is engulfed in a large flame (82, figure 3.8). The portrayal of Melissa drawing at a desk is a representation that marks the cover of the book and winds its way through many of the pivotal moments in both Lasko-Gross’s memoirs; it is a visual trope that binds the different themes and experiences traced throughout. The desk typically represents the institutions that confine the protagonist and attempt to normalize her. But the act of drawing, alluded to in this and other images not only by the pencil itself but also by the series of sketches visible in her notebook, conversely represents the possibility of freedom. With a pencil and notebook she can imagine a way out of the stifling pressure to conform that is otherwise so tied to the desk.

This self-portrait thus reflects not only the pain of Melissa’s separation and estrangement, from others as well as from various versions of her self, but also the power and drive to repair this separation through a provocative and solitary engagement with art, however anxiety-driven that engagement (as the tapping of her pencil reflects). The underlying subject of Escape from “Special,” as of all the other texts explored in this book, is how self-representations can help revise or reconfigure feelings of being an outsider, which are often initially alluded to in childhood and reinforced or confirmed in adolescence. The personae explored in these diverse texts all actively claim their senses of not belonging by drawing their displacements.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.