COP3: Practical Brief

• My idea is to create a small publication of strips
• Maybe all under the same story 
• Perhaps think of the context? Maybe think about magazine's or newspapers
• Maybe merchandise? 

COP3: TED TALK: Mads Ananda Lodahl and The Straight World Order

"Queer means a lot of different things, but something that’s essential to the queer perspective is to turn the focus away from the people who deviate from the straight norm onto the straight norm itself. To stop asking questions like “why do people become gay” and “why do gays have to act like that”  and start asking the big question, “how did the normal become normal?” That is: “How did the straight norm become so strong and so integrated into every part of our lives, our societies, our relationships and ourselves that for us to even begin to understand what the straight world order is, is like asking a fish to describe water”

"We expect for people who deviate from the norm to want to be normal."

Lodahl speaks of the straight world order and it but it shares a big resemblance to heteronormativity, a quick search seems to imply that he is one of the only ones using it. I guess heteronormativity is slightly "tighter" and the straight world order has he explains it is slightly larger a concept. I'd be tempted to say it's the same thing explained a little differently. Perhaps I should ask him. 

Overall I enjoyed this video and I liked some of the quotes I've got from it that I can possibly use. It also made me think about myself a lot ad my own experiences with heteronormativity and the straight world order, and why I choose to write about it. It made me realise how personal a project this is for me and made me look at why I feel awkward and vulnerable talking about this subject to tutors/peers/etc

"Hiding makes it harder for others who can’t hide"

Although I think people should hide if they feel unsafe, it's a very good point that by hiding the more visible people are more prone to violence, the idea of saftey in numbers etc. I definitely feel better seeing other LGBT people being visible.

COP3: 20th October Support Session

COP3: Current Bibliography

Heteronormativity Sources: 

• Rich, A. (1981). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. London: Onlywomen Press
• Nolan, M. (2013). The Rhetoric of Queer: Subverting Heteronormative Social Institutions and Creating New Meaning.. Georgia State University. 
• Horne, Peter and Reina Lewis. Outlooks. London: Routledge, 1996. Print.

Alison Bechdel Sources: 

• Mitchell, Adrielle. "Spectral Memory, Sexuality and Inversion: An Arthrological Study of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic." .ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. 4.3 (2009). Dept of English, University of Florida. 13 Oct 2016. 
• Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Print.
• Bechdel, Alison. The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008. Print.

Comics Sources:

• Shaw, Adrienne. "Women On Women: Lesbian Identity, Lesbian Community, And Lesbian Comics". Journal of Lesbian Studies 13.1 (2009): 88-97. Web. 
• Cooper, Sara E. Lesbian Images In International Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 2010. Print.
• Shaw, Adrienne. "Women On Women: Lesbian Identity, Lesbian Community, And Lesbian Comics". Journal of Lesbian Studies 13.1 (2009): 88-97. Web.
• Kirby, Robert and Justin Hall. Qu33r. Print.
• El Refaie, Elisabeth. Autobiographical Comics. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012. Print.

General Social Sources:

• Foucault, Michel. Discipline And Punish. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Print.

COP3: Key Points

Having trouble planning out the structure of my essay because I haven't thought about exactly what I want to talk about so I can't possibly know where to place things! So i'm listing here key Points I'd like to maybe talk about in my essay.

• How we see heteronormativity manifest in Alison Bechdel's work
• How Alison Bechdel's work exposes heteronormativity
• Alison Bechdel's impact? (How at the time it was a big deal to be published? How it paved the way for other gay comic makers to be more accepted in the mainstream and talk about their views/stories?)
• How people use comics to talk about difficult parts of their life
• How people use comics to explain minority struggles to others
• Why these people choose the medium of comics
• Cross reference with other comic makers (try for gay female comic makers but don't discount people like Allie Brosh too quickly)

COP3: Presentation After Thoughts

• I thought I'd explain some points better but I always muddle my words up in presentations. I feel I did manage to get the general point across however.
• It was interesting to see where other people are doing
• Needs to make use of Thought Bubble, see what LGBT comic artists are going and see if I can chat with them. I need to see who is going so I can prepare some questions for them, also get their contact details from them. 
• Look into Laydeez do Comics, I knew they existed but could be worth going to events/contacting them.
• Need to finish doing some bigger chunks of reading. 
• Not really interested in widening my subject again, if it happens naturally that's ok, but for now keeping it fairly tight will keep me more focused.

COP3: Allie Brosh

I think Allie Brosh is really interesting to me because she just so obviously is not a classically art trained person and isn't bothered that people know about it. She said in a interview that she just opened paint and just started drawing.

In relation to my project I'm most interested in how she decided comic were the best way to communicate about her mental illness. She wrote about it on her blog, but doing it through her comics so obviously became a way for her to communicate to her readers about her feelings.

COP3: Potential Questions

How does Alison Bechdel's autobiographical comic "Fun Home" show how she uses the medium of comics to deal with living in a heteronormative society?

Feel's like a direct follow on from my essays last year, which is great and feels very natural. I am worried however about putting words in another artists mouth.

How does Alison Bechdel's autobiographical comics show her experiences living in a heteronormative society?

Feels less like I'd be showhorning in her other comics

How does Alison Bechdel's comics show us how minority groups can use comics as a medium for talking about the issues facing them?

(Could include my other examples of Allie Brosh, who is good because she's not a trained artist. However is a slightly wider question.)

COP3: Fun Home Musical

Managed to sneakily watch Fun Home as I'm waiting for the copy of the book I ordered to come. Very interested to see how what I watched differs from the source material. When I finally get the book I'll make a post comparing the two in some key areas.

 

Really loved how they translated Alison Bechdel's role of narrator into the live production. In the comic her comments and telling of the story outside of the panels is done in caption boxes. In the musical they have a actor playing Alison's modern self has a pad and pencil, and moves around the scenes, shouting [CAPTION] before inserting some commentary. This is particularly moving during the last conversation with her father, and when she speaks of her father's suicide. Her repetition of the word [CAPTION] makes the scene extremely climatic and emotional.

I presume in the comic these are either blank caption boxes OR there are non at all. If they are blank I feel it would have made the moment seem like Alison Bechdel is silent and contemplative, or if there are no caption boxes then the emotions we get from her artwork are left to shine through without her commentary. In the musical her emotional repetition of the word caption makes her seem bursting with emotions and unable to speak even though she knows she must continue the story.

Since I'm not examining the musical in my essay I don't know if I should examine any bit in great detail. We'll have to see if it feeds in or not. I'm doing more about the comic and how using comics as a medium affects the story but the musical also had some very interesting parts.

Overall the tone of the Fun Home musical, although saddening, has parts that are much more upbeat than the comic, but due to the art style, colours and pacing of the comic, it feels overall much more somber than it's live counterpart. The live counterpart's songs are a balanced mix of lively, fast paced, slow paced and somber.

COP3: Idea Change

I was going to focus on LGBT Zine's made by women, however I'm finding it difficult to pick certain zine's I'd wish to examine closer in essay. Zine's are sprawling and large and I need to be more focused. When looking for artists I remembered Alison Bechdel, a well respected lesbian comic maker. Her autobiographical stuff is very interesting, and I can still examine it using the same ideas of heteronormativity and social protest as I have in previous essays and would have done for the zines I picked. I feel like looking at her work as a basis for an essay would be a lot easier than trying to grab random zine's I find out the air. 

Plan of Action: 

• Read Fun Home
• Watch Fun Home Musical if possible. See how it translates to a different medium.
• Read more of her "Dykes to Watch out For" Series
• Look up interviews
• Look for other lesbian comic makers to use as cross references.