Dr. Mel Gibson (“I’m the Mel Gibson
who knows What Women Want”) is running a graphic novel
workshop/discussion for the afternoon. She has worked as a public
librarian in various difficult areas, and became interested in using graphic
novels to get non-readers and troubled kids interested in reading.
She’s been working in this area since 1993, most recently in manga.
Rather than a talk, Mel presented a
general discussion and exploration of some possibilities of using
comic books in education. The discussion was wide-ranging, so this is
a scattershot selection of the points made.
Mel is interested in using comic books
as a platform for engaging with students, and for sparking
discussion. Comics which have been around for a
long time can be a good topic for a cross-generational discussion –
she mentions a heated discussion between 6 and 60 year olds about
different incarnations of Dennis the Menace. For example, Tintin is
good for discussing different cultures, but also for discussing
old-fashioned representations of those cultures that would not be
considered politically correct anymore. Asterix is another popular
title – Mel points out that readers outside of France will be unaware that many of the characters are satirical
interpretations of French politicians of the time. This could be a
good platform for a discussion of translation.
The topic of literary comics comes up.
In Sunderland, a 13 year old read the Diary of Anne Frank,
and was uninterested in a ‘story’ featuring a girl who didn't fight. She gave him Maus instead
(telling the story of the plight of the Jews in Germany using animals) and he was enraptured.
Mel quotes Scott McCloud’s idea that
the more detailed a comic image of a character is, the less likely it is that you can relate to them. She thinks this is arguable, but worth
considering given how powerful a book like Maus can be when
discussing big issues using a cast of animals, who are expressive but not realistic.
The audience for comics in America is
80% male, but the audience for manga is 60% female. There used to be
a huge female British readership for comics, with over 50 titles –
Jackie sold a million a week. Mel is excited by the fact that even
though these titles have now disappeared completely, a new generation
of girls has independently become enraptured by manga targeted at
girls. Manga groups will generally be dominated by girls, graphic novel groups
by boys.
Mel has brought a large collection of
comics and graphic novels, and wants us to spend some time simply
reading them and considering how they might be used in a classroom.
A group of four ten-year old girls in
Leeds are making their own manga.
Mel talks about DeviantArt, an online
art community in which people of all ages submit their own artwork
and get feedback, including comic and manga art.
Recently there’s been a trend towards producing classic literature as graphic novels/manga, particularly Shakespeare – she holds up a popular manga version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She also displays the Manga Bible, a manga version of the New Testament, which has dramatic blurb on the back to entice readers. “It’s making texts accessible in all sorts of ways, without dumbing down.” There’s also Action Philosophers, featuring Plato as a wrestler (!) and ‘The shocking life of Thomas Jefferson.’
Mel moves on to discuss what manga is,
in particular Shōjo manga, which is aimed at a young female readership.
Mars, a popular Shōjo romance for young girls, is fully 15 volumes
long – “think about the commitment to reading that story! That’s
a lot of reading.” She also notes that comics like X-Men
essentially go on forever, like soap operas.
The biggest Shōjo manga in both
Britain and America is Fruits Basket, a story about an orphan taken in
by a cursed family – if they hug a member of the opposite sex, they
turn into a creature from the Chinese Zodiac, like a pig. This is
cross-genre: fantasy; drama; comedy.
There’s a question about primary
school aged children reading books like these – Mel says that it is
generally kids of 10 and up, though she recommends that teachers
should make their own decisions about age ratings, as everyone else
does.
“Every single school library I’ve
been to in Edinburgh has manga pictures on the wall. They’re
already doing this. It’s simply a question of doing it formally.”
Another popular genre is yaoi, which are
boy-boy romances generally written "by girls, for girls." Mel notes the similarities between this and fan-generated
slash fiction. These are popular amongst girls, though Mel
acknowledges that some are “quite rude”. Anecdotally she reports
that she has found some boys in schools taking photographs of
themselves kissing in order to display their affiliation to Japanese
culture.
"Shōnen is for boys, Shōjo is for
girls. People read across, but that’s the intention.”
She mentions various titles. Death Note is very popular amongst boys. The seven volumes of Akira are “immersive
reading experiences” and are considered a post-apocalyptic classic.
Akira is also an anime film – “for every anime, there is
eventually a manga; for every manga, there is eventually an anime.”
She also mentions the tremendously popular Studio Ghibli anime films
such as Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle.
At a particular school, the popularity of manga led to
various explorations of Japanese culture, including film screenings
and analysis,eating sushi, interest in Japanese clothing, etc.
Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry
Blossoms – a story about everyday life after the atomic bomb has
dropped. Drawn in watercolours.
Manga are read from right to left in
Japan, and this can immediately spawn a discussion about how books
differ across different cultures. There are other differences. In
manga, there are many panels where nothing happens, for an
intentionally slow pacing – this is distinctive to Japanese comics
in particular, though it has now spread.
A compilation like Best New Manga not
only provides a wide variety of artistic styles and stories, it often
provides contact details for the artists and writers, which means
it’s quite common to actually get manga creators into schools to
work with children directly.
Mel gives an example exercise for
getting kids to write their own comic books. You are allowed between
6 and 9 panels on your page, and up to 2 speech bubbles, 1 thought
bubble, and 1 information box in each panel. You should also encourage kids to end on a panel that makes you want
to turn the page.
You can take it a step further and get
kids to make their own complete comic books, though this is quite
ambitious. You can take it into enterprise by getting them to sell
their comic books. Another suggestion, “the easiest”, is to get
kids to design ‘the cover to a comic I would like to see’. This
involves designing the art, title and logo, thinking about the subject matter, and could potentially be a
marketing and media project as well.
Comics bring together art and literature.
You can visit the Doctor Mel Comics website – she mentions a call for papers for a comics conference in Liverpool next week. The site url is www.dr-mel-comics.co.uk. Her site has a lot of resources, particularly links to web pages which collectively can act as a kind of ‘starter pack’ for people who are new to studying comics.
There's a website called No Flying, No Tights which is reviews of graphic novels by young readers.
Neo is a magazine that caters for various facets of manga, including user art, reviews, even recipes!
Sweatdrop Studios – aiming to
encourage new manga authors with competitions.
‘Draw your own manga’ books are widely available.
Mel discusses ‘cultural capital’. Kids know that a man wearing a mortar board is a teacher from the Beano, not from real life. “[But] if you watch Spirited Away, you know you’re missing half the references.” If you read manga and there are references you don’t understand, which there will be, you will want to go and find them out, and gain expertise in that culture. “This is tremendously empowering.”
Kids can say things like, “this is
boring, this is difficult, I hate it!” Mel recommends that the
audience try reading manga, as they too will find it difficult at
first. “You become the guy by the side, not the sage on the stage.”
Shaun Tan’s ‘The Arrival’ –
“this is about what it’s like to arrive in a place where you
don’t know the language or the culture, or even the counting
system.” The book has no dialogue or text, and is made up of the stories of various people arriving in new lands. The Arrival was extremely popular when building comic book libraries for schools.
You have to describe an
interpret each image to work out what’s going on, like a puzzle.
“There are so many questions, so many possibilities with this book…
Westminster College said, ‘Right, we need lots of this.’”
‘The Savage’ by David Almond and
Dave McKean is a hybrid of text and pictures. It has a strong
regional voice.
‘The Tale of One Bad Rat’ by Bryan
Talbot. Designed as “a way back into comics for female readers who
hadn’t read comics for a long time.” An exercise in comics,
history, imagination and the healing power of literature, it's about a
girl who is obsessed with Beatrix Potter’s work.
“They’re reprinting old comics like
Girl and Bunty. You could teach about the history of a place from
comics of the past.”
‘Alice in Sunderland’ by Bryan Talbot. A playful mixing of texts. It features ‘Once more unto the breach dear friends’ in the style of Mad Magazine. “It’s about showing the different voices of comics.”
A popular author is Neil Gaiman – his work is all about myth and stories around the world (as is Alice in Sunderland.) Unlike most graphic novels, the readership is equally split between male and female.
‘Safe Area Gorazde’ – an example of journalistic comics.
‘Age of Bronze – A Thousand Ships’ – Eric Shanower – the beginning of the Trojan War in comics form.
“This is the point at which study and
joy come together. This is one way in which you may actually engage
people.”
‘Persepolis’ by Marjane Satrapi – about growing up during the Islamic revolution.
‘Pride of Baghdad.’
‘In the Shadow of No Towers’ by Art
Spiegelman, a book about the author's reaction to the destruction of the World Trade Centre. “A very political book – someone was saying they
consider it an art book.” “I actually think there’s a whole
unit of teaching there in itself.”
Mel asks us all to consider a wide variety of comic books and think: “How might I use this? What kind of
project might I initiate with this material?”
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