Popular Science Graphic Novel by Alison Bechdel

The nonfiction graphic novel “Are You My Mother” by Alison Bechdel is a work of experimental nonfiction, which utilizes the means of the graphic novel to tell the story. In many ways, it is a memoir of the author’s relationship with her mother. Sure, there are many literary and film works that underline struggling parental relationships, but the focus and depth of Bechdel’s revealings allow the reader to follow her in a fun but serious manner in the novel’s entirety.

In Bechdel’s autobiography, she attempts to capture important elements of her life. She not only deals with her career and growth as a person, she also uses emotions and facts related to family life, relationships, education, travels, sexuality, and any types of inner struggles. Bechdel incorporates her own record of memories and particular events that have taken place in her life.

My comparison to Bechdel’s work is the film adaptation of “Jersey Boys”. This story highlights the tough times and personal clashes of four ordinary guys, and the ultimate triumph of a group of friends, who become the infamous “Franki Valli and the Four Seasons.

” Each relationship that is created is shown at their all-time lows and highs throughout the movie. Like Bechdel’s relationship with her mother in her early years, the boys’ relationships begin with trust, loyalty, and care. However, as time goes on, the relationships begin to deteriorate. Both Bechdel and each member of Jersey’s group recall every happening, situation, and even conversations that formed the final outcome of their personal relationships.

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However, while Bechdel’s novel and the film of “Jersey Boys” share similar upbringings and conflicts, they are very different in spite of each of their contexts.

First, in a sense, Bechdel’s innovative form lends itself to the subject that the graphic memoir can reproduce the layering of thought and mimic strands of life. The extensive relay of insight and memory coexist in ways that normal prose cannot. Things happen at the same time. Associations are made. The past is overlaid into the present. In theory, a film does the same thing, but with more of an entertainment purpose rather than informative. Each work depicts thoughts and experiences in a manner that allow the reader to visually understand the context. The differences lie in the way the scenes are depicted and communicated. In “Are You My Mother?”, Bechdel uses her dreams and her psychoanalysis comparisons to support her arguments and experiences. “Jersey Boys”, on the other hand, tells the story from multiple perspectives as well as sharing many different topics. It does not solely focus on one troubled relationship or past events. “Jersey Boys” conveys many issues, mainly focused on the troubled relationship idea, but it jumps from story to story and then all merges into a present-day verdict. For the most part, Bechdel’s work uses more of a cognitive dissonance approach, which intertwines with her social ineptitude.

This gives her the ability to create a more personal appeal of her mature, yet childish emotional and psychological differences. Bechdel’s novel also allows readers to analyze each frame at their own discretion. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the film moves in the alloted time, which gives the viewer less time to follow and analyze the details of each scene. Graphic novels are not books with pictures thrown in for good measure. They’re not movie scripts, although you might think otherwise with the recent creations of graphic novel based Hollywood flicks. When images are used alongside text, the reader can more easily decipher the meaning of the text, as well as retain elements of the story. Graphic novels are books that combine both text and illustration. For example, the pictures are arranged in panels while the text can be either in speech bubbles for dialogues or in a textbox for narration. Many people read graphic novels because it gives you a break from traditional prose.

The text content in a graphic novel seems to deem itself interdependent, whereas a film is, in theory, a grouping of many moving pictures. The comprehension rate increases with the frame-by-frame approach and decreases with the scene mashup loaded with content for entertainment. However, there are also limitations of graphic novels since you have lost the ability to imagine what the characters look like, what the setting is like, and how all the situations will be. You are completely dependent on the author’s view of them and the story becomes less personal because of it. You are very dependent on the illustrations and that is mainly because the language that is used does not offer detailed descriptions of what the characters look like and does not utilize figurative language. Both a graphic novel and a film want to convince you of something and put an idea into your head. According to Harvey, the ultimate goal of all art, in fact, is to get people to consider your point of view, and put forward an argument in the form of film or novel that your idea is the correct one

All in all, the balance of similarities and differences between a film like “Jersey Boys” and a graphic novel like “Are You My Mother?” are nullified in the sense that every piece of media contains the purpose of altering someone’s point of view in a very innocent way. The writer does intend to convey certain meanings and be aware of audience interpretation, but the rest of the interpretation will be up to us as readers. Once the piece of literature is out in the world, it is the reader’s responsibility to try to understand it with the information available. Many people associate colorful pages full of images with childishness and therefore take them less seriously as a work of literature. This is an interesting situation, however, since most people look at magazines on a fairly regular basis, either out of boredom or habit. According to Harvey, working with graphic novels can expand a reader’s imagination by giving them another opportunity to think about how or why the author chose the wording or scene decoration he or she did (Harvey, 2008). When there is a lack of words explaining a scene, authors have a unique chance to show where they are imagining an event happening or how they envision the character they are writing about.

Work Cited

1. Harvey, R. C. (2008, September). In Graphic Novels, the Pictures Are the Story (The Council Chronicle, Sept. 05). Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/magazine/archives/122082
2. Lorenz, Robert (Producer), & Eastwood,Clint (Director). (2014). Jersey Boys [Motion Picture]. United States: Warner Brothers