McKinney M. History and Politics in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
224
Cécile Vernier Danehy
old family home, and a journey to Vietnam and back. It is also the beginning
of a new and more pleasant journey, as suggested in the last page of the book,
when Homer drives away from Ron’s Clear Creek Inn, the old year, and his
past, and into the new year, a smile on his face.
A felIcItouS IntruSIon Into homer’S World
“Klik” (9.2). A close-up of Madonna bawling out her song “Like a Prayer”
pops onto the television screen. This very first text explodes noisily in a vi-
sually shocking, orange, jagged-edged speech balloon. It bursts through the
boundaries of the gutter between two frames and shatters the silence (9.2–3).
As if Madonna’s first words “And it feels like home” bothered Homer—
indeed, the deserted house may not feel like home—he quickly turns off the
television, silencing this disrupting text, and literally runs outside where he
finds silence and coolness. Homer is not quite ready to confront again his
Vietnam past and running out of the house could be seen here as a mo-
mentary return to his “present world” and to “outside,” which is a place that
may not be entirely comfortable, but yet is not as uncomfortable as “inside”
or his past. Once he is outside, the more sedate, peaceful palette of blue-
grays returns (9.4). Homer will go outside twice more during the night, both
times right after Felicity hangs up (14, 45). Now back in the house after a run
through the woods (10), Homer still has two hours to while away before the
broadcast, when the telephone rings. Unlike the “KLIK” written in orange on
the previous page (9.2), the “DRRING” is colored in blue-violet (10.7). The
ring tone is not written in a jagged script that would emphasize the disruptive
nature of the noise, and the color sets the phone call “outside.” The lettering
and color could suggest that the phone call, although unexpected, is not an
unpleasant interruption. Homer picks up the phone and utters his very first
word: “Hello?” (11.1). His speech balloons are neutral white. Instead of an
answer to his greeting, there is only silence, three dots in a blue balloon. This
blue both helps to distinguish between the speech of Homer and Felicity, the
caller, and sets her in the world of the “present” and the “outside”—she is an
intruder in Homer’s past. A dialogue ensues: “Who’s calling?” “Felicity. Felic-
ity Cosgrove. Am I bothering you?” “It depends . . . ” (11.2).
Not entirely ready to allow the intruder inside, yet not averse to that
possibility, Homer does not hang up right away. For a middle-aged man to
engage in a telephone conversation with an unknown thirteen and a half year
225
Journey Through Memory—Cosey’s Saigon-Hanoi
old girl, home alone on a New Year’s Eve, and to encourage her to call back
later if she so wishes (14.1), is somewhat disconcerting. Nonetheless, by nam-
ing the caller “Felicity” the author suggests that she may be a harbinger of
good things to come. He also marks Homer’s second important encounter in
the book through the use of incrustation—Cosey had used it only once so far,
in Homer’s face-off with the house—rather than depicting the beginning of
this unusual phone call through a more conventional panel layout (figure 4).
The entire page is composed of two main frames. At the top, an almost empty,
pale yellow, narrow strip contains a close-up of Homer’s face and of his hand
holding the phone (11.1). A large, two-layer frame (11.2) fills the rest of the
page. The bottom layer of this frame depicts the house at a distance, from the
outside, poised between an immense night sky and a snow-blanketed field,
with its windows burning bright. The palette of the frame is blue-gray and
blue-violet. The second, superimposed, layer is composed of eight frames,
all contained in and hovering over the larger frame. Four of these superim-
posed images show Homer on the phone talking to Felicity (11.2.a, c, d, e),
one depicts a brightly lit window from the outside (11.2.b), and the remain-
ing three are independent, blue, speech balloons, containing Felicity’s words.
Belonging to the world outside the house, the girl’s voice shares its blue color,
although in a lighter shade. In the third floating frame, Homer stands in
front of a window tinted in blue, looking into the night (11.2.c). Incrusta-
tion on page 11 is not just a device to present in a more visually interesting
way what is going on inside the house. The floating frames pull Homer out
of the house and place him on an intermediate plane: he is no longer com-
pletely “inside” nor “outside.” This underlines the tug between Homer’s
realities—his present world and his Vietnam past—and his hesitancy to
bring the “outside” “inside,” to attempt a reconciliation between the two.
When the first telephone conversation ends, Homer will go back outside,
into the world from which the phone call emanated, and stand looking again
into the far distance of the blue-violet and peaceful night (14.3). But Homer’s
healing starts with Felicity’s first phone call, because it forces him to identify
himself and to begin describing and defining his relationship to home and
to the war. Felicity’s first substantial question is of a personal nature—“You
live in Wickopy year around?”—and in a white speech balloon originating
from the house, Homer answers back—“No, I came back for a few days”
(12.1). He does not know quite yet how to react to the intrusion, to this young
girl and her disconcertingly mature talk. He gets up, phone in hand, and
moves about the house while the child continues her string of questions
and comments, met at times by Homer’s silence (12.3–4). The child worries
226
Cécile Vernier Danehy
that she might be disturbing a family gathering (12.4). “I’m alone” (12.5),
he replies. Something in his voice has alarmed her: “Is everything alright?
Do you need help?” (12.6). “Everything’s okay, Felicity, really. If there is
one guy in top shape in the whole county, you’re talking to him! It’s true!”
(12.6). Homer is unsettled by the call, but, if Homer’s attempt at lightness
fig. 4. Floating frames place the character on an intermediate plane: neither “inside” nor “outside.”
From Cosey, Saigon-Hanoi (2000),
page 11; Cosey © editions dupuis, 2007.
227
Journey Through Memory—Cosey’s Saigon-Hanoi
does not ring true to the reader, the sarcasm of his reply appears lost on the
child. Carrying the old-fashioned phone into the kitchen, Homer pulls out
a drawer and opens a cupboard—gestures more mechanical than purpose-
ful. With this intrusion of the outside world, Homer’s inside world is frag-
mented: mimicking the layout of this particular comic-book page, the lines
fig. 5. images echo the layout to express the character’s fragmented reality. From Cosey, Saigon-
Hanoi (2000),
page 12; Cosey © editions dupuis, 2007.
228
Cécile Vernier Danehy
of the white kitchen cabinets (12.4) and the open, compartmented drawer
(12.5) seem to divide the kitchen space into frames and gutters, but the story
they tell remains indecipherable, very much like the telephone conversation
(figure 5). Felicity tells him that he reminds her of her grandmother—her
best friend—and asks him whether he has a “best friend” (12.5). This ap-
parently anodyne question invites the Vietnam War into their conversation.
Homer hesitates before answering “Hum . . . . . . I had one” (12.5), then add-
ing, “In Vietnam . . . ” (13.1), while he opens a cabinet door (13.1). The follow-
ing frame is a close-up of the cabinet’s contents. Felicity’s “Oh, I’m sorry,”
in a blue balloon, is wedged among the groceries underneath a jar of honey,
as though her sweet apology could assuage the unhealed psychic wounds
that she has inadvertently touched. However, next to the jar of honey sits a
big box of salt (13.2), which Felicity will metaphorically and unintentionally
keep pouring on Homer’s open war wounds with her witty retorts: “I didn’t
mean to enter your territorial waters . . . Especially on New Year’s eve . . . ”
(13.3). Spoken only as an innocent metaphor for Homer’s private life, “Ter-
ritorial waters” also necessarily brings to mind the August 1964 Gulf of
Tonkin Incident, which led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the open
involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War. Homer silences his
feelings—“It’s nothing. Don’t worry” (13.3). He does not want, or is not
ready, to talk freely about Vietnam with the child, and changes the subject
by asking what Santa Claus brought her (13.4). As he asks, he himself grabs
an orange from his bag of groceries, the fruit that, traditionally, Santa or
Saint Nicholas brings to good girls and boys. Could this be seen as a last at-
tempt at persuading himself of the innocent righteousness of the American
involvement in the Vietnam War? The conversation ends with a promise of
a possible call the next day: “Whenever you want,—Very glad to have heard
your voice, Felicity” (14.1).
A BlASt from the pASt: the Shock of return
Almost smiling now, Homer seems to have enjoyed the interruption (14.2).
He now turns the television on to watch the documentary (15). The orange
shade that dominates this page glares unpleasantly. The orange balloon (15.9)
containing the text of the commentary spreads across the bottom frame and
mostly obliterates the gutter above it, while its jagged edge suggests a jarring
sound: a visual aggression for the reader and an auditory one for Homer.
What is supposed to be limited to the television screen has invaded the whole
229
Journey Through Memory—Cosey’s Saigon-Hanoi
strip: wheeled in a tricycle sits a man looking strangely like Jerry Garcia of the
Grateful Dead and sporting a T-shirt that reads “Vietnam Veteran.” He and
a throng of Vietnamese on mopeds are literally spilling into Homer’s living
room, threatening to engulf in their tide the reader as well as Homer, who is
sitting in the right-hand corner of the strip and colored in cool tints.
fig. 6. incrustation shows homer pulling away from an uncomfortable position to a more mediated
one from which to confront his past. From Cosey, Saigon-Hanoi (2000),
page 15; Cosey © editions
dupuis, 2007.
230
Cécile Vernier Danehy
At this point, Felicity calls again, and the ringing of the phone pulls
Homer and the reader from an uncomfortable position (smack up against
the invasive sound and image of the documentary) to a more removed, me-
diated, and perhaps more critical one. The lettering of the phone’s ring is
again in blue (15.9), bringing the “outside world” back into the “inside world,”
Homer’s Vietnam past (figure 6). Felicity’s role becomes clearer here: she is
the one to help Homer successfully bridge his dissonant worlds. The first time
that she had spoken with him, she had already brought Vietnam into the con-
versation (12–13). This time her incursion into Homer’s Vietnamese reality is
deliberate: “Homer? They’re showing a report on Vietnam—Channel 31—I
thought that it might interest you” (16.1). Her second phone call is more in-
timate too, because she uses the “tu” form—“J’ai pensé que ça t’intéresserait”
(16.1)—instead of the more formal “vous” of her previous conversation—“Je
vais vous laisser maintenant” (14.1). From this point on, Homer will watch the
muted documentary while carrying on a conversation with Felicity.
cAtAlySIS And crItIcAl dIStAnce: re-vIeWIng A pASt lIfe
Initially, Homer’s reaction to this second prod by Felicity is similar to his first
one, when he had changed the subject (“It’s nothing. Don’t worry” [13.3], “Tell
me instead what Santa brought you” [13.4]): he again silences Vietnam, this
time by turning off the sound to hear Felicity better (16.3) and failing to tell
her that he is the veteran that they are both watching on television. Instead he
asks her whether her mother has returned home safely (16.4). The layout of the
page (16) is significant because of the three distinct layers that compose it, each
with its own coloring: neutral white for the first, warm tints for the second
and cool shades for the third (figure 7). The first layer is the blank white page
on which the story is drawn. The second layer is formed by two frames: across
the top of the page, an orange, jagged-edged balloon contains the television
commentary, whose lettering progressively disappears as Homer turns off the
volume; and a large frame fills up almost the entire page—it contains a high-
angle shot of Saigon and the words “Saigon (Hô Chí Minh City),” as a caption
at the bottom of the documentary’s image. The third layer is composed of
six frames that are superimposed, partially or fully, over the large image of
the city. They mainly depict the telephone conversation between Homer and
Felicity. Three of these images hover above the white strip of the first layer and
slightly overlap both the orange speech balloon and the large frame, which
together compose the second layer. Whereas the beginning of the first phone
231
Journey Through Memory—Cosey’s Saigon-Hanoi
conversation was depicted in a series of frames hovering over Homer’s outside
world (the snowy landscape with the old house [11.2]), the beginning of the
second conversation hovers over a void—the blank strip of the first white layer
that separates the jagged-edged balloon from the large frame. The layering of
panels functions here to suggest that the intrusion of the outside world (the
fig. 7. A masterful use of gutter space and incrustation underscores the character’s more detached
and critical look at his vietnam past. From Cosey, Saigon-Hanoi (2000),
page 16; Cosey © editions
dupuis, 2007.
232
Cécile Vernier Danehy
phone call) does not allow Homer to immerse himself fully in his past—a
position that might encourage a sterile narcissism—but rather maintains him
in an intermediate reality, a detached position from which to look at his past
more critically and to progress toward understanding and healing. In fact,
in the bottom right-hand corner of the facing page (17), Homer can be seen
sitting, holding the phone, and looking out toward the reader. Although he
is probably watching the documentary, he is shown as though his back were
turned to it, as it plays for the reader on the page behind and around Homer.
He is silhouetted in blue tints against the white bottom layer, in a borderless
frame that suggests that he has entered a transitional state. This constitutes
a juncture in the story, when the two narratives (the visual one of the docu-
mentary and the telephone dialogue) enter into a curious dance, sometimes
meeting but often apparently distinct and at a distance from each other.
The cathartic effect, for the reader and for Homer, will come from the
strange interplay between the superimposed conversation and the silent
images, which have become far more powerful and freer to reveal Homer’s
true motives for returning to Vietnam, with the removal of the distracting,
voice-over commentary of the documentary. The visual language of the docu-
mentary now predominates, and links America’s Vietnam War with a more
distant but related past: we see images of Citroen “Etablissements Bainier
d’Indochine” (18.2), of an old sign in French (“Crèmerie-Buvette” [37.5]), of
a late 1950s French car model—a Renault Dauphine (23.1.3, 23.2.1), and one
of Homer’s means of transportation (23). These evoke France’s long colonial
presence in Indochina and the French Indochinese War (1946–54), which led
to the Geneva Conference (July 1954) and the partition of Vietnam at the sev-
enteenth parallel, so prominently featured on Homer’s journey map (24.2).
This reminds the reader that after having provided material assistance to the
French war effort, the United States began its own long war against Vietnam-
ese Communists and nationalists. Historical and personal journeys into the
past intersect when Felicity asks Homer: “Did you notice the veteran . . . ? His
gaze . . . ”; to which he answers, “No . . . What do you mean?” Her perceptive
reply—“Well, he looks like a guy searching for Santa Claus’s workshop . . . /
Or something like that” (25)—suggests that Homer might have been look-
ing for something that does not exist.
4
She thereby forces him to think about
his motives for going back to Vietnam, as do the images that flash up on the
screen: for example, we see two young women of mixed race (no doubt the
children of American soldiers and Vietnamese mothers), whose stern gaze
follows him (30). We may imagine that they question his right to return to
Vietnam freely and smile, given the fact that they had been left behind, like
233
Journey Through Memory—Cosey’s Saigon-Hanoi
many other children who did not make into the cargo planes of “Operation
Babylift.”
5
This constitutes a brutal reminder of those who destroyed the land
and raped its women (30.3–4). Reaching Hué, Homer has completed half of
his journey. There he meets two South Vietnamese veterans—friends from the
war (34.7)—who take him back to where his friend Dean was killed (31–35),
fig. 8. incrustation establishes a dialogical interaction between the frames. From Cosey, Saigon-
Hanoi (2000),
page 43; Cosey © editions dupuis, 2007.