A Week of Kindness or the Seven Deadly Elements, by Max Ernst, is a surreal graphic novel that relies heavily on cultural context. Through the strange imagery of this novel, Ernst suppresses what would traditionally be viewed as comprehensible and allows the subconscious minds of the readers to take over the experience. This work takes advantage of what the graphic novel is capable of on a very surreal level, one that leaves the story’s plot up to the individual interpretation, unlike other art forms that are absolutely tethered to a mundane plot that is completely dictated, word for word, by an author (or other similar creator). Thursday, in particular, focuses on a wildly impossible story featuring chicken-like monsters, human experiments, and murder. Ernst is able to pull this off artistically because of the audience’s willingness to suspend disbelief. When something as fantastic and utterly impossible as this is laid out before a person, he or she is less likely to scrutinize every single aesthetic aspect of the story and is able to delve deeper into the theme, passing right by the physical, surface elements of the illustrations. As a result, and given the wordless fashion of this graphic narrative, A Week of Kindness: Thursday, inevitably shifts in meaning with every new person that joins the reading of this story. It can be argued that this is something that happens in some small measure with every work of art, but the surreal quality of Thursday allows this to take place to an exponentially higher degree, following – yet reinforcing – the fashion of wordless comics.
No comments:
Post a Comment