The exploded comic assignment required us to create an object “that unfolds over time, plays with scale, viewpoint, framing/shot, characters, rhythm and mood.”
I approached this assignment with a specific narrative in mind. It is a story about my grandfather and his own father and grandfather, told to me by my father. My grandfather, Sam Grizzard, grew up on a farm in rural southeastern Virginia. When he was about ten years old, his father took ill and passed away. The family held a small memorial service at the house the next day. That evening, Sam and his grandfather, who was still alive and healthy, dug a grave in the family cemetery. It began to rain and the sun began to go down. My grandfather, who was just a child, held a lantern while his grandfather dug the grave, lowered the casket into the ground, and filled in the hole.
The piles of dirt,which increase, and then diminish in size, lit by hanging flashlights, represent the digging and subsequent filling of the hole. Although this was intended to represent a linear process, it seems the largest pile (in the middle) signified the “culmination” of the piece to some viewers. In future iterations I will perhaps try to make the linear progression of the narrative more evident by placing the largest pile of dirt on one end and the smallest on the opposite end.
There was also some question as to whether the piece could really be said to operate in a narrative mode. My initial feeling was that each of the piles captured a discrete moment in the digging and filling of the hole, and the circles of light functioned – like panels in a comic – to frame the discrete events of the narrative. In hindsight, I can see that the lights might evoke a notion of seriality that is not necessarily sequentially ordered or telic in design. Here again, I think that placing the piles of dirt in order from largest to smallest might help endow the piece with more of a narrative arc.
I had initially thought that some of these narrative details might be filled in through the addition of audio that included the sounds of digging and a thunderstorm. However, during the critique, a strong consensus emerged that the audio was too obvious, and made the piece feel hokey or contrived.
In any case, the changing quantities of dirt function on several levels. There is the literal, narrative signification of the dirt removed from, and then put back into, the ground. But they also operate as a metaphor for the oral tradition. As stories are passed along from one generation to the next, details are omitted, reasons become obscured. Sometimes we add our own interpretation or exaggerate dramatic elements of the story. Over time, the story may transform into an unrecognizable myth or tall tale, or be forgotten entirely. I am interested in how this process functions, particularly within families, and in the role it has traditionally played in the American South.
