Writing (and Drawing) Identity and Autobiography

Anyone who writes stories or novels knows that when you write a character, it is and is not yourself you are putting down on paper.  All writing (even fantasy sci-fi) is autobiographical, but it doesn't mean that there is a direct analog between the author and the character.  So, does it matter whether the author writes the protagonist as "him/herself"?  Can an artist or author inhabit another person or persona effectively when writing a story?  My answer is, of course.  That is a stupid question.

Literary history is fraught with stories of authors hiding their identities for good reason.  Women were taken more seriously (or considered at all) when they published anonymously or with the name of a man (See Currer Bell and George Eliot).  So, what is the motivation?  To get published?  To circumvent a patriarchal bias in the publishing industry?  Does it matter?  Do we discount these women's characterization of men?  No, we do not.

Flaubert once said/write, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi."  Love or hate Madame Bovary, she is one of the most recognizable female characters in history.  We debate forever whether Flaubert does women justice in his characterization, but we do not doubt Bovary's existence (as a fictional character).  She is real.  The story is real, despite its being fictional.  So, what happens when you draw a character in a comic book?  Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis is autobiography.  I am sure there is some poetic license at work, but we are meant to believe that these things drawn on paper happened to character drawn and that that character drawn is Satrapi (or at least a fictional character of herself that is very close to the real Satrapi).  In a work like Maus by Art Spiegelman, although the atrocities of Holocaust were real, the characters are depicted as mice and cats.  Why?  Is it to provide a buffer, a way to approach the horribleness of the reality from a unreal lens?  To make a short leap to non-comics Cubist art, do we not understand or comprehend the horribleness of war any less when depicted in Picasso's Guernica?  Of course not.

Guernica by Pablo Picasso

As is evidenced in this blog, I am fan of the work of Adrian Tomine.  In his Wikipedia entry, there is the following paragraph:

"Most of Tomine's early works rarely mentioned racial issues and most of his characters appeared to be Caucasian. Tomine, who is Asian American, drew himself in many of his early strips, but did not make his ethnicity clear (he often drew his glasses as being opaque, so his eyes couldn't be seen). In later works, he has explored racial issues more directly, such as in his latest graphic novel Shortcomings."  --Wikipedia entry for Adrian Tomine

I have heard a similar argument in print and/or in an interview, but I cannot seem to find that reference.  But in essence, Tomine has been criticized for writing "outside his ethnicity?"  Not sure.  It is a bizarre critique for someone to say, "Hey, you're Asian, shouldn't your characters be Asian?"  And how do you know?  Do all part-Asian peoples look outwardly Asian?  What about people of Jewish decent? How do you tell an Italian from a Jew or Arab for that matter drawn in a comic book?  Or any other race or ethnicity?  And how does this argument translate to to writing through/about another gender or sexual orientation or social status?  Does Kazuo Ishiguro's Asian heritage prevent him producing The Remains of the Day, a work dripping with Britishness?  Again, of course not.  I won't get into the arguments for an against identity politics, I just know that people are too uptight, and that part of why I quit a Ph.D. program was that classmates said really stupid things that clearly showed that they never experienced the creative process of ever in their lives, because if they did, they wouldn't have said the stupid and ignorant things they did.

In the brief comic below (done a couple years ago), the author/artist (Me) makes a cameo appearance but is not the primary character(s) in the comic, right?  Maybe. Maybe not. What are the implications of writing from a different gender or sexual orientation?  I don't think there are any, and there need not be any sub-text or hidden message in the choice.  I can only speak for myself, but in my dreams I take on multiple perspectives and points of view, irrespective of age, gender, or existence.  Haven't you ever dreamt of and dreamt from the perspective of someone or something that in real life you know to be fictional?  When you "think" what exactly are you doing other than talking with yourself?  I find that my most heartfelt dialog comes from 1) real life dialog with other people and 2) dialog with myself.  Does writing/drawing a gender or ethnicity provide distance from the character and if so, is it a way of "hiding" behind a character?  No.  When the words of thoughts of a writer ring true, it does not matter in what form the thoughts and ideas manifest themselves.  Read a sci-fi novel and try to discount the insightful philosophical discourse of purple aliens or androids.  Can't be done.  Kill not the messenger.

I include the YouTube clip below, because 1) It's a funny example of a fictional character explaining writing across gender lines, and 2) Julie Benz is in it. I love you, Darla!