On November 18^th, my Art Studies class at UBC visited the Rare Books Archives in one of the libraries on campus, in an attempt to get a deeper understanding of a book we read and are now analyzing. The book, Obasan by Joy Kagawa, though classified as a fiction novel, is based off of the real-life events that the Japanese Canadians experienced during World War II. Obasan follows Naomi Nakane, a Japanese Canadian living in Vancouver in 1972, but frequently jumps to the past to intertwine events from the war, in relation to the affect they had on Naomi’s family.

During this trip to the Rare Books Archive, I found myself engulfed in the treasured rough drafts of Obasan. In these first drafts, I found interesting metaphors that were not included in the book. Kagawa refers to Snow White in her beginning writings. In each mention of this Disney princess, Kagawa paints the picture of her being tormented and running through forests.

“Snow white running through the forest, beautiful and pursued, the forest branches swaying seductively, their leaves falling down to surround her flight.”

“A child is running through a think forest. Snow white runs and runs and terror surrounds her. The theatre is dark as the forest.”

-Joy Kagawa

Though I found these quotes extremely intriguing but they seemed out of place, as there are no other references to Snow White in the rest of the novel. I question if Joy Kagawa used Snow White as a representation of Naomi Nakane maneuvering through the disturbing memories that overwhelm her family history. As I continued my exploration through these rare documents, I came across a newspaper clipping from the Citizens Forum, of an article written by Joy Kagawa entitled, “Divorce Lawyers: a Profit From War at a Safe Distance”. After reading the first couple sentences I was enthusiastic at the reoccurrence of the Disney princess theme. To open the article, Kagawa writes, “Much of society today is still wandering in the after glow of the Cinderella Story. As children, we were almost universally launched on the rocket of the romantic myth with the expectation that we would land in a Happily Ever After world of marriage” (Kagawa). She then goes on to discuss how this childhood expectation proves to be fictitious throughout the inevitable struggles of life. This idea of the falsification that Disney creates for children, especially young women intrigued me to do more research on the subject as I have noticed this phenomenon in my life as well.

As I delved into more research on the gender roles reciprocated in Disney movies, I found an intriguing article by scholar Nicole Sawyer that discusses the effect of Disney movies on young children. When we are children, we are at our most prone to acquisition and our brains have the most plasticity. We are easily influenced and learn at a rapid rate. This is extremely helpful as we are able to acquire rules, morals, appropriate behavior and language quickly. The downside to this developmental stage is that our environment heavily influences us, and sometimes the things we learn from observation prove to be somewhat permanent. Children at a young age are shown movies by Walt Disney, though very entertaining and contain an abundance of positive morals; these movies depict the female role in a very negative light. “Walt Disney has set forth standards for girls on how to grow up into proper women in order to find their prince. It is assumed from the films that women are supposed to be beautiful, acquiescent, skinny, and perform all the duties of a housewife. They do not hold jobs of their own and will not disobey direct orders” (Sawyer 3). Sawyer also shows how Disney movies show an unrealistic, over exaggerated view of love, this “Happily Ever After” per se. “The young romance helps fulfill the ideal of a ―Happily Ever After‖ life that includes the princess and her prince, and the life that they are about to embark on together” (Sawyer 7). Though I strongly support Sawyer about unfair female norms and Kagawa’s unrealistic happiness shown by Disney, I am not claiming that Disney is consciously misogynistic in any way. I was raised on Disney movies, and played my part in the princess fantasies most girls participate in, which is more than acceptable. I am not asking for a boycott of Disney. I, like many other scholars, would just like to bring to light the unequal and unrealistic ideals presented by this production company. These overdramatized ideas of gender roles and love, though blissful and dreamy, are not necessarily true in today’s society and should not be looked at as reality.

Though Joy Kagawa doesn’t necessarily mention the feminine outlook on Disney movies that Nicole Sawyer so obviously outlines, the point she brings up is congruent. Both scholars mention how much of the world is focused on this Happily Ever After Ideal that fairytales and Disney represents. When Kagawa uses the metaphor of Snow White in her rough drafts for Obasan, she is in a way questioning the surreal happiness of Disney movies by bringing them into a realistic light. She does this by not only depicting a well-known princess as distraught and being terrorized by the environment, but by in a sense, relating Naomi to Snow White and showing her being tortured by the disgusting events of discrimination during WWII.

Works Cited

Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. Toronto: Penguin Books, 1981. Print.

Sawyer, Nicole. “Feminist Outlooks at Disney Princesses.” James Madison University. N.p.. Web. 11 Dec 2012

Many people see graphic narrative simply as a form of entertainment; unfit to be analyzed by students at a world-renowned school like the University of British Columbia. This uneducated assumption would be just that, an uneducated assumption. Graphic narratives can aid in a scholars understanding of events as they provide a deeper meaning that requires intellectuals to think deeply and find meaning in symbols and the art, rather than just blatantly looking to the syntax in written novels to understand the deeper meaning.

After reading the graphic narrative, Persepolis, in UBC’s first year ASTU class, we went on to analyze an article by scholarly writer, Hillary Chute, which examines the effectiveness of graphic narratives in relation to retelling history and explaining trauma.

Chute makes her position clear by the first couple paragraphs of her article, “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis”, that she passionately supports the use of graphic narratives in regards to retelling events. In the second key paragraph of her literary piece, she specifically focuses on the simplistic style of art utilized by Marjane Satrapi. She describes the minimalist and childlike artwork throughout Persepolis as “[A] sophisticated, and historically cognizant, means of doing the work of seeing” (Chute 99). Here, Chute recognizes the complex meaning embedded in minimalistic artwork and how less detail can bring about a deeper understanding of events that cannot adequately be represented by language alone.

This idea of minimalist artwork has been incredibly influential throughout art history. It became an outlet to reflect on societal culture with an ironic twist in the late 1950’s when “Pop Art” or “Dada” became well known throughout America and Europe. This seemingly simple art was ridden with deeper meanings, and in most cases was a rebellious style of art that was used as a way of passively protesting laws or societal norms. This use of art as rebellion reflects the deeper meaning throughout Persepolis as the book is centered around the peoples rebellion of the social/religious norms and laws in Iran at the time.

Keith Haring (1958-1990), a modern artist and activist who started out with graffiti but became well known for his murals, has a similar style of art to the artwork in Persepolis. Though Keith Haring did not consistently use the strict black and white palette that is used by Marjane Satrapi in her graphic narrative, he utilizes simplistic figures and objects to portray a greater and more complex meaning, in his case usually to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS. In a biography of Haring by the A&E Television Networks, his art is described as, “deceptively simple” with “deeper themes of love, death, war and social harmony”. This is extremely similar to the opinion Chute has towards Satrapi’s basic art in Persepolis, “The visual emptiness…shows not the scarcity of memory, but rather its thickness, its depth;” (Chute 98).

Other than the simple lines and generally black and white color used in both Satrapi’s and Haring’s art work, they also share a stylistic trend of portraying masses as all identical and similar. This shows how they both see society as a collective group rather than individuals. In Persepolis, Marjane draws the masses as undistinguishable because, in a sense she is showing them as a united front for rebellion, creating a visual representation of the power in masses of people. Similarly, Keith Haring’s art portrays the crowds as identical as a way of calling out to society to make a change together, to show how unified we can be, and how we are all similar and equal.

Works Cited

Chute, Hillary. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 36.1 & 2 (2008). Print.