viz. - book covers

Playing with Darkness: A Problematic New Cover for The Jungle Book

Deb Streusand — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 01:21:20 +0000

Following up on my last post’s discussion of the 2008 Alice in Wonderland cover, today I’m exploring another dark reimagining of a children’s book cover. The image above was designed for the Vintage Children’s Classics series. In Vintage’s own words, “Rudyard Kipling’s collection of fables have a much darker feel than the Disney musical, and we wanted to reflect this in the cover. We chose Italian illustrator, Gianni De Conno, to come up with an image which has engaging animal characters peering out from dense jungle foliage. The resulting cover illustration has both charm and intrigue, and a hypnotic feel from the staring faces.” But what makes the image “darker,” exactly? Certainly the literal color is much darker than the general color palette of the Disney film, as shown in the image below:

Image Credit: fanpop.com

The animals look considerably more realistic and therefore much more threatening, even though the animals pictured are the ones who help Mowgli in the story. The flowers, however, are bright and colorful, making Mowgli’s desire to stay in the jungle more understandable. The green foliage is rather neutral-looking, dark without being jagged or otherwise ominous. The center of the image’s darkness, I think, is in Mowgli’s half-shadowed face, which almost appears to be covered by a mask. His eyes are shaded by the plants looming over him, and in combination with the somberness of the more visible part of his face, this shading argues for a Mowgli who is more beast than man.

Of course, there are multiple complex racial issues involved in re-issuing The Jungle Book. There’s the initial question of whether Rudyard Kipling, author of “The White Man’s Burden,” should have his work promoted as a classic. If one is going to re-issue his work with visual accompaniment, then the image of the central character should have two characteristics: the hero should unambiguously be a person of color, as he is in the story, and he should not be portrayed as savage. This cover fails in both of these respects. The shade of the unshadowed portion of Mowgli’s skin could be that of a white person, or of a light-skinned person of color. It’s not clear. What the cover does is choose a shade that is non-threatening, to white readers, for its hero. Then, with a Mowgli who could be white, it becomes safe to play with the idea that this specific person has inhuman elements to his character. But the implication that he is inherently uncivilized can’t be separated from Mowgli’s explicit identity, in the story, as a person of color. The cover ends up both whitewashing Mowgli and reinforcing the idea that people of color are savages. So it’s certainly darker, but, I think, not only in the way that its commissioners and creator intended.

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book covers

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Visual Rhetoric

Alice or Wonderland: How Visual Representations of a Story Change Over Time

Deb Streusand — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 00:31:14 +0000

Image Credit: Deb Streusand. Taken at the Harry Ransom Center.

The Harry Ransom Center’s current public exhibit is on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the children’s book by Lewis Carroll. It displays many fascinating artifacts related to the book, including a selection of about twenty-five different covers the story has had over the last century. (The picture above shows the entrance to the section of the exhibit containing the book covers.) These covers demonstrate what people have found most interesting and most attractive about the story over the years. This post will discuss just three of the covers, though I certainly recommend going to look at all of them if you have the opportunity.

Image Credit: Deb Streusand

The above cover is from 1903. It emphasizes the magical and mysterious aspects of Wonderland, showing a mushroom and a caterpillar that are both far bigger than Alice. The exotic hookah and the accompanying puffs of smoke look rather magical as well. Alice’s eyes are wide with wonder, but most of her face is obscured – the story is more about Wonderland than it is about Alice. The cover shows no sign of concern about whether prominently displaying a hookah is an appropriate way to sell a book for children, which demonstrates some of the cultural changes that have taken place between 1903 and the present day.

Image Credit: Deb Streusand

This cover of an Alice in Wonderland comic book from 1945, by contrast, emphasizes Alice over Wonderland. Alice is by far the largest thing in the picture. All the other entitities in the picture are much smaller, and even look like they could be toys, not living beings. The playing cards are flat and can be held in the hand – they are not the rather unmanageable characters they become in the actual story. Alice, in saddle shoes and letter sweater, is clearly immersed in the modern world. The background is plain and shows nothing of the Wonderland environment. In fact, it bears some resemblance to the cover of an Archie comic from the same year:

Image Credit: Comic Vine

The Archie comics are set in the real world, not in a wonderland, and this Alice looks like she would fit right in there. This cover sells Alice as someone the audience can relate to.

Image Credit: Deb Streusand

This much more recent book cover, from 2008, does not show Alice at all. It shows the White Rabbit, in color, against a dark and formal-looking house and garden. Rather than portraying Alice in Wonderland, it depicts a Wonderland creature in Alice’s England. The Rabbit brings the magic into this colorless background, but it is a rather forbidding environment for him. This cover seems more directed at adults who are interested in exploring the sinister aspects of the story, or perhaps children who like their fairytales dark.

These three covers demonstrate what were considered the most saleable or most interesting aspects of the story at their respective times. The 1903 cover sells the tale as magical and mysterious. In 1945, Alice needed to be an accessible figure to the readers. The 2008 cover argues, “this is not your grandmother’s Alice in Wonderland.” The book covers from these three time periods sell the same story in entirely different ways.

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And Now, A Reading from The Book of Bro

wiedner — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 00:56:26 +0000

Image Source: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bro

Brainstorming with my fellow viz. writers on matters related to book covers and the rhetoric thereof, I mentioned my interest in the Chick Lit phenomenon. After politely listening to the sound of a dead horse being dug up from its grave and beat relentlessly, there was a collective eye roll and sigh. For more reasons than I have time to list at the moment, I realized very quickly that the nonplussed reception was more than justified. We kept bouncing around ideas, and touched upon the question of whether there was a male equivalent of Chick Lit. Or, to use the term that our editor Rhiannon invented, is there such a thing as “Bro Books?”

It was an awesome idea, and what follows is my attempt to run with it.

So, let's talk Bro Books.

Before we can define what, exactly, constitutes a “bro book,” we need to define what, exactly, constitutes a “bro.” Derived from the word “brother,” people have been employing the term “bro” as far back as the 1600s; it was in the early 1900s that the term gained specificity and began being used to address someone (generally male) whom one was close with and fond of. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bro. More recently, however, the referent of the term “bro” has increased in specificity, losing some of its positive connotations. So we need to parse this out a bit more if we want to arrive at a solid working definition.

But where to begin?

“Bro-ness” is one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it kind of things. In his excellent posting on the blog “codeswitch,” entitled “Jeah! We Mapped Out The 4 Basic Aspects Of Being A 'Bro,”’ author Gene Demby provides a great example of bros via gif:

"Y’all know who we mean. These cats right here:”

Image Source: http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/185wsu7f62b33gif/k-bigpic.gif

But Demby’s “Y’all know who we mean” is about as productive as the “you know it when you see it” that I spit out above as far as articulating a definition of a bro is concerned. Thankfully, Demby digs deeper for us, using a Venn Diagram to illustrate his definition of the quintessential bro as being equal parts (1) Jockish, (2) Stoner-ish, (3) Preppy, and (4) (my favorite) “Dude-ly.” http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch. Demby also provides some examples of bro behavior to fill out the picture, such as fist-bumping, posting pics with other bros doing “bro-ass things,” and “juggl[ing] a sporting life and [a] salubrious appetite for alcohol.” (Id.)

While this is all helpful, I feel as though Dembly misses the two most critical criteria of being a bro. For one thing, he doesn’t seem to account for the most “bro-ass” activity of them all: seeking out members of the opposite sex for romantic dalliances (read: bar hopping in search of drunken casual sex). He seems to forget that, even among bros that are “super tight,” there’s no bromance strong enough to completely supersede a bro’s fundamental desire to hit the bars and “chase some tail.” Put simply, while it is irrefutablely true that bros like watching a football game together, there’s a reason that they’re frequently doing so at Hooter’s that deserves consideration.

I would also humbly suggest that Demby also gives short shrift to what I see as the second definitive characteristic of bro-ness. Specifically, a bro is always conscious of whether they’re “looking the part,” regardless of whether they acknowledge that “the part” is that of a bro (I would describe this to my undergraduates as the bro’s ethos). The aim is to present one’s self as the guy who’s “cool” enough to afford his $65 pair of J. Crew cargo shorts, but “chill” enough not to notice that they don’t match the throwback Chicago Cubs jersey that he’s rocking on top. (After all, what could possibly be more un-bro than worrying about stuff like whether your hat looks cooler forwards or backwards or slightly askew when there’s a cooler full of brew-dogs that need a poundin’! Am I right, Bro?! Fist-bumps!!)

We can further refine out definition by looking at what a bro is not. As I am defining a bro for present purposes, age is of little relevance. While the definition we’ve been refining has probably painted a picture of a young individual, you can be a bro at any age whatsoever. Replace the J. Crew cargos and Cubs jersey mentioned above with Dockers and a Ralph Lauren polo shirt, and you’ve got the same bro, except with several more decades of bro-ing it out under his belt. It would appear Demby agrees with me on the (in)significance of age in defining “bro,” given that age is not at all invoked in his comprehensive “4 Pillars” theory and accompanying diagram (see above). Demby and I also seem to agree that the propriety of using race as a defining characteristic of a bro is troubled, at best. Demby set out to determine whether the term “bro” had a racial component to it, his research did not show that any such component existed, at least not one that’s consistently agreed upon. (Id.)

Now that we have put together a working definition of “bro,” can we finally define the term “bro books?”

Well, kinda.

Remaining consistent with the mode of analysis we’ve been employing thusfar, let’s illuminate via illustration what we mean when we talk about “bro books.” Below is the quintessence of a bro book collection.

Image Source: The Private Collection of viz.'s Resident Dude

Because the totality of a collection of bro books is as important as the presence of any particular book, it is important to look at the collection as a whole. For the bro, the physicality of his books (individually and collectively) is the first and foremost consideration. Just as was the case with bro clothing, bro books need to look as though they were simply “thrown together” by the bro in question. A neatly organized shelf of books would be anything but “chill.” Further, having many books of the same genre, author, historical period, etc. might appear as though there’s a particular topic that a bro cares deeply about, which is not at all in keeping with the bro’s MO. So, each book is carefully chosen in and of itself and in its relation to the collection as a whole. Almost invariably, the “audiences” the bro has in mind are (1) fellow bros who have come over for a bro-ass activity, or (2) a woman the bro would like to impress. Let's look at a sample from the above collection of bro books:

1. Anything by Chuck Palahniuk. Preferably “Fight Club,” but any of his others will do. This one’s aimed at the audience of fellow bros more than the female object of his desire.

2. Anything by Hemingway. Preferably more than one title.

3. “The Complete Guitarist.” It says that you have other interests and skills, and playing the most bro-ass instrument of them all is one of those pastimes.

4. A law textbook. In this case, “Torts,” by Richard Wright. An impressive looking law-related book is an absolute must for any collection deserving of the name “bro books.” I mean, just look at it! Heavy. Dense. The no-nonsense cover is supposed to be taken as representative of the nature of its contents, as well as the contents of the bro's character.

5. “100 Love Sonnets,” by Pablo Neruda. He may seem like just another beer-chugging jock, but he appreciates perusing poetry as much as he does “whaling on his pecs at the gym.” This suggests that that the lucky lady surveying this collection might even have some poetry read to her! (Fingers crossed!)

6. Collections of articles from “The Onion.” Guaranteed to get serious bro-grabs (excessively masculine versions of hugs).

Obviously, there’s much more that could be said about this bro book collection, but you get the idea.

In the end, then, the answer to this posting's original question would be in the affirmative, but in very different ways than are generally considered when seeking to identify categories of readers and/or reading. There are most certainly individual books as well as personal collections of books that could properly be called “bro books.” However, since one of their unifying characteristics is the attempt to have no unifying characteristics, it is hard to define bro books as a genre, per se. It would appear as though a book’s physical appearance, along with the cultural cache of title or author are the aspects of what gives a book its bro-ness. In creating and/or identifying a bro book collection, the actual words on any of the pages between those covers is an ancillary concern at best.

All of this should be taken with a grain of salt, of course. I am by no means the bro-thority on the nuances of bro-dome.

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