Stranger Than Fiction

BETSY: You know what you remind me of? TRAVIS: What? BETSY: That song. By Kris Kristofferson. TRAVIS: Who’s that? BETSY: The songwriter. “He’s a prophet— He’s a prophet and a pusher. Partly truth, partly fiction. A walking contradiction.” — Taxi Driver (1976) 212 STRANGER THAN FICTION David Lynch, Eraserhead THAN FICTION Dan Clowes, Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron STRANGER STRangER Than FICTION 213 The time has come when the normal revolt against time, space and matter must assume a form not overtly incompatible with what is known of reality—when it must be gratified by images form- ing supplements rather than contradictions of the visible and measurable universe. And what, if not a form of non-supernatural cosmic art, is to pacify this sense of revolt—as well as gratify the cognate sense of curiosity? —H.P. Lovecraft in a letter to Frank Belknap Long (Feb 22, 1931) I vividly remember the first timeI saw Twin Peaks. It was December 12, 1990. I was an eighth-grader growing up in the rural Cascade Mountain town of Enumclaw, Washington. That night I was babysitting for our local librarian, Bob Baer. While under no circum- stance would I have been allowed to watch Twin Peaks at home, I was free to be lured into the series at the Baer residence with my parents miles away and the kids asleep upstairs. Twin Peaks was a revelation. Not only did it connect with me geographically, but creatively as well. Even the nonsense made sense to me somehow. And that fasci- nated me. How could Lynch communicate so effectively, while being so…strange? At that age storytelling had already become an obsession of mine. I began writing and illustrating comic books in the fourth grade, and by the eighth grade it consumed all the free time I had. At firstI was aping the style of the Marvel comics I loved, using the Stan Lee model of taking normal, flawed people and endowing them with superhuman powers. I was interested in creating narratives and places that were fictional yet believable, and after seeing Twin Peaks I realized the potential of taking that model even further, and never saw storytelling the same again. As I grew older I began creating comics with more complex assemblages of interest and influence. My latest series,Runoff , is an homage to Enumclaw made from a surreal pastiche of elements: film noir, B-Horror, Bloom County, and Twin Peaks. While creating Runoff, I came to realize the same point Lovecraft makes in the beginning quote: You want to create something that revolts against reality? Something memorable? Something THAN surprising? Then start with something that is compatible with reality. Our reality: a place depicted by naturalistic description and governed by common sense. And from there transform it within that reality. And then there is a good chance you will have created something that is at first approachable, then curious, then fascinating…and then maybe FICTION even transcendent…surreal…uncanny. I adhere to this way of working both as a comic book creator and graphic designer: a way that creates work that roots itself in reality in order to subvert it. What is “real” is what is experienced communally, and if my work can connect with that, then it will help STRANGER 214 STRANGER THAN FICTION widen my audience and provide them with a more engaging, lasting experience. Striving to tap into what is collective has been a goal for a variety of artists, and that has generated a variety of tactics to achieve that goal. On one end of the spectrum we find Kasimir Malevich, the father of the art movement Suprematism that flourished around 1915 in Soviet Russia. By rejecting the depiction of anything naturalistic or cultural, Malevich painted abstract geometric compositions that strove to create shapes and spaces only possible in the imagi- Kasimir Malevich, Black Square nation of humanity. Malevich stripped histori- cal baggage and invited a new beginning for painting through the erasure of representa- tion. This tactic appealed to many creators, fully blossoming in the Modernist movement, where creators of all types—from painters to architects—imagined a world free of orna- ment and history, a world bound by reason instead of reference, and therefore tapping into a timeless collective imagination? At the other end of this spectrum we find David Lynch, who evokes the communal through genre and cultural references. I find this tactic to be more effective because Lynch embraces and uses reality in order to transcend it. He takes our cultures, our Edward Hopper, House by the Railroad genres, and subverts them, redirects them. In this way, Lynch’s tactics fit the Lovecraft- ian model of creating supplements to “the visible and measurable universe” rather than contradictions. Lynch’s redirection of expectation and genre has an American accent, since Ameri- can culture is often typified as a sampling and appropriation of other cultures. Here we still find the pioneer spirit, one that creates with a bold lawlessness, an “anything goes” mental- ity. This spirit invites us to look at our world, our cultures, as fertile sources for reference and inspiration. The transformative qualities I find affin- ity with in the work of Lovecraft and Lynch are Diane Arbus, Identical Twins, Roselle NJ, 1967 part of a tradition in American art and culture, one which I would describe as a loose hybrid of odd references from horror fiction, fine art, and Americana; a kind of Gothic American Surrealism. What’s this tradition about? It’s about unveiling the gothic in the everyday. It’s about emphasizing the grotesque and mysterious qualities of something we could find on our own block. It’s about knowing that the most powerful things can also be the most communal. It’s about borrowing from the most familiar genres and icons to reveal the deeply ingrained and disturbing power of things that we might usually find comfort in. It’s about the use of narrative and archetypical characters, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Romance (N.) From Ambrose Bierce #3 and being innovative with the use of both. STRangER Than FICTION 215 Like a creature without a fixed form, the tradition of Gothic American Surrealism can be found in a variety of art. It can be found in the writings of Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Patricia Highsmith, Stephen King, and Cormac McCarthy. It can be found in the photographs of Diane Arbus, O. Winston Link, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard. The music of Brian Wilson, DEVO, Warren Zevon, and DJ Shadow. The films of Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Tim Burton, and the Coen Brothers. The comics of Winsor McCay, Jack Kirby, Berke Breathed, and Dan Clowes. The art of Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, Paul David Lynch, Twin Peaks McCarthy, Eric White, and John Currin. This tradition not only manifests itself across a variety of media, it also has a tradition of inspiring and cross-referencing itself among those media. With its high contrast and open composition, Edward Hopper’s 1925 painting House by the Railroad invites me to imagine exactly why I wouldn’t want to knock on that door. Alfred Hitchcock seemed intrigued to knock, and gave us the Bates Motel and Psycho in 1960. Diane Arbus’ Iden- tical Twins, Roselle NJ, 1967 was twinned itself in 1980 when we laid eyes on the twin girls haunting the halls of the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, which is itself based on the novel of another practitio- Alfred Hitchcok, Psycho ner of Gothic American Surrealism: Stephen King. The mundane yet ominous landscape and lighting of David Lynch’s 1977 filmEraser - head was a clear influence on DanC lowes’ early ’90s surreal comic book masterpiece Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. And a phrase uttered by The Giant in Lynch’s Twin Peaks is sampled to close DJ Shadow’s groundbreak- ing 1996 album Endtroducing. This sample Shadow chose is quite fitting for the tradition. “It is happening again” the Giant says…“It is happening again.” Gothic American Surrealism also knows the power of reviving and re-appropriating things of the past. The tradition embraces hauntology, an idea first introduced by Stanley Kubrick, The Shining Jacques Derrida’s in his 1994 work Specters of Marx. The Wikipedia entry for hauntology explains the idea quite well: The word, a portmanteau of haunt and ology and homophone to ontology in Derrida’s native French, deals with “the paradoxical state of the spectre, which is neither being nor non-being”, accord- ing to a professor at RMIT University. The idea suggests that the present exists only with respect to the past, and that society after the end of history will begin to orient itself towards ideas and aesthetics that are thought of as rustic, bizarre or “old-timey;” that is, towards the “ghost” of the past. In this, it is has Paul McCarthy, Bossy Burger 216 STRANGER THAN FICTION some similarity with the cyberpunk liter- Redirection is required for almost any ary movement. engaging constructed experience. Imagine a Hauntology is proving to be quite movie about a man who gets up in the morn- relevant for today, with the use of sampling ing, experiences a predictable day, and then permeating all forms of contemporary art. goes to bed. Roll credits. That wouldn’t cut it. Currently the idea finds its biggest supporter As an audience, we expect a deviation from in the critic Simon Reynolds, who, in his 2006 the expected to happen at some point— essay Hauntology Now, states: though it is the power and placement of that Why hauntology now? Well, has there deviation that can make it, or break it.

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