I recently thought I’d treat myself to a graphic novel by someone I’ve considered in the past to be one of my favorite artists: the acclaimed Chris Ware. I loved the wonderful, multi-layered adventure-in-a-box that is Building Stories. I love the heartbreakingly honest portrayal of multigenerational isolation in Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid On Earth. I knew that Chris Ware doesn’t shy away from portraying the difficult parts of humanity (in fact, that’s one of the reasons I liked him) so I knew that I wasn’t in for a light, feel-good jaunt. But I found Rusty Brown to be different in a way that was genuinely kind of disturbing. I put it down when I realized that reading it was making me sick to my stomach.
It bothered me so much, I started searching for explanations from Chris Ware as to why he decided to portray himself in this way. I looked up to him in a way, and wanted to believe that I could makes sense of this choice in terms of what he was trying to do overall, but I couldn’t find an explanation that made the decision less distracting and unpalatable. I think I was searching for some journalist somewhere who was brave enough to ask the straight question: “You characterize yourself as being a child predator. In a world where, ostensibly, all of your other characters are fictional, why? Is this the sort of thing you did and excused because “everybody does it/was doing it?”
When asked to comment on his portrayal in the Chicago Tribune, Ware said: “The story needed a real jerk, and I was available. I figured the most horrible person in the story should look like me, since the story itself originates within me. It’s all in the service of trying to feel through someone who’s not up to par, as it takes much less effort to be a bad person than it is to be good.” Chris Ware calls this self-insert a “real jerk”, and the interviewer who asked for Ware’s comments calls the portrayal “unflattering”. These are pretty tame words for someone as disgusting as the person he portrays in the book.
And really, the story didn’t need an extra jerk. It’s replete with jerks. To me, Chris Ware’s self-insert character seems kind of redundant to the eponymous Rusty Brown. Both are characterized as sad, disappointed, immature, isolated adult males who find themselves teaching at a school and who milk everything around them to regain a sense of control over their directionless lives, and who are both using the same underage girl in the same way (as masturbation fodder at the expense of her childhood). If anything, it’s a portrayal of two laughably similar jerks meeting and not recognizing their own terrible qualities in one another. So in a sense, Rusty Brown already seems to be Chris Ware’s self-portrait. It would make more sense for this to be the case anyway, since all other characters in the universe are presented as fictional, he goes out of his way to identify himself with this character.
Which means that, for me, this self insert character seems to stick out like a little flag that says: “This is also me, I identify, on some level, with this.” Which isn’t something you’d generally want to admit to publicly, since it’s, you know, a sex crime. It single-handedly destroys the illusion of objectivity that he uses his whole precision schtick to build.
It left me feeling weird. Like sick weird, and after tearing the dust jacket, I felt better, so I kept on tearing. Out on the back porch, into a paper bag, I started just ripping, into tiny little pieces. At first I was just going out of anger, with much feeling, but eventually it became meditative. It feels good – really, really good – it turns out, to rip something covered with so much precise ink and carefully placed primary color.
So I took my copy of Rusty Brown and decided to transform it, starting with a self indulgent and very satisfying breakdown of the work as raw material. This book is a brick, and will make so much confetti that I’m taking the time when I need to vent with experimenting in disposal methods. My first (in the little video below) was a magic color transformation. I used the hue that I think is most likely to frustrate and confuse the self-hating male: bright magenta.
My experiment here was done with what I had on hand: acid powder dye in “Deep Magenta”. I love how the individual pieces retain their original printed detail despite their color bath – it’s what I was hoping would happen, and is going to make some really fun filling for a future project. I’m not sure what it will all be yet, but it’s been really nice to have something to dig into when I’ve felt like I needed to be aggressive with my hands, and I’ve had lots of ideas floating around. Maybe some experiments with handmade paper? Stuffing for a transparent vinyl teddy bear? (water resistant for sad, emotionally stunted pervs to cry into!) Easter basket lining? The world is my pulpy oyster.