After I finished reading One Hundred Demons a few days ago, one question remained on my mind: Why were all the memoirs or autobiographically-based graphic novels we've read this semester so self-referential? I don't see this happening nearly that often in memoirs, autobiographies and poems, so what is it about the medium of the comic, or the graphic novel to be more precise, that makes it so obsessed with the meta? The answer has to be at least in part in the visual nature of the comic. Is it the act of gazing at yourself (however far in the past) while simultaneously drawing yourself? Or do the comic medium's textual conventions--the need to not only draw yourself but also give your old self a moment by moment voice-over--play an equally important part in inviting self-reference?
In One Hundred Demons, the meta-layer struck me as particularly interesting. The entire book is the result of a project that is all about introspection and creating for the creation's sake (not publication)--but at the same time, the book has a clear massage by the end: You can do this too! "Come on! Don't you want to try it? Paint your demon." It's a self-help book & memoir at the same time. Of course, there are other, smaller-scale meta moments in One Hundred Demons. Page 199: "The situation looks hopeless. But suddenly something happens that turns it around. The bad guy is vanquished. The good guy wins. It's called a happy ending. There are nine million stories like this. Why do we tell them?" And what's the arc of One Hundred Demons if not that? What about the chapter, if it be called a chapter, called "Classifieds" that explains why the author is not composing in more traditional medium? Or the note on page 18: "Sounds better in Tagalog"? Or page 22: "What did he mean when he said i was not-in-the-moment enough?" Or the dogs description on page 174: Ooola as "observant, moody, socially unpredictable (aka 'artistic')" (notice the quotation marks of irony)? (Sure, some are more subtle than others).
Do you recall the meta-layers, the breaking of the fourth wall, the self-reference in the other memoirs we read this semester? In Maus, Fun Home, Stitches, The Arab of the Future, The Photographer?
Why does it happen so often? I'll just leave that here.
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