Colour and emotion within ‘Ismyre’ by B. Mure – a study of aesthetics

I went to Bristol Comic and Zine fair earlier this month, and I picked up a lot of goodies. One of the most immersive things I picked up was a copy of B. Mure’s Ismyre [1]. I was lured in by its promise of a fantastical narrative featuring magic and a city of anthropomorphised creatures.  Also, I will admit, I have been a growing fan of the artist’s work and wanted to see how they translated their illustrative talent into the comic form.

B. Mure did not disappoint. Furthermore, I found, despite the relatively short length of the comic, I was taken on a story where my emotions were tugged at in many complex directions. I wondered how this was done. Ismyre is drawn in a relatively loose and rough manner – or at least made to look this way – so I was left impressed by the emotional journey it had taken me on. Looking over it again, I now see that a lot of these emotional arousals (by which I mean the emotions aroused in me by the work) are down to B. Mure’s colouring technique.

B. Mure appears to use watercolour to colour their comic. In the majority of panels, we see yellow for light and warmth and blue for shadows and coldness. Indeed, these are quite natural pairings of colour and emotional expression. The brilliant contrast between these creates a beautiful night-time atmosphere and adds realism to the otherwise simple line-art. Yet, B. Mure also uses colour to create much more depth than this, and it is through his use of layering and additional colours that B. Mure is able to create deeper emotional resonance within panels.

Here, it is suiting to draw parallels to the aesthetic theories regarding music. It has been noted that when there is a mixture of major and minor keys in a piece of music, and we look at the combining and positioning of these as a whole, we can feel aroused within us more complex emotions [2]. In contrast to this, it is noted how a piece of music strictly in either minor or major key, can only allow us at most to feel either happy or sad, but nothing more. Instead, it is the inter-relation of these keys that can give music the ability to tell a story.

In Ismyre, colour is used in the same way as chords to express the emotion of the panels and it is the layering of our base colours – set out as blue and yellow – that contribute to more complex emotional arousal in the reader. For example,  the first page is only made up of blue and yellow.  Each panel represents a small moment of time, and the scene is played out relatively slowly for us to absorb the beginning of the story, and start to become familiar with the main character, Edward. It presents quite a simple series of actions and the emotional pulse of the page is quite subdued: we feel calm and relaxed.

In contrast to this, we also see panels where colours are combined and overlayed and thrown together in a way which, in comparison to this first page, force a deeper complexity. They do this firstly by literally forcing the reader’s attention to increase – there is more to take in as our eye cannot flow over the page so easily anymore – and secondly by increasing the emotional arousal felt by the variety of colours displayed.

So now, we have a greater response to the images displayed and we are spending more time considering the artwork itself. This extra time contributes to the increased response felt, and the colours aid the complexity of the emotions aroused within. On just the second page, when other colours begin to be introduced, our focus is snatched up quickly as we feel the shift in Edward’s mood: from a subdued contentment to a curious intrigue and the notion that something mysterious is going on…

This arrival of new colours hints at the arrival of a deeper plot and, as a reader, we know we are not simply going to watch Edward carving at his table forever but that a mystery is unfolding. This happens again and again in Ismyre, and although you may argue that the contrast of simply using two colours and draw a scene into clearer focus through the clear division of the colours, it is still true that these scenes are often found to be seeking out one key emotional response, reflecting that of Ed. But when something more pivotal is occurring, or when panels are crowded with other characters or emotions are charged and changeable, we are introduced to more colours.

I can’t wait to read B. Mure’s second book set in the town of Ismyre, Terrible Means, and to see whether the use of colour is continued in this way, and I would highly recommend Ismyre for anyone interested in fantasy, magic and strange worlds full of mysterious and intriguing characters.

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Ismyre by B. Mure (London: Avery Hill Publishing, 2017)

[2] Music & Meaning by Jenefer Robinson (Cornell University Press, 1997)

 

Mirrors and Multiple Worlds in Murakami’s ‘A Wild Sheep Chase’

I may have a slight obsession with the stories of Haruki Murakami, and if you read any one of his books I defy you to evade developing one yourself. In many of his novels, we are confronted with an intricate and finely-tuned view of the complexities and relationships of daily life, combined and contrasted with aspects of magical realism and absurdity.

In his novels, most of what Murakami describes is grounded in reality and abiding by the laws of our world. However, quite suddenly, we will then encounter vanishing hotel floors, an elusive Sheep Man, a gathering of Skeletons, talking crows and a sleeping character who is abruptly absorbed into a television set, and so on. As a reader of Murakami, we cannot help but wonder if these oddities are supposed to be happening in the same world we inhabit, or if the worlds described in Murakami are fundamentally different realms; perhaps with a predisposition for these occurrences.

A philosophical explanation of the latter interpretation would be the ‘Possible Worlds’ concept: things may not have ended up as they are experienced by us, but may have led to an entirely different experience and situation [1]. Maybe, the world was constructed where sheep men hide in vanishing rooms, scurry around the mountains of Hokkaido, and converses by candlelight upon a towering stack of books.

In Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, we join our narrator on a search for a mysterious sheep. Yet, the odd connections and coincidences of the ‘chase’ leave us incredulous and disbelieving [2]. A girlfriend’s beautiful ears seemed a not-too-unusual character feature, but suddenly those ears are a means for psychic predictions – a matter which is accepted by our narrator without any seeming hesitation. This doesn’t seem like a reaction someone from our world would exhibit, given this realisation. Furthermore, upon the discovery of the Sheep Man, of hearing the tale of the non-existent sheep with the mark on its back, and of a man who claims to have been possessed by such a sheep, our narrator is similarly nonchalant and accepting.

Perhaps we are to conclude that this is not our world. Perhaps, what we should conclude, is that Murakami is presenting for us a possible world. Philosophically speaking, the notion of ‘possible worlds’ are mostly induced with regards to modal logic, that is, for discussions of logic and argumentation. But there is an instance of philosophy where these ‘possible worlds’ are invoked in a notion where they exist in the same space and time as our own world, and this is in the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics [3]. Let us simply note that according to this view, there are worlds in the Universe which overlap with our own – of which we are totally unaware – and of which there are various instances of ourselves.

Yet, I believe that in Murakami’s works, we are being told stories about some of these other worlds, rather than our own. Near the end of A Wild Sheep Chase, it seems that our narrator, in fact, becomes aware of these overlapping worlds during a strange encounter with a mirror. The narrator experiences the sensation that the person in the mirror is separate from himself:

 

“I wasn’t seeing my mirror-flat mirror-image.

It wasn’t myself I was seeing; on the contrary,

it was as if I were the reflection of the mirror

and this flat-me-of-an-image were seeing the

real me.” (p. 269)

 

This ‘real me’, could be referring to the version of himself that belong in our own world. Furthermore, when he is talking to the Sheep Man, later on, our narrator notices that the Sheep Man is not reflected in the mirror: “In the mirror world, I was alone” (p. 272).  On this interpretation, we can see that the strange occurrences, exemplified by the mysterious figure of the Sheep Man, do not exist in the world seen through the mirror. This mirror-world reveals a different world, which happens to be our world: the one inhabited by your and me, where the Sheep Man does not exist.

Additionally, a similar encounter with a mirror is described in Murakami’s short story ‘The Mirror’, reinforcing the intention of this symbol and the idea that Murakami’s stories are from a world very much different to our own [4]. That they are from another world is confirmed in this story, where our narrator recalls a time when he was on night duty as a janitor at a high school. He describes his experience upon suddenly discovering a mirror, which he has never seen before: ‘It looked exactly like me on the outside, but it definitely was not me. No that’s not it. It was me, of course, but another me’ (p. 72). Here, our narrator has also come across another version of himself from another world, revealed briefly and inexplicably through a mirror.

In telling his stories through the guise of another world, Murakami allows the reader to confront the absurdity of our own condition; things needn’t be as they are and they could have, very easily, ended up differently. Earlier in A Wild Sheep Chase, our narrator goes off on one of his many tangents and talks about the ‘worm universe’: “In the worm universe, there is nothing unusual about a dairy cow seeking a pair of pliers. A cow is bound to get her pliers sometime. It has nothing to do with me” (p. 67). Here, our narrator references and directly mentions the notion of multiple worlds, of ‘alternate considerations’. Murakami forces us to realise that maybe the stories being told seem absurd and crazy to us, but if their world and our world are just two in a multitude of different worlds, then we have no grounds to reason that they are not all absurd.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Menzel, Christopher, “Possible Worlds”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/possible-worlds/&gt;.

[2] Murakami, Haruki, A Wild Sheep Chase (London; Vintage, 2003)

[3] Vaidman, Lev, “Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/qm-manyworlds/&gt;.

[4] Murakami, Haruki, ‘The Mirror’ in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (London; Vintage, 2007)

Spookiness and the Sublime in Murakami’s ‘Dance Dance Dance’.

 

The Two Comedians by Chris Peters, via Google Images

 

In Philosophy, the ‘Sublime’ is what we experience when we are confronted with the vastness of existence. It refers to an underlying nature that we occasionally acknowledge by experiencing the incomprehensibility of the thing itself. I think often when we are overwhelmed, this sensation is accompanied by, or almost indistinguishable from, fear. Or, as Edmund Burke unabashedly notes, a certain ‘Terror’.[1]

‘The Sublime’ is indeed a philosophical notion and refers to such occasions and scenarios that induce in us a reflection of pain and, or, danger. For the narrator in Dance Dance Dance, his reality has been overtaken by occurrences of the Sublime, and this is exactly why reading this book can often create a certain trepidation; an uneasy empty-stomach feeling… a terror.[2] For example, when the elevator opens, not onto the modern hotel interior, but instead onto the musty darkness of the Sheep Man’s realm; or, when our protagonist finds skeletons seated around a television in a tucked away room, in an abandoned office block, in a busy street in Hawaii, these happenings are unnerving exactly because of the unknown danger they taunt us with.

Are we one of those skeletons? Are the other characters we have come to like being represented by those skeletons? Will they die soon? What awaits in the darkness of the other realm and will it harm us? This underlying terror produces a rather spooky tone, and it is there even in the hinted at imperative of the title; the Sheep Man demanding our narrator to just keep dancing;

 

“Dance. It’stheonlyway […] Dance. Don’t think. Dance.

Danceyourbest, likeyourlifedependedonit, Yougotta-

dance”

 

We picture a frantic, eager dance; full of a fear that keeps him moving. The Sublime is manifest in this fear; a fear that is always around the corner from our Narrator, but never truly visible. Fear of a warning, rather than of a thing itself: “It’stheonlyway”. Its origin is lost behind the ‘connections’ which are desperately weaved to make sense of his life.

Chaos itself merely fuels the Sublime, and the more desperate the search for a connection, a unity, the more the chaotic nature reasserts itself. For, Burke identifies that one thing that makes terror so distinct is that it has a certain ‘obscurity’, and this is exactly the issue for our narrator. Burke writes that:

 

“When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can

accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension

vanishes”

 

Now, the Sheep Man represents our narrators need to have things make sense (to remove the obscurity he is experiencing): “Weconnectthings. That’swhatwedo. Likeaswitchboard, weconnectthings. Here’stheknot. Andwetieit”. But our narrator has focussed too much on the absurdity of things, and his threads are splaying and falling around him. Thinking too much is the cause of his terror, and he is advised against this by the Sheep Man: “Yougottadance. Aslongasthemusicplays. Yougottadance. Don’teventhinkwhy”. Here, we see general advice aimed at mankind. Don’t think about your situation, don’t pause but just keep on moving.

The music becomes our lives. The Dance becomes our response to it. The terror of the Sublime cannot be ignored, but we can move on from this. We can dance and not think too hard about it. Go with the flow, as they say. And so, throughout the book, we are ourselves eagerly trying to make sense of the plot, of the loose ends we are shown and of the various unique characters presented to us; how do they fit together? What will happen to them? And then death intervenes. And with it, we are back to the Sublime. Yes, the reading of this book is tense and frustrating, but when the narrator stops questioning things, we find we can also relax again. We are happy that he is happy. And we join him in his dance.

 

—-

 

[1] Edmund Burke, The Sublime and Beautiful

[2] Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance