Piece I wrote and presented at Toronto's Image and Spectacle conference on comics!

Digging through the sand in Dash Shaw’s Bottomless Belly Button: Style, codes, and the Parallax View.

In Dash Shaw’s “Bottomless Belly Button”, the narrative explores a divorce within the Looney family and the varying perspectives that come from every family member involved. We are introduced to this concept of multiple perspectives on the front facing end paper of the book. Shaw presents the reader with a diagram of the techniques employed by the artist: Stippling, Hatching, Cross-Hatching, and one, two and finally, three point perspective. It is because of the use of a previously unseen perspective of the parallax view, that the text transcends the boundaries of the comic medium to allow further comprehension.

As Sol Worth states in the seminal text “Studying Visual Communication”

Communication, and its attendant implication and inference of meaning, is a process in which one produces a set of symbolic forms or signs in some mode--in words, pictures, or sound--as well as in some code. The social nature of this process is embedded in the assumption of intention. That assumption is basically that the signs people choose are coded and that the relations between signs or elements are conventional. (167)

In the medium of comics, there are two modes of communication and interpretation that happen: pictorial and textual. The “mode” that Worth refers to in this case is comics, and in every comic there is the unique style of the artist that informs the interpretation of the work. Shaw’s style fits very well into a category that Scott McCloud mentioned in his TED Talk, “There are four different kind of comics: formalist, classicist, animist, and iconoclast” (McCloud 2005)  Shaw’s comic would align itself with the iconoclast subdivision. McCloud goes on to further explicate on this type of iconoclast comics, “...iconoclast represents honesty and authenticity of human experience.... If this is applied to form, you get truth” (2005). This iconoclast subdivision, when applied to Shaw’s form is where the aforementioned codes, become easily recognizable. In any of the codes presented in the text -if deciphered- the meaning extracted enriches the “authenticity” of the character’s experience. The reader gets a better sense of the characters and their trials and tribulations.

  McCloud also goes on to state that “comics are a medium that use only one of the senses that tries to embrace all of the senses...through the single conduit of vision ” (2005). This is where Bottomless Belly Button, exceeds the expectation of how to translate some of the sensory stimulus by using unconventional motifs. His linear style drastically informs the work. In an interview on The Daily Cross Hatch, Shaw describes how David Mazzuchelli first informed him of this style. “He {Mazzuchelli} said, “this is a dumb line. The style of Batman: Year One is that the line doesn’t know what it’s describing.” (Heater 2008) This no doubt left an impression on Shaw. Taking a page from McCloud and the universal face in the infamous Picture Plane, the Looney family is not abstracted enough that we can’t relate to them, but they are distinct enough so that we at least feel estranged from his characters.  

The technique that is the most crucial to the understanding of the text is perspective. One, two, and three point perspective alludes to the multiple perspectives of the three main characters within this text-- and their individual perspectives on the divorce that their parents are going through. These techniques are utilized in a way that furthers the comprehension of each character’s development.

Shaw starts showcasing these multi-point perspectives by illustrating the various physical elements of sand. He explains that “there are many types of sand”, then goes on to illustrate sand in various physical properties. This sort of codifying comes across as very Sausserian. The sand is similar to much like the Saussere’s idea of how arbitrary language is. Universally, there is not exact image that comes to fruition when the word “sand” is mentioned; there are multiple images that conjure up with the signifier. Also, there are very specific, personal connotations associated with any image. In showcasing this, Shaw vividly draws attention to the wide array of interpretations that each character has when ruminating over their parents, (or grandparents/in-laws) divorce. As part of Shaw’s general idiosyncratic style, he includes a lot of experimentation with the form.  He incorporates a wide array of elements that aren’t necessarily crucial to the book, but end up being of the utmost important to the overall comprehension of the character’s varying state of mind.

In an earlier work, “Cartoon Symbolia” Shaw even presents a new lexicon for deciphering comics. Specifically, his use of Solrads and Invisidites are all over Bottomless Bellybutton. Because of his introduction to a unique pictorial language, it is necessary that we analyze these from multiple perspectives.

Perhaps a better way of depicting Shaw’s idiosyncratic style, is through the understanding of Worth’s idea of a sign-event. “A sign-event is symbolic (that is, communicative) only if it is taken as having been formed (to an important degree) with the intent of telling something to the observer...while it is a communicative event for them, is a natural event for the observer” (27). Through the use of sand, floor plans, reflections, and even refractions of light, Shaw’s sign events are all there for a reason. As Worth elaborates; “...all mediated events are to some degree symbolic” (29). Even the most seemingly innocuous details, are there for a reason. This idea of sign events coincides with the cinematic concept of mise en scene. William Phillips in his book, “Film: An Introduction” Volume 3,  describes this as consisting of “ the settings; the subject(s) being filmed, usually actors or people as themselves; and the composition, the arrangement of the settings, lighting, and subjects.” This concept elicits the notion that everything within the frame, (or within this case panel) is there for a reason.
Through out the text, Peter is portrayed in a very Spiegelmanesque style as a frog.  Up until past the half way point, we never get a reasoning for this. Peter then speaks about how he has always felt alienated, like a  frog. Then we see Shaw add lines to Kat’s eyes, indicating that the next frame will be from her perspective.  It is not until this moment that we see him as he actually is. It is very clear to see that Peter is a character that is distanced (literally and figuratively) from the rest of his family, but by drawing him in this style, we are even further removed. This is the first of many instances of the Parallax view that Shaw employs.

In Slavoj Zizek’s titular book “The Parallax View”, he defines this phenomena, “The standard definition of parallax is: the apparent displacement of an object... caused by a change in observational position that provides a new line of sight.” Zizek adds, “The philosophical twist to be added, of course, is that the observed difference is not simply “subjective,” due to the fact that the same object which exists “out there” is seen from two different stances...(Zizek 17).” To illustrate this, here is an example of a Parallax representation. as you can see in the image there is a sun that appears above the street light, but as it is reflected in the water, it appears to be the light of the street light.  Shaw incorporates multiple minor characters perspectives in order to provide yet another insight into his multi-faceted characters. Without all of these perspectives, they would be rendered as characters without depth.  Another character that is visualized in a different way is Peter’s niece Jill. In the text, Jill gets in a fight with her friend, who says she looks like a man. This deeply disturbs Jill. Later on, we can see an inaccurate reflection of Jill looking like a man.

Shaw cleverly shows us what Jill is seeing in order to further the reader’s connection with the character.  Later on, we still see Jill’s reflection, (or for that matter, the outline of it) except this time, it’s her actual reflection. Shaw is doing this in order to make her self-image issues that are still present concrete to the reader; in spite of the fact that we no longer have the parallax representation of it.

There are multiple techniques that Shaw employs to emphasize his character’s feelings. For instance, the omnipresent division in Shaw’s frames with the whole family is no accident. Shaw clarifies another aspect of the separation (their appearances) in an interview from the french website DU9, “ I wanted all of the characters to have drawn themselves. That’s sort of the thesis statement for the book: that this was a web of intersecting autobiographical comics. Each character was drawing their own autobio comic and they all connected to form a larger tapestry ”. This meta-self-expression is another instance of the parallax. We are given a new line of sight of all of these characters in the book. Additionally, in an exclusive interview that I had with Shaw, he explained that “one of the key features in this book is how all the characters reflect off of each other.”
Another coded system of perspective that is present within the text is the documents that have been collected over the years within the family. The scathing review of Peter’s film (that clearly is thinly-veiled fiction), and the notes that David and Maggie have shared over the years, create an intertextuality within Bottomless Belly Button. These very revealing and intimate letters of David and Maggie are a direct contrast with how they are presently very tight-lipped about their unraveling relationship. It is an entirely new perspective than the perspective the readers have already grown accustomed to. The notes themselves are presented in an interesting fashion; they are all coded.  One of the first codes present is reminiscent of Charles Bernstein’s poetic experiments. Specifically, the homophonic translation. As Bernstein states, this is where you “Take a poem in a foreign language that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate the sound of the poem into English...” Shaw codes this letter by using a symbol that is recognizable by its dominant sound (for example, a cube of ice for the letter I, because the I is the dominant tone). Yet another, is an acrostic, where there is a message that can be deciphered with every capitalized letter.
By doing this, Shaw makes the reader engage with the text, and therefore engages with the character’s emotional development. The next letter is another Ideogram, however, this language is an entirely arbitrary one.

Worth states that, “In a larger and nonrestrictive sense, we can, of course, observe and interpret both natural sign-events and symbolic sign-events.” There is no keystone in this code that makes it easily decipherable. However, it can be inferred using knowledge that the reader has acquired previously in the text. By using what Worth states as an attributional meaning, the reader already has the skill set to decipher what this code is. Worth’s definition for this reads as follows:“...to distinguish a process by which people largely impose, impute, put onto symbolic events knowledge they have within their psycho-cultural selves...(Worth 165).” By attributing some of the known facts (i.e. character names) of the book into the arbitrary language of the letter, it does become easily translatable.  Then, if the reader does go back and translates the code, it turns out to be some of the most rewarding text of the book...which also reveals where the title for the book came from.

Regardless of the time invested by the reader into the translation of this code, if it were embedded in the text without any way to confirming the translation, it is purely assumption. Paul Thibault, in his book Re-Reading Saussere, discusses this schism of translation, “According to proponents of the code view, communication may be modeled as follows: the Sender {S} of a message has an idea.... that S wishes to transmit this message to the Receiver. R perceives the message... and does this by making an intelligent guess as to S’s thoughts or intentions” (132).  There is no direct means of an affirmation of R’s translation.

By experimenting with how the reader engages/perceives the text, the readers realize that they are just another pawn in Shaw’s game of points of perspective and parallax views. He does this to acknowledge, the more that we immerse ourselves in the text, the more we can appreciate it. In spite of just being a captive audience.