Paper Girls - Brian K Vaughan analysis notes

The series Paper Girls written by Brian K Vaughan is an example of a narrative written by a man for an audience of both genders, but interestingly featuring only female main characters. The story follows four paper girls in the 1980s who get caught up in a science fiction time travel plot, which sounds very much like the kind of narrative usually aimed at boys. What makes this story so interesting is the fact that it features four pre-pubescent girls as opposed to boys, as is arguably the norm. A media contemporary of this story is the Netflix television show, Stranger Things, which has similar themes, but features four young boys. The series was a hit with both genders, becoming a sensation on Netflix which has continued into its second series released in late 2017. The main difference between these two stories is the gender of the main protagonists. A story that features only male main characters may prove popular among girls and boys alike, but an alarmingly similar story featuring a main cast composed of women or girls may not be as popular with boys, for the simple reason that it will be considered 'girly' because it features girls.

Vaughan also discusses menstruation during Volume 3 (2017: page) of the series, in a very nonchalant and matter of fact way. One of the girls starts her period whilst on the adventure, much to the disgust of one of her, also female, peers. Vaughan could be commenting on the attitude many adolescent boys have towards the process. Despite it being a very natural and normal thing that half of the world's population experience, menstruation is still an embarrassing topic of conversation and stigmatised. Perhaps Vaughan is saying that this, and other experiences, both biological and social, that boys and girls experience as they grow up, should not be considered so taboo from the other side of the gender spectrum. It is perhaps necessary for members of the opposite gender to learn about what the other goes through as they come of age, both physically and mentally, and then perhaps their relationships with each other may be easier to understand.

Vaughan is a popular figure in the comics industry, having many stories under his belt. another popular series he currently writes is Saga, also published by Image Comics. This story, like Paper girls, could be considered to have an ungendered target audience, despite featuring many elements of the science fiction genre that could be considered only for boys. The story is essentially a forbidden love story between two members of rival species, at war with each other across a galaxy. The story is narrated by the product of their relationship, a young girl called Hazel. As the story takes place over a number of years, we are told it through Hazel's narration as she herself grows up. It was an interesting choice to combine two genres that are socially accepted to be for one gender - science fiction and romance - into a story that both genders can enjoy. STATS HERE? It may have also been a concious decision to make the child a girl. ASK BRIAN HIMSELF?

First individual tutorial

Rough notes before individual tutorial

Presentation and first small group tutorial

Key feedback:

• Creating my own comic-length story might be too time-consuming.
• Move focus away from political/feminist critique of sexualisation and objectification of women
• Focus on gender in coming of age comic narratives and how these influence our own relationships with gender
• Themes - teaching children/young adults about gender

Summative Evaluation

End of Module Student Evaluation

BA (Hons) Illustration

Module Code: OUIL501 Context of Practice

Name: Molly Halson

Student ID: mh259901

Learning Outcome	Evidenced where? Blog, Visual Journal, Roughs, Final Illustrations, Storyboards, Development Sheets etc.  (No more than 75 words)	Your grade Using words: > poor, satisfactory, good, very good, excellent
5A1 Demonstrate a critical understanding of the aesthetic, cultural, historical, technological, social, political or other contexts relevant to individual subject disciplines. (Knowledge and understanding) (Research / critical awareness)	Blog, essay	Excellent
5A2 Demonstrate an awareness of the relationship between the theoretical and practical contexts of their own creative concerns. (Knowledge and understanding) (problem analysis/definition)	Blog, essay	Excellent
5B1 Evidence the ability to use logic, reasoning and critical judgement to analyse ideas from a range of primary and secondary sources. (Cognitive skills) (Critical awareness)	Essay	Excellent
5C1 Evidence the capacity for undertaking practical and theoretical research that demonstrates an informed application of critical, effective and testable processes. (Practical and professional skills) (research)	Blog, essay	Excellent
5D1 Organise and carry out self-directed projects and communicate outcomes through written and other appropriate forms. (Key transferable skills) (professionalism / technical competence / visual quality)	Visual Journal	Satisfactory

Summative Evaluation

Although CoP is oddly one of my favourite modules, as I love writing, I struggled a lot with it this year. I had a lot of personal problems which affected my motivation. Despite my struggles, I still managed to get a whole 3000 words done in time, and words that I was happy with. I changed my focus of research quite a bit over the year, going from just looking at the presentation of female characters to investigating how these tropes actually affect women (and men) in real life. I initially wanted to focus on comics, as that’s primarily where I see my practice going, but decided along the way that I had more research and examples in film, and had too much research to fit everything in 3000 words, so I hope to move the focus to include comics in CoP3. Similarly, I wanted to make a comic in response to my research, but leaving a lot of the module until last minute, this was impossible. I always knew vaguely that I wanted to illustrate girls and women in their own terms. By which I mean, not written by or for men. A lot of the research I did showed that the media is patriarchal, so a lot of the women in fiction are a male fantasy. I want to contribute more material that girls can actually relate to, doing real things and looking like normal women, not supermodels. Hopefully next year I can manage my time better and expand on this, perhaps in comic form. I always feel like I learn a lot from this module, and I do really enjoy it once I actually motivate myself to do it. I love writing and challenging myself to investigate something I care about. I definitely should focus more on the visual aspect of the module, but a lot of what put me off it this year was the format of the journal. I felt that giving us a specific size and type of sketchbook was very limiting, especially considering all the freedom we had last year. I felt encouraged to express myself last year, but this year definitely felt more constrictive. I hope next year we’re able to work in ways that we find more comfortable. As always, I struggled with blogging. I find it distracting to blog alongside my work, and do the study tasks when I know I’ll demonstrate most of these things within my essay. I know a lot of people struggle with writing and hate this module, but I really love it, and I find the tasks and blogging really tedious, and just want to get on with it. As I know we don’t have as much time on CoP next year, I hope I’ll organize my time better, and make myself do some work over summer. I think because I’ve done a lot of research already that I didn’t use this year, and because I’m focusing on a similar area, I should be able to make a start on my essay over summer, and hopefully have most of it finished before we come back in September!

Essay

CoP 3 Proposal

Visual Journal

Firstly, obviously I managed my time with the visual journal very badly. I hated the forced format of the A5 concertina book, but my motivation issues were really stopping me from starting it. I was overwhelmed by the restrictions, and confused about what I should actually do in it. I also didn't really want to start it without having finished my essay, which I also finished very late! With very little time left I was quite limited in what I could do.

I talked to a friend who suggested collage - it's not what I usually like to do, but with limited time left I thought it was actually a good idea.

I decided to focus on portraying women in realistic and natural environments, with other women, to contradict current media's portrayal of women through the male gaze, as I discussed in my essay.

I got some TV magazines, home magazines, women's magazines and catalogues. I started to cut out any women and settings I thought could contribute. I tried to get pictures of women and girls without men, who weren't necessarily smiling, as women don't smile all the time. I definitely didn't want obviously fake and posed pictures, especially where the women were looking into the camera.

So, after cutting out a LOT of images, I set to work creating different scenes.

When I'd finished one side of the journal though, I felt it looked too bare. So I started writing about my perspective on female relationships and how important they are.

It actually kinda turned into a poem, weirdly!

I titled the journal/lengthy zine/poem 'Everyday Superheroes: mums, friends, daughters, women.'

Kinda pretentious maybe.

But I wanted to encapsulate the importance of female relationships, and, extending from my essay, the fact that women need and want these relationships to be featured more in media, and realistically!

Because women are the unsung everyday superheroes of eachother's lives.

You can tell this is a topic I'm passionate about. I love the women in my life.

Changing essay title

As I write more of my essay and read more little bits of information, I've realised that what I really want to say in my essay is that female characters in cinema are actually damaging to women in the real world. So I've changed my essay title again, to 'How are the tropes of female characters damaging to women?'

I don't know how much I can actually proves the links between presentation of female characters and sexism/violence against women in the real world, but you can't argue that most violence against women is committed by men, and most instances of rape and domestic violence are vastly committed against women, rather than men, And even if men are the targets, it is mostly men acting against men too. 

I think that while the correlation may not necessarily be provable, especially as I only have a few days left to write this essay, but these tropes definitely fuel the fire for a lot of men whose masculinity is threatened, and who are perhaps on the cusp of greater violence against women, even if they don't realise it.

In fact, it may be the ones who don't realise what they're doing that make it worse. Many men who have raped women may not even consider it rape as they're doing it, because they're taught to be entitled from a young age, and taught to disrespect women from a young age, subliminally, through not only the tropes within films, but also how female characters are treated outside of films. For example, the fact that female characters are often left out of merchandise - like the absence of Princess Leia, Gamora (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Black Widow (Avengers) costumes and merchandise. We are taught that women are secondary, almost objects sometimes, and this culture continues to undermine women and threaten their safety.

Minor change to essay

Having (finally) started properly writing my essay, I realise that I might actually have more material than I need. I've done a lot of research intermittently over the last year, and I probably have enough to write a lot more than 3000 words if I wanted to. 

So I'm going to focus my essay a bit more, and instead of looking at comics AND films, I'm just going to focus on film for CoP2. Next year, for CoP3, I think I'll focus on a similar topic, but will look in more depth at comics and other visual narrative illustration.

There are many contextual points and concepts that I want to explore, but having looked at the breadth of my research and how much I've already written (well over 3000 words) just in notes and quotes scribbled in notebooks and Word documents, I'm changing my question from 'How are female characters presented in visual narratives and why?' to just, 'How are female characters presented in cinema and why?'.

I also need to consider the fact that I have to include a 500 word paragraph about my own visual responses, so I need to leave room for it!

Research notes