James Spooner is probably best known for Afropunk (2003), a documentary that explores what it means to be Black and a punk. This graphic memoir provides the background for how Spooner came to punk in the first place, focusing on his time in Apple Valley, California, a place not known for either punk rock or racial diversity. It also explores how he came to see punk as more than music or rebellion, but as a movement that believes in something beyond itself, even while he begins to understand the shortcomings of the people involved, including himself.
Spooner’s childhood was rootless, as his parents were divorced, and his mother moved a number of times for work. The High Desert focuses on roughly a year they spent out west, the year Spooner discovered punk rock and the culture that surrounded it. In a pre-internet era, Spooner finds punk through skating videos, which leads him to record stores where he eavesdrops on conversations to try to find new bands to listen to. Unfortunately for him, Apple Valley doesn’t offer many options. Thus, Spooner focuses on a few people and events that occur over the year that help change his trajectory in significant ways.
He puts together a small group of friends in California, including Ty, another Black boy who’s into punk, and Melody, a white girl Spooner falls for, though he never acts on those feelings. The town is so small, though, some of the tangential relationships Ty and Melody have are with skinheads, who will sometimes accept Ty and Spooner, but often turn on Spooner, probably because he’s biracial. Thus, in addition to dealing with the majority of his peers—whom Spooner often calls “normals”—he has to negotiate outright racist attacks, which ultimately culminate in a beating at a party that Spooner uses to open the work, though the opening scene is purposefully vague, as he’ll clear up the details by the end of the memoir.
In a recent podcast with NPR about Black Punk Now, an anthology Spooner co-edited with Chris L. Terry, Spooner admits that he struggled with self-hatred during this time in his life, a theme that shows up throughout the book. He even says to Melody, “Sometimes I wish I was white.” He knows it’s not really how he feels, but, reflecting on that moment years later, Spooner writes, “Outside of being a typical teenager with the usual assortment of family issues and insecurities, I was facing a whole host of other problems rooted in racism. I wasn’t equipped to handle existential fears, so instead I grasped at an easy way out.” Not surprisingly, Melody doesn’t know how to respond, and Spooner doesn’t expect her to. He knows he’ll have to navigate the problem of race on his own.
Many of the desert scenes mirror Spooner’s internal feelings, as he lays out black-and-white artwork throughout, setting a stark tone for the story. He’ll often intersperse full-page spreads in the desert, often with his youthful self set near the center and the wind whipping through the panels to show just how alone he feels. The exception comes when he’s listening to music, no matter where he is. In the same way that music is a pervasive part of his adolescence and growth, it visually winds its way through numerous panels and pages, breaking through the frames in the same way Spooner is trying to find a way to break through the divisions he sees in his life.
While Ty and Melody help Spooner negotiate daily life in Apple Valley, it’s a trip to New York City to see his father that truly changes how he sees the world. His father is a former Mr. America, though he was never on the cover of magazines due to his race, a slight Spooner mentions in one of the first descriptions of his father. His father doesn’t understand his son, hasn’t been involved in his life, and doesn’t seem to want to take much responsibility for him now. However, he does take Spooner to Greenwich Village, where he meets two people who expand his horizons on what punk is and can be.
When he’s buying new Doc Martens, he meets Seven, an employee at the store who offers to hang out with Spooner after work. Their exchanges don’t seem to reveal much of a relationship, but when Spooner meets Seven and some friends for pizza, he meets several members of SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice). He learns that there are people who look like the skinheads he knows from California, but who actively work against racism. In fact, when a white guy begins attacking Spooner and a young woman, the SHARP members quickly come to their aid, giving the guy a boot-kicking that Spooner has only seen in other situations.
More importantly, when Spooner is waiting for Seven to get off work, he wanders the village and finds his way into a record store by following a young woman who takes change from pay phones that she then uses to buy a record. That leads him to follow another young woman (Spooner admits that he spends much of this time of his life believing a girlfriend will solve his problems; it’s ironic that women provide so much of his punk education when he was simply looking for a date) who calls out the racism, sexism, and homophobia in parts of the punk community. Blanca explains what it means to be vegan, how to be an ally for women rather than a threat, and how the punk community can create DIY art exhibits and zines to put forth positive ideas and create a more inclusive, truly egalitarian world.
Spooner’s artwork while he’s in New York reflects what’s happening to his view of the world at that time. The street scenes convey how overwhelmed he feels, as street activists’ dialogue crowds him to the edge of the frame, breaking through his daydream of having a girlfriend. The kinetic energy of these scenes, though, also shows how the wildness of the Village drew his interest in a way the monotony of the desert never could. Almost every page foregrounds Spooner and the person he’s talking to, while the background has a mélange of bicycle tires in a shop window, graffiti, trash-ridden sidewalks, or somebody trying to sell him marijuana.
When he returns to California, he has grown beyond Ty and realizes he wants to do more with punk than be in a mediocre band. He still hangs out with his friend group, though, which continues to get him into trouble at school, ultimately leading to an unlikely intervention from a teacher. Their community becomes more fractured through a tragedy in their friend group and Spooner’s inability to respond appropriately. The end of the school year will bring even more changes in his life, but he is already moving in a direction that will lead him to become a creator and positive influence in the punk world.
His art reverts back to more frequent scenes that represent how alone he feels, even as he’s developing his relationship with Melody. There are regular full-page spreads of Spooner alone, though there are more images of him with Melody, showing what his life could be, if he could find a way to be honest with her about his feelings. The best visual representation of this moment is when they’re walking alone at night, and Spooner gives each of them a close-up, one in each full-panel image facing each other, with the distance still between them. They’re alone together, but that seems to be the best he can manage.
Spooner’s graphic memoir not only conveys the particular life he lived, but it also encapsulates a time in so many teenagers’ lives when they’re trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be. While his development begins with rebellion against his parents, as it did for so many of us, it develops into a philosophy that has shaped who he has become as an adult and creator. The High Desert is a deep dive into the margins of the punk world through the lens of a boy who wasn’t sure he would fit there or anywhere, until it became the core of who he was.
The post The High Desert appeared first on The Comics Journal.
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
No comments:
Post a Comment