JUAREZ and KAFKA

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VARGAS:
This isn't the real Mexico. You know that. All border towns bring out the worst in a country.

Touch of Evil (Dir. Orson Welles, 1958)

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rough notebook sketches...










Horror and metamorphosis


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As a study of 'in medias res' and a subjective narrative, elements of Franz Kafka's text, Metamorphosis has been chosen as a vehicle for experimentation with a graphic, mixed media treatment of a text for my MA project. Kafka's story offers multiple interpretations, the story itself becoming warped and distorted in translation, it will be the foundation for visual treatments and experimentation with story beats. It features an unreliable narrator and an opening story beat that causes chaos that the narrator fails to resolve. Using Kafka's work as a starting point for experimenting with sequential art, I can work with a limited palette of themes.



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video: Rock band At the Drive In use the music video format to communicate information to a diverse audience

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video stills: the subtitles show the link between consumerism and the murders in Juarez; the majority of the murdered women work in factories in the border town.

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The ongoing femicides in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, a real and socially relevant and current, ongoing news story is something that I will attempt to present using comic art, adapting Kafka's story to use as a foundation for visual treatments of real horror. The themes of metamorphosis, alienation and the collapse of a family unit are shared in Kafka's text and the news coverage of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The comics medium will be used to communicate with the audience and have them interact with the issue.

I first heard of the situation in Juarez from my Spanish teacher while in Guadalajara, Mexico and the story stayed with me. A very different Mexico was depicted closer to the border than what I had seen in my experiences of travelling around the country. The ugliness of the murders is heightened by the ongoing corruption that surrounds them. I feel confident that I can now give the story a worthy visual treatment, something that has been lacking in recent film treatments of the situation. For years, young women have been preyed on by rapists and murderers while commuting to factories on the outskirts of the city. The killings continue and, to use imagery from Kafka, the men who commit these crimes are like vermin or cockroaches.

"Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to discover that he had been transformed into a giant cockroach."

(Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis, 1913)

With comics and animation I will not be limited by the egos of actors or the constraints of budget and a mixed media treatment can hopefully bring the story to a wider audience. The comic book medium has been used by Amnesty International in the past to bring attention to injustice and bring news stories to an audience in a format that they can interact and engage with, using expressive artwork to communicate the desired message more directly and make the audience wake up to the ongoing situation as factory workers continue to be seen as being disposable and corruption continues to be ignored in the border town.





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