What is this Chris Ware cover about? Some feel confident
that it’s a ‘trite’ image, unambiguously illustrating its maker’s disapproval
of the scene it portrays: “those darn kids today, playing with computers when
they should be playing outside.” In this reading, Ware is ‘cranky grandpa,’ and
that’s the end of it. But this interpretation, and others like it, seem a
little simplistic, taking an image full of
things/information/relationships/design choices/etc. and reducing it to a
verbal cliché. Why is our first reading -- our first reaction -- so often a
didactic one? (Note 6.26: This post has been revised to eliminate some
incorrect material on Minecraft and expanded with new observations.) {Click on
images to enlarge them.}
Some things I thought about when reading and writing about
the cover:
* What about aesthetics, the relationship between Ware’s
geometric approach to cartooning and Minecraft’s somewhat similar visual
approach, as seen when comparing the image framed by the window to those on the
screens? The way cartoonists and video-games build worlds also parallel each
other. These connections seem like clear “themes," at least as intentional
as any commentary about kids and play. Style- and design-wise, the cover gives
us reasons to think that Ware's attitude toward Minecraft might be positive.
Is Ware judging this scenario, or is he simply setting up a
scene/series of ideas for our contemplation and enjoyment? If judgment is
involved at all, might he have mixed feeling about the scene?
* The world outside the room is certainly designed to echo
what appears on the screens (grass, tree, sky). The cover shows that virtual
worlds are pretty compelling, that they may actually be more interesting than
the 'natural' world (at least in its manicured suburban form). Maybe Ware, a
parent, identifies with the kids. In Minecraft, users are gods, little
demi-urges, just as cartoonists like Ware are . . . So world-building, cartooning, creativity,
parental sympathy, and aesthetic sympathy also seem like themes.
* What about the cover’s depiction of three versions of
play?:
1. The discarded dolls are an imitative form (users pretend
to be a care-giver, mother).
2. The ball near the image’s center (like the swing set)
represents a non-imitative, less restrictive kind of play (in other words, it’s
not programming kids for adult roles).
3. Minecraft represents both something imitative and more
open-ended than what the dolls represent. Is Ware making a statement about a
"hierarchy of play?" Maybe, but I doubt it. Ware doesn't seem like a
"statement artist."
The yellow ball, which occupies an image's place of
prominence (the center), does look a little lonely, though. (Note that the
pink/red girl might be stepping on a ball.) Ware's work often communicates 'the
pathos of objects': things can carry more emotional weight -- can even seem to
'feel' -- more than people do. At the risk of overstating things, there may be
a 'spiritual materialism' at work here.
This room is a curated collection -- and careful artistic rendering -- of
objects that appear to have the kind of talismanic power that things have for
children (and for nostalgic adults.) (Ware's work is kind of like that of the
cartoonist Seth in this way; both show a lifelong collector's devotion to
things.)
* What about perception and ‘frames of reference,’ or comics
form and sequence? All of the frames/panels echo each other -- the screens, the
window panes, the odd empty frame on the left. So perhaps the image has
something to say about competing forms of seeing, maybe? Something about enclosed spaces (rooms,
screens, fenced in yards, houses) and perception/attention? When a
cartoonist (especially one known for
formal innovation) uses so many panels in an image/illustration, there might be
something interesting going on; and certainly we can talk about the image in
terms of design, even independent of its content.
With all of these panels, the cover reminds us that a single
image can be sequential, and that the sequence here (in contrast to one in a
comic made of rows) is unstable: it can be read in many different orders; there
is no definitive way through the image's 'units' (which seem like an ugly term
to use when describing such an attractive image).
* What about gender and technology? Girls leaving dolls
behind them to invent worlds? They appear to have just been playing tea and
cake while dressing the dolls; cups are knocked over and three of the dolls’
four shoes are off. The girls seem to have left this play-world in a hurry . .
. There’s a real sense of chaos toward the bottom of the image that’s replaced
by an impression of order as we move up into the space of technology. Maybe
Ware endorses their implicit ‘rejection of gender roles’ and the technology
gender gap? (The cover is a male-free zone, with girls, girl-surrogates (female
dolls), and girl avatars.) Or perhaps he's just documenting, with a kind of
objectivity. something he's witnessed.
* Each girl is near a doll whose outfit matches hers. Note
how different the poses of the girls’ bodies are when compared to their doll
counterpart. The girls, comfortable and creative, seem to be rejecting those
more restrictive poses. Lying on the floor, the un-bendable Barbie can never
relax: she must forever pose, and even be propped up in order to stay upright.
On the topic of matching colors: in a balancing design
gesture, the partially-shown lamp on the left shares the two-color scheme of
the outfit on the girl on the right, just as the colors of the partially-shown
doll on the right -- atop the bookshelf -- resemble the outfit of the girl on
the left. There's what appears to a skirt at the bottom/center of the image;
it's blue and red, with the blue part 'gesturing' toward the blue girl and the
red part toward the red girl. Some of this mirroring seems to be related to how
Minecraft can be played.
Another odd detail: a shrub visible through the window is
blue (you can have blue trees in Minecraft.)
* The blue girl sits in a full-size chair, her doll’s
play-chair almost fully hidden under the desk. This feels like some kind of
‘moving away from childish things’ -- or at least Ware sets up a relationship
between these things. Like the dolls, a few books are strewn about, perhaps
tossed aside for the more engaging Minecraft. Is Ware, a lover and maker of
books, OK with this? In 2015, are books and dolls becoming more and more like
artifacts of some dying world? Or, again, is this just something that happens
in homes around the whole that Ware finds visually interesting, socially
relevant, and/or 'relatable'?
Etc. Etc.
If you don’t like the
cover, fair enough. All such opinions are valid. But I think there’s a
lot going on in it, more than can be expressed by a few words. It's a pretty
dense image.