Cartoon College

After the success of our previous blog starring a young critic - reader feedback has been positive, mainly because there is less Vile text - Rose Douglas joins Gareth for another chat about a film in the GFF.

Cartoon College

Rose Douglas: So this is a pretty niche subject to begin with, especially for someone based in the UK. I mean, tiny American indie comics schools don’t really attract a lot of international attention. But I think we’ve both already agreed that this documentary didn’t really spend a lot of time looking at the school itself. Do you think that’s opened this film up to a new audience? Or just left it feeling strangely conflicted?

Gareth K Vile: I agree that the film’s intention is rather divided – it is split between the adventures of the students – and of the four that get plenty of attention, I notice that three either failed or dropped out at some point – and some broader thoughts on the nature of comics. So it never really decided whether it wanted to introduce the audience to “the magic of comics” or be a series of real life stories. But, you are an artist yourself: did the film convince you that comic books (graphic novels or sequential art or whatever we are calling them this week) did to have a special degree course?

Rose: Now the jury’s still out on that one. I feel I’d be able to give you a definite answer if we’d been shown a little less of the panic around final evaluations, and more of the actual work the students produced. As you said, three of the four students we saw struggled in one way or another to complete the course, so in the end the degree course isn’t really painted in a positive light.

Gareth: I did like the tutors though: they came across as friendly types. Throughout it, there was a nice sense of goodwill towards the college. Even that big archaeologist guy, who dropped out, came back at the end, and he didn’t blame anyone for his failure.

Rose: People seem to enjoy the experience, but ultimately it doesn’t seem like the course is all that successful. Given how difficult it is to find real success with any kind of artistic career, I’m left feeling like it’s maybe too niche a market to actively plan on going into.

Gareth: Indeed, most of the work we saw was very small scale!

Rose: That being said, in the epilogue most were shown to have found some kind of success with their projects, including one of the tutors at the school. He played an interesting part in the film, at first discussing the meaning of the school itself, but then quickly diverting to talk about his own visual novel. Do you feel like his inclusion benefited the school’s presentation, or was it more about his own personal situation?

Gareth: I think the idea was to show that he was still an active artist: like me not just teaching criticism, but doing plenty of it. I suppose there is always that question about people who teach art: are they hiding in teaching so they don’t have to address whether their work can stand up in the aesthetic battle. I know that it true of me… so: last words. Who would you recommend the film to?

Rose: Aww now I wouldn’t say that! As for the audience, I wouldn’t really recommend it to anybody who didn’t already have an interest in comics, or graphic novels or whatever. And even then, I think it’d help if they’d seen some of the weirder, more experimental books out there. It’d be great for someone like me, for example, looking to study illustration or the like, if only to see the process of actually creating work in learning environment. It’s a very niche film for someone already wrapped up in this world, but so long as that’s what it’s aiming for, that’s just fine.