Graffiti and Context

This is a great shot, especially because Venice Beach, California is famous for its boardwalk, skateboarders, body builders, single line skaters, surfers, beach, waves, bars, cafes.

So this image of an 18th gentleman wearing a dress suit, high collared white shirt and black cravat is jolting in a fun way, so out of context with all the bare, tanned skin, the tattoos and piercings, the athletic informality. This formal portrait of whiteness, maleness, privilege.  It could be in a gold frame hanging in a museum or library, but instead it’s plastered onto some kind of trash can or public utility cover, with dead brown grass below and oil stains on the asphalt street. Something about the juxtaposition is so pleasing. A great juxtaposition.

 

Let’s begin….

This graffiti is art because the dislocation and relocation is intentional. It isn’t the same thing as it would be if the poster of the gentleman had been thrown away by a student cleaning out her apartment, the paper falling down a trash chute into a dumpster and then taken to a recycling plant. It might be art if it is observed and framed in one of those locations, or the process framed, seen through some lens. But without that deliberate seeing and framing, the paper image would just be trash.

We feel surprise and pleasure because the image also seems, oddly, to be at home in this new location.

We want our writing to do exactly this. To lift something or someone from one location or context into another in such a way that the result will be surprise and pleasure. We want our writing to give to the reader and to ourselves this small, but very nice, surprise and pleasure.

Exercises:

#1. (you may consult the complete image on “photo credits” page)

Graffitti is great because it’s surprising. It can also be provocative, political, a form of resistance, a celebration, an assertion, a complaint.

-How does this example make you feel? Refreshed? Offended? Annoyed? Joyful?

-When you walk around your city, or you take the bus, the train, the subway, notice graffiti. Take your camera, your phone or a small notebook to record what you see. If it’s writing on a warehouse that you pass traveling south on a Friday on Caltrain from San Franscisco to Redwood City, notice all the different lettering styles, the different colors, the assertion of ideas and slogans and personal identity the graffiti makes manifest.

-Imagine one of your characters now also on the train. How does he or she react? What feelings are aroused by this transgressive form of art? Does your character voice his or her feelings? Does an argument ensue?

#2.

Take a major or minor character and put him or her into a different context. An unfamiliar one. Just as an exercise.

-Take her and put her back 50 years or forward 50 years into the future. Or lift her from poverty to wealth, from being a member of a minority living on the social margins, to a center of power. Write the scene. What happens? What new contacts are made? How does your character respond? Does you character want to stay or go back? And why? What did you learn?

#3.

Surprising circumstances, small momentary dislocations, can occur throughout the stories we write. In fact, they are absolutely essential to the stories we write. It can happen when we meet someone new, ride a roller coaster, experience a moment of fame quite suddenly, receive something wonderful and unexpected in the mail.

-Where do I have these small dislocations in my new work?

-Do they alter what comes afterward?

-Should I do more of these in my story?

-If so, where will I first give it a try?

#4.

Write out your answers to these questions in as much detail as you can:

-When have I felt dislocated? Out of place? Not at home?

-When did I start to like it?

-What happened to change that sense of dislocation so that it felt okay?

#5.

Take the above life experiences and put them into the life of one of your characters.

-Which character will I choose?

– How do I modify what happened to me so it fits my character?

-What do I learn about my character when I put him or her into this new context?

#6.

Dislocation can be massive (a migrant caravan) or minute (being handed a rose by a stranger). Dislocation also creates conflict, whether internal or external, big or small, positive or negative. The conflict from dislocation can be profound and life changing or momentary and passing.

-Think of all of your characters. Think of the contexts in which you have placed them. Now lift them each into a different context. Write a short scene for that moment when your character realizes he or she is in conflict. Write what your character would say if completing the sentences below.

I’m in conflict with myself now because…

I’m in conflict with my surroundings because…

I’m in conflict with my lover because…

I’m in conflict with my government because…

I’m in conflict with my previous world view because…

#7.

When we move our characters around, lifting them here and there, placing them into new locations and making them respond to the feeling of conflict, we also open the way for their pleasure. Dislocation can produce energy, hope, gratitude, joy.

-Go over your answers to the above exercises and see what contexts do what to your characters. Pick the changes that you like. Develop those examples into full scenes. Do what is pleasing. Create surprise. And celebrate that what was unexpected is good! Is new!

© Mary Rakow, 2019. Please do not reproduce without written permission from the author.