EPISODES by Alex Scott — reviewed by Stella
Earth’s End publishes excellent graphic novels in Aotearoa. The latest from their publishing stable is Episodes from the pen of Tāmaki Makaurau cartoonist, artist and editor Alex Scott. Here you have a series of slice-of-life stories —episodes — that capture growing up in the city in the 1990s and the influence of media and advertising on society, particularly young people. Scott has narrowed in on the influence of advertising and the role of television initially, through to the advent of social media, to disrupt and to create an arena where there can only be disappointment and confusion. In the first story eating breakfast is dominated by the hyperactive images of Space Cadet cereal. There is no touching the ground here, rather a sense of disconnect. There are stories about relationships and desire, mostly not realised, where the protagonist has romantic expectations that occur only in soap operas. A teen narrows in on an overly hyped beauty product as the key to popularity. A man is traumatised from working in the advertising world. There’s the world of the mall, and hanging out at the beach. Judgements abound based on peer pressures, heavily influenced by advertising, reality TV and the addictive nature of the TV series. Yet there are also feisty rejections of these messages, and growing suspicions on the part of some of the protagonists. As technology changes, and the media platforms vary, Scott cleverly changes the dimensions of the frame. Gone is the TV screen rectangle. The phone takes over with its vertical reference. To reflect the screen-like style, text is captioned rather than speech-bubbled, giving another sense of remove. In the later stories, social media is king, and there is a distinctive shift to self-absorption — the screen turns on the self recording every moment in that strangely manufactured way. The illustrations are wonderful, with details that will keep you looking and looking again, seeking out the familiar. In a strange way, there is comfort in the absurdity; and yet it is this exact absurdity that questions our relationship with media, especially in the formative years of childhood and the headiness of growing up. The stories in Episodes are sad and funny, thought-provoking, and all too real. Here you will find the wonderful awkwardness of adolescence, the kid that is always sideways to the world, along with the epiphany of being yourself, and the sometimes crushing, but always necessary, understanding that life isn’t like the movies. A ballad to — and a warning about — our media-obsessed society.
