Saturday, October 4, 2014
Essential Blackness (The Negritude Movement)
A group of three young, black intellectuals, sent to Paris to study at
university from their home colonies in Africa, begin meeting at the tea-shop
Clamart Salon.These
students, known as les trois peres
(the three fathers), publish multiple literary journals and magazines and found
the Negritude movement — an intellectual and literary movement characterized by
anticolonialism; Marxism; the rejection of Western domination; and pride in and
valorization of African history, traditions, and beliefs. The story pits the
turbulent development of the protagonist’s personal identities against the
backdrop of an intellectual revolution, questions of moral imperatives to
action, and violent anticolonial wars across the globe.
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While I think the themes are super relevant (specifically being a black citizen of a white colonial power) and the story of the movement is an important one to tell, I'm really excited about this project as a chance to get adventurous with an ambitious, unorthodox story. I love the idea of illustrating Cesaire's philosophical exploration and psychological breakdown, challenging the medium to do more than simply dramatize biographical information. To this end, I'd personally like to see a heavy focus on Cesaire's character. However, I think the really important thing is to have a narrative arc that a) has enough going on to engage the reader and b) is fairly self-contained / not too expansive.
ReplyDelete(That said, I think it would be cool to include Senghor and Damas fighting in WWII)
This was my third choice. I am very intrigued by the illustrative challenge that the story would bring, and this would definitely be an ambitious project to take on. I think that the story could be very powerful given the many themes it brings up, and also be a very poignant coming of age story which I think a lot of readers could identify with somewhat. It may be important to keep the scope of the story pretty tight; if we are going for an illustrated journey into the characters' minds and philosophies, too much real-life action could confuse the pace or detract from the more conceptual aspects.
ReplyDeleteThis was my second choice. Despite there not being a lot of "physical" activities going on (or that's what I'm assuming...), I think it would be awesome to illustrate the characters' moods. Especially since we have access to a wide variety of essays and poetry they write, it would be interesting to describe it in a visual sense. It would be interesting to follow a journal-ish format, since we are studying very expressive characters. That said writing the actual script(?) shall be challenging since the actions seem very limited to philosophical debates which visually isn't necessarily the most exciting thing.
ReplyDelete