V/ritingWorlds

'Welten-

und Raummodelleder Fantastik

Herausgegeben vonPASCAL KLENKELAURA MUTHKLAUDIA SEIBELANNETTE SIMONIS

UniversitätsverlagWI NTERHeidelberg

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Vorwort

1 . SySTBUATISCH-THEoRETISCHE PBRspeTTweN

Hans Krah (Passau):

Rotkäppchen und der Wald. Narrative Funktionenfantastischer Welten

Matthias Hurst (Berlin):

Film(t)räume. Raum und Raumerfahrung imfantastischen Kino

Isabella van Elferen (London):

Un/mögliche Welten. Wolken, Quanten und Weird

Stephanie Großmann, Stefan Halft (Passau):

Transitorische vs. transformierende fantastischeRäume. Versuch eines diachronen Vergleichs derkulturellen Funktionen fantastischer Räume

2. RauupNrwünpe zvlrscHEN FANTASTIK UND(Nerun)WTSSENSCHAFT

Meret Fehlmann (Zurnch) :

Weltkonstruktion in der Prehistoríc Fíction

Ulrike Kruse (Göttingen):

Die wissenschaftlich-fantastische Welt in B ernhardKellermanns Der Tunnel (1913)

9

15

37

51

69

87

103

S abine Zub arik (Erfurt) :

Übertretung = Eliminierung. Biotechnische Kontrolleund B ewegungs(un)freiheit in dystopisch-fantastischenRaumentwürfen

3. FaNrasrrscHE Raulr,rn¿o¡ELLE IN DER

KLASSISCHEN MoDERNE UND Posrir¿ooERNE

Tobias Krtiger (Augsburg):

Von ab ge nutzteî Träumen. Eine Probl emati s ierungdes IJtopischen in Alfred Kubins Die andere Seite

Marc-Oliver Schuster (Wien) :

,der zauberkasten / des famosen dr. mabuse I enthaltmich, mädels!" H. C. Artmanns Fantastik undRaum[Welt]-Modell

Tom Reiss (München):

Mehr Raum, mehr Freiheit? Überlegungen zumEnde der Postmoderne und dem (Neu-)Beginn desPhantastischen bei David Foster V/allace

Pascal Klenke, Laura Muth (Gießen):

Dämonen, Siegel, dunkle Nächte. Das Konzept vonFreiheit und Raum in Peter V. Bretts Demon Cycle

4. SpmI-RÄUME UND FnM-WsLrsN

Jochen Walter (Mainz):

Vom dungeon zur Existenzebene. Beobachtungenzu Raumkonzepten im Tischrollenspiel

Sabine Planka (Siegen):

Tim Burtons bunte (Unter-)Welten. Corpse Bride(2005) und Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Johannes Pause (Trier):

Das kinematographische Subjekt. Zur Raum-und Mediengeschichte filmischer Reisen ins Ich

115

127

r4t

r53

t63

t79

19r

205

5. TTTg FaNrasrlc AS A MEDruM oF FICTIoNALWoRLnunrINc

Alejandro Riberi (Hu11):

Thinking the Unthought: Fiction and Worldmaking

Klaudia S eibel (GießenÆVetzlar) :

'oRsad, friend, and enter!" Genericworld construction in fantastic texts

Diego Samuelle Guillén (Montevideo, Uruguay):

Potential fantastic elements in the epistle 21 ofbook VII in the book of letters of Pliny the Younger

René Schallegger (Klagenfurt):

Dishonored? Navigating the Neo-EdwardianSpaces of Dunwall as an Exercise inSocio-cultural Criticism

Markus Oppolzer (Salzburg):

Reading Shaun Tan's The Arrival

Verzeichnis der Autorinnen und Autoren

221

227

241

251

265

277

Markus Oppolzer (Salzburg)

Reading Shaun Tan's The Arrival

No recent picture book has been met with more critical approval than ShaunTan's The Arrival.t Due to its conceptual hybridity it has found an audience out-side children's literature, for example winning the coveted "Album of the Year"Award at the 2008 Angoulême International Comics Festival. As a wordlessgraphic novel and sophisticated picture book it reveals levels of complexity thatare not uncoûìmon in these narrative forms, but rarely executed with such preci-sion and artistic skill - especially regarding the almost seamless integration ofdiverse materials into a coherent and accessible narrative. Tan's sufitmary of thebook's plot offers a revealing glimpse at its complex layers, but also addressesthe aspect I am concerned with in this essay, which is the reading of culturalsigns, especially as they manifest themselves in the artist's architectural 'lan-guage':

The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem tocome from a long forgotten time. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverishedtown, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean.He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals,curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suit-case and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat andsome kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers,each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world ofincomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope.2

I approach this book as a writerly text that employs 'the fantastic' strategicallyin two distinct but conceptually interconnected ways: first, as a reading experi-ence that simulates the main character's hesitation and defamiliarization on arri-val in the new world, whose languages, cultural signifiers and urban spaces hecannot decipher at first. Using Tzvetan Todorov's classic definition of the fan-tastic and Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen's concept of modality as mystarting points, I shall demonstrate that there are four intersecting layers ofvisual representation that create an ambiguous modality and challenge the

1 Cf. the book's official website http://www.thearrival.com.au (12/05/2014) for a long list ofawards. I am using the following edition: Shaun Tan: The Arrival. Melboume: LothianBooks 2010. Since there is no pagination, I always indicate the chapter, the number of thepage and then the number of the panel, counting the first nanative page of each chapter as

" 1. Accordingly, the child's drawing on the very first page of the picture book is L 1.5.

' Shaun Tan: "The Arrival". http://www.shauntan.netlbooks/the-arrival.html (1210512014).

266 Markus Oppolzer

literacy skills of different audiences. Secondly, I intend to show that ShaunTan's The Arrival pertains to the more specific (sub)genre of utopian fictionwhich, among other things, becomes evident in the highly metaphorical ren-derings of the alien cityscapes, but also through cultural references - mainly inthe form of intertextuality. Both of these strategies serve the decidedly utopianimpulse of promoting multiculturalism and solidarity as antidotes to totalita-rianism and intolerance.

For an artist who holds nothing more sacred than the creative freedom of hisreaders to interpret his paintings and drawings in ways that are relevant to theirown lives,' Tan has produced a staggering amount of detailed interpretations ofhis picture books that frequently contain what I would call explicit reading in-structions.o The creation of these paratexts may be ascribed to the pressures ofthe publishing industry, which would explain Sketches from a l,'lameless Land:The Art of 'The Arríval' (2010), a making-of companion volume that is sold to-gether with The Arrival in expensive "DELUXE LIMITED COLLECTOR'SEDITION" box sets.S More influential, I assume, have been the countlessteachers who became interested in the book, but then felt intimidated by toomuch interpretative freedom. In case of The Arrival these 'book notes' foreducators seem especially inappropriate as Tan's "interest as an artist has beento dislocate the reader in order to better explore the idea of being an immigrantwithin a foreign culture".6 He elaborates on this idea in the following"Comments onThe Arrival" which can be found on the artist's website:

In 'The Arrival', the absence of any written description also plants the reader morefirmly in the shoes of an immigrant character. There is no guidance as to how theimages might be interpreted, and we must ourselves search for meaning and seek fa-miliarity in a world where such things are either scarce or concealed. Words have a re-

3 In his essay "PICTURE BOOKS: Who Are They For?" Tan defends the complexity ofpicture books and repeatedly stresses that "older readers" should get a chance "to look atthings in new ways". Picture books should be "playful and subvert our usual expectations".He refers to his own book The Lost Thing as a prime example of what he is trying toachieve creatively: "It is within this simple narrative shell that our recognition is playedwith and our comprehension challenged". Due to these indeterminacies a "passage betweenfamiliarity and strangeness is opened, and the reader cannot help but ask questions in theabsence of any explanation." Cf. http://shauntan.nelimages/whypicbooks.pdf (l5l03l2014).

4 The most elaborate ones are a sister volume to The Arrival, entitled Sketches from aNameless Land: The Art of 'The Amival' (Melbourne: Lothian 2010) which retraces Tan'sarduous design and production process in great detail; Tan's own website http.llwww.shauntan.net which not only contains a handful of essays and lectures on his work,but also offers "Comments on 'The Arrival"'; "Teacher's Book Notes" which he producedfor his US-American publisher Scholastic (http://www.scool.scholastic.com.aulschoolzone/toolkit/assets/pdfs/The_Anival.pdf ll2/05120141); and a series of interviews onthe book' s website (http://www.thealrival.com. aul).

5 Cf. http://www.thearrival.com.au.6 Tan: 'oTeacher's Book Notes", p. 1 (15/03/2014).

Reading Shaun Tan's The Arrival 267

markable magnetic pull on our attention, and how we interpret attendant images: in theirabsence, an image can often have more conceptual space around it, and invite a morelingering attention from a reader who might otherwise reach for the nearest convenientcaption, and let that rule their imagination.T

Interestingly, this statement reverses the commonly held view that words leavemore room for the imagination than images. Tan's highly metaphorical drawingsin combination with a lack of visual literacy skills among potential readers mayexplain why he had to compromise his lofty idea(l)s and simply state outrightwhat he intended to say. More relevant to my enquiry is the conceptual blendingof immigrating, travelling and reading as three related processes. In the fol-lowing statement Tan suggests even more explicitly that this should be the pri-mary way of interpreting the book:

In the case of 'The Arrival', I drew heavily on my own memories of travelling toforeign countries, that feeling of having basic but imprecise notions of things aroundme, an awareness of environments saturated with hidden meanings: all very strange yetutterly convincing. In my own nameless country, peculiar creatures emerge from potsand bowls, floating lights drift inquisitiveiy along streets, doors and cupboards concealtheir contents, and all around are notices that beckon, invite or warn in loud, indeci-pherable alphabets. These are all equivalents to some moments I've experienced as a

traveller, where even simple acts of understanding are challenging.8

This is indeed what we find in the book, starting in the latter half of chapter II,when the nameless main character begins to interact with his new environment.We follow him around and vicariously experience his first steps in terms of in-tercultural learning. Frequently panel-to-panel transitions emphasize thisintended identification with the arrival. Many frames are revealed to be subjec-tive shots (as the photo in II.1.1), while others show the central characterlooking somewhere in a frightened or pluzzled manner (II.I.4; II.9.1-3; II.15.10;1I.25.4; II.26.7-9), which is then - according to the principle of eye-linematching - followed by the scenes he is contemplating. Frequently we simplystay very close to him, which is often accomplished through a whole series of(medium) close-up shots (II.8.5-9; IL15.1-11; II.18.1-9). The animals in thenew world (e.g. 1I.24.3 f.;1I.28.6; II.31.1-7) seem monstrous or at least fantasticon first sight, as do the aforementioned floating lights (II.26.6-9) or thepromised land's retro-futuristic technologies (II.29.4;T1.30.6/9;IlI.3.4; III.10.1).In this way the exploration of the new world becomes an exercise in visualliteracy, a struggle to make sense of a physical environment that - in many ways

- seems too alien to be acceptable as real. Tan's argument that he was "trying tomake a world as befuddling as our own would be to any new immigrant"e is so

7 Tan:'oComments on'The Arriyal"' (15103/2014).I lbio.9 Shaun Tan: "strange Migrations", IBBY Conference Keynote, London 2012

http : /lshauntan. net/ comments 1 . html ( 1 5/0 3 /201 4).

268 Markus Oppolzer

convincing that one is tempted to simply quote Tzvetan Todorov's famous defi-nition of the fantastic as a perfect match for a reader's encounter with theindeterminacies of The Arrival: "The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by aperson who^knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatu-ral event".to Without any corroboration by a verbal channel and faced with apersistent uncertainty about the ontological status of what we see, it remains en-tirely unclear if the scenes that we witness partly spring from the immigrant'simagination, which is suggested by instances of internal focalization (e.g.II.32.4), or are meant to be taken as the visual narrator's objective representa-tions of this diegetic world. As Tan has suggested himself, "the best way to be'truthful' is to sometimes go in the opposite direction: fantasy",tt by which hemeans that he values the emotional resonance of a scene or the overall dream-like quality of the narrative higher than a neat and consistent separation of dif-ferent spheres of reality.

In their seminal study How Picturebooks Work,12 Maria Nikolajeva and CarolScott appropriate the term 'modality' from multi-modal analysis13 and use it fora simple distinction between "'indicative' (presenting the events as true), 'opta-tive' (expressing a desire), and 'dubitative' (expressing a doubt)".14 They iden-tify Todorov's hesitation as their third type of modality which means that thereader cannot ascertain the truth value of what s/he is witnessing.t5 "For anunsophisticated reader, the iconotext is constructed in the indicative mode",r6but the experienced or adult reader tends to be more sceptical: "in pictures with-out words, it is hard to tell whether what we see is real or unreal, a dream, awish, a prescription, a permission, or a doubt."l7

The Arrivøl would be a clear-cut case of hesitation (in Todorov's sense) ordubitative modality (in Nikolaleva and Scott's terminology) if we acceptedShaun Tan's suggestion that the reader of the book experiences the narrative ex-clusively through the immigrant's eyes. However, the book's overall visualdesign departs in several significant ways from this basic tale of defamiliariza-tion and gradual acceptance of the weird and wonderful in the new world as

everyday phenomena. These additional layers of signification can be traced backto particular design choices that not only had an impact on the overall look and

10 Tzvetan Todorov: The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. 1970.Richard Howard (transl.),Ithaca./NY: Cornell UP 1975, p.25.

1 1 Tan: "strange Migrations" (15/A3/2014).12 Cf. Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott: "Mimesis and Modality", in: How Picturebooks

Work, New York and London: Routledge 2006,p.173-209.13 See Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen: "Modality: Designing Models of Reality", in:

Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, London and New York: Routledge 2006,p.154-174.

14 Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott: "Mimesis and Modality", p. IT5.15 cf. ibid., p. 2og.16 rbid., p .180.17 rbid., p. r74.

Reading Shaun Tan's The Arrival 269

feel of the text, but especially on the way we come to understand it. Theyhappen to be closely tied to the question of modality, our interpretation of 'thefantastic' in the text and the representation of spaces and specific locations inthe narrative. The following analysis may not steer away from such basicnotions as defamiliarization or hesitation, which are central to Tan's work, but itquestions the conformity of the character's perception with our own. Before wetake a look at the 'language' of photo albums and silent films, the intertextualityof the book and the generic influence of utopian writing, I want to demonstratethat even the first layer - the extensive use of visual metaphors and symbolicrepresentations - is not intended to promote a simple dichotomy of familiarhome and unfamiliar destination.

A good example is the presence of the floating serpents in the immigrant'splace of origin. When the family leaves the house to walk to the train station inchapter I, the reader is startled by black dragon-like creatures hovering abovethe empty streets.

One of the images I had been thinking about for years involved a scene of rotting tene-ment buildings, over which are 'swimming' some kind of huge black serpents. I realisedthat these could be read a number of ways: literally, as an infestation of monsters, ormore figuratively, as some kind of oppressive threat. And even then it is open to the in-dividual reader to decide whether this might be political, economic, personal or some-thing else, depending on what ideas or feelings the picture may inspire.ls

Fig. 1: The Black Serpents @ Shaun Tan

For an unsophisticated reader the literal interpretation is a possibility, but other-wise very unlikely as the characters would respond to such a threat. Obviously,they know exactly which of Tan's suggested threats forces them to separate andseek their fortune in another country. This would detach our perception and in-terpretation of events from those of the characters which is also implied in Tan's

18 Tan: "Comments onThe Arrival" (15 March 2014).

210 Markus Oppolzer

comments above: instead of linking the image to the characters' experience, heclaims that - as an artist - he was intrigued by the metaphor and that the readerscan speculate about 'the truth' of this country's affliction. However, later in thebook our nameless hero uses the very same visual metaphor to explain to an-other immigrant why he had to leave home (III.13.5). This clearly suggests thatwhat we saw in chapter 1 was internally focalized after all and visualized themain character's understanding of the situation back home. Since the streetswere shown to be completely empty and the railway station full of people, thehouses more like walls and the facades broken, these elements could be read as

metaphorical renderings of the characters' feelings rather than objective reality.Through its low-angle shot the final page of chapter I (I.10) suggests that whatwe are experiencing is not 'the truth', but a particular 'point of view'. This isagain visually contradicted by our first encounter with the serpents (I.6 f.), apartfrom a brief teaser in form of a shadow (I.5), which is presented as a high-angleestablishing shot, one of the usual indicators of objectivity in film language.These contradictions raise the important issue of focalization in the book andquestion a simplistic reading of the narrative as internally focalized. Since themost striking instances of visual metaphors do not occur as illustrations of themagical land across the ocean, but the immigrants' traumatic experiences intheir home countries,tn I agree with Tan's suggestion that through the metaphorswe are allowed to vicariously participate in the characters' lives. Yet, what theexample of the serpents illustrates is that, frequently, this is not directly relatedto the notion of an immigrant having to learn anew how to read and speak. Thisis even more true of the three other layers of visual signification that ingeniouslytie the book together as a universal tale of immigration. Significantly, theycommunicate to the readers on a meta-level beyond the characters' reach andperception.

During his extended period of research Tan became "intrigued by the idea ofborrowing the 'language' of old pictorial archives and family photo albums, [...]all these faded, unlabelled scenes that are at once particular and universal. Photoalbums are actually perfect examples of how illustrated narrative works mosteffectively".20 Due to this perceived similarity between his own approach tocreating images and the archival photos he encountered, "which have both adocumentary claúty and an enigmatic, sepia-toned silence"," h" made the far-reaching decision to base the overall design of the book on this ambiguousmodality. On the one hand, he had to draw every single panel in a 'þhoto-

19 This becomes perfectly clear when the other immigrants relate their own tales ofpersecution which are explicitly marked as internally focalized (e.g. 'The Story of theGiants', Iil. 17 .9-ll ; Il.L8-24).

20 Shaun Tan: "The 2009 Coiin Simpson Memorial Lecture", p. 9 f. htçs://asauthors.org/files/lib/images/ColinSimpson/2009/Colin_Simpson_2009-Shaun_Tan .pdf (15/03/2014).

21 Scholastic: "Shaun Tan: Biography". http:llwww.scholastic.com/teachers/contributor/shaun-tan (I 5 / 03 I 20 I 4).

Reading Shaun Tan's The Arrival 271

realistic manner",22 since "naturalistic imagery seemed ideally suited to thesocial realism of an immigrant's tale",23 but it also allowed Tan to pay homageto a plethora of real-life stories of immigration. In fact, the double-spread ofsixty tiny portraits in the endpapers of the book not only contains representationsof himself as a baby and his father's passport photograph,2a but several exactcopies of photos that he found in the Ellis Island archive." On the other hand, hecould model the sequences of the narrative on the 'languages' of photo albumsand silent films that were closer to his artistic sensibilities than a completedeparture from illustrations. This would have meant a far more wide-reachingacceptance of the language of comics.26 As it is, the book is a conceptual hybridsomewhere between picture books, comics, silent films and photo albums,modelled on such wordless picture books as Raymond Briggs' The Snowman,which Tan affectionately called "an essay on nostalgia".27 Returning to our topicof reader reception, what does this mean now for the interpretation of theseimages?

First it means that there is no generic 'reader' , but a global audience of poten-tial addressees that all bring their own life experiences to a reading of the book.Returning to my question how fantastic the tale may seem to various readers, Ifirst have to clarify Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen's original concept ofmodality. ln Readíng Images: The Grammar of Visual Desígn (2006) they arguethat the "reliability of messages",28 or the tikelihood that images are taken forreal, depends on "a complex interplay of visual cues"2e or so-called "modalitymarkers".30 Though photorealism could be seen as the gold standard of high mo-dality in western society,3l "visual modality rests on culturally and historicallydetermined standards of what is real and what is not, and not on the objectivecoffespondence of the visual image to a reality defined in some waysindependently of it".32lmages are always 'þolyphonic, weaving together choicesfrom different signifying systems, different representational modes, into one

22 Zack Smith: "After the Arrival: Talking to Shaun Tan", http:llweb.archive.org/ web/20071028024429lforum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=I34270 (L5/03120L4).

23 Shaun Tan Sketches from a Nameless Land: The Art of 'The Arrival'. Melbourne: Lothian2010, p. 42.

24 cf. ibid., p. 10.2s cf .1bid.,p. 12.26 Cf. Shaun Tan: "The accidental graphic novelist", Bookbird 49.4 (October 2011), p. 1-9,

and "Comments on 'The Arrival"' for Tan's struggles to learn the language of comics forthis book.

27 Tan "The accidental graphic novelist", p. 4.28 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen: Reading Images,p.l54.2e tbid.,p. t63.30 lbid., p. 160. They are listed and explained on p. 160-163.3l cf. ibid., p. 158.32 rbid.,p.163.

272 Markus Oppolzer

texture",33 and whether they are regarded "as real depends on how reality isdefined by a particular social group".3a

As a "modality cgnfiguration"35 the "documentary claúty" and "enigmatic,sepia-toned silence"36 of Shaun Tan's The Arrival may be interpreted different-ly, depending on a particular group's notions of what counts as a reliablerepresentation of reality. As should be clear by now, Tan's intention is not at allto present any literal truths about the historical context of waves of migration inthe late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Still, it matters howcontemporary readers may respond to this, how 'fantastic' they take thenarcative to be. I would conjecture that for modern-day children or teenagersTan's visual design - despite its photo-realism - signals low modality and firmlyroots the narrative in a distant, inaccessible past that may seem as fantasticallystrange as a time-traveller from the nineteenth century may find our con-temporary high-tech world. Together with Tan's refusal to clarify the oftenambiguous modality of the narrative with words, this makes it a lot harder for acontemporary audience, to whom the very notion of a traditional photo albummay already seem overtly old-fashioned, to identify with the central characterand accept his reality as close enough to present-day life to see a clear con-nection.

However, the very same visual design may signal high modality to a moresophisticated reader who is well versed in history, who has visited Ellis Islandand understands the modality configurations of TV documentaries that ascribearchival footage a higher modality value than recreations of historical events. Inshort, the cultural references in the book may have two contradictory effects,depending on who is reading the text. For sophisticated readers the obviousallusions to Ellis Island (II.10-17) and mass migration firmly ground thenarrative in a historical context that invites a metaphoric reading of the morefantastic notions of the book to bring them in line with the serious content matterof the narrative. Since Tan's intention was "to reflect historical events emo-tionallylhrough surrealist imagery, and avoid reference to any specific time orplaee",37 readers are still chalténged to interpret the book, bui -- and this is animportant point to raise - in very different ways, depending on their previousknowledge. While all can relate to the emotional impact of forced migration, thetext triggers different responses in all other respects.

The second visual layer that exceeds the perceptual scope of the immigrants- but also that of the unsophisticated reader - is the extensive use of inter-textuality. Similar to the 'language' of photo albums these references toiconographic images of our western cultures open a level of communication and

33 lbid., p. r72.34 lbid., p. 158.35 lbid., p.17r.36 Scholastic: "Shaun Tan: Biography" (15/03/2014).37 Zack Smith: "After the Arrival: Talking to Shaun Tan" (15/03lZOl4).

-

Reading Shaun Tan's The Arrival 273

interpretation that help to broaden the scope of the narrative beyond the heart-felt tale about the hardships of migration. Since they belong to differentcenturies, cultural contexts and forms of expression, Tan had to translate whathe found into a visual design that would homogenize the material enough toblend in with radically different texts and contexts. In comments on his workprocess, he tends to de-emphasize the importance of originality in favour of thetranslation aspect, the recombination of elements into a coherent whole.

I never feel like I own the ideas, they're just ideas that are out there. I myself amconstantly drawing from things around me. I feel like I'm a translator more than anartist. Very little of the work is autobiographical or anything I'd even call self-expression, it's about taking one idea, almost like writing a research essay, processing itinto another idea, which is clear and sharp but in a different language.3s

These intertextual references serve two distinct functions: they firmly link thebook to the US-American and Australian history of migration, as we havealready seen with Ellis Island. However, they also help to establish The Arrivalas a political text that inscribes itself in the tradition of utopian fiction.Intertextual allusions reinforce the reading of the new world as a eutopianplace,3e while the traumatic events in the immigrants' past lives and the workingconditions in the new world become associated with dystopian visions. InSketches from a Nameless Land: The Art of 'The Arríval', Shaun Tan includes adouble spread of images (p. 18 f.) that are organizedinthe following manner:

Opposite: concept sketches of dystopian worlds - like nightmares - representingcountries left behind by migrant characters, here involving slavery, civil war andtotalitarianism. This page: sketches of the 'new country', conveying a utopian sense ofilluminated open space and freedom.4O

This illustrates how utopian concerns were central to the project from the verybeginning. Before I talk more broadly about the impact of utopian thought onthe book, I want to present one example of intertextuality that has a bearing onboth the eutopian and dystopian representations in the text.

38 Michael Shirrefs: "shaun Tan - Tales from outer suburbia", "The Book show", ABCRadio, (29/05/2008); http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bookshow/shaun-tan---tales-from-outer-suburb ia/3 1597 42 (I 6/03 /2014).

39 For this spelling (p. 5) and other key concepts relating to utopian fiction see Fátima Vieira:"The concept of utopia", in: Gregory Claeys (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to UtopianLiterature, Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press 2010, p.3-27 .

40 Tan: Sketches from a Nameless Land,p. 19. [original emphasis]

214 Markus Oppolzer

Fig. 2: The Night of the Giants @ Shaun Tan

The 'Story of the Giants' (1il.I8-24) is perhaps the most fantastic rendering ofthe whole picture book and the second flashback that presents a migrant's back-story. Tan explains the key image of the sequence (III.18 f.) in the followingway:

The scene of towering giants destroying a city is a typical example [of using photo-collages in preparation for a drawingl. The initial concept was inspired by a descriptionof communism by a Romanian refugee: she explained it as an ideology of negation, ofliberty and beauty being 'sucked away' and replaced by a spiritless pall of 'silentgreyness'. For me, this provoked quite a literal mental image: powerful beings sweepinga world with vacuum cleaners (also suggestive of that terrible euphemism 'ethniccleansing').41

The language of victims, survivors and refugees is rich in metaphors and Tanchose to translate these into visual terms, in some cases by literalizing what wasmeant metaphorically. What Tan simply refers to as 'a city' in his comment isan intertextual reference to Florence,a2 whichin the western tradition is closelyassociated with the Renaissance and a period of enlightenment. What the giantsendicate is not just the population, but - from a utopian point of view - thedream of a city where people can develop their full potential, be it in the arts orthe sciences. This is made explicit by mirroring the ravaged city (IU.18 f.) in theeutopian safe haven (III.25) where our immigrants find a new home. Althoughthis particular image seems to be based on one of Canaletto's views of Venice, itkeeps alive the vision of a thriving and enlightened city. Allusions to Florentinearchitecture can be found in chapter II when we first see the city in some detail(II.19) and immediately before the flashback (III.15.4). The floating lights(II.26.6-9) which I referred to earlier as an example of visual metaphor can now

4t rbid., p. 40.+2 ct. iøid.

Reading Shaun Tan's The Arrival 275

be explained in this context. The city is literally filled with floating orbs of lightwhich are mirrored in circles and round forms that are ubiquitous in thismetropolis.

Not only is The Arrival a "city utopia"a3 in the tradition of Plato's Repubticor Thomas More's Utopia (1516), but it also features a key characteristic thatLyman Tower Sargent closely associates with this type: that of "intentionalsocieties".oo This means that the everyday interactions in this eutopian city areshaped by the moral vision of its inhabitants.*t Tan addresses this concept ofmutual benevolence in the following comment: ooOne of the ideas I wanted tosuggest is that everyone in this place is some kind of immigrant or refugee fromelsewhere; and also that people are able to cope with their new circumstances byhelping each other."oÓ This is visualized in the final chapter of the book whichends with the immigrant's little girl giving directions to a new arrival (VI.6).Sargent's basic definition of utopian fiction is "social dreaming",A1 whichinforms Tan's unashamedly optimistic, counter-cultural vision of a"multicultural society" on all levels.ot In an interview with Zack Smith Tandefends his own variety of 'social dreaming': "I think many problems, local andglobal, are largely caused by an inability to creatively imagine alternative waysof existing, and asking only naffow questions."ae

V/hat is more to the point than this hteralized vision of utopia on the diegeticlevel is its overall generic impact on Tan's urban designs which inscribe keycultural principles into the city's architecture and landscapes: a love of nature,openness and generosity, birds as symbols of freedom, eggs (fertility, growth,development) and other round forms that signal harmony and balance. These areclearly intended to contrast with the refugee's home town of straight lines andangular shapes, the tenement blocks in the new world (1I.34 f.) and themetaphorical spaces in 'The Story of the Giants' (III.2| f.) whose design isclearly informed by German expressionist cinema.50 It is no coincidence that themanhole through which husband and wife escape is round (III.20.5 f.) - a visualsymbol of hope througliout the book. Another important reminder of thepluralism of this utopian city is the eclectic architecture of the new world (e.g.

43 Lyman Tower Sargent: "The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited", (Jtopian Studies 5:l(1994), p. I-37 , p. 11.

44 LymanTower Sargent: "The Three Faces", p. 19.45 This transformation is not completed yet, as the central character's worþlace is a night-

mare of capitalist exploitation (IV.9).46 Tan: "Teacher's Book Notes", p. 3 (15/03 2014).47 Lyman Tower Sargent: "The Three Faces", p. 1.

48 Tan: Sketches from a Nameless Land, p. 29.49 Smith: "After the Arrival: Talking to Shaun Tan" (15/03 /2014).50 I am strongly reminded of Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Another

reference to German expressionist cinema can be found in the factory where the immigrantworks (IV.9) whose gigantic cogwheels bear a clear resemblance to the machines in FritzLang's Metropolis (1927).

276 Markus Oppolzer

II.l9-21: III.3.4: III.15; III.25) which contrasts sharply with the uniformity ofthe tenement buildings in the old world (I.6 f.; I.10) and the Asian girl's formerworþlace (III.8).sl

A frequent feature of utopias is their lack of industrialism. In Tan's world wefind steam-powered airships (III.3.4; III.5; ru.10.1) which are impossiblecreations, but blend in nicely with a cityscape that features enoÍnous statues ofanimals (II.20 f.; ffi.1L lII.26) and whose inhabitants all have pet companions.This view of humans and animals living together happily in an urban space thatallows for the intrusion and inclusion of nature may seem almost naïve, but itsuits the overall utopian orientation of the narrative.

One problematic side-effect of Tan's utopian vision is the completereplacement of the immigrants' own culture with that of the new world. The firstpages of chapters I and VI are mirrored intentionally to highlight this completeeradication of what they once considered to be key signifiers of home. Not onlydoes this imply that there are perfect correspondences between cultural artefactsin all societies, but that the ideal of integration is to negate one's cultural rootsand start completely anew.

Shaun Tan's The Arrival is a magnificent example of the levels ofcomplexity that wordless picture books and graphic novels can attain. However,Tan's own suggested reading of the text - as an exploration of a countryalongside a new arrival - clearly falls short of the various layers of significationthat characteúze this book. This discrepancy can be explained as catering to aparticular audience of secondary teachers and their students who are looking foran easy entry point into the narrative. IJsing Tzvetan Todorov's definition of thefantastic, Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen's concept of modality and MariaNikolajeva and Carol Scott's appropriation of this term to classify readerresponses to the book, I have suggested that all readers can relate to theemotional journey of the main character - which is, after all, one of Tan's majorconcerns, but that all other aspects of the reading experience are determined byone's familiarity with the western tradition of signification. Tan's strategicimplementation of the 'language' of photo albums, of intra- and intertextualreferences and key characteristics of utopian fiction may be completely lost onyounger or less educated readers who may interpret metaphorical aspects of thenarrative as literal or, vice versa, references to historical events and culturalicons as pertaining to fantasy. This is not to say that a more academic reading ofThe Arrival is superior to a naïve approach, which can be quite as rewarding, butthat different reader responses have to be taken quite as seriously as genre ormodality markers that may seem self-evident to some readers but may triggervery different responses in others.

51 This image is based on Gustave Doré's "Over London - By Rail" (ca. 1870) which wasincluded in Doré's London: A Pilgrimase (1872). This is another great example of Tan'sattempt to expand the cultural meaning potential and significance of The Arrival throughintertextuality.

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