Anthropology is one of those words that has the stench of higher academia all over it. Not quite the sexy associations of the archeologist (thanks Indy) nor the nobleness of exploration (thanks every history textbook ever), anthropology, even in the halls of the academy today, has a stigma of a person with a notebook living with gorillas or a dusty tribe somewhere recording history for no one in particular. It is the misfortune of connotation that has led our view of anthropology as passe while it is actually very much alive and thriving, especially in the medium of comics via the graphic narrative. The educational value of the stories presented in graphic narratives and comics are, therefore, of great value.
We Don't Need no Education
Hopefully, you didn't stop reading with the last sentence. Look, when I make a statement of educational value, it is more of an all encompassing idea. I speak of comics and graphic narratives as educational in a more far reaching connotative sense--we cannot begin to evaluate how we communicate unless we look at the different ways in which we attempt to make sense of the multiplicity of ways in which we, as a species as a whole, have created systems of communication. So what does that mean exactly? Well this requires looking at stories (for starters) in the following ways:
-Stories as transformative pieces of culture representation.
-Stories as communicative.
-Stories as symbols.
**For another angle on this, see my post on semiotics in Carey and Gross's The Unwritten
Spinning out of the above ideas about stories, I want to isolate an experimental way of how anthropology extends into the comics medium in a very effective and affecting way to help us understand various cultures, histories, ideologies, and viewpoints through experience.
Ethnographies of Experience
Anthropology utilizes a more qualitative means to present findings (data). One reason for this is that qualitative data gathering lends itself to deconstruction due to it being more of an experienced based record of events. Thus, the ethnography is a method in which written study is conducted to attempt a break down of an understanding of a culture or group. How an anthropologist can organize, validify and present that written account has been in a highly contested debate for decades. What cannot be denied, however, that more often the idea of what constitutes a qualitative ethnography has grown into other branches of study, more noticeably the narrative trappings found in English and History departmental writings. One that I have found in my readings that can be applied to comics studies is the ethnography of experience.
According to Marcus and Fischer (1999), the ethnography of experience is one that looks to "persuade the reader that culture matters more than [one] might have thought" (p.43). While you may at this moment be saying to yourself " that's just common sense", you may want to step back and ask yourself-- how well do I know a culture outside of my own? Odds are, even for the most educated, that we actually know very little. If this is so, how often then do you think are young people, the children in the schools, the young adults burgeoning out into the world, exposed to various cultures? While technology has allowed for new informational gates to open up, it is often overlooked that western culture has ignored actually teaching how to learn about different cultures even via the web- some could say there is a complete lack of any real media literacy (but that is for those much smarter than I in that field). But in digressing, the avenues of how we are exposing ourselves to cultures different than our own needs to be forever widening in the multiplicity of media that are available to us.
Graphic Narratives As Ethnographies Of Experience
While many still ( the public at large as well as many in academia) only think of the graphic narrative as a “comic”, many have argued for the applicability of them across a much broader and relative spectrum. For example, Mila Bongco (2000) believes:
While comicbooks themselves may be ephemeral ,the medium and the
form are not… Many mythologies, characters, anecdotes and forms of
humor which originated in comics are deeply ingrained not only in
American consciousness but have found their way into a world-wide
system of reference. The language, characters and narratives in comics do
not exist devoid of ideologies, doctrines, and biases. Given the ubiquity of
the medium and its influence on a large portion of the population, it is
difficult to imagine that sequential art [does] not, in an enduring way,
participate in or contribute to the cultural debates or struggles of the
medium’s surrounding social environment” (p. 24-25).
Bongco (2000) sees the intertextual possibilities of using graphic narratives, one that I also believe exists in presenting subject matter to audiences that are looking for connection with the subject matter (e.g. anthropological studies/findings/writings). In using the graphic narrative for such purposes, it is , as educator and writer Rocco Versaci (2007) points out, a medium that provides another important contrast towards “ a common thread: however beautifully or ineptly or movingly or lifelessly conveyed, these works are someone’s interpretation of how the world in which we live either is or was or should be or might be or might have been” (5). It is the interpretation that is the conversation that we need to come into, and if a graphic narrative can provide a part of that common thread, it needs to be utilized.
Finding the Common Thread In The Outsider Narrative
The comics medium has been utilized by artists/writers as outlets to tell stories of experience, therefore sometimes conducting very potent and powerful ethnographies. Many times, these personal stories extend into something greater to provide a larger cultural significance. These stories of personal reflection and insight have been a window into some of the most interesting and turbulent times in American history. One major example is Howard Cruse's Stuck Rubber Baby. 
Cruse takes the reader, via his protagonist Toland Polk, through a journey of self-discovery as Toland comes to embrace his own sexuality and identity, while simultaneously giving us the experience of this discovery through the historical socio-cultural turbulent time of the 1960's in the deep south. Topics such as racism, homophobia, identity confusion, and spirituality (just to name a few) are funneled through Cruse's narrator as he experiences normative hetero-sexual christian white culture (of which he is raised), african-american culture, and homosexual culture. Cruse is also placing not only the voice of his narrator into the text, but uses Toland of the story present to break into specific points of the narrative to actually address the reader, as if he is having you over on an evening to just relax and tell a story. This type of narration is also found in a number of feminist theories concerning the power of the individual storytelling experience. But don't artists just come up with places and people in their head? Isn't that what ostensibly makes it fiction and cannot really make it anthropology due to some of it may not really have ever happened or existed?
Well, yes and no. Artists use references often to create the people and places. No fiction is not without some type of grounded context in our own reality, therefore, experience and reference always gives the story and art relevance/context to the reader as channeled through the artist/storyteller. Also, the amount of research and time that goes into creating these exploratory stories rivals any traditionalist sense of anthropology and or field based research and writing. Cruse himself discusses the four year process of creating his story at his website in more detail, which is filled with detailed journal entries, photo reference and other tidbits worth further investigations. http://www.howardcruse.com/howardsite/aboutbooks/stuckrubberbook/longroad/index.html
The extensive nature of how Cruse constructs his story is anthropology. Cruse's narrative is no different and just as valid as a field researcher who compiles data through experience and observation and then presents the findings. If people are going to continue to grow in understanding cultures as the exposure to them expands in the twenty-first century, the conceptions of what constitutes representations of cultures needs to be expanded to be more inclusive of peoples learning abilities and interests through an already available multitude of accessible media and re-tooled notions of research.
References
Bongco, Mila (2000). Reading Comics: Language, Culture, and the Concept of the Superhero in
Comic Books.
New York: Garland.
Versaci, Rocco (2007). This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics as Literature.
New York: Continuum, 2007.
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