annabellaclairehabeggercom.files.wordpress.com · web view2018-05-09 · this is sometimes...

Annabella Claire Habegger

Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët

Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët is, truly, an anti-fairy

tale. There is always a grim, solemn mood underlying throughout the novel, but the

characters seem to not notice or care. At times, Beautiful Darkness can be gory or

disgusting, but the attitudes of the pixies that star in this tale can be comic relief and

keep the reader from getting grossed out. Death is a horribly heavy topic to cover in

such a light-hearted way with bright, cheery watercolors and ethereal, miniature

pixies, but comic artist couple Marie Pommepuy and Sébastien Cosset (Fabien

Vehlmann and Kerascoët) gel gloomy themes and dreamy illustrations together

through a really well-written story that compliments and depends on the visuals

and vice-versa. In this paper, I will take a closer look at the storyline and events,

formal aspects, conceptual content, and even social and artistic contexts of Beautiful

Darkness.

The tale begins with what seems like a normal situation in our real world.

Aurora, the main character who we follow through the whole novel, is having cake

and tea with her crush, Hector. They are about to kiss over their hot chocolates,

when all of a sudden; something plops into Hector’s drink! The room starts

collapsing into pink, rotten goo and Aurora has to escape the room. At this point,

the reader gets to see the environment and setting of the novel for the first time.

These people aren’t normal; they are very tiny and had been living inside of a little

girl. It is not revealed to the reader how or exactly when this girl died in the woods,

but we can tell that there are lots of little pixies that had been living in her.


Aurora meets a mysterious woman in the grass next to the body who is

eating cookies out of the little girl’s bag. Within the same two pages, Plim is

introduced to the reader. He is goofy and small and acts childish in a very excitable,

impatient way. More and more characters are revealed to the reader in rapid-fire

fashion, which is very visually exciting and busy (see Fig. 1: Page 16). The novel

continues in a very happy, upbeat fashion as the little pixies go on small adventures

and interact with the forest animals, birds, and insects. Aurora serves as a sort of

leader for the first part of the book, as she is good at finding supplies such as food

and dealing with the shenanigans of the younger pixies.

From the start with the mysterious woman, there is a sense of rebellion

against civilized society and organized groups… The reader is introduced to

Timothy, a reject pixie with one eye. Just as quickly as we get attached to this

character, it seems, she is killed and everyone seems to forget about her or accept it

as daily life for the pixie world. Slight mishaps and negative events seem like

nothing to these characters, and it is comforting in a “Life goes on…” way. Worry

and sadness fade so quickly if they appear at all to begin with. This is sometimes

humorous, like on page 45 (see Fig. 2: Page 45), when not only does a kite take a

pixie away, but also a pixie who got poison ivy or something like that continues to

get worse and worse and no one seems to be concerned at all. This outlook

displayed by all of the characters is refreshing and, to me, the best of dark humor.

After a while, Aurora gets angry with Hector marrying another main

character named Zelie, who acts like an entitled princess and bosses everyone

around. She wanders of into the woods and finds the mysterious woman, whose


name we learn is Jane. They live together in a house with a “giant” who is painted as

mean and dangerous, but never is. Right when they seem to settle in to their new

place and be calm and happy, the group of pixies that Zelie forces to be her servants

and Zelie herself show up and take over the new place Aurora and Jane found,

simultaneously killing Jane to take her robin. Aurora is forced to be Zelie’s servant

but in a turn of events, she kills all of the other pixies in the furnace of the giant. She

takes a liking to the giant and finally being alone with her own place (see Figs. 3 and

4: Pages 93 and 94).

Formally, this is a fairly traditional comics format. There are some splash

pages (as just seen on the last page of the novel) and some other variations on the

typical grid of frames. Other than those small details, the frames are all squares or

rectangles and only a couple of times do the text narration escape those frames.

There is a bit of inflected line in the inking, but more importantly there is lots of

detail and shading with just watercolors. Kerascoët does an amazing job of utilizing

feathering and little bits of emanata to give life to the characters and their

movements. There is wide variation of distance and angle of the framing that keeps

the action lively and makes the reader want more and more. Non-sequiturs let us

jump around to different groups of characters and get a feel for the polyphony that

is almost always happening.

Each character has their own individual style of delivering their utterances

and exclamations, but they are all united in the way that they are not fazed by death

or misfortune. I think that this microcosm of our real world is very unrealistic in the

way that the pixies are not affected as much by emotion as humans tend to be, but


otherwise I found the novel to portray a very accurate reflection of the world I find

myself in. Even thought the end of the novel may seem too gory or eventful to be

tranquil and picturesque, I felt solace and comfort in the ending which speaks to me

on how at the end of the day, all you have is yourself. The title itself is a hint as to

how the book makes the reader feel… The dark themes and events are not too

powerful for the gorgeously rendered illustrations that pull at the heartstrings and

delight the mind of an artist reader.

One message that I really could relate to was that of taking moments of pause

to see beauty around you. The first example of this is on page 21 (see Fig. 5: Page

21), where Aurora looks out on the sunset and seems to be almost overwhelmed by

the new world she is in. I often forget to take a moment to breathe and just observe

what I can, and this recurring breath throughout Beautiful Darkness is what I needed

to serve as a reminder to do so. The narration of this novel and the dialogue

between the characters are very low-key and they are not try-hard at all. Because of

this, the pixies are so genuine and real to me, that I can relate to their struggles and

joys that much more. None of what happens feels forced or contrived or overly

cutesy. I see that as a possible trap both the author and illustrator could’ve fallen

into, so I am very pleased those issues were avoided.

This may be a far stretch for some people, but I connected this novel to our

presidential election and the refugee situation abroad. The pixies were welcomed

into the woods as refugees, but they encountered so many problems while trying to

acclimate themselves to the new situation they were in. In an odd way, Zelie was

like a Donald Trump-type person who saw others as below her and forced them to


do her dirty work. There were lots of occasions of a pixie or group of pixies that

migrated to a new area or found new homes in different places in the woods. I make

a connection to what I am currently seeing in the news today, where I see there are

refugees who crowd onto tiny boats to start new lives and the journey to the new

place is so turbulent and terrifying – much like the one that Beautiful Darkness

begins with when the girl’s body is giving in to nature on the forest floor. The

polyphony of the different individuals and groups of pixies that are in action all at

the same time gives a somewhat consoling notion of “We are all in this together!”

attitude where they started to live in harmony not only with each other, but also

with the environment. By the end, I felt that Aurora was triumphant, albeit violent,

with her fully finding a new home to feel safe and thrive in.

The concept of the giant in the home (the stinky, messy man who seemed to

be a watchmaker) that they found is interesting and has a delicate balance to it.

Aurora and Jane thought that he was dangerous and yet, he never made any move

that seemed to make that true. Just last night, I was walking near downtown on 6th

street with my pepper spray in my hand ready to counter any attack I may be

unfortunate to experience. A man was walking down the sidewalk near me and for

some reason I felt fear and wondered if he was dangerous much in the way Jane and

Aurora contemplated the giant. But, to my relief, nothing happened and he even

turned to enter an apartment building before I reached him. For some reason,

which I may not be able to pin down, I paired this experience to the curiosity and

trepidation felt towards this giant. The main themes of Beautiful Darkness, I would

say, are death, decay, finding a new home, adjusting, inclusion, oppression,


adventure, c’est la vie attitude, and nature being the end-all-be-all force we can

never overcome. Even after appreciating and fully discovering all of these themes, I

still find multiple smaller instances of deeper meaning that I truly can relate to and

see in my own life.

The children’s book feeling of this graphic novel adds to the depth of the

character’s emotions and actions. If it weren’t for the gore and death, I would say

this actually is a book geared towards children, which calls me back to

conversations we had in class about how comics went from being for kids and being

a dime-a-dozen, to being for young adults, to being for everyone. Call me morbid or

immoral, but if I had children, I would probably read this to them for (1.) the

amazingly fragile yet complex artwork and (2.) the overwhelming feeling that if

these characters can accept obstacles in life and, ultimately, death, then so can we

humans. As a child, I had no qualms with exploring death (like the dead mouse ((see

Fig. 6: 8))) and investigating what is left behind after death. This child-like

curiosity is so strong in the viewpoints of the pixies that it calls me back to

childhood when you could have no filter and just explore anything you speculated

about.

All of these themes, big and small, come together to create a novel that truly

is about beautiful darkness! It makes the reader’s problems seem so small and

unimportant compared to how small this world of the pixies is… I hold this novel

near and dear and plan on re-reading it. I am glad I looked for a new graphic novel

that I haven’t read before to do this paper on, as I lucked out with finding this gem! I

will definitely be recommending this to friends, especially those who are artistically


inclined and who appreciate watercolor and hard work and dedication. I can see the

effort put into the story and visuals in Beautiful Darkness, and I don’t know if there is

anything I could say I’d change about this experience the author and illustrator

created.


Fig. 1: Page 16


Fig. 2: Page 45


Fig. 3: Page 93


Fig. 4: Page 94


Fig. 5: Page 21


Fig. 6: Page 68

annabellaclairehabeggercom.files.wordpress.com · web view2018-05-09 · this is sometimes...

Documents