Title: Cannonball


Citations


Wroten, Kelsey. Cannonball. Accessed November 3, 2020. https://uncivilizedbooks.com/cannonball/.


Summary


Caroline Bertram is an art school graduate who falls into the trap of the “tortured genius”. She struggles with figuring out what to do after finishing her education in a world that only cares about you when you are succeeding. Caroline utilizes alcohol and sex as ways to disconnect from the world around her, believing it makes her a “true” and more “authentic” artist. Her friends try to show her the damage that she is causing to herself and others yet the art always comes first. Caroline ends up writing a children’s book that gets a lot of attention, which only intensifies her feelings about the role of art in a capitalist society. (The book is the story of a young girl going on a magical journey that involves saving the universe by deceiving vampires and other scary creatures.) She is told how to act and present herself to a wider audience so as not to alienate possible readers because of her queerness and pessimistic attitude. The story ends with her attending an awards ceremony where she gets recognized for her hard work but blacks out due to drinking too much. Her internal demons take on the shape of characters from her book start to make fun of Caroline, truly at rock bottom.


Cultural Origins


Wroten’s graphic novel functions as a fictional account of a character similar to Ellen Forney, another comic artist who wrote about mental health and being a “tortured artist” as a queer woman in the graphic memoir “Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me” (2012). Both stories show the main characters dealing with how their thoughts on art and artists effect how the act usually in self-destructive ways. Caroline feels like someone who would be in my friend group and I recognize some aspects of her in myself, which is why I am comfortable with telling this story. It’s is very contemporary (late 2010s), thus making it feel immediate/necessary.


Audience


The audience would be people in their early twenties through their thirties, most likely artists. I can see myself telling this story at a bar or as a book talk at a public library because it is quite versatile and relatable to young artists. We all know (or are) a Caroline.


Adaptation Ideas


I’d love to tell this story both in the third and first person, showing how the world views Caroline’s actions and vice versa. In a digital story format I could include images from the graphic novel, specifically the pages that are from Caroline’s novel. It would be greatly paired with “Grease Bats” because of how the queer characters look and act like real queer people, as well as “On a Sunbeam” because of the science fiction/fantasy narrative within the narrative. The tone should be tense: giving the audience the feeling that it isn’t whether Caroline is going to go too far, it’s more about when is she going to do it. The storytelling process should feel casual, like sharing news about a mutual friend to someone.



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