Frezno's Comic Challenge: The Straight Story Six Part 3 (Ducks)

 (TW: sexual assault) 

On July 1st, 1992, the world came to an end in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador. After 500 years of prosperity, the lifeblood and livelihood of the Newfoundlander ran out. The noble Atlantic codfish, fished to near extinction by the advancements of technology in the modern age, of high-powered ships with draggers literally trawling the ocean floor of all marine life, siphoning up the codfish with more volume than it could repopulate itself. The moratorium which dropped down from the Canadian government was swift, but crushing. Thousands of men, who had fished all their lives and whose fathers had fished all their lives and who had fathers who fished all their lives, going back generations all the way to the heady days of John Cabot and the "discovery" of Newfoundland, out of work. I was seven years old. My generation, the early millennial. The first crop of Newfoundlanders for whom the fishery was not a viable career path. Something had to be done for the tradesman among my peers. Many choices were made, but one that saw some success lay thousands of kilometers away. In the oil sands of Alberta, a far-off place of frigid winters landlocked on all sides, where no soothing ocean breeze could tickle the senses and soothe the soul. Many made that journey. I was not among them, but many did. Some of them are even in the book we'll be talking about today.

Why do I mention the plight of my generation, the loss of our fishery? Ducks is not a book about such things, but the animating inciting incident is not too unfamiliar. As Kate Beaton puts it in her book, Newfoundlanders are accordions and codfish whereas Nova Scotians are fiddles and lobster. The dilemma which faces her at the beginning is similar. A small town on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Mabou. I have never been to Mabou (though I have been to Nova Scotia), but I feel a familiarity with this place all the same. A tiny little thing nestled at the water's edge. This is just what we call "out the bay" in Newfoundland. It's home to me. It's Grand Bank in Newfoundland. (Consider this synchronicity: Grand Bank is not mentioned but the Grand Banks, the fishing grounds upon which we and the Europeans fished and fished until there were no more fish to fish, are. An invocation just one added letter off from my serene sanctuary.) There is naught there for Kate. Soothing marine scenery is lovely, but it does not pay the bills. As she looks out at a picturesque seaside, awash in a soft and sad marine grey-blue as the rest of this book is, I can feel the image in my soul. I can smell it in my memories. It soothes and comforts, but it is a fleeting thing. A complex contradiction of emotion, captured in a still moment of time, a beat between panels. I feel the comfort, but I feel the loneliness of this vast expanse of beach and see. One last comfort before a life-changing trip. One last look before going off to do what must be done. Kate Beaton, like so many before her, is going out to the oil sands. Out to Alberta.

Ducks is, and will probably be, the most affecting book I read for this challenge. The other stories, they intrigued in their own right. Many of them opened my mind to new horizons and possibilities. Many of them dealt with issues that felt poignant, human, and real. Ducks is different. It does not feel like a composed narrative. It feels real, and that is because it is real. This is not a constructed narrative. This is a form of reality, channeled through Beaton's talents as a comic artist. Everything that happens, then, takes on a whole new level. Every face, every friendship, every interaction. All a real thing which happened to this real artist, all of it put on the page with an honesty and brevity. Alberta and her oil sands are a bit much to get used to. I have never been, as I said, but I feel that disconnect all the same: this is not a space I belong in. Beaton feels that far more intimately than I do. I had the innate privilege of being born male. The fundamental disconnect of the oil sands would be there for me at first, but I would eventually adjust to it in my own way. Beaton does as well, to a degree... but there is always a disconnect there due to her gender. The oil sands, for lack of a better term, are a boy's club, and sometime boy's clubs generate the most terrible things.

And yet there still is beauty here. One bit that moved me was a scene with Beaton, late at night and outside, witnessing aurora borealis in the harsh frigidity of her camp. This place, so alien and foreign and almost hostile to a Maritimer, still has its moments of transcendent wonder. The place is not an entire wash. In the end, that may just make things more tragic. If the oil sands were wall-to-wall misery, it might be easier to write them off. Such fleeting moments of beauty just add to the complex contradiction at play here. Rare jewels of beauty nestled in such ugly unpleasantness. Beating at the center of the oil sands is the toxic ichor of MASCULINITY, and all the horrors that it entails. For the sake of her job, Beaton endures. An off-color comment here. A flirtatious entendre there. Nothing worth kicking up a fuss over, right? Girls who kick up a fuss over little jokes like that aren't cool, aren't team players, aren't one of the guys. Better to just grin and bear it, right? That mentality leads Beaton to a dark place, the darkest place a woman can possibly go to. A tale that's, sadly, as old as time. The worst thing that can happen to a woman happens to Kate Beaton.

I feel like I'm being way too goddamn clinical describing this. Let me put some emotion into it, some passion in with the solemn horror you feel as you think of the fact that this really happened and the victim has enough talent to make comic book art out of it, to express beyond words this horrific fucking thing which has happened to her. Make no mistake, Beaton calls it what it is in the afterword. It was rape. She was raped. As advances are made, the hint of marine blue of the comic's tone fades away. Everything becomes gray and lifeless. Panels fade to black, and when they return, everything is fuzzy and washed-out, Kate stumbling out and walking home in an almost dissociated daze. It's terrible. Horrible. My heart goes out to Beaton, but somehow it gets worse. Fifteen pages later, it happens again and worse. The first time is just "hey come hang out in my room" which leads to the fade-out to advances being made. The second time? The second time is a party with the fellas, one too many to drink, advances made, Beaton saying no... and things happening anyway. 

Once again the soft marine blue fades from the world, replaced with that grey. Once again the world becomes fuzzy and ill-defined as things begin to happen. Both times it happens, Kate thinks back to that beach at Mabou, color coming back to the world in her memory. A melancholic comfort, attempted. Ocean breeze and calm waves could do little to calm this, the worst thing that could happen to a woman happening twice. Jesus Christ. And yet, as awful as it is, it happened and Beaton is able to express the emotion of what happened with penmanship, marine blue, and the absence of it. It's a testament to the power of comics, even though I wish to all that I didn't have to praise it. Not because it's expressed poorly. I wish it didn't have to be expressed at all to begin with. I wish Kate Beaton didn't have to go through this horror twice, and here I get to sit in my comfort giving critical praise because she depicts her own internal trauma with dignity and grace? It is not a good feeling to have. 

These things do happen. They are terrible things and should be condemned, but they also should be expressed. The stories should be told, and that is what Beaton does here. She does more than just tell her own story, though. There are multiple scenes in the back half of the book in which Beaton confesses what happened to a woman she's close to, only for the woman to confess a similar story of her own. In this space of her own making, a space of inks and pens and panels, Kate Beaton gets to not only tell her story, but the stories of those she loves most in this world. There's a sense of taking back her own agency here, and doing it with craft and panache. I admire that for her. Ducks is a wonderful book for that. It is shocking and horrible and makes me feel a deep sympathy for its author, but I admire that her talent can tell the story this well. Kate Beaton went to this world and lost something, but in telling that story she put those feelings out into the world for all of us to feel and mull over. It is a real book, a raw one, and quite possibly the best comic I will read for this thing.

Thank you for telling your story, Kate. As a fellow Atlantic Canadian, albeit one from the land of accordions and codfish... thank you.