Why CGI and Dada don't go together.

I dislike Drooker's style of art in the graphic novel Howl. The digital images he creates look cheap and tacky and obviously totally 90s. In interviews from 2010, Drooker vaguely refers to "using the same software as Pixar," though obviously not to its full capacity. An ethereal and gauzy style such as seen on pages 20-21 would be more suited to the text overall, as opposed to the weird robot-looking characters Drooker conjured up. (Seriously, they look as though they were cut from a tin can.)  The metallic and smooth characteristics of the figures do not mesh with the grittiness of the beat generation.  Furthermore, all of the women looked as if they were aliens, with annoyingly unnatural exaggerated proportions. They appeared generic and not fashioned after anyone in particular, as opposed to the males referenced in the poem who were given more details such as facial expressions, beard stubble, and clothing. Drooker rather explicitly depicted penises on pages 66-67, on pages 110-11 a nude female figure spreads her legs but the artist did not illustrate her genitalia; she is carved from one giant stone and objectified and idealized within the cathedral. The nude woman hitchhiking is easily the worst CGI figure I’ve seen. Crappy software aside, the contradictory treatment of nudity should not be overlooked. Some people argue that the beats’ ideal of nakedness is being free, at ease and pure.  But the nudity depicted throughout the book is degrading (page 19), objectifying (78-79), or overtly sexual (72-73.)

Drooker’s imagery fails to deliver when paired with a potentially vertigo-inducing chunk of text. On several instances, what could've been a trippy page filled with small vignettes dancing 'round the text, he flashes a two-page spread of a typewriter (70,71) rather than try to illustrate movement in the juicier bits of Howl. On pages 118-19, instead of crafting a delirious spectacle of picnic favorites and bald fools preaching from ancient and imposing steps, we're given a blurry close up of a face with a mouth partially open. Whether he is in fact begging for his lobotomy, we shall never know. Drooker missed an incredible opportunity to visualize and interpret the beat ideals on these pages. The beat movement was heavily influenced by Dadaism, a Post-WW1 movement involving visual art, anti-art, theatre, poetry, and graphic design that rejected war, establishment, and rationality. Throwing potato salad during Dada lectures is actually an act of excited agreeance ; huzzah! down with the old tired ways! Dada was the rejection of the traditionalist, the bourgeois, and held political ties with the radical left. Though Dada’s name is of obscure origin, one theory claims Tristan Tzara, one of the founders of the Dada movement often said “yes, yes” or “da, da” in Romanian, his native tongue. Towards the end of On the Road, Neal’s obtuse sentences would often be replaced with reduced mutters or screams or cries of “yes, YES!” Dadaism also created the framework for sound poetry, which infuses music and literature but focuses on phonetics and sounds rather than syntax. It is also referred to as “verse without words” and is best suited for live performance, an essential element of the beat experience.

Mommy issues and peaches & cream

Shortly after arriving in Colorado, Kerouac went in search of a “rich thick milkshake at the roadhouse to put some freeze in my tormented hot stomach. Incidentally a very beautiful gal shook me that cream.” Mother’s milk, Milk of Magnesia, both soothe a sour tummy. And who better to deliver Kerouac’s long-lost dream of a loving gaze, all smiles.

Languid beat language

The beat(s) needed to move, especially their language. They are the language. Kerouac’s beat expressions, highly contextual and always shifting shapes and meanings. On page 138, Kerouac “And here I am in Colorado! I kept thinking gleefully. Damn! Damn! Damn! I’m making it!” Here, the form of “make” expresses an achievement. He “made it” to Colorado.  In another form, it describes intercourse with a girl. Here it seems to imply force, coercion, using rhetoric, or having to convince a girl or woman.

Existential icons

The only thing to believe in now is now, because the past already happened so no sense in worrying about that and the future, well that’ll be here fast enough anyway. Even if it is from total nihilism, a certain sense of freedom is born from that even. Neal experiences optimistic nihilism, as he “longer cared about anything (as before) but he also cared about everything in principle, and that is to say, it was all the same to him and he belonged to the world and there was nothing he could do about it.” Indeed, when nothing matters, everything matters. Kerouac describes Neal as tremendously excited about everything in his immediate surroundings he is experiencing. It all falls equally before judgment. Neal the mystic, he exists with no qualms, never questions his own actions and carries no burden of guilt, as he explains on 222: “troubles, you see, is the generalization-word for what God exists in. The thing is not to get hung up.” To get hung up, you see, is to get dragged down. “The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced—tho we hate to admit it—in death.” Kerouac becomes afraid and paranoid on 332 as Neal drives maniacally toward Chicago, but soon resigned himself to whatever fate await, be it death on this road or some other time? Is there ever an ideal time to die? 

How does one become god?

The moment you accept them as such. Enormous egos allow the beats to consider themselves gods above others and their views superior. Kerouac imagined himself appearing before his friends: In their eyes I would appear strange and ragged like the prophet that has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was Wow." On page 341, Kerouac describes himself and Neal as, “ragged and dirty, looking like as if we had lived off locust,” just as John the Baptist did, the predictor of Christ’s arrival.