thread: 2006-03-07 : Troubleshooting the Baby
On 2006-03-09, Vincent wrote:
Larry! This is fun. I hope you're not too too frustrated.
It's a story, not a joke. In fact it's three stories that make up one story, kind of like Sliding Doors or Femme Fatale or Run Lola Run if you saw any of those.
Fit character in an unstable situation -> escalating to crisis and resolution -> landing at last in a stable situation.
There are two characters, the baby and the implied parent. The mother in panel 3b isn't a character, unless you figure she's the implied parent in all the other panels. (I don't figure that, but you could.)
What you need to bring with you to read the story is: a parent's instinctive identification of the situation as existing between the baby and the implied parent. The unstable situation at the beginning, the crisis, and the stable situation at the end - they aren't between the baby and her or his bodily functions, they're between the baby and the unpictured parent.
If you want to add nuance to the reading, get the age of the baby, and realize that the baby's not teething yet, but will be soon, and imagine how the illustration will have to change to accomodate that development. Heh.
