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Great Silence, when the tale breaks the taboo of incest

2021-07-03T06:48:07.620Z


LA CASE BD - With poetry and fantasy, Théa Rojzman and Sandrine Revel's album tackles the painful theme of sexual violence inflicted on children. A perilous exercise but successful with flying colors.


On an unknown island, a factory bristling with spikes devours the cries of children victims of sexual violence.

With a huge fireplace, this scarlet factory is called Grand Silence.

The confiscated voice of Freddy, assaulted by his uncle, is there, among many others.

How to heal from the trauma of incest?

How do you prevent the same tragedies from happening again?

By destroying Great Silence!

To read also:

#BalanceTaBulle:

62 cartoonists harassed or sexually assaulted testify

To evoke the drama of sexual violence against children, Théa Rojzman uses the codes of the story.

“I immersed myself in the child that I was, his emotions, his problems linked to these attacks. Creating a fiction requires working with a raw material which is human experience to then “recreate” a real parallel, something that can touch the universal, she

explains to

Figaro

.

Cultural work in general is the right way to approach subjects that we prefer to keep at a distance. It allows you to position yourself without frontality while offering access to complexity and privacy. ”

Her collaboration with artist Sandrine Revel works wonderfully.

“I could not have hoped to find a better partner for this difficult project.

Sandrine brought to it a sweetness, a poetry, a dreamlike nature that is absolutely necessary to make this reading, which is a priori difficult, bearable, even “pleasant”, ”

compliments the screenwriter.

The Grand Silence building is inspired by an abandoned factory in Belarus.

Théa Rojzman & Sandrine Revel / Glénat

Through its atmosphere, its landscapes and its creatures,

Grand Silence

evokes the work of Shaun Tan, designer of the masterpiece

Where Our Fathers Go

.

“It's a book that is in my library and that I look at very often, like

those by Chris Ware

or

Art Spiegelman

. These are fuels for moving forward, ”

replies designer Sandrine Revel, even if she thinks she is more directly influenced by the world of Isabelle Arsenault. For the anecdote, the building of Grand Silence is inspired by an abandoned factory in Belarus.

“At the beginning, I had drawn it as it is, but Théa told me: 'We are not going to alienate the Belarusians so we are going to imagine it a little differently!

(laughs)

So I customized it. "

Sexual assaults are represented by wild animals shredding soft toys.

Théa Rojzman & Sandrine Revel / Glénat

Opting for a comic book story, rather than a purely textual work, is by no means trivial:

"Comics allow us to construct an offbeat narrative, using visual allegories to express the unspeakable, invisible emotions or realities. for example, ”

says Théa Rojzman. Without being evaded, sexual assault is represented by wild animals shredding blankets:

"This protects us from the unbearable while allowing us to measure the horror of the fact."

Another visual find is that abused twins develop specific symptoms:

"The child who shrinks, because she no longer eats and gradually disappears in a desire to die, symbolizes the phenomena linked to eating disorders (anorexia here and suicidal thoughts), the stinging that grows on the back of the other child, for their part, express the violence, anger and delinquency that can emerge, ”

explains the screenwriter.

“Empty bubbles express psychic absence, speech emptied of meaning, of presence.

We “feel” what is being experienced and we put our own words into it, ”explains Théa Rojzman.

Théa Rojzman & Sandrine Revel / Glénat

As its name suggests,

Grand Silence

tackles a taboo, a suffering that struggles to be expressed, but also to be heard. To transcribe this, some speech bubbles appear empty or filled with illegible inscriptions.

“Bubbles saturated with unreadable text express dismay mixed with anger. Empty bubbles express psychic absence, speech emptied of meaning, of presence,

deciphers Théa Rojzman.

We “feel” what is being experienced and we put our own words into it, the linked emotion. And it seems to me that by appropriating this word that is not said, we feel as close as possible to what these characters are experiencing. ”

In addition to its graphic and narrative qualities, this necessary comic aims to alert readers to the extent of the scourge of sexual violence against children.

“We all too often relegate all this to news items or micro-scandals that erupt here and there and then disappear into oblivion. And even when it happens at home or near us (in his own family for example), silence is golden ”,

regrets Théa Rojzman.

"You have to speak out to denounce, to avoid other tragedies and save yourself, free yourself",

adds Sandrine Revel, who recalls that one in five women and one in thirteen men suffered such violence.

“Saying nothing can lead to excesses in the family, depression, suicides, drug addiction… It destroys lives!

And the aggressors continue on their side. ”

We must now behave as responsible adults in the face of a phenomenon of an incredible magnitude.

These are not poor isolated cases, they concern millions of people, ”

insists Théa Rojzman.

In

Grand Silence,

Arthur is helped by a teacher, Maria, who manages to detect his discomfort ... In reality, this is far from always the case.

“We must create training for all adults who are in contact with children.

Or even create new specialized trades, ”

suggests the screenwriter.

BD box

Onte and Aine, two monsters whose twins are struggling to get rid of. Théa Rojzman & Sandrine Revel / Glénat

These four boxes feature the twins Ophélie and Arthur in the company of funny creatures called Onte and Aine. “

These“ bugs ”symbolize an emotion that never leaves you, that sticks to your skin, that you carry around everywhere. Shame mainly but also rage, disgust, hatred of oneself and of the whole world, ”

explains Théa Rojzman. Why make some kind of soft toys out of them?

"Children sleep with these critters because a child does not question what he lives, he lives with, that's all,"

says the screenwriter.

I also wanted to symbolize the idea that we can get rid of these critters, that they are not oneself. We are not reduced to it, we are not shame or rage,as we are not just victims. ”

This scene also resonates with designer Sandrine Revel:

"I still tend, even today, to look under the bed when I'm in an old house!"

Where does the inspiration for the design of the two creatures come from?

"I think it's not intended, but now it reminds me of the little balls of soot from

Miyazaki's

Spirited

Away, mixed with a spider,"

said the artist.

The second bug, the one that drips, looks moreover like the monster of the public baths from the same film ...

“Ah it's true!

But in doing so I thought more of

Alien

, with the little teeth. "

The paper, by absorbing the ink, created this veil that is a bit hazy, a bit milky… I find that very nice!

Sandrine Revel

Regarding the appearance of the two children, the reason is more pragmatic:

"Many of my children are red-haired because they often have pale skin, there is something very graphic about it",

specifies Sandrine Revel, who uses lots of fall colors throughout the rest of the album. This search for contrast is found in the use of polka-dot, striped and checked patterns ...

“This patchwork blanket of colors, I had one at home when I was little, so I tend to draw my childhood memories

.

And I found it very practical to paint small squares because it fragmented the work, otherwise I find that with large surfaces we always see the traces of the brush! "

The slightly ghostly character of the second box, even more obvious in the paper version, is particularly suited to the sequence, even if it is not completely voluntary.

“The paper, by absorbing the ink, created this veil that is a little hazy, a little milky… I find that very nifty!",

Confides the designer, who works on the digital tablet.

"I created my little brushes, my frames and I worked a lot by exfoliation and with filters, in superposition, which change the colors ... Always trying to join the traditional",

underlines the one who made a training with the beautiful ones -arts and paints in parallel with the comic strip.

Grand Silence

,

by Théa Rojzman (screenplay) and Sandrine Revel (drawing), Glénat, 128 pages, 23 euros.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-07-03

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