Don’t Rock the Boat
Digital narratives utilize many techniques in order to create a certain feeling or mood for the reader. The Boat by Matt Huynh, an adaption of the graphic novel by Nam Le, is a beautiful digital narrative reminiscent of a moving comic, which may or may not just be a cartoon. However, it provides certain elements to the story that a comic could not. Both could tell the story. Primarily, the narrative tells the tale of a woman escaping Communist Vietnam. The young woman, named Mai, waits on a boat to reach Australia and safety. While on board, she faces many perils, including a deadly storm and dehydration. However, The Boat is more successful at eliciting feelings than a traditional medium, such as a comic, because it creates a more immersive and interactive environment. This is possible because of Huynh’s engagement of the different senses, particularly sight.
In the first chapter, Huynh uses different elements in order to make the audience experience the world in much the way Mai would feel on her escape boat, but to an even greater degree than simply reading about it. The first technique he uses is to appeal to our senses visually. Animation is the primary way in which he does this. Huynh makes an incredibly movement filled narrative in order to create a feeling of motion sickness in the viewers. A comic or other print medium would be unable to use this technique, due to their stationary nature. The first image is that of a boat on the ocean. The waves move up and down drastically as rain pours down in the direction of the audience. They submerge much of the boat randomly as the storm rages. It’s difficult not to feel a little sea-sick with the constant motion of the waves, showing that animation can be an effective tool in immersing the audience in a story. In order to portray movement, comic artists will use a variety of methods, such as drawing lines or blurring the background behind a subject. Although the drawings can be interesting to look at, they don’t have the element of realism that animation adds to a piece. In real life, objects move. Animation is able to trick our eyes into believing that what we’re seeing on-screen is moving. So while a comic may give a nice portrait or scene by scene depiction of a rampant storm, animation allows the viewers to more easily understand what the actual motions of the ocean would look like. Thus, we as viewers can also better imagine how disoriented Mai and the other passengers would feel inside the boat.
A second visual aid utilized by Huynh is movement of text and drawings. When a motion is indicated to occur in the story, there is a corresponding motion in otherwise stationery drawings and text. This sort of action is physically impossible for print media to incorporate. Therefore, they also lack the ability to visually represent an event as its occurring and to create as strong of a visceral reaction within the viewer. For example, Huynh describes that a “body collided into hers, slammed her against the side of the hatch door.” The text has an accompanying picture of a chaotic mass of people under decks. They both come into focus in a jarring sweep. It, and subsequent drawings during the same event, all move back and forth like the sway of a ship being violently hit by waves. The simulation of the interior of the boat’s movements allow the viewer to see and potentially feel what Mai and other Vietnamese refugees may have felt during their escapes by sea. Additionally, forcing the viewer to read the text as it and drawings around it move can create further feelings of motion sickness and disorientation. A comic would not be able to create this same type of discombobulation, the type where everything is moving and the eyes don’t quite know where to focus.
The lack of movement itself is a technique used to draw attention to the plight of the refugees. Still images draw attention to the details within, but in a different way than in comics. Comics have several drawing panels that depict a story. Unlike the digital narrative, all of the pictures are technically still, in that they have no animation. To draw attention to an important part of the story, the artist will use a variety of techniques, such as widening the space between panels or changing the style of drawing. The Boat turns something common in comics into something abnormal for the current viewer. When everything else is moving, a still image sticks out visually. For comics, a still image is just a still image and doesn’t tell the reader anything by its very presence. So for this narrative, still images are a port of calm amid the chaos of the animations often surrounding them. The characters depicted become individuals, rather than the blur of humanity seen in the first moving images. A significant image seen with no accompanying movement is of Truong. A little boy with soulful eyes, Mai cannot stop herself from pitying and trying to help care for him. Initially, the artist shows him only as an extension of his mother and the rest of the refugees. In the picture, Truong is the child to the right. By giving him a separate panel with nothing else to distract us, Huynh allows the viewer to connect more with the innocent child caught up in a terrible situation. You can see the despair in his eyes and from the lack of movement throughout the piece.
Interaction with the website is also different than comics visually. As the viewer scrolls down the page, writing appears. In print media, a reader moves their eyes down or physically turns a page to follow a story. The Boat is designed to be less stationary and more active. This can be more emotionally engaging, as we can’t look ahead very far to see what will happen. In The Boat, you often only see one subject at a time, such as the storm or depictions of the people (but not at the same time). Thus, we are forced to focus on a particular scene or part of the story. When something sudden appears as we scroll down the webpage, it reflects how the characters within the story would feel. The refugees would be just as surprised by an unexpected wave hitting the boat as we are by the corresponding movement of the text. The digital version is able to interact with the audience in a way the print version can’t. A comic panel won’t move in response to the reader or storyline. By creating this interaction between the website, text, and the readers, Huynh evokes empathy for the characters that is simply impossible for physical comics to recreate.
The Boat by Matt Huynh is a compelling tale of the Vietnamese boat people. Beautiful illustrations and animations bring their harrowing journey to life. Huynh uses many types of media to extract a more full understanding from his audience. While we can never fully grasp everything that the refugees went through, Huynh ensures that we have no choice but to recognize a bit of their plight. Through his utilization of the visual arts, the audience is able to see the dangers and feel the disorientation that came with being on Mai’s boat. Huynh ensures that we feel the experience of these people. By understanding their material world, we can hopefully begin to understand the interiority of refugees and the degree of courage it takes for them to escape. Digital narrative like The Boat have the opportunity to help audiences understand the plight of those in dangerous situations. We can sometimes brush things off when we’re just reading about them or looking at drawings. But by actively engaging our senses, digital narratives may also be able to cultivate empathy and push us to do something.
