REVIEW: The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam (documentary VS graphic novel)

The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam (documentary and graphic novel)

By Ann Marie Fleming

Documentary published 2003

Graphic Novel published September 2007

· It is notable that the graphic novel left out details that were not present in the documentary that said graphic novel was adapted from. This included the fate of the five theatres that Long Tack Sam owned that was briefly mentioned in both the documentary and the graphic novel. In the graphic novel, Long Tack Sam’s son Bobbie and thus Ann Marie’s granduncle noted that though the Chinese government did take away land from the landowners like Long Tack Sam, they did compensate the losses later on with documented proof of ownership. Long Tack Sam, in his despair in the past, threw them away as he saw he could never get his fortune back. This note was not in the documentary, as were other tidbits of information.(Fleming, 150)

· With the international resources Ann Marie had, the documentary had a notable better international flavor with the people that she interviewed. An example would be Mr. Sun Tai. (Fleming, 58-67) In the documentary there was a seen interpreter that told Ann Marie of the back story of her great-grandfather. This was done with the native Mandarin language on his part, Ann Marie in English on her part and the translator as the mediating factor. This type of conversation was not in the graphic novel, which seemed to be purely Ann Marie reinterpreting the words of Mr. Tai later on. Said bias may be due to the fact that I happen to speak several Chinese dialects, but the graphic novel happened to not include the international flare that the audience of Long Tack Sam had, as with the graphic novel the entirety was provided in English written by Ann Marie.

· The documentary had the coherent representation of Ann Marie by her recording. This was consistent throughout the film. However, the graphic novel did not have said coherence. At the beginning, Ann Marie swapped her sketched persona of herself with “Stickgirl,” who would be her representing factor in the graphic novel for most of the comic. (Fleming, 4) This action was redundant in the graphic novel, as Ann Marie doubles her dissociation with the graphic novel with this minor point of difference. Should we read into her decision to make her story as such, she had a representation drawn to represent her representation. Rather than keep to one caricature of herself, she further separates herself from the tale by having “Stickgirl” as the biased omnipresent narrator. The use of Stickgirl is reduced when we realize that this representation of Ann Marie is not necessarily needed for the story. There are pictures of her throughout the graphic novel taken by the documentary alongside her long narrations. Most of the time Stickgirl served no purpose towards Ann Marie’s identity in her journey.

· The overall flow of the graphic novel seemed built around the words as opposed to the amalgamation of words and pictures. It is apparent in the documentary of Ann Marie’s film background, as the set up of the iconography seemed tailored towards the narration of Ann Marie. With the comic, however, there is little space for all the grandiose amount of text that went with Ann Marie’s narration from the graphic novel. Ann Marie had an interesting back story to how Long Tack Sam’s troupe gained his name alongside an animation to supplement the meaning behind her great-grandfather’s name in Chinese. However, this was abridged with the graphic novel, most notably to supplement the small space provided in the book.(Fleming, 25)

· The documentary had noted animations that the graphic novel lacked. The graphic novels had stills for all the scenes with photography or the golden age animations, while the documentary had a motion comic approach with moving the still pictures according to the scene.

Overall, the two versions of the tale of Long Tack Sam as covered by Ann Marie are informative, yet is clear where Ann Marie's focus lied as her film abilities show more in the pacing and scenic choice of the documentary as opposed to the graphic novel.

Bibliography:

Fleming, Ann Marie. The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam. New York: Riverhead, 2007

Fleming, Ann Marie, dir. The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam. Sleepy Dog Film, 2004. Film.

REVIEW: The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam

The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam

By Ann Marie Fleming

Published September 2007

· It was interesting on how Ann Marie had multiple interpretations on her great grandfather Long Tack Sam on his various tales of how he became who he was, as all her accounts were from second hand sources. Fittingly, I liked how she illustrated this in a Golden Age style origin story. Most noted to me was that she had a total of five different origins to the mystic arts and magician’s fame, some of which contradict one another. While these panels were straighter forward in nature compared to the collage of her other pages, they are noted to adding her interpretations of the times Long Tack Sam was popular, especially with Golden Age inspired art. (Fleming, 11-16, 38-43, 61-63, 65-67, 77-79)

· When Ann Marie was asked to take pictures next to her grandmothers, I found it interesting that she maintained her anonymous character persona through the scene by having a hand-drawn version of her stand next to the illustrations. While minute in detail, it shows the degree of reliability of her journey to the viewers within the continuity of her decision to have a drawn version of her be the representation one follows through the entirety of the book. This is opposed to having the true photograph of her next to the illustration, which would bring about an entirely different connotation altogether. (Fleming, 8)

· Reading this, I had a personal discrepancy with the ambiguity of her choice of composition on one page. While there was an arrow leading the viewer to read downwards on the piece, I couldn’t help but misread the piece by reading the panels continuously left to right as opposed to top to bottom. This would’ve been easily solved with a better planned composition of panels or dividing the page’s composition into two pages so as to remove the bad flow of reading for the viewer. However, this is just my personal observation. (Fleming, 7)

· It was a nice touch to add notable dates on the border of the pages, yet I felt that they were not necessary to the story and instead served as filler. My reasoning behind this is that she started out her journey to knowing her great grandfather with some noted dates yet the composition soon had them almost removed from the book entirely until the very end, where they jolt out in bulk to cover for the credits of the book. I can see why she placed them there, as a means to tie to the culture at the time. However, they serve little to the understanding of Long Tack Sam as the bulk of the graphic novel is dedicated to the mysteries of his stage life, not the mundane of the world around him. There wasn’t even a guarantee that he necessarily would be one to partake in the developing music and technology during those dates. (Fleming, 10, 50, 164-170)

· I liked how the pictures drawn to illustrate Long Tack Sam were at the time not the stereotypical Yellow face that captivated America since the Gold Rush and the first Chinese immigrants. This may be due to the fact that the illustrators may have not been American, but regardless of that fact it holds that Long Tack Sam was respected enough in his art that he wasn’t considered a “rat man” when drawn to promote his talents. It might’ve helped that he always wore the contemporary Chinese clothing at the time, thus noting his ethnicity, but that had little to do with his status in my opinion. (Fleming, 96)

· As a Charlie Chaplin fan, I find it interesting that Ann Marie made her statement about the black and white star with her noting of the rise of Hitler and other noted characters and people at the time. This, compared to the random dates previously noted, actually served the narrative well as it brought out the contemporary problems and influences at the time that people can research should they wish to relate to it. (Fleming, 103)

· The new reel from how Long Tack Sam refused to involve his daughters in racial lessening of Asians in the film industry at the time was notable. It showed the sense of ethnical pride that few note Chinese people at the time had. It denoted an interesting sense of Nationality from a man who traveled from place to place and had no permanent home of his own during his career. It was significant that Ann Marie chose to place illustrations of how beautiful her grandmothers were with how the American film industry noted them “too pretty” to portray Chinese people for their productions. It was even noted that Ann Marie provided newspaper that showed how much of an impact Long Tack Sam had to not wish for his family to be involved in the demeaning of Asian people in the public eye.(112-113)

· Overall, this was a great book. The small flaws it had me pause for a moment to contemplate what Ann Marie was trying to bring about in the plot of her journey, however they had little effect on the reading of the graphic novel. Her use of blending hand drawn illustrations with photographs and references as a collage made this an avant garde piece of work.

Bibliography:

Fleming, Ann Marie. The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam. New York: Riverhead, 2007