Chris Ware: Someone I'm Not | Art21 "Extended Play"'

[Art21 "Extended Play"]

I'm obviously a nervous guy
and I was writing a female character,

through her memory
and through her stories.

It was sort of an experiment

to write from the standpoint of
somebody who I'm not,

which is certainly fraught with peril.
[LAUGHS]

["Chris Ware: Someone I'm Not"]

When I was in art school,

I was told that I couldn't draw women.

That kind of cuts out
a whole half of humanity right there.

I distinctly remember being told
by one of my teachers,

"If you draw women,
you're colonizing them with your eyes."

Do you not draw women and then

maintain an allegiance to some sort of
experience that only you have had?

Or do you try to expand your understanding
and your empathy for other human beings?

As a white writer, how dare I begin to think

that I could write from the standpoint
of even another person.

What I'm trying to do here is draw
a gesture of a woman

slightly brushing hair away from her eye,

but now it just looks more like
she's got a headache.

Joanne Cole acts strangely
towards the younger woman,

and that's because she thinks it's possible

that she might be related to the younger woman

because she's lost in her own
memories and thoughts--

but that's not clear to the reader yet.

So I'm trying to balance
a couple of emotions here.

I'm trying to make it feel that it's authentic

and not just a bunch of nonsense--
or poorly acted.

This particular character is an
African-American elementary school teacher

who is teaching in a private school
in the 1960s and 70s.

Hopefully I'm attending to some of the complexities

that a kind of slightly unusual situation
might have brought up.

I feel very self-conscious about
writing a story like this.

Am I doing the right thing?
Am I doing the wrong thing?

Is it about empathy?

Am I introducing things I don't understand?

Et cetera.

It's a complicated question as a writer.

[WARE]
--Thank you for serving dinner.

[MARNIE WARE]
--You're welcome.

[LAUGHS]

[CLARA WARE]
--Plop!

[CHRIS WARE]
--Plop!

Many of my teachers were trying to get
myself and my fellow students

to find the one thing
that we were interested in

and then write about that.

I never wanted to do that.

I wanted to be able write about everything--

and anything--
because that's what life is.

[LAUGHING]

--I have no idea what I look like chewing

--but I bet I don't want to know.

It's up to me as an artist to try to decide

how much can I try to feel
through another person

and still have it not be

a sentimentalization or a falseness.

I have to try to somehow push my limits
and my understanding of

how I feel through other people
in what I'm doing.

And you risk falling on your face doing so,

but that's a risk you have to take.

What art is all about is
trying to figure out

if the feelings that you're having
are the same as the feelings that I'm having.