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[Art21 "Extended Play"]
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I'm obviously a nervous guy
and I was writing a female character,
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through her memory
and through her stories.
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It was sort of an experiment
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to write from the standpoint of
somebody who I'm not,
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which is certainly fraught with peril.
[LAUGHS]
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["Chris Ware: Someone I'm Not"]
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When I was in art school,
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I was told that I couldn't draw women.
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That kind of cuts out
a whole half of humanity right there.
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I distinctly remember being told
by one of my teachers,
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"If you draw women,
you're colonizing them with your eyes."
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Do you not draw women and then
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maintain an allegiance to some sort of
experience that only you have had?
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Or do you try to expand your understanding
and your empathy for other human beings?
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As a white writer, how dare I begin to think
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that I could write from the standpoint
of even another person.
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What I'm trying to do here is draw
a gesture of a woman
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slightly brushing hair away from her eye,
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but now it just looks more like
she's got a headache.
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Joanne Cole acts strangely
towards the younger woman,
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and that's because she thinks it's possible
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that she might be related to the younger woman
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because she's lost in her own
memories and thoughts--
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but that's not clear to the reader yet.
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So I'm trying to balance
a couple of emotions here.
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I'm trying to make it feel that it's authentic
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and not just a bunch of nonsense--
or poorly acted.
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This particular character is an
African-American elementary school teacher
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who is teaching in a private school
in the 1960s and 70s.
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Hopefully I'm attending to some of the complexities
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that a kind of slightly unusual situation
might have brought up.
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I feel very self-conscious about
writing a story like this.
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Am I doing the right thing?
Am I doing the wrong thing?
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Is it about empathy?
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Am I introducing things I don't understand?
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Et cetera.
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It's a complicated question as a writer.
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[WARE]
--Thank you for serving dinner.
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[MARNIE WARE]
--You're welcome.
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[LAUGHS]
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[CLARA WARE]
--Plop!
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[CHRIS WARE]
--Plop!
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Many of my teachers were trying to get
myself and my fellow students
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to find the one thing
that we were interested in
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and then write about that.
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I never wanted to do that.
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I wanted to be able write about everything--
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and anything--
because that's what life is.
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[LAUGHING]
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--I have no idea what I look like chewing
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--but I bet I don't want to know.
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It's up to me as an artist to try to decide
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how much can I try to feel
through another person
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and still have it not be
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a sentimentalization or a falseness.
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I have to try to somehow push my limits
and my understanding of
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how I feel through other people
in what I'm doing.
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And you risk falling on your face doing so,
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but that's a risk you have to take.
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What art is all about is
trying to figure out
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if the feelings that you're having
are the same as the feelings that I'm having.