The Art of Charlie Hock Choye the Art of Charlie Hock Chye
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye
Sonny Liew
March 2016
Pantheon Books
The Fine art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, has been nominated – and won – awards all over the globe. This year, cartoonist Sonny Liew is deservedly nominated for an Eisner for his graphic novel about the history of Singapore through the eyes of a fictional comic creative person, Charlie Chan Hock Chye. The volume is structured similar a biography, combining archival cloth past "Chye" also as work by Liew which illustrates their "interviews." This is then skillfully washed that if you didn't know information technology was fiction, it would exist piece of cake to believe that Chye was a newly discovered, classic Singaporean comic artist. He is a fully realized grapheme, perfectly situated in the Singapore of the 40s and onwards. Liew achieves this partly through the strength of his writing only also because he shows Chye'south style evolving with time and changing to suit whatever he's working on at the time; Chye'due south art is a huge function of how Liew sells the character. The inclusion of existent archival textile, government morality posters, compared with parodies Chye worked on with a friend's nephew completes the illusion. Of course all of this shows off Liew's talent, but The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye doesn't look like a "Liew book" as you might exist used to thinking of of his work. It's Chye's book equally much as it is Liew's.
Then permit's talk a little scrap about Hock Chye, aka Charlie Chan. Despite working on comics from the age of xvi to his death in his 70s, Chye never gets his interruption. Or any break, actually. He continues working on comics because they're his passion, only he doesn't even manage to eke out a minor (read deadline poverty every bit then many comics creators tin attest) living from information technology. Instead he relies on occasional work equally a commercial illustrator, night watchman, or whatever else comes by. Chye's comics are overtly political: social commentary through superheroes like his Roachman, who receives superpowers after beingness bitten by a cockroach; allegories like his long running Bukit Chapalang strip in which major political figures are recast as cute animal musicians locked in a never ending battle of the bands, not a political one. It's suggested that part of the reason Chye couldn't find success despite his obvious talent, is that his comics are also political for Singapore, which had (and to some extent even so has) a politically repressive civilisation. Merely the other office of the problem is that Singapore is and so tiny, unable to support a local comics community considering of its small size and the powerhouse comics industries exporting to it, including Japan, Hong Kong, the UK, and the U.s.a.. Of course, at that place'south bad luck besides – things and so ofttimes go wrong for those of us working in the arts, no matter how talented you are.
Chye starts out working on radical comics with new friend Bertrand Wong, inspired past gimmicky student and wedlock protests. As the fortunes of that real life movement waned, with leaders of Baralis Socialis beingness imprisoned or exiled and the ruling PAP party inspiring a culture of hollow economic pragmatism, so to do Wong and Chye'due south fortunes wane. I mean, information technology'south not like their comics were selling particularly well, but their hustle was strong enough to have ii published comic serial under their belts, with 7 and 23 bug respectively. Comics, like any tiny arts customs, is a grind though, and afterward years of information technology, Wong decides to requite information technology up in favour of starting a real life, with a wife and a existent job. Chye, though, isn't gear up to move on from comics – and it's clear throughout the volume that he never volition exist.
Although Chye'south life is one of frustration, lacking opportunities for personal growth or political expression, comics is what he loves – I guess as much as he does Singapore. Through all the years that he works as a night watchman or whatever else, he keeps at it, making comics daily, perfecting his arts and crafts, and commenting on the state of Singapore politics. There'south not a lot of hope for him in the latter, but there's some comfort in the onetime. An unfruitful trip to SDCC in the 80s was heartbreaking to read virtually just even being blown off during portfolio reviews doesn't kill his dear of comics. He returns to Singapore, thinking back on his youth, wondering what he could take done differently. This is explored through a Singaporean take on Phillip K Dick's Man in the High Castle, where an alternate Singapore where the Baralis Socialis won, and Chye is a considered a national hero, Singapore'due south finest and most important cartoonist. He meets his political hero, the prime government minister who could have been, who in the real world ended his life in exile, working as a fruit seller. Of course the real earth reasserts itself. But Chye's greatest creative disappointment still serves to motivate him. It'south "the love of reading [and making] comics… no worrying nearly how information technology will sell."
In the actually real world though, Chye is a fiction. He'southward a vehicle through which Lieu tin explore ideas nigh what Singapore is, was and could exist, and also, his feelings virtually the comics business. They make interesting companions – Singapore'south economical success contrasted with the narrow Western comics world, a manga scene that continues to be wildly profitable but struggles with digital piracy. Simply Singapore is more than its sustained economic nail – it's a country that lost a lot along the style, as Liew points out, and left many behind. Singapore'due south rapid economical growth was in office possible because of the policies of its longtime prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, whose political career started in the student and labour movement opposing British colonial rule. Liew takes the states through those early on revolutionary years from the perspective of someone who is merely peripherally involved (Chye). Information technology's a great way to arroyo Singaporean political history because as Lee achieves political office and so consolidates power, the state's politics becomes less and less politics. Though Lee started every bit a radical, he chop-chop moved to a more than centrist position, somewhen becoming an authoritarian capitalist. Until his retirement in 1990 (he was Senior Government minister until 2004) he stayed the state's key and singular political force, rumoured to be willing to practice annihilation to maintain his iron hold on the country's management. His is not a wholly nighttime record though – Liew through Chye concedes that Lee made Singapore a eye of commerce and replaced slums with affordable public housing. But through Chye's alternate universe story, Liew asks if all the repression, non merely of the arts only as well the press and all public speech communication, was worth information technology. Should Lee'south successor, Goh Chok Tong, who briefly tried to impose eugenicist social policy on the country worth remembering for his successes?
Chye, though, the devoted simply fictional Singaporean cartoonist, is worth remembering, despite his failures. While the PAP says that the Singapore Story is i where the "existent world triumphs over theory," Liew shows the party'southward real world for the cold fiction it is. In The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, Liew says that dreams, culling histories and failures are all valuable and worth remembering. His fictional account of one Singaporean, who loves his country and his art, is as real as PAP's version of history – more fifty-fifty, considering in turning his attention to an ordinary life total of expert and bad, Liew shares with usa a Singapore that's richer in humanity than the gilt island nation PAP has long tried to nowadays. The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye isn't "the Singapore story" merely it's a Singapore story, a comics story, that'south real and affecting and beautiful.
Source: https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2017/07/art-charlie-chan-hock-chye/
0 Response to "The Art of Charlie Hock Choye the Art of Charlie Hock Chye"
Post a Comment