Bookish Ponderings

I was left open-mouthed by a lot of what happened within Charles Burns’ Black Hole, and it took me a few moments to realise that the majority of the drama which took place was completely detached from the reason I had picked up the book. I picked up the book because I was intrigued by its seeming basis in the science fiction genre. Set in the mid-1970s, Black Hole is a story revolving around a sexually transmitted disease which mutates its owner: growing new body parts, excess skin, boils, spots, bulges and second mouths. It would manifest in different ways for different people.  In the end, this wasn’t the focus of Burns’ gaze. No. In this gripping graphic novel, Burns’ use of raw, honest detailing is predominantly used to share with us the raw and emotive world of teenage angst.

Here, I will be highlighting the subtle ways in which Charles Burns’ portrays the Existential Angst experienced, specifically, by the American teen.  In Philosophy, angst represents a necessary anxiety we experience because of our status as free, undetermined, creatures. In other words, it is a symptom of the fact that there are absolutely no rules as to what we should or should not do, no cosmic guidance on how to act, and no one to tell us which is the best path.

By no large stretch can we see how this angst can become prevalent during the teenage years; when most of us cannot avoid thinking about the future and all that it entails. For the teenager residents in suburban Seattle, this angst is embodied by the mutations of their peers. Of course, one of the big decisions or dilemmas of secondary school involves the testing of relationships and sexuality. Perhaps there are first boyfriends or girlfriends, sexuality may be discovered, feelings get stronger, and the entire school seems to be holding its breath and waiting for you to testify to these things.

In Black Hole, these decisions are put on display for everyone through often grotesque means. Surprisingly, those students without the disease do not seem to rule out relationships with their condemned peers. On one hand, the nature of desire and lust is that it is hardly reasonable, but on the other, it seems that the decision of whether or not to make any kind of ‘move’ is heightened by the idea that either path will be clearly identifiable by friends and family. Suddenly, the high school dating scene, usually something adults laugh at when looking back on because of its intangibility and temporality, is something which will stay with them permanently for the rest of their lives. For, whether they give in to desire or not, they will be left wondering what life would be like if they did otherwise.

However, there is also a reading whereby Charles is trying to tell us that this is what it really does feel like to be a teenager; as if you will be forever accountable for the decisions you make now. It is where right now is the most important time in your life, and it is what you do right now that matters most with the shaping and formation of that life. Recently, I read a letter to my future-self I had written during my secondary school examinations, and it read basically as an apology letter in case I had not studied hard enough and had not got the grades I wanted. Now, I laugh at the letter. But at the time, those exams were synonymous with my future. Here, Burns is trying to allow us the reader an unflinching glimpse into the teenager psyche: where fainting in Biology class can feel equivalent to being swallowed by a black hole, and an unplanned one-night stand makes your skin peel and shed until you don’t even feel like yourself anymore.

Simply, Charles Burns assimilates teenage angst into an undeniable visible form and through this demonstrates the timelessness of these uncertainties. For every teenager, the present seems to, above all, defy time and space with its demand for decisiveness: their own unique black holes.