Tag: reflection

When Tillie Walden, the author of memoir “Spinning,” comes out as homosexual to her friends and family, the young skater’s opening up is not met with much love and support from most, yet her cello teacher, Victoria, offers her acceptance in the following page which I’ve traced and analyzed.

The higher angle of the fourth panel draws our eyes up towards Victoria as Tillie would and the closeup shots of the first, second, and fifth panels maintain a close framing of Tillie’s grateful reaction to her teacher’s acceptance. Medium shots from the waist up (as seen in the fourth and sixth panels) pull back from the emotional intensity in time with the pull backs from embrace the two characters experience, yet the embrace and therefore “connection” between them is kept even in the final frame; Victoria is, and will, be there for Tillie.

I’ve traced out a page of David Small’s memoir “Stitches” for some thorough analysis and selected the scene in which David, with the help of Dr. Harold Davidson, begins to express himself and come to accept the cruel reality of his parents’ abuse.

The closeups of David’s face draw attention towards the change in the final frame of a solitary tear, which leads to a metaphorical downpour in the following pages (a transition which the unbounded final panel prepares for). The importance of this scene lies in Small’s transition into expressing his emotions in a healthier way, and as such, the White Rabbit (which represents Davidson, his psychologist), is out of frame for the whole page except for his pants leg which David cries into; the emotional transition Small wanted us to focus on was his own, so the framing ensures a focus on David in this moment.