In the Realms of the Unreal

my rating:

I pity Henry Darger.

I can identify with him a bit as well.

And I even envy him.

Henry Darger is the subject of In the Realms of the Unreal, a documentary whose name is taken from The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, Darger's magnum opus. It's a 15,000-page story with countless painted illustrations about an imaginary war revolving around seven pre-adolescent blonde princesses. No one knew it existed until just before Darger, a reclusive janitor, died.

The film was made by Jessica Yu, who manages to make do with rather limited material. For one thing, there are only three (black and white) photographs of Darger in existence, one of which barely shows his face and another of which is probably 50 years old. Not a lot of footage to get out of that. The novel is a rambling, incoherent story that apparently doesn't make for very good reading aloud. And still illustrations don't work well in a movie. Her main tool for getting around this is to animate the drawings, which she manages to do without losing their character and turning it into a Disney film. She also interviews the few people who sort of new Darger: his landlords, neighbors, the former altar boy at his parish, etc.

How little-known the man was is emphasized early in the movie by the fact that his closest acquaintances can't even agree on how to pronounce his last name, or where he "always" sat in his multiple-times-per-day attendance at Catholic mass: in the front, the back, or the middle.

But you can learn a lot about him from the work he left behind. He had an obvious fascination with pre-adolescent girls. He collected photographs and illustrations of them, which he used for teaching himself to draw. His art was never very sophisticated, and depended heavily on copying and tracing from photos and other illustrations, then painting with watercolor.

On one hand, the girl heroes of his story were naively innocent, resembling standard cutie-pie figures of the early 20th century. On the other hand, these girls were the leaders of a bloody rebellion of Christian slave children against a ruthless, godless enemy power. And on the third hand, they were frequently drawn nude. And usually with penises.

It's unclear what exactly the penises were about. One theory is that Darger - having grown up in an all-male environment, and probably a virgin - didn't really understand male/female anatomy. But he didn't always give the girls dicks, so he may have understood that not every child was equipped like he had been. Another theory is that he saw them as innocent saviors of a sort, so he drew them like baby Jesus was usually painted: with a little sac and dingus.

There's a definite religious theme to it, which is at times typically naive stuff about the virtuous Christians vs. the evil and enslaving godless foreigners. Darger was a compulsive mass-attender. But there's an undercurrent that seems to challenge God, with Darger producing this horribly violent disaster in his fantasy world, as if to demand that God do something about it. The ending of his epic is conflicted, with two versions: one in which the slave child rebellion succeeds with the defeat of the evil general (named after a bully from Darger's youth), and another in which the Vivian girls lose.

Yu provides a fair amount of biographical information about Darger, which is where most of my pity for him comes. He lost a sister and his mother during childbirth, and his father not long after. He grew up institutionalised as "feeble-minded", which certainly didn't help him become a well-adjusted member of society.

My empathy with him comes from the fact that I'm a less-extreme version of him. He spent all of his spare time alone in his apartment; I get out a bit more than that - such as going to see art films like this (by myself) - but there are times I'd be just as happy to stay in. And obviously no one has every really understood his psychology, which I'm sure is true of me as well.

As for my envy.... how could I not envy him? He produced what has to be the longest novel in history, and unquestionably the longest illustrated novel (which is what I consider "my medium"). His apartment was filled with painting after painting, some of them huge. I have a hard time getting anything onto paper. He had levels of discipline that I can only dream of. Granted, it came out of an obessive/compulsive neurological disorder (an after-the fact diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome has been tossed around the art world since his work was discovered), but he definitely produced more in his lifetime than I ever will.

There's also the issue of fame. I like to think it doesn't matter to me... but it does. I'd really like my work to be seen by more than dozens of people. And the fact that his paintings are now - after his death and discovery of course - selling for tens of thousands of dollars makes me a little jealous. Even when I'm dead, I can't see anything I've created commanding... well, any money. I guess I'm just not freakish enough.

The thing is, I think I am. I've got ideas for stories that - in my own mind, at least - would blow the roof off. God knows I'm iconoclastic enough that my views are often so far "outside the box" as to question whether or not there's even a box anywhere around to put them in.

But unlike Henry Darger, I don't spend my every waking hour putting my thoughts onto paper (or any other medium). I dabble. When I'm in the mood I might put several hours into something, but I often waste a lot of time doing other things. Like this blog. Or watching TV. Or drinking and not getting much of anything done.