Argument: The Hypo uses visual depictions of Lincons emotional state to deconstruct the litany

of past hagiographic treatments of him.

Parts of talk: past depictions of AL, comparison w/ Anomalisa and Smith, and methods
particular to The Hypo (which evoke Anomalisa)
Tradition: Jingoistic hagiography (Szasz)

As the ongoing war against terrorism continues to challenge the nation, perhaps
the federal government should reconsider dropping foreign-language versions of
the various Lincoln biographies over hostile territory (857)

Would anyone want to do this with The Hypo? Could it possibly achieve
any propagandistic aims?

Bourdieu: how this sort of reputation becomes associated w/ someone

The proper name is the visible affirmation of the identity of its bearer
across time and social space, the basis of the unity of ones successive
manifestations in official records, curriculum vitae, cursus honorum,
police record, obituary, or biography, which constitute life as a finite sum
through the verdict given in a temporary or final reckoning (300)

To produce a life history or to consider life as a history, that is, as a

coherent narrative of a significant and directed sequence of events, is
perhaps to conform to a rhetorical illusion, to the common representation
of existence that a whole literary tradition has always and still continues
to reinforce (298)
Discussion question: What was your impression of Lincoln prior to reading The Hypo?
The Hypo as a contrast w/ past AL representations

Contrast of Bingham: Historical fiction stems from the desire to see biographical and
historical figures living before us (8)

Previous repudiation of AL mythos: Joshua Wolf Shenks Lincolns Melancholy

ALs behaviour does seem to evince signs of clinical depression, but Shenk is
also wary of calling AL depressed and stopping conversation there (11)

Notes that AL has genetic history of mental illness in family (12)

The Hypo: Used by AL himself in letters

The word he used was an abbreviation of hypochondriasis, a disease akin to

melancholia. But the hypoalso the hyp or simply hyposused as Lincoln
did in this letter, had its own flavour. It signified an existential unrest, a gloomy
or morbid state that lurked in the background of ones life, but also a connection
to insight and a drive for heroic action (32)

Letter to Mary Owens that opens The Hypo

Anomalisa, Zadie Smith, and Lincoln

Show clip (25:30)

Michael: motivational speaker for customer service reps

Lives in LA but comes to Cincinnati for one night to give a talk

Married, but he calls up Bella, a woman he had a relationship w/ 11 years

ago, to have a drink w/ her

Characters are all puppets, and Michael hears everyones voice, other
than Lisa (a woman he has a one night stand w/ in the hotel), as the same
(Tom Noonan)

Connections w/ The Hypo: Puppets as puppets, uniform appearance, monotony of voices

Gap between facial plates makes puppet-ness evident

Smith link w/ Schopenhauer: were all puppets of the will

The World as Will and Representation:

All life expresses the will (desires, cravings, etc.)

We suffer, because the will is insatiable

Only temporary reprieve through

aesthetic pleasure

Were puppets of a force inside of us, which Kaufman

emphasizes by highlighting the characters puppet-ness

Eyes reflect light and look more human

He belongs to a strange new category: a puppet

who can see, who feels painwho suffers! Not
an analogy for us, in the Brechtian sense, but
rather an example of us, in the Schopenhauerean
sense, for Schopenhauer thought puppets
essentially what we are

Analogous to unnatural appearance of heads on bodies in The Hypo

Uncanny tilt of heads recurs

Not puppets, but clearly drawn figures whose autonomy

and humanity is de-emphasized

Individuality of characters is downplayed through visual sameness of characters

In spite of different dress and facial hair, characters are hard to

distinguish

Frequent use of names, because otherwise itd be hard to follow

Anomalisa: faces and visual appearance of characters are also very

similar

But if not narrowly narcissistic Michael is surely solipsistic in

the obvious, wider sense that we all are, limited, as he is, by his
own subjectivity, his only possible window on the world. Our
eyespopularly windows on the soulwork precisely the
other way around, bringing the world to us, in the form of a
representation of reality, and it happens that through Michaels
own hand-painted enamel everybody appears as one person, or
(which amounts to the same thing) as nobody in particular

Schopenhauer: all life is will

Inherent monotony

Monotony also expressed through sameness of voices

Anomalisa: literally same voice throughout, with the exception of

Michael and Lisa

The Hypo: panels where we see speech balloons, but cant hear whats
being said

First time: just after Mary Owens breaks off their

engagement

Stuarts response: I dont believe youve

listened to a word Ive said. What ails you?
nd

2 time: Stuart has been re-elected to congress and their

law practice will have to end; Mary Todds family is
unhappy with him as a suitor due to him coming from
farmers; AL tells Speed several pages later that hes
questioning his feelings for Mary Todd

Right after the Speed conversation, when he

meets Matilda Edwards, who he says he finds
beautiful, text in speech bubbles is again out of
panel
Also goes beyond Anomalisa, using the language of comics (while still following a similar
emotional arc)

Lots of splash pages with little to no action, which emphasize stasis

Baetens: Sequential organization - results from having images next to one

another

Baetens and Frey contrast this w/ what Groensteen calls

translinear organization (106)


Takes the whole page into account w/o sequence
Allows for a certain kind of alternation of action and
stasis (106)

Instead of this alternation, we get many pages w/

JUST stasis
Within splash pages: images of blank sky, landscape, and zoomed out images (long shots
of people dwarfed by landscape) emphasize individuals lack of control/power (I.e.
Whats in panels)

Particularly important due to Lincolns size: part of his mythos

White spots (sometimes within splash pages, at moments of high stress)

First appearance: right before AL stands up MT at dance

Hears from Ninian Edwards that the Todds dislike him as a suitor for
Mary, then sees spots, then he leaves the dance without acknowledging
her

Again: At William Butlers home, right before hes treated by a doctor

for diseases of the mind

Again right after treatment (it doesnt work)

Lincoln finally explains them to Speed (and reader) when he visits him at
his plantation in Kentucky and fireflies remind AL of Hypo spots

Disappearance: analogous w/ Lisas voice in Anomalisa

Michael hears the difference in her voice, they have sex, and the
next morning at breakfast her voice becomes Tom Noonans

Smith likens this to Schopenhauers assertion that we

can only find temporary reprieves from the will

Once he gets what he desires, he goes back to

desiring

Again: when Lincoln duels Shields over the accusations him and
Mary make in the Sangamo Journal, Simeon Francis newspaper

Time prior to the spots reappearance is happy for AL: he

reunites w/ Mary, they agree to get married, they
(perhaps) bond through writing accusatory letters as
Rebecca

Spots recur right before the duel is stopped

Just as Michael cant escape everyone

sounding the same, AL cant escape the
spots of the hypo
We also sense ALs inability to escape his suffering through the final evocation of Grant
Woods American Gothic

Slightly different blocking: wife is in front of husband in The Hypo, whereas hes
in front of her in AG

Regardless, framing of couple together and tense looks on their faces

evoke AG

Critical readings of AG:

Max Lerner: The record at once of the outer social tyranny and
the inner repression may be read in the stony faces of Grant
Woods provincials (152)

Luciano Chelsea: speculation that Wood intended to suggest

that dour and straight-laced people are emotionally and
intellectually dead (112)
Thus, as is the case in Anomalisa, the visual and aesthetic approach in The Hypo captures
its protagonists troubled emotional state