Annotated 27-5
I feel a little weird talking about this, but I’ll just dive in: we intended a sexual vibe to Carol and Shanna’s conversation, and that’s probably clearest here at the beginning and near its end. Sex is tangled up with power, intimacy, and some other elements that’ll come into play here, especially but not exclusively in American psychology. I don’t think of either Shanna or Carol as attracted to women, but they’ve both been without sex for a while, and when you don’t have the traditional outlets to express a part of yourself, that part can assert itself in other ways. Especially if you’re repressing a lot, as both Shanna and Carol are, for different reasons.
That’s one reason for the choice of setting: all sorts of things happen in a coffee shop, but I’ve been witness to some pretty handsy dates there. It’s reflected in other scene-setting aspects: Carol’s idle compliment, the panel focusing on her lips, the unromantic but intense eye contact, her pose in panel 5.
As we start, Carol looks like she has all the cards. Any anguish she feels about Ferris is well-concealed: if there is one thing Carol knows, it’s how to act professional. She’s physically above Shanna, shredding that disguise Shanna worked so hard on with two words, and acting like she doesn’t even care. She’s also bringing her own coffee to this meeting (that’s not a Starbucks cup), which, you’ve got to admit, is quite the power move. It’s like Ron Swanson bringing a flask to a wine tasting. (Not sure if Starbucks has a policy against bringing in outside coffee or not, but it wouldn’t matter if it did. Carol’s got that air of money that keeps minimum-wagers from challenging her.)
It might be because I’m a little “on the spectrum”, but reading about power dynamics as they’re presented in the annotation here always breaks my concentration – because I’m pretty much oblivious to it, if the subtext as described actually lines up with my perception of it.
My reading of Carol’s posturing could be summed up as “confident” and maybe “desperate to appear professional”, since I already know her motives. No sexual tension came across as I was animating the page’s action in my head, And the only power move I would have noticed is the mention of Shanna’s persona – I don’t think it even breached my awareness that she had an outside drink.
Though it’s fair to say I also don’t let social pretense prevent me from calling out people on going too far, if I ever have direct interactions with them to begin with, so in the shoes of, say, a barista, I probably wouldn’t even spare concern for Carol’s apparent wealth as a deterrent to doing so.
Honestly, I’m probably in the minority on all counts, here. Might be I just don’t have a functional radar for covert sexual tension of this magnitude, though.
I’d call it subtle. I didn’t notice any of that either, although admittedly I when I read comics I don’t spend a lot of time studying the artwork. (I don’t think I’m “on the spectrum,” but who knows. I’ve never been assessed.)
If it makes you feel better, absolutely no commenters picked up on this dimension of the story the first time it ran, and that was kind of what we wanted to happen, at least after Phil and I hashed it out a bit. We wanted it fluttering on the edge of some people’s consciousness, but definitely not obvious (which, of course, meant that some would miss it altogether). And hey, if all this stuff were obvious to everyone, what would even be the point of commenting on it?
Yeah, didn’t read any subtext myself. While I probably miss out on subtle ‘vibes’ irl, sometimes a coffee is just a coffee. You guys defiantly made it clear Carol is confident in this page, almost the polar opposite of the train wreck we have seen earlier and it’s clear why. She picked the meeting place, had time to prepare and caught Shanna off guard. The smile can be framed in a few different ways, both friendly and predatory (bearing teeth and all that) Hard to read which but it also works in this page as Shanna doesn’t now yet herself.
I read the smile – and the compliment it accompanied – as patronizing to the max.
That “sexual powerdynamics” thing that some people seem to believe exist, and this thing about all kinds of things expressing themselves that way … I’ve heard about that, and at least movie script writers and a bunch of authors must believe that such a thing exists, but I’ve virtually never read/watched scene building up (and usually releasing) sexual tension in that context which I didn’t immediately interpret as “oh yeah, I guess they had to have that kind of scene to show how mature the movie is or at least have some more female skin for the male audience, but did they have to make it so contrived? Can’t we just fast forward, please? This is silly”.
It’s a good thing those undertones were well hidden in this scene because if they had been obvious, I’d never have bought it. These people are enemies, they both know it. There’s serious crimes involved, and they both know that too, and they know that the other person knows it. There should be a ton of very very non-sexual tension — which is pretty much how I read the scene. And Carol is dominating because she set the whole thing up for that purpose, and she’s pretty good at such things.
Sometimes I think that the “sexual power dynamics” folks believe that all tension is sexual. That for them, “a ton of very very non-sexual tension” doesn’t – can’t – exist. It’s all so very Freudian.
Thinking about the story Carol is presenting: Why does she claim he’d been dismissed? What that says to Shanna is “Whatever I’m telling you know, Ferris would probably contradict” — so she should try even harder to get his opinion.
Wouldn’t the smarter thing be to tell her that Ferris had let her know about his appointment with this reporter person, but that he had some sort of urgent something to get to (“he didn’t say what it was but seemed really horrified by it. He asked to get a week off, and that’s all I know”), so she’d offered to meet the reporter instead?
It would have been smarter to ignore the FB message all together but I don’t think Carol is thinking things out. While saying Ferris has been let go creates some distance between Farris’s disappearance and Hurricane, some control over the situation, while Carol finds out what little Shanna know. In reality, Carol is coming undone and confronting Shanna confirms there is something they are worried about.
“Huh. A week off? Because all his coworkers seem to think he hasn’t been in a lot longer than that. And also that you told them he doesn’t work there anymore.”
Setting aside the fact that Carol doesn’t know Shanna hasn’t already spoken to Laura or Thomas, what you’re proposing would be equivalent to jumping up and down and shouting that Shanna should check with them immediately.
oh yeah, fair point … she should have started with that story a lot earlier than this conversation, and once she made the call she had to stick to it.
Before this scene’s done, Carol will elaborate on her lie a bit to imply that Ferris was fired right after the Facebook contact (like, twenty minutes after it) for NDA violations. “Of course we monitor employee use of internet at work, and we don’t care if they look at porn a little bit but meeting up with newswomen like you to blab corporate secrets, that’s another matter. You’re not really surprised by this, are you?”
That seems to me like it’s pretty smart of her, as it not only settles the question of what happened to him but would explain why Ferris won’t be communicating with her any further: ’cause he don’t wanna get sued! So, ideally, Shanna would try his FB account another time or two and then accept he’s been legally threatened into silence, rather than suspect what really happened to him.
Despite Shanna’s suspicious nature, this might have worked if not for the evidence she’s already witnessed at Ferris’ house, evidence that Carol doesn’t know about.
I definitely got less of a sexual and more of “gonna murder an obstacle” vibe.
Yeah, as a lesbian who came out in the mid-90s, a teen desperately searching for media representation, I’m VERY finely attuned to sexual subtext between women. There’s none of that in this scene.
Yeah I see it, it’s not blatant, but especially as the scene progresses. Carol is being very smug, and using that feeling of power to be a little playful. I mean replace her with a male character and I don’t think there’d be any question that “You changed your hair, it looks nice.” with a shot of the lips was a double entandre.