I have used the comic medium to create a Doc Mode that reflects the performative mode. The comic is a brief outline of my spring break trip to Boston, which was only a few days. I brought my sister with me and I tried to use this time as a way to better connect with her. Since I am no longer living at home, I feel like I need to set aside time just to talk to her again. She is getting into the teenager stage of wanting to be left alone, but I think she still had fun (even if she didn’t show it). This is all, of course, my personal point of view that I am showing the audience. My perspective is by no means the only perspective, but it is the one that I have chosen to present to my audience. By using the performative mode, I can become a character in my own comic and interact with the environment and people around me.

The performative mode has been one of the less formal modes that the class has discussed. The personality of the filmmaker often gets revealed to the audience though the interactions that are seen on camera. For example, in the film The Gleaners and I, Agnes Varda is an active character the audience follows. She is the narrator, the interviewer, and the comic relief. She invites the audience to understand her point of view by either using the camera to film what her hands are doing  or holding the camera at eye level so others can see what she is seeing. I could not manipulate the camera angles in the comic, but I tried to evoke the same sort of informality and personal touch to the story all the same by letting my character look directly at the “camera”. My perspective of the Boston trip dominates what I have considered worth showing to my audience.

By using the performative mode, I try to create a relationship with the audience. My comic becomes a record of my social interactions and this, according to Nichols, is one of the definitions of the performative mode (Nichols 157). The performative mode shows how different situations can hold different meanings for different people. This subjectivity of memories is what defines the performative mode from others, but can often seem autobiographical and diaristic (202). I used my comic to show not just where I traveled, but the reactions and emotions that my sister and I felt. I did not romanticize her reactions within my memory, but I can only portray what her emotions felt like to me. She was not going to explain herself to the audience, so I used my interpretation to explain her reactions through word bubbles.

The end result of the performative mode can be very subjective to the audience, but that is part of the attraction to use it as a filmmaker. In deciding to use a comic, I was limiting myself on visuals. However, the story telling is the same in film as it is in comics. The retelling of a story is subjected to memory. For example, when coming back from Boston and landing in Houston, I remember it was raining and dark. My memory likes to dramatize it as a storm, but it was only a light rain. Nichols explains that the performative mode is not so much recounting history as it is recounting memories, which I agree with.