By writing about a universe in which humans and robots coexist, Mario and Gilbert Hernandez’s Citizen Rex opens discussion for larger topics such as discrimination and individual rights. Within the story’s main plot there exists an anti-robot movement, which I have drawn comparisons with other race targeted protests in the United States (Chicano Movement anyone?). One of the more important questions that must be asked is, “What defines an individual?” The robots in Citizen Rex have “consciousness” chips, which presumably gives them the ability to think freely and have creative thought. However, they are denied basic rights and amenities such as “water, electricity and meat” because they were made to be subservient slaves to their human owners. Overall I think Rex serves as a platform for other robots to share their ideas because he has something the others do not; notoriety. This gives him substantial power to send his message to the human citizens.
Using some of Scott McCloud’s vocabulary to analyze the panel on page 122 in Citizen Rex I noticed that all of the panels make use of faith based fragmentation, which is based upon the idea that just because the whole picture is not seen doesn’t mean the rest of it doesn’t exist; our minds fill in the gaps in which parts are missing because we mentally visualize them to be there. In Citizen Rex, Rex himself is not always present in the novel but his story and what he stands for (liberation and justice) certainly is.
In this panel the Hernandez brothers also use what McCloud describes as abstract symbols, such as letters to form words, which themselves are abstract compared to what they represent. In this case, the letters symbolize a sound that is being made in the background (“HUMMMMM…”). I think this goes along with the idea that many things in Citizen Rex are abstract and not concrete such as his purpose and meaning in the story initially.
Rex’s face is also deteriorating, yet as it’s melting we the readers can still detect traces of what we know in our minds to be human facial features. McCloud explains this as a way people look for human images in everything; even out the most rudimentary shapes and lines. In the greater scheme of the story I see this as a visual representation of how the material manifestation of an idea can be destroyed but not the idea in which it was molded after. Rex may be dying but everything he has done up till that point will be remembered and carried on because in the words of V from the film V for Vendetta, “Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea…and ideas are bulletproof.”
I’ve also noticed how distance plays a role in how the different characters are perceived. When a panel is illustrating a scene seen from far away, faces and landscapes become less detailed. Lines, besides acting as shadows, also draw out bigger things in the distance such as mountain ranges and buildings.
Question:
How do you think Citizen Rex relates to the other novels we have read in class about Chicano Literature? And are the robots meant to signify the Chicano minority (or any minority in this case)?
