BIG ANSWERSAn Interview with Anders Nilsen
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Self-portrait by Anders Nilsen
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Anders Nilsen is a great cartoonist whose work blows minds on a regular basis. His claim to fame would be the series Big Questions, which is a continuing story about a group of birds trying to survive and reacting to things and an unchaperoned, mentally retarded boy doing the same in a place far from human civilization.
Vice: Birds. Why birds?
Anders Nilsen: The easy answer to that question is that they are easy to draw. You can convey a lot with a circle for the head, an oval for the body, a squiggle for the tail, and two little lines for legs. And it’s easier to get your story going if you can say a lot with a little. But the birds are, I think, about more than that. I hesitate to define too much why my stories use the things they use, because I don’t want to close down the possibilities of meaning and interpretation for the reader. But for me the birds are evocative of innocence. They are very humble creatures, and when they get too big for their britches it is automatically ridiculous. In that sense I feel like they’re a good vehicle for talking about people, who also are very small, ridiculous creatures but have a way of forgetting that about themselves. We think our ideas about the world actually matter, that we’re important actors in the drama. We can see the inconsistencies in the birds’ ideas better than we can in our own. So they’re a useful mirror. But birds have a whole range of other symbolisms. It’s hard to avoid reference to the idea of transcendence, because they can fly. They also happen to frequently be monogamous, which most other animals aren’t. They can be adorable and relatable at the same time that they are beautiful, mysterious, and strange. Different species are evocative of different archetypes.
People like to describe things as existential. Are your comics existential to you?
To me, “Should I do the dishes?” is an existential question. I’m perfectly happy to have people refer to my comics in whatever way works, especially if they’re recommending them. I definitely feel some affinity with Nietzsche and Camus and all those weirdly optimistic depressives. So I guess that’s fine.
Are you happy? Do you think happiness is real? Is it good to try to be happy?
Yeah, I’m happy. I think of myself as a happy person generally. I think a lot of people think of my work as heavy or dark or depressing, but to me that’s not incompatible with being a happy person. As far as whether one should try to be happy... I’m not sure it does much good to try. I think the best one can do is to try to pay attention to what makes one happy and pursue it. It’s hard to do, because it’s easy to be mistaken about what your happiness comes from. But aside from paying attention, I think some people tend to simply be generally happy, and some people don’t. And I don’t think it always bears much correlation with what has happened to you in your life, whether you’ve suffered tragedy or been wealthy or whatever. In fact, I recently heard of a study that showed that people who had faced some amount of hardship in their lives growing up actually tended to be happier as adults. This whole point of view, of course, is coming from someone in a wealthy country who has a roof over his head and food on his table and gets paid to draw pictures of little birds, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt.
See all articles by this contributor Anonymous, on Jul 22, 2009 wrote:
i would imagine birds would be hard to draw. guess not though | | Anonymous, on Jul 22, 2009 wrote:
okay dude, if you’re thinking that much about not thinking about the dishes i think you’re making this shit was too difficult on yourself. lighten up. aren’t you a comic drawer? | | Anonymous, on Jul 22, 2009 wrote:
you people act like you’ve never heard of google before. here, you’re welcome.
themonologuist.blogspot.com/ | | Anonymous, on Jul 22, 2009 wrote:
Joe Bananas you’re a fucking Vice groupie | |
| joe bananas, on Jul 21, 2009 wrote:
for such a short interview they seem to be covering some pretty huge topics? this is very unvice like. where is the sarcasm? | | Anonymous, on Jul 21, 2009 wrote:
i think that i am actually too tired to understand what the hell this guy is talking about. think im more of a visual person. | | Anonymous, on Jul 21, 2009 wrote:
i used to be so down with nietzsche and camus especially but then i realized life is too much fun to deal with not giving a shit about anything. ’the stranger’ is still a bad ass read though. no question about that. | | Anonymous, on Jul 21, 2009 wrote:
there are lots of example if you get your eyes all squinty. | | Anonymous, on Jul 21, 2009 wrote:
wish they showed a couple examples of the comics | |
| dangerboy, on Jul 21, 2009 wrote:
never thought about "should i do the dishes" as an existensial quesiton | | |
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