Reviews

Bezimena by Nina Bunjevac

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burntfries's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

borpotingis's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Nina Bunjevac never disappoints, and I think this is one of her best works. Her art is iconic and her approach to storytelling is refreshing and unique in this book.

Content Warnings

webjoram's review

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5.0

He leído este cómic por casualidad y sin saber que me iba a encontrar y sinceramente me ha dejado bastante impactado. Por el tema que trata y por la manera en la que la autora ha decidido enfocarlo. No sabría decir si es una obra que me ha gustado mucho, sinceramente ese no es el sentimiento que me ha producido ni durante su lectura ni al terminarlo. Más bien he cerrado el cómic con una sensación de desasosiego que aún hoy y pasados ya unos días déspues de leerlo no me abandona y esa es una de las razones por las que lo recomiendo.

inumakitoge's review against another edition

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TW: Sexual assault, rape

It is necessary to read the Author’s Afterword.

600bars's review

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2.0

The book as an object is absolutely beautiful, the illustrations remind me of those all-illustration novels like the Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Very detailed and textured, and huge. The formatting has speech bubbles with only one or two lines on the verso page, and then a full-page uninterrupted corresponding illustration on the recto.

The plot is strange: a priestess comes to an old woman, Bezimena, and she’s inconsolable because her temples are being destroyed. It seems very understandable that a priestess would be upset if the symbols of her religion and place of worship were being desecrated, but Bezimena is like bitch stop being a crybaby. She’s so annoyed with this crying that she plunges the priestess into a pond which causes her to be reborn as a baby boy on earth. ??? This is based on the myth of Artemis and Siprioties, where Artemis turned Sipriotes into a girl as punishment for Peeping Tom behaviors. This punishment has a direct relationship to the crime: what he did was bad, and it sucks to be a girl in most of history so that’s just simple tit for tat. But it will also hopefully help him truly understand the error of his ways once he has the experience of womanhood. In contrast, I don’t get why Bezimena is so bothered by this crying, and the Priestess's distress seems perfectly justified! I don’t get why she’s being punished at all, and moreover the punishment doesn’t fit the “crime”.

Spoiler

The little boy, Benny, is born to loving parents with respectable jobs. But he’s a pervert and won’t stop masturbating in school, making his classmates uncomfortable. He grows up and becomes a groundskeeper at a zoo. He sees one of his childhood classmates at the zoo all grown up. He watches her and her friend. She’s writing in a notebook, which she leaves behind. Benny gets it and finds that it’s full of drawings of sexual fantasies involving him, her friend, and her maid. He can’t believe his luck, he interprets the drawings as tacit consent, and sets about enacting all the fantasies. The next several pages are their sexual escapades, which involve dubiously consensual encounters.

Then there’s a weird interlude where the drawing styles shift and we see silhouette figures in a more fairy-tale style. A nun figure is accompanied by a child wearing a hat made out of a bear’s head. There’s a living deliciously fire dance with other bear children. A woman sells the child to a man for a few coins, and the man takes the child into a cottage. Benny also dreams that he’s growing stag horns.

When he comes-to after this dream sequence, the police knock on his door to take him away. They inform him that actually, he has raped and killed 3 twelve year old girls instead of having these semi-consensual encounters with 3 adult women. ????????????????? Benny seems genuinely horrified when they tell him the truth. He goes to prison and hangs himself, but the moment he’s about to die he hurtles through an imaginary space until he’s back at the side of the pond and becomes the priestess again. “Bezimena took the priestess’s head out of the water and calmly asked…Who were you crying for? Who were you crying for?”

So… the punishment for being upset that your religious centers are being destroyed is to be turned into a sicko pedophile? What does this teach the priestess? Who is she crying for? Herself or the temple? Is she crying for Benny or for the victims? I do not know. Bezimena means nameless which of course signifies the millions of nameless victims of patriarchal violence all through history etc. Usually in stories that are like “let’s get in the mind of a sicko” there is some sort of formative event, usually trauma, that causes the behavior. Or at least a fucked up relationship with the mother. But Benny seemed to be a natural innate sicko. Not that that can’t happen. He does seem to exhibit some shame around his impulses and makes an effort to hide them. I’m really confused on the pedo reveal– Benny himself seemed so shocked, is this meant to convey that he was so in denial about his fucked up desires that he constructed an entire other reality to obfuscate it? There wasn’t necessarily any indication that his sexual proclivities were swinging this way anywhere else in the book, he seemed to be more into voyeurism and peeping through windows. Is something wrong with the priestess that makes Benny this way the way Bob infests Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks?

Speaking of, Twin Peaks makes perfect sense while here I cannot find the thread of meaning even though it is also employing Lynchian storytelling techniques. Idk this is touted as a psychological trip into the mind of a sicko but tbh I feel just as confused as to why he is the way he is. What’s with all the Bear imagery?

Then after we read all that and are left with the very confusing question of “who are you crying for”, there is an absolutely insane afterward by the author. She tells a story from her youth. When she was fifteen she was lured by older girls at school into the orbit of an older man who was making sex tapes with underaged girls. She managed to escape but remained haunted by the incident and the knowledge that there were likely many many other girls and tapes who were not able to get out. She then divulges other details of sexual violence she’s been through. So then I start trying to connect this story to what we’ve just read– what is she saying about the psychology of perpetrators? I don’t know, while I know that it’s factually true that there are true psychopath disturbed people out there, sometimes I think this narrative obfuscates the normalcy of most perpetrators. It’s very disturbing that people like Benny and the man in the story exist, but what is more disturbing is that there are people like them who also are loving community members etc. It otherizes and exotifies perversion in a way that I’m not sure is helpful. Also, Benny is an antisocial freak who doesn’t seem to have any normal contact with women let alone other humans at all. The man in Bunjevic’s story charms her which is part of what made him so dangerous.

I just don’t think this was as nuanced or meaningful an exploration of the psychology of deviance as it was maybe meant to be. I’m willing to entertain the thought that perhaps I’m completely missing something or that my knowledge of Greek Mythology is not up to par. But I’m just rather confuzzled by the gender-bent framing device, and the ultimate meaning. I think the Artemis-Spiriotes device and trying to connect the afterword is what’s throwing me off. If it were merely Benny’s story even with the delusions and dream sequences I would not be scratching my head like I am, although I still think he was a rather 2D character. The art is soooooo beautiful though

cantordustbunnies's review against another edition

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3.0

Harsh, cold, and mysterious. Bunjevac leaves the audience to figure out her message which is shrouded in metaphor. This graphic novel certainly is of literary quality but is lacking in the nitty-gritty of plot. Without the interesting delivery, visual elements, and puzzling ending this wouldn't have been an especially well crafted look at a predator. A number of psychological elements don't ring true and Bunjevac's portrayal of insanity is stereotyped and two-dimensional (although maybe it was purposefully those things?) The pacing is also rushed. You can definitely tell this is written by someone who is criticizing "rape culture" and has something to say about society, as opposed to someone genuinely exploring the mind of a rapist. The things that bring this work together are the wonderful art and the mythological, esoteric underpinnings. This work can be interpreted on any number of different levels and through different lenses but lends itself to a feminist one (because it is, after all, Canadian). Something I do find tiresome is the obsession stories with a feminist bend have with "reversing roles." It's actually pretty trite and predictable at this point, like how many times can they write "Orlando"? Anyway, I did ultimately like this work. The narration is simple yet powerful. What really clinches everything is the ending which is shockingly yet perfectly abrupt and serves to lead one deeper into the work.