How Julie Doucet represents herself in her graphic memoirs

Abstract

Based on the semiology of images, this paper aims to highlight how Julie Doucet represented herself in My New York Diary, one of her graphic memoirs. To achieve the proposed objective, the methodological path sought to carry out a reflective analysis, considering that when exploring a frame in a graphic novel according to its semiology, several codes are mentioned, including the pictorial code that inspired this reflection. Within this context, images in graphic memoirs can aggregate meanings in multiple ways, and, simultaneously, these elements perform functions of numerous different signs that we sought to observe. Consequently, it was possible to verify that in a single static frame of a graphic memoir, we could find codes of human expression and gestures, spatial codes, and the possibilities of temporal and narrative codes. Julie Doucet uses the excess of information in her graphic memoirs to add a series of meanings to the pictorial elements of her narrative.