98 african appropriations
supplemented by a schematic sketch depicting the location of the crow’s
nest on the mast (vol. 7: 4). W hen the ship is about to hit the iceberg, he
inserts a panel with a sketch of an iceberg and explains the nature of this
phenomenon in a caption (vol. 7: 25).
Turning a sound film into a graphic novel is akin to turning moving im-
ages into stills, as well as dialogue into writing. In terms of images, Mtani
stays remarkably close to Cameron’s film. This is due to what he calls
“pause-and-sketch,” a technique he developed in transferring (video) film
images into his sketchbook: he would sit down in front of his vcr in search
of key scenes and, when he found one, he would press the pause button
to halt the video film and copy from the screen. Hence, a film frame that
corresponds to almost every panel of the graphic novel can be found (Beez
2007). I suggest that this relative closeness to Cameron’s “original copy”
is both indicative of Mtani’s captivation and is an attempt at maximum
authenticity. The latter suggests that the artist buys into Cameron’s cre-
ative mixing of historical events with fiction and assumes that the story of
Rose and Jack, though reenacted by Holly wood actors, actually happened
on the historical voyage and that Cameron’s film is the closest possible
account of this relationship. Certain passages in the graphic novel even
suggest that Mtani reads the framing narrative of Cameron’s Titanic—
the deep-sea exploration and elderly Rose telling her story to the team
of treasure hunters—as nonfictional footage (which in part it is). In this
regard, the summaries he provides in each of his booklets are revealing.
The first page of volume 4 reads: “Just as in the previous book, the main
character in this big disaster and tragedy, Rose, who at the point when the
film was produced was over 90 years old (she is now dead), continues to
narrate the story, picking it up at the point where they are out on the ship
kissing” (vol. 4: 1). That he Africanizes the characters must not necessar-
ily contradict his attempt to provide an account of the tragedy that is as
authentic as possible. Mtani himself explained this as a tool of mediation,
a necessary means to help his readers identify with the characters in his
comic and bring the distant historical event closer to his present audience.
I suggest that this change on the visual level has to be conceptualized as
equivalent to the use of Swahili on the textual level. Both are instances of
translation and therefore make it easier to infer meaning from a past event
which is distant for African readers in many respects.