The Hateful Narcissism of Allie Brosh in Hyperbole and a Half (2013)

Since the late 1960s and the rise of independent comics in the United States, graphic narratives of the self have flourished, and the medium has opened up the potentialities of life writing, not least because authors of autocomics convey an inner sense of self through an outer form that is necessarily simplified and stylized. Allie Brosh’s work is characterized by generic hybridity; it draws on the blog, the diary, autofiction, and standup comedy, and it combines confessions and testimonials with anecdotes and fantasies rooted in lived experience. Her grotesquely cute graphic avatar is a bizarre chimera which, although it can recall various cartoon conventions (such as the animal funnies), looks like no known living being; unnamed and unrecognizable, it is nevertheless a powerfully unique, embodied figure. This singular and not so simple creature is accompanied by a multiplicity of voices, expressed in text that also functions as image. Brosh creates a linguistic-graphic form that plays with combinations of word and symbol, with mixtures of graphic styles, panel composition, the interplay of signs belonging to different semiotic systems. Her singular autobiographical persona is not merely dual, an association of graphic representation and narrative voice, it is indeed protean and often duplicitous: it justifies and betrays itself, oscillates between antagonism and sympathy—a profoundly unstable, hateful narcissist. Through hyperbolic self-derision and irony, disputing authenticity and negating identity, Brosh achieves an intricate and brilliantly singular form of authentication.