Pandemic documentary and graphic narrative: Race, disability, and the chromatic language of In/Vulnerable: Inequity in the Time of Pandemic

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dc.contributor.authorMaxey, Ruthen
dc.contributor.editorBrett, Oliveren
dc.contributor.editorHarries, Rhiannonen
dc.date.accessioned2026-09-01T14:21:09Z
dc.date.available2026-09-01T14:21:09Z
dc.date.issued2026-09-04en
dc.description.abstractIn the free, online, serialised graphic narrative In/Vulnerable: Inequity in the Time of Pandemic (2020), the acclaimed Vietnamese American artist Thi Bui works with Reveal journalists to produce a highly collaborative, documentary account of the asymmetrical impacts of COVID-19 on a range of US subjects. In this article, I offer the first sustained scholarly discussion of In/Vulnerable, focusing on the centrality of Bui’s formal use of colour. She reveals the documentary “truth” of each individual story through a distinct chromatic language, employing often intense shades of specific primary, secondary, and tertiary hues: blue, red, yellow, green, purple, and brown. I emphasise this aesthetic technique—and its conjunction with narrative voice and the reader-text relationship—because “polychromatic graphic storytelling”, in Jan Baetens’ phrase, is key to interpreting In/Vulnerable and the role of colour in graphic narratives is still critically overlooked. My article explores Bui’s conjunction of colour with politico-economic inequality and the chromatic intersections between disability, care work, and death, which are depicted as largely racialised experiences during the COVID era. It also looks at the interplay between presence and absence and the use of frames to reflect the “cellular self”, in Candida Rifkind’s terms, compelled by COVID restrictions.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationMaxey, R. (2026)'Pandemic documentary and graphic narrative: Race, disability, and the chromatic language of In/Vulnerable: Inequity in the Time of Pandemic', Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media,31, pp. 17–32. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.31.02en
dc.identifier.doi10.33178/alpha.31.02en
dc.identifier.endpage32en
dc.identifier.issued31
dc.identifier.journaltitleAlphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Mediaen
dc.identifier.startpage17en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/19148
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherFilm and Screen Media, University College Corken
dc.relation.ispartofAlphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Mediaen
dc.rights© 2026, the Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.en
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
dc.titlePandemic documentary and graphic narrative: Race, disability, and the chromatic language of In/Vulnerable: Inequity in the Time of Pandemicen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
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Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media. Issue 31: Pandemic Documentary: Negotiating “Cramped Space”