2017
Decelerate Blue is kind of depressing. It's a graphic novel about a protest movement that opposes the sped-up society of the Guarantee, which has replaced the United States. It's a book that both seems to side with the protesters, and at the same time, to be utterly nihilistic about what they might accomplish.
I've really enjoyed other stories that satirize the accelerated pace of contemporary life, and that criticize capitalism's and corporations' roles in structuring everyday life this way. Two of my favorites are Heinrich Boll's "Action Will be Taken: An Action-Packed Story" and RA Lafferty's "Slow Tuesday Night," both of which I like much better. They're sharp, funny, and exaggerated in just the right ways. Though in fairness to Decelerate, both of those stories are about characters who enthusiastically participate in the madcap rush of their society, rather than asking what resistance might look like.
This would have been a good candidate for art that uses a single color to add a little interest to the black and white, but Cavallaro did not choose to do that. He did use a few panels of full color in two key places, moments when the protagonist feels most alive, but otherwise, it's entirely black and white, without even any grey.
So, Angela is a high school student in the Guarantee. Communication is terse, adjectives and adverbs are suspect, and every sentence ends with the word 'go' to let the other person know you're done. Her school teaches condensed versions of literature, movies last 15 minutes, her friends love shopping at the Hyper Mall, her dad's company just developed some really quick-drying cement, and her mom bought a standing bed that helps keep your heart rate up while you sleep. Go.
Also everyone has a tracker chip in their arm that gets scanned every time they interact with a business or government, soldiers patrol the streets, and there are cameras everywhere, even inside the home. Go. Someone slipped Angela a copy of 'Kick the Boot,' a dystopian science fiction novel that predicted a society much like the Guarantee, and that functions like a slow manifesto, radicalizing her against the hype. Go. And by the way, her grandfather is being sent to a 'reduction colony in Former California, because he's too old to keep up. Go. Go Guarantee Go. Go.
Against this backdrop, Angela accidentally discovers a commune of people living slowly, off the grid, literally underground in a cavern, and happily joins them. They're more like conscientious objectors than revolutionaries, although they do distribute copies of 'Kick the Boot' as a recruiting tool. Angela quickly adapts to the slow life. She meets Gladys and gets her first kiss, although we don't know whether or how sexuality is regulated in the Guarantee.
Then the group needs a volunteer to fetch a package of contraband from above ground. Angela volunteers, and retrieves it successfully, but she's unwittingly followed back by a camera. The package is a supply of a new drug, Decelerate Blue, that permanently slows your heart rate and increases your ability to dream.
The drug is supposed to be the next step in their project, but it won't be. Everyone in the commune takes a dose and falls asleep, and before they wake, the police come and kill or arrest almost everyone. Angela escapes, and is reunited with her parents, who want to get her back up to speed and back to her normal life. Go. She could also try to live slow on her own, try to share the book with others, or even distribute the drug. Instead, Angela commits suicide by taking all the remaining doses of Decelerate Blue. The end.
There are ways that this future society could resemble ours. Tweets are 140 characters, most TikToks are 30 seconds, we know we're tracked everywhere online, and many jobs are subjected to scrutiny and time pressure like Taylor could only have dreamed of. In China the 'lying flat' movement to rejects the 9am-9pm, 6-day work week, in favor of accepting a lower income and getting enough sleep. But Decelerate Blue doesn't really evoke any of those things, they're just the first things I wished it would have resembled. The sped up society is so vague that it lacks the power to really make you feel troubled about our own.
One of the most interesting parts was a debate between two characters about the power of 'Kick the Boot.' In these kinds of stories, going back at least as far as The Man in the High Castle, there's always a book-within-the-book full of revolutionary ideas, and I guess often in the real world too. But these books are symbols of protest at least as much as they are actual inspirations or sources of ideology. It was refreshing to see someone doubt the supposed power of art, though it would've been moreso if the entire piece didn't seem so convinced that protest is necessary, pointless, and fatal.
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