The Body as an Instrument: The Role of the White Violin in "The Umbrella Academy"

I have been working on ideas for Gerard Way's The Umbrella Academy for quite some time because I have been a bit overwhelmed by the different avenues I could take with it. My overall interest in parsing this graphic novel resides in the idea of the body as an instrument. Yet within that idea there are many facets such as the body as a literal instrument, in this case a violin. There is also the idea of the body as an instrument in that it is an object manipulated by an outside force for example, a villain using a musician for his own evil purposes. The manipulation idea can branch off into many other ideas as well such as the use and abuse of women's bodies. I also had ideas of using the meaning behind the number seven and there are WAY too many for me to comprehensively attack. Interesting note on that, there are seven musical tones and seven colors in the rainbow (and when you have all seven colors together that makes white, the color of her violin "costume!"). From the musical aspect I looked into the idea of music as a weapon or as a means of torture and there are many fun political ramifications to be dealt with there, especially via the US military. Then there is heavy emphasis on the importance of music which can certainly be attributed to the author's love and involvement in this sphere via My Chemical Romance.

So the question remains, where did I decide to take this ship after learning of so many routes of travel? Basically I had to go back to the book and pick a few panels to focus my attention on. So here we are:


If we follow the bouncing ball we can clearly trace the line from Vanya's humanity to her objectification as a musical instrument. In the very beginning and throughout her adolescence Vanya is held back from the superhero measures that the rest of her siblings get to participate in, instead being told that there "is nothing special" about her and to go play her violin. She is isolated from her family who cannot even manage to attend one of her recitals. It is evident that she has been manipulated as an object from day one, initially by her father and subsequently by the Conductor. We can physically see her objectification present itself in the way her body takes the shape of a violin. The scene in which Vanya receives the phone call from the Conductor she is pictured as having an exaggerated bow to her thighs, highlighting the violin form.


After a final falling out with her family, Vanya gives in to the Conductor where she is "refashioned" into an instrument of death. In the midst of this, she finds out her father had known all along that she had capabilities and she was actually the "most dangerous one." In this moment we see that Vanya has really been "played" and objectified her entire life. In objectifying Vanya as an instrument her body becomes "an object and is separate from its context" (Shaw and Lee, Women's Voices, Feminist Visions, 2009). Interestingly, according to Shaw and Lee the media and entertainment industries have a large hand in perpetuating this objectification of women's bodies. So the very industry that sells the music Vanya would create and the industry that markets the story of the Umbrella Academy are the vehicles by which women are continually oppressed in this manner.

Accordingly, Vanya, or Number Seven, is no longer the agent in her actions. She is being manipulated by her father and then the Conductor. Even after killing the Conductor does Vanya regain control of her body or does she continue to carry out the plans of her father or those of the Conductor? That is to say, at this point, are Number Seven's actions her own or is her body still an instrument? In Eva Cherniavsky's article on the body, the author posits that "the abstraction of labor from the embodied person of the laborer makes possible the theft of his energy and creativity in the production of value to which the laborer loses all claim." Since Vanya has been used for someone else's purposes for so long she has in effect lost the rights to her musicality. Her music is not her own nor does she receive compensation for her labor. Ultimately she is an object, an instrument, used for an outside party's gain.

At some later date I think I would really like to revisit some of these other ideas dealing with The Umbrella Academy and Vanja. But for next time I will delve into Wolverine and man's attemt to tame the wilderness.