Week 2

According to Horricks (2004), how have perceptions of comics as a media changed?

Comics, like many new forms of media, has been criticised by those who wish to banish them for being a societal evil (Horricks, 2004). However, I don’t think the genre is the danger, but more the content which can be against a person’s moral or ethical or political or racial or cultural standpoint and so seen as dangerous to an existing way of thinking or style of living. However, comics are still proliferating. Horricks discusses the different perceptions of comics. Among these are:

• Comics are made up of a number of panels appearing one after the other in a specified order (Horricks, 2004). Each panel was considered as being “a unit of time and space” (McCloud as cited by Horricks, p. 5).

I think this perception can be clearly seen in ‘The Blue Lotus’, for example, on page five and six (Herge, 2002) where the panels cover a time span (great or small is not specified) in which Tintin is walking along a road - moving to another panel Gibbons passing Tintin in a car – moving to Gibbons driving into the law enforcement complex – moving to Gibbons talking to the authorities – moving to an armoured vehicle leaving the complex – moving back to Tintin walking along the road. From the first Tintin panel in this sequence to the last, there’s a span of time (and jumping of locations), but the comics form makes the events occur almost instantaneously.

Even when the comics panels show two people talking together, each panel is a time shot. This reminds me of photographic images from a high-speed camera where certain pictures (in this case drawn) have been chosen from a series, but the many shots in between are not shown. For example, take ‘The Blue Lotus’, page 57 (Herge, 2002) where Mr Mitsuhirato is talking with Tintin. We see Mr Mitsuhirato pulling a cigarette out of a cigarette box, with the next panel showing him placing a lit match to the cigarette which is now in his mouth, to another panel in which he is holding the lit cigarette and gesturing with his other hand.

So, what happened to the lit match and the cigarette box? It seems to me the panels are chosen with time very much pinpointing the major action points, which I also think instils movement into the comics. This can be seen again on page 57 with the sword. It is shown four times, but never in the same position, giving a sense of movement.

• Then “space has become the form of comics and time the content” (Horricks, 2004, p. 6). That is, the space on the page is the comics and the way it takes its shape on the page. The example given shows the idea that panels have been abandoned in the top part of the page (McCloud as cited in Horricks, p. 5), but in this perception content is still connected to time.

• Another perception of comics which developed from McCloud (as cited in Horricks, 2004) is that comics have a hidden story. (Those 'snap shots' that are not chosen, I suppose). This is when the reader creates the story link between the panels which is what is termed “invisible art” (Horricks, p. 11), a process McCloud states as actually happening on a sub-conscious level, hence taking the word “closure” (Horricks, p. 11) from psychology.

This story-linking is what I think makes comics a study of action. If the movement in the comics flow is adequate and sophisticated enough by displaying the important gestures, movements, etc, the story can easily be picked up in the next panel. If not, I presume the ‘reading’ of the comics would be interrupted and confusing.

• Then comics began to rely less on the framed panel (unlike, I note, ‘The Blue Lotus’ which relies on framed panels). Whereas comics had taken a sequential format, some people, such as Chris Ware, developed comics where reading the comic moved away from being sequential (Horricks, 2004). Then the panel, according to Horricks, takes on the importance of conveying something to the reader rather than incorporating time and space.

• The story in comics became of lesser importance for some cartoonists than the worlds they created (Kochalka, as cited in Horricks, 2004).

However, ‘The Blue Lotus’ and other comics do not create a world for me. This is because I am looking at someone else’s rendition of, for example, what the characters look like and what their world looks like. I’m not relying on my imagination for world building but a world presented by someone else’s imagination. This tends to put distance between me and the work: I become an observer, not a participate. Words alone would have meant the Tintin stories would have taken more paper, to give descriptive pieces of characters, actions and the like – there being no reliance on pictures - then my imagination would have created the world.

• Comics became seen as an art form in which both the creator and the reader actively participated through the comics (Horricks, 2004). That is, the reader is no longer viewed as a passive recipient.

But was he/she ever? Considering ‘The Blue Lotus’ and Herge’s prior works, they certainly roused people to pass their opinions, both positive and negative, so his audience certainly wasn’t passive.

What does Baetens (2001) mean by ‘monstration’, ‘graphiation’ and the ‘graphiateur’?

Monstration is where “the events are performed by the characters themselves in a situation in which the story seems to narrate itself, without any narrator’s intervention” (Baetens, 2001, p.149). The term monstration was first used by Andre Gaudreault when looking at storytelling in films which is the intertwining of different kinds of storytelling, from the storytelling interpretation of the film director; the novel that may have inspired the film; and the film script itself (Baetens).

However, Marion (as cited in Baetens, 2001) believes there is another aspect in comics apart from monstration which requires consideration. That is graphiation. By considering graphiation, comics analysis can then include “elements which are neither [1] narrated nor [2] shown (‘monstration’) but are [3] drawn (‘graphiated’)" (Baetens, p. 149).

A graphiateur is the person who creates the graphiation which is the “graphic and narrative” (Baetens, 2001, p. 147) elements of comics. Graphiation allows for the special features in the comics medium to be taken into consideration when analysing the medium, for example, layout.

Baetens (2001) wonders at the problematics of taking the monstration idea and applying it to comics, for example, props used in movies and props used in comics. I think that in ‘The Blue Lotus’ it is the ‘props’ which help to create an authentic environment, just as movie props would in a movie. Herge uses banners, Chinese lanterns, Chinese pottery, wall hangings, rickshaws and so on.

What does Khordoc think the Asterix series does better than Herge’s Tintin?

Khordoc (2001) thinks the Asterix series depicts sound to a wider extent than Herge’s Tintin by using more ‘noise’ techniques than Herge.

Examples of ‘noises’ in the Asterix series I notice that are not used by Herge’s ‘The Blue Lotus’ include:

· Coloured speech balloons to show the negative words spoken by a character which affect others when their balloons alter colour as well;

· The representation of sound through pictures (e.g. lightning bolts to represent verbal aggression) and tone (e.g. sarcasm) and as a way to represent censored words that would be improper to use (Khordoc, 2001).

However, one ‘noise’ I notice in ‘The Blue Lotus’ that is not mentioned specifically by Khordoc (2001) is the use of musical chords dispersed through speech to represent someone singing (examples: page three and 23, Herge, 2002). Also another ‘noise’ not mentioned by Khordoc is the use of fuzzy outlined capitals. This occurs in ‘The Blue Lotus’ when the guru sits on the soft couch and its softness hurts him (Herge, p. 2). This is more than the capital bold letters that Khordoc speaks of to show increase of volume. The fuzzy outline of the lettering also signals the guru’s tone when he shrieks of pain. But on page 41, the ringing telephone sound is also fuzzy to represent its brittle, vibrating tone (Herge).

References

Baetens, J. (2001). Revealing Traces: a new theory of graphic enunciation. In Varnum, R. & Gibbons, C. (Eds.), The Language of Comics: word and image (pp. 145-155). Jackson: U Press of Mississippi.

Herge. (2002; 1983). The adventures of Tintin: The Blue Lotus. London: Methuen.

Horricks, D. (2004). The Perfect Planet: Comics, games and world-building. In Williams, M. (Ed.), Writing at the Edge of the Universe. Christchurch: U of Canterbury Press.

Khordok, C. (2001). The Comics Book's Soundtrack: Visual Sound-effects in Asterix. In Varnum, R. & Gibbons, C. (Eds.), The Language of Comics: word and image, (pp. 156-173). Jackson: U Press of Mississippi.