Look For More in the Coming Months

2009-01-01T22:49:00.001-05:00

While I haven't posted much or recently, the coming months will be filled with notes in my research area...

Eco on Comics

2008-10-25T15:37:00.002-04:00

The following post was copied from: http://www.bdquebec.qc.ca/forum/detail.php?forumid=9&id=1055&p=1.

Le texte qui suit est extrait d'un essai d'Umberto Eco sur l'histoire de la critique de la bd . La traduction anglaise [vers 2002] est de Levana Taylor.

(Les mises en caractères gras sont de moi.)

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FOUR WAYS OF TALKING ABOUT COMICS

Umberto Eco

"When in a collection of writings dedicated to comics (or a particular comic) essays with erudite references are found, and subtle critical analyses, structural anatomy and vivisections - then the cultivated reader, even if he esteems the genre of comics, feels troubled. At the least, a feeling of suspicion. To be sure the times have passed (but I speak about the Sixties) in which dedicating a critical essay to the phenomenon of comics was received, in "serious" atmospheres, with a chorus of reproval; indeed, there has been a complete reversal, and there is even too much being written on comics, at least in Europe. I want to say that the suspicion, or the discomfort, rises even in one who in his own way, and even in advance of the others, has practiced the noble art of writing "serious" essays on comics. Regarding the issue in the perspective of the last twenty years, it can be said that four types of essays are written on comics:

(i) on comics as a medium in general;

(ii) on comics or a particular comic as a sociological indicator;

(iii) on some comic as if it were a matter of the Iliad;

(iv) on a particular comic, knowing that it belongs to the comics medium, and some "genre" practiced through this medium, but forgetting that it is a comic (but on this way of "forgetting" I will say more later).

Type 1: Thoughts on comics as a medium. They were the pioneering essays, those that tried to reconstruct the history of the medium finding its independent characteristics and reconstructing its genealogical tree. This includes the classic books, purely historical, of Whaugh and Becker, the first notes, the bravest, of Gilbert Seldes in The Seven Lively Arts, certain observations of McLuhan, many more critical works that appeared later on, in which there was a passing from historiography to the definition of the typical characteristics of a "language" (writes Fresnault-Deruelle, Alain Rey, and others). These writings all had an apologetic function, in the sense in which the first Fathers of the Church were called "apologists", as they tried to introduce the Revelation to the pagans, and to defend it against their attacks. It was a matter of demonstrating that comics had an illustrious pedigree (how many citations of Egyptian painting, of the Biblia Pauperum, of the several nineteenth century Max und Moritz!), that they had an independent language, that they were therefore a "genre", that they could give artistic results, that they did not ruin the minds of the young and were not limited to insinuating perverse ideologies into adults, that they could escape the commercial conditions in which they were born, even if these conditions were spoken of without neurotic reactions, because every form of art has its own conditions... Many of these studies have been valuable and important, many others repetitive, such that it is not rare to see the student in search of a thesis, or amateur who wants to get exposure with a book, ready to rewrite for the nth time a syntax of framing, a semantics of the balloon, a textual theory of layout, or that the first comic strip was the San Clemente mosaic. It is academic, to be sure, but it happens also with the greats of literature, and it is rare to find a history of the Greek lyric which says something new to us. However it is certain that this phase is past, and at the most can generate profitable archive searches, perhaps some critical edition of The Yellow Kid.

Type 2: Comics as a sociological indicator. The comic is a product, nearly always conceived and distributed thinking of a certain public: this is the case whether it is a matter of American comics, the comics of Mao's China, or Indian comics, which every collector possesses but obviously nobody reads and analyzes. Like every product depending on the circulation of the mass media, it can be analyzed as an indication of the tastes of a public, or of the ideology of its creators and/or distributors. In exactly this way the pre-McCarthyist premises of Little Orphan Annie, the poujadism of Li'l Abner, the latent colonialism of The Phantom have been analyzed, and so on. As always in these cases, there has been research counter to the current (The Phantom anticipates the revolt of the third world, for example - but it has been difficult to find the negative or positive ideology of Mandrake), and there has been ingenuous research: for example someone has analyzed the capitalist ideology of Uncle Scrooge (who is called Paperone in Italy) working on stories that were by then not produced in America any more, but in Italy, and were written by veterans of '68 who amused themselves precisely by creating an Uncle Scrooge as a caricature of the classic capitalist. We will not say that this tradition is ended: in theory it can live as long as there are new comics. In practice it is in crisis, because the new creators of comics have read the social critics of comics. How to analyze, in terms of ideological indicators, Crepax, Pratt, Moebius, Druillet or the Comix of Crumb? It is easy to write a brilliant analysis of the "aesthetic mystification" of Puvis de Chavannes, but how to do it with Picasso?

Type 3: Every comic strip is the Iliad. Every aesthetic or scientific current produces its own imbeciles. In comics they are called "fans" by the critics. Thus horrible comic books of the forties, badly written and worse drawn, can be collected for emotional reasons, because they remind us of our youth. It has happened that many of these fans have set out to write about the object of their love as if every comic were a work of art. Often the results have been pathetic. One needs to watch out for this type of work, because at times it assumes an aspect that at first glance is similar to work of the fourth type. In these cases too (type 3), to the degree that the fan has read a bit in livres de poche, the analysis can be replaced by quotations from Saussure, or Mircea Eliade. Certainly, in the Iliad, in the series Flash Gordon (which the French insist on calling Guy l'Eclair), just as in the most trite third hand product, can be found the signifiant and the signifié, archetypical situations, the structures of myth. Like the worst greimasians who find squares even in the railway timetable: arrival vs departure, non-departure vs non-arrival. It is obvious that the square is also in the timetable, the trouble is that we are not interested in knowing it because we know it already.

Type 4: On a particular comic, knowing that it belongs to the comics medium, and some "genre" practiced through this medium, but forgetting that it is a comic.

This demands a longer discussion. We will try to make an example with regard to written literature. You will remember the Platonic fable in which the Pharaoh Thamus reproaches the God Thot because he has invented writing; "this is bad," he says in summary, "because in this way men will lose the art of memory, and therefore a beautiful part of their interior life". Certainly, if we had been present at the debate, we would have had to defend the medium of writing. But now the battle is won.

Therefore when we analyze a literary work we do not discuss the virtues or defects of the medium of writing. In principle, we forget the medium. We focus our attention on the "genre" (within the medium: lyric, historical novel, tragedy...) and, beyond the genre, on the single work. To forget the medium does not mean to forget that we are facing a work that, by means of writing, manipulates language. Indeed, every time that the author, with a happy stylistic solution, freshly brings into question the art of writing and the art of the word, we reconsider both from the beginning. But not by taking sides. In principle, I repeat, we forget about the medium because we move in it like fish in the water. Therefore we are exempt from any need to apologize for the medium, and we analyze the single work for what it is, as a particular execution of an art (or of a technique) which is no longer in question (at least, not in the foreground and in the first instance).

This type of work, as far as comics goes, is rather recent. It had in fact to wait for two events, not necessarily simultaneous: (i) that comics grew up, (ii) that comics criticism grew up. The first event is rather distant (even if it is only in the last twenty years that comics have become, more than adult, scholarly, cultivated, sophisticated, metalinguistic, experimental). The second event is more recent, because criticism was adolescent when many comics were already of age. To talk about adult comics does not only mean to talk about the evolution of language, topics, genres. It means to talk about a proliferation of tendencies, and levels, on which comics can be spoken of as written literature is spoken of: Blanchot and Dard are part of written literature, just as the old films of Eddie Constantine and Godard are part of cinema. In order to do criticism of the fourth type one must forget that there exists a genre called comics. One must go in search of the evolution of genres, topics, techniques and motifs in the universe of the comics medium.

In the beginning comics were divided into comics tout court and "serious" comics. Gasoline Alley was a "comic"; The Phantom was a "serious comic". The "serious" comic strips were such because they did not have irony, usually. They were not serious because they were "mature", indeed they were adolescent and unripe, mythological, lacking any attempt at critical thinking. The comic comics aimed at satire, but their satire did not go beyond a mild humour: character jokes, good-natured satire of the daily customs of the average American man (think of Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Donald Duck); and among fans of type 3, Mickey Mouse, Reporter is cited as an example of denunciation of bad behavior and gangsterism, when Hollywood had already given us a lot, lot more, and Walt Disney's story had taken on a shape accessible to all, palatable even to Al Capone's cronies.

In the Fifties in the United States something new began, and I am thinking first of Schulz and then of Feiffer. Schulz seems to speak about the "private life" of some children (easily transformable in dolls, as has been done by the fan market) but in effect he says something to us about the human condition and the neuroses of adults. Feiffer inaugurates a moralistic tradition, of ferocious social criticism. He is conscious of the limits of the enterprise, the conditions of the market, and in an interview denounces himself as a king's fool, but the vein that he begins to mine is not to be neglected. In his wake have come a not very large, but noteworthy, series of pages of "critique de moeurs", among which we will cite the Italian Altan and Bretécher (it is not a coincidence that both Altan and Bretécher also attempt criticism of our times, revisionism, indeed demystification of history, and even of sacred history, Altan with Saint Francis and Bretécher with Saint Teresa).

Because I number myself among those who by now know to read comics forgetting (in principle) the medium, I assert that with these works a new literature (a genre to be precise) has been inaugurated, which has taken the place of the works of the great moralists of another time. With Vauvenargues, La Rochefoucault and others having ended on chocolate boxes, with the passings of Karl Kraus and Jerczy Lec, who today practices, by other means, the eighteenth century humors of criticism of customs? Pucelle d' Orléans or Bijoux indiscrets, where do we find them again today (and I am not asking a question of "greatness", I prudently limit myself for now to seeking a genre)? Bretécher's stories belong to the tradition of moralist literature. They do not imitate it, they replace it. The lovers of the written page, without images, may think (like King Thamus) that it is sad: but it is so.

Then one discovers that when Giovannoli speaks about Bretécher citing Goffman or Bateson, he is not playing uncritical fan games: he cites them because they, social scientists, speak about the same thing of which the moralist speaks, as has always happened. And when Arasse speaks about realism, absurdity, classicism (all illustrious literary categories) and quotes Bakhtin, he is doing what must be done when a text is analyzed – be it literary, pictorial, cinematographic or, precisely, of comics. And when Barbieri analyzes the frame, he is not repeating the commonplace of an essayist of type 1, who discovers that the frame is a syntactic element of the language of the comic strip: he is trying to understand what is the particular syntax of the moral speech of this author. The reading of newspapers (said Hegel) is the morning prayer of the modern man. And moral reflection on customs and society is the meditation of the lay man. Now we open the newspaper, or the weekly magazine, and in its pages (quite perishable) we find - by design – the elements necessary to carry out our daily practice of pietas: irreverent, ironic, but quite sympathetic reflections on the defects of those who are our brothers and sisters. And it may prove that, reading authors like Bretécher, at times we are shamed and we discover that it tells the story of us.

The Rhetoric of Comedy

2008-10-06T20:33:00.001-04:00

Symbolic Letters

2008-09-21T15:12:00.001-04:00

Popup by Marion Bataille
Uploaded by jacques_faciale

Para Graph(y)

2008-09-12T18:01:00.003-04:00

Over the past few months, every time I write the word paragraph I've been including an extra "y" at the end of the word - usually, I catch myself and fix the error. But it got me thinking about why I do that and what the two parts of the word "para"graph" [in] have in their intimate relationship. So I went to the Online Etymology Dictionary (etymonline.com) and looked up the words "paragraph," "para," and "graphy." The following it what I found:

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paragraph - 1490, from M.Fr. paragraphe (13c., O.Fr. paragrafe), from M.L. paragraphus "sign for start of a new section of discourse" (the sign looked something like a stylized letter -P-), from Gk. paragraphos "short stroke in the margin marking a break in sense," also "a passage so marked," lit. "anything written beside," from paragraphein "write by the side," from para- "beside" + graphein "to write."

para- prefix meaning "alongside, beyond, altered, contrary," from Gk. para- from para (prep.) "beside, near, from, against, contrary to," cognate with Skt. para "beyond;"

-graphy "the study of." (under demography)

graphe "writing, drawing," from graphein "write," originally "to scratch" on clay tablets with a stylus. Meaning "of or pertaining to drawing" is from 1756; that of "vivid" is from 1669, on the notion of words that produce the effect of a picture. (under graphic)
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There are two things that I see here: 1) "Para-graph" could mean the "writing, drawing of being alongside or beyond"; and 2) and "Para-graphy" could mean "the study of being alongside or beyond" or even the "study of alteration" among many other possibilities.

As it applies to comics, I think that it also has the possibility of being a reference to the movements from one panel to the next, in a temporal sense - time moving across sequential art, or a stand-alone comic working as an instance in time that is separated from the "beyond."

Interesting stuff that I hope to explorate (ate - Greek word for "ruin, folly, delusion", is the action performed by the hero, usually because of his or her hubris that leads to his or her death or downfall. There is also a goddess by that name (Até) in Greek mythology, a personification of the same).

In The Shadow of No Towers

2008-09-07T01:20:00.003-04:00

Soiegelman, Art. In the Shadow of No Towers. Pantheon: New York; 2004.
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"The only cultural artifacts that cold get past my defenses to flood my eyes and brain with something other than images of burning towers were old comic strips; vital, unpretentious ephemera from the optimistic dawn of the 20th century. That they were made with so much skill and verve but never intended to last past the day they appeared in the newspaper gave them poignancy; they were just right for an end-of-the-world moment." (11).

"The first decade of comics was the medium's Year Zero, that moment of open-ended possibility and giddy disorientation that inevitably gave way to the constraints that came as the form defined itself. One of the most exhilarating anomalies of that topsy-turvy moment was Gustave Verbeck's short-lived UPSIDE DOWNS OF LITTLE LADY LOVEKINS ANS OLD MAN MUFFAROO" (12).

"Comics pages are architectural structures - the narrative rows of panels are like stories of a building - and while an eccentric artist like Verbeck cold turn that structure on its head, Winsor McCay, the towering genius of the first decade of comics drew monumental structures designed to last" (12).

Comics Voyeur

Look For More in the Coming Months

Eco on Comics

The Rhetoric of Comedy

Symbolic Letters

Para Graph(y)

In The Shadow of No Towers