The Space Between: Graphics and Gutters

A response focusing on Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and chapters from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

Although Satrapi’s Persepolis is a graphic novel rather than a comic strip, readers can find a connection between what McCloud writes about in Understanding Comics and that which Satrapi presents on her pages. In Chapter 3, “The Blood in the Gutter,” McCloud writes of the importance of the gutter. He writes: “the gutter plays host to much of the magic and mystery that are at the very heart of comics! Here in the limbo of the gutter, human imagination takes two separate images and transforms them into a single idea” (66). On page 84, McCloud furthers this thought and presents the following scenario:

McCloud makes the point that not all of these images are necessary in order for readers/viewers to understand what is going on in the story. He suggests that because “the art of comics is as subtractive an art as it is additive,” the same story can be told in fewer panels without sacrificing any meaning (85). McCloud then presents several shortened versions of this story on page 85. Satrapi makes use of this idea of shortening in Persepolis. Take the following example, found on page 68: 

This page serves as an example for what McCloud describes. In these moments above, Marji and her father are outside on the sidewalk. Even though readers/viewers do not witness the father/daughter duo return to their house, they may assume this is so. Within the frames from this single page, the characters move from outdoors to indoors to then inside a car. Readers/viewers do not see the lengthy car ride that they do in McCloud’s story on page 84, but rather see the condensed version such as McCloud’s on page 85. Because readers/viewers can connect the dots and merge the space between the gutters to a single scene or idea, they are aware of the change in setting within this example. If they weren’t, readers might wonder how Marji comes to be standing in front of a mirror with her mother between frames of conversation with her father. “Creators,” McCloud writes, “must regularly make assumptions about their readers’ experiences” (85). In making these assumptions, it is left to the imagination of the reader/viewers and the “magic and mystery” of the gutter (66).

Another key concept McCloud discusses is that of time. In chapter 4, “Time Frames,” he writes: “In learning to read comics we all learned to perceive time spatially, for in the world of comics, time and space are one and the same” (100). McCloud also comments on the presence of the silent panel and writes, “When the content of a silent panel offers no clues as to its duration, it can also produce a sense of timelessness” (100). This sense can be found in Persepolis as well.

Although there are some textual descriptions in this panel, there are no dialogue bubbles presents. Instead, readers/viewers are presented with one of the largest panels thus far in the graphic novel. The panel covers the entirety of the page and very much so includes this idea of space and time as one. The difference here, however, is that this panel does tell readers/viewers the duration of the family vacation: 3 weeks. Even so, this powerful, detailed image, in conjunction with the lack of dialogue, gives readers/viewers the feeling of timelessness that McCloud discusses. By using this image across one large panel (rather than breaking it up with gutters across smaller panels), this panel from Persepolis “linger[s] in the reader’s mind” (102).

The presence of time (and its length) is seen in many other panels of Persepolis. On page 73, the panel reads: “And then some days later…” Page 100 reads: “When I got back from school…” Both of these instances draw further attention to the presence of time and the importance it plays in a story such as Persepolis.

Also within this chapter, McCloud makes note of motion and its evolution throughout the history of comics. “As we’ve seen,” McCloud writes, “the interaction of time and comics generally leads us to one of two subjects: sound or motion” (116). Satrapi makes a very basic use of one of the types McCloud discusses — motion within panels. See the following images from Persepolis illustrating this concept: 

Finally, before concluding this response, I would like to point out just two illustrations I found of particular importance in Persepolis. While they do not relate as closely to what McCloud addresses, the selected images do relate to previous class readings. Take a look at the following illustrations: 

This first illustration symbolizes the “male gaze.” The female is centered in the panel, surrounded by males eyeing her with malicious anger. The female is in hiding, both in the story and in the painting, and she is impacted by this presence of an unbalanced power ratio. Similarly, the second and third illustrations symbolize this patio ratio between the superior (the teacher) and the inferior (Marji). Just as the men did in the first image, here too, the teacher looks down upon her students; this further highlights the levels of power at play. In the following panel, the teacher’s body looms over Marji’s; this difference in size is symbolic of the teacher’s all-powerful state.

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: HarperPerennial, 1993. 60-117.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003.

Maps and meaning, composing with style

A response focusing on Chapter 3 of Ben Barton and Marthalee Barton’s Professional Communication: The Social Perspective and Chapter 6 of Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design

In the later pages of their text, Barton and Barton discuss denaturalizing the acts of production and reception in regard to maps, graphs, etc. The authors examine Harley’s (1989) particular praise of the Historical Atlas of Canada of which Harley writes: “Bar graphs, flow lines and proportional circles survive but they are enriched by architectural and archeological drawings, by original maps and town views of the past, and by landscapes with people and artefacts” (Barton & Barton, 74; Harley, 88). A classic book associated with popular culture serves as exemplary for Harley’s statement.

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour’s 1972 Learning from Los Vegas offers an excellent example of the concepts and techniques Harley describes (and those which Barton and Barton reiterate in their text). According to the MIT Press[1], Learning from Los Vegas “call[s] for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of ‘common’ people.” Although the book is grounded in architecture and design, it places a great deal of attention on the importance of appropriate maps, their visual presence on the page and their salience to surrounding information (both text and visual).

The following images are from Learning from Las Vegas and they help illustrate those concepts which Harley and Barton and Barton explain.

The final picture is of Venturi and Brown. It shows the architects on a 1968 field trip to Las Vegas. These images allow viewers to “begin to know what it might have felt like to have lived in old Canada (Barton & Barton, 74; Harley, 88) and further illustrate the techniques Barton and Barton deem important for maps and images. Of course, in this sense the location is Las Vegas. Just like the Historical Atlas of Canada, so too does Learning from Las Vegas include a narrative that “unfolds expanding rather than denying the rhetorical power of the map” (Barton & Barton, 74; Harley, 88). The New York Times writes, “Learning from Las Vegas was one of the last big architectural manifestos and a heartfelt embrace of American popular culture that be would be hard to imagine anyone attempting today.[2]”

Figure 6.20: Water parks of the damned, is an interesting illustration to include in Reading Images. The comic strip has a resemblance to the childhood classic favorite, “Where’s Waldo?” Whereas the strip has a bold headline that “predisposes us to start our reading top left,” these textual elements are not present in most “Where’s Waldo?” illustrations. Thus, it is not as easy to determine a starting point for “Where’s Waldo?” or similar displays (Kress and Leeuwn, 208).

Take the following “Where’s Waldo?” illustration (I apologize for the poor quality):

 In this image, viewers might be hesitant on where to start. Do they begin with “Hotel” and “Saloon” simply because they are in the top left corner, or do viewers look instead at what they might find most salient? If it is the latter, viewers might first see “The Pioneer Saloon” as it is larger and in the center of the photo. Regardless of the starting point, one thing is certain: “but where the eye will move from here is difficult to predict.” (Kress and Leeuwn, 208).

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[1] http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=3723

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/arts/design/23yale.html

Modern day examples of “the gaze”

A response focusing on Chapter 3 from Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright’s, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture

In Chapter 3 of Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Communication, Sturken and Cartwright focus intently on the idea of “the gaze,” a term that “sometimes carries connotations of looking long and intently with affection, awe, wonder, or fascination” (94). The term has journeyed across multiple disciplines and has also received great attention in the feminist culture. As a result of these travels, its definition has various interpretations. The authors mention that although the concept of “the gaze” originated in classical Hollywood filmmaking, it was French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan who brought the term into popular usage.  

This concept of “the gaze” is prevalent across the children’s literature and film genre. Take for example, Ken Mochizuki’s Baseball Saved Us. The story follows a young boy, Shorty, and his Japanese American family during their time at an internment camp immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The family finds relieve through baseball and it is through this sport that deep, conceptual themes for the book surface. In one particular image, Shorty is pictured at home plate, up to bat for his team. Viewers of the image (“spectators” as Sturken and Cartwright would say) see Shorty from the viewpoint of the stands/bleachers at the baseball park; spectators see the cage that surrounds home plate, (seen in the book cover pictured here) and Shorty’s back caged is within it. 

 This image in turn symbolizes the confinement Shorty and his family feels by living at the camp. Also in the upper left third of the image, a rough-sketched guard sits in a tower, observing the game that takes place below. The guard wears sunglasses and a shadow casts over his face. In this example, “the gaze… thus helps to establish relationships of power” (111). This illustration establishes a difference that Sturken and Cartwright discuss. The authors write: “In systems of representation, meaning is established through difference. Hence, throughout the history of representation and language, binary oppositions, such as… culture/nature or white/black, have been used to organize meaning” (111). In Dom Lee’s illustration, the guard is given the power as he looks down upon Shorty and the Japanese Americans with an all-powerful stare.

We may look to Hans Christian Andersen’s classic children’s tale, The Steadfast Tin Soldier for another example. In this story, a tin soldier falls in love with a paper ballerina and gazes at her intently. Although the descriptions provided in the text are more profound than those in the animated version, the following clip features an adaptation of Andersen’s story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGwk0bb3qC8&feature=related.

In this example “the gaze” suggests that females are submissive recipients of the “male” gaze. Sturken and Cartwright write that “women are posted as objects of an active or ‘male’ gaze, and their returning looks are most often downcast, indirect, or otherwise coded as passive” (124). This is the case for the soldier and the ballerina. This gaze makes reference to a power ratio between males and females; the power rests with the male gazer leaving the female helpless under the watch of this powerful gaze. In this state, the female is objectified and at times viewed as “the other” (see here--http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/other.html-- for more information on “the other”). This example confirms what Sturken and Cartwright write: “The concept of the gaze is fundamentally about the relationship of pleasure and looking” (124).

This idea of the gaze can even be seen in television today. For example, in televised sport events, such as tennis, the camera lens has been thought of to take on the role of the male gazer. Feminists and others have argued that the camera movements, shots, and/or angles (often operated by men) might be related to the eye of a man and thus representative of his perspective or gaze. This, these critiques argue, may better explain shots of women’s short skirts, long legs, and midriffs. This corresponds with the Rear Window example in the text. The writers say the film “is a quintessential example of a film that depicts the male gaze as a practice in which men look at female bodies, containing them (through the device of the binoculars, for example) and rendering them objects of visual pleasure” (126).

Making meaning matter

A response focusing on Chapter 2 from Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright’s, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture

In Chapter 2 of their text, Sturken and Cartwright discuss the power of images in respect to the roles producers and viewers play in evaluating and, therefore, making meaning of those images. The authors write: “Rather, meanings are created in part when, where, and by whom images are consumed, and not only when, where, and by whom they are produced” (Sturken and Cartwright, 55). This quote magnifies the relationship between the producer and the viewer, and to some extent points out that perhaps meaning cannot be understood (or even processed) without the existence of both parties.

The discussion of taste and aesthetics is one that seems to circulate everyday conversation, regardless of the topic or scene of said conversation. For example, food, clothing, and home and garden design are all up to the scrutiny of viewers and the critiques given vary as does the venue and context. The authors suggest just this: “…the circulation of objects through categories of taste and the reclassification of objects according to new scales of value show us that hierarchies of taste and beauty are not fixed but are relative to historical and cultural interpretations” (Sturken and Cartwright, 58). This is seen in the recycling of several trends (e.g., fashion). High-waist jeans with belts and tucked in blouses are now deemed acceptable in the fashion world and even trendier than they were some time ago. Similarly, tie-dye has been on the rise in recent years; these trends, however, are showcased in a different light than their original debut. Sturken and Cartwright note these trends in later pages when they write that revisiting trends from previous times “has allowed young people to create new styles by mining styles of the past” (Sturken and Cartwright, 79).

Continuing with the idea of aesthetics and taste is the correlation with low and high culture and in turn, this placement in popular culture. The text states that animated films have evolved from once being only for children to now inviting older audiences to enjoy the laughs. Take, for example, the DreamWorks Shrek series — it appeals to children and includes a tremendous amount of dry adult humor. The evolution of the film industry (in this respect) as well as the inclusion of popular culture curriculum in universities, are evidence of the shift in multiple forms of culture.

In reading the text, I took great interest in Stuart Hall’s explanation of encoding and decoding. The popular culture example of American Idol (and similar series) was very relevant and intrigued me to inquire more about this particular show in relationship to the three positions Hall states viewers can take as decoders. In a simple search, I found the following video:

This video, created by a student for the purposes of a class assignment, elaborates on the ideas Sturken and Cartwright mention in Practices of Looking, including negotiation and opposition. The student discusses the role of the viewers and exactly how powerful their roles are—as individual voters—in shaping the outcome of a nationally coded television program. The video complements the idea that American Idol embodies “a set of ideological beliefs about democracy, encouraging the idea that voting in the show is like voting in political elections” (Sturken and Cartwright, 74). This method is seen across other television shows, such as America’s Got Talent. Both the text and the video propose the idea that this show (and perhaps related shows) is one presenting a modern-day means of achieving the American Dream.

It is fascinating how we move from making meaning of what we think are simple images to then pondering the complexities of things we later view. We then find, process, and ponder meaning of images in conjunction with what we already know. In addition to interpreting images from our individual perspectives, we give way to the thoughts of the massive audience of which we are classified. We dissect television shows or animated films and, “make meaning…not only through describing an experience with images but also through reordering, redisplaying, and reusing images in new and differently meaningful ways in the reordering of everyday life” (Sturken and Cartwright, 89).

Source: “Encoding and decoding.” YouTube. 19 May 2010. Retrieved 3 September 2012. Web.