If comics represent simplification in the visual world, poetry can stand to represent simplification in the literary world. In poetry, major themes are stripped down often to only a few words; yet it is poetry that takes the longest to interpret and draw out the meaning. Bakhtin speaks about this and the flaws of poetry in Discourse in the Novel. Bakhtin writes, "the trajectory of the poetic word toward its own object and toward the unity of language is a path along which the poetic word is continually encountering someone else's word, and each takes new bearings from the other, the records of the passage remain in the slag of the creative process"(331). This is to say that the power of one word in poetry is so loaded that the original meaning often gets lost in the interpretive process. I wonder then if this can be said about comics, as there is for one image a thousand ways to interpret it; or possible McCloud is only saying that simplification of characters in comics is useful in order to appeal to the largest possible audience. If anyone has any comments or thoughts or answers, I would love to hear them!
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Lost Meanings in Oversimplification
After reading McCloud's chapter from Understanding Comics, I was stuck with the idea of amplification through simplification. The whole piece focuses on the way cartoons cut down images or ideas in order to make the audience more receptive. McCloud writes, "When we abstract an image through cartooning, we're not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential "meaning," an artist can amplify that meaning in way that realistic art can't"(30). While I agree that simplification helps to put the reader in a mindset that is unbiased and open, there is an aspect to simplification that might leave too much room for interpretation, which might skew the meaning and tamper with effective communication.
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Annie,
ReplyDeleteYes, often the analysis of poetry is complex and long winded, however I think McCloud's simplification through cartooning is much more to the point than the art of poetry. Poetry is a literary form that brings about a meaning through meter, rhyme, and a specific form. Meanwhile cartooning holds no boundaries, and can stretch from a smiley face to a highly detailed image. Poetry is like searching for a meaning while cartoons highlight meaning through simplification and help from the reader.
I'd lalso ike to point out that although Bahktin mentions the drawn out process of creating poetry and leaving creative "slag," he also believes that poetry has the ability to express a "single-voiced purity and unqualified directness," that has the potential to "give rise to the conception of a purely poetic, extrahistorical language" (331). He laces this thought with the term, "language of the gods," meaning that it may one day become a unified concept of relativity for everything in historical and living discourse.
On page 41, McCloud writes, "By the de-emphasizing of the appearance of the physical world in favor of the idea of form, the cartoon places itself in the world of concepts." I think that this passage might challenge the idea that comics simplify only to appeal to the broadest audience. Rather, an author can choose to use comics to make concepts take precedence over realistic portrayal.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure, however, that this translates to poetry, nor am I sure that graphic novels = poetry in this way. A reason that I question the parallels between poetry and graphic novels is that I see quite a lot of Baktin's theory of novels as discourse at work in Persepolis and other graphic novels. Heteroglossia is at work in Persepolis: the language of the Islamic Revolution, the language of her family and other leftist political people, as well as French and German are only some of the languages present in the novel, and much of the plot stems from the interaction and conflict of these languages. It certainly "...deals with discourse that is still warm from that struggle and hostility, as yet unresolved and still fraught with hostile intention and accents" (331).
I am also not sure that I can accept what Baktin says about poetry - it seems to reductive to me and does not take into account the many varieties of poetry. Heteroglossia can be present in poetry (think of Shakespeare and Chaucer, as well as more recent poetry). There may be a different use of language in poerty, but I would argue that it is not extrahistorical or removed from everyday life as Baktin (331) believes.
I think the parallel of cartoon drawings to poetry is apt, however I might frame my comparison differently. The similarities lie in the careful selection and editing of the components, but the implications of this restraint and simplification are different in the visual world. Though more abstract than realistic pictures, cartoon images are still much less abstract than the poetic word and require more gut reaction than dissection. A cartoon is "practically a blank slate" while poetry is far more conceptually loaded (McCloud 37).
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