On the topic of the implied author in Booth's 'Rhetoric of Fiction,' Booth addresses how the second self is similar to "a stage manager, a puppeteer...an indifferent God, silently paring his fingernails" (151). When the narrator has dramatized himself, he shares the same beliefs and characteristics with whichever way he chooses to manifest in.
With thoughts similar to Miranda H's post 'Self Conscious Narration and Persepolis,' the author is able to completely be himself, comfortable with joking or even directly conversing with the reader.
I noticed that so far this year we have looked at 2 types of comics. One which is an autobiographical narration, and the other which is basically a lecture. In this type of comic the author is able to address the reader not only visually with drawings, but consciously by using the inclusive tones such as "ourselves," or "our paths." This is another technique of the author joining his reality with ours, making him all the more present.
In Persepolis, Marji visits an old friend Kia Abadi. As she comes to soak in the destructiveness of war on her friend, she makes an important realization: "That day, I learned something essential" we can only feel sorry for ourselves when our misfortunes are still supportable...once this limit is crossed, the only way to bear the unbearable is to laugh at it" (266). By presenting her personal realization at that point in her life, Satrapi shows us that she's seeing how this war has put her country at rock bottom. And this way it is not only more relevant to us but also shows how her perception and awareness comes to life.
McCloud touches on this when he mentions the outward flowing of consciousness into the extended identity. "Our ability to extend our identities into inanimate objects can cause pieces of wood to become legs...pieces of plastic to become ears...pieces of glass to become eyes. And in every case, our constant awareness of self -- flows outward to include the object of our extended identity" (39). Like Satrapi, McCloud speaks with us as if he were right there in the room. In one frame, the one about pieces of glass becoming eyes, McCloud shows himself motioning towards his own glasses. When the author exposes himself like that, it fills the authorial intention, really letting you see straight into his mind.
I guess what's led me to this the discussion on the author's identity, intent and whether the author should be labeled by his other works or just in one single work. Instead of distancing the author from the text, it is absolutely necessary for the author to be there. It gives the text a guiding personality, someone readers can converse with. This style is not only clever, but more meaningful than anything words can describe laid out in text form. It is why you can see in modern comic culture a healthy amount of comics being transformed into multimillion dollar films. In it's basest form the comic is just as text, a method of communicating. And when done well, it is powerfully affective.
In my second SCD, I talked about this at length in regards to the connection between Satrapi and McCloud. I described the Marjane as depicted on the page as a phantom of the real flesh-and-blood Satrapi. Her ghost or daemon on the page flitted freely between narrative and dialogue with the reader as needed. Granted, it's an autobiographical work and this device was necessary in her mind/artistic vision, but even in works of fiction in which the author is supposedly absent, the author's presence can be felt.
ReplyDeleteMark Twain had a bitingly sarcastic sense of humor, as anyone can find out by reading his correspondence and nonfiction works. This wit of his shines through his works; even a neophyte of his works can comprehend this curmudgeonly personality through his fiction alone. The tenor of his works is like a fingerprint left by his mind on the page. The same could be said of any artist. Everything ever created by humankind is a physical manifestation of a purely mental concept.
I don't really know where I was going with this. I just marvel at the omnipotence of the creative process, if only in the confines of our own mind. We may be flesh and blood, but in our minds we can be and are gods. Everything we create is a genesis.
Gabe and Chris, I'm glad for this exchange and want to jump in for a moment. Your questions make me realize that nowhere has McCloud ever told us that the role of the author should be diminished. (In fact, I'm now racking my brain to determine whether any of our theorists has advocated as explicitly as Barthes did for the "death" of the author, which as it turned out, really helped give rise to Foucault's "author-function.") McCloud does state some truisms about how certain messages are more acceptable when they are delivered in more minimalistic forms that amplify reader-identification. But I'm not sure he argues against the importance of the author.
ReplyDeleteWhile you both rightly note that these texts represented different genres -- comic essay vs. graphic memoir -- it seems that both equally rely on the presence of the author, rather than simply the importation (or insertion) of the reader. Another way to put that is to consider the necessity of the author to what Chris calls that "physical manifestation of a purely mental concept." Perhaps that joining that McCloud writes about isn't only a function of semiotics or signification, but it is a more active "joining," to use Gabe's words.
Which leads me to my old standby question about "frames": How much does this joining (or this interpretation) rely on the concept of a frame, and what does that mean? What does a frame make possible? Impossible?
-Prof. Graban