"It's considered normal in this society for children to combine words and pictures, so long as they grow out of it. Traditional thinking has long held that truly great works of art and literature are only possible when the two are kept at arm's length. Words and pictures together are considered, at best, a diversion for the masses, at worst a product of commercialism."
Meanwhile, television is wildly popular.
Do academics really enjoy reading dense prose? Probably not. I know I don't.
McCloud demonstrates the complex language of comics by painstakingly illustrating the tactics that can be employed to alter the message. He also says that people can relate to comics because the people in them are ambiguously drawn, which means that it is not for lack of artistic skill that comic art often lacks detail. I'm sold. I hold the graphic novel to a higher standard.
Maus I has been the nominal graphic novel of my education. I've read in in literature class in high school and again in college. I didn't think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, maybe because of the story itself. I probably would have enjoyed reading Calvin & Hobbes as a graphic novel much more (I own every Calvin & Hobbes book ever published). I know that Maus I tells a historically essential story in a way that can be grasped and even embraced by many, but maybe we should back off and look at some other graphic novels in our classes before people forget that there are other graphic novels.
I know that McCloud never uses the term "graphic novel;" he proudly uses the word "comic." The term "graphic novel" seems to serve to legitimize comics for naysayers, people who believe in only "refined art"—words with no pictures, and pictures with no words.
One of my roommates is a Drawing major. Words appear throughout her art. She draws a simple object a puts a quote underneath it. For instance, a drawing of a donut is captioned, "What a blessing." It gets deeper, too—right now she is working on a project of a human moving from a crouch to a stand and growing wings, and one of the phrases in the piece is "Embrace repression."
Because there are words, I connect more with the art. Maybe it's because I'm an English major, but I find a composition much more engaging if there are words.
It amazes me that McCloud wrote his book in 1991, and 20 years later nothing has changed. Professor Lisa Eckert is a strong supporter of the graphic novel, but when she surveyed teachers to find out what they thought about graphic novels, many of them didn't even know what a graphic novel was (or they thought it meant a novel with R-rated content). It's funny that as a society that thinks we are so advanced, we are also so stuck in the ruts that polarize images and words that we cannot see a reunion of the two as academically advanced.
"I do feel a certain vague longing for that time over 50 centuries ago—when to tell was to show—and to show was to tell."
What happened?
McCloud was dead on, his insights struck me as undeniably valid and strangely familiar. Its strange to think how vastly different communication forms, can all establish meaning. His historical perspective of pictographs evolving in to written and visual forms of language, is key to this idea of changing forms of communication. I find it hard to label one as greater than another, as each has its strengths, and while comics have sort of a niche of inclusion of many forms I wouldn't go farther than validating its effectiveness. All of this to say, McCloud helped me understand that its important to appreciate the various forms communicative discourse.
ReplyDeletegreat post!
"Because there are words, I connect more with the art. Maybe it's because I'm an English major, but I find a composition much more engaging if there are words."
ReplyDeleteI agree, the addition of words in art produces thought. Sometimes the use of only one simple word can cause a viewer to connect dots about a painting that would have been un-connectable without the word.
Sounds like colleges need to make an Art/English major, the ultimate liberal arts major haha