- Week 2 -

- According to Horricks (2004), how have perceptions of comics as a media changed?

The influence of comics to young people was concerned in New Zealand in the early 1950s (Horricks, 2004). In general, people think that comics are not good for children so that they do not recommend reading comics at all. For example, in Korea, adults consider that reading comics is a just waste of time and it is not helpful to children. “The comics erode the most fundamental habits of humane, civilized living and living and they erode them in the most vulnerable element of our society, our children….If we ban the comics we are reducing the chances of war and preventing the further perversion of the world’s children” (Horricks, 2004, p.3).

However, these days, the perceptions of comics have changed. Comics are reviewed to the genre of ‘graphic novels’ in the pages of the NY Review of Books (Horricks, 2004). As the perceptions of comics changed, the society and people are influenced and changed. In America, Britain and also in New Zealand, there are courses that related to comics in English and Art History university departments (Horricks, 2004). Moreover, the work, Landfall has reexamined and even printed in recent years.

“Perhaps when we find ourselves disturbed or bewildered by the popularity of a new genre or medium, it’s precisely by giving it that “serious consideration” that we will begin to get to grips with what it is and how it works” (Horricks, 2004, p.3).

- What does Baetons (2001) means by ‘monstration’, ‘graphiation’ and the ‘graphiateur’?

The explanation of Baetons is based on the Traces en cases which is written by Philippe Marion. Marion is analysed and focused on the language used in the genre of comics. This work is proposed the visual aspects of the medium as well as the visual form of a comic. In fact, three ways of language features in the comic medium are typically explained that are monstration, graphiation and graphiateur.

According to Batetons (2001), the monstration is categorised as ‘image-narrator’ or ‘great image-maker’ that related to the hierarchical mixture of several kinds of narration. “The creative movement of the graphiateur is only by acknowledging and identifying the graphic trace or index of the artist that the reader can fully understand the message of the work. From this viewpoint, graphiation is eminently self-reflexive and autoreferential” (Baetons, 2001, p.149). I think it can describe just shotrly that monstrated is shown and graphiated is drawn. There is always a relation between the character of graphiation and a single graphiateur. As Baetons (2001) explains, the theory of graphiation is proved that can divide the comic strip’s into a few parts and get together features like the text and the drawing.

Baetons also briefly predicted and mentioned about the future function of graphiation theory in comics artwork. “The future of graphiation theory will play out in relation to its capacity to open the analysis of the written or drawn line to the study of the structural characteristics of a comics artwork” (Baetons, 2001, p. 155).


References:

Baetons, J. (2001). Revealing traces: A new theory of graphic enunciation. In Varnum, R. & Gibbons, C. (Eds.). The Language of Comics: word and image, (pp.145-155). Jackson: U P of Mississippi.

Horricks, D. (2004). The Perfect Planet: Comics, games and world-building. In Williams, M. (Ed.), Writing at the Edge of the Universe. Christchurch: U of Canterbury Press.