Week Two

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

Horricks (2004) cites Bill Pearson in his letter written to Landfall: 'The comics erode the most fundamental habits of humane, civilized living and they erode them in the mose vulnerable element of our society, our children ... If we ban the comics we are reducing the chances of war and preventing further perversion of the world's children'. Needless to say this accusation is not only ridiculous but hilarious, however at the time (1950's) comics were considered as a distraction for the active minds of the younger generation. These concerns were brought on by the 'moral panics' of which were always raised as new popular fads came through.

Horricks work brings reasoning to the concerns for comic books by elaborating that 'the problem lies in the way we unthinkingly apply whatever aesthetic paradigm is our most familiar, regardless of whether its relevant to the work' with a solution being one of realisation. 'Perhaps when we find ourselves disturbed or bewildered by the popularity of a new genre or medium, its 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).


What does Baetens (2001) mean by 'monstration', 'graphiation' and the 'graphiateur' ?

The explanation of 'monstration', 'graphiation' and the 'graphiateur' comes under a coined term 'mediagenius' based off the work of Phillipe Marion (1993). He explains the way in which Marion categorised the elements within a comic book into 3 notions - style, storytelling and medium and how 'Marion proposes to treat all three domains as one single field' Baetens (2001). Noting that neither of the 3 fields can be defined without reference to the other two, allows the concept of enunciation comes into play. Enunciation, in the case of comics is both narrative and visual due to the storyline and also the stories created by the drawings, wordless but generally completed by words. Semiotically, an enunciator is the agent responsible for the enunciative act (in this case the narrator and a graphic artist). So to be more precise, Baetens writes that Marion sought out to create terms that would be more distinct for comic analysis. A 'graphiation' would become the graphic and narrative enunciation of the comics and a 'graphiateur' would be the agent responsible for it.

This is where it gets interesting, Marions distinction between a graphiation and graphiateur is mainly thanks to Europe where comic theory is often more abstract than that of the United States (the work of Scott McCloud is more dominant). The difference between the two is that the American work tries to link the analysis of graphic style whereas Marion 'aims to retheorize the notion of graphic style in relationship with the new perspective mediagenius' Baetens (2001). Baetens furthers this point by explaining that 'every drawing bears the traces of 'graphiation', or the specific enunciative act uttered by the author or agent when he or she makes the drawings and does the lettering of the panels. Graphiation cannot be observed directly since, logically speaking what we see is the result of the enunciative act, not the enunciation itself. However, the analysis of lines, contours, and colours, both of the drawings and of the letters and words, can give an idea of what the graphiateur and his or her graphiation is like - provided of course, one never forgets that semiotic analysis is not concerned with real persons but with agents and 'functions'.

In addition to this, Marion also deals with the concept of graphiation within the larger framework of narrative enunciation by adapting narratology to the comics field similar to the way it has been adopted for film studies like the work of Andre Gaudreault's Du litteraire au filmique.  According to Gaudrealt, 'filmic enunciation is narrative when the events of the story are presented to the public by means of narrator, and monstrative when the events are performed by the characters themselves in a situation in which the story seems to narrate itself, without any narrators intervention' Baetens (2001). Marion however argued that Gaudrealts findings were not enough to distinguish the difference and that it should be further analyzed that allows 'monstration' and 'graphiation' to be seperate. According to Marion, graphiation is eminently self-reflexive and autoreferential. By adding monstration into the notion of graphiation is to acknowledge the fact monstration in comics is far from the same as it is in film. In film it has a figurative transparency, whereas in comics the graphic material (lettering and drawing) prevents the transparency from happening.

Baetens demonstrates how Marion's analysis on comic books differs from that of predecessors in that he doesnt try to isolate the comic books intrinsic characteristics or the specificity of internal (balloons or facial expressions) and external (narrative or communication) elements. He does however, introduce 'elements which are neither narrated nor shown ('monstrated') but are drawn (graphiated)' Baetens (2001).