Yesterday, Joe Zabel, who conducted the interview with Scott McCloud
I blogged about yesterday left me an interesting comment, which I thought I’d reproduce here since it addresses further the always contentious relationship between the media of film and comics. Here’s what Joe had to say:
Interesting comment, Ben. As a matter of fact, I’ve criticized
Understanding Comics in the past because it didn’t properly acknowledge
the similarities between comics and film. I’m not sure how much his
terminology has changed.Why do you think it’s giving students
the wrong idea? Isn’t the cinematic comparison just one of many ideas
that will be useful to students in constructing their own approaches to
understanding comics?
…and here’s my reply:
Joe - Thanks for writing. Before I respond, though, one thing: I re-read my initial post and realized that it comes off as really dour and critical. That's not really how it was intended. I'm a cartoonist myself (I do occasional stuff for Slave Labor), a teacher, and an admirer of Scott's other work, so I'm looking forward to his book and will most certainly purchase and enjoy it.
That being said, I do chafe at the use of film terminology in discussions of the comics medium for a number of reasons. Some of these are high-minded theoretical ones based, basically, on my belief that film and comics are more different than they are the same.
More practically, though, I've found that using film terminology in a classroom environment generally has ill effects. For one thing, it presupposes that what should be drawn in each panel of a comic book should be quite similar to what could be depicted there by a camera--not as far as "realistic" vs. "cartoony" style goes, but in terms of really limiting the way visual information is communicated. Comics is a drawn medium, and as such, needn't be bound by the conventions of the human eye--or its most frequent immitator, the camera.
Take, for example, showing objects in a space. A camera shows the relationships between these objects by mimicing ocular perspective. A visual artist not bound to immitating a camera (which, keep in mind, is itself merely an immitation of true human vision) can show those relationships in any number of ways: diagramatically, through overlapping, using top-to bottom perspective (like in Egyptian art), etc. And, really, what's the point? Perspective is an illustion (train tracks dont' actually converge in the distance!) created by the human eye; a photograph is an inacurate version of that illusion; and a
drawing in immitation of photography is even more of an odd proposition.
Using panel compositions, and panel-to-panel transitions that immitate the conventions of film just don't play to the strengths of the comics medium. The conventions of film--close up, mid shot, etc.--are after all quite arbitraary and work mainly because they are exaclty that:
mutually agreed-upon conventions. By using these conventions to make comics, many of the decisions about what to show and how to show it have already been made for you.
I think that it's OK to address the conventions of film in the context of teaching comics, at the very least because--for good or for ill--those conventions have had a huge impact on the way comics are now usually done. But, with students aready overly-steeped in movies and TV, relying on film comparisons can often encourage them just to think in terms of this "shot" followed by that "shot" without ever exploring other ways of saying what they want to say visually. It is, as you say, one of many modes of visual commiunication that can be useful to expose
students to, and if that were really how film/comics comparisons usually were utilized, I'd have no problem with it. In point of fact, though what almost always goes on is that the two are conflated and no other types of visual communication are discussed. A cursory glance through
most "how to" books on comics and graphic novels confirms this.
As a side point, I feel that film conventions also presuppose a semi-realistic style of rendering, necessarily utilizing linear perspective and the like--and this can have the effect of getting students hung up on this technical stuff and not concentrating on storytelling... or, most importantly, on the simple joy of making comics.
Finally (whew!), I find that using film terminology really just plaindoesn't work as a way to discuss the breadth and depth of the medium. It works fine when discussing comics most highly influenced by film--the action adventure newspaper strips and their cousins, superhero
comics--but, this terminology really starts to be ineffective if you want to discuss, say, KRAZY KAT or EPILEPTIC or JIMBO IN PURGATORY, etc.
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