hello hello
so most people upon learning that I
studied graphic novels which is the
highfalutin term for comic books graphic
novel is really just a comic book that
takes itself seriously most people upon
learning that and maybe stifling some
ridicule or laughter may not realize
that comic books have grown up in comic
books it is my argument that we have
unique opportunities for seeing the
social and by that I mean the way that
comic books often depict a single figure
in proximate relationship to depictions
of community but before we get to
anything so romantic and abstruse and
grandiose is that most people want to
know about the movies hey wasn't that
one film from hell originally a graphic
novel it was wasn't that one movie a
history of violence originally grabbed
yes yes again it was it turns out that
there are a lot of movies that take
graphic novels as their templates and
some of us who know comics and graphic
novels quite well are sometimes a bit
disappointed when we see that even those
scenes in the films that are the most
poignant to see are taken directly from
the comic book on which they're based
leads us to ask why is it that so many
films these days are based on comics I
think one answer has to be that comics
provide incredible opportunities for
identification we heard a talk earlier
that suggested that the human brain is
ideally trained to recognize mind in
faces comic books love to give us the
doll face and imbue the doll face with
mine because we don't just have images
we also have words and the words are
usually accorded to some kind of mind
activity however another reason is a
practical one the problems that anyone
might encounter in telling a story
pictorially have already been solved in
the graphic novel all right
let's start with iconic abstraction this
is a panel from Scott McCloud's
understanding comics which is a primer
that tries to help us understand how
comics make meaning why they are
meaningful Scott McCloud suggests that
realistic depictions actually detract
from our ability to to take meaning from
comics that he'd be he wouldn't be as
convincing an avatar if he drew himself
more realistically and that is because
he's drawn himself like a cartoon that
we tend to give him authority this again
has to do with the way we love to see
narcissistically perhaps faces and just
about anything any sort of ordinary
object the comic though is there to
suggest that it is in the most cartoon
affine kind of face that we are able to
see a reflection of the face that we
might have in our minds eye of ourselves
and that we are so good at projecting
the face onto the two dots in the line
because it is there that we find our
minds eye reflection of ourselves as
exemplification let's move to the first
panel of Marjane Satrapi's wildly
successful autobiography Persepolis
something else something else that's
important these books are called graphic
novels but they're usually not novels
they're often based on autobiographies
and you know most people try to not lie
in their own autobiography this is about
Marjane Satrapi's experience of growing
up during the fundamentalist revolution
in Iran in 1980 first panel just says
this is me we are to take the cartoon as
an immediate reflection of the author
artists interestingly the second panel
and I want to give you the whole page
from which that first panel is taken the
second panel situates that cartoon
avatar of the author in in individual
panel all to herself
alongside another panel of her peers is
it not interesting that in that other
panel of her peers what we seem to get
her haps because
of the veil our other girls who in their
seriality
look like indistinguishable versions of
our author
so here the comic is able to train our
eyes to recognize individuality despite
see reality to see the individual
despite her drawn indistinguishability
from her peers in the first panel what
we have is a fantasy of immediacy we are
not supposed to see this
image of the cartoon as a representation
of the author not at all this is the
author the fantasy in the second panel
of course is is that the photo realmedia
the photograph is somehow subordinate to
the properties of reflection that we get
in the comic book so it up ends our
normal understanding of a hierarchy of
arts where the photograph would be able
to content to convey something that is
transparently objective and the cartoon
is just so obdurate ly mired in the
artists subjectivity but we have a
suspicion of photography in a lot of
comics this might be some sort of
internecine war between media but in
Persepolis we have a moment where the
father goes out to photograph events
related to the Islamic Revolution so he
is there with camera in hand capturing
history as it happens
poor Margie's ten years old she can't go
to the demonstrations she can't be on
the sidelines of history as it occurs
but in her book the one we know we've
never heard of her father we've never
seen his photographs they're not famous
her book is his photographs are
transubstantiated into the stuff of
cartoons and it is only on that level
that they bear meaning we have similar
suspicion of photography and Art
Spiegelman's enormous ly popular graphic
novel about his father's Holocaust
survival mouse in which most of the
graphic novel depicts human beings as
anthropomorphic
except for a few exceptional photographs
that are inserted in the panels this is
one of father Vlad ik looking far too
salubrious in a camp outfit that doesn't
seem to associate with our own
understanding of what people look like
wearing this outfit he was indeed a
survivor but why does he look so healthy
why so clean because after his camp
experience he went to a place where they
there was a photography studio and he
donned a survive a camp outfit and had
his picture taken this was his
commemorative photograph of his
experienced Art Spiegelman has
transformed the lie that the that the
photograph of engenders here into his
own comic memoir but why the suspicion
of photography within comics to answer I
want to go back to the movies one of my
favorite recent heroes think Batman with
even more psychosis Rorschach from Alan
Moore's Watchmen very interesting thing
about this character he wears a mask
that is made of some sort of high-tech
fugitive substance where the pattern
that we see on that mask is constantly
moving in the comic however the pattern
on Rorschach's face which really is kind
of like a Rorschach test ink blot right
is we know it's supposed to move but
because of the limitations of the comic
medium it never does
we can only ever experience the pattern
on Rorschach's mask as a still image but
it has power because of that nonetheless
its power I would argue is for the
pattern on the image at any one time in
a panel in the comic book to visually
echo other patterns other images we've
seen elsewhere in this comic book for
instance this one pattern called the
Hiroshima lovers which becomes a
graffiti image that you see in the
background in so many panels of the
world of the Watchmen think about what
this represents these are lovers
clasping one another amidst certain
disaster
the mask can reference this other image
of these lovers in a way that the movie
never can that's why we call it the
movies it's it's a cinema of motion all
RI see when we see the Rorschach figure
in the movies is how the mask is
constantly moving the pattern is always
changing ooh
lava lamp whoo lava lamp is very safe
what's not so safe is to be put in a
precarious position of someone who is
taking a Rorschach test the comic book
wants to make me a patient of its own
psychoanalytic penetrative test I become
its test subject in order to read it
cinema passive spectator comic something
else but not only do graphic novels spur
us to engage more actively than film
they also allow us to see social
relations and abstractions through their
complex interplay of words and images to
excavate the implications of that I want
to return to the first two panels of
Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis remember
the first panel says this is me when I
was 10 in 1980 it's kind of our readerly
contract we enter into into this graphic
novel this the this is what we have to
willingly suspend that disbelief that
that is not the author we we want to
engage in that fantasy after all it is
that fantasy which becomes our entree
into the world of this comic second
panel though has some interesting
information in the caption which I want
to dissect it says you don't see me in
this photo I'm on the far left I'm not
there I want to ask
oh really why don't I see you unless I
am being trained at the moment of
encountering this panel to observe and
impute almost sacred force to the pet
the gutter that separates one panel from
the other so of course in the other
panel
I sure do say you
you just told me this is you when you
were 10 so there you are and in this
photo in the caption you say you don't
see me on the far left well there you
are in the far left but I'm supposed to
act like I don't see you because the
gutter has now this metaphysical magical
power to make me unsee what I obviously
see but even if I don't you want to
break they want to transgress from the
Latin literally to cross over a line if
I don't want to transgress or violate
that rule why is it that the second
panel wants to give me ever so slightly
the indication of someone cut off on the
far left don't I see you there comics
because they're constructed of two
symbol systems words and images
constantly juxtaposed these two symbol
systems against each other creating
unique and inimitable effects I'm in the
middle inimitable effects yes here's
another one where the claims of the
picture unmasked the claims of the text
it's from Art Spiegelman's Maus it's a
moment very poignantly where the
survivor father is telling his son all
what is left are the photos
interestingly it comes in a panel that
shows us cascading down to the floor a
monument of photographs but the
poignancy of this is to suggest that
that monument to photographs is all
there is the photographs of people the
actual people no more but I look at the
way the page explodes with photos images
of photos cartoon images of photos and
then once again I'm proud to ask our
photos really all that's left has an Art
Spiegelman comic artist
second-generation survivor in a way son
of a survivor captured and revivified
what the photograph can never really
convey in this comic Palestine by Joe
Sacco Joe Sacco is a journalist and a
cartoonist he goes to Palestine he wants
to collect stories doing some thick
descriptive ethnographic
fieldwork good old-fashioned
anthropology but he's going to draw up
his results in not so good old-fashioned
comic book form there's a moment where
he suggests that every time he
encounters militarist action on the
street that makes him afraid he rushes
off into a taxicab and escapes the scene
of imminent violence but it is in those
taxi taxi cab escape moments where he
encounters unique intimacy's with others
in the cab as he says here I love that
now and then intimacy's with fellow
passengers the shared candy the
anecdotes about prisons and beatings
once a student of Electrical Engineering
press beyond scholarships in the States
well I don't know he says really I could
I could find out my dad's an engineer
and the the person that he's there says
yes whatever you can do I must get out
of here and then we get the captions
captions our language that exists in
another time scape there almost its
language of the present it tends to have
more authority he says out of here out
of this he scribbled his address I put
it in my pocket and forgot about him
forever forgot about him forever
once again I'm prodded suspiciously to
look at the claims of the text and ask
how the picture is revealing they're
fiction ality did you really forget
about this person forever how could you
forgotten them here here they are here
is this very scene in the taxi cab drawn
so precisely in your comic so you
obviously didn't forget about them the
words claim one thing the pictures tell
us something else
final example for this back again to
Marjane Satrapi's
Persepolis this is one of those panels
that many critics would say showcases
what is most unique about comics the way
comics in a single frame can show you
complexities of identity and influence
that no moving image really could or
moving images could in a different way
but not so not so concisely not with
such an economy of style here our main
character our heroine
is telling us that her world her sense
of identity is determined by two
competing cultural influences obviously
what is religious about her we can see
immediately because of the veil that
seems to bisect her but the caption says
deep down I was very religious but as a
family we were very modern and
avant-garde so whereas it's very easy
for me to figure out what represents
religiosity here by where the veil is
placed I would suggest that it's
actually very difficult to figure out
what iconic symbols in this image are
meant to represent the avant-garde or
the modern could it be the draftsman
stool the gears in space or the
arabesque and the curlicues either one
looks avant-garde to me it really does
depend on our perspective it really does
in fact depend on the way that we've
been trained by the comic to interact
with these two sometimes competing
symbol systems of the pictorial and the
verbal how we allow them to coalesce how
we trouble the easy way with which they
coalesce how we try to find meaning
somewhere in between in the world of
comics we must learn to see for
ourselves since the whole truth is
always a complex interrelation of words
and images thank you very much
[Applause]