This article was originally written for my periodic column at the online magazine Comixtalk in July 2004.
In my last article, I wrote about the problems facing the designation of the “comics medium as art,” and the value of changing that conception to one viewing the “comics medium as a language” – visual language(VL). In this piece, I’ll explore how the cultural associations brought in the “Art” versus “Language” positions could affect the “medium” structurally, rather than the differences they hold in the realm of “public perception” that I discussed previously.
The conceptions of Art and Language are in nearly diametric opposition to each other. While Language works off of conventionalized signs and the perpetuation of common structure across social use, the primary thrust of Art in Western society has been individuality and innovation. For Art, being like everyone else is a detriment, while in Language it is a necessity. The tension created between these polarized conceptions of Art versus Language has been perpetuated throughout visual language’s development and usage, as VL has been wrongly identified throughout history.
In my last article, I wrote about the problems facing the designation of the “comics medium as art,” and the value of changing that conception to one viewing the “comics medium as a language” – visual language(VL). In this piece, I’ll explore how the cultural associations brought in the “Art” versus “Language” positions could affect the “medium” structurally, rather than the differences they hold in the realm of “public perception” that I discussed previously.
The conceptions of Art and Language are in nearly diametric opposition to each other. While Language works off of conventionalized signs and the perpetuation of common structure across social use, the primary thrust of Art in Western society has been individuality and innovation. For Art, being like everyone else is a detriment, while in Language it is a necessity. The tension created between these polarized conceptions of Art versus Language has been perpetuated throughout visual language’s development and usage, as VL has been wrongly identified throughout history.
This polarity most arises in the realm of a “lexicon” – the vocabulary items of a language. In the visual language context, this refers to the makeup of individual images. More often than not, VL features “iconic” representations of concepts – they look like what they represent. This is very different from the “symbolic” nature of spoken words, which do not resemble what they mean, but are not so different from vocabulary items found in sign languages, which are sometimes gestured to look like their meaning. Now, some might say that, unlike the common set of symbols used by English speakers, there is no systematically shared vocabulary among visual language users. Furthermore, producers of visual language all might draw stylistically in a very different fashion. However, these issues can be reconciled by pointing out that our cultural conception of Art might be holding back further development of such conventional signs.
First, there are many shared elements among authors. Both American and Japanese comics commonly use conventionalized methods of representation. In his Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud noted how certain depictions mean different things symbolically in American comics than they do in Japanese comics (e.g., stars and birds encircling someone’s head to show dizziness or a bloody nose to show lust). Within their respective cultures, these symbols have quite common and regular usage, though between cultures they help distinguish one system from another. This difference is inversely similar to words in spoken English versus those in spoken Japanese. Most of the words between the two languages vary greatly, though loan words are shared between the two only with slight change in pronunciation (for example, English has borrowed “tycoon” and “karaoke” from Japanese, while taking “computer” and “elevator” from English).
Commonality in structure occurs in iconic elements as well. However, in images it is not the entire representation that is systematic, but smaller parts of the image. Indeed, in the visual languages used in comics, there is no strict set of images that people write with. However, for example, the depictions of eyes, shape of faces, and female bodies are fairly consistent across many Japanese authors, yet not all that accurate to real bodily proportions. The systematic elements are not the full contents of the drawings, but smaller pieces of those images. And, despite the fact that the depictions are not “realistic,” they are accepted by all readers and writers of manga as an appropriate way to draw people. This reflects the language’s desire for social systematic usage in its language group.
In terms of learning, the cultural emphasis on “realistic” depictions posed by Art could actually hold back the creation of a more systematic and shared use of a vocabulary. If the culture emphasizes drawing the human body “realistically” it could be providing a cultural “block” to broad-scale shared signs, because every learner would be hitting the “reset button” when figuring out how to draw. Learners no longer become concerned with finding out the regularized way in which the language group depicts something, but with accuracy of depicting “reality.” In many ways, a higher demand gets placed on the learner in this system as well, because they must rely on a large degree of specialized knowledge and individual innovation rather than on acquiring a pre-established system of signs.
On the other hand some people do not aim towards “realistic” representation at all, and attempt to develop their own unique style. By stressing individuality and innovation, the same blockade against the creation of a set of conventionalized signs emerges. Again, if the producer develops their own ways of drawing, they forego joining the sign system of the group.
However, these Art-sponsored drives towards individuality and innovation may not be the natural inclination for learning. In his “Six Steps” of “artistic development,” Scott McCloud described the first step taken in learning to draw comics is that of imitation. After this, though, McCloud enters into an Art-driven learning process, whereby individual innovation and personal growth are heralded above imitation.
However, imitation allows learners to acquire the language of their social group. For example, many American children want to learn “how to draw like manga,” since they are reading Japanese comics at increasing numbers. The reasons for this growing readership are no doubt fairly complex, though consistent styles across manga might be one factor (other motivations might include less structural things, like diversified storylines or genres). In any case, with children’s interest to “draw like manga” we see the natural Language desire for systematic signs winning out over the cultural Art desire for individuality.
The linguistic tendency to learn through copying could also be one of the driving forces behind “clone artists,” who emulate the style of whatever is popular (the other major force being the marketing tool of copying who’s “number one”). Legitimately, people could be learning visual language imitatively, though the Art conception in turn frowns upon it because it goes against individuality.
The “clone artist” issue taps into another field of opposition within this dichotomy: the difference between what you are saying and how you are saying it. In language, we all know that the words we use will be the same, its how we put those words into novel combinations that excites a reader – by expressing ideas or stories imaginatively or with beautiful rhetoric. However, we often find in Art that as much emphasis is placed on how someone draws as to what they’re saying with those drawings. Oftentimes, the more an author is new and innovative with their drawing style, the more they are noticed, and sometimes, admired (or conversely, the less innovative an artist, the more they are criticized for unoriginality). For “artists”, the paramount goal has always been finding one’s individual style.
Perhaps the perception of clones of popular artists wouldn’t be nearly as bad if they were actually saying something interesting, novel, and worthwhile in their content. More often than not, the styles that clones imitate also extend beyond the structural features of the drawings and into the subject matter of their stories. As a result, most judicious readers can hardly get past the fact that clones are just a derivative of some other artist. Here might be the biggest problem with clone artists: they both draw derivatively and work on derivative subject matter: so who cares?
While a shift in cultural perception from Art to Language might not abate this issue, it could remove some stress from the status of imitative styles by acknowledging that drawers need not be stylistically innovative to have worthwhile expressions. Indeed, this certainly hasn’t held back Japanese authors who draw similarly to each other. “Clone artists” would then be left with more freedom of expression, which no doubt could be aided by a diversification of genre, though I have discussed that elsewhere.
In contrast to how images are drawn, the Language and Art tension has not affected the structure of VL in one particular area. In no noticeable way has the grammar of visual language changed – the rules governing how sequences of images are put together. McCloud explained this grammar as a set of categorizable “panel transitions,” uniting every juxtaposed pair of panels. He finds six types: 1) action-to-action, 2) moment-to-moment, 3) subject-to-subject, 4) aspect-to-aspect, 5) scene-to-scene, and 6) a non-sequitur. For example, the action-to-action transition shows the progression of time at a fast pace, while subject-to-subject shifts between characters within the scene.
Since various data are unexplainable in terms of linear transitions, I have proposed an alternative modelbased around hierarchic rules. Panel relations held within a single moment embed into a larger “environmental” structure, all of which embeds into even larger structures expressing “temporal change.” Thus, temporal change presides over both environmental and intra-moment panel relations in a hierarchic embedding across several panels, and cannot be seen merely be comparing isolated pairs of panels linearly.
Both of our models espouse the common thread that categories or rules are shared amongst all readers and producers of visual language. However, McCloud seems to imply that authors can consciously modify the types of panel transitions used, which falls right into an Art-bound perspective of individual innovation. (Qualitative “innovation” of this type would be impossible in my grammar, because the rules are not accessible to conscious awareness, being properties of the mind.)
At the same time, though, McCloud is able to record his categories across varying comics, showing that there is a common way in which authors chart. Thus, despite the potential for originality, comic creators are for the most part systematic in their “grammatical” expressions. The primary differences in these recordings came only across cultural boundaries – namely American/European comics versus Japanese comics.
While American and European comics charted similar panel transitions, Japanese comics showed variance in several different categories. McCloud’s explained these differences by asserting that Japan has a different “artistic culture” than the West. However, shifting from an Art to a Language perspective can offer a different reason for such variance.
Simply, the Japanese actually use a different visual language than Americans, which must share common cognitive apparatuses with their spoken language. Therefore, “Japanese Visual Language” shows such radical disparity from its American and European counterparts because the grammars of the spokenlanguages are so different. English is grammatically far more similar to European languages than to Japanese, which mirrors the charting done by McCloud’s panel transitions. I hope to address these issues of variance in cultures’ visual languages in my own model of grammar in the future.
Thus, though the force of Artistic innovation may influence the representations in a visual language, it does not affect the grammar by which those images are unified in meaningful combinations. Nevertheless, despite the competing influence that Art poses to the linguistic nature of visual language, it does not mean that the development of VL has been damaged or weakened per se. In fact, visual language in America has perhaps developed as any natural language would be expected to develop throughout the last century, despite these cultural constraints. Indeed, the Art mentality has in fact become a part of the present system of visual language in America.
It cannot be speculated how the visual languages present in the comics of the world might change if the cultural constrictions of Art were pulled off in full. However, I also do not think that there needs to be a conscious movement for this, either. Indeed, the influence of Language has always been present in the development of VL, since it is indeed a language in nature. And, if we treat the medium as a language as opposed to Art, that evolution will continue naturally just like any other language, shaped by its shared use within its language group.
Comments