[Wittrs] Re: [C] of comic book conventions and philosophy of the mind
- From: John Phillip DeMouy <jpdemouy@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2011 21:30:11 -0400
>
>
> Authors will develop their own styles and solutions, perhaps
> conforming to a
> given code or convention. Do DC and Marvel have their own style sheets
> for
> internal use?
Probably there's something of the sort. I know that in the 60s and 70s,
Carmine Infantino at DC and John Romita, Sr. at Marvel enforced a lot of
the standards that had emerged as the the companies' respective "House
styles". However, consider the pathetic state of storytelling in
current work from both companies, I wouldn't be surprised if much of
that tradition has been forgotten. And unfortunately, there's now been
30 years of artists who entered the business with the aim of being comic
book artists rather than artists simpliciter, so its all very incestuous
- with all the birth defects one would expect from in-breeding.
>
> Does it make sense to put a thought balloon above a whole crowd of
> people?
> "Certainly a whole crowd wouldn't be thinking the same thing." I can
> imagine
> some times when it would make sense. Perhaps just a question mark,
> corresponding to a collective gasp of surprise. "It's a bird, it's a
> plane?
> No... it's Superman!".
Indeed.
If you are interested in exploration of these sorts of mechanisms, I
wold direct you to the work of Chris Ware. Scott McCloud is less
experimental but very attentive to the existing traditions and their
mechanics.
>
> How about a comic book character, a kind of freak that starts reading
> others' thought balloons, like in some Octavia Butler story. Or
> perhaps our
> freak's thoughts simply "echo" (and respond) to themes in the others'
> balloons, and in a way the reader can see and appreciate, but none of
> characters really can.
I am not sure if that particular move was ever done in John Byrne's
She-Hulk, but that serious was noted for subverting conventions,
breaking the fourth wall, the title character addressing the artist as
well as the readers, and so forth.
> That all-seeing eye of many filmmakers and screenwriters is in
> contrast
> to 'Blair Witch Project' say, or some of the documentaries, which at
> least appear to account for their being recordings, camera operators,
> with some role in the drama.
On the other hand, a film like Rashomon (or Akutagawa Ryunosuke's short
story) doesn't acknowledge the artifice of filmmaking (or fiction), as
such, but is far from the "all-seeing eye".
But here's why I am replying to this...
>
> Having a picture of Wittgenstein in a comic book (or illustrated
> narrative),
> staring at a duckrabbit, and then having a thought balloon showing "a
> rabbit"
> or "a duck" (i.e. which aspect he's currently focused on), would be a
> clever way to capture "aspect seeing" in this way Sean was yakking
> about.
I can't say whether it captures Sean's picture of all this but it most
certainly would not capture Wittgenstein's! It would in fact completely
miss the point!
A significant part of the issue with aspect seeing is Wittgenstein's
attack on a certain picture we have of "internal representations" and in
particular some confusions in Kohler's work.
Aspects, "organization" are of a different category than pictures.
>From Philosophical Investigations, Part II, p. 196.
And above all do not say "After all my visual impression isn't the
drawing; it is this--which I can't shew to
anyone."--Of course it is not the drawing, but neither is it anything of
the same category, which I carry within
myself.
The concept of the 'inner picture' is misleading, for this
concept uses the 'outer picture' as a model; and yet
the uses of the words for these concepts are no more like one another
than the uses of 'numeral' and 'number'. (And
if one chose to call numbers 'ideal numerals', one might produce a
similar confusion.)
If you put the 'organization' of a visual impression on a level
with colours and shapes, you are proceeding
from the idea of the visual impression as an inner object. Of course
this makes this object into a chimera; a queerly
shifting construction. For the similarity to a picture is now impaired.
> "At any rate only I have THIS" we could write in W's thought balloon.
> The
> aspect he's currently seeing, whereas everyone else just sees a
> duckrabbit,
> is now shown as "a beetle" (maybe like a scarab from hieroglyphic lore
> --
> a comic book motif if their ever was one). How weird is THAT! What a
> loner, to have such a private interpretation of the meaning!
>
> "What gets to talk" is a part of the rule book, and the rules vary
> from strip
> to strip. Do inanimate objects have a voice? What if a thought balloon
> suddenly emanates from a tree, or a whole forest? Is this a children's
> book then, which calls for "tree spirits" to play a role? Are dogs
> giving
> lectures at podiums, on their hind legs? Is this like 'Gulliver's
> Travels'
> perhaps, more a spoof than a literal rendering? Is this like 'Animal
> Farm'?
282. "But in a fairy tale the pot too can see and
hear!" (Certainly; but it can also talk.)
"But the fairy tale only invents what is not the case: it does
not talk nonsense."--It is not as simple as that. Is
it false or nonsensical to say that a pot talks? Have we a clear picture
of the circumstances in which we should say of
a pot that it talked? (Even a nonsense-poem is not nonsense in the same
way as the babbling of a child.)
We do indeed say of an inanimate thing that it is in pain: when
playing with dolls for example. But this use of
the concept of pain is a secondary one. Imagine a case in which people
ascribed pain only to inanimate things; pitied
only dolls! (When children play at trains their game is connected with
their knowledge of trains. It would
nevertheless be possible for the children of a tribe unacquainted with
trains to learn this game from others, and to
play it without knowing that it was copied from anything. One might say
that the game did not make the same sense
to them as to us.)
>
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