- Oct 2016
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www.english.ufl.edu www.english.ufl.edu
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emphasizes his emotional state of separation
The color Jon is really does isolate him from the background and other people which shows us that he is different from everyone.
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Jon does not die in the experiment; he slowly reassembles himself, using his new ability to "control atomic structure"
This was honestly one of my favorite parts of the graphic novel.
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rather, they are encoded in the form of vivid sensations and images
I find this so interesting because it is like a dream when something bad happens. I feel like replicating that could be hard in a graphic novel, but it is done time and time again.
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struggle with their personal lives, while America faces the threat of nuclear
I think today, even when we are dealing with our lives there is always going to be a fear we have inside of bombings or shootings, just because that is the world we live in. This sort of relates the characters to their readers.
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Recent literary criticism has focused on the effects of trauma and how they can be realistically presented in literature.
Rorschach is a good example of this.
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In fact, because of its connection to the image of Jon's accident, the sense of inevitability inherent in Jon's fate is applied to this moment &ndash from the beginning of the book, as the repetitive imagery has shown the audience, this moment, this explosion, has been inevitable
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story's focus shifts to the impending global threat
also in the last few pages of the novel, the smiley face mirrors the clock that is set at 12 after the octopus attacks NY...almost like the doomsday clock
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does not, in itself, signify a particularly traumatic moment.
no, but the irony of that being the comedians "last act"
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"Traumatic events call into question basic human relationships. They breach the attachments of family, friendship, love, and community. They shatter the construction of the self that is formed and sustained in relation to others. They undermine the belief systems that give meaning to human experience"
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tendency to think about pieces instead of people.
sometimes the victims inability to relate to people after a traumatic event
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people relive the event as though it were continually recurring in the present
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two moments condensed and symbolized in one picture
this is almost like a victim of trauma's inability to forget the event
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no beginning, no ending, no before, no during and no after
Almost like Jon's ability to know the past, present and future simultaneously
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traumatic experiences do not alter the victims physically to the point that they are no longer members of the human race, they often cause detachment from society
Moore and Gibbons visually represent the detachments from society after a traumatic event fantastically well
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he is Superman, a radioactive threat, or God
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dispersed or fragmented narrative voice
Rorschach's journal and voice definitely displays this
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In addition, Watchmen successfully overwhelms the reader, using the graphic novel format to focus on the intensive impact that trauma can have and to force the audience to feel the effects &ndash the sense of helplessness, the isolation, and the fear &ndash just as the characters do.
I definitely agree with this statement. At times the book was overwhelming because there were so many things going on that were all key events, but after I was able to figure it out and connect with the character on an empathetic level.
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have a clearer idea of the ways these traumatic experiences can affect people.
I find it interesting how Rorschach is the only one who is seen being given psychiatric help amidst all the trauma he went through, however, all the characters seemed to experience some sort of trauma in their past as well
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medium provides the message of trauma. The authors utilize imagery to emphasize the theme: Woven together into a complex structure, illustrations of personal traumatic experiences and national traumatic events represent the growing fear, the helplessness, and the isolation that mankind can experience during and after a traumatic event
because we can actually see the trauma, we are effected more emotionally than simply reading it
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superheroes into a real world setting, making them face "scenarios that mirror the [world's] current political and social problems
offers a sort of relief from reality for readers so they can separate themselves from the atrocities of the world (even now)...we are always looking for a solution to the hatred and violence in the world, so superheroes offer this relief
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Multiple moments can occur within a single frame, which corresponds to another convention of graphic novels.
I definitely saw this through Watchmen and liked how this occurred throughout the book. I would definitely get confused, but after I went back and looked at the details, I was able to figure it out.
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However, as the story continues, the bloody smiley face repeats and becomes more iconic, appearing in various forms as a circle with an arrow within it: a poster of the sun, splattered with blood; a yellow flower, splattered with blood; a smudge on a pair of goggles; a smudge on a dirty, round glass window; a smudge on a foggy window, set against the full moon; pumpkin juice on a Jack-O-Lantern; a radar monitoring air space; and even a speech bubble in a circle of light.
I hadn't noticed these; I saw a lot of the actual smiley face buttons, but I'm interested to go back to look for some of these other representations!
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This is the atmosphere within Watchmen, and the people within the story feel the same oppressive fear and helplessness that occurred in 1962.
It's interesting to think about the national trauma as well as the individual; I had noticed how the main characters have experienced trauma in their lives, but I hadn't given much thought to the public's trauma from having the constant threat of nuclear war.
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the audience may feel the same confusing lack of sequence that Jon goes through, viewing numerous moments of time at once.
There were definitely times I was confused. I spent the entire chapter with Dr. Manhattan and Laurie on Mars trying to figure out what the importance of the falling bottle was.
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In Watchmen, Jon Osterman experiences time in this exact way &ndash past, present, and future cannot be clearly differentiated. After his traumatic accident, Jon undergoes extreme disruptions in time.
I really like this interpretation of his seeing things out of chronological order! It gives an interesting meaning to it beyond being a type of superpower.
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However, because of his appearance, his super-human powers, and the lasting emotional ramifications of his accident, he cannot.
This is a really interesting way to look at Dr. Manhattan's personality (and inability to relate to others); it isn't necessarily due to some change in himself, it's due to trauma.
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On both the personal and the national levels, Watchmen addresses real-world problems,
It is interesting how the universe of Watchmen is in some ways more realistic than in other comics.
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In the first, Jon and his father stand on the balcony as Mr. Osterman shakes the cogs from the velvet sheet they laid upon.
i always really liked how each character had a backstory and it was very specific and detailed
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which allows knowledge of trauma and its symptoms to reach a larger audience and gives authors an opportunity to illustrate how the human mind experiences and processes traumatic events.
this helps others understand their own trauma and recognize it, as well as not be ashamed by it
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personal histories.
makes the characters more complex and believable
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www.english.ufl.edu www.english.ufl.edu
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one untainted with hollywood adaptations of his works and millions of fans wondering when the sequel to Watchmen will come out
Nothing popular can escape Hollywood. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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Blake's question "did he who made the Lamb, make thee" gains a new significance.
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"form networks of interrelations from panel to panel, panel to page, and page to page and thus participate in a symbolic order governed by laws of substitution and association (metaphor and metonymy)
interesting, literary analysis tools shown in images
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. Each page is a reflection both of layout and content" (V;
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order and the terror that comes with this order actually breaks the order of the poem
much like how Rorschach views his actions throughout the book...he tries to keep order that results in terror
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"fearful symmetry
this keeps reminding of Rorschach
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reflection, symmetry and difference serves as the archetype for the disconcordant visionary parallax between the two.
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experimentation with panel and narrative conventions
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Blake has the imagination
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religious saints on hovercrafts
that's a sight to see...
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Workers produce labor, are alienated from that labor through the mediating function of capital, and are then forced to buy the very product of their own labor.
so we cause the society that Moore represents in the book therefore since we caused it, we find entertainment in it, and buy the book?
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This is because perversion, rebellion and revolution are easily incorporated into global capitalism and sacrifice progressive politics for a trademarked identity
so basically the terrible state of our society allows Moore more of a celebrity status today than Blake
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mutating its character almost beyond recognition
i.e. Dr. Manhattan
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Moore turns to Blake in the wake of the elastic marketplace of global capitalism, believing that the poet's dedication to individual vision can help him reestablish a connection to a self underneath the commodified dissemination of his celebrity around the globe.
interesting...so is he saying that Moore is simply focused on the benefits of writing about such a traumatic topic and not on the piece as a whole?
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- Sep 2016
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www.english.ufl.edu www.english.ufl.edu
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a utopian excess of the scopic drive.
It seems to me that "Narrative in Vacation Time" did a better job of discussing clearly why these matters of perspective were important or relevant to the narrative of the comic. It's difficult to tell why these aspects are valuable to be aware of in this text.
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he evidence for such schemata is the way they allow an artist to produce surprising variations and unpredictable deviations from standard poses, which are nevertheless still coherent with the character's subjective unity
the "magic" of Disney animals is that they behave like 3D but aren't. When you take their 2D boundaries and lines and make them 3D, the effects are weird:
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As it shows up in the comic page, the gaze exposes the spectator to being looked at by the panels from a multiplicity of places at the same time, rendering the spectator simultaneously constituted and fragmented by this kaleidoscopically dispersed gaze.
cf (later) Watchmen chapter VI
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interruptions between panels cannot be straightforward transcriptions of the "real," which, for Lacan, resists symbolization absolutely, because the shapes and sizes of the blank spaces between panels place constraints on the kinds of images that can show up in adjacent panels.
So this refutes the "blood in the gutter" example by saying that it's not the case that what really happens is in our minds. There is no transcription of the real.
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he allowed his Ducks to conform to his imaginative vision in any situation in which he placed them, no matter how incommensurable the drawing in a particular panel might require the character to look in relation to other neighboring drawings.
This sounds like times when I've remembered dreams or even distant past events and the "characters" have felt like they had skewed positioning, but the memory still feels "real" to me, or in the case of dreams like this, as if it could be a real scenario. In the symbolic world of comics, non-euclidean positioning works.
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allegory of metaphoric/metonymic
there he goes again using that phrase!
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allegorize the metaphoric and metonymic dimensions
he keeps saying this phrase and i still don't really understand it...
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a kind of
yeah, I guess it has to be noted that it's "a kind" of voyeurism, because it's typically in a sexual context and we don't really get those vibes in "vacation time"... or at least i didn't haha who knows
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voyeurism
ah, I learned about this in visual rhetoric! but, it was in the context of studying music videos and it was part of a set that also included fetishism and narcissism
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the cuts in the body of this page allow a gigantic phallus/vagina to be unveiled, hovering over the mother/son dream-limit in the last panel.
okay Ault you lost me again
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each view of a character is analogous to a linguistic element that the artist selects from a paradigmatic set or ontological schema of potentially substitutable poses or postures that exist in the artist's imagination. Such a schema must not be confused with ordinary three-dimensional figurines or two-dimensional model sheets which produce only frozen, pre-selected visual aspects as guides for artists to keep their drawings within a certain range of acceptable poses.
I really like this establishing of character forms/poses as linguistic elements in the comic, and it made me think about how an artist's skill or style can influence this. When I re-read Vacation Time I need to pay more attention to the non-euclidean structures (which I noticed pretty sparingly)
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individuality
these are VERY special ducks
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this metaphoric function can operate on the comics page only in conjunction with displacements of images along the syntagmatic axis of contiguity.
metaphoric function only works in this medium where images are "sutured" (cut) from certain scenes? does this also connect to the "Visual Narrative in 'Vacation Time'" article where Ault says that we trust Barks as the author/artist so we buy into his created world?
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algorithms of the unconscious.
I think it's cool to consider the psychoanalytic effects of this medium, but i'm not 100% sure i'm following the oedipus complex/genitalia metaphor
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Thus the identity of alphanumeric characters'is of an entirely different
is this saying that dimensional presence changes the meaning?
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space is forced to give way; things are squeezed out of one space of the page into another; one image is sacrificed for another; one part of one body is excised so that another part of another body can find its place
this idea of comics artists starting with a blank box and bringing the world in
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‘the thing must be lost in order to be represented.
like closure?
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This fragmentation of the gaze allows comics to participate in two different ontological and semiotic fields at once
This kind of reminds me of Schrodinger's cat - a character exists in multiple places simultaneously, and is everywhere at once until we look at a single image at a time and pin the character down there for a while.
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has made an impact on the structure of the page being looked at, precisely at the point Donald is about to lose the precious object once again.
This is a direct parallel to the Ault reading, to the camera that Donald so preciously held on to.
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The comic panels crack open the body of the page, placing the viewer in the position of being fragmented in a mosaic mirror. Imagining the comic page as a fractured mirror, with the panels serving as mirrors of varying curves and angles, the viewer appears as a multiplicity of imaginary captures, and these views are actual aspects of the spectator caught in the gaze of the world
This is really important because it highlight the truth that people all see things in different ways. Even though we are all led to the same "conclusion," we never see the panel or scene play out the same as any one else. The actions and motions are all individual.
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characters exist for each other
Interesting thought, a comic written not for the reader but for the comic itself.
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function in visual competition with the images
Another way of explaining that juxtaposition? Saying "competition" makes me think of ironic humor where the way the words are written purposefully contrasts with the images
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"non-Euclidean"
this means "unusual geometry", according to Google
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for example, where characters refer to the fact that they are characters in a comic book or comic strip
Seen in some of the comics we've already read (Krazy Kat, Blood in the Gutter, etc.). As interesting as Bark's style is, I think I actually prefer the self-aware style. Does anyone like this better?
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bear snaps a photo of himself—a comic transcription of Lacan's formulation of "myself seeing myself."
Clever, creative interpretation and execution of Lacan's philosophy
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"perspectives " on a single event, with the axes of perception being aligned with the three nephews—down on the whirlpool, up under the bridge, and behind the rock at the same time.
Perspective seems to be very important to Ault and after re-reading "Vacation Time" I've noticed the intentional use of it thoughout the comic
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American comic strips.
I wonder if any of this holds true in other countries comics
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Lacanian process of "suture," an intersection of the symbolic and the imaginary performed through the act of reading;
Fantastic description
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imaginary, symbolic, and real
So are these always present throughout comics or do they take "turns" throughout the entirety of the comic? Further discussion
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The fragmented comic page makes visible what is usually elided in paintings and drawings that use an undivided image to illustrate a verbal text
Mona Lisa is an interesting example for the difference between the comic and painting
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physically homogeneous
So figures and verbal language are the same on paper essentially?
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an interruption usually accompanied by anxiety.
Interesting, so the imagination is like a sort of "crutch" and care free version of thinking but the "real" always finds a way to take over...which causes angst
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Since a trademark of Barks's style is that he drew characters to seem as though they exist primarily for their access to each other and only indirectly for the reader, his style allows a kind of voyeurism
flagging for further discussion
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where Donald is encapsulated in a circular panel as he refers to "going around in a circle" (Figure 7).
eyyyy that's amusing. In a circular panel, talking about going around in circles... I didn't notice that the first time through.
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we are able to look at the scene at the same time we are seeing it.
I'm not sure I understand here what the difference is between looking at the scene and seeing the scene
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McCay draws this page as if it were a representative sequence of photographs or motion picture stills shot from a stationary camera as an elephant moves toward it
bit we still process that sequence as the elephant moving closer... interesting taking that in context of the reading on closure from a couple days ago that we fill those gaps. We could see it as a series of stills, but we (or atleast I) process it as movement.
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for example (Figure 1), it almost seems as if completing the drawing would unnaturally elongate (or even disconnect) the right arm that we assume is extending from the body wielding the spear; and the torsional portion of the hand above the curve suggests that the disk-like shape may be rising, resisting the hand atop it, perhaps as if this curved form were a (prodigiously phallic?) part of his own body.
is he suggesting that if we finished the image it would make it more difficult to process, not easier?
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the "symbolic" order through its linguistic dimension (its letters, words, and syntax); and the "real" through the interruptions or cuts in the body-space of the page which leave blank spaces between the panels that correspond to (or mark the absence of) events that are assumed to be occurring "between" the panels.[2]
I think this is an interesting extension of 'blood in the gutter". I never thought to look at it as a sidderence between symbolic and real.
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ifferent times, a unified embodied consciousness residing in a world that exists independent of the actual dra
Two worlds each dependent on each other, while also existing independently at the same time. Extensions of each other
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Athirdp~'!.llclisalmostalwaysimplicated,':'andthisconfirmsthatitisindeedattheminimumacompoundsyntagm,orevenamuchlongersequence.chatisatthemajorlevelofsignificance,thethresholdwhereonecanelaboratepertinentlogicalinferences.
In other words, there must be a higher-order syntax operating. One that the panel-void-panel rhythm is a unit of.
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theseintervalsbetweenrwopanelslavishedwithaccuracyandaudacny.?"
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theseintervalsbetweenrwopanelslavishedwithaccuracyandaudacny.?
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- Aug 2016
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www.dartmouth.edu www.dartmouth.edu
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The pastoral life having wonderfully fattened his ladye-love, Mr. Oldbuck begins to get tired of it.
This seems like a key moment- the first time Mr. Oldbuck has reached a goal and then decided that he was bored. This line also implies that the woman's happiness was a burden or negative force in Oldbuck's life, which is messed up.
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For the sake of the health of his ladye-love,
Page 58's art style is pretty cool. The two frames are cohesive through a continuing line of darker page space. This helps inform the reader that the actions are happening at the same time. This happens in frame 59 as well. I think it represents Oldbuck's tendency to ignore suffering or relevant issues in search of his own personal happiness.
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possession of the carriage.
The "beloved" figure is so objectified in this novel. She's a device to propel the central figure's plot, not a character. She has no agency of her own and is instead a possession to be battled or argued over.
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Meeting with one of the monks who imprisoned him,
One of his flaws seems to be an absolute inability to let things go.
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almost overtakes
I love the middle panel here. All it needs in order to convey "almost overtaking" is his foot and her foot.
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Just as he reaches her, he is stopped by invidious fate.
I'm not used to this separation between the text and the images. In graphic novels I've read before there is less space between these, and in video you even can see images and hear words simultaneously. The space is distracting and breaks the suspension of my disbelief.
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