Psycholinguistic aspects of comic book narration

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УДК 159.9:[76:821.111-31]

Psycholinguistic aspects of comic book narration

E.E. Ivashkevych

Key words: narrative discourse, visual emphasis, focalization of information, epigraphs' emphasis, meta-narrative presentation of the text, contrasting visual linkings, actualization of narrative potential.

Ключевые слова: нарративный дискурс, визуальная акцентуация, актуализация информации, актуализация эпиграфа, метанарративная презентация текста, контрастные визуальные словосочетания, актуализация нарративного потенциала.

Introduction. Studying narrative levels of graphic novels, it is naturally to be located in the field of narrative studies and it will attempt to mould a narrative method suitable for studying of graphic novels, for studying of the world of image. As no such established method exists yet, this thesis we'll begin by combining various theoretical researches from the field of traditional narrative studies, such as Seymour Chatman and Gerard Genette, with various views on visual narration and researches of studying comics. A basic structural analysis of “Watchmen” (1986) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons is the initial goal, and later chapters will attempt at more detailed analysis of the various narrative aspects of a graphic novel. It is important to point out right at the beginning that in the context of this study, the general terms of traditional narrative study are not directly applicable, but must be reconsidered and possibly redefined when applied. Therefore, terms such as narrative studies poorly, as no single narrator can be extracted from the story appearing in a graphic novel, as the images are not “narrated” in a way traditional written novels are. It is more useful to borrow the term “narration” from the field of film studies. Still, in this thesis the terms from narrative studies will be applied from the point of view of comic book narration and its requirements.

The review of recent researches. As we know, comics are formed from images, words and the union of the two, and it is impossible to find a single dominant narrative level typical to traditional narrative literature, which has traditionally been divided into retrospective first-person narrative, self-reflective narrative, objective third-person narrative, an omniscient narrative, focalized narrative or stream-of-consciousness-type of narrative. These are not alone sufficient in a study of visual narration, which is usually divided between narrator, narrative level and so called “point of view”, but these terms are not used in the same way as they would be used in basic literary studies, for the narrator of the comic book does not have to describe the characters or the settings around him, because they are immediately available to the reader in a visual form. The setting of the comic is therefore important, the events-on-scene are what it is shown and how it is shown. The various narrative devices of the comic book can also enable to reader to identify to the characters in a new way by concretely positioning the reader inside the point of view of a certain character. In the following subchapters we'll present some of the basic theoretical tools and concepts this thesis will rely on as well as some of the reasons for choosing these particular approaches. As the study of comics and the terms linked with it are not yet widely known, the basic concepts related to it will also be presented.

The researcher Seymour Chatman divided the narrative text into two components, which will be referred to here as story (what happens?) and narrative (how it happens?). The story is further divided into events and existents, which are composed of subcategories such as actions, happenings, characters and setting [2, p. 19]. “Watchmen” also can be divided into story and narration, the story being the abstract plot of superheroes uncovering a plot to kill millions of people, and the narrative is the arrangement of the events of the plot in a given medium (here comics) that actualizes the story [2, p. 37]. The narrative structure in “Watchmen” plays with temporal levels and concepts, showing the reader events and actions from the past, present and sometimes even the future, many of them almost simultaneously by the way of juxtaposing panels from separate temporal levels. A past act can be shown to the reader in connection to the present action, thus giving both events new contexts and new meanings by associating them with each other [1]. psycholinguistic graphic novel character

So, the objectives of our research are:

1. To analyze the narration of “Watchmen” and to show emphasis of textual device with the help of epigraphs.

2. To study psychological characteristics of narrative level of graphic novels.

3. To propose psycholinguistic aspects of narrative discourse.

The main material of the research. Traditional narratology as it is does not provide sufficient tools for graphic novel analysis, as the medium is visual in a way written literature is not and the written narrative is usually privileged above the visual, as already mentioned in the previous section. However, rather than creating a whole new method for the narratological analysis of comic books, this thesis will apply these traditional views as far as they can be useful, and continue to build new concepts with the help of other theorists when this approach fails. A transition in theoretical approach from classical to post-classical narratology will take place during this thesis, as traditional approaches will gradually be supplemented with views from cognitive sciences and later developments from the field of narratological studies.

For the basic narratological analysis, this thesis will begin by relying on some very fundamental narratological theorists, beginning with Seymour Chatman, the author of Story and Discourse - Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (1978). Chatman suits the thesis as his theories include film studies, which overlap closely enough to the study of comics as to be of use. Chatman has divided the narrative text to two essential components: story and discourse, in which story stands for “the content or chain of events (actions, happenings), plus what may be called the existents (characters, items of setting); and a discourse the expression, the means by which the content is communicated” [3, p. 19]. In short, the story tells us what happened, and the discourse shows us how it happens - a division widely accepted in the field of narratology. However, the term “discourse” is so heavily linked with foucauldian discourse analysis that the term in the sense Chatman uses will be replaced with the more appropriate term “narration”, taken from Gerard Genette.

Gerard Genette will be another essential classical narratologist in this thesis, as the term narration itself comes from him, as well as the idea of a focalizer, both of which are essential to narratological study, and of great interest in the study of graphic novel narration, for focalization in comics has possibilities beyond traditional literature. In his Narrative Discourse [3, p. 114-116] Genette also refers to frequency, which he uses to describe the way certain elements are repeated in the story and how often the certain event is told. The event cannot be told exactly the same way each time, but it is always bound to different contexts and thus creates new meanings and is connected to new thematic ideas every time. According to Genette, a text can hold several abstract and thematically motivated events that are repeated in different parts of the narration. Considering the temporal structures in graphic novels, frequency is an important concept in this study since certain images appear repeatedly in Watchmen, each time in slightly different contexts, thus creating new meanings. Some events are also repeated from different perspectives, variations in point of view, which is a narrative device labeled by Genette as repeating narrative [3, p. 114-116]. This type of repeating can also involve only stylistic variations, but the changes in the point of view is the aspect of repeating narrative that will be applied in this thesis.

The study of visual narration has lately been of interest in the academic world. What makes the study of visual images challenging is the fact that the visual experience is described first and foremost with language; the visual meaning is verbalized and narrativized through language. One of the great early masters of comic books, Will Eisner was one of the first to demand comics the respect they deserve, both as an art form as well as an object worthy of serious academic study. His book, Comics and Sequential Art (1985), is despite its twenty-plus years' age still a valid aid when analyzing the very basic elements of comics, such as imagery, timing and framing, all of which are crucial in understanding and comprehending the building blocks of comics as a narrative medium. When one examines a comic book feature as a whole, the deployment of its unique elements takes on the characteristic of a language. Comics communicate in a “language” that relies on a visual experience common both to creator and audience. The format of the comic book presents a montage ofboth word and image, and the reader is thus required to exercise both visual and verbal interpretive skills. The regimens of art (eg. perspective, symmetry, brush stroke) and the regimens of literature (eg. grammar, plot, syntax) become superimposed upon each other [6].

Telling about psycholinguistic aspects of narrative level of graphic novels, we have to admit that the kernel events are the major events which advance the plot “by raising and satisfying questions”, whereas satellite events are minor plot events that are in no way crucial in the ability to follow the narrative text. The omission of a satellite text will only impoverish the text aesthetically, and its function is to elaborate the kernel events, to imply their existence. Seymour Chatman said that these written appendices' functions precisely were as these satellites, operating at a deep structural level and by the means of an independent medium [2, p. 54]. Problematic here is the fact that even though the appendices begin as material clearly in the public domain, such as published books and articles, they gradually transfer into showing the reader evidently private material not meant to be published. This creates a hierarchy of discourses which provides the reader with knowledge no other character in the story has.

Textual evidence is also offered to the reader of “Watchmen” in a much more subtler way than the appendices, by the way of detail texts. These detail texts are small textual details embedded in the visual world of the comic book, such as posters, signs, books or newspapers. Depending on the comic book in question, these detail texts may be crucial to the understanding and interpretation of the text, and create several narrative levels within the comic. “Watchmen”, although already constructed at multiple levels of narration, does not ignore the opportunity to influence the reader via these detail texts. Newspaper headlines appear at various points in the comic, contextualizing the current political situation with headlines such as: “French withdraw military commitment from Nato” [5, p. 9], “Keene Act passed: Vigilantes illegal” [5, p. 15] or “Reds cross Pakistan border” [5, p. 44]. All these take place in different points in time in the alternate history of Watchmen, and they all help the reader to construct the political and historical context of this fictitious world. These headlines are deliberately written out, so it is likely that they are meant to be read, instead of being ignored. Other types of detail texts include advertisements and slogans that appear in the background, including a spray-painted “Who watches the watchmen?” that appears repeatedly. So, even though the title phrase of the “Watchmen” is not explicitly said at any point in the actual narrative, the theme it presents is kept alive throughout with the help of the detail texts, appointing the detail texts in a more crucial position than just background material.

The narration of “Watchmen” is affected by yet another textual device, in this case we mean the role of epigraphs. Every chapter ends with an epigraph that consists of a short quotation, varying from the song lyrics of Bob Dylan to the philosophical fragments of Friedrich Nietzsche. These inter-textual allusions all affect the way the reader interprets and analyzes the chapters; one could say that they cast a shadow over the chapter to which they are epigraphed, forcing the reader to reconsider what he/she has just read. But as we may understand from the already highlighted points, the comic book quotation differs crucially from the traditional literary quotation due to its radically different format. We see the gaps between panels and gaps between the original text and the quotations as places where the reader steps in and “creates” the text being read, inserting his/her own interpretations of the relationship between the old and the new text, as with the images on a comic book page. However, as this in my view applies to other types of literature as well, Ali's argument is left rather weak. Chapter V, titled “Fearful Symmetry”, ends with a quotation from William Blake's poem “The Tiger” (1794):

Tiger, Tiger burning bright,

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry? [5, p. 26]

The entire graphic novel ends with the epigraph “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes”, with the translation “Who watches the watchmen?”, quoted from the epigraph of the Tower Commission Report from 1987. A simple argument is that this is what the entire graphic novel is about: the question of political power, the question of the misuse of power, which leaves its shadow over the whole work, making the reader question the justifications and motives of all the characters in the novel. In this light the entire publication of the graphic novel could then be read as critique of the political situation of the mid-1980s, tying the work closely to a wider context. The decision to put the epigraphs at the end of the chapters instead of the beginnings is somewhat peculiar, for it affects the interpretation of the text once the chapter has already been read. What ensues is a sort of hermeneutic circle, in which the interpretation of the text influences the way we read the epigraphs, which in turn affect the way we read the text itself [4]. The status quo of the world of “Watchmen” is preserved as the truth is revealed, and the visual narrative supports this interpretation by showing the reader again the image of the smiley face with the red stain that began the entire novel.

These recurring images, such as the smiley face (“Have a Nice Day!”), a black-and-white silhouette of a couple embracing, not to mention the numerous triangles and circles, all appear repeatedly. Through this repetition the visual images become symbols, which mean that they begin to represent something else through a rule or a shared agreement. These symbols become narrative, and act as parts of the narrative by the way of integrating the symbolic meanings linked to them to new contexts. The symbols can even turn into metaphors, as for example the recurring image of the Comedian being flung through the window, which may be interpreted as speaking of the violence hidden in all of us. The reoccurrence of these images that turn into symbols can also be interpreted through what G.Genette refers to as narrative frequency, repetition in narrative [3, p. 113-116]. As already mentioned, in “Watchmen” certain images and panels are repeated in different contexts, sometimes even with an alternate point of view, thus adding new dimensions to the narrative. One example of this frequency, this repetition is the image of the Comedian being thrown out of the window in Chapter I [5, p. 3]. This image is repeated in other contexts: in Chapter II, Rorschach narrates an anecdote about the depressed clown Pagliacci, while the narrative shows again the murder of the Comedian [5, p. 27]; the black humor of the anecdote and the images is that of a depressed clown, which is what the Comedian appears to have been before he died. The punchline “...I am Pagliacci” is contrasted with the by now iconic image of the man thrown through a window. This image finally returns in Chapter XI, shown again but now both through the eyes of the killer as well as the victim, finally revealing the reader the face of the killer, just before flinging the Comedian through the window [5, p. 24-26].

Another such an example of the way this type of narration widens the storytelling is the panel showing Dr. Manhattan [5, p. 9]: the dialogue between Laurie and Dan comes from the other narrative, the image shows Dr. Manhattan dressing himself telekinetically, by the power of his mind. The caption says “...and he does not care how people dress”, the original context being that of describing Hollis Mason and how it does not matter which clothes one wears when visiting him. However, combined with the image of Dr. Manhattan dressing himself in a manner unlike anyone else on the planet, the “how” in the captions acquires a whole new meaning - the complete message of the union more that either would be if narrated separately. Most of these cases of inter-narrative commenting in “Watchmen” produce an effect of irony, even though often very dark irony, such as the clumsy lovemaking attempt between Dan and Laurie in Chapter VII [5, p. 64-65], which is accompanied by a praising television commentary of Ozymandias' skillful gymnastic performance. These parallel narratives mostly take place simultaneously in two different places at the same time, but occasionally the time frame alters so as to show a recurring narrative from the past events, giving meaning to the current narrative. This is the case for example in Chapter VII, where Dan s motives for suddenly being scared about Laurie's life are motivated by a simultaneous recount of a previous visit from Rorschach, warning that someone might be killing masked heroes [5, p. 3].

As Gerard Genette has pointed out, these “retroactive returns” confer on the past episode a meaning that it did not yet have in its own time. Past actions are modified in their meanings, their interpretations changed after an occurrence in a new context [3, p. 56]. This new context is in its turn also affected by the narrative schemas related to the past event which is now recurring. This is apparent throughout Chapter II, “Absent Friends”, in which various characters appear to be remembering the deceased Comedian during his funeral, and the visual narrative activates certain past events to the present narrative for the reader to see. These memories are conveyed in the visual narrative by changes in time and space in which the character “remembering” it stays in the same posture while the temporal and spatial elements around him alter [3, p. 9, 12]. The type of transformation of visual information is familiar from film studies, and it is a clearly visual way of narrating the past private experiences of the character through external focalization, showing what the character has experienced in the past but from outside the character. Still, while reading the novel it is easy to notice how the use of visual elements to provide smooth transitional moments in space and time is a practical advantage of a rich visual style that exceeds the content of the speech balloons. This playing with temporal levels and transitional moments in time and space is in fact an essential quality of the narrative of “Watchmen”, leading to the interpretation that alongside power, time is one of the crucial overall themes of the graphic novel.

Conclusion. So, analyzing “Watchmen” and describing psychological characteristics of narrative level of graphic novels we can propose such psycholinguistic aspects of narrative discourse: visual emphasis; focalization of information; epigraphs' emphasis; meta-narrative presentation of the text; contrasting visual linkings; actualization of narrative potential. Also “Watchmen” as the socio-cultural phenomenon has been studied in the courses of history, economy, politics and sociology, while there have been no psycho-linguistic study on the novel. In other our articles we'll decide to focus mostly on the culturelogical aspects of the novel, and the results of these researches will be discussed and completely described.

The list of literature

1. Кетфорд Дж.К. Лингвистическая теория перевода / Дж.К. Кетфорд // Вопросы теории перевода в зарубежной лингвистике. - М. : Международные отношения, 1978. - С. 91-114.

2. Chatman S. Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film / Seymour Chatman. - New York : Cornell University Press, 1978. - 98 p.

3. Genette G. Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Trans / Gerard Genette. - New York : Cornell University Press, 1980. - 136 p.

4. McCloud S. Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art / Scott McCloud. - New York : HarperCollins, 1993. -

220 p.

5. Moore A. & Gibbons D. Watchmen / Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons. - London : Titan Books (DC Comics), 1987.

- 108 р.

6. Seleskovitch D. Interpretation, a Psychological Approach to Translating / D. Seleskovitch // [in : Ed. Richard W Brislig. Translation Applications and Research]. - New York Gardner Press, 1976. - P. 92-115.

References

1. Ketford Dzh.K. Lingvisticheskaya teoriya perevoda / Dzh.K. Ketford // Voprosy teorii perevoda v zarubezhnoj lingvistike. - M. : Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1978. - S. 91-114.

2. Chatman S. Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film / Seymour Chatman. - New York : Cornell University Press, 1978. - 98 p.

3. Genette G. Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Trans / Gerard Genette. - New York : Cornell University Press, 1980. - 136 p.

4. McCloud S. Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art / Scott McCloud. - New York : HarperCollins, 1993. - 220

p.

- Moore A. & Gibbons D. Watchmen / Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons. - London : Titan Books (DC Comics), 1987.108 p.

5. Seleskovitch D. Interpretation, a Psychological Approach to Translating / D. Seleskovitch // [in : Ed. Richard W Brislig. Translation Applications and Research]. - New York Gardner Press, 1976. - P. 92-115.

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