Brain Drain Blog

Posts Tagged ‘form’

Dear class:

I can get behind Lyotard’s?postmodern theory on several levels:

• I’m down with the fact that reality is not real, that it is?rather “simplicity, communicability” (75) in the name of?the “unity of experience” (72).
• I even prefer?the raw honesty of the aesthetic sublime over the beautiful and perfect modern form.
• AND I get that the postmodern “puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself” (81).

What I need some help with is how:

The artist and the writer , then, are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done. Hence the fact that work and text have the characters of an event, hence also they always come to late for their author, or, what amounts to the same thing, their being put into their work, their realization (mise en oeuvre) always begin too soon. Post modern would have to be understood according to the paradox of the future (post) anterior (modo). (81)

Please tell me this means that?artist and writer?are working without a planned form, aside from their experience of writing about an event,?and that the outcome, or presentation of the unpresentable,?is?only revealed to them?once the work is finished.

Its either that or?time travel.

This assignment is interesting. I am not, nor have I ever been, a fan of comics, but I’m having fun seeing?echoes of Jameson all over the place. I can even see a bit of Saussure and the French duo, Deleuze and Guatarri.

Like the reflective walls of LA’s Bonaventure Hotel,?Watchmen?reflects the genre in which it situates itself, and yet it is certainly not a direct representation.?This is a comic book – kind of. The?format, like all comic books which came before, comes complete with crime,?super heroes and cartoon-like illustrations, yet Watchmen borrows?this traditional form to create something new, a graphic novel (as in pictoral AND graphic in content).?This gives?whole new meaning to the?recycling of comics.

I’m reminded of Jameson’s description of the Bonaventure’s confusing layout with entrances that aren’t clearly marked and with no directions within. Maybe it’s just that I’m new to the whole comic thing, but it took me some time to learn how to navigate through the narrative.?In the traditional sense of reading from left to right, I could enter into the story, but I needed to allow the text to carry me through?time (flashback with the actual use of a flash image)?and space (the use of color to designate East coast, West coast, Vietnam and Mars). Like the Boneventure’s escalators and elevators, the text required me to be?receptive and adapt to the space?within the page.

This is where Saussure’s sign/signifier/signified theory comes in. While he spoke solely of speech, I learned a new?visual language, one randomly assigned but accepted and understood by the comic community. Again, I’m reminded of how color represents place while images?of flash bulbs and fireworks signal flashback.?This only works if this is true of all comics. Perhaps the Super Man and Batman “Pow” is a better example of the sign we all know to signify a punch.

More directly associated with Sassure is the?necessity for societal acceptance in the adaptation of language. Minuteman Hollis Mason in Under the Hood also talks about?this happening in his lifetime?when he says:

The arrival of Dr. Manhattan would make the terms “masked hero” and “costumed adventurer” as obsolete as the persons they described. A new phrase had entered the American language, just as a new and almost terrifying concept had entered its consciousness. It was the dawn of the Super-Hero” (Watchmen 13).

(Uh, do I credit Mason or Moore?& Gibbons for this quote? I jest.?Ah, the technicalities of a new form…)

To return to Jameson here, I have to ask – Are the super dudes parody or pastiche? I?think?parody, although Jameson would disagree. One thing is clear. These guys aren’t super?heroes in the?traditional sense. Most don’t have powers at all, except for the tall, blue freak. (I?mean that in the nicest possible way.) These clowns (I mean that in the nicest possible way too) don’t even have morals to guide their mother-freaking mental ship. The Comedian is the ultimate satirical character. He isn’t funny and he doesn’t?seem to?find the world as funny as?he says he does. His superbly f*&!ed up power is to rape a fellow super hero and shoot a pregnant woman carrying his child. Aside from?the foulest of his transgressions, I think?he’s an amusing character… but I’m kinda sick like that.

To recall Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomes, this novel is certainly the organic orb to which the metaphor?refers. There is a pulpy center called Watchmen. Off to one side is?the offshoot of the?Comedian’s journal. To the other, there is a comic book within a comic book. And somewhere left of center is?Hollis Mason’s?autobiography. This is no typical, traditional, linear representation.

Jameson would have a field day with the fact that Watchmen looks back to a non-existent social and political?history.?This brings us back to?our discussion of capitalization on both the nostalgia and originality of a piece depending on the consumer’s generational perspective. If comics are for kids, and this is definitely not, does?this idea still?work? It seems that this book targets the same audience that was once interested in comics, although it targets them at an older age. And does Watchmen lose it’s comic critique in the face of the previously released Heavy Metal, an adult cartoon that similarly looks back on “future artifacts?” Does that make it pastiche – a dead language – something lacking indiviuality? I think yes. Sure, it won awards for what it accomplished, but so do pop songs and they’ve all been done before too.