Roy T. Cook wrote a recent post trying to define comics, those tricksy critters. There’s a fun comments thread; I thought I’d highlight one comment from Peter Sattler.
Hi Roy,
I appreciate your interest in defining comics in part by “how” we read and interact with these texts. I’ve thrown around my own definition of this type in various conference talks: “COMICS ARE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TEXTUAL READING HABITS ARE ACTIVATED IN A VISUAL (IMAGE-CENTERED) FIELD.”
[Please feel free, everyone, to let this go viral.]
But I also tend to think that all our definitions — yours, mine, institutional, genre- or reader-based, Wittgensteinian, deflationary — are fundamentally FORMAL in the the end.
Your definition and mine, for example, are still trying to capture something about sequence — the juxtaposition of images to be read in a certain order. People who try to formulate definitions based on what either general users of the term or experts in the field think, they still always seem to come down to aspects of the medium that can be described formally. Wittgensteinian “family resemblances” — at least when it comes to this term, comics — seem to resemble each other in formal features. Even people who want to say that comics didn’t exist until there was an institutional matrix for the medium ultimately have to develop new terms to talk about what links post-institutional comics from pre-institutional proto-comics, and those inter- and supra-institutional forms of analysis tend to be formal.
Of course, it didn’t have to be this way. But it is. Or rather, I’ve yet to see that any other definition of comics has any level of usage, pull, institutional support, or analytic heft as formalism. And definitions that try to account for other aspects, for interactive practices, for unavoidable vagueness, and for historical contingency still seem to be tacking their new ideas onto the old formalist structure.
Perhaps, in this case (for now), there is no “outside” or “after” formalism. And that’s okay.
Peter’s definition strikes me as odd because it seems achievement oriented in a way that would seem to render my comic books ‘not comics’ when on the shelf, and because it would seem to make reading any pictographs (even with fluency) an act of comics. Neither of those strikes me as true or compatible with our everyday ways of talking or interacting with the world.
I think much of the interest of this lies in how it makes clear that the formal/nonformal distinction that we make a lot use of – both here and elsewhere – is much less clear than we like to think. Consider the following two stabs at defining comics:
(1) A sequence of images.
(2) Any sequence that we are intended to experience the way we standardly experience images.
The first is a simplification of McCloud’s definition, the second is something like what I proposed in the earlier post. Now, at first glance I think most of us are tempted to say that the first is formal, but the second isn’t. But as Peter makes clear, this is far too simplistic. The second might not be purely formal, but it includes formal elements like the mathematical notion of sequence. And Peter’s point (or, at least part of his point, I take it) is that any definition that is going to do any theoretical heavy-lifting is going to involve formal elements in an essential way.
At first glance, one might think, we can salvage the distinction. A formal definition is a definition that involves only formal notions, while a non-formal definition is a definition that involves at least some non-formal notions (like intentions, beliefs, etc.)
But even here things flounder. (1) above would seem to be a purely formal definition if anything is, but even it involves non-formal notions. For example, what counts as an image?
Consider a ‘swamp’ comic: A bolt of lightning strikes a puddle of rotting wood and chemicals in the swamp and rearranges the molecules so that they are a atom-for-atom, molecule-for-molecule perfect copy of Marvel Team-Up #100. Most theorists (not all, I’ll grant, but a very great many) would deny that the result is a comic (even if definition (1) is right!) because we don’t have a sequence of images. They look like images, but they aren’t, since they weren’t created by anyone.
Of course we often talk as if such accidental resemblances were actual cases of representation (e.g. the face of Jesus burned into the toast). But it seems plausible that any genuine representation requires some sort of connection, however loose or varied, between the creation of the representation and the thing being represented. So the swamp comic doesn’t contain any genuine images.
But notice that the swamp comic and my genuine copy of Marvel Team-Up #100 are formally identical.
The point of all of this is this: If being an image requires some sort of connection between the thing represented and the representing image, and this connection is often purely intensional (and would seem to have to be in the case of images of fictional, non-actually-existing persons), then even definition (1) isn’t purely formal, since being an image involves all sorts on non-formal criteria.
So perhaps the distinction between formal and non-formal definitions breaks down.
Oh, and Tavis.
I think you are possibly reading Peter’s definition a little too literally. Of course, since we are trying to provide careful definitions, doing so is fair, in a sense. But I think that he didn’t mean to imply that something only becomes a comic when its images are actually activating textual reading habits (any more than I intended to imply that something is only a comic when someone is actually looking at the parts in the right way). Instead, I take it that he meant that something is a comic if the images contained in it are intended to activate textual reading habits (or perhaps is the right sort of thing to activate textual reading habits, or ought to activate textual reading habits when experiences, or has a disposition to… I don’t know exactly how he would prefer to word it, the point is that it would be fleshed out along these lines somehow).
Wait, when did externalist theories of content become the only game in town?
(And obviously Swamp Thing, not MTU, is Swampman’s molecule-for-molecule “comic” of choice)
If Peter didn’t mean to claim comics are an act of acheivement by the reader (or perhaps a synergistic occurance requiring such an act), then I think his suggested definition needs revision. If he did, then I contend his definition clashes with general usage and most instances of the term–meaning either people are usually mistaken in some big ways about what comics are exactly, or this ‘comics’ is a different sort than usually referred to*.
In either case, his description of comics seems to admit maps, analog clocks (especially ornate, symbolically rich ones like the Strasbourg astronomical clock), caligraphy, graphs, pictographs, crime scenes or photos thereof (for those capable of reading them), portraits or other representational and non-sequential art dealing in symbolism or a scene from a story, and possibly imagist poetry–or the act of reading such things–as comics. This seems far too broad.
I can think of instances where it might also deny some comics entry to the club, but these strike me as either tenuous objections or outliers (such as a comic composed of nothing more than words, panels, and speech or thought balloons). I am not opposed to a working definition that misses some rare or conceptual exceptions. I think it likely any decent, usable definition would require some qualifier allowing for those odd moments.
*Which might be handled by offering a disjunctive definition, but what exactly the other half of the disjunct would be in that case is not clear.
When I mentioned imagist poetry, that was a mistake. I meant calligrams and similar poetry with an interplay between image and words. Anyway.
Hi Tavis,
I think that your concerns about my definition may be at least partly due to this comment’s having been plucked out of the original thread (as well as my own clumsiness). Let me try to clarify.
The initial definition I provided was to share with Roy my own attempt at a non-formal — or maybe para-formal — definition. It was mainly there as a set-up for the rest of the comment, however, which tries to argue that formal definitions and formal criteria are basically and blessedly unavoidable. Even when you’re not talking about them, you’re talking about them (or assuming that you’ve already talked about them).
That said, let me turn to your specific concern. I’m not sure I would call my definition, in spite of its wording, as necessarily involving reader-activation per se. The “habits of textual reading” usually activated in the reader through the efforts of the cartoonist, through things that he is doing on the page. Often words, word-balloons, and regular panel-sequence activate these reading habits. But one could also just imagine the cartoonist as simply exploiting the visual signposts we have for comics (e.g., implicitly, “This abstract looking thing has components that resemble panels, like a comic; you should approach it ‘read’ it as such — that is, as a sequence of semi-discrete components in a readerly sequence”).
That said, I do like Roy’s characterization of my definition from the earlier thread: Mine is about reading image-fields like words; his is (partly) about reading words and textual elements like pictures. But in the end, mine rests upon formal considerations and components as much as his does.
And that allows me to say, in closing, that I completely agree with you that my definition as stated is too broad, in part because it elides the specific formal aspects that are so central to many people’s recognition of comics, and the activation of those concomitant “habits of textual reading.” Panels-within-a-unified-page/composition and semi-discrete-textual-units-within-an-image-field seem to be be the most likely and common signposts, but even they may be only “sufficient but not necessary.”
And all this added clunkiness seems to prove to me that the formal issues and clarifications become unavoidable, popping up their heads the moment to try to tamp them down or side-step them. Descriptions involving reader-activation quickly turn into descriptions of form. Descriptions that rest upon institutional recognition, pragmatic common usage, authorial intention, and outright dismissal eventually do the same — or invite the same types of form-related questions.
It may be apt and helpful for us simply to stop asking these types of questions. (After all, we seem to be able to know what we’re talking about when we talk about comics 99+% of the time, so why bother?) But if we do so, it won’t be because we found a analytical or definitional space beyond formalism.
One more thing, Tavis, specially on your topic of form and intention.
As an anti-formalist thought-experiment, you imagine (in a Davidsonian vein) two identical comics: one created by people and another created by swamp-lighting. You point out that we would want to say that the former is a meaningful text, while the latter just resembles a meaningful text, and that one cannot distinguish between the two purely through form. After all, they are formally identical. The difference must lie elsewhere, specifically in intention. Therefore, form cannot be sufficient.
Here’s the kicker: I completely agree. I am a hardcore intentionalist. And if “formalism” must mean that one thinks the meaning or identity of a text lies purely in its physical and linguistic features – not in the intentions behind that utterance – then I will toss out the term.
When I use the idea of “formal definitions” above I am deploying it more pragmatically, talking about the kinds of features and aspects we are talking about when we ask the question, “What is comics?” And my argument is that the aspects of comics that have proven most helpful for (and currently constitutive of) the field, most productive for research and discussion, and most central to our common usage – that these aspects are related to or ultimately rely upon (sometimes prior) agreements about form. Maybe we can call this small-f formalism, centered on form-based definitions and qualities.
Intention is another matter, in part because intentionalism is not a separable theory of interpretation. Intention is simply built into any discussion or assessment of meaning, and (like small-f formalism when one talks about comics) there is no escaping it.
If I pick up the SwampComic without knowing its origin-story and try to figure out what it means, I will be asking questions about intention. That is, I will be assuming that there are intentions at work, intentions that make it a meaningful text. (I will not address for the moment what happens if I discover its true, intentionless origins.)
Asking questions about intention is simply what we are always doing when we ask questions about meaning (as opposed to questions about a text’s effects, its success or failure to achieve certain goal, its beauty or ugliness, its resemblance to other texts, etc.). Intentionalism is not a theory or a method for approaching the interpretation of a text’s meaning. Intentionalism simply is the grounding for – is the equivalence of – any discussion of meaning, including a discussion of whether something is a work of art or an example of a particular artistic medium.
But I don’t think this fact has any effect on my view of the (currently) inescapably small-f formalism for comics studies and comics definitions. As I tried to explain in my comment above, even my “habits of textual reading” definition presupposed authorial intention.
Mine was a definition of meaningful form, not just form in itself – and meaningful form is intentional form. But that holds, tacitly, for ANY discussion of artistic form, linguistic meaning, and interpretable texts.
My best,
Peter
[P.S. By the way, I know that I am *way* outside the mainstream in my views of intention and meaning among comics folks. Indeed, I’ve rarely seen a discussion in the comics field that hasn’t discounted the “fallacy” of intention outright, as if it were something we outgrew — or should have outgrown — ages ago.]
Peter, thank you for your replies. I am satisfied with your first, and the idea of ‘small f-formalism’ you provide in your second. But I should point out that Roy posted those concerns about form and intention.
While I think intention can matter to meaning, and that authorial comments or knowledge of an author’s circumstances and thinking can help us understand a work or untangle some threads of it, they needn’t. We can meaningfully and not mistakenly ask about what Sun Tzu’s and Miyamoto Musashi’s martial theories can tell modern American readers about how to approach 21st century business or life in general, although the authors almost certainly had no intention of seeing their works applied in those realms (especially without martial study). And we can meaningfully and not mistakenly ask what the meaning of Monument Valley is, even supposing no guiding hand there, and come away with geological explanations or personal interpretations of the place. It seems to me, works (including aesthetic objects, with or without original intent) can be repurposed, given new context and thus new meaning, or otherwise interpreted without actual or possible knowledge of authorial intent, and without an author in the first place. We are mistaken in doing so only to the extent that we say, “What the author meant…” when this is said without sufficient evidence or contrary to the overall evidence. Though there are perhaps moments where we must say that in order to justify some reading, it is often unnecessary to say so, and some readings may be justified without reference to authorial intent.
It seems to me that the unintentional copy is a perfect example, because we would have no problem understanding and interpreting its content, which presupposes meaning despite lack of intent. But there are other examples, such as unintentional humor in bad movies, the statements of children, or the real life slapstick of someone slipping in a funny way. Or in generative music or the music of birds (which has intended meaning, but not necessarily or often the meaning we assign to it). Or in a properly filled out Mad Lib that somehow makes sense and isn’t funny.
I once drew a head, which someone viewed while facing me. They asked me how I was able to draw a head upside down. Confused, I turned the paper 180°, and discovered the drawing looked like a different head with a different face when viewed at this angle. My friend had the same experience. It wasn’t intentional, but I had created a drawing of a head that could be understood as right-side up while upside-down, and which contained two faces in one.
It’s been a long time since I glanced over these issues in college, though, so my thoughts are not fully formed. Please excuse the roughness of my reasoning in real time.
Of Momunent Valley, we might also have interpersonal or intersubjective interpretations of it. Our views might, for example, be informed by Krazy Kat or John Ford’s movies, which obviously post-date the valley and cannot speak to its intent.
Thanks, Tavis. Sorry for my misattribution of some of those ideas.
I won’t go into the weeds on my total embrace of intentionalism (and my insistence that everyone is in the weeds with me, whether they admit it or not). But such a discussion would insist on a division between two things: meaning, on the one hand, and effect, on the other.
Looking at Monument Valley may make you think about the deep time of cosmic creation; it may make me think about skyscrapers and the power of human achievement (there’s a Herriman cartoon about that, comparing a mesa to the Woolworth Building).
But these are just statements about different effects — about what a landscape makes you think about and what the same landscape make me think about. They are not different interpretations of the valley’s “meaning.”
To understand what I am getting at here, just try to imagine you and I arguing about our different reactions. About what would we argue? On what terms? What would it mean for me to realize that my “meanings” were the wrong ones, or the right ones? We might disagree — and probably would, given that the effects of any object are countless — but we wouldn’t be having a disagreement about meaning.
I doubt you’re convinced yet, but I think I’ll stop while still somewhere in the vicinity of brevity.
My best,
Peter
The sense in which you take intention to be foundational is referential — “cat” means cat only in virtue of (something to do with) our intentions.
The sense in which the intentional fallacy is (allegedly) fallacious is that the author’s intentions do not uniquely determine theme, symbolism, how we fill in narrative lacunae, the moral status of the characters and their actions, etc. Thus “the cat sat on the mat” might be interpreted figuratively as an allegory for the British occupation of Northern Ireland circa 1973; but not even the most ardent New Critic should deny that, in the first instance, the sentence is literally about cats sitting on mats.
Peter, I realize that in some of my examples, I rely upon a blurred distiction (and porous boundary) between ‘meaning to’ or ‘meaning for’ and ‘meaning in’ or ‘meaning of’). However, both senses of ‘meaning’ apply to meaningful things, and claims involving either may be interrogated, valid or invalid, evidence based or lacking in evidence, odd or common, explicable or inexplicable, and correct or incorrect. Both also rely upon effects upon people in order to be meaningful.
In the Monument Valley example you propose, there isn’t anything to argue about. The inferences and connections each makes appear reasonable, easy to follow, mistake free, and not incompatible. Someone who describes a day as cloudless has nothing to argue about with another who calls it windy. Clearly, we can check those assertions about whether, but in your example, there are also underlying propositions whose facts can be checked (e.g. the valley is old, the outcroppings are thin and tall, buildings have similar characteristics).
We could make mistakes, odd and difficult to justify claims, or contentious declarations about the valley’s meaning. There is argument to be had about just how similar it might be to the landscape of an alien world, and what it might tell us about being in such a place. It would be hard to explain, “Monument Valley means Florida is great,” a statement which seems to be clearly mistaken.
We could also be clearly correct (or, of course, incorrect) in making geological claims about and based upon Monument Valley, that is, what it means to geology and about certain geological facts, states, and periods, and about the valley itinterpre could also rationally accept, deny, or argue claims about its place in culture: what it tells us about ourselves, a person, or a bygone era.
Nature allows broad and numerous interpretations, but so do fragments of ancient texts, vague statements, and the aphorisms of Nietzsche or Jesus. We do not deem these meaningless.
Still, I think my reference to Momunent Valley was the most tenuous of my counter-examples. So you’re right, I am not yet convinced. However, I appreciate you entertaining my amateurish objections.