Notes for a Future Manifesto

The more disciplined among us are able to minimize that self-importance in service of the message we feel compelled to communicate; more often, though, an artist’s favorite subject is himself, and the message he ends up communicating is, “Look how clever/skilled/cool I am!”. This is so common in the world of comics as to be practically compulsory; artists and writers alike show off every chance they get. [...] I’m constantly telling my students, “If the reader says, ‘oh look at the cool thing the author did,’ you’ve failed,” because attention is being paid to how you are showing something as opposed to what you are showing. But as with all things, such instances should be judged on a case-by-case basis, according to the intended function of the work. If Martin Amis truly seeks to convince us that his worldview has value, he should use language that draws less attention to itself; on the other hand, if the whole of Geoff Darrow ’s intent is to feed us eye candy, then all he needs to do is keep that sugar comin’.

Lutes, Jason. “Prose vs. Plane.” Coyote vs. Wolf. 2 May 2008.

I love Jason Lutes work (I’ve been reading Berlin for what seems like decades). His realist style is one thing that sets him apart from a lot of other comics artists. I disagree with the sentiment expressed in the the quote above (for more context go read the whole post). Art, any art, is more than just communicating some idea. There’s always an element of the artist drawing attention, not necessarily to themselves but to the work, the creation, the process, or the form. Lutes seems to equate formal/stylistic ostentation with attention grabbing for the artist. I don’t think this is always the case (though admittedly, sometimes it is, and generally those cases are quite obvious (probably the case with students he deals with)). Just because an artist has taken on a certain standard of conventional/realist stylistics that is ostensible transparent, does not make the work more about communicating content than a more experimental usage. And just because an artist experiments and draws attention to style/form doesn’t mean they are attention grabbing for themselves.

But it’s rare to find an American ready to keep the camera still and steady and to let the actors sculpt the action in continuous time, saving the cuts to underscore a pivot or heightening of the drama. Now nearly every American filmmaker is inclined to frame close, cut fast, and track that camera endlessly. I’ve called this stylistic paradigm intensified continuity.

As Los Angeles agent and former editor Larry Mirisch once put it in conversation with me: “They used to move their actors; now they move the camera.” Most of today’s prominent directors prefer kinetic camerawork and machine-gun cutting. This tends to make their staging rather simple and static: we get stand-and-deliver or walk-and-talk (subject of a blog entry here).

The result is a split in contemporary American style. Action scenes are often gracefully and forcefully choreographed (though sometimes the editing fuzzes up character position and overall geography). By contrast, conversation scenes, which could be choreographed as well, are handled either as a Steadicam walk-and-talk or simply as seated actors talking to one another, with cuts breaking up the lines and the camera on the prowl.

Bordwell, David. “Hands (and faces) across the table.” Observations on film art and Film Art 18 Feb 1008.

Bordwell’s comparisons of styles could be applied in many ways to breakdowns and compositions in comics. I think generally when someone says a comic is “cinematic” they mean in the sense of fast cutting/kinetic camerawork style of film. Compare just about any contemporary superhero comic to something like Louis Riel. That link to “intensified continuity” is also worth following and reading. I feel some sense of analogy between Bordwell’s intensified continuity and the conventional manga style of close ups and lots of panels per scene.

As regards content, the persistence of certain key antinomies structuring all his work has already been noted [this is from the Conclusion of the book]. While these originate in an underlying opposition between the temporal and the eternal, the human and the divine, the material and the spiritual, they are realized in a variety of recurrent forms: appetite versus austerity, self-indulgence versus self-denial, artifice versus nature, betrayal versus fidelity, reason versus faith, fragmentation versus unity, part versus whole. In various ways the abstract visual parameters available to filmmaketers (inside/outside, up/down, center/periphery, as well as black/white and color oppositions) are emplyed to give form to these antinomies. The result is a thematic recurrence of contrasts between mountain and valley, city and country, Paris and the provinces, day and night.

The narrative structure within which these oppositions are realized is usually overtly or covertly circular, with an extensive central element constituting a “digression” or hole in time through which the temptation of the temporal intrudes. The digression will seem to promise escape from a trap which the protagonist feels closing around him or her, but will come to be seen rather as itself a trap from which the protagonist must escape–hence the circularity. In the course of closing the circle, a threatened distortion or inversion of the “natural” order of things will be corrected. (106)

…the narrative chain is not segmented into the ceaseless shot/reverse-shot clusters that are typical of psychological editing. There is little recourse to the “informative” close-ups of face, hand or object which standard filmmaking employs in order to “orient” the spectator and avoid any indecision or ambiguity.

This avoidance of the two more sophisticated sets of editing practice is characteristic of the technical discretion of Rohmer’s films. In fact, the avoidance of such “normal” practices as film music, optical punctuation, expressive camera angles, and most tracking shots is at times so marked as to register as itself a form of aggressive technical experimentation. Cumulatively, these absent techniques would have served to structure the spectator’s response to the profilmic material, and the contemporary spectator is accustomed to expect such subconscious orientation. Its absence serves to endow that profilmic material, in the spectator’s eyes, with something or the same ambiguity and indeterminacy which it holds for the central protagonist, who, craving certainty yet trapped in endless conjecture, is finally constrained to an act of largely irrational commitment, of faith.

[...] The reason is simple: Rohmer associates with his enigmas neither the plot elements (threat, deadlines, intercutting) nor the technical practices (close-ups, expressive editing, expressionist lighting) which construct suspense in mysteries and thrillers. This avoidance of the viewer manipulation inherent in dramatic narratives is perhaps the strongest evidence supporting Rohmer’s claim to be producing both a moral and a realist cinema. (108)

Crisp, C. G. Eric Rohmer, Realist and Moralist. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.

A review is a buyer’s guide. It exists to tell you about some new product that you can buy, and whether you should or should not buy it. A good review goes beyond that, and suggests who should buy it, since not everyone enjoys everything. [...]

Criticism is an informed discussion, by an intelligent and knowledgeable observer of a medium, of the merits and importance (or lack thereof) of a particular work. Criticism isn’t intended to help the reader decide whether or not to plunk down money on something; some readers’ purchase decisions may be influenced, but guiding their decisions is not the purpose of the critical work. Criticism is, in a sense merely “writing about” — about art, about dance, about theater, about writing, about a game–about any particular work of art. How a critical piece addresses a work, and what approach it takes, may vary widely from critic to critic, and from work to work. There are, in fact, many valid critical approaches to a work, and at any given time, a critique may adopt only one, or several of them.

Some valid critical approaches? Where does this work fall, in terms of the historical evolution of its medium. How does this work fit into the creator’s previous ouevres, and what does it say about his or her continuing evolution as an artist. What novel techniques does this work introduce, or how does it use previously known techniques to create a novel and impactful effect. How does it compare to other works with similar ambitions or themes. What was the creator attempting to do, and how well or poorly did he achieve his ambitions. What emotions or thoughts does it induce in those exposed to the work, and is the net effect enlightening or incoherent. What is the political subtext of the work, and what does it say about gender relationships/current political issues/the nature-nurture debate, or about any other particular intellectual question (whether that question is a particular hobby-horse of the reviewer, or inherently raised by the work in question).

Greg Costikiyan. “Game Criticism, Why We Need It, and Why Reviews Aren’t It.” Play This Thing (24 Feb 2008). (link from Mark Bernstein.)

Costikiyan is talking about game criticism, but for the most part his comments could be applied to any medium, like comics.