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Silence in the graphic novel
Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 2278–2285
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Journal of Pragmatics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Silence in the graphic novel Silvia Adler a,b,* a b
University of Haifa, Dept. of English Language and Literature, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel University of Haifa, Dept. of Hebrew Language, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history: Received 16 September 2009 Received in revised form 2 November 2010 Accepted 17 November 2010 Available online 21 December 2010
The current study aims at highlighting argumentative silences in the graphic novel, illustrated here by Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005). In the graphic novel silence occurs, mostly, when the narrator promotes the showing over the telling (within the frame) and when, between the frames creating a sequence, the reader/observer is devoid of information (either visual or textual). None of these cases represents a failure of communication. On the contrary, the reader/observer has the opportunity to experience various modes of reasoning that may be applied to support or justify conclusions. The reader/observer is, accordingly, intensely involved in the process of constructing meaning. ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Silence Comics Graphic novel Communication Image Semiotics Argumentation
1. Introduction In comics in general, and in graphic novels in particular, meaning is generated by verbal language, iconographic language, and the different modes of interplay between both. What happens when verbal language is being interrupted and images become momentarily the only means of communication? Why is verbal language absent at times? Our study investigates the argumentative values of silences in the graphic novel. In particular, we will analyze Diaz Canales and Guarnido’s Blacksad: Arctic-Nation (2005), a contemporary French work dealing with issues related to flagrant injustice. The story of Blacksad is set in a film noir atmosphere, in New York of the 1950s, but the social matters it is concerned with remain current: racism, segregation, hate crimes, intra-communal violence (between the white Anglo-Saxon protestants and the colored mob), the membership of the Whites in an extremist clan called Arctic Nation reminiscent of the ideology and practices of the Ku Klux Klan, the Blacks’ membership in a violent gang called Black Claws (a kind of Black Panthers organisation encouraging selfdefence with the use of force1), double-cross, economic depression, prejudice, perversion – all reflecting the communal decay boiling beneath the surface of an apparently peaceful and respectful suburbia. Silence functions then not only as a simple absence of speech, especially in interactive situations, but also as a vehicle of a large variety of emotions and mental states connected to the protagonists. Moreover, the narrator may turn off the vocal channel in order to invite the reader to gain understanding through observation and deduction, and to decode the narrator’s
* Correspondence address: University of Haifa, Dept. of English Language and Literature, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. Tel.: +972 50 7804071/8 8677661; fax: +972 8 8677661. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected]. 1 Or directly alluding to Malcolm X’s doctrine:‘‘The time for you and me to allow ourselves to be brutalized nonviolently has passed. Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you can bring me a nonviolent racist, bring me a nonviolent segregationist, then I’ll get nonviolent. But don’t teach me to be nonviolent until you teach some of those crackers to be nonviolent." (Malcolm X’s speech, June 28, 1964. The founding rally of the OAAU. Taken from the link: http://www.panafricanperspective.com/mxoaaufounding.html). 0378-2166/$ – see front matter ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.11.012
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(or the protagonist’s) intentions, to let symbols and icons ‘‘talk’’, to deliver information on the implicit level, to argue – in our particular case – against injustice. In the graphic novel, silence thus coincides with those instances where the showing takes over the telling. The result may be silence related to the protagonist’s voice channel, in one case, and silence of the narrator (who intentionally lets the iconographic level and the implicatures – below the surface – ‘‘talk’’), in another. Besides the above-mentioned case where images take the lead, another instance of silence in the graphic novel occurs between the frames, in the space called the ‘‘gutter’’. Neither does this kind of silence represent a failure of communication. Silence between the frames is an invitation for the reader/observer to construct meaning within a sequence based on premises (of a textual or a visual kind). Not only is the reader/observer given the opportunity to fill in the details that are missing between the frames,2 but s/he also responds with an intense emotional, intellectual and/or critical reaction to what is not articulated explicitly and therefore restored through his/her own understandings. Meaning arises, then, from the silent juxtaposition of images within a sequence. This is a moment of closure3 for the reader/observer, a moment in which s/he gains awareness and reaches conclusions (see section 3 for these cases). The study of the graphic novel Blacksad: Arctic-Nation will enable us to shed light on the rhetorical function of silence in these cases. 2. Background Before focussing on the different functions of silence, we present the following synopsis whose aim is to facilitate the process of decoding the scenes analyzed in section 3. The characters in Blacksad: Arctic-Nation are anthropomorphic figures.4 Blacksad, a private investigator and the first-person narrator, is a black cat. He is the prototype hunter: distant, dark and discreet, he defends his territory (all being advantageous features for a private eye).5 We always see him carefully dressed, just as cats keep themselves clean. He is valiant, intelligent, cynical, yet possesses a clear-cut moral code, a high sense of justice, an honest desire to annihilate evil and to help the weak. As the narrative develops, some may see in him a modern Sherlock Holmes accompanied by his own ‘Watson’ in his quest to uncover the crime: The ‘Watson’ role is personified here by a parodic figure of a tabloid muckraker named Weekly (a weasel). Like the animal, Weekly does not hesitate to dig deep in the dirt to obtain results and indeed, no information escapes him. It is not surprising he suffers from bad smell.6 The cooperation between the two protagonists will soon turn out to be useful: on the one hand, a cat who knows that reaching the truth involves climbing to high places, and on the other hand, a weasel for whom the truth also exists in the lowest places. Other characters are the supremacists – all polar (white-skinned) animals – who hold cardinal positions and the members of the neo-Nazi organization7 (also members of a racist secret clan) in the suburbia The line: Oldsmill, a business tycoon, is a Siberian white tiger. Hans Karup, the chief of police, is a polar white bear. Huk, his right-hand man, is a white fox – a cunning, sneaky type. The illustrator emphasizes the sharp claws and canines of these animals, unmistakable testimony of their being carnivores, but he never exposes Blacksad’s hooked nails, and he constantly dissimulates Blacksad’s canines, although cats are by definition predators. This silent strategy reflects the author’s attitude towards his subject: Blacksad is cultivated, tamed, domesticated; he is anything but bloodthirsty. At the heart of the story is the case of the kidnapping of an elementary school student named Kayleigh (a colored bear). Blacksad is hired by the schoolmaster (Miss Grey, a colored gazelle) to find her.8 The investigation will soon lead to a confrontation between Blacksad and the student’s mother Dinah, the members of the Black gang who are immediately and stereotypically accused of the kidnapping, Jezabel (Karup’s spouse, a white bear) who has an affair with Huk and meets with Dinah in secret. Later on, we come to understand that although Jezabel is married to Karup, she has never had intercourse with him. Karup himself is suspected of pedophilia. The plot gets entangled when, by way of betrayal, Huk takes over the secret clan and then assassinates Karup on the false pretence that the latter has kidnapped an innocent child (act committed by no other than Huk himself), and has thus dishonored the sacred values to which every true Christian is committed.9 At the brutal climax of the story, we learn, among other things, that Jezabel and Dinah are twins (the latter being colored, the former white), and that Karup is no other than their father who left his black pregnant wife to die in the snow, when he had turned racist under the influence of Oldsmill. Jezabel, the white sister and the stronger one, married her father (the means) in order to avenge their mother’s death (the goal).
2 It is essential to refer to silences between frames even though the gutter is empty by definition because the artist has other strategies at his/her disposal. Instead of silencing or concealing information in the gutter, the artist could have fully unfolded the missing verbal or iconic information in order to deliver it as explicit content in the next juxtaposed frame. 3 According to McCloud (1994), closure occurs when we observe parts but perceive a whole. It is a mental process enabling us to complete that which is incomplete based on individual experience. Closure allows us to connect moments (separated by ‘‘gutters": the gaps between the frames) and to construct a continuous reality (more on comics, cf. Eisner, 1997; Groensteen, 1999,2005; Peeters, 1998, 2003; Pomier, 2005). 4 The animal/human relation allows exploiting many stereotypes in order to economically and efficiently attribute characteristics to the protagonists. 5 The detective has fostered a suspicious, anti-social character, not to mention his ways of action offering an alternative whenever the law can no longer be relied upon. Cf., for instance, his hostile attitude towards his sidekick, Weekly (the scandal reporter), at the beginning of the narrative. 6 In reality, weasels have scent glands which produce a strong smell. 7 The organization’s emblem is a snowflake, symbolizing the members’ ideology of the superiority of the white race. 8 Kayleigh is apparently kidnapped by the racist political movement Arctic Nation. 9 Huk himself is far from behaving as a good Christian: Other than kidnapping the child and killing his boss, he commits adultery with Jezabel, lies, deceives and conspires.
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3. Interplay between verbal and iconographic language: What does silence do or to what extent do imagery and juxtapositions of frames communicate? This section explores silences generated by instances where the ‘‘showing’’ is promoted at the expense of the ‘‘telling’’ within the frame, or by instances where there is a total absence – ellipsis – of both imagery and text between the frames, a space where the reader/observer is nonetheless called to reconstruct meaning. The scenes analyzed below will simultaneously disclose the extent to which images and text interact in order to create a multi-layer message and thus a complex scene which involves the reader/observer in the process of both solving the kidnapping case as well as revealing the authors’ silent plea for tolerance and justice. These cases are all brought together in the present section, in order to be able to give a full account of the scenes analyzed. Images may be primarily considered as objects, i.e. by their geometry or morphology (dimensions, perspective, colors, shadows, style, angles,10 depth, calligraphy, etc.). In the case of comics, one should consider not only the individual frame but the architecture of a sequence of frames, too: symmetry, equilibrium, shapes and dimensions, movement, etc. But in comics, the frame silently conveys its own message, individually or in a sequence. Images, as much as text, play a central role in the process of generating meaning. They are more than mere objects; they are symbols or signs.11 Similar to verbal language, one should ask to what extent morphology refers to reality, i.e. what semiological aspects relate to images, what their connotations are, how their rhetoric functions. According to Barthes (1977), an object becomes a symbol when, through convention and social experience, it acquires a significance that allows it to refer to something else, and connotation occurs, in its turn, when signs meet the user’s feelings, emotions and social values or, in other words, whenever subjectivity (or intersubjectivity) is involved (Barthes, 1964a,b, 1977).12 3.1. The scene described below13 will illustrate the power of the iconographic dimension in itself and in its interplay with verbal language: La station de métro de ‘The line’ était un fidèle reflet de l’histoire du quartier. Une image de ce que cela aurait pu eˆtre, mais qui ne jamais fut. Cela faisait dix ans qu’on l’avait abandonnée à moitié construite et, avec les usines fermées à cause de la crise, elle s’intégrait au paysage fantasmagorique du quartier. The subway station ‘The line’ was a loyal reflection of the neighborhood’s narrative: an image of what could have been, but never was. Abandoned ten years ago half-constructed after the crisis, it had ended up as just another piece of scenery in the phantasmagorical landscape of the neighborhood. The frame’s visual content supports the narrator’s version by the selected angle which places the observer in an inferior position with respect to the object, thus transforming the depicted unfinished subway station into a magnified solid monster-like entity, and the observer into a fragile creature. In other words, the image functions as a semiological system suggesting a subjective interpretation, not to mention the fact that the frame including this text also uses metonymy: The picture of the deserted subway station becomes a silent testimony of the problematic situation of the neighborhood as a whole. The angle chosen for the last frame of the same page already shows what the text does not mention, thus allowing the observer to build a complementary scenario matching the moral code supposedly shared in a civilized society: ‘‘justice exists and it still occupies the highest place in the hierarchy’’, or ‘‘low people’s superiority is nothing but an illusion or a temporary episode’’. Blacksad narrates Weekly’s disappearance and his decision to follow a magpie named Cotten as a potential lead. In the last three frames of the page, the magpie is in the middle of an illegal transaction with a rat over a camera (the camera confirms the investigator’s intuition as to the magpie’s involvement in the journalist’s abduction). In the background of the first frame we can observe Blacksad in a position of ‘‘just landed from the roof from which he spied the transaction’’ (the process of landing took place in the ‘‘gutter’’). In the second frame, Blacksad is already in the centre of the scene, asking where the camera owner is. The image shows the expression of surprise and fear of someone just caught red-handed during a transaction of stolen goods (we easily arrive at such a conclusion if we take into consideration the deserted, dark place in which the transaction is being carried out). In the last frame, the magpie denies knowing whose camera it is. However, the visual dimension reveals information that goes beyond that which is supplied by the dialogue. In the first frame the magpie is higher than the rat, symbolizing the former’s privileged position in the transaction. In the last frame, the balance of powers is reversed, in part because of the speech act of accusation performed by Blacksad, the protagonists’ body language (Blacksad is leaning forward a bit, penetrating into the magpie’s territory), but mostly because of the angle chosen whose effect consists in both reducing the magpie in order to reveal his ‘‘true’’ position in society, and allowing a panoramic view so as to include the rat, now reduced to the size of a dot (which suggests he has cowardly run away). This is not solely a question of 10
The position of objects with respect to the observer: observer and object are collinear, observer is ‘‘lower" or ‘‘taller" than object. We refer here to Eco (1976), Sonesson’s semiotics of images (1992a), Peirce’s ‘‘mediation’’ (vehicles of meaning), as well as to Bergman (2000), Parmentier (1985), Sonesson (1992b) for whom meaning is a result of the process in which the sign mediates between the object and the interpretant. 12 Barthes is particularly interested in signification (rather than in meaning), i.e. in the secondary, indirect products, rather than in the arbitrary relation connected to the communicational process. For him, the analysis of communication has to concentrate not only on denotation and reference, but on connotation (the second-order semiological system) as well. Symbols and myths convey indirect signification. Mythic signs are messages that reinforce cultural dominant values and thus ‘‘go without saying’’ (cf. also Bignell, 1997). 13 Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005:29). Also available at: http://img137.imageshack.us/i/blacksad2034ty.jpg/. 11
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perspective and creation of an illusion of movement, but also a message as to the position of losers in general, a message which is not told but, instead, is silently communicated through the image. The connotation created by the image supports the meaning of a certain myth: Denoting a creature as possessing the dimensions of a dot in a certain context produces the connotation of absence of weight or importance and thus leads to the mythical meaning of the deserved position of lowlifes in society, a meaning which is in accordance with a certain moral and social ideology. 3.2. Let us consider a second example.14 After a loud quarrel with his spouse – he realizes that she has betrayed him with Huk, she confronts him with the ‘special attention’ he gives to the young children in the church chorus – Karup gets ready for the secret clan meeting. There is no text preparing the reader to what is going to happen at the turn of the page, but the symbols and the technique used lead the reader/observer to dog-ear the following events and to foresee conflict or danger. How is suspense being injected at this point? First of all by silencing the voice channel: A series of silent frames and the inclusion of a frame within another help to raise the tempo of events, to speed things up, to create a more feverish pacing. Setting is another tool that helps to increase tension: We see Karup alone in his room as opposed to the members of his organization gathering – as a group – in the dark, in front of an abandoned industrial unit. This will soon become a message at the turn of the page when we reach the unexpected twist in which Karup is being isolated and betrayed by the members of his clan. Zooming in is also an invitation to pay extra attention. In our case, the zoomed image of the uniform carrying the emblem of the snowflake is an invitation to go beyond denotation. The zooming in, the red color (danger? blood?) and the emblem (the snowflake standing for the supremacy of the white race), together with the sharp claws of the bear (hunt?) play a role in creating a feeling of uncertainty, tension, and in predicting immediate danger or some kind of climax. Indeed, this image needs to be taken as a cataphora coreferring with the bloodshed awaiting at the turn of the page (with just a ‘small’ surprise: the hangman becomes the hanged). The contextual15 visual parameters even reinforce the connotative level. The strong, unambiguous red color of the uniform, for example, appears after the eye of the observer may become used to the film noir atmosphere16: dark scenes, low light creating contrasts and shadows (in the preceding pages, but also in the case of the following frames), the use of many shades resulting out of few colors (which is also a message in itself: reality is never a simple ‘‘black and white’’ situation). As already pointed out, although in the graphic novel the image in itself plays a crucial role in generating meaning, one should not neglect the interaction between image and text, i.e. between iconographic and verbal language. To¨pffer (1833, in Groensteen & Peeters, 1994), considered by many to have been the first theoretician of comics, claims that in the comic, images without text are difficult to decipher and text without images does not signify anything. For McCloud (1994:155), the showing and the telling are often inter-dependent, working hand in hand to convey an idea that neither could transmit alone. Barthes (1964a,b, 1977) refers to the function of anchorage that words fill up in relation to images (which are polysemic by nature). The intimate and various relations existing between image and text are also discussed by other scholars (Abbott, 1986; Kohn, 2003; Mitchell, 1986, 1994): images matching the text and thus consolidating the message, images solidifying and privileging one message in case of polysemy or textual ambiguity, images creating a gap with relation to the text, for instance, when they show what the text does not tell and thus complete the message, or when they contradict the text in order to create irony. Dillon (1999) claims that when an image appears on a school text book, we assume that it illustrates or supports the information supplied by the textual message and therefore we consider it as secondary to the text. On the other hand, in the case of an exhibition, we get the feeling that the picture is prior to the text. In reality, says Dillon, the relations between text and image may encompass functions going beyond those of mere explanation and illustration.17 If we return to the graphic novel scene, we should not forget that the two levels, the iconographic as well as the textual, are complementary in various ways. So we learn about Balcksad’s habits/attributes not only from the text but also from the image. His persona is being built through the two channels in parallel. In fact, if it weren’t for the images we would not have become acquainted with his outfit and his looks, the fact that he smokes, his tough nature, his preferred drink, his car, his taste in women, his being a gentleman, his tenderness (for instance, the way he carries the little girl). Poyatos (1981:107–108) claims that a cursory reading of a page in a novel, where both the writer and his characters speak . . ., that is, where an interactive conversational encounter takes place alternating with the author’s own observations about it, shows that if we were to rely exclusively on what words those characters say – depicted on paper as printed lexemes – and on a few punctuation marks, plus some instances of extralinguistic communicative features, a good part . . . of the total human message would be simply lost.
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Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005:32). The place of images in relation to other images plays a role in creating connotation (consider Barthes’ 1977 ‘‘syntax’’). There are of course other parameters generating the tone of the film noir: observation through the private eye of the investigator, the realistic style, the narrative technique using flashbacks, a plot dealing with crime, stereotypes connected with the hero’s outfit, the fact that he smokes, his hardboiled nature, the city as a labyrinth, the crime scene (a deserted factory), New York in an economical crisis, typical American symbols and scenes such as road posters in English concerning values of the White American family and encouraging segregation (pp. 4, 9, 44), the English lyrics of the late 30s song ‘‘Strange Fruit’’ (written by Abel Meeropol under the pseudonym Lewis Allan, following Lawrence Beitler’s picture depicting the lynching of two Blacks in Indiana (pp. 45–46)), the barbecue scene (p. 10), the drive-in (p. 13). 17 See also Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996) and Noth (1995). For instance, Noth (1995) is interested in the capacity of pictures to lie, and deals with the question of the semiological autonomy of pictures, and that of the status of pictures in relation to text. More precisely, is the semiological potential of pictures inferior to that of text (according to logocentric semiotics adherents) because of their pragmatic indeterminacy or their incapacity to assert reality? This would be the opinion of Wittgenstein (1953:22) and Peirce (CP 3.361) for whom pictures are indexical signs: ‘‘The index asserts nothing; it only says ‘There!’ It takes hold of our eyes, as it were, and forcibly directs them to a particular object, and there it stops" (cited by Noth, 1995). 15 16
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which could pertain to comics, too. The two following scenes (3.3 and 3.4) will allow us to gain further concrete understanding of the messages conveyed by the interplay between text and image. 3.3. The first scene18 depicts Blacksad and Weekly in Karup’s office. Right before that scene these two have been involved in a fight after colored people had not been allowed into a coffee shop. We deduce that their presence at the chief of police’s office is consequent to this aggression.19 The scene shows one of the White racists (who tried to apply the segregation rules) being punched, but there is ellipsis, both textual and iconographical, of the one who is responsible for this physical attack (Blacksad). This strategy is beneficial to Blacksad’s ethos: we do not get to actually see him violently messed up, so he remains unsullied. The first interaction between Blacksad and Karup (last frame of p. 10) is being ‘‘heard’’ but not shown, because of a black and white family picture picked up by Weekly20 from Karup’s desk which is now blocking the observer/reader’s view (the picture is in close-up and it coincides with the size of the frame). This picture resounds in its irony. The text accompanying it as well as Karup’s monologue on the following page are all about law, order and moral values (of course Karup represents the law, contrary to Blacksad and company who sow disorder and anarchy), but even if we are only at the beginning of the plot and thus lacking many elements concerning Karup’s past, the reader/observer already suspects that something is not working under Karup’s own roof. While Karup is busy preaching the white Anglo-Saxon myth of correct civil conduct (supported by the other pictures on his desk: Karup celebrating the American barbecue scene with his friends, Karup with the young boys of his church chorus),21 we come to see closely that Huk (Karup’s right hand) is hugging Karup’s wife (in the picture) in a way that seems more than just friendly. We assume that the young lady in the picture is no other than Karup’s wife, for they are playing complementary roles as exemplary hosts. The message depicted in the image creates such an antagonism in relation to the credo being stated by Karup, that Weekly ‘wrongly’ concludes that the young lady in the picture is not Karup’s wife but his daughter. 3.4. The second scene22 illustrating the interplay between verbal and iconographic language is that in which Blacksad confronts Oldsmill, the White business tycoon, about the latter’s potential involvement in Kayleigh’s kidnapping. In the first frame of the last sequence of page 20, Blacksad motivates his decision to follow Oldsmill’s son as a lead in the kidnapping. The illustrator does not expose Oldsmill’s son yet. Instead, we see a significant number of balls that went missing during a tennis game. We understand immediately that the one responsible for the many missed balls is Oldsmill’s adversary, because in the previous image we see Oldsmill serving. Together with the onomatopoeic ‘‘poc’’ accompanying the force of the serving seen clearly in the scene, the missed balls function as a cataphoric element to Oldsmill’s son.23 When we finally get to see Oldsmill’s son, we are tempted to consider the ‘missed balls’ scene as a metaphor for the ‘‘missed’’, mentally handicapped son: Many balls on your court and one more in the process of being missed do not predict good news. Indeed, two frames later in the same sequence we get to see Oldsmill’s son, called by his very own progenitor déchet (‘‘waste’’). In this frame Oldsmill explains what Blacksad and the observer understand immediately: A ‘waste’ such as this cannot be Kayleigh’s father nor can he conduct any complex operation of the kind needed in abduction. On the next page, Oldsmill discloses his theory regarding the degradation of The line, a situation having to do, in his opinion, with the presence of the colored mob in the district. In the last image of the second sequence, Blacksad, who leaves a spot of dirt on the white tiger’s white sport outfit after having picked up one of Oldsmill’s son’s missed balls which landed on the clay court, says to Oldsmill that ‘‘sometimes the mixture turns out well’’, a verbal message supported by the spot, testimony of the mixture between color and white, that when it comes to clothing it may be annoying, but when it comes to living creatures the advantages – the improvement of species and the prevention of the procreation of handicapped creatures consequent to unions within the family (endogamy) – are too obvious. The next image anticipates the insult received by Oldsmill in the last sequence. The impact of his emotions is proportional to both the impact of his serving and that of his son missing the ball (again!), and this is supported by calligraphy: The size and the width of the fonts (‘‘POC!’’), modified from the previous page, transmit emotivity.24 The perlocutionary effect consequent to Blacksad’s suggestion is silently but clearly supported also by Oldsmill’s expression of contained anger. This would be an example of Saville-Troike’s (1985:6) claim: ‘‘As with speech, silent communicative acts may be analyzed as having both illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect. . ., although here we clearly cannot use ‘locution’ in its usual sense’’. 18 Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005:10–11). Also available at: http://www.google.co.il/imgres?imgurl=http://p3.images22.51img1.com/6000/yuoasis/ 3919f025f783b026744fac0bb4d8579d.jpg&imgrefurl=http://youa.baidu.com/item/b86a513297a1593e8230ed4e&usg=__1BTIUR74AR530aNbDa4AEUyL C3g=&h=600&w=428&sz=100&hl=en&start=149&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=HKOjXcS_X8clhM:&tbnh=135&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblacksad%2Barctic% 2Bnation%26start%3D140%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26newwindow%3D1%26sa%3DN%26rlz%3D1T4RNWN_en___IL278%26ndsp%3D20%26tbs%3Disch:1. 19 Let’s recall (see footnote 3) that in comics, motion is produced between the frames by closure. 20 Another silent testimony of Weekly’s curious nature. 21 According to Barthes (1973), a myth is a means through which a culture explains or grasps a certain reality. The myth exists prior to the moment in which it was taken in picture or, in the case of comics, before it was revived by the illustrator. 22 Pages 20–21. Also available at: http://www.google.co.il/imgres?imgurl=http://img47.imageshack.us/img47/7599/55422971pg6.jpg&imgrefurl=http:// blacksadmania.xooit.com/t137-Quels-personnages-pour-la-serie-3-des-mini-bustes-Attakus.htm&usg=__BnLfCyjhbWwwNESiY1Cj-VBAYtg=&h=154&w= 115&sz=8&hl=en&start=131&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=voZCpqXR7RC14M:&tbnh=96&tbnw=72&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblacksad%2Boldsmill%2Bson%26start %3D120%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26newwindow%3D1%26sa%3DN%26rlz%3D1T4RNWN_en___IL278%26ndsp%3D20%26tbs%3Disch:1. 23 Let’s remember the importance of ‘‘closure". According to McCloud (1994:88), ‘‘comics ask the mind to work as a sort of in-betweener filling the gaps between panels as an animator might’’. For him, closure is the ‘‘grammar" of comics. 24 More on calligraphy (lettering): When Huk preaches his racial theories to the crowds (pp. 6–7), we understand that he raises his voice both from the expression of his face and the calligraphy becoming bigger and wider. Calligraphy becomes more voluminous than usually in order to reflect the amplitude of the voice. In other words, the form of writing is iconographic and reflects the magnitude of the voice as well as the pathos of the orator. See also pages 34–39. On page 39, when Huk shouts ‘‘Find him’’, we can actually feel his husky voice: the calligraphy is not homogeneous anymore, suggesting that the fox is having trouble to control his voice.
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According to Fiske (1990:10) a message with a low level of predictability, i.e. an anthropic message, is of very high informativity.25 We find many such pictorial messages in Blacksad. If the reader/observer pays attention to them, they may become clues for the decoding of the mystery. For example: - The message that the young lady figuring in the pictures on Karup’s desk is his wife and ‘not’ his daughter.26 - The white spot on Dinah’s chest.27 This is a detail whose importance escapes both Blacksad and the reader in real time, but that will become crucial to the solving of the mystery after Blacksad, but not the reader, will scrutinize the pictures secretly taken by Weekly and portraying intimate moments shared by Karup’s wife and Huk. This is of course the moment in which Blacksad solves the case (due to the spot, he understands Dinah and Karup’s wife are sisters despite the difference of color). We realize this is indeed the moment because of the close-up on his facial expression, revealing his deductive skills, and this is as well the moment in which the reader’s and Blacksad’s roads split, since the reader does not get to see the content of these pictures.28 The message that Blacksad gets from the pictures is anthropic (for the private eye, but not for the reader), and is at the same time the last key needed to solve the case. In fact, Blacksad’s expression of surprise while looking at the intimate pictures and the zoom technique chosen by the illustrator serve as an index to Blacksad’s deduction. The index shows clearly without the need of telling, and this silence or, at least, ‘expression by non-verbal means’ intensifies our suspense by leaving us in a state of indecisiveness with many questions remaining open (what did Blacksad understand that we haven’t?). - A message having a low level of predictability and high informativity is the one connected to the fact that Dinah is the sister of Karup’s wife: Dinah is black, Mrs Karup is white. The revelation is made by the reader/observer on p. 49,29 information supplied only at the iconographic level. Blacksad comes to this understanding before the reader, two pages earlier, so for him there is redundancy. If we borrow from Barthes (1980) the notions of studium and punctum in photography,30 relevant to our domain as well,31 in the black stain on p. 49, we will identify that very element responsible for the creation of punctum. The black stain on the chest carefully hidden by Jezabel from the rest of the world, for it is not only an object but also and mostly a symbol, includes the essence of a narrative dealing with tension between black and white. Through it the observer finally reaches his/her own private understanding a minute before Jezabel reveals to the detective the origin and the stages of her own mission of revenge, to which her stain is an everlasting reminder. Finally, we cannot neglect the role of stereotypes in creating meaning. Stereotypes are very efficient to the narrative because they communicate in an economic way.32 The usage of stereotypes is current on the textual level but they are apparent also on the visual level, thus conveying additional meaning in perfect silence. For instance, the protagonists’ shaping of character is based on visual stereotypes: Blacksad as a private eye, the femme fatal image of Karup’s wife, Oldsmill as a business tycoon. In fact, the work exploits stereotypes in a very assorted way. On the one hand, the work eternalizes the stereotype of the White as xenophobe, e.g. the textual/visual message on the road poster calling for votes for the Republican Party. We get to see there what will happen to the innocent White child if the Republicans don’t win the elections: the demonic claws shown on the poster couldn’t be there just for ornament purposes. The work also exposes stereotypes connected to Blacks as violent (thus, the Black Claws gang’s brutality does not spare the colored either). On the other hand, the reader/observer gradually understands that xenophobia is not exclusive to a specific social rank. Moreover, in the case of the Black Claws gang, whose members are a black horse, a black bull, and a black Rottweiler dog, it is interesting to notice the message the illustrator silently transmits beyond their violent rhetoric. It is true that stereotypes connected to violent gangs are being consolidated: animals bearing weapons, and their dress code which is very different from the other animals: long hair (the horse’s mane), jewelry (the bull’s earring, the horse’s chain), short leather jackets, belts with big buckles, dark sun glasses (the horse), T-shirts without ties (suggesting freedom from restraints). Yet, we cannot help paying attention to the way stereotypes are being manipulated: the bull wears an earring on his earlobe; the horse has a chain on his chest. In reality, we expect the ring to be on the bull’s nose (for control purposes). In other words, the ring, originally placed on the animal’s nose, no longer symbolizes the submission of the bull to humankind. The same is true for the horse: the chain on the horse’s back, usually helping men to conduct and control the horse, changes its place to become here a piece of jewelry which the horse bears proudly – and silently – on his chest. Tannen (1985:97) holds that ‘‘silence is the extreme manifestation of indirectness. If indirectness is a matter of saying one thing and meaning another, silence can be matter of saying nothing and 25 In contrast with a situation of redundancy (Fiske, 1990:10), i.e. a message with high predictability and therefore low information. See also Sonesson (1996/1997) for the different approaches to the issue of redundancy (or ‘expectancy’) in pictorial semiotics. 26 Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005:10–11). 27 (a) Dinah’s spot (Diaz Canales and Guarnido, 2005:14); (b) Blacksad looking at the pictures (p. 47); (c) Mrs Karup’s spot (p. 49). 28 Until that moment, Blacksad and the reader share the same opportunities to solve the mystery. 29 When we actually see the spot on Jezabel’s chest: Dinah has a white spot, Jezabel has a dark one. 30 The studium is the attraction of the observer towards the picture, the interest the observer shows towards it, his willing to analyze and understand it in relation to his subjectivity. New pictures supply a lot of studium. The punctum is that detail in the picture that attracts the attention of the observer, that brings memories, creates emotivity. The punctum is that moment at which there is creation of broader meaning, recognition, the moment in which the picture turns from just a medium to the thing itself (cf. Barthes, 1980, 2000). 31 We also deal here with the influence of the visual level on the observer (cf., too, Bourdieu, 1965 on the visual level, this time from a sociological point of view). 32 According to Amossy (1982), due to its ‘‘déjà-vu" effect, the cliché – the ‘‘height of stereotype" – plays an important role in immediate intellectual and emotional identification as well as in critical reflection. Clichés perform many other functions: for example, they speed, facilitate, orient and model the process of reading. They also serve as argumentative devices (pp. 36–37).
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meaning something’’. Undoubtedly, the pictorial – silent – messages analyzed in this section have all proven to ‘‘mean something’’, but they have also proven to ‘‘say something’’ in a certain context.33 4. Conclusion According to Philips (1985:205), interaction structured primarily through talk refers to activity in which attention is focused overwhelmingly on verbal utterances. At the other end is interaction structured through silence, referring to activity in which the participants’ attention and production and reception of messages are focused on nonverbal activity (which can be a physical one, such as dance or mime).34 In a continuum such as this, we could place comics, and graphic novels as a particular case, somewhere in the middle in the sense that both the verbal and the visual (non verbal) channels are equally important to meaning processing. This study focused on argumentative values of silences in the graphic novel. Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005) was chosen for the purpose of illustration. We associated the concept of silence to the following situations: occurrences where the showing takes over the telling, silences occurring in the gutters (between the frames creating a sequence) and, finally, silences interacting with verbal communication – in various ways – within the frame or in a sequence. The common denominators of these silent, non-verbal messages within the frame of the graphic novel would be: (1) the fact that they all illustrate a case of Saville-Troike’s tactical-symbolic/attitudinal silence (1985:17); (2) the fact that they are dependent on context for their interpretation (Saville-Troike, 1985:11); (3) the fact that they are intentional, thus meaningful in the sense that they may be translatable into verbal propositions and are part of communication (cf. Kurzon, 1998:5–50; Saville-Troike, 1985:3–18). However, cases where silence is related to the dominance of imagery over talk are to be distinguished from those where silence occurs between frames: only the latter involve a zero signifier (which is nonetheless a mark and not a non-mark) (cf. Kurzon, 1998:6–8). Acknowledgments I thank my colleague, Dennis Kurzon, for helpful comments, and the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Haifa for their research support. References Abbott, Lawrence, 1986. Comic art; characteristics and potentialities of a narrative medium. Journal of Popular Culture 19 (4), 155–176. Amossy, Ruth, 1982. The cliché in the reading process. Sub-Stance 35, 34–45. Austin, John L., 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Clarendon, Oxford. Barthes, Roland, 1964. Eléments de Sémiologie. Le Seuil, Paris (Elements of Semiology, 1964, publ. Hill and Wang, 1968). Barthes, Roland, 1964b. The rhetoric of the image 1977. In: Barthes, Roland (Ed.), Image – Music – Text. Fontana, London. Barthes, Roland, 1973. Mythologies. Paladin, London. Barthes, Roland, 1977. Image – Music – Text. Trans. S. Heath. Fontana, London. Barthes, Roland, 1980. La Chambre Claire. Le Seuil, Paris. Barthes, Roland, 2000. In: Howard, Richard (transl. Eds.), Camera Lucida. Vintage, London (originally published in 1980). Bergman, Mats, 2000. Reflections on the role of the communicative sign in semeiotic. The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy XXXVI 2, 225–254. Bignell, Jonathan, 1997. Media Semiotics: An Introduction. Manchester University Press, Manchester & New York. Bourdieu, Pierre, 1965. Un Art Moyen: Essai sur les Usages Sociaux de la Photographie. Minuit, Paris. Diaz Canales, Juan, Guarnido, Juanjo, 2005 [2003]. Blacksad: Arctic-Nation. Dargaud, Paris. Dillon, George L., 1999. In: Art and the Semiotics of Images: Three Questions about Visual Meaning. Conference, University of Birmingham, July 1999, http:// faculty.washington.edu/dillon/rhethtml/signifiers/sigsave.html. Eco, Umberto, 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Eisner, Will, 1997. La Bande Dessinée Art Séquenciel. Vertige Graphic, Paris. Fiske, John, 1990. Introduction to Communication Studies, 2nd ed. Routledge, London & New York. Groensteen, Thierry, 1999. Système de la Bande Dessinée. PUF Collection Formes sémiotiques, Paris. Groensteen, Thierry, 2005. La Bande Dessinée, une Littérature Graphique. Les Essentiels Milan, Toulouse. Groensteen, Thierry, Peeters, Benoît (Eds.), 1994. To¨pffer – l’Invention de la Bande Dessinée. Hermann, Paris. Jaworski, Adam, 1993. The Power of Silence: Social and Pragmatic Perspectives. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, London, New Delhi. Kohn, Ayelet, 2003. A comic story a song and a press article: three models of image/text. In: Ben Shahar, Rina, Toury, Gideon (Eds.), Hebrew, A Living Language, vol. 3. Hakibutz Hamehuhad, Tel Aviv, pp. 167–189. Kress, Gunther, Van Leeuwen, Theo, 1996. Reading Images – The Grammar of Visual Design. Routledge, London. Kurzon, Dennis, 1998. Discourse of Silence. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, PA. Marlin, Randal, 1989. Propaganda and the ethics of persuasion. International Journal of Moral and Social Studies 4, 37–72. McCloud, Scott, 1994. Understanding Comics The invisible Art. Kitchen Sink Press for Harper Collins Publishers, New York. Mitchell, W.J.T., 1986. Iconology: Image, Text Ideology. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. Mitchell, W.J.T., 1994. Picture Theory. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. Noth, Winfred, 1995. SRB insights: can pictures lie? The Semiotic Review of Books, vol. 6 (2). http://www.chass.toronto.edu/epc/srb/srb/articles.html. Parmentier, Richard J., 1985. Signs’ place in medias Res: Peirce’s concept of semiotic mediation. In: Mertz, Elizabeth, Parmentier, Richard J. (Eds.), Semiotic Mediation: Sociocultural and Psychological Perspectives. Academic Press, Orlando, San Diego, New York, London, Toronto, Montreal, Sydney & Tokyo. Peeters, Benoît, 1998. Case, Planche, Récit. Comment Lire la Bande Dessinée. Casterman, Paris. 33 In this respect, it is possible to refer to yet another type of silence which was not developed per se in the present paper but which definitely corresponds to silence: that of implied meanings. 34 Cf. also Jaworski (1993:7–8), who holds that ‘‘silence requires high participation involvement and a lot of filling in of information to be fully understood and interpreted".
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Peeters, Benoît, 2003. Lire la Bande Dessinée. Flammarion, Paris. Peirce, Charles S., 1931–1958. Collected Papers. Vols. 1–6. Ed. Hartshorne, Charles, Weiss, Paul; vols. 7–8 Ed. Burks, Arthur W. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Philips, Susan U., 1985. Interaction structured through talk and interaction structured through silence. In: Tannen, Deborah, Saville-Troike, Muriel (Eds.), Perspectives on Silence. Ablex, New Jersey. Pomier, Frédéric, 2005. Comment Lire la B.D. Klincksieck, Paris. Poyatos, Fernando, 1981. Forms and functions of nonverbal communication in the novel: a new perspective of the author–character–reader relationship. In: Kendon, Adam, Sebeok, Thomas A., Umiker-Sebeok, Jean (volume editors), Nonverbal Communication, Interaction and Gesture: Selections from Semiotica. Mouton Publishers, The Hague, Paris, New York. Searle, John, 1969. Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Saville-Troike, Muriel, 1985. The place of silence in an integrated theory of communication. In: Tannen, Deborah, Saville-Troike, Muriel (Eds.), Perspectives on Silence. Ablex, New Jersey. Searle, John, 1979. A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In: Expression and Meaning, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–29. Sonesson, Go¨ran, 1992a. Comment le Sens Vient aux Images: Un Autre Discours de la Méthode. In: Carani, Marie (Ed.), De l’Histoire de l’Art à la Sémiotique Visuelle. Les Nouveaux Cahiers du CE?LAT. Les éditions du Septentrion, Québéc, pp. 29–84. Sonesson, Go¨ran, 1992b. The semiotic function and the genesis of pictorial meaning. In: Tarasti, Eero (Ed.), Proceedings from the 3rd Annual Meeting and Congress of The International Semiotics Institute. Center/Periphery in Representations and Institutions, Imatra, Finland, July, 1990. International Semiotics Institute. Imatra, pp. 211–256, pp. 16–21. Sonesson, Go¨ran, 1996/1997. Approches to the Lifeworld Core of Pictorial Rhetoric. In: Visio. La Revue de l’Association Internationale de Semiótique Visuelle, vol. 1 (3) pp. 49–76. Tannen, Deborah, 1985. Silence: anything but. In: Tannen, Deborah, Saville-Troike, Muriel (Eds.), Perspectives on Silence. Ablex, New Jersey. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell, Oxford. Silvia Adler is a senior lecturer in French Linguistics at the University of Haifa. She received her doctoral degree from Tel Aviv University in 2002 with a dissertation on ellipsis in prepositional environments. Her current research interests include ellipsis as well as other strategies of linguistic economy, lexicalization, simple and compound prepositions, scalarity, intensification, prepositional quantifiers, and argumentation in comics.
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Journal of Pragmatics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Silence in the graphic novel Silvia Adler a,b,* a b
University of Haifa, Dept. of English Language and Literature, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel University of Haifa, Dept. of Hebrew Language, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history: Received 16 September 2009 Received in revised form 2 November 2010 Accepted 17 November 2010 Available online 21 December 2010
The current study aims at highlighting argumentative silences in the graphic novel, illustrated here by Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005). In the graphic novel silence occurs, mostly, when the narrator promotes the showing over the telling (within the frame) and when, between the frames creating a sequence, the reader/observer is devoid of information (either visual or textual). None of these cases represents a failure of communication. On the contrary, the reader/observer has the opportunity to experience various modes of reasoning that may be applied to support or justify conclusions. The reader/observer is, accordingly, intensely involved in the process of constructing meaning. ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Silence Comics Graphic novel Communication Image Semiotics Argumentation
1. Introduction In comics in general, and in graphic novels in particular, meaning is generated by verbal language, iconographic language, and the different modes of interplay between both. What happens when verbal language is being interrupted and images become momentarily the only means of communication? Why is verbal language absent at times? Our study investigates the argumentative values of silences in the graphic novel. In particular, we will analyze Diaz Canales and Guarnido’s Blacksad: Arctic-Nation (2005), a contemporary French work dealing with issues related to flagrant injustice. The story of Blacksad is set in a film noir atmosphere, in New York of the 1950s, but the social matters it is concerned with remain current: racism, segregation, hate crimes, intra-communal violence (between the white Anglo-Saxon protestants and the colored mob), the membership of the Whites in an extremist clan called Arctic Nation reminiscent of the ideology and practices of the Ku Klux Klan, the Blacks’ membership in a violent gang called Black Claws (a kind of Black Panthers organisation encouraging selfdefence with the use of force1), double-cross, economic depression, prejudice, perversion – all reflecting the communal decay boiling beneath the surface of an apparently peaceful and respectful suburbia. Silence functions then not only as a simple absence of speech, especially in interactive situations, but also as a vehicle of a large variety of emotions and mental states connected to the protagonists. Moreover, the narrator may turn off the vocal channel in order to invite the reader to gain understanding through observation and deduction, and to decode the narrator’s
* Correspondence address: University of Haifa, Dept. of English Language and Literature, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. Tel.: +972 50 7804071/8 8677661; fax: +972 8 8677661. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected]. 1 Or directly alluding to Malcolm X’s doctrine:‘‘The time for you and me to allow ourselves to be brutalized nonviolently has passed. Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you can bring me a nonviolent racist, bring me a nonviolent segregationist, then I’ll get nonviolent. But don’t teach me to be nonviolent until you teach some of those crackers to be nonviolent." (Malcolm X’s speech, June 28, 1964. The founding rally of the OAAU. Taken from the link: http://www.panafricanperspective.com/mxoaaufounding.html). 0378-2166/$ – see front matter ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.11.012
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(or the protagonist’s) intentions, to let symbols and icons ‘‘talk’’, to deliver information on the implicit level, to argue – in our particular case – against injustice. In the graphic novel, silence thus coincides with those instances where the showing takes over the telling. The result may be silence related to the protagonist’s voice channel, in one case, and silence of the narrator (who intentionally lets the iconographic level and the implicatures – below the surface – ‘‘talk’’), in another. Besides the above-mentioned case where images take the lead, another instance of silence in the graphic novel occurs between the frames, in the space called the ‘‘gutter’’. Neither does this kind of silence represent a failure of communication. Silence between the frames is an invitation for the reader/observer to construct meaning within a sequence based on premises (of a textual or a visual kind). Not only is the reader/observer given the opportunity to fill in the details that are missing between the frames,2 but s/he also responds with an intense emotional, intellectual and/or critical reaction to what is not articulated explicitly and therefore restored through his/her own understandings. Meaning arises, then, from the silent juxtaposition of images within a sequence. This is a moment of closure3 for the reader/observer, a moment in which s/he gains awareness and reaches conclusions (see section 3 for these cases). The study of the graphic novel Blacksad: Arctic-Nation will enable us to shed light on the rhetorical function of silence in these cases. 2. Background Before focussing on the different functions of silence, we present the following synopsis whose aim is to facilitate the process of decoding the scenes analyzed in section 3. The characters in Blacksad: Arctic-Nation are anthropomorphic figures.4 Blacksad, a private investigator and the first-person narrator, is a black cat. He is the prototype hunter: distant, dark and discreet, he defends his territory (all being advantageous features for a private eye).5 We always see him carefully dressed, just as cats keep themselves clean. He is valiant, intelligent, cynical, yet possesses a clear-cut moral code, a high sense of justice, an honest desire to annihilate evil and to help the weak. As the narrative develops, some may see in him a modern Sherlock Holmes accompanied by his own ‘Watson’ in his quest to uncover the crime: The ‘Watson’ role is personified here by a parodic figure of a tabloid muckraker named Weekly (a weasel). Like the animal, Weekly does not hesitate to dig deep in the dirt to obtain results and indeed, no information escapes him. It is not surprising he suffers from bad smell.6 The cooperation between the two protagonists will soon turn out to be useful: on the one hand, a cat who knows that reaching the truth involves climbing to high places, and on the other hand, a weasel for whom the truth also exists in the lowest places. Other characters are the supremacists – all polar (white-skinned) animals – who hold cardinal positions and the members of the neo-Nazi organization7 (also members of a racist secret clan) in the suburbia The line: Oldsmill, a business tycoon, is a Siberian white tiger. Hans Karup, the chief of police, is a polar white bear. Huk, his right-hand man, is a white fox – a cunning, sneaky type. The illustrator emphasizes the sharp claws and canines of these animals, unmistakable testimony of their being carnivores, but he never exposes Blacksad’s hooked nails, and he constantly dissimulates Blacksad’s canines, although cats are by definition predators. This silent strategy reflects the author’s attitude towards his subject: Blacksad is cultivated, tamed, domesticated; he is anything but bloodthirsty. At the heart of the story is the case of the kidnapping of an elementary school student named Kayleigh (a colored bear). Blacksad is hired by the schoolmaster (Miss Grey, a colored gazelle) to find her.8 The investigation will soon lead to a confrontation between Blacksad and the student’s mother Dinah, the members of the Black gang who are immediately and stereotypically accused of the kidnapping, Jezabel (Karup’s spouse, a white bear) who has an affair with Huk and meets with Dinah in secret. Later on, we come to understand that although Jezabel is married to Karup, she has never had intercourse with him. Karup himself is suspected of pedophilia. The plot gets entangled when, by way of betrayal, Huk takes over the secret clan and then assassinates Karup on the false pretence that the latter has kidnapped an innocent child (act committed by no other than Huk himself), and has thus dishonored the sacred values to which every true Christian is committed.9 At the brutal climax of the story, we learn, among other things, that Jezabel and Dinah are twins (the latter being colored, the former white), and that Karup is no other than their father who left his black pregnant wife to die in the snow, when he had turned racist under the influence of Oldsmill. Jezabel, the white sister and the stronger one, married her father (the means) in order to avenge their mother’s death (the goal).
2 It is essential to refer to silences between frames even though the gutter is empty by definition because the artist has other strategies at his/her disposal. Instead of silencing or concealing information in the gutter, the artist could have fully unfolded the missing verbal or iconic information in order to deliver it as explicit content in the next juxtaposed frame. 3 According to McCloud (1994), closure occurs when we observe parts but perceive a whole. It is a mental process enabling us to complete that which is incomplete based on individual experience. Closure allows us to connect moments (separated by ‘‘gutters": the gaps between the frames) and to construct a continuous reality (more on comics, cf. Eisner, 1997; Groensteen, 1999,2005; Peeters, 1998, 2003; Pomier, 2005). 4 The animal/human relation allows exploiting many stereotypes in order to economically and efficiently attribute characteristics to the protagonists. 5 The detective has fostered a suspicious, anti-social character, not to mention his ways of action offering an alternative whenever the law can no longer be relied upon. Cf., for instance, his hostile attitude towards his sidekick, Weekly (the scandal reporter), at the beginning of the narrative. 6 In reality, weasels have scent glands which produce a strong smell. 7 The organization’s emblem is a snowflake, symbolizing the members’ ideology of the superiority of the white race. 8 Kayleigh is apparently kidnapped by the racist political movement Arctic Nation. 9 Huk himself is far from behaving as a good Christian: Other than kidnapping the child and killing his boss, he commits adultery with Jezabel, lies, deceives and conspires.
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3. Interplay between verbal and iconographic language: What does silence do or to what extent do imagery and juxtapositions of frames communicate? This section explores silences generated by instances where the ‘‘showing’’ is promoted at the expense of the ‘‘telling’’ within the frame, or by instances where there is a total absence – ellipsis – of both imagery and text between the frames, a space where the reader/observer is nonetheless called to reconstruct meaning. The scenes analyzed below will simultaneously disclose the extent to which images and text interact in order to create a multi-layer message and thus a complex scene which involves the reader/observer in the process of both solving the kidnapping case as well as revealing the authors’ silent plea for tolerance and justice. These cases are all brought together in the present section, in order to be able to give a full account of the scenes analyzed. Images may be primarily considered as objects, i.e. by their geometry or morphology (dimensions, perspective, colors, shadows, style, angles,10 depth, calligraphy, etc.). In the case of comics, one should consider not only the individual frame but the architecture of a sequence of frames, too: symmetry, equilibrium, shapes and dimensions, movement, etc. But in comics, the frame silently conveys its own message, individually or in a sequence. Images, as much as text, play a central role in the process of generating meaning. They are more than mere objects; they are symbols or signs.11 Similar to verbal language, one should ask to what extent morphology refers to reality, i.e. what semiological aspects relate to images, what their connotations are, how their rhetoric functions. According to Barthes (1977), an object becomes a symbol when, through convention and social experience, it acquires a significance that allows it to refer to something else, and connotation occurs, in its turn, when signs meet the user’s feelings, emotions and social values or, in other words, whenever subjectivity (or intersubjectivity) is involved (Barthes, 1964a,b, 1977).12 3.1. The scene described below13 will illustrate the power of the iconographic dimension in itself and in its interplay with verbal language: La station de métro de ‘The line’ était un fidèle reflet de l’histoire du quartier. Une image de ce que cela aurait pu eˆtre, mais qui ne jamais fut. Cela faisait dix ans qu’on l’avait abandonnée à moitié construite et, avec les usines fermées à cause de la crise, elle s’intégrait au paysage fantasmagorique du quartier. The subway station ‘The line’ was a loyal reflection of the neighborhood’s narrative: an image of what could have been, but never was. Abandoned ten years ago half-constructed after the crisis, it had ended up as just another piece of scenery in the phantasmagorical landscape of the neighborhood. The frame’s visual content supports the narrator’s version by the selected angle which places the observer in an inferior position with respect to the object, thus transforming the depicted unfinished subway station into a magnified solid monster-like entity, and the observer into a fragile creature. In other words, the image functions as a semiological system suggesting a subjective interpretation, not to mention the fact that the frame including this text also uses metonymy: The picture of the deserted subway station becomes a silent testimony of the problematic situation of the neighborhood as a whole. The angle chosen for the last frame of the same page already shows what the text does not mention, thus allowing the observer to build a complementary scenario matching the moral code supposedly shared in a civilized society: ‘‘justice exists and it still occupies the highest place in the hierarchy’’, or ‘‘low people’s superiority is nothing but an illusion or a temporary episode’’. Blacksad narrates Weekly’s disappearance and his decision to follow a magpie named Cotten as a potential lead. In the last three frames of the page, the magpie is in the middle of an illegal transaction with a rat over a camera (the camera confirms the investigator’s intuition as to the magpie’s involvement in the journalist’s abduction). In the background of the first frame we can observe Blacksad in a position of ‘‘just landed from the roof from which he spied the transaction’’ (the process of landing took place in the ‘‘gutter’’). In the second frame, Blacksad is already in the centre of the scene, asking where the camera owner is. The image shows the expression of surprise and fear of someone just caught red-handed during a transaction of stolen goods (we easily arrive at such a conclusion if we take into consideration the deserted, dark place in which the transaction is being carried out). In the last frame, the magpie denies knowing whose camera it is. However, the visual dimension reveals information that goes beyond that which is supplied by the dialogue. In the first frame the magpie is higher than the rat, symbolizing the former’s privileged position in the transaction. In the last frame, the balance of powers is reversed, in part because of the speech act of accusation performed by Blacksad, the protagonists’ body language (Blacksad is leaning forward a bit, penetrating into the magpie’s territory), but mostly because of the angle chosen whose effect consists in both reducing the magpie in order to reveal his ‘‘true’’ position in society, and allowing a panoramic view so as to include the rat, now reduced to the size of a dot (which suggests he has cowardly run away). This is not solely a question of 10
The position of objects with respect to the observer: observer and object are collinear, observer is ‘‘lower" or ‘‘taller" than object. We refer here to Eco (1976), Sonesson’s semiotics of images (1992a), Peirce’s ‘‘mediation’’ (vehicles of meaning), as well as to Bergman (2000), Parmentier (1985), Sonesson (1992b) for whom meaning is a result of the process in which the sign mediates between the object and the interpretant. 12 Barthes is particularly interested in signification (rather than in meaning), i.e. in the secondary, indirect products, rather than in the arbitrary relation connected to the communicational process. For him, the analysis of communication has to concentrate not only on denotation and reference, but on connotation (the second-order semiological system) as well. Symbols and myths convey indirect signification. Mythic signs are messages that reinforce cultural dominant values and thus ‘‘go without saying’’ (cf. also Bignell, 1997). 13 Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005:29). Also available at: http://img137.imageshack.us/i/blacksad2034ty.jpg/. 11
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perspective and creation of an illusion of movement, but also a message as to the position of losers in general, a message which is not told but, instead, is silently communicated through the image. The connotation created by the image supports the meaning of a certain myth: Denoting a creature as possessing the dimensions of a dot in a certain context produces the connotation of absence of weight or importance and thus leads to the mythical meaning of the deserved position of lowlifes in society, a meaning which is in accordance with a certain moral and social ideology. 3.2. Let us consider a second example.14 After a loud quarrel with his spouse – he realizes that she has betrayed him with Huk, she confronts him with the ‘special attention’ he gives to the young children in the church chorus – Karup gets ready for the secret clan meeting. There is no text preparing the reader to what is going to happen at the turn of the page, but the symbols and the technique used lead the reader/observer to dog-ear the following events and to foresee conflict or danger. How is suspense being injected at this point? First of all by silencing the voice channel: A series of silent frames and the inclusion of a frame within another help to raise the tempo of events, to speed things up, to create a more feverish pacing. Setting is another tool that helps to increase tension: We see Karup alone in his room as opposed to the members of his organization gathering – as a group – in the dark, in front of an abandoned industrial unit. This will soon become a message at the turn of the page when we reach the unexpected twist in which Karup is being isolated and betrayed by the members of his clan. Zooming in is also an invitation to pay extra attention. In our case, the zoomed image of the uniform carrying the emblem of the snowflake is an invitation to go beyond denotation. The zooming in, the red color (danger? blood?) and the emblem (the snowflake standing for the supremacy of the white race), together with the sharp claws of the bear (hunt?) play a role in creating a feeling of uncertainty, tension, and in predicting immediate danger or some kind of climax. Indeed, this image needs to be taken as a cataphora coreferring with the bloodshed awaiting at the turn of the page (with just a ‘small’ surprise: the hangman becomes the hanged). The contextual15 visual parameters even reinforce the connotative level. The strong, unambiguous red color of the uniform, for example, appears after the eye of the observer may become used to the film noir atmosphere16: dark scenes, low light creating contrasts and shadows (in the preceding pages, but also in the case of the following frames), the use of many shades resulting out of few colors (which is also a message in itself: reality is never a simple ‘‘black and white’’ situation). As already pointed out, although in the graphic novel the image in itself plays a crucial role in generating meaning, one should not neglect the interaction between image and text, i.e. between iconographic and verbal language. To¨pffer (1833, in Groensteen & Peeters, 1994), considered by many to have been the first theoretician of comics, claims that in the comic, images without text are difficult to decipher and text without images does not signify anything. For McCloud (1994:155), the showing and the telling are often inter-dependent, working hand in hand to convey an idea that neither could transmit alone. Barthes (1964a,b, 1977) refers to the function of anchorage that words fill up in relation to images (which are polysemic by nature). The intimate and various relations existing between image and text are also discussed by other scholars (Abbott, 1986; Kohn, 2003; Mitchell, 1986, 1994): images matching the text and thus consolidating the message, images solidifying and privileging one message in case of polysemy or textual ambiguity, images creating a gap with relation to the text, for instance, when they show what the text does not tell and thus complete the message, or when they contradict the text in order to create irony. Dillon (1999) claims that when an image appears on a school text book, we assume that it illustrates or supports the information supplied by the textual message and therefore we consider it as secondary to the text. On the other hand, in the case of an exhibition, we get the feeling that the picture is prior to the text. In reality, says Dillon, the relations between text and image may encompass functions going beyond those of mere explanation and illustration.17 If we return to the graphic novel scene, we should not forget that the two levels, the iconographic as well as the textual, are complementary in various ways. So we learn about Balcksad’s habits/attributes not only from the text but also from the image. His persona is being built through the two channels in parallel. In fact, if it weren’t for the images we would not have become acquainted with his outfit and his looks, the fact that he smokes, his tough nature, his preferred drink, his car, his taste in women, his being a gentleman, his tenderness (for instance, the way he carries the little girl). Poyatos (1981:107–108) claims that a cursory reading of a page in a novel, where both the writer and his characters speak . . ., that is, where an interactive conversational encounter takes place alternating with the author’s own observations about it, shows that if we were to rely exclusively on what words those characters say – depicted on paper as printed lexemes – and on a few punctuation marks, plus some instances of extralinguistic communicative features, a good part . . . of the total human message would be simply lost.
14
Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005:32). The place of images in relation to other images plays a role in creating connotation (consider Barthes’ 1977 ‘‘syntax’’). There are of course other parameters generating the tone of the film noir: observation through the private eye of the investigator, the realistic style, the narrative technique using flashbacks, a plot dealing with crime, stereotypes connected with the hero’s outfit, the fact that he smokes, his hardboiled nature, the city as a labyrinth, the crime scene (a deserted factory), New York in an economical crisis, typical American symbols and scenes such as road posters in English concerning values of the White American family and encouraging segregation (pp. 4, 9, 44), the English lyrics of the late 30s song ‘‘Strange Fruit’’ (written by Abel Meeropol under the pseudonym Lewis Allan, following Lawrence Beitler’s picture depicting the lynching of two Blacks in Indiana (pp. 45–46)), the barbecue scene (p. 10), the drive-in (p. 13). 17 See also Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996) and Noth (1995). For instance, Noth (1995) is interested in the capacity of pictures to lie, and deals with the question of the semiological autonomy of pictures, and that of the status of pictures in relation to text. More precisely, is the semiological potential of pictures inferior to that of text (according to logocentric semiotics adherents) because of their pragmatic indeterminacy or their incapacity to assert reality? This would be the opinion of Wittgenstein (1953:22) and Peirce (CP 3.361) for whom pictures are indexical signs: ‘‘The index asserts nothing; it only says ‘There!’ It takes hold of our eyes, as it were, and forcibly directs them to a particular object, and there it stops" (cited by Noth, 1995). 15 16
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which could pertain to comics, too. The two following scenes (3.3 and 3.4) will allow us to gain further concrete understanding of the messages conveyed by the interplay between text and image. 3.3. The first scene18 depicts Blacksad and Weekly in Karup’s office. Right before that scene these two have been involved in a fight after colored people had not been allowed into a coffee shop. We deduce that their presence at the chief of police’s office is consequent to this aggression.19 The scene shows one of the White racists (who tried to apply the segregation rules) being punched, but there is ellipsis, both textual and iconographical, of the one who is responsible for this physical attack (Blacksad). This strategy is beneficial to Blacksad’s ethos: we do not get to actually see him violently messed up, so he remains unsullied. The first interaction between Blacksad and Karup (last frame of p. 10) is being ‘‘heard’’ but not shown, because of a black and white family picture picked up by Weekly20 from Karup’s desk which is now blocking the observer/reader’s view (the picture is in close-up and it coincides with the size of the frame). This picture resounds in its irony. The text accompanying it as well as Karup’s monologue on the following page are all about law, order and moral values (of course Karup represents the law, contrary to Blacksad and company who sow disorder and anarchy), but even if we are only at the beginning of the plot and thus lacking many elements concerning Karup’s past, the reader/observer already suspects that something is not working under Karup’s own roof. While Karup is busy preaching the white Anglo-Saxon myth of correct civil conduct (supported by the other pictures on his desk: Karup celebrating the American barbecue scene with his friends, Karup with the young boys of his church chorus),21 we come to see closely that Huk (Karup’s right hand) is hugging Karup’s wife (in the picture) in a way that seems more than just friendly. We assume that the young lady in the picture is no other than Karup’s wife, for they are playing complementary roles as exemplary hosts. The message depicted in the image creates such an antagonism in relation to the credo being stated by Karup, that Weekly ‘wrongly’ concludes that the young lady in the picture is not Karup’s wife but his daughter. 3.4. The second scene22 illustrating the interplay between verbal and iconographic language is that in which Blacksad confronts Oldsmill, the White business tycoon, about the latter’s potential involvement in Kayleigh’s kidnapping. In the first frame of the last sequence of page 20, Blacksad motivates his decision to follow Oldsmill’s son as a lead in the kidnapping. The illustrator does not expose Oldsmill’s son yet. Instead, we see a significant number of balls that went missing during a tennis game. We understand immediately that the one responsible for the many missed balls is Oldsmill’s adversary, because in the previous image we see Oldsmill serving. Together with the onomatopoeic ‘‘poc’’ accompanying the force of the serving seen clearly in the scene, the missed balls function as a cataphoric element to Oldsmill’s son.23 When we finally get to see Oldsmill’s son, we are tempted to consider the ‘missed balls’ scene as a metaphor for the ‘‘missed’’, mentally handicapped son: Many balls on your court and one more in the process of being missed do not predict good news. Indeed, two frames later in the same sequence we get to see Oldsmill’s son, called by his very own progenitor déchet (‘‘waste’’). In this frame Oldsmill explains what Blacksad and the observer understand immediately: A ‘waste’ such as this cannot be Kayleigh’s father nor can he conduct any complex operation of the kind needed in abduction. On the next page, Oldsmill discloses his theory regarding the degradation of The line, a situation having to do, in his opinion, with the presence of the colored mob in the district. In the last image of the second sequence, Blacksad, who leaves a spot of dirt on the white tiger’s white sport outfit after having picked up one of Oldsmill’s son’s missed balls which landed on the clay court, says to Oldsmill that ‘‘sometimes the mixture turns out well’’, a verbal message supported by the spot, testimony of the mixture between color and white, that when it comes to clothing it may be annoying, but when it comes to living creatures the advantages – the improvement of species and the prevention of the procreation of handicapped creatures consequent to unions within the family (endogamy) – are too obvious. The next image anticipates the insult received by Oldsmill in the last sequence. The impact of his emotions is proportional to both the impact of his serving and that of his son missing the ball (again!), and this is supported by calligraphy: The size and the width of the fonts (‘‘POC!’’), modified from the previous page, transmit emotivity.24 The perlocutionary effect consequent to Blacksad’s suggestion is silently but clearly supported also by Oldsmill’s expression of contained anger. This would be an example of Saville-Troike’s (1985:6) claim: ‘‘As with speech, silent communicative acts may be analyzed as having both illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect. . ., although here we clearly cannot use ‘locution’ in its usual sense’’. 18 Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005:10–11). Also available at: http://www.google.co.il/imgres?imgurl=http://p3.images22.51img1.com/6000/yuoasis/ 3919f025f783b026744fac0bb4d8579d.jpg&imgrefurl=http://youa.baidu.com/item/b86a513297a1593e8230ed4e&usg=__1BTIUR74AR530aNbDa4AEUyL C3g=&h=600&w=428&sz=100&hl=en&start=149&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=HKOjXcS_X8clhM:&tbnh=135&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblacksad%2Barctic% 2Bnation%26start%3D140%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26newwindow%3D1%26sa%3DN%26rlz%3D1T4RNWN_en___IL278%26ndsp%3D20%26tbs%3Disch:1. 19 Let’s recall (see footnote 3) that in comics, motion is produced between the frames by closure. 20 Another silent testimony of Weekly’s curious nature. 21 According to Barthes (1973), a myth is a means through which a culture explains or grasps a certain reality. The myth exists prior to the moment in which it was taken in picture or, in the case of comics, before it was revived by the illustrator. 22 Pages 20–21. Also available at: http://www.google.co.il/imgres?imgurl=http://img47.imageshack.us/img47/7599/55422971pg6.jpg&imgrefurl=http:// blacksadmania.xooit.com/t137-Quels-personnages-pour-la-serie-3-des-mini-bustes-Attakus.htm&usg=__BnLfCyjhbWwwNESiY1Cj-VBAYtg=&h=154&w= 115&sz=8&hl=en&start=131&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=voZCpqXR7RC14M:&tbnh=96&tbnw=72&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblacksad%2Boldsmill%2Bson%26start %3D120%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26newwindow%3D1%26sa%3DN%26rlz%3D1T4RNWN_en___IL278%26ndsp%3D20%26tbs%3Disch:1. 23 Let’s remember the importance of ‘‘closure". According to McCloud (1994:88), ‘‘comics ask the mind to work as a sort of in-betweener filling the gaps between panels as an animator might’’. For him, closure is the ‘‘grammar" of comics. 24 More on calligraphy (lettering): When Huk preaches his racial theories to the crowds (pp. 6–7), we understand that he raises his voice both from the expression of his face and the calligraphy becoming bigger and wider. Calligraphy becomes more voluminous than usually in order to reflect the amplitude of the voice. In other words, the form of writing is iconographic and reflects the magnitude of the voice as well as the pathos of the orator. See also pages 34–39. On page 39, when Huk shouts ‘‘Find him’’, we can actually feel his husky voice: the calligraphy is not homogeneous anymore, suggesting that the fox is having trouble to control his voice.
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According to Fiske (1990:10) a message with a low level of predictability, i.e. an anthropic message, is of very high informativity.25 We find many such pictorial messages in Blacksad. If the reader/observer pays attention to them, they may become clues for the decoding of the mystery. For example: - The message that the young lady figuring in the pictures on Karup’s desk is his wife and ‘not’ his daughter.26 - The white spot on Dinah’s chest.27 This is a detail whose importance escapes both Blacksad and the reader in real time, but that will become crucial to the solving of the mystery after Blacksad, but not the reader, will scrutinize the pictures secretly taken by Weekly and portraying intimate moments shared by Karup’s wife and Huk. This is of course the moment in which Blacksad solves the case (due to the spot, he understands Dinah and Karup’s wife are sisters despite the difference of color). We realize this is indeed the moment because of the close-up on his facial expression, revealing his deductive skills, and this is as well the moment in which the reader’s and Blacksad’s roads split, since the reader does not get to see the content of these pictures.28 The message that Blacksad gets from the pictures is anthropic (for the private eye, but not for the reader), and is at the same time the last key needed to solve the case. In fact, Blacksad’s expression of surprise while looking at the intimate pictures and the zoom technique chosen by the illustrator serve as an index to Blacksad’s deduction. The index shows clearly without the need of telling, and this silence or, at least, ‘expression by non-verbal means’ intensifies our suspense by leaving us in a state of indecisiveness with many questions remaining open (what did Blacksad understand that we haven’t?). - A message having a low level of predictability and high informativity is the one connected to the fact that Dinah is the sister of Karup’s wife: Dinah is black, Mrs Karup is white. The revelation is made by the reader/observer on p. 49,29 information supplied only at the iconographic level. Blacksad comes to this understanding before the reader, two pages earlier, so for him there is redundancy. If we borrow from Barthes (1980) the notions of studium and punctum in photography,30 relevant to our domain as well,31 in the black stain on p. 49, we will identify that very element responsible for the creation of punctum. The black stain on the chest carefully hidden by Jezabel from the rest of the world, for it is not only an object but also and mostly a symbol, includes the essence of a narrative dealing with tension between black and white. Through it the observer finally reaches his/her own private understanding a minute before Jezabel reveals to the detective the origin and the stages of her own mission of revenge, to which her stain is an everlasting reminder. Finally, we cannot neglect the role of stereotypes in creating meaning. Stereotypes are very efficient to the narrative because they communicate in an economic way.32 The usage of stereotypes is current on the textual level but they are apparent also on the visual level, thus conveying additional meaning in perfect silence. For instance, the protagonists’ shaping of character is based on visual stereotypes: Blacksad as a private eye, the femme fatal image of Karup’s wife, Oldsmill as a business tycoon. In fact, the work exploits stereotypes in a very assorted way. On the one hand, the work eternalizes the stereotype of the White as xenophobe, e.g. the textual/visual message on the road poster calling for votes for the Republican Party. We get to see there what will happen to the innocent White child if the Republicans don’t win the elections: the demonic claws shown on the poster couldn’t be there just for ornament purposes. The work also exposes stereotypes connected to Blacks as violent (thus, the Black Claws gang’s brutality does not spare the colored either). On the other hand, the reader/observer gradually understands that xenophobia is not exclusive to a specific social rank. Moreover, in the case of the Black Claws gang, whose members are a black horse, a black bull, and a black Rottweiler dog, it is interesting to notice the message the illustrator silently transmits beyond their violent rhetoric. It is true that stereotypes connected to violent gangs are being consolidated: animals bearing weapons, and their dress code which is very different from the other animals: long hair (the horse’s mane), jewelry (the bull’s earring, the horse’s chain), short leather jackets, belts with big buckles, dark sun glasses (the horse), T-shirts without ties (suggesting freedom from restraints). Yet, we cannot help paying attention to the way stereotypes are being manipulated: the bull wears an earring on his earlobe; the horse has a chain on his chest. In reality, we expect the ring to be on the bull’s nose (for control purposes). In other words, the ring, originally placed on the animal’s nose, no longer symbolizes the submission of the bull to humankind. The same is true for the horse: the chain on the horse’s back, usually helping men to conduct and control the horse, changes its place to become here a piece of jewelry which the horse bears proudly – and silently – on his chest. Tannen (1985:97) holds that ‘‘silence is the extreme manifestation of indirectness. If indirectness is a matter of saying one thing and meaning another, silence can be matter of saying nothing and 25 In contrast with a situation of redundancy (Fiske, 1990:10), i.e. a message with high predictability and therefore low information. See also Sonesson (1996/1997) for the different approaches to the issue of redundancy (or ‘expectancy’) in pictorial semiotics. 26 Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005:10–11). 27 (a) Dinah’s spot (Diaz Canales and Guarnido, 2005:14); (b) Blacksad looking at the pictures (p. 47); (c) Mrs Karup’s spot (p. 49). 28 Until that moment, Blacksad and the reader share the same opportunities to solve the mystery. 29 When we actually see the spot on Jezabel’s chest: Dinah has a white spot, Jezabel has a dark one. 30 The studium is the attraction of the observer towards the picture, the interest the observer shows towards it, his willing to analyze and understand it in relation to his subjectivity. New pictures supply a lot of studium. The punctum is that detail in the picture that attracts the attention of the observer, that brings memories, creates emotivity. The punctum is that moment at which there is creation of broader meaning, recognition, the moment in which the picture turns from just a medium to the thing itself (cf. Barthes, 1980, 2000). 31 We also deal here with the influence of the visual level on the observer (cf., too, Bourdieu, 1965 on the visual level, this time from a sociological point of view). 32 According to Amossy (1982), due to its ‘‘déjà-vu" effect, the cliché – the ‘‘height of stereotype" – plays an important role in immediate intellectual and emotional identification as well as in critical reflection. Clichés perform many other functions: for example, they speed, facilitate, orient and model the process of reading. They also serve as argumentative devices (pp. 36–37).
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meaning something’’. Undoubtedly, the pictorial – silent – messages analyzed in this section have all proven to ‘‘mean something’’, but they have also proven to ‘‘say something’’ in a certain context.33 4. Conclusion According to Philips (1985:205), interaction structured primarily through talk refers to activity in which attention is focused overwhelmingly on verbal utterances. At the other end is interaction structured through silence, referring to activity in which the participants’ attention and production and reception of messages are focused on nonverbal activity (which can be a physical one, such as dance or mime).34 In a continuum such as this, we could place comics, and graphic novels as a particular case, somewhere in the middle in the sense that both the verbal and the visual (non verbal) channels are equally important to meaning processing. This study focused on argumentative values of silences in the graphic novel. Diaz Canales and Guarnido (2005) was chosen for the purpose of illustration. We associated the concept of silence to the following situations: occurrences where the showing takes over the telling, silences occurring in the gutters (between the frames creating a sequence) and, finally, silences interacting with verbal communication – in various ways – within the frame or in a sequence. The common denominators of these silent, non-verbal messages within the frame of the graphic novel would be: (1) the fact that they all illustrate a case of Saville-Troike’s tactical-symbolic/attitudinal silence (1985:17); (2) the fact that they are dependent on context for their interpretation (Saville-Troike, 1985:11); (3) the fact that they are intentional, thus meaningful in the sense that they may be translatable into verbal propositions and are part of communication (cf. Kurzon, 1998:5–50; Saville-Troike, 1985:3–18). However, cases where silence is related to the dominance of imagery over talk are to be distinguished from those where silence occurs between frames: only the latter involve a zero signifier (which is nonetheless a mark and not a non-mark) (cf. Kurzon, 1998:6–8). Acknowledgments I thank my colleague, Dennis Kurzon, for helpful comments, and the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Haifa for their research support. References Abbott, Lawrence, 1986. Comic art; characteristics and potentialities of a narrative medium. Journal of Popular Culture 19 (4), 155–176. Amossy, Ruth, 1982. The cliché in the reading process. Sub-Stance 35, 34–45. Austin, John L., 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Clarendon, Oxford. Barthes, Roland, 1964. Eléments de Sémiologie. Le Seuil, Paris (Elements of Semiology, 1964, publ. Hill and Wang, 1968). Barthes, Roland, 1964b. The rhetoric of the image 1977. In: Barthes, Roland (Ed.), Image – Music – Text. Fontana, London. Barthes, Roland, 1973. Mythologies. Paladin, London. Barthes, Roland, 1977. Image – Music – Text. Trans. S. Heath. Fontana, London. Barthes, Roland, 1980. La Chambre Claire. Le Seuil, Paris. Barthes, Roland, 2000. In: Howard, Richard (transl. Eds.), Camera Lucida. Vintage, London (originally published in 1980). Bergman, Mats, 2000. Reflections on the role of the communicative sign in semeiotic. The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy XXXVI 2, 225–254. Bignell, Jonathan, 1997. Media Semiotics: An Introduction. Manchester University Press, Manchester & New York. Bourdieu, Pierre, 1965. Un Art Moyen: Essai sur les Usages Sociaux de la Photographie. Minuit, Paris. Diaz Canales, Juan, Guarnido, Juanjo, 2005 [2003]. Blacksad: Arctic-Nation. Dargaud, Paris. Dillon, George L., 1999. In: Art and the Semiotics of Images: Three Questions about Visual Meaning. Conference, University of Birmingham, July 1999, http:// faculty.washington.edu/dillon/rhethtml/signifiers/sigsave.html. Eco, Umberto, 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Eisner, Will, 1997. La Bande Dessinée Art Séquenciel. Vertige Graphic, Paris. Fiske, John, 1990. Introduction to Communication Studies, 2nd ed. Routledge, London & New York. Groensteen, Thierry, 1999. Système de la Bande Dessinée. PUF Collection Formes sémiotiques, Paris. Groensteen, Thierry, 2005. La Bande Dessinée, une Littérature Graphique. Les Essentiels Milan, Toulouse. Groensteen, Thierry, Peeters, Benoît (Eds.), 1994. To¨pffer – l’Invention de la Bande Dessinée. Hermann, Paris. Jaworski, Adam, 1993. The Power of Silence: Social and Pragmatic Perspectives. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, London, New Delhi. Kohn, Ayelet, 2003. A comic story a song and a press article: three models of image/text. In: Ben Shahar, Rina, Toury, Gideon (Eds.), Hebrew, A Living Language, vol. 3. Hakibutz Hamehuhad, Tel Aviv, pp. 167–189. Kress, Gunther, Van Leeuwen, Theo, 1996. Reading Images – The Grammar of Visual Design. Routledge, London. Kurzon, Dennis, 1998. Discourse of Silence. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, PA. Marlin, Randal, 1989. Propaganda and the ethics of persuasion. International Journal of Moral and Social Studies 4, 37–72. McCloud, Scott, 1994. Understanding Comics The invisible Art. Kitchen Sink Press for Harper Collins Publishers, New York. Mitchell, W.J.T., 1986. Iconology: Image, Text Ideology. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. Mitchell, W.J.T., 1994. Picture Theory. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. Noth, Winfred, 1995. SRB insights: can pictures lie? The Semiotic Review of Books, vol. 6 (2). http://www.chass.toronto.edu/epc/srb/srb/articles.html. Parmentier, Richard J., 1985. Signs’ place in medias Res: Peirce’s concept of semiotic mediation. In: Mertz, Elizabeth, Parmentier, Richard J. (Eds.), Semiotic Mediation: Sociocultural and Psychological Perspectives. Academic Press, Orlando, San Diego, New York, London, Toronto, Montreal, Sydney & Tokyo. Peeters, Benoît, 1998. Case, Planche, Récit. Comment Lire la Bande Dessinée. Casterman, Paris. 33 In this respect, it is possible to refer to yet another type of silence which was not developed per se in the present paper but which definitely corresponds to silence: that of implied meanings. 34 Cf. also Jaworski (1993:7–8), who holds that ‘‘silence requires high participation involvement and a lot of filling in of information to be fully understood and interpreted".
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Peeters, Benoît, 2003. Lire la Bande Dessinée. Flammarion, Paris. Peirce, Charles S., 1931–1958. Collected Papers. Vols. 1–6. Ed. Hartshorne, Charles, Weiss, Paul; vols. 7–8 Ed. Burks, Arthur W. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Philips, Susan U., 1985. Interaction structured through talk and interaction structured through silence. In: Tannen, Deborah, Saville-Troike, Muriel (Eds.), Perspectives on Silence. Ablex, New Jersey. Pomier, Frédéric, 2005. Comment Lire la B.D. Klincksieck, Paris. Poyatos, Fernando, 1981. Forms and functions of nonverbal communication in the novel: a new perspective of the author–character–reader relationship. In: Kendon, Adam, Sebeok, Thomas A., Umiker-Sebeok, Jean (volume editors), Nonverbal Communication, Interaction and Gesture: Selections from Semiotica. Mouton Publishers, The Hague, Paris, New York. Searle, John, 1969. Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Saville-Troike, Muriel, 1985. The place of silence in an integrated theory of communication. In: Tannen, Deborah, Saville-Troike, Muriel (Eds.), Perspectives on Silence. Ablex, New Jersey. Searle, John, 1979. A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In: Expression and Meaning, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–29. Sonesson, Go¨ran, 1992a. Comment le Sens Vient aux Images: Un Autre Discours de la Méthode. In: Carani, Marie (Ed.), De l’Histoire de l’Art à la Sémiotique Visuelle. Les Nouveaux Cahiers du CE?LAT. Les éditions du Septentrion, Québéc, pp. 29–84. Sonesson, Go¨ran, 1992b. The semiotic function and the genesis of pictorial meaning. In: Tarasti, Eero (Ed.), Proceedings from the 3rd Annual Meeting and Congress of The International Semiotics Institute. Center/Periphery in Representations and Institutions, Imatra, Finland, July, 1990. International Semiotics Institute. Imatra, pp. 211–256, pp. 16–21. Sonesson, Go¨ran, 1996/1997. Approches to the Lifeworld Core of Pictorial Rhetoric. In: Visio. La Revue de l’Association Internationale de Semiótique Visuelle, vol. 1 (3) pp. 49–76. Tannen, Deborah, 1985. Silence: anything but. In: Tannen, Deborah, Saville-Troike, Muriel (Eds.), Perspectives on Silence. Ablex, New Jersey. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell, Oxford. Silvia Adler is a senior lecturer in French Linguistics at the University of Haifa. She received her doctoral degree from Tel Aviv University in 2002 with a dissertation on ellipsis in prepositional environments. Her current research interests include ellipsis as well as other strategies of linguistic economy, lexicalization, simple and compound prepositions, scalarity, intensification, prepositional quantifiers, and argumentation in comics.