in the manga section the other day, i remembered the complaint of americans who say 'it all looks the same'. ironically, i felt it all looked different - too different. i bemoaned the lack of objectivity, of standardization. but i felt the same way when i moved into the american section and i wondered if there was something inherent in comics, or in drawings, that, compared with other mediums, is inhospitable for standardization.
'empire' by andy warhol is a long single take of the empire state building. there is a minimalism involved and there is an objectivity involved. there is subjectivity as well, as in all things, but this does not exclude the objectivity involved.
this objectivity is the result of a faith in science. a person who has faith in christianity understands christianity to be an objective viewpoint. this is not to say they don't believe it is subjective as well, that they are unique in their faith in this objectivity, just that this objectivity exists. objectivity is faith.
because i believe in science i believe there is an objectivity involved in mechanical processes. photography, film, and video are recorded by mechanical processes and therefore these recordings are objectively, to some degree, recorded. drawings, on the other hand, are recorded by humans. drawings have no claim to objectivity, except for those who have faith in humans. some people have faith in all humans, and for these people all drawings involve objectivity. some people have faith in some humans, and not other humans, and for these people some drawings involve objectivity, (an 'ecstatic truth'?) and some do not.
hollywood now has two main styles of filmmaking, one being the documentary 'realistic' style, the other being the cgi 'comic' style. increasingly, these two styles are employed in tandem, creating a hyperrealistic comic reality.
american comics, once vehicles for visualizing the interiority of characters, now, in deference to hollywood's monetary influence, perhaps, primarily visualize the exterior. thought balloons and narrative voice are left behind in favor of 'realism', but there is nothing more objective about physical reality than interior reality, since interior reality (thoughts, dreams, etc) has been recorded in the physical realm (MRI, etc) and has been physically expressed by most, if not all, of humanity. empirical data for an interior reality has weight, i'm guessing, in the science community.
objectivity is standardization of faith-based systems. because film, photography, and video have standards (a low number of brand names), and drawing has so many standards (perhaps as many as there are drawers) that it has no standards, film, photography, and video are trusted, by those who have faith in science (faith in the inanimate object?), to record objectively, and drawing is not.
aside from frank santoro's longbox curation - (re)presenting comics as comics - and some single pages/works by various creators, objective recording of comics, in a reality-by-consensus sense of the word, is nonexistant. facebook, however, is words and pictures constructing a seemingly arbitrary narrative, with no single author, and a militantly standardized method of recording.
33 comments:
What are you talking about?
I can't really make sense of what you're trying to get at here, but faith, in general, would not be required if there were some kind of objective proof on offer. Christians don't necessarily believe in the Christ narrative in the same way that you or I believe a pound weighs a pound. They're suggesting that there are other ways to know Truth than by material proof.
Science, which is a system of measures— a practice/process— that seeks to describe the physical world, has built-in requirements that are meant to leave no doubts. Having "faith" in science, is like saying you have belief in inches, or in cinder blocks.It's tool for determining material truth, nothing more. It doesn't posit anything that requires faith or "belief".That's the entire point.
But really, you lost me with the manga stuff. Surely, both kinds of comics you write about are pretty homogenous. It's just not true to say that a lot of manga doesn't look a like. Black Americans would agree with me, so there.
But, the whole subjective/objective thing is just baffling...
Can you try to flesh it out more?
i edited out 'white'
i haven't edited this at all, really
i haven't actually read this yet
faith in science, i think, is faith in an objective standard for recording material reality
'pentax provides an objective record' is as much a faith-based statement as 'genesis provides an objective record'
i think
i know there is some trap in relativistic thinking that i tend to fall in
maybe 'relativism is absolute' or something
hyperlinked 'facebook'
I guess the problem with objectivity is that there's so much stuff out there to measure and record that it's hard to know what constitutes "reality." There's always POV involved. Is "Empire" objective? The idea of involving a NY icon is subjective. So is the medium of BW film (does it look like any reality you've witnessed?). So is the cropping. So is time (It was shot at a faster fps than projected). So is the lack of sound. I think Warhol was possibly critiquing objectivity. I think it's false to think that mechanical devices allow us to reconstruct reality. Film seems more objective than drawing because it is supposed that in looking at a photograph we are viewing the actual visual stimuli we would've been presented with had we been there at the time of its recording instead of those stiumli being mediated and boxed in by whatever recording device was used. There is faith in that verisimilitude (because it looks so much more similar to what we see than painting or drawing), but there is always a huge degree of filtering.
Is it additive (comics) vs subtractive (non-CGI or non-animated film)? Both of which are highly subjective.
There's something about spontaneity that can seem objective to me in the sense that it is not recording anything other than its coming into existence.
I have trouble with a lot of your phrasing because of your reliance of metaphysical binaries such as interior/exterior,objective/subjective, science/faith... The problem with that sort of thinking is that you start essentializing constructs that are more or less fluid. I agree with most of your ideas but not your point of entry.
When it all boils down to it, what we consider 'objectivity' is founded on an essentialization of systems rising from systems of arbitrary couplings of signs and signifiers. We will never come to a true consensus on what constitutes meaning is constantly deferred in our reliance on constructs (language, media, value systems) to elucidate constructs. Language and media make constructs that are irreducibly complex more straightforward than they really are. This is both their weaknesses and strength. 'Essence' is what is elusive, not objectivity.
Of course, we need to draw the line at where the deferral of meaning ends - this is where your need for standardization comes in. For clarity's sake, language is useful for drawing that line. The medium is pretty much the message because it determines the constant in constructs in a constant state of flux. The film medium is what engenders meaning in Warhol's Empire.
In a world where meaning is engendered by language (may it be visual, verbal or otherwise) we have to be aware that the search for truth and the search for clarity are two very different things. The former is constantly elusive and the latter is attainable only by default or through conceit. The constant elusiveness of essence is where the need for faith comes in.
@jason i think objectivity and subjectivity can coexist
i was thinking of using the additive/subtractive binary, and talking about my feelings re 'fantastic mr. fox', but it seems to imply, in my mind, 'adding to or subtracting from' 'reality'
@manosturbo i like your comment
can you clarify re 'clarity', 'truth', and 'essence'?
i don't think i validated objective/subjective or science/faith binaries
Jesus Austin. It was so obviously a joke I don't know how you could've thought otherwise. Blaise edited out a bit where he wrote that "White Americans" thought manga looked the same. I thought that was silly and made fun of it.
"I think it's false to think that mechanical devices allow us to reconstruct reality. "
I agree with that. Really, what Blaise is after is something that looks/feels "objective", I think.
Blaise- I think people do have a form of faith in science, but I'd argue that it's misplaced. A lot of Christian apologists ( and some philosophy types) use the term "Scientism" to describe that faith.
The idea is that Materialism doesn't really do much to erase religious thought, but instead misdirects it, or creates a vacuum for this new faith to fill.That's why Communist States have always needed to create idols out of heads of state, and offer utopian solutions instead of notions of transcendence.
in a kind of free market liberalism like ours, scientism essentially becomes a New Age gospel, where everything you think is awesome, science will someday bring you and everything that is bad it will destroy. It's kind of the ultimate get out of jail free card, cause you can claim it's "scientific" and therefore beyond real scrutiny.
science is not absolute
it can be manipulated
Well, people can manipulate scientific findings, sure, by misrepresenting them. But if it's not done according to the methodology, it's psuedo-science.It's false.
"But if it's not done" - I mean that if the science itself is not done according to methodological requirements.
hey luke. yeah sorry, my mistake! i figured it had somethin to do with what blaise edited out. ma culpa.
my fault
The a-bomb did not subjectively go off in Hiroshima.
sheesh louise
Ian - do you mean that there is an objective reality? Or that science allows us to develop technologies that wouldn't have come into existence without the application of some systematic methodology over established fact? Was Hitler applying science? Is the actuality of the aftermath of Hiroshima or the Holocaust evidence of the non-existence of subjectivity?
By the way, Ray - rad comment! Blaise, not sure I'm disagreeing with you.
The idea of the difference between "subjectivity" and "objectivity" is a semantics argument, in a way - it's based on how you present those terms and what you're talking about.
I'm getting sort of frustrated with Blaise's approach to writing. It's almost like it's uncool to simply state your case. why not, ' I've encountered this problem, are these good ways to approach it?'. It's like it would defeat the spacey art-guy posture he's been working on or something..
And please, Blaise, don't tell me that you're not capable of writing this stuff out in more coherent ways. It's just not true. You prefer to remain aloof to such concerns because they make demands on you you don't want to meet.
He's setting us off on these tangents where we all sort of can get at things that interest us, but it just takes that energy and diffuses it, as none of us can really use the texts he writes.
I think this blog needs to reassess what it's mission is.
Pardon my pedantry, but: "Empire" is not a "single take".
Jason, there is an objective reality and there is of course the subjective interpretation of reality. Where things get muddy is in the semantic game of trying to pin down the objective reality via subjective experience. My point was that being vaporized in an atomic attack requires none of the five senses. Your existence is no more, with absolute certainty. The problem with post-modern thinking is that you never get to deconstruct the bullet that's got your name on it.
The reason I thought up the bomb analogy was that I was watching a show about Oppenheimer and the first a-bomb test. If there was ever faith in science played out with starkly real consequences it was that moment. The mechanics of a a-bomb are totally invisible. They only exist to the perception of man as a equation on a piece of paper. The thing works though, and in a way that negates subjectivity.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
In many ways the opposite of Clarke's famous law is true with regard to scientists. I think it's easy when you're involved in that process to have tunnel vision and see only the mechanics of the process. It's easy to lose sight of the content and only see the form in a way that's antithetical to the perception of the layman who only sees the results and is mystified by the science.
Also, my original point was just that it can be dangerous to presume that you are witnessing an objective record of a phenomenon when that isn't possible.
I like comics partially because of the crank aspect I've talked about before, where it's painfully obvious that you're presenting a subjective interpretation of your world, but I've been getting somewhat tired of my own tics lately. I like, also, the tradition of utilizing devices (Aames guide, ruler...) or methods to take the cartoonist's hand out of the picture, to make things seem more mechanical or standardized. It's a way of limiting what they're presenting as subjective, their style.
with movies and photographs theres all this conjecture about what is real or did that shot look real or does gollum look real
but with drawing and comics there is never this question of reality
fans expect mainstream comics to be 'realistic' to some degree
mainstream comics are routinely criticized for 'unrealistic portrayals of women' for example...
mentioning 'ecstatic truth'
and especially hyperlinking it
fills my heart with warmth
i am serious
you knowwwwwwww
http://tinyurl.com/artschoolconffanfic
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