Homework 10 - "Is Anime Art?"

Recent events in the Computer Animation department have caused a wave of thinking among the programs’ students, primarily in reference to anime and its place in the Western world of animation. Without divulging into the details, it was made clear to the students that not only that the faculty adamantly believes anime and manga have no place in their students’ work whatsoever, but additionally that the genre isn’t a successful form of art at all due to its “repetitive nature”. Stereotypically referring to art students and anime, it is perhaps understandable where the hesitation for the style may come from, but especially after reading Osamu Tezuka’s “Phoenix” I believe it is impossible and unreasonable to box an entire genre of art into one label as “good” or “bad” media, and that this genre is undeniably a form of art.

“Phoenix” is a beautifully constructed story that demands the reader to question what it means to experience life as a human, told through expressively bold artwork that evokes feelings that the reader is perhaps not familiar with, but understands.

When Leon is first brought back to life after falling from the air car, his journey back into the world of the living is jarring and disruptive from the calm that death brought. The straight lines across the panels are interrupted by Leon’s presence as the two try to coexist in the same space.

Even page to page, the novel emits extremely different vibes and styles to evoke different feelings. From highly exaggerated goofy drawings to show how inhumane the people appear, to heavy stitched lines emphasizing the weight and anger the characters feel, and again to warped angles and stretched anatomy to stress the pace of the story moment, there is nothing “repetitive” about this work at all.

Even within just one section of one series, “Phoenix” provides more than enough evidence to the versatility of the anime and manga art style with a unique art direction that serves its story effectively and uniquely.

Homework 9 - What makes international comics different?

To an American reader, a lot of international comics appear to have a very different feeling to their content compared to the works in the United States. While reading through a variety of stories from European countries, I sought to theorize on the main difference in the stories that emerge from these two continents, and why there seems to be such a difference in style that can be picked up on in certain types of stories. After contemplating the contrast, I’ve discovered a potential reasoning for the development in styles, which may be the result of the difference in the economics of creating comics between these cultures.

A primary element in European comics that characterizes the stories is the unapologetic lack of censorship across the board over various mediums. While obviously present in American comics, the European comics had a pattern of featuring sex, drugs, and/or violence for just the sake of doing so. While such approaches to the stories might ward away American customers, European comics use it to their benefit to appeal to their own audiences as an unapologetic art form.

Another element of European comics is the free-form way of storytelling that often appears in comics, as there seems to be a priority of the art direction over a concise story plot. Many of the styles even in serialized stories appears experimental and beautifully detailed, and are given compositional and story priority.

Due to this, it can be difficult to create a market for serialized comics as the attention to detail would be time-consuming and nearly impossible to keep producing on a constant basis. While American comics and films rely on the selling of merchandise and consistent media production, European comics seem to expect more patience from their consumers, resulting in a style of comics that focuses on producing high-quality artwork with themes that push boundaries.

Homework 8 - Stereotypes and moving forward

In all likelihood, most people have experienced a period of their life where they are on a daily basis affected by stereotypes and societal pressures without any awareness of their presence. Whether that effect may exacerbate our privilege or become detrimental to our personal identity, there is little doubt that people and their desire to “fit in” have effects on others. In various forms of media, this gives a lot of potential power from creators to shape the culture of their audience and their own interpretations of themselves. Only recently has the notion of this power been relayed to society on a mass level and although individuals react to this in different ways, the awareness that this has brought is ushering in a completely newfound way of thinking and perhaps the most healing way of thought.

As an example of “healing reteaching”, Pop Culture Detective is a personal favorite channel to watch due to the creator’s patient and careful explanations of harmful stereotypes in media. Soon after watching his videos for the first time several months ago, I realized that I was suddenly looking at entertainment and storytelling through a bit of a different lens than before. “Adorkable Misogyny” in particular was a significant help in realizing the behavior I was not only condoning in television, but also in reality.

I have a lot of hope for the future; not necessarily in terms of people changing their discriminatory views, for new types will always emerge with time, but hope towards the ones who are affected. Being able to gain an understanding and skill set of the world they live in is a powerful mechanism not just for protecting oneself against what we’re exposed to, but also to move forward in consistently new and better ways.

Culture Comics 1: A Brief Introduction & History

Growing up visiting Czech Republic every summer, a large part of that experience was sitting in my parents’ childhood homes and reading the comics they grew up with. It served as a great reading exercise in a language I wasn’t as familiar with, along with an opportunity to bond with my parents over a shared interest. Being a part of this class inspired me to think back on these stories and revisit them as an adult, hoping to learn not just more about the artists and stories, but also the circumstances under which they were created and perhaps the impact that Czech comics in general had on my parents’ and my own culture.

For this first response, I wanted to start with a historical understanding of Czech comic productions. Generally speaking, Czech comics had an intriguing cultural shift when the country went through the Stalinist era, resulting in a multitude of varied actions taken between artists. Some stopped production altogether, others changed their cartoons in order to keep their publications, and some even continued to produce their work while unchanging its content, being faced with bans or potential incarceration. Through the 1950s to 60s, comics were completely outlawed as an anti-socialist medium, but by the 1970s was used as a vessel for propaganda.

Evidently a large portion of early Czech comics featured stories already discussed in class, but the first highly successful Czech series was titled Rychlé šípy, translated to “fast arrows”, published in a magazine titled Young Herald beginning in 1938. Although published nearly 80 years ago, the tale is fondly remembered by Czech people born during the late 1960's - an interesting phenomenon, considering the comic was banned three different times. Due to its resemblance to American Boy Scouts, the story was banned for the first time in 1941, and made disappearances and reappearances until banned permanently by 1971. This lead to its popularity spanning generations, and still fondly remembered by those generations today. On the other end of the political spectrum, the children’s comic Ferda Mravenec is an example of a story modified for political propaganda, which completely changed its characters to reflect a “model USSR citizen”.

Another extremely important comic to Czech culture is called Čtyřlístek, the “Lucky Four”, which revolves around four anthropomorphic characters facing a variety of adventures. It was the only published comic for an extended period of time and the only one that continues to be published to this day, and the only one to survive the so-called comic crash of 1993.

Since Czech Republic’s attainment of political freedom, comics had become almost non-influential on Czech culture until 2000, after the market had gained some stability and artists were finding opportunities to publish once more.

The history of comics in Czech serves as a fascinating tool to show the powerful impact that comics can have on generations not despite of, but because of political influence. I look forward to engaging in more of my cultural history, and gaining a new appreciation for the art form that I grew up with.


Resources:

-https://www.radio.cz/en/section/in-focus/study-traces-czech-comics-evolution-from-lowbrow-to-respected-medium
- Parent’s recounting of events and stories

Homework 7 - Maus: The Power of Visualization & Materialism

While reading Maus, there were two central ideas that piqued my attention, and I wanted to cover both topics in separate sections of writing.

Part 1: The Power of Visualization to Propel Comics as an Art and as Literature

It’s the subtle design and visual choices that make Art Spiegelman’s Maus succeed as a comic portrayal of his father’s intense and saddening life story. Spiegelman makes it clear from the first page that there is an intent to provide visual metaphors into the story by clearly stating the visual device of portraying Jewish individuals as mice, Polish as pigs, and Nazi Germans as cats. While this is the most prominent visual choice in Maus, it is the effect of these appearances that provides an insight into the experience of living through this event. From the very beginning this shows how much of a target the Jewish people have on their backs, which is extended through visuals like the ones shown below:

Spiegelman uses the visual framing of feeling like a trapped mouse through illustrations that evoke terror and immediate danger in a carefully constructed maze set by those in power. The fact that the characters are portrayed in this way does not make an impact on their behaviors or the story line; as the people still act like people and do not exhibit the animalistic qualities of their drawings (a trait commonly found in pieces where characters are portrayed as animals, such as Animal Farm). By just putting on a “mask”, the people can disguise themselves as a completely different species. Instead the focus is on the situation that these metaphorical descriptions put the characters in; further strengthening the impact of the story in a way that wouldn’t have been as powerful with just words.

Spiegelman actually addresses the difficulty of exploring comic art as a medium for his father’s story as well as his doubts of the art’s ability to describe the complexity of the story. It was evident that Spiegelman had experimented in underground comics to describe the emotions he was processing after his mother’s death, which got a strong emotional reaction from not only his father but also from others around him. This shows a unique self-reflection on the author himself that admits both how little he truly understands regarding his father’s experience, as well as how experimental and potentially unsuccessful this newfound type of storytelling may be. However, Spiegelman himself realizes by the second book, as with much of the rest of the world, just how effective and powerful comic art can be as a literary and visual medium.

I believe that this is the reason why Maus was one, if not the first, graphic novel to be considered as an intellectual study, as the medium seeks to strengthen the themes of a story through what comic art had to offer, instead of using the visuals as an element primarily for entertainment.

Part 2: The Effect of Materialism on Vladek’s Psyche

Throughout both parts of Maus, there is continuous mention of Vladek’s “miser-like” behavior and his desire to hoard any and all items of his possession. Artie and Mala both discuss the potential reasoning for this behavior, but between the two of them only come to the conclusion of that just being a part of Vladek’s personality.

However, the story of Maus shows the value of materialism and monetary gain in a country that’s falling apart, as it is a major component of Vladek’s survival. There is a consistent “trading” mentality while Vladek is in the camps, and through the whole story he fully utilizes his business skills to collect enough food or money to provide for himself as well as his family. This is a very common phenomenon among those who take initiative or a leadership role in their families; a parallel I was told of in my own family in the form of stories about my grandfather who sold his original landscape paintings to secret police officers and repaired neighbor’s radios for extra supplies. Being forced into survival with nothing but your wits, it is completely reasonable that Vladek wouldn’t so much as use his own toilet paper in fear of not being able to come by any in the future.

Perhaps unaware by the author himself at the time, Vladek is not stingy or cheap for his own sake, but to insure the safety of his family. This is shown through him sending packages to Anja while in the camps, asking for boots and a belt for his friend while working as a shoe repairman, and even by returning cereal to the supermarket for another person to eat. These traits and subtle details about Vladek’s behavior makes him an extremely human character portrayed by Siegelman with a sense of truthfulness not outwardly commented upon.

Homework 6 - Underground comics are more familiar than expected

If I am to be honest, the first couple of pieces I read from the “Underground Comics” section confused me on if I was meant to find anything in the stories. Perhaps this was due to the first comic being “Air Pirates” and seeing a bit too many Mickey Mouse genitalia drawings. The vibe the entire genre gave me was a little reminiscent of the “middle school boys” mentality where it seemed that the humor or appeal was drawn entirely from strangeness, sex, or swearing.

Going a bit further into the archives, however, I was quickly surprised at how familiar some of the characters were to things and people existing in current time. It seemed as though some of the comics sought to bring light to issues from the time period through hyperbolized comedy - not unlike common day memes or jokes. I’ve heard of people comparing the millennial time period and mentality to that of the social revolution of the 1960s-1980s, and I hadn’t realized how similar those actually were until I read some of these comics.

For example, seeing this frame casually strewn in a story that had nothing to do with college except for this throwaway line, written in an almost “too casual” manner that resorts to comedy while still bringing up the issue.

This image actually made me laugh out loud as it completely reminded me of the ridiculous female anatomy in comic book drawings that became a meme where people would draw the ridiculous proportions and poses with the character Hawkeye.




After reading a variety of different genres and magazines aimed at different groups of people (for example, the LGBT+ presence), I arrived at a better understanding of the comics in this time period. Just like modern humor, it seems to make light of social issues with comedic nihilism - the moral being, people like to make things that are unexpected or out of the ordinary for shock value and for just entertainment’s sake.

As a last note, it also makes me wonder if future generations will ever write responses on modern memes...

Homework 5 - Eisner and Thompson: Emotions in Ink

Something that could be considered as the most difficult, yet also the most intuitive or instinctual, aspect of creating stories is the emotional truth of the character’s experiences and world. It may be argued as the most challenging part, as audiences are quicker to pick up on fake or unrealistic emotions and the process of creating subtle yet colorful realism falls on a delicate balance of “too much” or “not enough”, especially in the context of visual presentation. However, emotions are perhaps the most plentiful source of inspiration for creators because it’s nearly impossible to create something without implementing some form of feeling, and the most successful pieces are those that can capture the feeling of humanity.

Both Eisner and Thompson seek to convey emotions in their stories through blurring the lines between words and pictures, utilizing the strengths of ink as a medium to show a plethora of feelings from “heaviness” to “ecstasy”.

Even something as simple as the very first page already throws the reader into an intense feeling; “one” for a separated feeling loneliness among those who are physically close, but emotionally distant.

Eisner uses thick, jagged lines to emphasize the physical and emotional toll that the rain and Hersh’s grief have upon him.

By stark comparison with the loneliness of the first few pages, the second to last is full of detail, stories overlapping with the background, to show the coming together of the characters and the blend between their experiences.

Thompson’s “Blankets” also conveys strong emotions through visual presentation, though his focus tends to revolve around feelings of growing adolescence while Eisner tackles gritty adulthood in the city.

Just like the emotions expressed, the drawings are simplistic yet complex with carefully nuanced details that sweep you into each frame, as shown above with how Raina’s words radiate into Craig’s mind.

“A Contract with God” and “Blankets” are two pieces of story that individually have unique focuses, but share a strong, grounding emotional complexity told in expressive and beautiful drawings.