Week 2: COMICS AS GRAPHIC NOVELS

Week 2 : Comics as graphic novels

What does Baetons (2001) mean by ‘monstration’, ‘graphiation’ and the ‘graphiateur’’?

In ‘Revealing Traces,’ author Jan Baetens wrote a comparison analysis about Philippe Marions study ‘Traces en cases,’ and contrasted it to other authors that have similarly participated about issues regarding comics.

In this analysis, Baetens discusses Marions study about the elements of comics, and explains how they belong to three domains: the images, the captions, and as she noted “the marks which are neither directly part of the image nor part of the captions, such as for instance the form of the balloons or that of the panel frames.” It is important to know that for the purpose of the study, Marion treats all three domains as a single field, and called it ‘Mediagenius.’ The author also mentions that Marion

“…Designates the way in which the three notions of style, storytelling, and medium are inevitably and necessarily intertwined and mutually dependant. None of these three elements can be defined without reference to the other two, and this is a crucial shift in semiotic analysis, where style and storytelling are often considered an almost mechanical result of the dominant features of a medium.”

Baetens supports Marion’s view about incorporating all three elements as the main ingredient in semiotic analysis. Marion’s breaks down of the comic strip’s elements basic formation as two forms of semiotic enunciations: narrative and visual enunciation. Marion points out that unlike semiotics, in comics, “the enunciator is of course the narrator” and also a “graphic artist.” In order to distinguish the two, Marion describes the graphic and narrative enunciation of comics as a ‘Graphiation,’ and the agent responsible for it is the ‘Graphiateur.’

According to Baetens, every drawing bears some form of graphiation, “or the specific enunciative act uttered by the author or agent when he or she makes the drawings.” Marion examined these graphiation’s by using two key features in his approach. First, he believes that the most important characteristic that matters is the impression felt by the reader, and “not the technique used by the actual author.” Second, he does not treat graphiation’s as a separate type of narration, but as a “subordinate.”

Furthermore, Baetens points out Marions reference from “Andre Gauldreault’s ‘Du litteraire au filmique,’” about the theory of Monstration. Gauldreault’s theory states that monstration is, “the narrative instance of a film the ‘image narrator’ or ‘great image-maker’ (“le grand imagier”), and to analyze the specific narrative situation of movies as the hierarchical combination of several types of narration.”

Marion argues that in comics, ‘monstration’ should be further analyzed to establish a new distinction between it and ‘graphiation.’ Marion also underlines that Gaudraeult’s concept of monstration “cannot be transposed mechanically to the field of comics, since monstration in comics is far from having the same figurative transparency as in film.” Marion’s unique views have introduced new terms to the comic strip dictionary. In this case, he believes that “elements which are neither narrate nor shown (‘mostrated’) but are drawn (‘graphiated’).

Finally, after conducting an analysis about graphic styles in comic strips, Baetens asserts that the most advantageous elements of Marion’s theory are the understanding of graphiation, the ability to differentiate the comic strip’s various aspects, and to bring together characteristics that are usually divided, such as the image and text. If it were not for Marion’s precise and detailed attention to differentiation, words such as graphiation, graphiateur, and graphiated would not even be alive today.

Reference:

- Baetens, J. (2001). Revealing traces: a new theory of enunciation. In The language of comics: word and image (pp. 145-155). Jackson, MS: Univ. Press of Mississippi.

- Varnum, R., & Gibbons, C. T. (2002). The language of comics: word and image. Jackson, LA, MS: University Press of Mississippi.