Week 2 | Comic Theory
7:32 PM
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
Scott McCloud presented a quite thorough look at comics and how they influence us.
Perhaps my favorite point he made was about how much we relate to characters on the scale of reality and abstraction. As a child, I always felt odd that I was never quite interested in movies or shows that weren't animated, but it reassuring now that McCloud shines some light on why that is so. When a character is rendered realistically, there is little room for interpretation in who that character is. However, the more abstracted a character becomes, the easier the reader can infuse their own subconsciousness on them (whoa!). That is why when things are cartoony, but uncomfortably realistic at the same time (I'm looking at you Polar Express and TinTin), we venture into Uncanny Valley where we just don't know how we are supposed to feel anymore.
The best example to illustrate his point: Kingsglaive Final Fantasy XV.
Kingsglaive: The most unnecessary 2 hour cutscene
Kingsglaive is a CG movie released last July as a multimedia expansion of Final Fantasy XV (why this is a ridiculous concept is a whole other topic). The visuals are, admittedly, pretty gosh darn amazing, but...
...they are just too real...
So real, in the end of things, I could care less about most of these characters. To be fair, I haven't watched the whole movie, so I can't beat down on the movie too hard. But if you tried to ask me what happened in those 12 minutes of the movie, I'd just say there were some pretty explosions and big monsters doing cool things. If you asked me who the main character's name was, I don't even think I could tell you who the main character was, less so their name. The characters are so realistic, it's hard to evoke any empathy from me. Which is strange, you'd assume something so lifelike would be easier to relate to, but in the end, the opposite is true.
Like McCloud says, things that are more abstract tend to be more relatable to the viewer. Things that are realistic leave no room for the mind to reach closure, because the closure is already right there. That's why I think what comics and cartoons are able to achieve is pretty awesome.
0 comments