Rested and ready to go? Okay, here's Part 2:
Once you've finished watching, I want you to respond to the question below (in bold) as a COMMENT to this post. Just click on comments and write your own. You don't need to make a profile to do so, but if for some reason it doesn't allow you to post, you can either (a) make a Blogger profile (which is free and easy), or you can (b) e-mail your response to me with your other e-mail. If you post anonymously, be sure to put your name in the comment, otherwise I won't know who you are!
THE RESPONSE: Why do you think comics have such a tough time getting respect as a form of literature or art in our society? Is it because of the name comics (as I mentioned in the video), or some other aspect of the form? What biases do you personally have about reading comics, or what criticisms have you heard from others? If you are a comic-book reader, what comments have been directed at you by non-readers? In other words, what do you think prevents comics from being truly mainstream literature in American society?
[Note: to get credit for this, you must post a response--or e-mail it to me--so I can read it and respond to it. You lose points for every missed response, so be careful!]
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ReplyDeleteI think that because the comic art form is a marriage of visual and textual content that they can be used to communicate to people at all age levels. I think that many primary resources that are aimed at young readers use comic-like information. Periodicals like Highlight are riddled with images intermingled with text. As a reader matures they are still attracted to this form of information in things like the Sunday comics and Mad magazine. At some point as the individual continues to mature they associate their youth with these image-dependent forms of literature and categorize them as juvenile without the exploration of additional forms of comics. Yet, if you really think about it, reading the comics in the newspaper as a kid there were comics that you didn't enjoy because you didn't understand the content or if you go back and read those Mad Magazines you can see that they were actually very witty and insightful commentary of current events. I think that because so many people associate comics with their youth they just assume they are childish instead of exploring them with the lens of maturity. I can assure you that I received many a eye-rolls when I told friends and family that I would be taking a course in college in which the reading list consisted entirely of comic books. I understand that there is a stigma that comic books are for children and nerdish adults that refuse to grow up. However, I think that these critics are being too quick to judge and have yet had the opportunity to experience the right comic for them at their particular point in life. Therefore, maybe comic is more of a format rather than a genre as it could potentially represent every type of literary genre.
ReplyDeleteKari Elledge
Great response...as you suggest, just because something was encountered in childhood doesn't necessarily make it childish, especially since we didn't understand most Mad comics in childhood! Mad was written by very subversive adults, and when you go back and read it, you realize, wow, that was pretty risque! We have a strange bias in America, which is that only one type of art (painting) can be considered 'great,' while only one type of writing (novels) can be seen as 'important.' Other forms are dismissed or reviled outright. And yet other countries don't see it this way, which suggests it's culturally constructed rather than a universal truth.
DeleteCallie Farley: Why do you think comics have such a tough time getting respect as a form of literature or art in our society? Is it because of the name comics (as I mentioned in the video), or some other aspect of the form? What biases do you personally have about reading comics, or what criticisms have you heard from others? If you are a comic-book reader, what comments have been directed at you by non-readers? In other words, what do you think prevents comics from being truly mainstream literature in American society?
ReplyDeleteI think that comics are just associated with being "nerdy". Probably due to certain characters in films and tv shows liking superheros and comics and being represented as nerdy. I think many people now days think of comics and associate it with someone like Dwight Schrute. I also agree with Karli because I do think people think that it's okay for children to like them but adults shouldn't or their just juvenile. However, I like to read comics, or graphic novels. I think people would probably find that rather surprising, but really, they're just the same as a book, just in a picture format. There are many different comics or graphic novels that can be a number of different genres, not just fantasy or Sci-fi. I was gotten criticism from mostly my sister but she's one of those people that also thinks that harry potter is weird...
Yes, and Harry Potter only really became accepted once it became a movie. And the same is true with superheroes. Once we had movies of the Avengers, Batman, and even Ant Man(!), they were cool and acceptable. But when I was a teenager, it was seen as deviant behavior and a waste of time and money. For some reason, film makes everything 'serious,' which is ironic, because film was considered trash for decades as well. So why has film been rehabilitated when comics (which are older!) still aren't? Probably their association with childhood and the name itself, which suggests that they can never grow up. Even though Batman is almost 100 years old now!
DeleteComics will probably never get the same respect as other literature in out society does. Most critics comment on the fact that they are basically picture books. While they are technically not incorrect, the amount of work put into comics may be more than your typical novel. Drawing in itself is its own art-form and many people do not recognize this. Comics that have color rather than black and white go a step further in how hard a work is to produce. While comics have much less text included it is still a hard work to make. Like Callie said, reading comics has a stereotype of being nerdy attached to it. I have read many graphic novels growing up, manga to be exact. Most people find these type of books to be odd and often refer to them as books for weird kids. I do not believe that any kind of comic will be mainstream because of these stereotypes.
ReplyDeleteYes, great points...and isn't it strange that we have entire museums devoted to art, yet when someone illustrates a book it's seen as silly or childish? It's because of an ignorance of what a book should be: just words, no pictures, as if pictures are "easy" and words are "hard." Why is looking at pictures easier? Sure, there are simple pictures, but there are also simple words and books. I think manga has an even bigger stigma here because it looks so foreign to our experience of comics AND books. So a lot of people reject them entirely rather than realizing they come from an ancient tradition (going back hundreds of years) and tell very complex stories. And if comics and manga are so simple, why are so many movies today based on them? Crazy...
DeleteI think comics don't get the same form of respect as other literature works because people think they are hard to understand. I think reading a comic book makes some people feel uncomfortable because it looks different. They probably don't know if there is a specific way to read them or what to pay attention to. Also, there are many people that see comic books as picture books and they probably think they are "too smart" to be reading comic books. When we reach a certain grade in school, teachers start telling their students to stop reading picture books. Teachers say that you can't use a graphic novel to do a book report. By teachers saying that, the students sort of get this idea that comic books are not a type of informative books. I personally have never really read a comic book because our teachers never allowed it so I was never interested in them. We also did not have comic books in our school library so you would have to go to the public library to check one out.
ReplyDeleteYes, there is the idea that you start with 'comics' or picture books, and then graduate to more complex, word-only books. But I've read many, many books that are totally brainless, whereas I've read many comics that have haunted me for years and have even confused me. If pictures are so 'easy,' why do still puzzle over Kandinsky's paintings? As you suggest, this behavior is learned in school by teachers who are (sadly) ignorant of the possibilities of art and literature, and don't use the form to tap into the many possibilities of reading. It's a shame, but oh well, that's what college is for! :)
DeleteI believe the major schism between the larger public and comics in the west specifically is that their traditional target audience has always been the juvenile reader. As this population ages, so too do their tastes. I feel that most readers have a strong proclivity to move away from comics as they mature, mostly because they associate them with being childish. Evidence of this is that as graphic novels and comics have steadily become more and more satiable to an adult audience, and the movement toward them by the general public has intensified-- if not with direct contact with the media itself, at least with the subject matter. It is no accident that the highest-grossing movies of the last few years have all been superhero movies.
ReplyDeleteI personally have never been much of a comic reader. Be that as it may, I have “studied” the lore of many a favorite superhero or obscure background character on wiki sources. My bias against comics is mostly centered on the fact that when I am interested in a character's back story I don't need to read 27 years worth of comics when 1000s of more ardent fanboys (or girls) have written ad nauseam about them. As a history major, the hypocrisy of not ferreting out original sources is not lost on me, however the complexity and convolution of many of the plot devices used in comics makes direct “vivisection” of a multi-volume periodical extraordinarily daunting.
Great points...so much of our cultural lore and mythology is found in popular culture, of which comics constitutes a sizable share! But comics are daunting, because there are so many issues to deal with and almost a hundred years of storytelling! But not to fear: you don't have to read it all (and you wouldn't want to--most of it is VERY repetitive). Comics are designed to jump into at any point...and unlike most books, you can usually figure out the context within a few pages or issues and then you're part of the story. Comics really have no beginning, since (as we'll discuss) they predate comics themselves. To learn the origin of Batman (which is repeated every few years, anyway) you would have to go back to The Shadow, Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes!
DeleteThere is power in diminishing the types of content that people of all walks of life can appreciate. There is a threat in the idea that something can be sophisticated and complex AND be popular with "the masses"; the elites want us to think, and want to feel justified in thinking, themselves, that art has to be inaccessible to large portions of the population in order to be valid and valuable.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, because setting that point aside, comics are NOT undemanding of the audience. If I ever thought that, reading Watchmen cured me. But that's sort of a threatening idea, too, because now we're considering the idea that the lower classes of a society actually have just as much capacity to grasp complex art as the upper classes. The only thing that might be stopping them is time and education.
Harmful and oppressive norms stay in place when the ruling classes have a vested interest in their preservation. If this weren't the case we'd no longer have a need for feminism and for race activism. I see the designation of comics as "low art" as a similar sort of dynamic, since an unwillingness to expand the definition of what is "high art" protects the people at the top who have always made and sold "high art" and who would like to keep their exclusive rights.
Ha, you're right--Watchmen is the cure for the comics snob! Nothing is more complex or maddening! My son (15) is reading it right now and he keeps asking me, "now, why is this happening?
Deleteor "what just happened?" etc. But you're right--we're obsessed with classifying high vs. low art, and deciding what is worth or attention and what is for the hoi polloi (the uncivilized people). And yet, comics have the ability, like literature itself, to cut across both the educated and the uneducated, and unite people in the primal act of reading in a way that many novels simply cannot. That's their power, and by using that power, we can tell some very universal stories.
I think that comics do not get as much credit in literature because they are fictional literature that many times include pictures. Many people probably consider comics to be "immature", or not up to their standards in literature. The formatting is also different in comics, which many people might have a hard tome understanding. Comics are not all the same, and often time people know comics to be funny, or simple. I have never read a comic before, but I know they are stereotyped to be "nerdy". I remember my parents talking about comics from their childhood years, so I always associated them to be older, too. I feel like they get a bad reputation just because they are not set up in a novel form. I never knew anyone as I was growing up that read them, or had previously read them.I Everyone knows what they are and we have many movies and tales about comic book characters, but I am not sure if they are even the same, but I think it will be interesting to find out what they are really like.
ReplyDelete- Kurstyn Young
Yes, great response...too many people see them as something from childhood which is experienced and then set aside, like toys or playing on swing sets. It's part of the machinery of childhood which is pointless in adulthood. But if that's so, why does it continue to speak to us in the form of superheroes? The fact that so many movies reinterpret them in "adult" language on screen suggests that they have hidden depths--or that the comics were never properly read in the first place!
DeleteMayra Munoz: I think that comics have a hard time being respected as a form of literature because of the format that it is presented. Picture books are related to a form of “children literature”, and as the child grows up the requirements for literature are limited to certain specifications in literature, which doesn’t include in any way the use of comics, especially for the older grades, unless it is done by pure pleasure.
ReplyDeleteI have been interested in comics because of my son, he finds all of the Marvel world amusing and unique, everything that has to do with comics is a conversation started for him, he has investigated every detail in every comic strip he has come upon, and he can explain to me in detail a whole story just by looking at a comic strip with little or no words at all, like you mention on the video, that it is not just a drawing or a graphic, it actually tells different points or parts of the story in every little detail; so, to me, all of this comic, superhero stuff is amazing, this type of literature has brought some of the greatest creative writers/graphic designers that ever existed and has given my son another world to explore.
I think that our society has been brainwashed on the idea that literature is prominently formal and complicated, when in reality comics can also bring out so much to our school society in general. They can also help kids with dyslexia by not only reading words, but also understand the story being told by looking at the graphics, instead of being focused only on the reading and meaning of a word.
Yes, great points--comics are universal, so that a wider variety of readers can appreciate them, especially kids who aren't ready (or interested) in something more traditional. But also, they give a context for more traditional books and a way of understanding them that is harder to do without reading them first. I read comics avidly as a kid, and they helped me move right to traditional literature and see them as two branches of the same tree. I think students can understand symbolism, metaphors, and thematic links much easier if they can see them in comics first, and then learn to identify them with words alone.
DeleteJordyn Moore: Although comics are a great combination of literature and art, I believe a great reason they do not receive a lot of respect in American society today is because some people consider them to be stories mainly for children. In the video it was discussed that the name and meaning of the word “comic” could be a turn off for certain people but, in my opinion I do not believe that the correct meaning of the name would steer away people in modern society. However, I could see how a few old timers might not like the choice of term considering they might think of a comic as only the newspaper comic strips. What I believe is keeping comics from being mainstreamed in literature today is not enough people giving them a chance because they feel as if comics are childish.
ReplyDeleteI don’t believe I have any biases when it comes to reading comics but, a criticism I have personally received from a friend was that comics aren’t as interesting as traditional books because they don’t give as much detail. I completely disagreed with her as comics have deeply detailed illustrations which I believe would make them more interesting. She still thoroughly believed that normal books were more interesting and detailed. To each their own.
Yes, the problem is that we call everything comics, which suggests comic strips...not comic books or graphic novels. It would be like calling books "advertisements," because both use words and are written in English. But a book isn't an advertisement, so we have to find new words for each type of book. For some reason, we refuse to do this with comics. It's frustrating! ANd if comics don't give enough detail because they're full of pictures, couldn't we say the same about art...is Monet "boring" because he spells everything out? :)
DeleteKolbi Eskue: I think comics are a great source of both art and literature, especially after watching your videos. However, many people do not look at comics as either a form of art or literature. I think comics have such a tough time getting the recognition they deserve because many people think of them as children stories or even as weird for those who do read them. I do think the name "comics" has a part in why people are think they are childish because people associate comics with pictures. another genre associated with comics are superheros which some people may not be into, so maybe that is another reason why comics have lost some respect as good literature.
ReplyDeleteI personally do not have any biases towards comic books, if anything I think they are a cool way to switch up how you read. Although, from other people I have heard terms like "nerdy", "weird", or "picture books". I think the one thing that prevents comics from being mainstream in literature is all the stereotypes behind them, such as childish or nerdy.
For sure, the name holds them back--they're seen as something childish from childhood, and nothing that adults can read. Yet in Japan and France, adults read them quite regularly; there's nothing 'childish' about them, unless a particular comic is geared toward a child. It would be like someone laughing at you for watching a movie. "That's kid's stuff!" And yet, movies are movies--they can be anything. So can comics!
DeleteI feel as though there are several reasons why comics do not get the same respect as other forms of literature. One of them I believe is due to a misunderstanding or a lack of any understanding at all. I myself have never looked at comics as anything other than child like or comedic in nature. This is most likely due to the issue of the name and the fact that I have never took the time to read any. The name definitely doesn't do the genre any justice and there should be a better global agreement to the name itself. Due to the fact that I do not follow this genre, I have yet to hear any criticism that wasn't in association with the film versions. Although, I am now curious to know if this genre has a place within the cannon. -Misty Dorrough
ReplyDeleteI never knew why comics get such a bad rep as legitimate forms of literature. The first video gave me some idea as to why. I think people hear the word comic and already have that in their head or vocabulary as something to not take too seriously, like you talked about comics (comedians), in your video. Another reason I think is that people think they are too old or too "cool" for comics, even though most comics are what we love to watch and read. Who doesn't love a good superhero or a great plot line? I don't have any criticism for the comic book world right now because I don't know enough about that world yet. I do hear a lot of criticism from others though and, honestly it is all from people who haven't read a comic because they are too old or whatever. I feel like you are never too old for comics, if any literature makes you happy, read it. Comics make a lot of people happy and I am excited to dive into this world for the next three weeks.
ReplyDeleteBrittany Davis
DeleteYes, great responses; I think people like the subject matter, but are afraid to like something that looks like this. It just seems to childish to them. Almost like when you throw a "granny shot" in basketball: people laugh at you. Yet some experts say that it's the better way to make a shot--you throw with more accuracy that way. Yet most players would never adopt that way of throwing no matter what. The same with comics; it just seems too childish to those who would otherwise read them, and will, as long as they appear in movies.
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