SEMIOTICS AND SEQUENTIAL ART A Thesis Submitted to the

Transcription

SEMIOTICS AND SEQUENTIAL ART
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Sequential Art Department
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Master of Fine Arts
at
Savannah College of Art and Design
Aaron C. Olson
Savannah, Georgia
© August
2014
Anthony J. Fisher
David A. Duncan
Mark Kneece
Dedicated to Dana E. Olson
The Bridge to My Better Self
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Index of Figures and Illustrations
1
Thesis Abstract
2
Introduction
3
Visual Language and Semiotics
4
Visual Communication and Literacy
9
Post-structuralist Problems
15
Overcoming Objections
20
Conclusion
22
Appendix: Visual Component
24
Works Cited
49
Bibliography
51
Semiotics and Sequential Art
INDEX OF FIGURES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
Otto Nückel
Figure 1, Page 6
Eric Drooker
Figure 2, Page 7
Ernie Bushmiller
Figure 3, Page 10
Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden
(edits of Ernie Bushmiller)
Figures 4 and 5, Page 11
Scott McCloud
Figure 6, Page 22
1
Aaron C. Olson
© August
2014
ABSTRACT
The successful application of sequential art heavily depends upon the understanding and
use of semiotics, visual communication, language, and literacy. Post-structuralist critiques of
semiotics have argued there are problems inherent with the representational nature of imagery,
especially as the imagery becomes more abstracted, and a sequential artist must be aware of them
to truly master their craft. There are a few simple, basic approaches to sequential art creation
that can largely overcome or reduce the weaknesses of visual communication. This thesis
explores these concepts, comparing and contrasting several overlapping theories of semiotics and
visual language, and outlines a few basic approaches for sequential artists to better understand
and use the theories and subsequent tools to create more effective works of sequential art.
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INTRODUCTION
There are many different approaches a sequential art creator can use to better understand
the elements which comprise the whole of sequential art and its methods of communication. As
a broad category, the concept of visual communication covers most of the graphic or visual
nature of sequential art; however anything this is graphically drawn is inherently representational
and is comprised of many possible and definable elements. Semiotics - the study of signs or
representational elements used to communicate - is likely the best place for sequential artists to
begin their studies of how sequential art really works. In short, as a creator moves from direct,
realistic, photographic or photo-real imagery to more abstracted signs or representations, a full
spectrum of modes of communication become apparent. Awareness and mastery of these modes
of communication as they are encompassed within the study of semiotics is absolutely necessary
for a sequential artist to be in control of what and how their work communicates and of the
meaning and messages the reader or viewer takes away from the work.
In works of sequential art, there are often textual components as well as those that are
purely visual. This combination of textual and graphical modes of communication, or text-image
interdependence, is at times poorly utilized because the combination of modalities is not
understood well. Semiotic theory accounts for the textual and aural elements as well as the
graphical modes of communication. At times the textual elements are more auditory, or aural, in
nature, or suggestive of aural phenomenon; a spoken word is different than sound or the
emphasis on a lack spoken words or of sounds. The successful reading of sequential art heavily
depends upon understanding a fuller spectrum of visual communication, semiotics, language, and
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literacy. Quite often, visual communication is considered to be a language itself, but it would be
more accurate to describe visual communication as the message which is being conveyed (and
not so much how it is conveyed). Visual language, more strictly defined, is the description or
study of how the message is constructed – i.e., the words and grammar of the message. Visual
literacy could be considered to be the fluency of representational art – in other words, the
cultural references or commonly understood concepts that give the message meaning. Visual
communication, therefore, combines visual language, semiotics, and visual literacy to convey the
overall meaning of the message.
VISUAL LANGUAGE AND SEMIOTICS
Currently and somewhat mistakenly, the words and grammar of visual language are
described in academia, especially in the study of sequential art, in much the same way linguists
describe textual or aural language. Just as sequential art is often described in terms of stage
acting or cinema and film, for lack of a common vernacular, descriptions of visual language
often default to aural or textual linguistics. The modern theory of semiotics and visual language,
therefore, borrows heavily from conventional linguistics without necessarily understanding
semiotics, multi-modal communication, and text-image interdependence as it relates to visual
communication. Part of the reason for the appropriation of linguistic concepts into the study of
semiotics was a result of the early attempts to categorize and explain aural and textual language
through broader definitions of sign systems; linguistics were well established and therefore
dominated many of the ideas and much of the terminology of semiotics. Semiotics and visual
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language are only just beginning to emerge as their own fields of study and are currently being
redefined and reshaped as the interest in them increases (Chandler 2007).
Semiotics is also often thought to be a term more closely identified with the original
theories of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, and semiology relates to the Swiss
linguist and semotician Ferdinand de Saussure. Pierce and Saussure were contemporaries
working on similar concepts of semiotics in the mid to late 19th century and into the early 20th
century. The most common semiotic concept encountered by visual arts students is Saussure’s
separation of the signifier and signified, emphasizing the difference between a sign, what it
represents and the reality to which the sign refers (Chandler 2007). The more contemporary
study of semiotics, especially the work of Neil Cohn, author of The Visual Language of Comics,
is based more directly upon the work of Peirce. The three types of sign references: iconic,
indexical, and symbolic, were defined by Peirce and more easily lend themselves to linguistic
study of visual language (Cohn 2013). To be clear, sometimes the application of semiotics is
referred to as structuralism, while the broader field itself is referred to simply as semiotics. This
thesis will focus more on semiotics in general, than on structuralism specifically, but the
difference is important to note to better understand criticisms of semiotics and structuralism
(often referred to a post-structuralism).
Sequential artists have recently begun to show an interest in semiotics, visual language,
and how the study of them can inform and improve their work and ability to communicate
visually. The books of McCloud and Cohn have begun to appear on the bookshelves of
sequential artists and have worked their way into classroom discussions of sequential art and
visual language. One problem with the application of the ideas and theories presented by
McCloud, Cohn, and others, however, is that the ideas are still in the early stages of development
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and are not well understood or, at times, not easily incorporated into a sequential artist's
creations. A good place to start in the exploration of semiotics is with visual language itself and
wordless sequential art.
Visual language can be understood in much the same way literature is understood. In a
Tufts’ University Profile interview, Neil Cohn states "Visual language is to comics what English
is to novels," and makes clear that he hopes research into visual language increases so that a
better understanding of graphical fluency can be constructed. As this fluency, or literacy,
increases for artists, there will be a greater body of work and exposure that will build the visual
literacy of the culture (Cohen 2009). In many ways, sequential art creates its own forms or
variations of visual language, and it shapes visual language itself. Consider the 1930s book
Destiny: A Novel In Pictures by Otto Nückel and how it visually tells the story of a young
woman's life in Germany during a very tumultuous and difficult time (see figure 1). Or, consider
the much more recent and similarly titled book by Eric Drooker, Flood! A Novel in Pictures (see
figure 2).
Figure 1.
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Figure 2.
Both Nückel and Drooker in the given examples use high-contrast, black-and-white images with
no words, which strongly emphasize and employ the use of acquired visual language and visual
literacy to transmit a story. Nückel and Drooker, to a great extent, created new and unique visual
language sub-sets, or dialects, as they chose the particular imagery and sequences in these works.
The use of images and visual semiotics, which refers specifically to the creation and use of signs,
to represent the world in which a story takes place, and the actors within it, is particularly
essential when not using words or when the words are not comprehensible on their own. Signs
are representations of reality, and they convey a meaning to the reader of the work; but that
meaning must be somewhat already acquired by the reader before they are able to decode the
meaning of the images and sequence – this is, in a sense, the essence of semiotics and acquired
visual literacy. The reader is building upon previously acquired competency and learning new
visual language phrases and ideas as they go along reading the visual story, building a new and
more complex understanding of visual language. Thus visual language and visual literacy must
build on one another for the meaning of a work of sequential art to be conveyed as intended.
The article “Pictures Speak in Comics Without Words,” in the book The Language of
Comics, David Berona addresses visual communication in sequential art:
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As our means of communication develops increasingly and obtrusively at times
with streaming video and wireless technology, our world becomes jumbled with
pictures and words that lose their meaning and importance. Comics have always
forged a personal – almost singular – relationship between the artist and reader.
With the added commitment required of artist and reader in wordless comics, this
personal relationship increases. The surprise of these silent novels and wordless
comics is not with the novelty of telling a story in pictures but in the creative use
of a pictorial language that ultimately rises above language barriers and all levels
of literacy. Wordless comics, on one sense, are among the best ambassadors for
representing not only our different cultures but also our shared humanity. In this
sense, 'pictures speak' perhaps more clearly in wordless comics than in any other
medium (Gibbons and Varnum 2002).
Clearly, balancing creative expression with the logical principles of visual language and visual
literacy can be complicated and difficult at times. In an effort to improve their visual
communication skills, sequential artists should give a good deal of thought to designing their
comics wordlessly, adding text only where it enhances the image so that a fuller meaning can be
conveyed when only part of the meaning could be demonstrated with only the text or image
alone.
The progression of traditional language acquisition is often described as first listening,
then speaking, which is followed by reading and then writing. A more involved and accurate
way of describing language acquisition would probably be to first see and comprehend, and then
to associate what is beginning to be understood with what is heard, and later, with what is
written. There would be exceptions to this, obviously, with people who do not have the ability to
see the visual imagery or understand the visual context - but for the majority of people seeing is
one of the earliest and most profound learning experiences. A well-known second language
acquisition expert and linguist, Stephen Krashen, states in his linguistic hypothesis known as the
Input (Comprehension) Hypothesis: given enough understandable information a language
learner automatically and quite naturally and without much effort learns proper language
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associations and meanings (Krashen 2003). The language learner, or for the conceptual use of
this thesis, the sequential art reader or viewer (who is also a language learner), only needs proper
context to draw upon along with, as Krashen applies it towards aural language acquisition, a
“…previously acquired linguistic competence, as well as our extra-linguistic knowledge, which
includes our knowledge of the world and our knowledge of the situation.” This hypothesis,
modified for sequential art and visual language learning, is not far from several ideas put forward
by semioticians and early structuralists. Signs, as visual language, are naturally learned through
exposure to comprehensible structures and associations within sequential art works. The
question for sequential artists would be how do they incorporate the fundamentals of seeing and
comprehension so that it can best aid what is being written and suggested in their work?
VISUAL COMMUNICATION AND LITERACY
To better facilitate the study of comprehensible structures, context, and semiotics in
sequential art, sequential artists should make it a habit to break apart their own work and the
work of others into smaller pieces. When the words and distinct visual elements are stripped
away from a sequential art work and specific elements highlighted or eliminated, the distinct
visual language of a sequential artwork more clearly emerges; the words and the grammar of the
visual elements become visible and more important, just as they do when a textual sentence is
diagrammed. In the article How To Read Nancy, Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden analyze the
seemingly simple gag strip Nancy by Ernie Bushmiller to show how complex and visually rich
the comic strip actually is (Karasik and Newgarden 1988). As the elements of the visual
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communication are broken down and the more basic semiotic signs exposed, the visual language
of the comic strip also becomes clear. The syntax and grammar of the illustration support the
possible cultural references and interpretations that give the strip meaning – understanding these
images and sequences is visual literacy. Consider the visual elements of the Nancy strip below
(see figure 3):
Figure 3.
There are several characters present but the regular audience would be extremely familiar
with the short, black hair, the ribbons in Nancy’s hair, and usual dress and shoes of Nancy. The
text and image relationship between the boy with the squirt gun and the words sets up the gag at
the end of the strip but it also emphasizes the importance of the boy to the strip and the gag
immediately. Text and image inter-dependence is important, but to understand the visual
language concerns, it is easier to remove the words and focus on the characters and their actions.
Notice Nancy and her relationship to the fence (see figure 4):
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Figure 4.
Nancy is not facing the viewer and exists on the far left of the frame, as well as the entire
strip. Nancy’s body language communicates a curiosity, surprise, and perhaps a lack of ease. Not
being able to see the face of Nancy can simultaneously empower the reader to believe they
understand Nancy's emotional response yet also question if she's about to do what the reader
thinks she might. On the right, in frame three, Nancy appears again but more prominently
positioned in the panel and a few minor adjustments have been made. The back of Nancy’s head
is still all the viewer sees, but her arms are raised with hands on the hip, which conveniently
hides the hose from the boy with the squirt gun. Nancy also has a slight forward lean and
although it is slight, it is enough to communicate confidence. The reader now fully knows that
Nancy is not intimidated by the boy and is prepared for the conflict.
Now, notice the positioning of the boy with the squirt gun (see figure 5):
Figure 5.
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In the very first panel, the boy with the squirt gun is immediately shown to be an aggressor and
his facial features show an amusement with his devious behavior. Pay special attention to the
fact that the boy’s shirt is the only other item, in addition to Nancy’s hair from the earlier edit, in
the three panels to have a large solid black. The strong black markings, also known as spot
blacks, with the large white backgrounds are very eye-catching and draw the reader to follow
him. In the second panel, the panel and character are smaller and the repeating the squirt gun
attack on another innocent bystander reinforces the gag. In panel three, on the right, the boy is
approaching where Nancy will be, and looking confident and ready to attack once again. The
rhythm and patterning of the three panels aids the gag that is suggested at the end: What will
happen now that Nancy is ready, and who is the “varmint?”
The inter-workings of visual language and visual literacy, as demonstrated in this Nancy
strip, are essential to effective visual communication – the overall message being conveyed
through any piece of sequential art. Sequential artists should pay particularly close attention to
panel layout, transition types, spot black placement, body language, simplicity versus complexity
and clutter, and text-image interdependence to best communicate the meaning of their art. The
prettiest piece of sequential art may be quite pointless if the context is lost and its meaning
cannot be conveyed to its readers.
As previously stated, visual language in sequential art should be thought of as the basic
sentence structure of the message – the words, syntax, and grammar of the image. In this sense,
it is also useful to recognize the role that simple linguistics plays in creating sequential art.
Visual language is one of the primary tools used to create comics. The work of Neil Cohn is an
interesting and important point of reference for the evolution of visual language theory in that he
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strives to apply modern linguistic theory directly to sequential art. Cohn's work reflects much of
the early linguistic work of Noam Chomsky, especially generative grammar, by way of Cohn’s
mentor, Ray Jackendoff, who was one of Chomsky’s students. The roots many of Cohn’s visual
language concepts come from Jackendoff, Chomsky, and conventional linguistic theory. Cohn
separates visual language elements, or chunks, in much the same way as a linguist currently
would diagram a textual sentence. For some artists, this mental separation of elements could
help them to simplify and streamline their work before they fully create it, thus increasing its
image effectiveness. More importantly, Cohn has offered a more universal visual language
standard, or at least a beginning of the exploration of a standard, for the discussion of visual
language in sequential art.
When considering sequential art in terms of visual language, the juxtaposition and
ordering of the images is sequencing of sequential art. This sequencing is a major factor in
creating comprehensible visual statements. From one image to the next, transitions exist,
possible interpretations are created, which must be carefully considered. Both McCloud and
Cohn have identified possible panel transition types in sequential art. It is beneficial for
sequential artists to study and recognize these panel transition types, as they comprise the basic
structure of comics. Using transitions well or poorly could mean the success or failure of the
sequential art and the communication created by the sequencing of the images.
One of the more important contributions to the theory of sequential art McCloud shared
in Understanding Comics was the six possible types of panel transitions. McCloud’s book
Understanding Comics has been heavily criticized, but the early conceptualization and
presentation of ideas like the basic transition types has inspired a great deal of discussion and
other sequential art theorists to springboard off McCloud’s work and offer alternative theories
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(Chute, 2007). As a direct example of the constructive criticism and feedback to McCloud’s
early visual communication ideas, Neil Cohn offers up a visual language version of transitional
panels in sequential art with a discussion of Transitional Syntax in his book Early Writings on
Visual Language. Transitional syntax is much more complex than McCloud’s six transitional
panels, but offers a more linguistically sound approach to the study of syntax in sequential art.
Cohn understands the panel transitions are essential to the grammar of sequential art’s visual
language and in his book Early Writings on Visual Language, he states: “Ultimately, language is
defined by its sequentiality. Without sequence, statements lack predication, the same as single
images. However, in sequence, these increments of meaning are connected to form what could
be called ‘concept streams’– the study of which is called syntax” (Cohn 2003).
To compare and contrast with McCloud's six transition types, Neil Cohn lists no fewer
than eight types of transitions with several additional visual language formatives to include:
Macro, Subjects, Aspects (subjectual, environmental, active), Actions, Cognables (visually
native and transcriptive) (Cohn 2003). Though Cohn's ideas are a bit more involved and
complex than McCloud's, the principle stands: recognizing and understanding these panel
transitions will greatly help sequential artists to organize their thoughts and images strongly and
effectively, giving the greatest sense of readability and thus meaning to their readers. Serious
sequential artists must study transition types, which is the study of sequencing itself, to aid in
retaining and building comprehension through proper context, and the theory behind them if they
are to improve their mastery of sequential art.
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POST-STRUCTURALIST PROBLEMS
In 1992, Scott McCloud released his seminal Understanding Comics, the importance and
use of image and text-image inter-dependence was repeated and used throughout. His work was
highly abstract and theoretical, and he later admitted in an interview with Hillary Chute for The
Believer Magazine in April 2007 that he thought “there were probably grumblings in academia
early on because [he] was like a bull in a china shop” on concepts relating to semiotics (Chute
2007). Regardless, McCloud was on the right track to recognize that understanding the language
and grammar of sequential art is essential to its success. It is not hard to understand why many
scholars, especially linguists who study semiotics and language theory, would criticize
McCloud’s loose use of semiotic and visual language terms (Chute 2007). Even when properly
understood and applied, signs and sign systems have many inherent complications and
weaknesses, which many Post-structuralist semioticians or philosophers have noted.
In the book Comics and Sequential Art, Will Eisner suggests a complex and symbiotic
relationship between artists, images, and the audience: “Comics communication in a ‘language’
that relies on a visual experience common to both creator and audience,” moreover, the visual
language of “comics can be called ‘reading’ in a wider sense than that term is commonly
applied” (Eisner 1985). Drawing from research derived from Tom Wolf, in the Harvard
Educational Review of August 1977, Eisner delves yet even deeper into visual language’s
source, potential, and eventual weakness:
For the last hundred years, the subject of reading has been connected quite
directly to the concept of literacy;… learning to read… has meant learning to read
words… But…reading has gradually come under closer scrutiny. Recent research
has shown that the reading of words is but a subset of a much more general
human activity which includes symbol decoding, information integration, and
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organization… Indeed, reading – in the most general sense – can be thought of as
a form of perceptual activity; but there are many others – the reading of pictures,
maps, circuit diagrams, musical notes… (Eisner 1985).
Even Eisner recognized the possible weaknesses of more highly stylized or codified
work, leaning more heavily on symbols and metaphors, and reminds the creator and audience
that:
Comprehension of an image requires a commonality of experience. This demands
of the sequential artist and understanding of the reader’s life experience if his
message is to be understood. An interaction has to develop because the artist is
evoking images stored in the minds of both parties. The success or failure of this
method of communicating depends upon the ease with which the reader
recognizes the meaning and emotional impact of the image. Therefore, the skill of
rendering and the universality of form chosen is critical. The style and the
appropriateness of technique become part of the image and what it is trying to say
(Eisner 1985).
Eisner understood that effective communication required a common experience and that the
reader recognize the meaning of the image(s), and subsequently the sequencing for proper
context. Eisner’s preference for more text-image inter-dependent work surely had much to do
with the more philosophical or abstract nature of his work – in other words, the complexity of the
stories he wanted to tell. A certain “sophistication on the part of the reader (viewer)” was
necessary for stories without words, and a “common experience and history of observation are
necessary to interpret the inner feelings of the actor,” according to Eisner; but “the artist should
be free to omit dialogue or narrative that can clearly be demonstrated visually” (Eisner 1985).
In semiotics, symbols are the most abstracted image type within visual communication
and are susceptible to misunderstandings in communication as Eisner noted. Eisner also noted
that text itself can read like an image, an idea McCloud also clearly supports, and in a way
becomes the most abstracted form of visual communication. In the Introduction to the book The
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Language of Comics, Gibbons and Varnum write “Perceptual theorist Anne Marie Seward
Barry… asserts that ‘it is images, not words, that communicate most deeply’” (Gibbons and
Varnum 2002). Barry furthers this argument in her book Visual Intelligence, discussing how
many emotions and physical behaviors may not be culturally learned, but are, rather, innate:
Paul Ekman, for example, has studied interculturally the universal in human
expression and concluded that facial expressions are innate, evolved behavior.
While others such as Birdwhistell and Mead have argued that facial expression
are learned, culturally controlled behavior, Ekman’s research shows that what is
culturally learned is the display rules that allow for the appropriate expression of
emotion, not the spontaneous expression of the emotion itself. With illiterate,
visually isolated people of New Guinea, for example, Ekman and his colleagues
found that expressions mirrored those of people in Berkley, California and in
Tokyo, Japan – cultures with very different display rules – showed universally the
same natural expressions for emotions, despite their culturally different customs.
He concludes that for each emotion there is a distinctive pancultural signal that
has evolved phylogenetically through evolution in order to deal with fundamental
life tasks common to us all (Barry 1997).
Barry outlines the classes of signs, originated by Peirce: iconic, indexical, and symbolic. In a
spectrum of simplest visual item, most easily read and understood to the most abstract and
difficult to understand without context, the icon is most like, visually, what it represents. The
indexical sign may not visually look like what it represents, but is clearly suggestive of it; for
example the wind driving a flag or a fingerprint found on a glass window pane. The symbol,
however, is the most complex of the signs because of its abstractions:
Symbols, on the other hand, have abstract associations rather than experiential
connections. They often seem to look totally manufactured, or arbitrary, because
their meaning is determined through convention, as in the prescribed use of color
in religious paintings, or the usual Oriental bow on greeting. It may be doubtful,
however, that any symbols can ever be considered fully arbitrary in that at bottom
there is some kind of experiential connection between signifier and signified
which, however remote, makes them seem appropriate at one time. Once a
gesture becomes standardized and streamlined into a sign, it is then in the
situation where it can be used to denote other related ideas, and as the evolution
continues, the symbols that develop from experience may seem to be completely
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detached from their origins. Symbols in the form of written language may be
inaccessible to those outside the culture, yet each symbol within that culture of
necessity carries a history of representation, association, and relation (Barry
1997).
As it progressively uses signs, from simpler icons and indexes to more complex symbols, visual
language becomes more dependent upon a mature visual representation or reader, or perhaps
even needing a bridge to understand through use of text.
The French philosopher, semiotician, and post-structuralist, Roland Barthe, approached
semiotics from a largely Saussurian perspective and defined sign as “the culturally constructed
entity of signifier and signified, which appear as one but exist only in relation to one another.”
He continued with the two aspects of a sign, mentioned previously, the signifier and the
signified: “signifier- the perceptual image of the sign; signified – the idea expressed by the
signifier” (Costello and Vickery 2007). According to Saussure, the distance between the
signifier and the signified is arbitrary, and post-structuralist critiques, like that of Roland Barthe,
challenge the absolute nature of the sign and the ideas of signifier and signified. Jacques
Derrida, another French philosopher, deconstructionist, and post-structuralist suggested the
reading of sign can become a self-referential loop, or a definition of a sign is given meaning by
yet another sign, and has no independent meaning. Madan Sarup, in his book An Introductory
Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism, expands on Derrida’s views of signs:
In Derrida’s view of language the signifier is not directly related to the signified.
…[Derrida] sees the sign as a structure of difference: half of it is always ‘not
there’ and the other half is always ‘not that’. Signifiers and signified are
continually breaking apart and reatting in new combinations, thus revealing the
inadequacy of Sassure’s model of the sign, according to which the signifier and
signified relate as if they were two sides of the same sheet of paper (Sarup 1993).
Sarup restates Derrida’s ideas and suggests that his understanding of signs is that “meaning is
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continually moving along on a chain of signifiers, and we cannot be precise about its exact
‘location’, because it is never tied to one particular sign” (Sarup 1993). In post-structuralism,
this “chain of signifiers” goes beyond just criticizing the arbitrary nature between the signifier
and signified, but more broadly claims that the interdependent nature of signs and relative
meaning makes the definition of any particular sign more distant and difficult.
Not only is the distance or distinction between signifier and signified unclear, but signs
are often defined by the use of more signs, which creates a definition gap in meaning. Sarup
continues, noting another French philosopher’s and post-structuralist’s, Jean Bauddrillard’s
perspective on culture and consumption in relation to signs: “[Baudrillard] argues that the
commodity has now become a sign in the Saussurian sense, with its meaning arbitrarily
determined by its position in a self-referential system of signifiers. Consumption, then, must not
be understood as the consumption of use-values, but primarily as the consumption of signs.”
Sarup criticizes Baudrillard’s postmodernist and post-structuralist views in the same text, stating
“In Baudrillard’s world truth and falsity are wholly indistinguishable, a position which I believe
leads to moral and political nihilism” (Sarup 1993).
From a semiotic perspective, visual language and the sequential art which uses it, is
completely constructed with signs and as such has inherent weaknesses. The artist is often
already removed from the source of the referent, or reality, as they derive their imagery from
secondary source material, and therefore create yet another layer of distance between the viewer
and reality. However, as Sarup notes, the creation of a lack of definability between truth and
falsity may lead to confusion or, in Sarup’s words, a “moral and political nihilism.” Visual
language, just as an aural or textual language, can be more carefully used and created to
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communicate more clearly. Will Eisner correctly understood that the artists has the
responsibility to consider the reader-viewer's understanding of the imagery, or signs, used in a
work of sequential art. Visual language and sequential art potentially have a very strong
weakness when the creator does not make every attempt to reduce, as much as possible, the
cognitive gap between the signifier and signified; between the viewer and the reality the signs
are designed to communicate.
OVERCOMING OBJECTIONS
Anne Marie Seward Barry suggested a way through, or around, the problems of poststructuralism and semiotics with her mention of the work of Paul Ekman. It is not unusual, then,
to note Scott McCloud’s use of Ekman’s studies of facial expressions in McCloud’s newer book
Making Comics. As a potential bridge from what is relative to what is knowable, McCloud
explores six basic or “pure” emotions, as originally outlined by Ekman, and demonstrates how
these basic expressions can be combined to produce a spectrum of possible emotional
representations (McCloud 2006). In the book Unmasking the Face, Paul Ekman and Wallace V.
Friesen state quite clearly that there have been hundreds of studies exploring facial expressions,
emotions, and the potential universiality of emotional expression on the human face. Ekman and
Wallace claim that recently scientific investigations have proven that there are indeed universally
expressed and readable facial emotions, but there are cultural variations as to when and how
these expressions are displayed (Ekman and Wallace 2003). Knowing this fact, sequential artists
can practice and use these basic facial expressions to more clearly communicate universally
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understood emotions. There will still exist, of course, a layer of representation between the
reality of the facial expressions and the signs used to communicate them. Considering Scott
McCloud’s conclusions in Understanding Comics, and the inherent problems associated with
signs and symbols, when sequential artists move from more photo-real imagery, which requires
little to no interpretation beyond the context, to abstracted imagery, an effort must be made to
keep the meaning as clear as possible or needed for the meaning of the work to be accurately
communicated (see figure 6).
Figure 6.
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In addition to universal facial expressions of emotion, there also appears to be a very
universally recognized and understood sort of body language. In the book What Every Body Is
Saying, Joe Navarro, a retired FBI counterintelligence special agent trained in interrogation and
interview, shares his accumulated experience with reading people, their facial expressions and
body language. Navarro advises students of facial and body expressions or language to “[l]earn
to recognize and decode nonverbal behaviors that are universal.” and states that “some body
behaviors are considered universal because they are exhibited similarly by most people”
(Navarro and Karlins 2008). Likewise, it would be advisable for sequential artists to study facial
and bodily expressions and realize they are more universal than most post-structuralists or
philosophers are often willing to admit. The cognitive gap between the signifiers and the
signified is not as wide as semiotic discourse may suggest, and the differences between reality
and the signs artists employ are often quite minor.
CONCLUSION
Visual imagery is inherently removed one or more degrees from the source of the
referent, or reality, and therefore creates yet another layer of distance between the viewer and
reality. This cognitive gap or weakness can largely be overcome by way of the creator skillfully
using visual language to communicate more clearly, just as aural or textual language is carefully
crafted and used to communicate when speaking or writing. In addition to more carefully
choosing the visual imagery and sequencing used, it is important to understand the text-image
22
interdependence to better communicate both visually and textually through sequential art. An
image or a sequence of images can often stand alone quite effectively, and when they absolutely
cannot or if they need a little help, added words help facilitate understanding and give extra
meaning to the sequential images. It is extremely important for sequential artists to learn the
basics of visual language and visual literacy so that the sequential art work will communicate
well. Knowing how to more clearly communicate through the use of visual language and
knowledge of semiotics will strengthen sequential art works which are dependent upon text, and
more, it can and will improve the visual communication of the work rather than simply
complimenting it.
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SEMIOTICS AND SEQUENTIAL ART A Thesis Submitted to the

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