Week 2

Week 2 – The sky is falling

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

The term Monstration was first used by Andre Gaudrealt when he was looking at storytelling in films and the intertwining of different kinds of storytelling such as an interpretation of the film director, a novel that may have inspired the film or the original filmscript (Baetons 2001). Baetons definition of monstration is that “the events are preformed by the characters themselves in a situation in which the story seems to narrate itself, without any narrator’s intervention” (2001, pg.24). This is to say that when ‘monstration’ occurs in the story, the audience does not require any help from a narrator to understand what is going on. The readers can unfold the situation without text and narrative would be pointless as the characters narrate themselves. I believe that monstration is very important so there is not too much text to read as comics are enjoyed for their graphic sense. Leaving the narration up to the characters keeps the readers attention and are a lot more suitable for the children to read.

Although, Marion states that apart from ‘monstration’ in comics, there is another aspect that requires consideration called Graphication (as cited in Baetons, 2001, p. 149)
Baeton states that ‘graphication’ is ‘the graphic and narrative enunciation of the comics’ and that ‘graphiatuer is ‘the agent responsible for it’ (2001, pg 26). Graphication is present in all comics starting from the initial sketch, to analyzing the layout, and finally the special features. The ‘Graphiaetur’ is the person who creates these elements in the comics.

What does Khordoc think the Asterix series does better than Hergé’s Tintin?

Khordoc (2001) states that the main reason the Asterix series does better than Herge is the noise techniques used. Khordic displays sound to a wider and more frequent extent than Herge’s Tintin.
I agree with this and find that the noise element is more present in the Asterix series but in saying that, Herge’s Tintin definitely doesn’t lack example of ‘noise’ either.

A main area of ‘noise’ I noticed in the Asterix series that was not used as effectively by Herge’s ‘The Blue Lotus’ were the coloured speech balloons. They emphasised the effect of showing negative words spoken by a character leaving less need for narrative text. Herge’s speech balloons “often occupy approximately half the panel, showing that despite the detailed drawings, the steries is none-the-less quite reliant on the text.” (Khordoc, 2001, p. 158)

Khordoc (2001) also states that the Asterix series also portrays some representation of sound through pictures, such as lightening bolts which represents verbal aggression. Asterix also successfully use tones such as sarcasm from the characters as a way to represent censored words that would be improper to use especially for children reading the series.

References
Baetons, J(2001). Revealing Traces: a new theory of graphic enunciation. In R., Varnum & C., Gibbons (Eds.), The Language of Comics: word and image (pp. 145-155). Jackson: U Press of Mississippi.

Khordoc, C. (2001). The comics book's soundtrack: visual sound - effect in Asterix. In varnum, R. & Gibbons, C. (Ed.). The language of comics: word and image. (pp. 156 - 173). Jackson: U P of Mississippi.