I was thinking - this was a while ago, now - but I was thinking, "What the hell is literary criticism?"
Maybe it's just me. Sometimes I'll realize that I've been wandering along, blissfully ignoring the fact that I don't really have a firm grasp on some subject, and then someone asks me a question. Or the topic comes up in conversation and I realize I'm not really following the discussion. The assumption that I know what's going is shattered and I either move on or try and figure out the subject. And here we are.
I've got a degree in English (I double-majored in English and Psychology in college) back in� um� (hang on, I'm counting) 1994. I've been reading books since I was four. I've been reading comic books since 1992. I thought I had a pretty good grasp of literature.
But then I would read a piece by
Wednesday White, or something at the
The Webcomics Examiner, or something in a blog somewhere and I would think, "Crap! I'm hitting bumps!" Parts of the essays would sort of fail to make sense. Some of it was the way different writers use the words
medium and
genre. But more often it was the use of big words whose meaning I understood, but whose context indicated there was something more going on, a deeper level of commentary that I was missing. And regularly there were references to outside influences - feminism, Freud, Scott McCloud, European comics, Marxism, semiotics, Jung, structuralism - frankly, a great many
-isms and
-ians, plus quite a bit more. And while I knew about many of those people, places, and things, and even had read some of the writing mentioned, I didn't really understand how it all fit together.
So I started poking around and I realized that this beast known as Literary Criticism, or LitCrit -- as we shall occasionally refer to it from here on out because I am very lazy -- isn't something you just sit down and learn. It's a bit more complex than that. And there are schools of thought about particular subjects (well, I'm guessing that they are "schools of thought" rather than, say, "realms of rumination" � is there a better phrase?). A literary critic might take a feminist perspective on a comic and discuss it in depth using the language and history of that specific perspective.
"Well!" I kept thinking, "This is cool!"
Anyway, while blindly swinging the big stick of learning at various pinatas of data, I thought it might be interesting to share what I learn as it bursts forth like a shower of candy. Of course, not everyone thinks of information as candy. But I am addicted to both sugar and information and I hope a few like-minded folks will enjoy reading the column as much as I enjoy writing it.
This column will also undoubtedly make for a great deal of cringing in the future, as I learn more, then think back, "Oh, I
get it now. I had it all wrong in January (or March, or whenever). Oops." Perhaps I need lessons in humility.
But my hope for the column is that having to meet a deadline will actually give me the necessary push to continue reading my copy of
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Critical Reading, looking things up in
The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory, and trying to understand the articles over at
ImageTexT.
I'm also hoping readers will help educate me with their commentary and by passing on websites and print references that might add to my understanding (for instance,
The Penguin Dictionary� is very UK-oriented; I'd like something that considers America as well). I don't expect to become a LitCrit expert, nor do I intend to devote my life to one school of thought, but I would like to have a deeper working knowledge of literary criticism in general.
Why accrue this knowledge? Well, so I can talk about webcomics in some way that's a bit more informed than "I like this" or "I don't like that." And so I can better understand the critical writing of others and join the conversation. Plus, maybe I'll contribute to this burgeoning field. Or maybe not. Not so sure about that last one.
The plan is to learn something and then use various webcomics as illuminating examples. Did I mention webcomics yet? This is a column about webcomics. Well, more about applying literary criticism to webcomics, but still� there are webcomics in the title and everything.
Now that the introductory stuff is over, I'd like to define a few terms before closing out this introductory column.
Webcomics are comics on the web. What are comics? I suppose "I know it when I see it" isn't really going to work here. I like the term "sequential art" myself. Or, if you prefer, we can use Scott McCloud's definition, from page 9 of
Understanding Comics (say it with me, cause you know you memorized it):
Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.
But I like "sequential art presented via electronic equipment, most commonly the computer" as my starting definition of
webcomics. It's possible I'll need to modify it as we go along.
Next term,
criticism.
Per the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to
criticize is "1. to consider the merits and demerits of and judge accordingly or 2. to find fault with or to point out the faults of" something. And the first definition of
criticism relies upon that definition, focusing on the negative aspect, "1 a: the act of criticizing usually unfavorably b: a critical observation or remark c: CRITIQUE." But the second definition is "the art of evaluating or analyzing works of art or literature" and that is the type of criticism on which I am focusing.
I think many people, when they hear the word "criticism," immediately leap to the conclusion that they are going to be judged and found wanting. No matter how positive the potential outcome might be, it's a knee jerk reaction. All criticism is negative. People hate to be judged. Consciously or unconsciously, many do not even realize that there's a whole realm of analysis that may not include any judgement at all.
The Penguin Dictionary... doesn't have an entry for
literary criticism. But this is what you find for just the word
criticism:
The art or science of literary criticism is devoted to the comparison and analysis, to the interpretation and evaluation of works of literature.
The rest of the entry (two pages) is a brief history of LitCrit, going back to the ancient Greeks. Great.
Seeking simplicity, I ran into my first conflict. Per
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Critical Reading, "[l]iterary criticism is the ability to judge the quality and/or meaning of a piece of writing" (page 4). Well, crap. This definition wrecks my non-judgemental thesis. Although, reading on, the authors' focus is definitely on analysis. They might have been better served by saying "an
informed judgement," meaning having enough knowledge to know all the aspects of the literature you are evaluating.
We could go back to Merriam-Webster and delve into more definitions. But perhaps freaky people and nerds are doomed to hate the word JUDGEMENT forever and ever. Or, at least, until we're all done with therapy.
Moving on, another term I keep running into is
genre. This one was a bit of a surprise. Per
The Penguin Dictionary it's a "French term for a kind, a literary type or class." That's not the surprising bit. What is surprising is that form and content were inseparable for most of the history of western literature. And that is what I perceive to be the source of conflict over defining genre.
Originally there were only five genres: epic, tragedy, lyric, comedy, and satire. To that list, the Penguin people added novel and short story.
But genre has become a much more fluid term. Other sources added other genres, like autobiography and journalism. At what point did things change? Damn good question. But at the present, a novel can be a biography, a mystery, an adventure tale, etc. So while
The Penguin Dictionary� defines the novel as a genre, it has also become a medium for presenting certain genres (or, arguably, subgenres).
Well, what about
medium? Doesn't even get an entry from Penguin.
Back to Merriam-Webster where
genre gets a broader treatment: "a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content."
Of course, broader isn't necessarily better. Per Merriam-Webster, a
medium is a "material or technical means of artistic expression."
Even Shakespeare made fun of critics who attempted to categorize him�
The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poet unlimited. Hamlet, 2. 2
So a genre can be a medium, but a medium is rarely a genre.
Got that?
Yeah, me neither.
I could really use a primer or how-to guide on comics literary criticism. There sure are some mighty fine magazines and such out there devoted to comics LitCrit, but I haven't found much from people trying to teach it.
Until next month, this is Kelly J. Cooper, signing off.
Comments
Don't forget the comics part of your project
First of all, I'd recommend dumping the "Idiot's Guide", probably not the most reliable source. Secondly, if you are going to apply criticism to comics, make sure you read some works that are actually discussing comics criticism.
You can apply a lot of literary criticism to comics, but so could you apply art criticism and even some film criticism. In the end you need to look at the elements of comics that make them comics and not novels or movies.
Besides the ubiquitous McCloud books I'd recommend Robert Harvey's Art of the Funnies and Art of the Comic Book. Both books have an opening chapter that discusses comics as comics and some opening ideas about how to criticize/evaluate/analyse them. I just blogged about those a bit here.
There a few French writers who write well about comics criticism too such as Thierry Groensteen and Benoit Peeters. I'm looking forward to more of your columns.
Derik A BadmanThings Change: http://madinkbeard.com/comicsBlog: http://madinkbeard.com/blog
Huh?
Weds is a very skilled writer - why would you write this?
Is there something specific you're thinking of?
Xaviar Xerexes Oh yeah... this place is called ComixTalk now.
Huh?
Ah ok, gotcha. I think the point of Kelly's column is not to go all high falutin' on us, but to approach reading webcomics in a way that allows for discussion beyond "that's awesome" or "that sux".
Xaviar Xerexes Oh yeah... this place is called ComixTalk now.
Though I love Wednesday and
Though I love Wednesday and some of the things she writes, I gotta agree with Jeff on this. You shouldn't have to research criticism in order to understand someone's critique of a particular webcomic. If the general populous can't understand the commentary being written, then why is it being written at all. We're trying to make webcomics more mainstream here, not academia.
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Zoinks! Magazine contributing writer
Evil Avatar Webcomics artist
Yeah. In all the writing
Yeah. In all the writing classes I took, I was taught to write to my audience, rather than above my audience. But hey, what do I know? I'm not an English major.
Creating A Strawman?
I'll just repeat my above comment - I think you've both miscontrued what Kelly said she was setting out to do in her column.
Xaviar Xerexes Oh yeah... this place is called ComixTalk now.
Creating A Strawman?
I know what you're saying here, Xaviar, and I want to make it perfectly clear that I'm not bashing Kelly's article in the slightest. I actually love the article for what it represents: Kelly has discovered that webcomic criticism has risen above her head, and she wants to better understand the foundations of criticism in order to gain insight into what webcomic criticism is doing for the community. I get it. I have NO problem whatsoever with Kelly's article.
My problem is this: why must the audience research the critical foundations in order to better understand the criticism being written? My problem isn't with Kelly's article at all, it's with the state of webcomic criticism as it stands today.
If we're going to discuss webcomics, why can't we make our discussions more approachable? Yeah, you can easily go beyond "I like it" or "I hate it" and into a more in-depth discourse, but does it have to include the concept of structuralism? Do you have to understand the basics of dianoia in order to appreciate what's being said?
Anytime I think about webcomic criticism as it is building right now, I just think of a comment from Kris Straub:
I'm done.
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Zoinks! Magazine contributing writer
Evil Avatar Webcomics artist
Creating A Strawman?
Um, that's MY plan. I don't know about anybody else's plan, but mine is to make webcomics criticism more approachable by explaining the heck out of criticism in general.
My current focus is on literary criticism because that's the stuff I don't really understand. But a lot of the lessons I'm learning are about criticism in general. I suspect the column will evolve toward learning and speaking the language of criticism, but I dunno. I'm along for the ride myself.
But you'll notice the column is NOT called "Webcomics LitCrit." It's called "The Webcomics Reader" because the point is to be a more informed, more articulate reader and interpreter of webcomics.
Thanks for the comments.
Creating A Strawman?
At the same time, why must a critic assume the audience are a bunch cud-chewing idiots and dumb it down?
These supposed pretentious reviews that are being handed down from upon high, only exist in the minds of people who have bought into the idiotic idea that acting like you've read a book or two is bad. Which is a shame, because I keep seeing otherwise smart people acting like they barely completed high school when this topic comes up.
Webcomics gotta keep it real, right?
Keep on thuggin'
Creating A Strawman?
There's a difference between dumbing down, and writing a critique or a review that someone who is supposed to be part of the target audience - Kelly is an English major and presumably has had at least some previous exposure to LitCrit - has to spend a lot of time STUDYING before they can understand.
Creating A Strawman?
Blame Postnuke! (I think those are functions that will be added in the next version of this comment thingee).
Xaviar Xerexes Oh yeah... this place is called ComixTalk now.
Creating A Strawman?
Well, that's all fine. But when the LitCrit method has been used, it's been used by the author to further explain their position... and even then, it has never formed the basis of the entire review. It's typically barely touched upon outside of using the methodology. As we both know, unless you plan to give a glowing review, people seem to demand a level of academia/ journalism totally uneeded for stating a negative opinion on a webcomic.
Go figure.
If we're talking about something like an Examiner roundtable where the point is to discect the material at hand... It being weighty and requiring some concentration to get through is the point. Laying this sort of complaint at the feet of this sort of material would be categorized under "tough shit"
Now, since I assume we're talking Wednesday White... It doesn't matter what she writes, her approach is typically scattershot to anything she puts down. Any confusion that may stem from reading her stuff isn't because of pretentiousness... Or whatever word one would care to use as an easy dismissal. I think it's because she operates at a different wavelength from the rest of us.
Or, she's high.
Creating A Strawman?
. As we both know, unless you plan to give a glowing review, people seem to demand a level of academia/ journalism totally uneeded for stating a negative opinion on a webcomic.
I hadn't noticed that at all.By the by, when I pointed to
By the by, when I pointed to Wednesday White as an example, I did not intend to hold her up as some sort of target to be used to attack my arguments.
Feel free to mock the column, disparage my arguments, and call me whatever names you like, but please leave off the personal attacks on whomever and whatever I use to illustrate points. (Counter-arguments using my examples POLITELY are fine.)
Thank you.
Well, you can always count
Well, you can always count on William G to insult someone in order to keep people from noticing that he has no idea what he's talking about.
I kid! I kid! =D
But honestly, I don't think anyone would attack your article, Kelly. I said already, and it's worth repeating, your article is really good, and I enjoyed it immensely! Jeff and I just used it as a launching point to discuss webcomic criticism as a whole. I'm hoping you noticed any negative comments we've made are not directed at you or your column, but at the general discourse being applied these days.
And then William G suggested Weds might be high, and, well, I stopped responding in comments after that. =O
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Zoinks! Magazine contributing writer
Evil Avatar Webcomics artist
In William's defense(!), I
In William's defense(!), I once found myself needing to get appallingly drunk in order to complete a review assignment. This is the exception, not the rule; I was covering something long past even my personal trainwreck threshold, and it would have been worse to work from an incomplete assessment. The alcohol, however, only served as anesthesia.
Well, you can always count
Well, you can always count on William G to insult someone in order to keep people from noticing that he has no idea what he's talking about. I kid! I kid! =D
You better be kidding, because that statement is the opposite of true. Anyway, I think it's pretty obvious to anyone without an axe to grind that my comments about Wednesday were just a ribbing about her writing style. But oh, them axes: We all always have them at the ready in webcomics, don't we?
Creating A Strawman?
Perhaps removing the blinders of your mission statement may help?
I'm not convinced that the
I'm not convinced that the inherent assumptions here are valid. Chiefly, we don't have a binary state here between "accessible/populist" and "academic." Focus can go any number of places.
Since I've been invoked here, I get to use myself as an example: the mandate at Websnark is, quite simply, "whatever the heck we want to write about." That's *it.* Our intended audience is "anyone who wants to read what we want to write about." We're basically indulging the writer's compulsion. The mandate has us focusing on the work first; if it works for any given segment of the readership, that's great. If Eric and myself get something out of writing any given thing, that's what matters.
Part of the problem is (and I keep having to say this) that we're *not* A Webcomics Site For All English-Speaking Humanity, and I don't think it's fair or appropriate for that mandate to be imposed upon us. We are participants in the discourse because that's what we want to do. Some are coming in expecting a form of targeting appropriate to a different mandate, or expecting me to clone aspects of my lover's prior work which have found widespread approval. We have made our purpose and intent clear. If it doesn't work for you, well, thanks for giving the work a shot.
On the occasions when what I need to write about is webcomics, I'm generally sorting out the puzzles in my own head and/or the things which have caught my attention. (I'm bemused at any notion that I'm trying to evoke the academic setting because of that. I have no real education to speak of, and nothing I discuss is more than a googlebeat off.)
If I confine what I write to a limited range of subjects and references, then I drastically reduce the pool of whatever that I *can* write as and when I want and need to do that. If the compulsion demands that I write a page-by-page breakdown of Left Behind as a d20 Modern campaign, I'm going to weaken the piece substantially by constantly explaining Christian dispensationalist fiction to the hypothetical general audience.
If I write something about webcomics that's specifically for a broad, diverse audience to read and understand, then chances are that piece is going to be submitted to Comixpedia; Comixpedia *does* have that mandate, and they might find the piece useful.
Kool thing, sitting with a kitty...
For some reason I kept hearing Chuck D saying, "Yeah, tell'em about it... Hit'em where it hurts" in the background while reading this.
Kool thing, sitting with a kitty...
It takes a nation of populists to hold us back.
Kool thing, sitting with a kitty...
Ooo! Can I be your and Eric's disgraced leader of the S1W? I'll change my name to Professor Will.
"This time around, the drama will not be aggro-ed!"
...
...
I just bought the Public Enemy "Best of" CD the other day...
Faulting a giraffe for having a long neck
The Webcomics Examiner outright states that it is seeking to have an elevated discussion of webcomics. It took me three seconds to find out that they were seeking to create /a more sophisticated dialogue/ on the subject. That seems to me to be the reason they use words and nuance not everyone will grasp. It isn't written in any way to suggest that it's aimed at all english-speaking people with webcomics on the brain, and a handy link labelled 'About Us' says as much. I'm sorry to be snarky on this point but it needs pointing out, because stuff like this is a MUCH BIGGER PROBLEM with criticism than hard-to-follow dialogue on some critiques.
If the Examiner throws a term at me that I don't feel I fully understand, I take that as a cue to go find out what the current thinking on that term might be. In terms of media and genre I think the confusing ways these terms are applied accurately reflects the confusing ways these terms are defined by proponents of the medium at large. Contributing authors, after all, bring their own understanding of the webcomic zeitgeist to the situation. Dictionary or no, words are subject to the zeitgeist and will be applied as the general community understands them. Debating the accuracy of their etymology and waving their etymologies at them can't prevent that, or we would not have the screwed-up version of English we speak today. Enormity, terrific, awesome and all their twisted bretheren would be in much different use today.
In specific, though, I've never found any of WW's reviews to be difficult to follow-- in fact the review of Broken Saints for the Examiner pretty well restored my faith in the idea that there were still reviewers trying to connect with the material-- not just register an opinion for the sake of having one. Because I expect the critics to put more effort in, not less, than the readers out there, it can be heartbreaking to find carelessness in critics. It makes those huge unknowns called readers look even more careless and diffident by proxy.
I've read (and been subjected to) reviews clearly written /as the critic read the archives/, complete with thesis passing judgement on us before they'd waded four strips into a 100+ strip archive. I would much rather deal with a review that threatened to make me crack a book or do some background research than that.
If you are going to do a series of articles on literary criticism in regards to webcomics, please, PLEASE please include a section on actually reading and grounding thoroughly in the thing being criticized BEFORE these writers throw the article together. I really do believe everything would be greatly improved by a more focused approach to writing than 'I'm going to start this article and add to it as I explore the topic, then publish it as is when I'm done', which is how a lot of review sites seem to operate. At least we could use more dedication to insight, even if it costs some accessibility.
abusing words
... damn I am /twitching/ for abusing 'dialogue' like that, too, I didn't mean to. I was discussing dialogue concerns earlier and it got lodged in my head sideways. I tend to get snagged on a word without realizing it from time to time, that's the only explanation I have.
... but then again I should probably just pretend I'm pointing out how 'dialogue' gets mangled by the zeitgeist too :-p
The Webcomics Examiner is not "LitCrit"
I'm puzzled by the assertion from some folks on this thread that The Webcomics Examiner ( http://webcomicsreview.com ) uses obscure "LitCrit" jargon to an excessive degree.
In fact, our features and reviews are couched in terms any layman can understand. The only jargon that usually crops up in the magazine are terms from McCloud's books and a few graphic arts and html terms, and we have a glossary to help readers with those.
Consider this: Adelph's much-appreciated defense of us includes the term zeitgeist, a common term of critical writing. According to The Examiner's search engine, we have *never* used that term in the entire history of the magazine!
I understand that the magazine is not everybody's cup of tea, but I think webcomics fans should set aside their pre-conceptions and check us out occasionally. For example, this week's feature on Girl Genius is by Shaenon Garrity, a very engaging professional writer and quite an expert on webcomics. She talks about how the Foglios' series is a great example of serialized storytelling.
Writes Shaenon, "There’s a knack to serializing longform comics on the Web. Each page must grab the reader on its own, preferably ending with some type of cliffhanger or punchline, yet blend harmoniously into the longer story; the pacing must work equally well for readers following along with the current updates and for those reading the comic in big chunks in the archives."
I didn't have any trouble understanding that. Did you?
Well to be fair
To be utterly fair, I don't use the word 'zeitgeist' because I want to be LitCrit in any way, but because it is /exactly/ what I mean. That's just the way I speak, and I don't know how to put it any better. The spirit of the age, the generalized understanding in present day as it applies to the term in question. I don't think webcomics as a genre/medium/whatever HAS a solid set of definitions, I think the zeitgeist is all it has to go on. I've never seen a solid case for standardizing how people use those terms in the webcomic world. I've seen people SAY they have a solid case but I've seen people walk up and fill that case full of holes. Because the nature of the medium has so much affect on the content presented, the line between genre and medium blurs as far as I can tell.
I wasn't putting forth the idea that the examiner was trying to LitCrit up the debate, I don't express things very clearly. I was pointing out the fact that you folks were trying to get indepth/sophisticated views into webcomics, and that this explained the writer's expressed feeling of nuance not grasped and concepts that got away from her. Therefore, criticizing you for doing exactly what your mission statement says you set out to do.
Well to be fair
Aleph-- I apologize-- I didn't mean to suggest that there was anything wrong with using the word zeitgeist, and I certainly didn't intend any criticism of your writing style, which seems pretty darn good to me. I was just suggesting a method by which critics could test their assertion that The Examiner is plagued by litcrit terminology.
I'm not sure if Kelly was referring to us in this instance, but "Structuralism," "Semiotics," "Marxism," "feminism" and "Freud" are not found in our archives. "Jung" pops up in three features. "McCloud" shows up in a ton of features, of course.
Well to be fair
"Feminism" is probably me. Webcomics commentary as a whole has had problems involving the feminist perspective, barring the usual lines of tokenist questioning with regards to visible creative participants.
The Webcomics Examiner is not "LitCrit"
The WCE strikes me as the same kind of middlebrow writing, aimed at a general college-educated audience, that you would find in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Comics Journal, or any large city newspaper's "Culture" section. It's miles ahead of the usual messageboard chatter ("Kewl comic LOL!"), but nowhere near academic LitCrit.
Those who wish to see *actual* academic LitCrit writing applied to comics should check out ImageText:
http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v2_2/
The differences, to me at least, are obvious.
Joey
www.webcomicsnation.com
The Webcomics Examiner is not "LitCrit"
Which I did, in fact, link to in my article.
I'm honestly not sure where the line is, between criticism and literary criticism. I guess that's something I need to explore.
Thank you, all of you, for a very interesting discussion of criticism.
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