Visual Narratives are Underrated

Finally, here is a space to formally gush about visual novels, comic books, and webcomics. I always knew that there was something special about them, and not just in the sense that they were pretty and you can see your favorite superhero’s abs instead of just imagining it, but I mean that these visual narratives have an impact that you can’t get from short stories or novels. Throughout my life, I’ve been noticing the clever ways in which comic books use visual representation to present subtext or metaphors within the story. It wasn’t until I read MAUS, and its complementary critical readings, that I was able to put a name to it: focalization.

“Focalization” is a completely new term to me, and initially I had only understood that function as a visual perspective. More specifically, a visual perspective in textual narratives. When we discussed about focalization versus narration in textual narratives, I was still pretty confused, but seeing how focalization functions in visual narratives, the distinction has become obvious to me, because I had been making this same distinction my whole life, and these visual styles employed to give  deeper meaning to something is exactly why I enjoy reading visual narratives.

I really have so much to say about Art Spiegelman’s MAUS. It’s the kind of visual novel that you can tell people you read, and they don’t judge you for it. Hence, it has become one of my favorite graphic novels, and even more so now that I know how sophisticated its narrative is. Berlatsky’s analysis of Spiegelman’s infusion of ideological and existential concepts in the narrative of MAUS was not only enlightening but also empowering. Everyone who ever told me that comic books are childish can please move quietly to the exit. Take that, Tito Jerry, comic books are able to be sources of knowledge about things as serious as the Holocaust. Further, the narrative was also able to discuss ethical dilemmas of Holocaust representation while it was trying to represent the event.

MAUS was also able to discuss about a key consideration in communication studies: representational power, shown in the scene when he decides how to draw his wife Francoise. In the same scene, Artie reveals his conception of race, in that most of the time, it’s not really something you are, but something that someone else decides that you are. I think that that must be a prime consideration of any media endeavor: who has the representational power, and how are they using it?

These are only some of the things that I got from the two volumes of MAUS. I could really go on.

CONCLUSION

This was basically a rant for all the people who ever told me that visual narrative were for kids. No, they are not! They are as effective storytellers as thick novels can be, and they even bring an added depth to the table. Considering the narrating and focalizing advantages that the visual medium entails, I hereby conclude that visual narratives are underrated.

Works Cited

Berlatsky, L.. The Real, the True, and the Told: Postmodern Historical Narrative and the Ethics of Representation. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2011. Project MUSE

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor's Tale. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Print.

--Maus II: A Survivor's Tale : and Here My Troubles Began. , 1991. Print.