Visual Storytelling in Dutch and Flemish Comic Books a Corpus Analysis Across Culture and Time
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Visual storytelling in Dutch and Flemish comic books A corpus analysis across culture and time Mark Dierick ANR: 886453 Bachelor thesis Communication and Information Science Specialization: Text & Communication Tilburg University, Tilburg Supervisor: dr. N.T. Cohn Second reader: dr. R. Cozijn August 2017 1 Introduction The Dutch and Flemish visual story—stereotypically in comics—has had a rich history, with numerous characters and series having a place in the respective Dutch and Belgian collective memory. However, comic books are more than just characters and stories. There is an entire visual language working behind the surface of every comic book (Cohn, 2013). When viewing comics as shaped by a visual language, most people might especially look at images, text balloons and other common morphological symbols. However, the way the panels of a comic book are framed conveys another important part of the story, and is an essential part of the narrative structure found in sequential images. A language is not an absolute thing. Not only is every language constantly evolving, they exist in many gradations. These gradations, also called dialects, are often variations of a language that are bound to a certain geographical location (Chambers & Trudgill, 1998). Typically, the phenomenon of dialects refers to a verbal language. An example of this is Flemish, a series of variations on the Dutch language. It is the dominant language in a large part of Belgium. However, it could just as easily be assumed that the phenomenon of dialect goes beyond just verbal languages. Visual languages could have a form of dialectic interaction too: sharing the majority of their properties with a few distinctive differences, based on its geographical origin. This thesis aims to further investigate the way visual languages operate across cultures and across time. Within a corpus of 80 Dutch and Flemish comic books, the properties of their visual language are analysed, as well as the way books from the two countries compare to each other and how they have developed over the last eight decades. History of Dutch and Flemish comics Especially when investigating the cross-cultural differences in comics, it is useful to consider the historical context of both Flemish and Dutch comics. While the very first comic-like visual stories started appearing around Europe as early as the 19th century, it was not until after the First World War that the contemporary kind of comics reached the Netherlands and Flanders (Lambiek Comics, n.d.). While French-language comics like Tintin were released in comic magazines, the first Dutch- language comics usually appeared in newspapers (Lefèvre & Van Gompel, 2003). The Dutch-Flemish comic Bulletje en Bonestaak by George van Raemdonck is a very early example of this, running in newspapers from 1922 until 1937. The newspaper format did present Dutch and Flemish comic artists with some restraints as compared to French and Wallonian magazines: due to the low quality material involved in newspaper publishing, Dutch language artists could only draw comics that were stylistically simple (Lefèvre, 2013). There was simply no room for colours or more detailed techniques, as that would only be lost on the newspaper print. Over the years, most Dutch and Flemish comic series have stuck to a similarly simple style, even in the wake of technological advancements. Furthermore, comics in newspapers could usually only take three or six panels per day. Comic books were often a collection of those three-panel instalments, also called tiers, with four tiers per page. Because of this, many Dutch comic books, even ones that were not published in newspapers first, still have twelve panels per page (Lefèvre, 2013). The short instalment-based structure also has an effect on storytelling style. To keep newspaper audiences coming back, some kind of cliffhanger needed to be built into every instalment. Also, a length of three to six panels does not provide much room for narrative complexity or slow burning atmosphere. After the Second World War, Flemish comics went into a very successful era with the so- called Great Flemish Four publishing many different issues and series. Especially Willy Vandersteen, author of the most popular Flemish comic Suske en Wiske and Marc Sleen, author of the popular Nero series, often got a circulation of over 100.000 copies (De Weyer & Nihoul, 2015). In the meantime, Dutch comic book authors had trouble dealing with the national paper shortage created 2 by World War II. They took to publishing small graphic novels, also called beeldromans (Lambiek Comics, n.d.). The books often dealt with more mature subject matter, such as crime and violence. When the Dutch Minister of Culture ordered a distribution stop on the beeldromans, insisting they were corrupting children, this was a big setback for the national comics industry. There was a small number of approved comics that could still be printed in newspapers, many of them created by the popular Marten Toonder Studios. It is around this time that some differences between Dutch and Flemish comics were starting to be reported (Lefèvre, 2013). For example, while Dutch comics still printed the comic strips and the accompanying text separately, Flemish comics had already started using text balloons for dialogue. Also, Dutch comics had a more neat, clean style and a more formal use of language than their Flemish counterparts. Other characteristics that set Flemish comics apart, even from the French- language comics published elsewhere in Belgium, were their flawed, self-deprecating main characters and allusions to socio-political issues. Furthermore, where many Dutch and French- language comics still were mostly populated by male characters, Flemish comics also had a range of important female ones. However, not all story aspects started to diverge between the two countries. Humorous adventure was the most popular genre that is typical of Flemish comics, but is also often seen in comics from other (European) regions including the Netherlands (Lefèvre & Van Gompel, 2003; Lefèvre, 2013; Meesters, 2007). Typically, these comics are about a family or a group of friends that experiences all kinds of adventures. The prime example of this genre is Willy Vandersteen’s Suske en Wiske series, a Flemish comic about Wiske, her (adoptive) brother Suske, and her aunt and uncle who are raising her. It is the most successful comic series in both Flanders and The Netherlands (Meesters, 2007). To a lesser degree, more serious historical adventure comics such as De Rode Ridder are also successful in Flanders. These may be less common in the comics scene of the Netherlands. While both the Dutch and Flemish comic book markets have been under pressure of imported and localized American comics for some decades now (Lefèvre & Van Gompel, 2003; Lambiek Comics, n.d.), comic culture in both countries still seems to show some discrepancies. Flanders has its own educational facility for comic authors and a literature foundation that also supports comic strips, while the Netherlands had neither (Van Geelen, 2009). Since Van Geelen’s article, one educational facility for comic artists has opened in Zwolle in 2012. Almost a decade ago, Dutch comic authors warned that the last major Dutch comic magazines had shut down, and taken professional guidance for budding authors with them (Kolk & Van Tol, 2008). Furthermore, between 2012 and 2017 only three Dutch artists receive subsidies for their work, while twenty-one Flemish artists did, along with thirty-two writers and poets that wanted to turn their work into comics (Rijghard, 2016). On all accounts, while Flemish media report a national comic book renaissance, Dutch media were left reporting on a decline in both popularity and volume of new work. Background The divergent comic cultures in The Netherlands and Flanders could lead to different styles in visual storytelling. To find out whether that is the case, it is important to take a look at the different aspects and structures of visual storytelling. A theoretical background on attentional framing, framing style and semantic changes is useful when considering these potential differences in the way visual stories are presented. The attentional framing of panels is vital to visual storytelling, in that its main purpose is to guide the attention of readers towards the visual elements that are important to the story (Cohn, 2013). Most of the time, these elements are entities. It should be noted that an entity does not equal one character; it can also be a group of people that acts in unity. Entities can be either active or 3 inactive. When the entity does not interact with the story in any way and is not relevant to the events depicted in the story, it is deemed to be an inactive entity. Panel 4 of Figure 1 is an establishing shot, and the policeman in it is an example of an inactive entity. He does not do anything that sets in motion any part of the plot, and does not feature in any later part of the comic book. An active entity is an entity that progresses the story. For example, in panel 1 of Figure 1, both characters are active entities. They interact verbally and physically, one character talking to the other and both shaking the other’s hand. In addition to the interactions within the panel, the conversation they have, has implications on the following panels: the main character finds it pleasant and is visibly happy about it. The way active entities are framed and depicted determines which of the following categories of attentional framing any given panel belongs to. There are four attentional framing categories, also pictured in Figure 1: 1. Macro: contains multiple active entities (Figure 1, panel 1). 2. Mono: contains one single active entity. (Figure 1, panel 2) 3. Micro: contains part of one active entity (Figure 1, panel 3) 4.