How Comics Communicate on the Screen Telecinematic Discourse in Comic-To-Film Adaptations
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In: Christian Hoffmann & Monika Kirner-Ludwig (eds.). 2020. Telecinematic Stylistics. London: Bloomsbury. 263-284. 11 How comics communicate on the screen Telecinematic discourse in comic-to-film adaptations Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer 1 Introduction Recent years have seen a large number of commercially successful screen adaptations of printed comic books, such as Kenneth Branagh’s Thor (2011) or the award-winning series of Batman films (e.g. Christopher Nolan’s2008 The Dark Knight).1 Most of these screen adaptations of comics, like most studies of ‘graphic cinema’ (e.g. Booker 2007; Gordon, Jancovich and McAllister 2007; Rauscher 2010), focus on relatively dark superheroes.2 Against this background, one box-office success stands out due to its friendly and positive hero for all audiences: Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin (2011), which is based on the comic book series Tintin by the Belgian artist Hergé (a pseudonym for Georges Rémi; cf. Peeters 1990: 9). In Hergé’s comics, the young journalist Tintin experiences exciting adventures all over the world in the company of his dog Snowy. This chapter pays tribute to Hergé’s popular comic book universe by investigating the relation between Spielberg’s film adaptation and Hergé’s comics from a linguistic perspective. It sets out to fill an important research gap by exploring how language use in the scriptovisual3 medium of the comic (which combines still images and printed text) is rendered in the audiovisual medium of film (which combines moving images and spoken language). After discussing general linguistic similarities between comics and films and the use of language in each of the two media, this chapter compares the representation of voice, accent, thoughts, talking animals, sounds and written language in Spielberg’s screen adaptation of Tintin to the original printed comic books. It analyses to what extent the language from comic books can be directly transferred to the filmic medium and investigates possible causes underlying any modifications in the above-mentioned domains. 2 Linguistic similarities and differences between comics and films The juxtaposition of comics and films as such is no entirely new idea:Ecke (2010: 7–8) points out that comics have frequently been compared to films in the literature, with 264 Telecinematic Stylistics some researchers qualifying them as ‘frozen film’ (Berninger, Ecke and Haberkorn 2010: 1). It is therefore not surprising that director Steven Spielberg should also have used this analogy to describe Hergé’s Tintin comics: ‘Every single panel … it told a story in cinematic terms. … That was, I think, the genius of Hergé: it was a movie’ (The Journey to Tintin, DVD special feature). Most studies on comic-to-film adaptations (e.g. Leitch 2007; Lefèvre 2007; Ofenloch 2007) share this quotation’s focus on both media’s prevalent use of images, which constitutes a particularly salient common feature of comics and films. Previous research often concentrates on analysing how the look of individual comics is captured by their screen adaptations, for example regarding the use of colour or concerning parallels between panels and shots.4 However, even if both comics and films are characterized by the use of images, one should not overlook that they still rely very strongly on the use of language to transmit messages (with very few exceptions like silent films5 or silent comic strips, for example Lewis Trondheim’s La Mouche). Since the analysis of language in comic-to-film adaptations has been almost completely disregarded so far (e.g. in Fick 2004 or in Cohen 2007), the present study fills an important gap in research. On a very general level, a crucial linguistic difference between comics and films is that the former are by necessity restricted to the written medium, whereas sound film has the technical means to render both spoken and written language. Lefèvre (2007: 4) therefore speaks of ‘the importance of sound in film compared to the “silence” of comics’.6 In spite of this difference, comics and films share two other important language- related aspects, namely that they largely rely on dialogue in order to advance their narratives and that they attempt to simulate natural conversation. There even seems to be a common preconception that both comic and film dialogue are relatively naturalistic representations of actual spoken language: thus, students of linguistics frequently suggest studying language based on extracts from television series without being aware of the fact that ‘TV film dialogue … is an artfully-constructed selective simulation of natural realistic speech’ (Toolan 2011: 181), scripted and thus different from the unplanned speech typical of natural conversation. An important distinction for the comparison of comics to screen adaptations is made by Söll (1974: 16–17). He distinguishes between the medium of realization (in an auditory vs. visual code) and the characteristics of the conception of a text (spoken vs. written style). For example, negative contractions such as don’t are characteristic of spoken style in Standard English and will usually occur in the spoken code, but they may also occur in the written medium, for example in direct conversation in a novel. Conversely, Table 11.1 Code parlé, écrit, phonique and orthog- raphique Conception spoken written Medium Orthographic code <don’t> <do not> Phonetic code /dəʊnt/ /duː nɒt/ Source: adapted from Söll (1974: 16–18). How Comics Communicate on the Screen 265 the full form do not is more characteristic of the written style and tends to occur in the written medium, but it may also be used in oral speech, for example when giving emphatic instructions or reading a newspaper article aloud. Usually, however, there is an affinity between spoken conception and phonetic code (e.g. in casual conversation) and written conception and orthographic code (e.g. in academic research articles). If we apply Söll’s distinctions to the language of comic books and the language of film dialogues, we find that both comic book and film dialogues can typically be classified as conceptionally spoken language (which makes them similar to spontaneous spoken language). For instance, the language used in the Tintin comic books’ dialogues imitates spoken language in different ways. Thus Figure 11.1 contains contractions (Didn’t you know that?), hesitation phenomena (I… er… I’m Mr Bird’s new secretary.) and false starts (I…no, I hadn’t heard). Similarities of the language used in comics and spoken language have been observed in several empirical studies: thus readability scores based on sentence length generally qualify the language employed in comics as simple (Sanchez-Stockhammer 2012: 68–9), and the increased use of question marks and exclamation marks in comics (Sanchez- Stockhammer 2016: 162–3) characterizes their language as conceptually oral following Söll (1974: 16–17). Nevertheless, the spatial limitations of the individual panels impose artificial restrictions on dialogues in comics (cf. also Sanchez-Stockhammer 2012), so that these cannot be considered identical with naturally occurring conversation. The same is true of the language of screenplays, which are written in orthographic code supposed to be realized phonetically, that is ‘to be spoken as if not written’ (Söll 1974: 36): the literature on fictional dialogue (e.g. Bednarek 2010: 64–5; Toolan 2011: 161, 182) abounds with observations on the difference between natural conversation and televised dialogues, since the language used in films has a lower proportion of 1. background noise, unclear words and deficient syntax; 2. overlaps and interruptions; Figure 11.1 Spoken-language features in Tintin (The Secret of the Unicorn: 45) © Hergé/Moulinsart 2019. 266 Telecinematic Stylistics 3. false starts, self-repairs and hesitation phenomena; 4. abrupt topic shifts, unresolved topics, incomplete exchanges and ignored or misheard turns; in order to increase intelligibility and for a range of other purposes. Furthermore, dialogues on-screen have a lower proportion of fillers, redundancies and vague language (e.g. kind of, stuff), as these do not contribute to advancing the storyline. Narrative language is also used less in films than in natural conversation to avoid long and tedious monologues. Conversely, televised conversation has a larger proportion or degree of 1. coherence; 2. Gricean cooperativeness (to simplify the communicative process); 3. emotional and emphatic language (to entertain the audience); 4. informal language (to create more realistic characters); 5. stock lines (to attract a large audience) and 6. rhythmical arrangements (for aesthetic reasons). Furthermore, there is less linguistic variation in fictional dialogue than in natural conversation (e.g. regarding the settings, types of interaction and topics), and short turns in constructed filmic dialogue are distributed relatively evenly (cf. Bednarek 2010: 64–5; Toolan 2011: 161, 182). It is very likely that many of these aspects also apply to the language of comics. To conclude, neither the language of comics nor that of films is identical with naturally occurring conversation: while spontaneous conversation is shaped by the cognitive processing limitations of the speakers (cf., for example, Biber 1988: 131–2), dialogue in film rather focuses on the processing limitations of the hearers, whereas dialogue in comic books suffers less from such limitations, as speakers can ‘choose their own reading speed’, ‘linger on a panel, scan the complete plate, and return to panels or whole sequences at free will’ (Lefèvre 2007: 5). 3 Taxonomy of language use in comics and possible equivalents in film Having discussed general linguistic similarities and differences between comic books and films, let us now consider the various ways in which language occurs in comic books and possible equivalents in film. The following overview represents a modification of the taxonomy in Sanchez-Stockhammer (2012: 58–9). The very first instance of written language that readers usually encounter in a printed comic is the title of the book or the individual story as well as the name of the author.