Storytelling, Folktales and the Comic Book Format
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San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Faculty Publications School of Information 1-1-2001 Storytelling, Folktales and the Comic Book Format Gail de Vos San Jose State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/slis_pub Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation Gail de Vos. "Storytelling, Folktales and the Comic Book Format" Language & Literacy: A Canadian Educational E-Journal (2001). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Information at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Storytelling, Folktales and the Comic Book Format Gail de Vos ©2001 The reading process in comics is an extension of text. In text alone the process of reading involves word-to-image conversion. Comics accelerate that by providing the image. When properly executed, it goes beyond conversion and speed and becomes a seamless whole. In every sense, this misnamed form of reading is entitled to be regarded as literature because the images are employed as a language. There is a recognizable relationship to the iconography and pictographs of oriental writing. When this language is employed as a conveyance of ideas and information, it separates itself from mindless visual entertainment. This makes comics a storytelling medium. (Eisner 5) Will Eisner, in his ground breaking work Graphic Storytelling, points out that regardless of the various methods of transmitting a story incorporating any form of modern technology, there are only two major ways for a story to be told: words (orally or written) and images. In comics, these two methods are combined (Eisner 13). Eisner defines a storyteller as the “writer or person in control of the narration” (Eisner 6). I have always considered the term to mean an oral transmitter of a narrative and will apply my denotation throughout this article, which will briefly comment on the way oral storytelling techniques are incorporated and celebrated in the comic book format. The major focus of this article, however, will be on examples of retellings of traditional folktales in comic book format, particularly for the young adult reader. I became interested in the similarities between oral storytelling and the comic book format when conducting research on reworkings of traditional folktales for New Tales for Old: Folktales as Literary Fictions for Young Adults (co-authored with Anna Altmann, Libraries Unlimited 1999). Reading folktales in this format made me realize that this was probably the closest literary genre to the oral art of telling a story. Both the comic book and the oral tale depend on dialogue and tone of voice, body language and gestures, and timing for an effective experience for the audience. Both of these storytelling forms require the audience to actively participate in the understanding of the story; the listening audience must decode the words and silences, the body language and the voice to make their own images of the characters, the stage and the action that is taking place in the tale. The strength of the oral tale is that each member of the audience uses his or her own experiences and background to create a story that is uniquely his or her own. In the comic book format, the reader must speculate on what happens in the gutters (the space between the panels) as well as read the visual cues to interpret the story and, as in the oral tale, the experience and background of the reader not only enrich the story read but also individualize it. This article is not the first time that anyone has considered comic books in regards to traditional tales. In a study published in 1941, two psychiatrists conclude: “Comic books can probably be best understood if they are looked upon as an expression of the folklore of this age. They may be compared with the mythology, fairy tales and puppet shows, for example of past ages” (Levine 1372). A few years later, during the mid 1950s and the “comic book scare,” several articles attempted to evaluate the dangers of comics by comparing them with fairy tales and other literature that preceded them, such as Struwwelpeter. Some of the critics noted structural and narrative similarities between comics and fairy tales and admitted that fairy tales also were cruel and perhaps inappropriate for children, however, since comic books were read more frequently than the traditional folktales, the quantity of comic consumption made the decisive difference. Other critics rejected the comparison all together on the grounds that such comparisons should not serve as justifications for the horror and cruelty in the comics. “Fairy tales take place in another remote world of “once upon a time,” whereas the aim of horror series was to create a nauseous reality” (Jovanovic and Koch 112-3). Rolf Brednich, in 1976, reflected that there are numerous structural relations of comics and oral narrative types and in particular, the fairy tale. “European folktales offer—as a sort of universal poetry—a great number of characters, constellations of characters, plots, and so forth, which have been taken over—whether consciously or unconsciously—by the producers of popular and “trivial” literature (Brednich 47). His premise was that “comic book stories and folklore stories appeal to largely the same audience. Both are light entertainment that focus on the adventures of heroes who act outside the restrictions of the established authorities” (Brednich 48). Most of these critics compared the folktale to the superhero tale and paid no attention at all to the similarities of telling the same story both orally and in the graphic format. This then, is the focus of this article. Eisner defines an image as the memory of an object or experience recorded either mechanically (photograph) or by hand (drawing). “In comics, images are generally impressionistic. Usually, they are rendered with economy in order to facilitate their usefulness as a language. Because experience precedes analysis, the intellectual digestive process is accelerated by the imagery provided in comics” (Eisner 15). In his discussion of images as narrative tools, Eisner speaks of the benefits of employing stereotypes in the comic book world. Stereotypes are also widely used in the world of folklore. They are the short hand of human experience and allow for the engagement of the listener’s imagination. Everyone knows what a beautiful princess looks and acts like and so the storyteller does not have to stop or slow the telling of the tale to describe the characters or the setting (usually a castle, forest or hut). In both the oral tale and the tale rendered in comic book form, there is not a great deal of time or space available to develop a character in comparison to a film or novel. Thus, the use of the stereotype, but, as Eisner points out, “the art of creating a stereotypical image for the purpose of storytelling requires a familiarity with the audience and a recognition that each society has its own ingrown set of accepted stereotypes” (Eisner 19). This is what makes oral storytelling so powerful and the reading of comic books from other cultures so bewildering! At the onset of the telling of a story, whether oral, written or graphic, there is an understanding between the teller and the listener, or reader. The teller expects that the audience will comprehend, while the audience expects that the author will deliver something that is comprehensible. In this agreement, the burden is on the teller. In comics, the reader is expected to understand things like implied time, space, motion, sound and emotions. In order to do this, a reader must not only draw on visceral reactions but also make use of an accumulation of experience as well as reasoning. (Eisner 49) Eisner claims the reader is an actor because of the importance of dialogue in the graphic format. “Where dialogue is not furnished, it requires that the storyteller depend on the reader’s life experience to supply the speech that amplifies the intercourse between the actors. In depicting a silent sequence of interaction, the comic teller must be sure to employ gestures and postures easily identifiable with the dialogue being played out in a reader’s mind” (Eisner 57). Further on in his discussion about telling stories graphically, Eisner points out that subtle gestures or provocative postures are not easy to depict without the continuing movement afforded by film and therefore the “telling” images are extracted from the flow of action and frozen in the image presented on the page (114). Gestures are hand, body or face movements that aid in the communication process and must spring from strong, detailed images of the scenes, characters and action in the story. In an oral tale, gestures are effective because they translate more directly into specific and powerful images in the listener’s minds than do the words. They provide an important form of detailed visual information for the audience and must contribute to how the story is told. Gestures in comic books also aid in making the printed page and characters on it come alive. The major difference between the print format and oral storytelling is that the latter transmits images primarily through sound. How the story sounds, however, depends on the individual’s personal interpretation of the tale, the skill in which the storyteller tells the tale, and the listening experience and needs of the audience. Part of this skill also includes the effective use of body language and non-verbal communication cues. While the audience is listening to the sound of the words and decoding the images that are created in their minds, they are also reading the storyteller’s gestures, facial expressions and silences.