Medienkomparatisk; Schlüsselbegriffe und anderes Inhalt

Question 1

According to Scott McCloud, what is the ontology of comics?

Answer 1

Comics are a narrative art form with a very specific dimensional property, being that they are still visually drawn images sequenced into a panel. This is different to film, as the film contains only one panel (the screen) and is an uninterrupted series of moving images.

Question 2

What does “Volksaufklärung” mean and to which medium does the term relate to?

Answer 2

“Volksaufklärung” is a term which has been used in the history of comic studies. Coined by Richard Topeffer*, the term refers to the institutionalisation of comics in newspapers and their signature intellectually satirical style. **

• = Double-check this immediately
  ** = Double-check if the Yellow Kid by Richar F. Outcault is a useful example here.

Question 3

What was the first comic to be appear in a newspaper and who made?

Answer 3

The Yellow Kid by Richard F. Outcault. * Double-check which newspaper

Question 4

When comics first emerged as a popular medium, what did Classics Illustrate produce in order to attract audiences?

Answer 4

Classics Illustrate commissioned comic adaptations of popular literary success, especially stories with horror/gothic elements as well as sexual motives.

Question 5

Who established comics as a socially respectable medium?

Answer 5

Art Spiegelman through his creation of Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, depicting an allegory of his parent’s survival of the Shoah in which the Jews are represented as mice and the Nazis as cats. Serialised between 1988-91, Spiegelman won the Pulitizer Prize in 1992.

Question 6

Which key terms are crucial to the analysis of comics?

Answer 6

Besides medium itself being a crucial aspect of comics, as the visual ontology of a comic informs the reading experience of a comic, intermediality is a key aspect in the media analysis of comics.

Two aspects of intermedial appreciation are crucial to the study of comics: intermediale Bezüge (intermedial references) and adaption. The latter is clear: comics and graphic novels, even today, are often adaptions of literary stories with the aim of re-presenting the story to a new, often younger, audience.

Regarding intermedial references, comics are often referenced in other media. In films and television, onomatopoeic sounds and speech bubbles are often referenced as well as a comic’s typical panel design (think Batman on TV for the former as well as Ah-Ha’s music video for “Take on Me” for the latter).

Question 7

Name an example of intermedial referencing in Literature to comics:

Answer 7

“Populäres Gedicht” von…

Heavily ironic and terrible.

Question 8

What important aspects underlie the study of literary adaptations in comics?

Answer 8

1: Canonicity; which texts are typically selected?
2: Motivation: *
3: The template of the genre: which genre specific characteristics are changed, adapted or removed once adapted into a comic strip?
4: Source: This is of course linked to canonicity but is a particular source privileged? For example, in a comic adaptation of a Greco-Roman myth, which source for the story is used as there could be many versions of the same/similar story?

• = Double-check immediately what is meant by this

Question 9

Discuss Sappho and the problem which lyrics pose for adaptations in x medium

Answer 9

According to Wojcik, lyrics pose a serious problem for comic adaptations in comics, as well as most visual mediums. Wojcik’s argument for this is that lyrics only resist narrative or do not contain a narrative which can easily be transposed onto the panel design of a comic strip.

This just strikes me as a lack of imagination on the part of comic writers as well as a reflection of increasingly minor position poetry has in contemporary society.

Question 10

What is peculiar about video games as a medium?

Answer 10

As well as inheriting much the visuality of a film, a video games is comprised of an interactive, fictional storyworld whose logic is built on real rules. This is Juul, J Hauf*

• = Double-Check this

Question 11

What is the link between narrative, interactive and immediacy in video games?

Answer 11

Immediacy is the phenomenological term delineating how strongly an individual’s focus is directed towards an aesthetic object. It seems that the strengthened aspect of narration as well as interactivity augments the phenomenological immediacy of a video game.

I am somewhat sceptical of this assertion (candy crush as a counter-example. The immediacy does not seem dependent on narrative to me).

Question 12

Explain this quote:

“With the exception of some art games, most videogames function under the logic of “remediation”, a tendency within digital media to incorporate, contain, reform, and re-establish old media forms for a new cultural moment”.
- Kevin. M. Flanagan, “Videogame Adaptation” from the Oxford Handbook to Adaptation Studies

Answer 12

It’s pretty straightforward. Remediation is the process whereby a new medium, especially digital media, absorbs and reconstitutes aspects of a previous media. The radio remediated the media of music and therefore altered the grammar, the underlying expectations and conventions, of music in the 20th century, for example. Video games seem to assimilate many media, both in terms of content as well as structure.

Question 13

What is Medienkomparatisk (Comparative Media studies) and how does it differentiate to comparatives arts (inter artes)?

Answer 13

Comparative media studies investigates the unique properties of differing media in order to analyse and differentiate how certain functions or informs experience. Historically, comparative arts (inter artes) has been the study of contrasting art forms in order to differentiate the characteristics of artistic mediums. For example, the famous Lakoon debate initiated by Lessing, which instigated a discussion among 18th century elites as to the question how did literature differentiate itself from sculpture. Naturally, such debates often incorporated phenomenological as well as ethical questions in addition to the basic ontological definition of an art form.

Crucially, the object of analytical focus in comparative media studies is much wider than comparative arts as it includes other everyday or non-artistic forms of media.

Question 14

Can Medienkomparatistik be studied diachronically and/or sychronically? Give examples.

Answer 14

Yes.

Diachronic media analysis can be analysed in terms of media development and ,,koevolutionen”.

This being said, it would seem that most media analysis seems to centre on synchronic analyses. Synchronic analyses of media can include the following topics:

• Intermediale Spannungen
• Wechselwirkungen (interdependence)

** Continue from the slide

Question 15

According to Henry Jenkins, what are the key features of Medienkonvergenz (media convergence) to remember?

Answer 15

1: Medienkonvergenz defines the condition and/or process of new media being created from the fusion of older media.
2: The cultural-historical process of Medienkonvergenz seems to have intensified at the end of the 19th century.
3: Greater Medienkonvergenz in society contributed to the emergence of mass and popular culture.
4: 19/20th century Mediankonvergenz marks the spread of new media through society.
5: Medienkonvergenz is one of the central processes which allows for intermediality.

Question 16

Explain with examples the following quotes from Marshall McLuhan:

“The medium is the message”. P1

“The ‘message’ of any medium is always another medium” P1

“The power of technology to create uits own world of demand is not independent of technology being first an extension of our own bodies and senses”. P7

Answer 16

As German critic x puts out, what McLuhan means with “he medium is the message” is that any the content of any medium, be that a technological medium or any other form of communication, such as speech, is inflected by the properties of the medium itself. The classical example being that the prose, especially prose written after the advent of the Gutenberg printing press, has a distinctive character contrasting with earlier prose and property.

“The ‘message’ of any medium is always another medium” refers to what would nowadays be called premediation or remediation. Premediation designating the process by which an earlier medium, or even convention, influences a later medium or genre. For example, an “odyssey” is often the default, canonical metaphor in travel writing, even in travel stories of Shoah survivors. Remediation is process by which a new medium reconstitutes a previous media, such as the video game reorganising and assimiliating many elements of film and literature as well as other games. McLuhan gives the example of the content of writing being the medium of speech, which obviously a conflation of premediation and remediation.

The final point, I think, is that medium always has a distinctive phenomenological character, especially insofar as it demands a suspension of our disbelief, greater or lesson span of attention, etc.

Question 17

What’s the difference between a soft and hot medium?

Answer 17

A soft medium is the institutionalisation of a medium as a system of signification (zeichensystem) and communication. A hot medium, such as Adolf Kittler has argued, is the institutionalisation of a medium which in itself alters and redefines the content of communication. I think the telephone was his example. ** Double-check.