Medienkomparatisk; Schlüsselbegriffe und anderes Inhalt Flashcards
According to Scott McCloud, what is the ontology of comics?
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.
What does “Volksaufklärung” mean and to which medium does the term relate to?
“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.
What was the first comic to appear in a newspaper and who made it?
The Yellow Kid by Richard F. Outcault in The New York World in 1895.
When comics first emerged as a popular medium, what did Classics Illustrate produce in order to attract audiences?
Classics Illustrate commissioned comic adaptations of popular literary success, especially stories with horror/gothic elements as well as sexual motives.
Who established comics as a socially respectable medium?
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.
Which key terms are crucial to the analysis of comics?
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 adaptation. The latter is clear: comics and graphic novels, even today, are often adaptions of famous 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).
Name an example of intermedial referencing in Literature to comics:
“Populäres Gedicht N. 17” von Rolf Dieter Brinkmann. It refences both classic comic figures as well as typical tropes of comics as a medium, such as “POW”
Heavily ironic and terrible.
What important aspects underlie the study of literary adaptations in comics?
1: Canonicity; which texts are typically selected?
2: Motivation: Is the comic being produce as a contract with a company or for private enjoyment.
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?
Discuss Sappho and the problem which lyrics pose for adaptations in x medium
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.
What is peculiar about video games as a medium?
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
What is the link between narrative, interactivity and immediacy in video games?
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).
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
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.
What is Medienkomparatisk (Comparative Media studies) and how does it differentiate to comparatives arts (inter artes)?
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.
Can Medienkomparatistik be studied diachronically and/or sychronically? Give examples.
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)
- Adaptation studies
According to Henry Jenkins, what are the key features of Medienkonvergenz (media convergence) to remember?
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.
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
As German critic Sybille Krämer pointts 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. Early poetry, for example that inscribed on papyrus or on clay tablets, often displays the aesthetics of orality. The printing press also allowed fort he creation of new genres, a new readership as well as for what Jürgen Habermas termed “the public sphere”.
“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.
What’s the difference between a soft and hot medium?
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 when the institutionalisation of a medium alters and redefines the content of communication. For example, the printing press would be a hot medium as its widespread introduction influenced the nature of prose writing thereafter, whereas an alphabetic script or paper itself would be a soft medium.
Analyse Lessing’s Lakoon and how it relates Medienkomparatisk.
As Sabine Schneider points, the 18th century saw the emergence of new aesthetic theories which were considerate of the limitations of language, rationality as well as the beauteous self-referential nature of the image. Lessing’s Laokoon captures the discrepancies within this discourse by representing the disjuncture between the aesthetic ontologies within the media of language versus image.
Because medium is a broad category which resists tradition and may not necessarily be material, there are seven categories of possible medial analysis. Name them all with examples.
1: Channels of mass communication (radio).
2: Communication technologies (smart phones and the printing press)
3: Applications of digital media (Whatsapp, X, social media)
4: Techniques for the preservation and codification of language (script, voice recordings)
5: Form of semiotic expression (Language itself, movement, image, sound)
6: Art forms (painting, poetry, novels etc)
7: material substances which facilitate communication (papyrus, paper, clay tablets etc.).
Who was Ferdinand de Saussure and why is he relevant?
Ferdinand de Saussure was an early 20th century French linguist’s whose theory of signification became the basis of structuralism. Saussure theorised that a unit of communication could be condensed to the sign, which is constituted by two components: the signified, the unit of information conveyed, and the signified, being the visual and/or aural codification of within the signified. For example, the signifier of a tree, being the written word and its sound, communicates the notion of a tree, which is signified concept inherent to the signifier of a tree.
This crucial as it allows for the analysis of channel of media comparative studies, being semiotics, as well as provides a clarifying model for communication which could elaborate the different methods of communication distinct to a medium.
For Saussure, a sign with a widespread meaning would be a icon or index. For example, the sun as a sign for warmth. A culturally varying sign, on the other hand, was denoted by Saussure as a symbol, such as the multitudes of symbols for the good and evil. There can be, of course, medium-specific symbols.This observation would later become the basis for the concepts of cultural icons, as it is contemporaneously used in media comparative studies, and interfigurality.
What is the difference intramediality, intermediality and transmediality?
Intramediality refers to a medium sui generis and which also doesn’t contain the features of an intermedial medium, such as opera.
According to Irina Rajewsky, there are three forms of Intermedial composition. Intermedial reference, such as allusions within a work, adaptation (Medienwechsel), like Literaturverfilmungen, and mixed medial objects (Mischformen), such as operas and musicals.
Transmediality denotes the study of content which reappears across various media, such as the study of cultural icons and interfigurality. Objects of analysis in the study of transmediality include tnasfictionality (Transfiktionalität), Transmedia Storytelling, and transmedial narratology (Transmediale Narratologie)
What is the difference between pluri and multimediality?
Plurimedial:
Dramentexte
Songtexte…
Multimedial (multimodal):
Film
Comic
Photo-Fiction
The difference between these two concepts is the instance of consumption. A dramatic script can be consumed separate from the film with dramatises the words on the page.
Give two examples of intermediale Bezüge (intermedial referencing)
Filmic writing (filmisches Schreiben), such as a voiceover in a film. Wojcik does concede that filmic writing can be difficult to identify.
Referencing in terms of content: pop music within a film or the recitation of a poem. This can be function as an important feature of world-building within a piece of fiction. It must be noted that intermedial referencing abides the logic of canonicity, whereby more common or canonical aesthetic objects are more likely to be reference i.e. the Bible.
What is the example of photo-fiction given by Wojcik?
Photos, such as the frontispiece, for Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald. The images are an aspect of Sebald’s world-building, advertisement for the novel and are multimodal, not plurimodal, in that photo-fiction in Sebald cannot be separated from the novel Austerlitz.
„Reading, rewriting, critique, translation, transmutation,
metamorphosis, reveration, transvocalization, resuscitation,
transfiguration, actualization, transmodalization, signifying,
performance, dialogization, cannibalization, reinvisioning, incarnation,
reaccentuation.”
(Robert Stam: Introduction. The Theory and Practice of Adaptation. In: Ders., Alessandro Raengo
(Hg.): Literature and Film. A Guide to Theory and Practice of film Adaptation. Malden 2005, S. 1-52,
hier S. 3.)
What are these all examples of?
Adaptation and therefore fall under the category of intermedial analysis.
Originalnähe and Weltreue are relevant concepts in the study of what?
Intermedial adaptation, such as filmic adaptations of books (Lord of the Rings).
“Eins-zu-Eins-Verhältnis vs. Netzwerk und
Mehrfachadaption”. Prof Wojcik uses this oppositional paradigm to frame an analysis of two things. What are they are.
These concepts are relevant in Wojcik’s analysis of intermedial adaptations of Faust as well Romeo and Juliet. They help to clarify are “true to the original” an adaptation can be.
What four concepts are critical to the study of transmedial storytelling?
- Remediation
- Premediation
- Immediacy
- Hypermediacy
What is remediation?
„Der Bezug zwischen den beiden Medien kann würdigend oder rivalisierend sein;
entsprechend wird das repräsentierte Medium einmal bewahrt, ein andermal
transformiert. Remediation meint in diesem Sinne eine Form medialer
Umgestaltung in technischen, narrativen und ästhetischen Prozessen der
Inkorporation. Nicht nur werden die älteren Medien dabei von den neueren
aufgegriffen, sondern die Vorgängermedien reagieren ihrerseits auf die junge Konkurrenz, indem sie ihre Impulse aufnehmen: Die bildende Kunst des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, nicht nur die Videoinstallation, inkorporiert den Film; der Film, nicht nur der Künstlerfilm, inkorporiert die bildende Kunst. Vergleichbare Tendenzen einer wechselseitigen Bezugnahme lassen sich verstärkt zwischen dem Film und
den Neuen Medien beobachten: dem Fernsehen, dem Musikvideo, den
Videogames, dem World Wide Web oder der virtuellen Realität.“
(Fabienne Liptay, Susanne Marschall: Remediation. In: https://filmlexikon.uni-kiel.de/doku.php/r:remediation-7675 [20-10-2024])
What is premediation?
„By using the term ‚premediation‘ I draw attention to the fact that
existent media which circulate in a given society provide schemata for
new experience and its representation.”
(Erll, Astrid: Remembering across Time, Space, and Cultures: Premediation,
Remediation and the “Indian Mutiny”. In: Dies. / Ann Rigney (Hg.): Mediation,
Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter
2009, S. 109-138, hier S. 111.)
For example, the term odyssey being used a motif in travel narratives. Or WW1 being used as a device to elaborate the WW2.
What is hypermediacy?
“The logic of hypermediacy acknowledges multiple acts
of representation and makes them visible”
(Jay Bolter, Richard Grusin: Remediation: Understanding New Media.
Cambridge (Mass): MIT Press 1999)
For example, the desktop icon or metalepse in imagery.
What is immediacy?
Immediacy refers to the phenomenological experience of enveloping an individual’s focus on an aesthetic onject. To take an extreme example, when people believed Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of World of the Wars was real!
What is transfictionality and how is it different to adaptation?
„Two (or more) texts exihibit a transfictional relation when they share
elements such as characters, imaginary locations, or fictional worlds.
Transfictionality may be considered a branch of intertextuality, but
usually conceals this intertextual link because it neither quotes nor
acknowledges its sources.”
(Saint-Gelais Richard: Transfictionality, in: Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative
Theory, David Herman, Manfred Jahn, Marie-Laure Ryan, London: Routledge 2008,
S. 768-769, hier S. 612.)
„Whereas adaptation tries to preserve the story but sometimes
changes the world, transfictionality tends to preserve the world, either
in part or in whole, but to change the story, or to add more stories to
the world.”
(Marie Laure Ryan: Transmedia Storytelling as a narrative practice. In:
Oxford Handbook Adaptation studies. S. 527-541)
Think of Sherlock Holmes appearing cartoons.
Give Wojcik’s example of Transmedia Storytelling Top-down:
Das Matrix-Universum.
Which famous cycle of myths is a great example of transfictionality and why?
The Arthurian legends because there is, despite the variations in the differing reproductions of the mythos, a shared and repeating cast of characters, setting as well as narrative tropes. Crucially, the differing authors who reproduce the Arthurian legends are contributing to the building of the same storyworld.
Define interfigurality with an example
Interfigurality refers to the circulation of the same character in various media, such Don Quixote, Dracula or a Greek god. Interfigularity can also refer to the circulation of a character type and frame a historical analysis of that figure in their differing manifestations, such as mermaids or Scheherazade in 1001 Nights. As such, interfigurality can be a form of diachronic analysis.
The following quotes are currently understood as conceptualising the same phenomena. What is that phenomena?
“Fluctuating individuals” - Umberto Eco
,,Figuren auf Pump” - Theodore Ziolkowski
“Trans-world individuals” - Uri Mangolin
“Re-used Characters” - Wolfgang G. Müller
,,serielle Figuren” - Shane Denson and Ruth Meyer
Interfigurality
What are the axes of analysis, according to Wojcik, when studying an interfigural character?
1: The recipient (the viewer or reader for example
2: The transmedial ,universum”: the storyworlds in which the character appears, for example.
3: Diachronic palimpsest. For example, the writing and re-writing of a mythic character through history.
4: Individual representation of a character in a specific medium. Most literary/cultural analyses of an interfigural character in a specific instance like Bela Lugosi’ Dracula. But Wojcik gives the example of narratology.
How can analyses of interfigural characters be ,,fragmentiert” according to Wojcik?
1: Name
2: Attribute
3: Plotsnippet
4: Quote (Zitat)
These all denotes methods of isolating a certain aspect of an interfigural character which may appear in one iteration but not another over time.
Researching interfigularity can also incorporate a study of x?
Reception history
Interfigural characters, and analysis of those interfigural characters, often entails a search through or of x?
,,Bedeutungsoffenheit”. Wojcik’s example is Dracula.
What are the three essentially characteristics of cultural icons, according to Martin Kemp?
1: Widespread recognisability
2: A rich wealth of meanings beyond its inception and function.
What other characteristics concerning the defintion of cultural icons were discussed in the lecture beyond the definition given by Martin Kemp?
- Wiedererkennbarkeit (durch intermediale Zirkulation)
- Semantischer Überschuss: “veritable ‘Palimpseste’
überdeterminierter und vielschichtiger soziopolitischer
Einschreibungen” (Günther Leypoldt: Introduction. In: ders, B.
Engler: American Icons. 2010, S. 9) - Möglichkeit des Ikonoklasmus
Give examples of cultural icons?
1: Iconic quotes, such ast he opening of famous novel.s
2: Iconic images, such as sacred icons vs secular icons (the religious image of the Madonna against the popstar Madonna) or iconic adverts, coca-cola
3: Iconic sounds, “da da da”
4: iconic gestures, the peace sign or Musk’s roman salute :/
5: Figures which denote a nation, such as specific writers
6: Figures which denote a specific generation, like J.D. Salinger
7: Figures which denote a specific political movement, such as Virginia Woolf for feminism.
What four areas of literature and visual art were discussed in the lecture dedicated to the subject, given examples for each.
1: Literature in which visuality is a specific component of its design. For example, medieval ,,Umrissgedichte” or Baroque emblems
2: Images which accompany literature. E.G. the frontispiece of a book or an illustration. Again, canonicity is here important in regards to which images are used to accompany a piece of literature, as well as which texts are more often illustrated.
3: Images which are written to or adapt literature, and vice versa. The Biblical Judith in fine art, for example.
4: Ekphrasis: the description, often extremely self-conscious, of an image in ltierary language, such as Margaret Atwood’s poem “This is a Photograph of me”.
What effect did film have on literature, according to Tolstoy and McLuhan?
Film impelled a remediatory effect on literature by which literature after the widespread institutionalisation of photography and cinema became more visual.
In Mark Kuhn’s model of film narratology, what are the essential characteristics of film?
The interplay between camera, montage, and mise-en-scene, which includes audio-visual elements.
What’s the core challenge of Literaturerfilmung?
The visual narrative instance (VEI auf Deutsch = visuelle Erzählinstanz) is contained by the imagery itself, whereas the linguistic narrative instance (Sprachliche Erzählinstanz) is not. VEI entails multiple components its medial construction, such as mise-en-scene and diegesis, more than SEI.
Name the different types of narrative perspectives?
Ultimately, perspective has two components: its focalisation and the medium of focalisation.
Focalisation can be:
1: null: the narrative alignment is so constructed that more information is conveyed to the audience than the characters know.
2: internal: when the focalisation is restricted to only what the characters know.
3: external: the focalisation is so constrained that the consumer is granted less information than the characters.
The three core media of focalisation, especially as they relate to films but also other media, include the linguistic perspective (focalisation), the visual perspective (ocularisation; Okularisierung), and the auditory perspective (Auditorisation?; Aurikularisierung)
In film, what are the four possible constellation of perspective which can constitute the filmic narrative instance?
1: Disparate: either the SEI or VEi are dominant
2: Complementary: both SEI and VEI are dominant
3: Polarising: a) die SEI wird durch die VEI oder
b) die VEI wird durch die SEI verankert/polarisiert (SEI oder VEI dominant / beide gleichberechtigt)
4: Overlapping: The VEI illustrates the SEI or the SEI rewrites/reconstructs the VEI
Name the four most important theorists regarding the intermediality of music and literature?
1: Calvin S. Brown
2: Steven Paul Scher
3: Werner Wolf
4: Nicola Gess
What are Calvin S. Brown four, now outmoded, categories for the intermedial analysis of music?
1: Combination (Kombination)
2: Ersetzung (Subsitution)
3: Influence (Einfluss)
4: Parallel and analogy
What are the three categories for Steven Paul’s Scher’s intermedial analysis of music with examples?
1: Literature in music. E.g. Programme music, literary adaptations of a story into music, symphonic poems
2: Music and literature. Opera
3: Music in the literature:
Wortmusik
[Nachahmungsversuche der
akustischen
Qualität der
Musik, z.B. Lautmalerei]
musikalische
Form- und
Strukturparallelen
[Fuge etc.]
> verbal music<
[jede literarische
Präsentation eines
realen oder
fiktiven Musikstücks]
What is the Werner Wolf’s focus in the intermedial analysis of literature and music?
The thematic difference between showing music in literature and telling literature in music.
Telling entails the description of music and instruments; showing is the evocation of music through lanaguage.
What is Nicola Gess’ focus in the intermedial analysis of literature and music?
Medientransformation“:
„.. Der literarische Text konstituiert sich im Bezug auf das andere
Medium, indem er dieses bzw. eines seiner zentralen Charakteristika
oder Verfahren übernimmt und zugleich transformiert.“
Who pioneered comics before there were comics?
Wilhelm Busch with Max and Moritz
Which two videogames are used as examples in Wojcik’s lecture and what are they examples of?
Lego Lord of the Rings and a role-playing game version of Don Quixote. These are both intermediality, as they have to adapt the work and in the process enlarge narrative instances in order to make them more interactive. Interestingly, the Lego game is an adaptation of the film, indicating that the film has a greater canonical prominence in the culture than the novel.
Furthermore, the DQ game is an example of transmedial story in that DQ an interfigural character and the videogame adaptation amended the narrative of the novel, whereas the Lego adaptation of LOTR preserved the film narrative.
