[reposting] A Weaving of Representation and Discourse: van Eyck's Arnolfini portrait and Velazquez's "Las Meninas"

William John Thomas Mitchell claims pictures should be treated at though they are living things. According to Thomas, we still do not have a full understanding of the impact pictures can have on language and literacy. Considering the dependencewe have on pictures and images to convey certain thoughts and ideas, our limited understanding of their nature is of great consequence.

​Mitchell goes on to describe what he calls “metapictures” as a “place where pictures reveal and “know” themselves, where they reflect on the intersections of visuality, language, and similitude, where they engage in speculation and theorizing on their own nature and history” (Mitchell 82). This portrait by Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck illustrates this self-aware nature Mitchell describes. The subjects of the portrait seem to be aware that they are posing for a portrait. The man’s dark clothing and woman’s green dress seem to have been consciously chosen to reflect a certain feeling and message about the subjects. The woman’s hand is resting on her pregnant stomach, highlighting her pregnancy. The subjects and the artist seem to be trying to speak to the viewer through the image using these techniques.

The Text-Image Combo - Communication with a side of identification!

Scott McCloud offers an excellent examination of the human ability to give life to the lifeless objects we interact with and create.  Specifically, he explains that the human experience is split into the realm of concept and the realm of senses, and that the interaction of these two communicate ideas and give life to inanimate objects. (McCloud 39) Both of our animated texts present pictorial depictions in a way that connects viewers to them and, in a sense, allows us to put ourselves in that tragic scene.

He also writes that the inanimate objects that we use “absorb our sense of identity” and, essentially, become one with us. That is to say that this computer is now an extension of me. Or that those drawings become an extension of the artists who drew them.  He carries this theory into the cartoon saying that they exist conceptually in the same way we exist physically. In a sense, we “lend” life to them. (McCloud 41) This lending of life allows readers to identify with the characters on the page and, in turn, the comic becomes an extension of their self. In this way, our creation is as conduit through which life is created.

           

[reposting] "Is it really in the eyes of the beholder?"

The way that anyone views anything is going to vary depending on countless factors. It’s impossible to really guess how people are going to interpret aspects of life, let alone art; that can often have so many interpretations. Some of the biggest factors that affect outlook are upbringing, race, culture, gender, age, and exposure. Take this postcard, for example:

A Speechless Heart-stopper

The animated clips of the bombing in Hiroshima were incredibly powerful. These scenes were both wildly different but yet relayed the same feelings towards the audience in a lot of ways. The clips were mostly voiceless. The anime cartoon only had a voice from the pilot of the plane, then deafening silence followed by the roaring of the explosions. No other words were said. The segment from “Hiroshima Remembered” had no words, only music, a child’s laughter, and then the explosions. There was nothing to listen to, no words to read, just images to watch. These animations portrayed a story better than most writings ever could.

             

Reflection in Art: A Subtle Way to Ask “Why” in the Search for “What”

Often times students are encouraged—as interpreters of art—to ask “what” is happening in a piece. Thus a strange thing starts to happen: the “iconic” part or focus of the image remains important but in the search for what is happening as a whole, we are clued into the background details just as much as the main action. In this way artists can sneak themselves (either literally or metaphorically) into a work. By placing themselves in the work the artists subtly can communicate their own interpretations of reflection, iconicity, and signification into the piece in question but this takes more reflection and historization to understand why they are doing it to look back at the epistemology in which they were composing. W.J.T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory, Nick Sousani’s Unflattening, and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics can all be put in conversation with one another to see how theory can be applied to traditionally fine art as well as draw parallels between art and comics.

McCloud/Sousanis and Hiroshima

I chose to do Homework 5 on McCloud and Sousanis’ pieces and compare it to the animated video clips of the Hiroshima nuclear attacks. After reading their comics, I noticed that both authors put an emphasis on how people attach meaning to photos. In Sousanis’ 5th Dimension chapter of his comic, I learned that we use our imagination to find perspectives that aren’t easily accessible. Our imagination is what allows us to “create stable and single images that make it possible to us to think and act” (Sousanis 90.) It also allows us to shape concepts and create new ideas. By using your imagination, we are able to bring ideas to life, give them meaning and create stories which we then use to connect with other people. When he says ‘stories’, Sousanis is referring to human activities. Simply put, we use our experiences to assert meaning to things. Our Frame of Reference has this way of altering things and make two opposing points true. In the chapter titled Ruts, we learn that others have paved ways for our ideas and when our ideas form into solid forms, they then have the ability to shape us. Ideas become flat when we accept ideas as facts and no longer question them. Repetition is how we become proficient.

Hiroshima: Different Lenses

Because of their chosen style in getting their messages across, it seems clear that both Scott McCloud and Nick Sousanis understood that visual media is powerful, but when looking at the Hiroshima clips assigned to us, it may be safe to say that the two would have come to different conclusions about how the clips impact viewers.

McCloud would have focused on how we interact with the two Hiroshima clips by extending our identities into the videos, or the characters in the videos. Based on his ideas about comic styles in “The Vocabulary of Comics,” it’s likely that he would have decided the differences in the clips would begin in the style of the animation. In his work, he speaks at length about effects how well the audience makes a connection with the animation. He asserts that people seek to “mask” themselves in a character, and this is more easily done when a character is drawn in a more simple -- “iconic” or “conceptual” – way. He says further that people don’t feel the urge to identify with the inanimate objects in the background of a comic, and so artists may take care to add as many details to the scenery and to the objects in a scene as they like. The result of these ideas is that there have been numerous successful cartoons drawn with simplistically drawn characters going on adventures in striking, realistically drawn settings.

McCloud and Sousanis

In Scott McCloud's comic essay "The Vocabulary of Comics," McCloud argues that all of the things that we experience in our lives can be separated into two realms of perception: the realm of the senses and the realm of the concept. In the realm of the senses, we take in the times around us with our senses, having a very basic understanding of the physical objects that surround us but nothing more. In the realm of the concept, we begin to associate physical things with abstractions and ideas, understanding that our identity is not merely the physical things that we identify with, it is a concept that we process in our minds. McCloud claims that we begin with concepts and slowly begin to manifest ideas, like the concept of identity and self, with the physical objects around us that we identify with. The objects around us can become extensions of ourselves, as we begin to associate them with ideas. We assign meaning to the objects that we encounter through our senses, and gradually they become an extension of ourselves and a part of the realm of concepts.

How Deep are Cartoons? Use Your Imagination.

Across of the United States of America, the semi-educated working man have traditionally picked up their newspaper off the front lawn after being delivered by the local paper boy, and flipped through some boring stories he didn't care to read to reach the reason he reads the paper every morning: the cartoon comic strips. Far-off in a foreign land, a similar instance occurs, but in an entirely different context; young Japanese adolescents are lining up at their nearest comic store to get issues of their newest edition of their favorite anime comic magazine. But how can two different people from two vastly different cultures in different points in life have such similar response to the same genre of text? The answer lies with the one trait that all of humanity is born with: imagination. Imagination is what gives comic art its strong influence and complexity.

A Competition: Words vs. Images

McCloud creates a scale to understand pictures as texts: the more detailed and specific the picture is, the more realistic it is. The less details the picture has, the more iconic it becomes. Photographs, in this understanding, are very realistic, while cartoons are iconic and abstract understandings(46). McClouds scale moves from photographs to words, where words are the most abstract of all texts(49). McCloud argues that detailed pictures are received information, they are able to be looked upon and understood without formal education in order to understand them. While words are perceived information, they are a code for the meaning they attempt to represent, that requires a de-coding or education about the language code in order to perceive the information being shared (49). For a long time, images were seen as only supplemental to words and shaped by the words. However, McCloud shows us how words and pictures each have their own characteristics that they embody. The writer and the photo artist are usually separated entities who come together to produce specific texts, but McCloud faces a need to bring these two entities together for the sake of a better text (49). Mitchell also recognizes this separation of picture and words, and actually shows cases where they are pinned against each other: "the president's press secretary even confessed that it was difficult to counteract image an image with words"(367). If words and images are so separated, and even at times competing with one another, how can they be brought together to work together and engage the audience as one? We see this ability to a degree on television, as Mitchell explains through "From CNN to JFK". On television news, photographs, in the most realistic form (apart from the event itself) are shown but still manipulated by words and chosen organization of the photographs in order to "distort the truth",  even with realistic images to compete with the distortion.

An Animated Reality

In the two clips we see animated depictions of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The clips, while featuring different animation styles, shed light on a commonplace topic that a viewer who was unfamiliar with the subject could still comprehend. I will be using McCloud’s “Vocabulary of Comics” and Sousanis’s “Unflattening” to describe how the images of both cartoons work to create understanding.

McCloud coins the term “viewer-identification” and states that a central part of audience involvement is the degree to which an audience identifies with a story’s character. He theorized that we experience life in two separate realms, the realm of concept and the realm of sense. We enter the world of 1945 Japan in both clips with the aid of a “sensually-stimulating background,” filled with buildings and landscapes that tend to be slightly more realistic than the characters.

A Detailed Analysis of McCloud and Sousanis's Stances on Imagery & Imagination

Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Nick Sousanis’ Unflattening both make strong claims regarding the incorporation of visual elements in writing. Despite their stylistic differences and modes of presenting their claims, both pieces make extensive arguments in favor of comic books as a legitimate medium of writing.

In Understanding Comics, McCloud presents his argument in the form of a literal comic book. Despite the informality often associated with comic books, McCloud challenges this pre-conceived notion by making detailed, reputable claims whilst incorporating the stereotypical cartoon illustrations of a comic book. The purpose of the book, as a whole, is to explain comics by giving it form, structure, a shared vocabulary, and generally informing readers on the medium itself. McCloud details how the abstract art of cartoons can often allow for a better expression of ideals due to their simplistic form and focus on only important details. This simplistic form also allows a broader classification of their imagery. Furthermore, this also allows more people to readily accept them and to see themselves in the artwork (hence why young children are drawn to cartoons).

Untitled

Graphics and language work towards the common goal of unified meaning. Detailed images help to assist our understanding of language when sophistication lacks, as text compliments the quality of images when the resemblance is absent. Through the study of comics and illustrations, we can gather that realism is the concept that portrays complexity through imagery. Through different methods and techniques of sophisticated imagery, artists can choose to objectify power to emphasize or resemble certain scenes and identities. This allows the viewer(s) to create new value, meaning or perspective from certain objects to have been extended a certain type of abstraction or “new life.” These images must work hand in hand with our imaginations (both as artists and readers) to create meaning, and fill in the gaps of action and agent for us to be engaged. When analyzing images and illuminated texts, we must not draw comparisons between the illustrations and language (visual and verbal), but instead learn to study the relations, the similarities and differences of the two that drive the collaboration and narrative. When comparing photography and language, we must stress the idea that it is a message without a code, meaning they have a relationship with the reality in which they are representing. Although this is contradicted by the idea that photographs are imbedded with and invaded by language as we associate them with it as soon as they are viewed or analyzed. This said, photography is considered both a language, and not. When viewing photography, we create and loose value as we exchange complex ideas between the verbal and the visual. Text can also be used as an instrument in this way to often time give the image independency or associate new meaning.

Imagining Reality

Visual depictions and animations are often chosen to retell events rather than words and language. Images are universally understood by viewers more so than words as words are restricted by language barriers. Visuals can also elicit specific ideas or emotions depending on how they are done. By applying the theories of Nick Sousanis and Scott McCloud to the two animations of the Hiroshima bombing, we can begin to analyze how these videos affect viewers.

In the video clip titled “Animation Depicting the Hiroshima Bombing,” the animators created a realistic setting with more basic and general art styles for the actual characters. McCloud breaks down the advantage of this art style when he says “This combination allows reader to MASK themselves in a character and safely enter a sensually stimulating world.(43)” I, personally, watched the videos before I read the pieces by McCloud and Sousanis. It’s interesting that my first thought after watching the video was “Wow, what if that happened to me, that could happen to me!” My first subconscious thought was to put myself in their shoes. McCloud says we do this because the individuals in the video were not super detailed, so we imagine ourselves.

Do you see what I see?

In Unflattening, Nick Sousanis challenges theories of knowledge that place the word over the image. Sousanis aruges that claims images are not inferior to words, but rather they are equal parts of a bigger whole, the articulation of thought. They work together as part of a symbiotic relationship, in which each has equal responsibility. Sousanis believes that images are not simply illustrations that exist secondary medium to words. In his section, The fifth dimension, Sousanis also describes what he believes to be a superpower we as humans have, that is perhaps the strongest tool in our arsenal, our imagination. He claims that the image is an act of imagination and that imagination pervades our entire existence. He believes, “Imagination lets us exceed our inevitably limited point of view to find perspectives not in existence or dimensions not yet accessible.” They are just as much an integral aspect of thinking as words are.

McCloud, Sousanis, and Mitchell on Comics

Comics are a seemingly lighthearted representation of concepts, jokes, and ideas. They often include pictures that vary in detail and even sometimes a few words to better symbolize what it is that's going on in a scene. This withstanding after reading the excerpts by McCloud, Sousanis, and Mitchell it has become prevalent that much more goes into creating a successful comic than meets the I. In this discussion we will delve into what comprises a comic as well as the ways in which pictures and words distinguish themselves from one another, but also aid in each other's reception. 

Both McCloud and Sousanis used a comic template to transcend their arguments to their audiences. I found some success in this because it made it clear what exactly they were referencing and also what type of prototype comics follow (useful to those who are unfamiliar with comics). Nevertheless, their comics were wordy and I often found myself focusing mostly on the writing and tuning out the pictures. I personally found McClouds illustrations more helpful and useful because they would often illustrate a claim that was being made in a very understandable way.

A Discussion of McCloud and Mitchell

First, I would like to say that it took me awhile to get a grasp on Mitchell's idea of a "pictorial turn." For a while, I was definitely struggling to understand exactly what he meant, but I have come to define it as "the interaction of pictures and texts is constitutive of representation as such: all media are mixed  media, and all representations are heterogeneous; there are no purely visual or verbal arts, though the impulse to purify is one of the central utopian gestures of Modernism (Mitchell, 5)." Therefore, in these two clips, we can see that even though these clips may seem purely visual, we will see that texts will also play a huge role in defining the message and experience. A text does not necessarily have to be on the medium, but words we associate with an image. 

Mitchell, McCloud and Some Racist Images

McCloud and Mitchell have similar ideas about how and what a picture can do, and does for a person. Whether that person be looking at a picture in passing, or studying the image, there is a spark of imagination that runs through the viewer. McCloud has an interesting point when he discusses physical appearance and the physical world. This basically says that artists sometime do not need to draw an in-depth drawing in order for the drawing to give a viewer the concept of whats being drawn, but if the artists intention is to show "beauty" and a "complexity of the physical world" the image much have some sort of realism. This is something I believe is related to Burke when he discusses symbols. We as humans can grasp an idea such as, a stick figure means human. However, for deep insight and imagination to unfold, the symbol, or picture, must contain a sense of realness. This is when the viewer can be one of what you call a "curious" eye. I hope to show that Mitchell's idea of a metpicture being possible through all images can't simply be true.

Captions, and Titles, and Pictures, Oh My!

Mitchell proposes a few interesting perspectives in his text Picture Theory on the significance of written text and illustration, both isolated and paired together. His analysis inspired other questions on this relationship, and more specifically, if words and illustrations could operate just as successfully alone as they do when paired together (do they have a sort of reliance on each other in certain texts, that would cause the work to go flat if it did not include one of these to rather “crucial” features?). He proposes that “the very notion of a theory of a theory of pictures suggests an attempt to master the field of visual representation with a verbal discourse,” which reflects his acknowledgement that there is a dynamic of verbal discourse and imagery, but I believe the images present that anyhow; verbal discourse, explicitly put, is enacted just to ensure that the author’s interpretations are not misread (Mitchell 9).

The Detriments of McCloud and Sousanis' Theories

Both McCloud and Sousanis deal with notions of conceptual and perceived meaning and how they relate to image. They both come at it from different angles, with the former suggesting that the physical world can become conceptual through sensory experience and the latter suggesting that imagination “pervades our entire existence” and that it is “the capacity to hold a multiplicity of worlds inside us,” but they are both done with somewhat of a positive connotation (Sousanis 91, 96). Both authors frame their arguments in a way that is supposed to convey a sense of limitless potential in the mind’s ability to relate images to the world around them, as well as construct realities based off of meaningful experience. Lines such as “Imagination lets us exceed our inevitably limited point of view” and “soon we discover that objects of the physical world can also cross over…[they] begin to glow with the life we end them,” imply a reverence for this human ability to recognize meaning, be it subjective or objective, in the images they receive (Sousanis 88, McCloud 40). I offer a counterpoint to both and assert that if their notions prove true, then there is potential for the innate human skill of recognizing, and sometimes embodying images based off of sensory experience to damage one’s mindset and conceptualization of themselves.

Levels of Imagination

In McCloud’s excellent comic essay, he maps out the total “pictorial vocabulary” of visual arts and, more specifically, comics. This chart exists between the three vertices “reality, language, and the picture plane” (McCloud 51). He then utilizes various familiar comic imagery to demonstrate how this chart works and how different icons fit into it.

In Sousanis’ piece, he explains that “both binding agent and action, imagination allows us to span gaps in perception. From the novel to the commonplace it’s how we formulate concepts. Which Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner explain as brining input from distinct sources together in a third space, a mental frame in which salient features from each interact to give rise to new structures, and new ideas take flight” (Sousanis 91). In other words, Sousanis is saying that imagination is something of a tool that we use, both consciously and unconsciously, to unite and derive meaning from the assortment of fragmented “static snapshots” in our minds.

Exploring Animation's Multi-Dimensions

Imagination defined as the “in-between space connecting two places outside of the usual way” (Sousanis 93) combined with McCloud’s “iconic abstraction scale” connects the two animated clips of Hiroshima as instantaneous symbols of both concepts and senses. Sousanis explores the theory that “imagination pervades our entire existence” (Sousanis 91) by saying that imagination is limitless and essential to interpretation and structure of our reality. This is a universal connection between people since it is what causes both our division and attachment as humans, including the reception we can create and attain through cartoons. McCloud writes that “words are the ultimate abstraction” (McCloud 47), which curiously enough, is something both clips lack. Instead, the cartoons and sound (sensory receptions) from both clips are simplified after the bomb is dropped in order to make a universal symbolic connection with the audience. The audience watches the characters enter a silence and “sensually stimulating” world that dismembers their identities in order to portray a raw and widespread sense of gore, death, and destruction.

Cartooning/Animation and Interpretation

After reading the two comic articles written and illustrated by McCloud and Sousanis, I came away with one similarity between the comics, and it is the interpretation of conceptual thinking versus perceptional thinking. I started out by reading “The Fifth Dimension” by Sousanis, and I was utterly confused to say the least. I know about the fourth dimensional tesseract and how time plays a role when adding a fourth dimension, but trying to under a fifth dimension of imagination via comic was very hard to grasp. Sousanis brings in the notion that “Both binding agent and action, imagination allows us to span gaps in perception” (Sousanis, 91). This notion of perception being a building block once combined with agency to get a sense of surrounding and meaning through an image. This idea of only have perceptual thought as a building block to the ultimate idea of imagination (conceptual thinking), is the idea that propels this comic strip along. Once reading McCloud’s article on the notion of identity and thought going back and forth between types of thought it was easier to understand Sousanis and the Hiroshima animated videos. “Our identities belong permanently to the conceptual world.

McCloud & Mitchell: More than Post Cards

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A person with a “good” eye would easily be able to recognize that this postcard is a representation of a woman’s differing sexuality contingent upon time of day. It’s easy to identify that on the left the woman appears tired and in a disarray. She sports an ill fitting night gown, disheveled rollers in her hair from the night before, and an overall expression that tells the audience she is flustered. However, on the right side her expression exudes confidence as she’s now clad in a black dress, with her hair and makeup done. To a viewer with a good eye, one would be able to determine that this comment is trying to assert a specific point about how the evening time can influence a woman to be more glamorous and sexy. However, when looking on with a curious eye a whole other set of details make themselves apparent. “By de-emphasizing the appearance of the physical world in favor of the idea of form, the cartoon places itself in the world of concepts”. (McCloud, 40) This cartoon manages to do this because in many ways the artist could have depicted it more realistically. After all, the woman’s face lacks detail as do her surroundings. However, we are able to get a notion of what the artist is attempting to convey in terms of a message without being distracted by photo realistic detail. Even small things like the inclusion of the pearls and makeup on the right side serve as signs that point toward the author’s message about femininity and sexuality.

Simplicity Favors Imagination

McCloud’s Comic Essay titled Understanding Comics was the one that really resonated with me. I also found this one easiest to apply to the animated Hiroshima videos. Firstly, McCloud’s dual realms of the (1) concept and (2) the senses fit well into the discussion about the videos. The clips are so powerful because they connect the concept (the idea of the atomic bomb) to the senses (the physical world and the permanent repercussions that resulted from it) in a way that allows the audience to more fully identify with the images. The scene in the beginning of Hiroshima A bomb attack animated bring forward the idea that this event was one which the residents of this Japanese city were not aware would be happening, evident by how the characters in the anime behave on the day they were annihilated. McCloud claims this audience involvement is measured by how much the audience identifies with a piece. The monotony of the day and the displayed innocence of the children are elements that the audience, as human beings, can relate to, and thus brings in a high level of audience involvement.

           

Mccloud and Sousanis Hiroshima

It has been clear in our readings so far throughout this class that no two theorists are alike, and all have a unique style of getting their point across. This is why I was pleasantly surprised to see two comic pieces among the three we had to read for today written by Mccloud and Sousanis. It occurred to me while reading both that I have had assigned to me a countless amount of pieces that i am required to read that have been written in plain old, boring essay format, and not enough times have I been able to read a comic style educational piece in one of my classes. Both comics were very complex, but not too complex where it was difficult to follow along. I found Mccloud to be much easier to read than Sousanis, mainly because Sousanis used much more intricate drawings than Mccloud did, and Mcclouds ideas were much easier to grasp in general.

“Imagination pervades our entire existence” was the line that caught my attention the most out of all three pieces, as the power of imagination is a phenomenon that is nearly impossible to fully understand . The dialogue that both had about our imaginations and how infinite they truly are spoke to the amount of layers their concepts have. Sousanis also did a great job at depicting the concept of imagination with his character that he made up when he was 13 “LockerMan," as his explanations about wondering what was behind the staircase or in a box perfectly caught the imagination of us all at one point of our lives.

Portraiture as Iconic Imagery

Art is a field that can have innumerable interpretations. Its complexities lead to discourse between the artist and the viewer, as both may interpret the work differently. When McCloud says, "In emphasizing the concepts of objects over their physical appearance, much has to be omitted. If an artist wants to portray the beauty and complexity of the physical world, realism of some sort is going to play a part," (41) he is explaining how artists convey iconicity in their work.

Both paintings in the case study, van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait and Velazquez's Las Meninas, are iconic pieces known extremely well throughout the world. The way they became iconic is what gives them their deeper meanings. McCloud describes that artists put themselves into the people they paint, whether these people are real or not. This reflection of the artist into their paintings gives a more personal feel to the people in the paintings. These paintings are texts in themselves, and the artists is the author of the text, with us, the viewer, being the reader as well. The voice of the author is portrayed in just the same manner and interacts with the audience similarly. Both portraits communicate with their audience, portraying important, wealthy people in European history. Both of these portraits are examples of realism, and Mitchell says, "The spectator of the realist representation is not supposed to be under the power of the representation, but to be using representation in order to take power over the world," (325). So, the representation presented in these portraits gives the viewer the power to decide what the images in it are being signified by.

Mccloud & Sousanis on the Animated Clips of Hiroshima

After reading both works from Mccloud and Sousanis, i have come to the conclusion that both have one similar understanding. Both of the authors believe in the importance of signification within the objects depicted in comics and how the audience reacts and interacts with them. Now, the interaction and reaction of the audience towards a specific face or object in a comic is dependent on how the comic depicts such object.  The depiction of an object can be presented by picture plane, language and reality, these three components represent the total pictorial vocabulary of comics (Mccloud 51).

                                           

                                       

Hiroshima: Stepping through Different Thresholds

As I read both McCloud's and Sousanis's comic essays, I came to understand that each author was deeply interested in how we signify pictures with meaning, even when those pictures (or even the meanings themselves,) are abstract, or even complicated. McCloud was concerned with the importance of how we convey stories themselves pictures, and the implications, affordances, and constraints each style of animation or cartooning can bring. Sousanis pursues a related topic, but at the comic essays core it resonates towards a different purpose. Sousanis wished to recognize the "Fifth Dimension," a plane of imagination that allows us to create concepts, imagine worlds, and even invent differing realities through stories, pictures, and other kinds of media. When watching the video videos from the case study, two different Japanese animated depictions of the Hiroshima bombing in 1945, I got to analyze them through these two theorist's vantage points. Sousanis might say that through these two films, we are stepping through two different thresholds that afford us two different vantage points when attempting to immerse ourselves in the experience, (or the story,) of Hiroshima. I believe that McCloud would argue essentially the same, but that perhaps he would specifically attribute the differing of vantage points to feelings as a result of the animation style.

McCloud and Sousanis // Hiroshima Clips

The two animated video clips of the Hiroshima nuclear attacks are able to express and/or evoke similar meanings despite their stylistic differences. I chose to utilize McCloud and Sousanis to analyze the differences in the visual depictions of the two clips in order to understand how they are able to create meaning.

Clip 1: The first clip (titled "Animation Depicting the Hiroshima Bombing") is incredibly stylized using conventional anime techniques: the colors are simple yet vivid, there is Japanese text on the screen alongside the English subtitles, and the original audio is present in the background. This immediately reminded me of the end of McCloud's chapter in which he writes that "comics [or in this case study, video clips] in Japan have evolved very differently from those in the west" (44). While the other video clip is stylized in a way that could be considered different from traditionally Western videos, it lacks the calling cards of Japanese anime.