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’s essay further expanded my ideas when he explained that less ink (in a drawing) is more abstracted from reality. In this way, one can argue that simplicity encourages imagination in the viewer. Both videos presented are complex in story elements and have several “moving parts”, if you will, but the actual animation is very specific and almost basic. I wouldn’t go as far as to say its “cut and dry,” but it’s more “no frills” than overexpressive. It forced me, the audience, to stay engaged and pay attention more to the message than to the individual details of the drawings in the animation. The simplicity in the animation leaves room for imagination in the viewer, which, when utilized correctly by the artist, can be used to further connect the deeper themes present in the piece to the abstract or off-centered mental frames of the audience, which is exaggerated by differences in perspective. I wanted to mention how at the beginning of the Animation Depicting the Hiroshima bombing the point of view is that of a third-person, as if watching both the American bomber dropping the bomb and the city below it experiencing the blast. This same piece draws the connection between the two experiences that perhaps could not have been properly bridged without the presentation of these elements together. The audience can clearly see that it was some foreign plane attacking a city of racially different people (even if the audience is unaware of the historical details).

Lastly about McCloud’s essay; at the end, he brings up the idea of the Picture Plane, kind of a third dimension that exists in connection to and yet still outside of, language and reality. This Picture Plane reminded me a lot of Kenneth Burke’s idea of “symbols” and how humans are symbol using animals. This Picture Plane almost feels like an artist’s evolution out of Kenneth Burke’s argument of symbol-using to create meaning.

              The main difference between the two Hiroshima videos is that the first one shows the point of the view of the American(s) as they press the button, while the other hardly shows the plane at all.

 Sousanis says that through storytelling, we can bridge the gap between people’s imaginations; for this reason, I think the first video is more effective in engaging the audience’s imagination and thus carves a deeper connection between the two parties (Americans and Japanese) that the second video simply cannot. In this way, the first video does a better job of “unflattening” the audience than the second one.