Random thoughts I already shared with Amber
Title cards for dialogue in silent movies and word balloons in comics are basically the same thing. Both are artificial creations - Will Eisner called them "desperation devices" - developed to communicate what the medium cannot naturally deliver. One segregates dialogue out into a separate space on the paper, the other in a separate space in the timeline, but otherwise they are basically the same.
Which got me thinking about how silent movie acting is inherently different from talky movie acting. Talky movie acting is more or less naturalistic in style, but silent movie acting is more closely related to pantomime: relating information about the characters in nonverbal ways. (I think this may be part of why expressionism did so well in the silent film era.) This could be related back to comics as well, as comic book art's primary goal is less "realism" and more conveying key character and story information in a visual manner.
I have a half-baked theory that modern copyright law (and therefore, a lot of problems with "piracy" and computers and such) is the fault Romantic (with a capital R) concepts of how creativity and authorship work, with the creative work springing fully formed from the head of the poet, like Athena from Zeus's head. (The Romantics knew this to be lies, as they would spend weeks revising poems but then claim they were written in a single sitting, but others believed them.) The thesis doesn't seem to hold up under intense scrutiny, but it was an interesting lens to consider things by. Certainly, it would be interesting (to me, if no one else) to look over the history of copyright law in England and the US and compare it to trends in literary history in the same countries. How did one affect the other?
The last idea comes from reading the conclusion of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, which concludes with Prospero claiming that creativity is all about building on what came before, as the League comics clearly do*. The Black Dossier is quite cool, but what is included and excluded from the League becomes increasingly idiosyncratic: why references to F. Scott Fitzgerald and not, say, John Steinbeck? This is even more apparent as the timeline shifts into the middle bit of the 20th century but no Superman or Batmen are to be found, though other comic book superheroes occasionally appear. Ultimately, I think, this is because the League is also a story about stories that personally influence Alan Moore (so British schoolboy detectives make it in, but not the Hardy Boys) and as part of Moore's quest to rebuild superheroes from the ground up (so skip the obvious sources and look to secondary or forgotten ones).
There was some other idea that seemed blogworthy that I had been theorizing for a few days, but I don't recall now what it was. Possibly something I thought about while reading Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey. But I don't have any idea how to talk about that book with it being full of spoilers. So I'll just say: go read Rant. It's my favorite book by Palahniuk in a long time.
Like with much of my journalling and writing, footnotes and parantheticals and links to other places seem to be taking over the text. I'm sure I could make my thoughts more linear if I really tried, but I don't think it's worth the effort for a LJ entry. There is no stream of consciousness here so much as a tidepool full of swirling eddies.
*Captain Marvel is, it occurs to me, the exemplar of the superhero as conglomeration of other proto-hero stories, since his powers are each defined in terms of previous hero stories ("I've got the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Strength of Hercules. I didn't memorize what "azam" was, but I'll still fight evil in my red pajamas...") Gerard Jones in Men of Tomorrow makes a good job out of illustrating the pre-existing story bits that became Superman, including Tarzan, bodybuilders and early science fiction.
Which got me thinking about how silent movie acting is inherently different from talky movie acting. Talky movie acting is more or less naturalistic in style, but silent movie acting is more closely related to pantomime: relating information about the characters in nonverbal ways. (I think this may be part of why expressionism did so well in the silent film era.) This could be related back to comics as well, as comic book art's primary goal is less "realism" and more conveying key character and story information in a visual manner.
I have a half-baked theory that modern copyright law (and therefore, a lot of problems with "piracy" and computers and such) is the fault Romantic (with a capital R) concepts of how creativity and authorship work, with the creative work springing fully formed from the head of the poet, like Athena from Zeus's head. (The Romantics knew this to be lies, as they would spend weeks revising poems but then claim they were written in a single sitting, but others believed them.) The thesis doesn't seem to hold up under intense scrutiny, but it was an interesting lens to consider things by. Certainly, it would be interesting (to me, if no one else) to look over the history of copyright law in England and the US and compare it to trends in literary history in the same countries. How did one affect the other?
The last idea comes from reading the conclusion of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, which concludes with Prospero claiming that creativity is all about building on what came before, as the League comics clearly do*. The Black Dossier is quite cool, but what is included and excluded from the League becomes increasingly idiosyncratic: why references to F. Scott Fitzgerald and not, say, John Steinbeck? This is even more apparent as the timeline shifts into the middle bit of the 20th century but no Superman or Batmen are to be found, though other comic book superheroes occasionally appear. Ultimately, I think, this is because the League is also a story about stories that personally influence Alan Moore (so British schoolboy detectives make it in, but not the Hardy Boys) and as part of Moore's quest to rebuild superheroes from the ground up (so skip the obvious sources and look to secondary or forgotten ones).
There was some other idea that seemed blogworthy that I had been theorizing for a few days, but I don't recall now what it was. Possibly something I thought about while reading Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey. But I don't have any idea how to talk about that book with it being full of spoilers. So I'll just say: go read Rant. It's my favorite book by Palahniuk in a long time.
Like with much of my journalling and writing, footnotes and parantheticals and links to other places seem to be taking over the text. I'm sure I could make my thoughts more linear if I really tried, but I don't think it's worth the effort for a LJ entry. There is no stream of consciousness here so much as a tidepool full of swirling eddies.
*Captain Marvel is, it occurs to me, the exemplar of the superhero as conglomeration of other proto-hero stories, since his powers are each defined in terms of previous hero stories ("I've got the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Strength of Hercules. I didn't memorize what "azam" was, but I'll still fight evil in my red pajamas...") Gerard Jones in Men of Tomorrow makes a good job out of illustrating the pre-existing story bits that became Superman, including Tarzan, bodybuilders and early science fiction.