BLOOD IN THE GUTTER – Scott McCloud 

In his fascinating comic, Scott McCloud explores the idea of closure, a phenomena of the human mind. Being it our ability to observe the world in fragments, but essentially perceive it as a whole – giving it, and ourselves closure. We have this ability to mentally complete what is incomplete, purely because of preconceived ideas and experiences. So it is to my understanding now, that closure depends on our capabilities of assumption, to make predictions and draw conclusions from a presented group of images – such as when reading a comic.

It is the prolonged example of comics that McCloud uses to further establish this idea of closure. The gutters (the gaps between panels in a comic book/strip) rely on human imagination to take two separate images and transform them into a single idea – which is kind of enlightening. These comic panels fracture time and space, and offer a jagged rhythm of unconnected moments. But! Closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally construct a continuous, unified reality – much like in our own sense of faith in human and global reality. Furthermore, this concept of closure within a comic’s gutter can be made relevant to any piece of media – through editing, namely cutting.

This emphasis on editing/cutting/sequencing was the predominant theme in Week 4’s lectorial. Both through the editing exercise we completed in pairs, and Liam Ward’s presentation on editing.

Liam’s time presenting to the class focused on editing and its given meanings and effects. Demonstrating this with the help of numerous videos and graphic examples. One of which, the famous Kuleshov Effect – how the simple method of cutting between the different shots of the items and the same shot of the man’s face, created new meanings to the man’s facial expression. Furthermore how two ‘irrelevant’ cuts can be put together, to which an audience pieces them together in a split-second cut. Another example, the cursed Joffrey of GoT and our very own Education Minister, Christopher Pyne (rightfully stimulating laughs throughout the room). The unassociated photos of the character and politician, were given meaning to one another just by cutting between them. Their respective association/meaning being that they are both widely disliked (hated) and unpopular by many.

       

From both the reading of Scott McCloud’s ‘Blood in the Gutter’ and Week 4’s lectorial, I learnt that two panels or images may not make sense in a traditional way, but still a relationship of sorts is made inevitable – all thanks to closure. Furthermore, I would absolutely love to play with editing/cutting to create my own new weird and wacky relationships between two ‘irrelevant’ things.