Satrapi and McCloud: Words vs. Images

Icons, according to Scott McCloud is, “any image used to represent a person, place, thing or idea” (McCloud, 27), so when looking at an icon for example, a recycle sign we know that it stands for recycling. McCloud goes further and, “when we abstract an image through cartooning we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning’, an artist can amplify that meaning” (McCloud, 30). So when taking an image, say a real life picture and transforming it into a cartoon picture with less detail we are amplifying the meaning or idea behind the image.

This is a bold statement by Scott McCloud and in some ways I do agree. However, when looking at a graphic novel like Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi, do we agree with what Scott McCloud has written?

Persepolis is a story about a ten-year-old girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution in 1979. Satrapi tells the story using comic images and a narrative. However, for a story like this it is not the images that pack a bigger impact than the words do. While reading this graphic novel the images are just complementary to the story they do not  provide further detail than what words could express. The images maybe too stripped down and therefore lacking its emotional response the author maybe trying to evoke by them.

McCloud also states, “the more cartoony a face is, for instance, the more people it could be said to describe” (31). Persepolis has very cartoony illustrations that evoke the idea that a child has drawn this graphic novel, which for Satrapi could be very well the point since the protagonist is a ten-year-old girl. But the characters of the story are so real, so drawn out, that a reader could not even if they tried putting themselves into these images. Satrapi did an excellent job in her characterizations for the story; readers can relate to the character, but cannot put themselves inside the character for the story has elaborated the personality of each individual character.

Here, it seems in this graphic novel that the words pack a bigger impact than any of the images. The story gives greater characterizations and the images complement the words. Also, the words give a direct linkage to the idea of what is meant to be said over the images. In this story, it is not the icon or the image that amplifies the meaning or idea, but the stripping down of the words.

Persepolis gives the idea that a ten-year-old girl has drawn the cartoons, and that is the same for the words in the story. The words used are not big, and if the reader has any background in Marxist philosophy,  then what Satrapi is trying to say is not convoluted in any way. The words lead to the idea.

While John Locke may have given the idea that, “men’s names of very compound ideas…have seldom in two different men the same precise signification, since one man’s complex idea seldom agrees with another” (Locke 818), Satrapi seems to have found a way to get past the difficulty of communicating an idea by using words as a child would.

It seems that Persepolis, while a graphic novel, gives the most meaning thorough its words than it images.

Sources

Locke, John. “From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, Second Edition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 814-827.

McCloud, Scott. “The Vocabulary of Comics.” In Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. 24-45.