Documentary of a documentarian?

The 2005 documentary Grizzly Man, directed by Werner Herzog, plays between a couple of the modes proposed by Bill Nichols in the “Documentary Film” of his 2010 book Engaging Cinema: An Introduction to Film Studies. In my opinion, I believe Grizzly Man fits into at least three of the six modes that Nichols proposes: the expository, participatory and poetic modes. This blending between modes might be due to the fact that this is technically a documentary that talks about a documentarian and uses footage from a potential documentary, but it could also just be that this film was not meant to fit any one category.

For the purposes of this assignment, I will focus on two specific scenes and point out how they fit (or don’t fit) with the modes I proposed above.

First, I want to focus on the scene at minute 25. The scene where the fox appears as Treadwell is wrapping up talking about a bear in the background. Herznog gives the viewer the clip with no preface. Just as Treadwell is wrapping up the scene, Herznog’s voice interrupts it and he gives us a hint of what will happen, saying: “Now the scene seems to be over, but as a filmmaker sometimes things fall into your lap which you couldn’t expect, never even dream of…There is something like an inexplicable magic of cinema.” In this sense, because his voice is narrating the scene and is separate from the actual footage presented, this part is an example of the expository mode that Nichols offers. Nichols defines the expository mode as “direct address [that] involves the use of a voice that speaks to the viewer directly” (114). However, I think this scene is a little more nuanced than this, since it is more of an expository mode of the observational mode that Treadwell delivers because, to use Nichols’s definition, Treadwell “capture[s] the unfolding duration of what took place in front of the camera” (117). Why did Herznog decide to use this particular scene to show “the inexplicable magic of cinema”? And why did he choose to interrupt the scene in the middle instead of narrating it from the beginning? I think that this scene complicates how we interpret what an “expository mode” might look like in actual documentaries.

The next scene I want to take a closer look at is the scene at minute 52:20. This is the scene where he listens (and Jewel watches him listen) to the tape that was recorded at the time of the bear incident. At this moment, Herznog breaks out of the expository and instead shifts to the participatory mode—where the “filmmaker becomes an openly integral part of what happens in front of the camera” (118). I believe this is the only scene where we actually see his body in the frame (someone can let me know if this isn’t the case), which breaks the norm of the documentary. He is literally participating in this scene by being in the frame of the camera, performing an action (listening to the tape and relaying what it says), and explicitly telling her “Jewel, you must never listen to this”. Though a very staged scene, this moment is meant to dramatize the emotional aspects of Treadwell’s death. But again, how and why did Herznog decide to physically interrupt the general mode of the documentary? Why show this scene at all? Compared to the fox scene, how is a visible interruption affecting how we read the general narrative Herznog is developing about Treadwell?

For me, these two scenes were two impactful moments of the documentary and let on a lot of what Herznog thought about Treadwell. They also seemed good examples of the modes Nichols covered in the reading. I also think that this documentary had some aspects of the poetic modes, since Herznog often let the camera linger a lot on nature (I’m thinking about the scene with the seagull diving into the sea) . So in many ways this film overlaps with most of the modes that Nichols covers, especially considering that footage of Treadwell’s would-be documentary are also used. What does everyone think?

Gutters and Comics

For my take on this assignment, I will focus on our reading from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and the two terms he wrestles with: comics and closure. I choose to focus on this because of three reasons. First, McCloud directly ties in with the new medium we focus on for this section and our primary readings. I think it is necessary to look at new mediums as other narrative forms. Second, this ties in with previous readings from our Abbott book. And lastly, I found the material particularly informative and entertaining because of the creative approach McCloud takes in delivering his arguments.*

 

In his first chapter, McCloud focuses on setting a definition for the word “comics”. Apparently, he did a solid job in 1993, since the only other definitions that pop up if you google “comics” are either something that is funny or is used as another word for comedian. McCloud bounces off of Will Eisner’s take on comics with the phrase “sequential art” to build his own definition (7). He goes on to define comics as: “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (9). As he mentions towards the end of the chapter, this definition is broad enough that it includes “comics” of different mediums, (even fotonovelas! A fave for Latinx abuelas, which he alludes to on page 20). I appreciate that it does include different modes because it gives a sort of legitimacy and history to extract from to the study of comics. The definition sets boundaries for what constitutes a comic, yet also sets limitations to it, so that something like last week’s “fiction vs. fictionality” debate does not happen (though maybe our in-house comics/pop culture expert may differ). As McCloud points out, this definition also excludes single panels, like those of political cartoons etc (20). By his definition, memes (I bring this up because they are my favorite) are also excluded. But what about those memes that have two pictures? (Here are some examples: A and B) Does this mean only some memes can be comics, but not others? Or are memes completely separate from comics?

 

Still, I think it’s of importance here that McCloud sticks with the word “sequence” as it ties in with the idea of time or cause and effect (he expands on this idea in his TED talk here). This sequence idea calls back on one of the first definitions of narrative we encountered in class: David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s “A chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space”. In particular, the assumptions of cause-effect as it pertains to the narrative form in comics tie in with the idea of sequence and the idea of closure. In this way, we see directly how comics fit in comfortably within narrative.

 

In his third chapter, McCloud ties the word “closure” with the usage of “gutters” in comics (70). We have encountered the term closure quite often in class and Abbott even spends a chapter on this. Remember that according to Abbott, closure refers to the resolution of conflict in a narrative that may or may not occur (Abbot 53). It is mostly based on the reader to find it and fill in gaps (also expanded on in Chapter 9 of Abbott) in the narrative if necessary. McCloud uses this term similarly as it pertains to the use of “gutters” (the blank spaces between illustrations) (66). He maintains that the gutter in between a sequence of images is where “the imagination takes two images and transforms them into a singles idea” (60). Because our different lived experiences and how our mind works to fill in gaps, two images are pinned together and thus formed into a story of sorts in our heads. Our mind provides closure in filling in the gaps and creating a story for the two images to be related.

 

At the end, McCloud details out 6 different forms in which closure through gutters can be delivered in comics for different effects (70-2). First, he gives us the example of movement-to-movement, an example in Watchmen is on the first pages where there is a zoom out from the happy face sticker and up to the point of view of one of the detectives (8-9). Like McCloud states, in this sequence we don’t need much closure in the sense of understanding what we are seeing. The gaps are filled in by the zoom-out and the text boxes. Second, is action-to-action which can be seen in page 56 when Eddie Blake/The Comedian is hit by the woman. We see the woman raise the glass and then hit him, one action expressed in two sequenced panels with little effort on behalf of the reader in concluding what was represented. Third is subject-to-subject, which I believe is exemplified by the panels from 198-9, especially the images of Rorschach/Kovacs with the meat cleaver since the audience has to picture what happened next to the dogs given previous images/dialogue. Then there’s scene-to-scene, in Watchmen it appears at the beginning of Chapter II, with the changing scenes between Blake’s funeral in New York and Laurie’s visit to her mom in California. We, the reader, have to fill in the gaps of where we are depending on the conversation and characters. In terms of the aspect-to-aspect example McCloud refers to, perhaps the panels on 96-7 in Watchmen classify under this definition. I say this since the reader does not get a general location and we only get a general emotion and action that is happening with no other clue other than John looking up at what ends up being Mars. I was pressed to find an example of the non-sequitor in the comic book, but maybe my colleagues can help me out? If we want to look at an example, the ones provided by McCloud on page 72 might suffice.

 

I want to conclude my post by pointing out two last things and asking for your thoughts. First, I think this happened more than once, but on pages 250-251 there are two scenes that I found interesting and did not know where they fit within McCloud’s categories for gutter-usage. The top scene on page 250 and bottom scene of page 251 both depict the same background split by gutters, but with the same characters appearing within them. What did you all make of this? Where would you place this in terms of McCloud’s definitions? Lastly, what did you all think of the imaginary paratext provided in the comic book? Does it take away from the “comic”-acy of Watchmen or add more to it? Why?

 

*Complete side note: small shout out to McCloud for being a relatively #woke white dude and including Mexican art and other non-Eurocentric art forms in the history of comics. I think it would be too much to assume that this was intentionally planned as a small recognition to the end of Latinx Heritage month, but I’ll take it nonetheless. Still, this begs another question: if non-European folks/communities of color have contributed to the shaping of this medium, why have they continuously been underrepresented/ignored in these narratives (Watchmen included)? Maybe McCloud does tackle this elsewhere, but it wasn’t in our reading so just dropping this off here.