We talked a lot about time in class today. To help us continue our conversation, here is an essay about temporality in Elektra: Assassin. The essay comes from ImageText, “a peer-reviewed, open access journal dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of comics and related media.” Keep reading after the jump for a few choice excerpts and some scanned images illustrating some unique representations of time. Broadly, “temporarlity” refers to being in relationship with time. Philosophers including Martin Heidegger whose Time and Being remains a reference point for much of the work on time. (If anyone wants to work with Heidegger and comics, I think there is a publishable essay there)
OK, enough context. In the ImageText essay referenced above, Renée Tobe uses “temporality of involvement” as a lens to examine the way comics panels work in Elektra: Assassin. Tobe argues that
Temporality of involvement refers not to how much time has passed or how long a particular action takes, but to participation with unfolding events. This is the time it takes something to happen, for something to “come into being” or the time “in” which we live and act. This is relevant even in the “unrealistic” world of the comic book superhero. Here, duration refers to the period of time we infer from reading a single panel. The time in which the events described “seem” to take place differs from the time it takes to read the sequence (Bergson, 1990). It may be a single instant or a longer period of time.
As Tobe understands it, “Elektra: Assassin is filled with breaks that require our participation.” She argues that this participation exists in all comics, that “[t]he divergent visual styles and compelling graphics of sequential art challenge conventional reading.” This challenge to conventional reading is heightened by Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz (the writer and artist) who create “volatile temporal conditions, such as flashforwards, flashbacks, or flashbacks within flashbacks” that are ultimately “grounded in the present and given presence in space.”
For example, here is a page where Elektra attempts to recall her earliest memories:
Of this page, Tobe says:
Elektra’s attempts to slow that memory down, drag it out, and extend it so she may repose within it, are interrupted by the inevitable advancement of time, even within a contrived memory. Miller uses the visual trope of the helicopter’s blades “rhyming” with the fronds of the palm tree to show the slow but inevitable arrival of the assassins who destroy Elektra’s mother, injure her father, and bring on her birth.
Tobe also draws attention to this panel where the main character is trying to recover more recent memories:
And then, on the next, page she is successful:
This essay and these examples prompt me to think about the ways repeated images might be used to show the passage of time. On the first page, the repeated palm tree seems to represent an intensely subjective experience of time (as Tobe suggests). The words serve a hugely important function in presenting the struggle of memory against the passage of time. Without the text, these images might cohere differently. I could list off a dozen readings of just the images, but my point is that the text is integral to the image and to the passage of time. The text not only “slows down” the eye, but also contextualizes the images, making the wavering trees more desperate than idyllic.
The second set of images plays a similar trick. This time, Sienkiewicz doesn’t re-draw the same image. Instead, he repeats modified versions of the same image. The first panel shows the image cut up and partially sown together. The second shows the image in total indicating that Elektra has regained some ability to perceive time “holistically” (a loaded term, I know). The differences in tinting between the two images and the progression of the text narration indicate that some amount of time has passed (a few seconds? a few minutes?), but the important change is how that time is being experienced.
At least, that is my take. What are your thoughts?
that is really interesting, that comic “Elektra: Assassin” where she talks about her earliest memories, is crazy. I know that’s such a vague term but, wow, I read it once and had to go back and read it in a completely different way. I really didn’t notice that it was a whole complete woman with a child in her belly in the first panel! weird, thank you. haha.
[...] work in film. I am not great admirer of Miller’s work (with the exception of his fabulous work with Bill Sienkiewicz) but I have to admit, I really enjoyed walking through this exhibit. Miller’s visual style is [...]