In the same vein as previous commentaries, I revere those talented enough to take an indescribable, in this case habitual, processes and turn them inside out; thereby unraveling, even evaluating invisible sequence of events. Piggy-backing off of what Molly wrote—I found Rabkin and McCloud’s work on temporal awareness, sincerely enlightening.
Positioning myself in Rabkin’s camp, he won me over from the get-go, beginning with the glaringly obvious concept, “…we need extended time to apprehend art, to read it” (36). Of course that what it is! You couldn’t stay we need more time to stare—too much emptiness implied. I guess gaze would fit, but the term doesn’t really indicate a deeper level of critical thinking, not to mention the action seems pretty one-way. Reading fits, because reading, as writing, is cyclical. The piece presents information, one takes it all in–comprehending, evaluating, disseminating, etc.–then, said individual contributes these new ideas to the piece, do they fit?, not fit,? oh hey look, the piece brought up something new, and by extension, I have a new idea—and around and around we go. As Rabkin noted, developing ‘analytical principles’ (43).
If that didn’t win you over, this next one might—although it’s a bit of a stretch. Pivoting off of the image, ‘reading in between the lines,’ that is reading blank space—if you just turned that space, vertical, you’d get a gutter…to read!
Still, Rabkin takes the idea of time happening in between the panels a step further, which I agree with; “But McCloud’s view of the reader’s role also needs refinement…we find single frames that can hold our eye for minutes as we note and decode a wealth of half-understood detail. Time, in graphic novels, then, is controlled, among other ways, by the degree of information density and representational immediacy in each frame” (37).
Take for instance, the many fight scenes in Nat Turner. While one frame illustrates Nat attacking, the next frame doesn’t necessarily portray the other person’s reaction, let alone them fighting back. More often then not, the next sketch was of a disfigured, dead body. Here, the reader’s imagination is processing much more than what’s represented—and the gutters merely helped, not instigated said process. Even if you could say, the author rendered the ‘quick and dirty’ nature of the killings, the contents of the frames themselves still represent time more than the space between.
And this all was routine. Readers just knew—it’s not as if words were put in the past tense and you could point, to something tangible, and say here, I knew this sequence of events took longer, no. The busyness of the frame subliminally measured time.