After reading the article “Why Are Comics Still in Search of Cultural Legitimization?” by Thierry Groensteen, the question of comics’ cultural standing struck me as interesting. Most of my following writing is influenced heavily by the paper that can be found in the collection A Comics Studies Reader, and I recommend reading it.
The medium of comics is an old one now, with almost 200 years of history behind it. That is correct, comics did not begin in the 1940’s with the birth of Superman. It is likely that the modern comic has been around since the 1830’s, a whole century before Action Comics #1.
It is surprising then that the comic book is still viewed as an inferior form of entertainment by most. Inferior in relation to the novel, or prose in general, but also as a medium of artistic expression on its own merits. While the assumed inferiority and juvenility of comics appears to be beginning to wane in some aspects in our current cultural climate, it seems uncontroversial to claim that they are still held by much of the population (in England and America at least) to be lesser than things like prose fiction, cinema, and other forms of narrative art.
Groensteen writes his article from a French perspective, mainly concerned with the cultural landscape of France, so not all of his analysis is directly relevant to anyone outside that bubble. But I’ll be considering a couple of the points that seem to have some overlap with English and American contexts, or can be abstracted from there original context to comment meaningfully on my own.
In his article, Groensteen points out that the history of comics can be broadly characterised by two cyclical movements through time. The first being a shift in audience, and the second in form. Comics were intended for adults in the nineteenth century, then shifted to be for children in the early and mid-twentieth century, before being reclaimed by adults by the end of that same century. Unsurprisingly, the worst damage to the reputation of comics as a medium was done during the time when there were for children. This is what I would consider to be the more important cycle for comics where their legitimacy in culture is concerned, but the second cycle in form was also able to exacerbate those same issues.
In terms of form, comics started out in books, before becoming an object of the press, appearing in newspapers and then the kind of floppy comic we know today, then finally returning to the book once again with the invention of the ‘graphic novel’. Obviously, comics do still exist in newspapers today, and they also undeniably still exist as floppy single issues (despite the quality of printing rising dramatically). But the notion of the comic as a book has been on the rise ever since 1978 and Will Eisner’s A Contract with God.
There was very little writing on comics in the early years of the medium’s development. Comics only really began to garner a sizable amount of attention when they began to be made specifically with a younger audience and children in mind. As a result of this vacuum of thought surrounding comics, the discourse that erupted largely defined future discourse around comics for a long time afterward.
I think it’s fair to say that kids in the early to mid-twentieth century had been handed a bit of a bum rap. Because of attitudes and concepts inherited from the nineteenth century, children were usually considered in the same terms as the least educated strata of society – the lower classes. Along with the lower classes, they were considered to be stupid, and lacking in reason. For the educators of the day, if something was popular it must necessarily be vulgar and inferior, purely in virtue of the fact that it was poor people that were enjoying it (unfortunately, a prejudice that still carries over to today). The same was true for whatever children enjoyed en masse. The children of the day loved comics, so there must be something wrong with them. After all, they were stealing children’s attention away from ‘real books’ and harming their education, and at worst actively corrupting the children who read them. These views were only reinforced by the form of comics that were cheap to print in large quantities because of the low quality of the ink and paper; they were seen as disposable.
This class antagonism brings into view a conflict that has yet to be fully dissolved: educational literature vs pure entertainment. This kind of ‘art vs entertainment’ conflict can be seen extraordinarily clearly in a contemporary example that gained some media exposure in late 2019 when Martin Scorsese flippantly claimed that Marvel movies weren’t cinema. He later doubled down on this snobbery in November of the same year in an article for The New York Times.
Whether or not Scorsese personally enjoys superhero films is of little interest to me, but not enjoying something is one thing, claiming that it ‘isn’t cinema’ is something entirely different. When he talks about how he wants films to expand a viewer’s notion of what films can be, or that Marvel movies are missing the kind of revelation that he sees as necessary to the cinematic experience, these are just modern versions of the same kind of criticisms that have been leveed at comics since early last century. They seem like reasonable things to want, but it’s the same kind of pearl-clutching about the level of educational value in the entertainment (as distinct from art, in his mind) that we serve up to children and the lower classes. It is an attack from superiority, because he believes that he knows better than you and knows what’s best for you, because you’re too stupid to think for yourself properly.
The idea that educational literature and pure entertainment are mutually exclusive (along with art being mutually exclusive from entertainment) is a false dichotomy, with roots firmly embedded in the upper class’s distain for the poor, and must be dismantled. Despite the best efforts of comic creators throughout the medium’s life, comics are still seen as pure entertainment that are inherently less valuable than other more worthy forms of art that have been approved by those in positions of cultural power. It’s nice to see the tide begin to shift. It has been a long time since comics have proved themselves as being capable of exactly the same kind of things that other mediums deemed ‘art’ are capable of. Now that comics have regained their adult readership, I imagine it’s only a matter of time before they have the same kind of legitimacy as cinema or maybe even prose. But unless the class antagonisms that caused that lack of legitimacy are torn down, they’ll only be another target as new mediums of expression are enjoyed by the lower classes of society.
The original article by Thierry Groensteen goes on to talk about a lot more interesting things regarding the cultural legitimacy of comics, including ‘the written word vs the image’ and the fourfold nature of comics handicap when fighting for its rightful place within our culture. But the last thing I’d like to talk about is in relation to the fourth handicap that comics have suffered from, mainly because it’s somewhat relevant to the kind of class struggles I’ve been talking about.
This fourth handicap is the prejudice that comic books offer nothing but a return to childhood and are simply too childish to be taken seriously, even if they are being read by adults again. What I find interesting about Groensteen’s strategy for dealing with this prejudice is that he decides to not combat or refute it. Instead, he proposes laying claim to their childishness. Even though comics were originally intended for adults (something critics may not even be aware of), it is undeniable that they currently have a privileged relationship with childhood. That is when most of us fall in love with the medium, or at the very least the colourful characters that call comics their home. Allowing yourself, in adulthood, to return to those nostalgic emotions and childish joys that can be found in four-colour nine-panel grids might be an effective method of combating those in a position of cultural power, who take themselves far too seriously and live without whimsy.
Perhaps it’s okay to live out childish fantasies of power and freedom in a world that seeks to rob you of both.
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