WP2: Rough Draft

The apocalyptic movie has become a staple within the film making industry. Fans of this genre flock to the theatres to experience the thrill and the more realistic the drama, the better. But, the most successful of these movies are the ones based on true events, such as the very real 2012 phenomenon that prompted the creation of the movie, 2012. This film is based on the fears that arose as people discovered that the Mayan calendar, created some three thousand years ago, ended on the Winter Solstice of the year 2012. This arbitrary end to such an influential and superstitious culture’s calendar caused people all over the world to develop their own hypothesis for why the calendar ended on such a date. The consensus was that the Mayans knew something would happen on that exact date centuries later, causing the world as

we know it to cease to exist.

Apparently, the apocalyptic comic has also become a staple within the entertainment industry. Or rather, just a commentary to the apocalyptic phenomenon that arose with the turn of the twenty-first century, Y2K. The always socially and culturally conscious, comic series, Bizarro, developed by Dan Piraro has come up with its own explanation for what has become known as the ‘2012 Phenomenon’. The aesthetic and rhetorical use of text, visual constraints, and pathos through humor help to develop the argument (or explanation) of the December 21, 2009 Bizarro comic, that as a society we misread and negate the material constraints of a text and instead lay our own narrative over that text that undermines the importance and original purpose for that specific communication, in this case the Mayan calendar.

The first part of the panel that is noticed when viewing the Bizarro comic is the text. The hierarchal arrangement of the dialogue bubbles in the top middle of the panel draws in the viewer’s attention. This attention-grabbing technique works “because we have learned to read from top to bottom and left to right.” (Wysocki, Lynch 287) The placement of the dialogue bubbles, one over the top of the other, and the direction of the communication between the characters, from left to right, also comes into play with the techniques of visual hierarchy. Another reason that the eye is first drawn towards the dialogue is because of the simplicity of this area of the comic and the stark contrast between the black text and the cream background. This hierarchal and aesthetic approach to logos speaks to how we could misread a text. With the placement of the text before the pictorial portrayal of the characters and their props the text, the viewer could misread the dialogue especially because it is supposed to work in conjunction with the visual images. The text could also be misread because of an anomaly in language.

There are two main ways in which the text is incongruent with the visuals and the context in which the characters are portrayed. The main way in which the text differs from the drawings is in the language. Based on the drawings, the characters in the panel are supposed to be Mayans. But, the text is written in English. This use of the English language produces a universalizing effect for the reader, but it is false because these characters would not be speaking English, they would be speaking in the Mayan language. Another anomaly created in the text is the way in which the dialogue is written. By using the phrase “freak somebody out,” a modern dialect is created within the comic and the contemporary slang also has a universalizing effect. Both of these contrasting effects between the language and the images adds to the argument of misunderstanding that can occur when interpreting historic events and artifacts in a modern context.

The argument of the comic is also furthered by the visual constraints in which it was created. The main visual constraint in which the comic is confined is that it is a single panel. Whereas most comics contain three panels in which the story is told, this Bizarro comic is contained in just one so that all of the commentary must be summed up this one small square. This small area also creates a focused effect on the argument of the comic at hand, allowing it to be more obvious to its readers. This constraint of the size of the comic is especially reflective of a visual image within the panel. The image that this is reminiscent of is the Mayan calendar depicted within the comic. This calendar was created in a circular fashion so that there was a finite amount of room available to its creator for the time in which he (or she) was incorporating. As so eloquently said by one the characters, “I only had enough room…”. The Mayan calendar was also only able to hold so much time with its circular, finite shape, just as the comic only had one panel to make its point. This similarity between the constraints created by the medium speak to how a historical artifact can be misread so that another, maybe inaccurate, narrative has been laid over the top of the artifact to create meaning for its audience.

The interaction between the inaccurate narrative and argument that the comic is working to portray is what appeals to the pathos of the audience via humor. The narrative that has been laid over the Mayan calendar in popular culture for the reasons behind the end of the Mayan calendar on the Winter solstice is that this is when the Mayans thought the world would end. The humor is held in the argument, that they actually just ran out of room on their stone to continue moving through time. They way that this message is told to the audience through slang dialect by the character’s dialogue also adds to the humor. Another part of the comic that adds to the pathos used to further the argument is the portrayal of the characters. These characters are caricatures of what actual Mayans look like. This overall comedic theme throughout the panel helps to further the argument by appealing to the pathos of the audience in an everyday and humorous way that is communicated to a variety of audiences. This type of lighthearted communication is more likely to make an audience accepting of the argument that a creator is trying to form and this is especially true with the Bizarro comic.

Many comics contain an argument, whether it is underlying or in your face. Dan Piraro, creator of the Bizarro comics, has a more in your face style than other comic artists. In the December 21, 2009 comic, this argument is as evident as ever. The argument of this particular comic is that as a society, we tend to misread and negate the material constraints of a text and instead lay our own narrative over it that undermines the text’s original purpose and importance. This argument is created through the utilization of the aesthetic and rhetorical techniques through the use of text, visual constraints, and pathos through humor. Now that it has been suggested that as a society, we tend to overlay our own assumptions on the unknown in history. What else in the course of history has been misread and where else in the entertainment industry has this been displayed?

Works Cited:

Piraro, Dan. Countdown to Catastrophe. 21 Dec. 2009. BizarroBlog. blogger.com, 30 Dec. 2009. Web. 28 Mar. 2010. .

Wysocki, Anne Frances, and Dennis A. Lynch. Compose, Design, Advocate. N.p.: Pearson Education Inc., 2007. Print.