October 16, 2012

Toufic El Rassi's Tactics

Toufic El Rassi's "Arab In America" was as easy for me to jump into as McCloud's "Vocabulary of Comics," which makes me question McCloud's claim that the narrator should be as simple as possible in order for the audience to put themselves in the narrator's shoes. The comic was an interesting choice for El Rassi to make since the non-Arab audience was not imagining their face as his facial hair covered face with the terrified expression. He was clearly not using McCloud's tactics, however the illustration was a perfect visual contrast between El Rassi's character and the people he interacted with daily. I think El Rassi relied on emotional ties to connect the audience to El Rassi's character because everyone has had times where they have felt like they were targeted for doing something wrong even when they weren't.

1 comment:

MeganW said...

Reading this I can agree with you somewhat about how El Rassi uses an emotional connection to attract the reader while McClouds technique was to be a little more blunt. However, to me it seems like the points the McCloud tries to make about being a little more vague with characters is what one should use only in certain situations. With this I am referring to situations when the writer wants the audience to be part of the text and relate to it. To me it seems that with El Rassi's story he is trying more to get his side across and shed light on a situation than he is to get the reader to become one with his story. So in the end it seems that the type of illustration required is dependent on what type of feelings and connection the author is looking for.

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