Précis of Pascal Leférve’s “Incompatable Visual Ontologies”

According to Pascal Lefévre, films based on comic books are not regarded successes according to art critics and comic readers. Why these movies may have been successful is because of people who have hardly read the comics who watch and support these movies. The following is a concise summary on Lefévre’s article on what the problems are when making films as adaptations of comic books.

Some support these adaptations and some comic book creators completely reject them because they say that their stories were only created and intended for the comic medium.

Comics and cinema are similar because they both tell stories through sequential imagery. They also differ because comics include still frames while cinema is live action.

The audience prefers first time they experiences a story because of how they picture it in their imaginations. Movies have to also deal with this aspect.

Though animated versions of live action require an analysis of their own they tend to encounter the same problems of live action.

Though comics and cinema are both mass-produced they are different because a person is solitary when reading a comic and in a group while watching a movie. The production of a comic books are also done by a few people or one person while movies require a large budget and a mass of people to produce it.

There are four main problems in the comics medium:

1. The deletion/addition process that occurs with rewriting primary comics texts for films.
   
2. The unique characteristics of page layout and film screen
   
3. The dilemmas of translating drawings to photography
   
4. The importance of sound in film compared to the ‘silence’ of comics.

1.
There are not many adaptations that respect the original storyline of a comic. This is because scriptwriters have to consider the difference in the narrative length norms of the two medias and the fact that comics have there own norms and rules. They therefore have to cut out scenes, remove characters and add new ones.

Comic book creators understand that the stories in comics require changes as ‘retellings’ of the stories. Diehard comic book fans rarely applaud the rewritings because they see as the changes as betrayals. If a movie is too faithful to the comic book it will seldom be a good movie. This is because Cinema is another medium with it’s own characteristics and rules. The best one can do is to try there best to be as truthful as possible to the original work.

2
Comic book readers can read at there own speed, focus on certain frames and return to previous ones easily at their own free will. This is because comic books are a more spatial medium and panels are placed like a montage. Cinema obliges one to follow a rhythm of sequences in a linear-time sequence. The layout of panels is also a factor of comics. When movies attempt to fragment the image it is noticeable and breaks the usual cinematographic illusion.

3
Although comics and cinema both use flat images they differ because comics are drawn while cinema is photographic. Comic books also use static images that appear frozen in time while film uses moving images that give the illusion of realism.

The drawn images have distinct edges that photographic images in cinema do not have. The mind has to interpret the bundles of light to be able to distinguish between the objects edges. Drawn panels in comics include clear edges and contours. Though less realistic they depict what is necessary for the viewer to see according to the artist and tells more about subjects. This result may also be done through picture elements such as simplicity of shape, orderly grouping, distinction between object and ground, and the use of lighting perspectives and distortions.

Impossible elements are more easily attainable to comic book creators than filmmakers. Though film can also depict such scenes they are restricted by budgets and the fact that they also have to appear as realistic as possible. Therefore they appear are less subjective as compared to comics.

Comic books, through a regular style of images, represent a visual interpretation of the world that expresses the creator’s specific view. This obliges the viewer to see through the creator’s perspective. Photographic images of cinema fool the eye; therefore some graphic and violent scenes accepted in comics may be more disturbing in film.

This difference in visual ontology may be the reason why it is difficult to interpret stylised drawing and caricature into photographic images. The artist can balance between realism and caricature and if interpreted in film results into ‘confusion incredulous surface’. This is because of the lack of the ‘clear line’ and artist may have been using.

Despite this cinema may attempt to adopt the stylisation of comics. Comic book artists have acted as co directors and have transitioned their style and approach onto films resulting in them being more successful. Film can also represent an alternate interpretation of the content in comic books by this being a deliberate choice.

Some comic books have no unique defining style and go through changes over time yet one still does not get confused between their same content. Because of this a film may be seen as a different style and therefore one does not get confused with it from the comic and accepts it as just another interpretation.

4.
There is a problem when converting a story from a “silent medium” into a “sound medium”. Comics may give hints to how a character’s sound like in a comic but it will be a shock to the reader when they hear it in film. This is because the reader’s interpretation would have been different. Also dialogue in a comic may not be as effective when converted to sound in film.

These four problems are the crucial problems of filmic adaptations of comics. First, to what extent has a scriptwriter for a film to rewrite the story, second, how to go from a page layout to a single, unchangeable screen frame, third, how to translate static drawings into moving and photographic images, and fourth, how to give the “silent world an audible sound?

When evaluating a film adaptation one should forget about the original work and credit the new work for it’s own merits, which should be judged as movies and not as adaptations.