Lab+3

//"The modern comics strip and comic book provide very little data about any particular moment in time, or aspect in space, of an object. The viewer, or reader, is compelled to participate in completing and interpreting the few hints provided by the bounding lines." //  Marshall McLuhan   McLuhan termed media as being either ‘Hot’ or ‘Cool’. According to McLuhan, Hot media, like film, force the perspective and ideas on the audience. The viewer becomes “a passive consumer of actions.” (McLuhan) Cool media are literature and creations that force the viewer to fill in the blanks and to actively engage in the literature. McLuhan termed comics as a ‘Cool’ medium. McLuhan identified comics as extensions of the photographic media. To him comic presented a world of ‘inclusive gesture’ and ‘dramatic posture’. Comics, as a medium require high viewer participation in order to make sense and connect each frame as related sequential images. McLuhan termed comics as a ‘low definition’ medium, meaning that the audience must fill in a substantial amount of the story themselves. (McLuhan) Comics are more than a photographic or pictorial medium. A lot of the story occurs in between the frames of a comic, or, as Scott McCloud termed it, the ‘gutter’. It is the continued participation of the active reader that keeps them involved in the story. These ongoing efforts take place outside the medium itself. Conclusively I would have to agree with McLuhan’s theory that comics are extensions of photographic media. The image doesn’t provide the full story, the connotating the story and the continuation of time and space happen in the mind of the reader. “[The comic strip] [belongs] to the world of models and extensions of situations elsewhere.” (Mcluhan) // McLuhan, Marshall “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”  //
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