In Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics," Scott discusses the idea of humans being "a self-centered race" since "We see ourselves in everything. We assign identities and emotions where none exist." (McCloud 32-33.) I have noticed this before: looking up at clouds and finding animals or faces; finding faces in outlines of buildings or cars; even people finding religious icons in water stains on walls or pieces of burnt toast. Before, this was nothing out of the ordinary for me. However, after reading these two chapters, it has made me realize that humans are, indeed, a self-centered race. All we do is try to find similarities in our outside world that relate back to us.
Once I realized that I wondered if there was an actual word to define that sensation. Something that could easily boil it down to a few words, or maybe just one. According to this website, the word pareidolia is what I was looking for: "Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon that causes people to see patterns in a random stimulus. This often leads to people assigning human characteristics to objects." ("Pareidolia") This helped me with not only defining it on paper but also in my mind. Other than this book, other than what was in these two chapters, I wanted to see if there were any more instances of pareidolia in comics. That search led me to find this comic since I honestly have never read a real comic book before this course:
It is funny because the guy is calling the man with pareidolia a looney and the man says that he did not see the looney when he first looked at these pictures. In reality, the looney is him. It is interesting, however, to see how certain people can have pareidolia and see things while others do not have pareidolia and cannot. When I searched for comics with pareidolia, many of the comics I saw were one single panel, which is something I learned was not truly a comic according to Scott McCloud's definition of a comic. That also was interesting to learn because when I was younger, my dad used to read the newspaper over breakfast and would give me the comic section to read with him. Learning that those newspaper comics are not really comics, according to McCloud, is strange since it was something my dad and I bonded over when I was a kid. Either way, comics are a considerably different type of literature than I am used to reading and it will take some getting used to after such a long time away.
Sources:
Once I realized that I wondered if there was an actual word to define that sensation. Something that could easily boil it down to a few words, or maybe just one. According to this website, the word pareidolia is what I was looking for: "Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon that causes people to see patterns in a random stimulus. This often leads to people assigning human characteristics to objects." ("Pareidolia") This helped me with not only defining it on paper but also in my mind. Other than this book, other than what was in these two chapters, I wanted to see if there were any more instances of pareidolia in comics. That search led me to find this comic since I honestly have never read a real comic book before this course:
Image: Inquisitor, Spanish. “Apophenia and Pareidolia.” SPANISH INQUISITOR, 24 Sept. 2007, https://spaninquis.wordpress.com/2007/09/22/apophenia-and-pareidolia/.
It is funny because the guy is calling the man with pareidolia a looney and the man says that he did not see the looney when he first looked at these pictures. In reality, the looney is him. It is interesting, however, to see how certain people can have pareidolia and see things while others do not have pareidolia and cannot. When I searched for comics with pareidolia, many of the comics I saw were one single panel, which is something I learned was not truly a comic according to Scott McCloud's definition of a comic. That also was interesting to learn because when I was younger, my dad used to read the newspaper over breakfast and would give me the comic section to read with him. Learning that those newspaper comics are not really comics, according to McCloud, is strange since it was something my dad and I bonded over when I was a kid. Either way, comics are a considerably different type of literature than I am used to reading and it will take some getting used to after such a long time away.
Sources:
Inquisitor, Spanish. “Apophenia and Pareidolia.” SPANISH INQUISITOR, 24 Sept. 2007, https://spaninquis.wordpress.com/2007/09/22/apophenia-and-pareidolia/.
McCloud, Scott. The Invisible Art Understanding Comics. HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
“Pareidolia: The Science behind Seeing Faces in Everyday Objects.” Lenstore.co.uk, 8 Sept. 2017, https://www.lenstore.co.uk/eyecare/pareidolia-science.
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