The Dance Between Visual and Written Art

I enjoyed reading the excerpt from Pyongyang: A Journey to North Korea. In this graphic novel, Guy Delisle takes us into an unknown part of the world- North Korea. The story follows the narrator, a westerner, as he visits North Korea for the first time. Americans have little to no knowledge of what life in North Korea is like. North Korea is unlike any other country; it has isolated itself from the rest of the world. And yet, the North Korea Delisle depicts is not the North Korea I would have imagined. What should be an unfamiliar place, seems familiar. Pyongyang presents North Korea in a civilized manner. Granted there are some political policies in place that may not make North Korea seem familiar, overall North Korea is shown as having art, culture, architecture, and the normalities of a large city life- crazy traffic and busy subways. Had Delisle not used the comic book medium to tell this story, I would not have come to the same conclusions. The visual depiction of the architecture, the narrator’s hotel room, the subway, and his office, helped create the North Korea Delisle wanted me to see and not the North Korea that I wanted to see. Had I just based my opinions on the text, I probably would have focused on the political issues this graphic novel touched on- such as the food shortage- and not on the visual/physical beauty North Korea has. This relationship between the visual and written is vital when communicating a message. In the words of Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, words and pictures are “interdependent, where words and pictures go hand in hand to convey an idea that neither can convey alone” (155). A great example of this is the way Delisle describes the subway versus how the subway is visually demonstrated. As shown below, the text states, “buried 90 meters underground, the Pyongyang subway can double as a bomb shelter in case of nuclear attack. What better way to cultivate a constant sense of threat?”Now, with the text by itself, I picture a survivor's guide to the apocalypse bunker and not a subway station with “marble floors, chandeliers, [and] sculpted columns” (Delisle) like the visual images communicate.

Thus, the comic book medium is the perfect medium for reporting, in that it can more accurately and/or precisely tell a story by combining both the visual and written components. It’s sad to say that not a lot of people consider graphic journalism as a serious or credible medium. Once again, quoting the god of all things comics, Scott McCloud explains why the comic books medium is not taken seriously. “The general public’s perceptions of ‘great’ art and ‘great’ writing hasn’t changed much in 150 years. Any artist wishing to do great work in a medium using words and pictures will have to contend with this attitude.” In other words, psychologically speaking, we still inherently see great art as art separate from the comic book medium and more elaborate or sophisticated as well as with written text- we seem to praise a style of prose that exists outside of graphic novels more than the written text found in comic books.