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Kottas, Lisa and Martin Schwarzenbacher. "The Comic at the Crossroads: The Semiotics of ‘Voodoo Storytelling’ in The Hole: Consumer Culture Vol. 1." The Comics Grid Accessed 11Jul. 2023. <https://www.comicsgrid.com/article/id/3591/>. Added by: joachim (7/11/23, 2:24 PM) Last edited by: joachim (7/11/23, 2:29 PM) |
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| Resource type: Web Article Language: en: English Peer reviewed ID no. (ISBN etc.): 10.16995/cg.150 BibTeX citation key: Kottas2023 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: "The Hole", Africa, Anthropology, Duffy. Damian, Jennings. John, Myth, Narratology, Religion, Semiotics, USA Creators: Kottas, Schwarzenbacher Collection: The Comics Grid |
Views: 8/691
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| Attachments | URLs https://www.comics ... m/article/id/3591/ |
| Abstract |
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The Hole’s storytelling abstracts ideas from West-African philosophies of religion and mythology. The authors Duffy and Jennings model their writing on the trickster linguist and god of crossroads, Eshu-Elegbara. They use the Afro-American meta-communication Signifyin(g) that derived from Eshu’s attributes. This meta-speech identifies plot elements as meaningless story mechanics and semiotic figures. On a meta-level, a story is just nothing but a system of bare signs. As tricksters, the authors play with their readers’ expectations by rendering The Hole a superhero story. As ‘Eshuian’ creators on the crossroads of storytelling, they create a path system that ‘updates’ the story’s interpretation interactively (Kottas 2017: 93–96), depending on the reader’s sign comprehension. The story is intentionally open-ended in order to challenge their readership. Arriving at the dead end, one path leaves the reader signified by racist and capitalist rhetoric. Another path may lead to the reader’s conclusion that The Hole promotes Black and White dualism and ‘reversed racism.’ The Hole’s Vodou semiotics however hides the opening to a third space beyond singularity and dualism (M’Baye 2016: 121). In that way, the comic book literally teaches its readers the breakdown of the semiology of marketing consumerism by metaphorically talking to them.
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