Communications and Media

The mass media exists to perform a variety of functions for society.  These are to inform or educate, to entertain, to persuade and to serve the economy through ads and revenues.  In earlier times, there were only two main types  the print and the broadcast media.  For print, there were books, journals, magazines, tabloids and newspapers.  Broadcasting only referred to television and radio.  These days, theres the internet and other forms of advertising media like billboards, digitized posters and other more high-tech concepts of the 21st century.

But how did these types of media evolve What were their origins  Tackling the various types of mass media would be a tedious task and would require much time and effort to research.  To limit the scope of this paper, the focus will be on the newspaper comic strips and early motion pictures.  The specific examples chosen for this paper are  Comic Strip No. 6 in Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend by Winsor McCay, and Uncle Josh in a Spooky Hotel in Thomas Edison Motion Pictures by genre.  This paper seeks to establish a comparison between newspaper comic strips and early motion pictures in the 18th to 19th centuries.

According to Nyman, a comic strip is a drawing ora collectionof multiple drawings that tells a story.  It is said that the origins of comics dates back to the time of mans predecessors who occupied caves during the prehistoric times.  In this venue, the more talented artists of this bygone generation were able to demonstrate their capabilities on the walls of their presumed places of habitat, which were the caves.

Nyman states that The Yellow Kid is usually credited as being the very first newspaper comic strip.  According to Olson, The Yellow Kid was created in 1894 by Richard Felton Outcault, who later came to be known as The Father of the American Sunday Comics.

The preparation of comic strips in the earlier stages of comic art history consisted mainly of black and white drawings which showed progression from a minimum of one to at most 6 to 8 panels of drawings, lined up horizontally to make a strip.  Comic Strip No. 6 is done in black and white, in 2 horizontal panels which are arranged one on top of the other, in 4 rows on a single page.  Perhaps this was purposely done by McCay to save on space, and to format his cartoons as patterned for a book rather than for a newspaper.

The story of Comic Strip No. 6 is about a man in a bus reading a newspaper and a bus conductor who forgot to collect his fare.  The main character feels fortunate for having been skipped by the conductor.  He tries to look innocent, but slowly, the comic strip shows the conductor gradually moving towards the main character, the conductors body getting bigger with each strip until eventually, in the 2nd to the last strip, the conductor  with his head 10 times bigger than the mans  confronts the main character.  The man answers in a trembling tone affirmatively -- still in denial.  The last strip shows a man sitting up in bed who is in the act of paying a nickel to the conductor, and who finds out it was just a bad dream.

Being the more complicated medium between the two, the evolution of motion pictures took a much longer time to ensue.  The first commercial motion picture machine called the Kinetoscope, was invented in 1891 by Thomas Edison (Motion Pictures).  This invention allowed film viewing through a peephole, one person at a time.  This was soon replaced by the film projector called the Cinematographe created by the Lumiere brothers in 1895 which allowed viewing of a film in a public cinema (The Early History of Motion Pictures).

The earliest films were used primarily to chronicle contemporary attitudes, fashions, and events, and ran no longer than 10 minutes (Origins).  The topics were simple, without audio, and in black and white.  The first motion picture ever recorded is said to have been made by Eadward Muybridge in 1867 which was shot using a series of cameras and shutters tripped by wires (Origins).  This film sought to record the motion of horses and proved to be the first successful attempt at making a motion picture.      

The same features of simplicity mentioned above are equally notable in the film Uncle Josh in a Spooky Hotel which was done in 1900 by Thomas Edison.  A comedy film about a hotel owner and a client, the story evolves around the idea that something spooky happens in this hotel when the clock strikes 12 midnight.  The setting is in a hotel room where the landlord and Uncle Josh are seated.  The audience enjoys a hearty laugh when the clock strikes 12 and the ghost starts to appear and disappear.  This makes the two characters accuse each other of actions neither did, until eventually, Uncle Josh finds out that there really is a ghost and escapes.

In comparing the two media, both comic strips and early films made use of stories.  It is an inherent quality of man to be curious and to find the story behind anything and everything.  It is this curiosity which makes telling stories a good product to sell, and the availability of different media further makes it conducive for inventors of the early times to capitalize on this quest for knowledge.  Knowledge is power, as everyone knows, and during the early times, it was already an acknowledged fact.    

Likewise, it is evident that both comic strips and motion pictures make use of humor to get their message across.  The possible reason for this is that the concept of humor transcends age, culture, or social background.  Humor is easily understood by kids and adults, rich or poor, from whatever race, education or religious circumstances.  Laughter is a universal phenomenon and catering to this type of social response is what makes the theme of humor more acceptable than other genres.

Another common quality of both comic strips and early video recordings is their black and white theme.  Resources were still limited at that time, and it would take a few more years before colored images for both media would come out.  Both media also make use of visual stimulation to capture their audience.  The comic strip is more advantageous for having a printed quality which can always be reread, and the presence of words also makes it easier to comprehend.  Conversely, the film has the quality of movement, hence is more appealing and pleasing to the eye.  However, the absence of sound makes it more monotonous and boring after 15 minutes of watching.

The circumstances dealt with in the two media being cited involved people and everyday situations which were more or less done in a normal setting like being in a bus, reading a newspaper, or going to a hotel and talking with the landlord.  Hence, it was something which people could easily relate to.    
However, one feature worth noting for both media is the use of concepts which are not readily explainable, or are escapist from a rational point of view.  The concept of a ghost in a hotel is not easy to explain because there is no actual scientific proof to back-up these phenomena.  On the other hand, the use of dreams in Comic Strip No. 6 is likewise a way for McCay to be able to explore a broader range of topics since, in the end, it will only be a dream anyway.  Although this is not true of all comic strips and early films, both of these media can be bent by artists in such a way that their artistic tendencies are expressed, and hence, are oftentimes a mere upshot of an inspiration that is far from reality.

How should media historians understand the relationship between these two media forms  In comparing the features and conventions of these two types of media, it can be said that each complements the other in some way.  The arrangement of comic strips in a horizontal manner to produce a successive range of motions became the impetus from which future film-making evolved.  This is how the very first motion picture was made from a series of photographs.  The discoveries relating to film which followed suit were based on this idea.

Ideas in comic strips are, more often than not, used as storyboard ideas in film.  This resulted to the creation of films with the same title and central characters -- Superman, Garfield, Dick Tracy, Spiderman, Daredevil and X-Men among others.  The fascinating thing is that hit movies, or movie-novels are now being made into animated cartoons.  The best example of this would be the Harry Potter cartoons, and the Jewel in the Palace cartoons (a Korean movie-novel series for television).  Even if the films are not actually transformed back to the printed form, the animated format is somehow a conglomeration of the two concepts  comic strips and film production.

Furthermore, the themes used in film and comic strips are now as diverse as the emotions of man  more true to life, so to speak.  Comic strips and comic books now tackle real-life situations like drama, conflict, suspense, horror, and other possible genres.  In like manner, films have also progressed to become more attuned to current issues of politics, environment, cultural, social and other similar concerns.        
         
The comic strip and the early motion pictures have evolved to become two of the more potent agents of social change.  The use of these two media should be maximized to initiate change for the betterment of society and not be abused by those in authority.