Peter Wagners Reading Iconotexts uses the theories
of intertextuality, discourse analysis, semiotics and deconstruction to
make sense of cultural objects which mingle pictures and words (iconotexts).
Wagners examples are all from 18th Century Europe, but they provide
models of how these tools might also be used to analyze comic books and
pornography and to improve comics historiography. Wagners prime examples
of iconotexts are the celebrated engravings of proto-cartoonists William
Hogarth (1697-1764). Wagner is an expert on 18th century erotica, and includes
obscene prints from the period of the French Revolution as another type
of iconotext which he examines.
Most of the standard histories of the comic book medium praise William
Hogarth, but in ways which makes Hogarths work seem dull. Usually
they describe his prints as a step toward the invention of the comic strip,
asking that we notice that his pictures were richly detailed, didactic,
and set in a narrative sequence. Wagner approaches Hogarths engraving
as supreme examples of intertextuality. The theory of intertextuality
insists that a text cannot exist as a hermetic or self-sufficient
entity, and hence cannot function as a closed system. In Hogarths
drawings, every small detail can be decoded as referring to other texts
or images or specific individuals or events, and many of his prints
cannot be understood without a thorough knowledge of the personal and political
feuds fought in the contemporary press. Wagner provides enough examples
of such meaningful detail in the visual and verbal elements of Hogarths
work to fire the imagination.
Several things deflate the excitement of this project. One objection
that Wagner anticipates is that his reading of Hogarths prints yield
results that are not strikingly different in kind from those in more traditional
kinds of studies (e.g., Paulsons books on Hogarth). Another
is that although the though of Hogarths prints as a semioticians
paradise in which every tiny element works as a footnote is delicious,
a careful reader must resist making indiscriminate speculations, forced
analogies, loose associations, and the tendency to see contrasts, reminders,
evocations and references everywhere. (I adapted this latter objection from
something comics historian David Kunzle said about a different scholars
study of Hogarth.)
In his defense against the first objection, Wagner emphasizes the theoretical
differences which mark his study. The first of these is that Wagner rejects
interpreting works, such as Hogarths prints, on the shaky foundation
of what the artists supposedly intended when creating the piece, in favor
of a discourse analysis. In Wagners book, studying Hogarths
intertextual references as part of a discourse analysis seems
to mean discounting most of the evidence that is available and pertinent
to interpreting Hogarths intentions. One appeal of discourse analysis
as a tool for studying comic books and pornography is that the creators
of these texts have frequently been anonymous or have left little record
of their intentions or have been driven by such intentions as getting
their pages in on time which do not yield much analytical insight
into their work. These texts do make intertextual references which are clear
to most readers, yet can become mysterious within a few years as contemporary
personalities and events are forgotten. On the other hand, comic books and
pornography present a much sparser array of intertextual references than
Hogarth did.
Regarding the second objection, since Wagner does not claim to be cataloging
the references and allusions that Hogarth consciously inserted into his
work, that frees him to see any references in as many places as he cares
to look, with the usual proviso that readers will find some of his interpretations
more convincing or interesting than others.
After chapters on the front matter of Swifts Gullivers
Travels, picture framing, and Hogarths prints, Wagner addresses
Obscenity and Body Language in the French Revolution. The dustjacket
for this book shows a teasingly-cropped engraving of the princesse de Lamballe
fingering Marie-Antoinette (the uncropped engraving is reproduced as figure
88). Wagner rejects interpretations of this smut as primarily political
or liberating, partly because of his consistent distaste for hierarchies
of meaning which reduce muddle by assigning central importance to
some elements and reducing others to marginality. Wagners interest
is in approaching works unconstrained by modern classificatory schemes in
order to reconstruct some of the mentalités expressed in them: Rather
than being mono-dimensional and genre-specific (political or pornographic,
fictional or factual), these works are impure (in a literary
and moral sense) and semantically ambiguous, and they cannot fully be comprehended
in terms of binary concepts. This is a helpful point of departure
for speculating about the meaning of contemporary sex comics and magazines
(although perhaps not directly useful for those trying to convince courts
that particular titles are not classifiable as pornography).
A mean-spirited temptation when reading works driven primarily by theoretical
concerns is to boil them down until they disappear as pure gas. When faced
with this temptation, one does well to remember the idea of différance
which refers to the subtle ways in which meaning is never [emphasis
added] really clarified but constantly postponed and deferred from one signifier
to another
Wagners study is a generously footnoted scrap
of a larger fabric. He took the word iconotext from Michael
Nerlich, intertextuality from Julia Kristeva, discourse
analysis from Michael Foucault, différance from
Jacques Derrida, and so forth.