從「後挪用」、「轉碼」與「漫畫系統」探討圖像小說家克里斯‧衛爾作品特質

Examining Chris Ware’s Graphic Novels from the Perspectives of “Post-Appropriation,” “Transcoding,” and the “System of Comics”

圖像小說是歐美漫畫發展的新分支，其中克里斯．衛爾（Chris Ware）是當今圖像小說研究關注的焦點之一。論文首先引入藝術史學者威克曼（John C. Welchman）對挪用歷史與藝術關聯的探討，理解1990年代的挪用藝術如何朝向與理論和評論脫鉤的解構主義思想轉而擁抱驚奇與感覺邏輯，以及「後挪用」（post-appropriation）的創作手法。接著再從詹明信（Fredric Jameson）的後現代文化轉碼理論闡釋「轉碼」（transcoding），以及包特（Jay David Bolter）與古魯新（Richard Grusin）的再媒介化（remediation）論述，解釋新媒體具備的「去媒介性」（immediacy）與「超媒介性」（hypermediacy）兩種再現邏輯，說明衛爾作品的媒體匯聚現象。之後根據列夫．曼諾維奇（Lev Manovich）提出的新媒體轉碼概念，分析衛爾的創作如何以舊媒體（漫畫）轉碼新媒體特質，並以緩慢閱讀抗衡飛快變動的世界的意涵。最後根據法國漫畫符號學者提里．格容斯帝恩（Thierry Groensteen）提出的漫畫系統（system of comics），分析漫畫空間特性如何使其中的異質媒材能保有獨特的敘事方式，衛爾如何善用漫畫符碼轉移不同媒體，使其訊息再現並產生嶄新的形式與內容。

The format of the graphic novel is a relatively new branch in the history of European and American comics, and currently significant research has been conducted on Chris Ware. In this study, we first examine art historian John C. Welchman’s exploration of the history of appropriation and its relationship with art to investigate how the discourse of appropriation has tended toward deconstructionist decoupling and the comments on the theory since the 1990s, embracing the logic of surprise and feeling as well as the definition of the term “post-appropriation.” We then employ Fredric Jameson’s work on transcoding in post-modern culture to explain “transcoding”. We also utilized Jay David Bolter’s and Richard Grusin’s work on remediation to explain the two types—“immediacy” and “hypermediacy”—of the logic of representation in new media, as we elucidate the phenomenon of media convergence in Ware’s work. Subsequently, we examine Lev Manovich’s idea of new media transcoding in a reverse operation, to analyze how Ware’s work “transcodes” the old-media comic book into a new media form and uses the slowness of reading to combat the fast world. Finally, we refer to the The System of Comics by Thierry Groensteen, the French scholar on comic symbolism, to elucidate how the spatial characteristics of the system of comics maintains its original language and narrative approach in other media while simultaneously allowing for the existence of intertextuality. This allows us to understand better how Ware shifts comic book codes to various other media in order to reproduce information and create brand new forms and content.