This past week, we started to learn about early comics including those of Hogarth with A Rake's Progress and Töpffer's Mr Jabot. With Hogarth, it reads more like narrative paintings that just tie together to tell a story over time. However, when it comes to Töpffer and his pieces, they are truly that of a comic format. It was the first to revolutionize art and storytelling into one piece, tied with a bow. It made use of dividing lines to make panels and told a narrated story with dialogue, unlike precursors like Hogarth.
Within his two stories, he uses them to give light-hearted and funny narratives of specific characters in their daily lives of their time period. Also unlike Hogarth's very frank views on specific things with a black versus white approach, Töpffer implements "Comedy of Manners" to poke fun and question certain things, especially social classes.
Being that he lived during the Romantic Era, this makes sense as he wants to show off uniquity and individuality. He also has these views in full display through his characters Mr Jabot and as they are characterized to go against the norms of society and became all the more lifelike compared to the monotonous societal characters behind them.
It seems impossible for Mr Jabot to not clash with others as that is his main role. He has the dream of being a proper aristocrat and has become a social ladder climber, one of the items that Töpffer pokes fun with in the "Comedy of Manners."
Mr Jabot, in the series, manages to get invited to a Reception and his entire time there could be considered a huge clash of these conflicting characters -- Jabot versus Aristocracy.
Everything that he does, there has to be an assumed air about him as he goes about his motions. Everything he does, it has to be proper to what he knows real aristocracy to be like. Like, in the comic scene below: Mr Jabot assumes it proper to give his greetings before resuming to his attitude, holding an air of elegance and dignity to himself.
Viewers who read this know it as a thing that legitimately happens, but seeing Mr Jabot do it in this fashion makes it seem almost silly. And in posing it like this, the question arises that "hey, this is silly. Why are we doing this?"
Breaking away from conformity and thinking individually, what a romantic notion!
It also gives a light poking towards social climbers, like Mr Jabot, for their silly regards to thinking that it was best to be high class within the same reasons that Töpffer slyly inputs his Romantic thinking for his "Comedy of Manners."
However, just after he goes through these dignified motions, Mr Jabot clashes terribly with the aristocracy -- literally!
In the series of comic scenes below, a gallopade has formed while the band plays. Mr Jabot has annoyed the bassist of the group, who sneakily tries for revenge against him. Afterwards, he manages to slip and fall, causing the gallopade topple to and on him. The train of people all dancing together shows the conformity and order within dancing throughout this scene. Had people been dancing individually in pairs, then this gallopade of people would not have dogpiled on top of Mr Jabot.
Nor would they later drag him around after he got stuck on a candelabra. Which, the candelabra scene I feel shows a break in his character of trying to break into upper-class society. Although he puts on airs to seem dignified, he has moments where his lower-class ideology shows.
What upper-classman is going to fix a candelabra himself instead of calling over a servant or waiter working at the Reception to do it for him instead? It's unscientific for them to do so!
This clash of responses between classes is another show of "Comedy of Manners." Mr Jabot may be playing aristocrat, but he won't ever be one or see himself truly as one, which lightly pokes at those types of people in real life who read this. It's a light-hearted wake up call to those specific readers.
It also is another display of Romantic ideology as he does this solely to make sure a young woman isn't bothered by its smell of the melted wax. Doing this individually versus someone else doing it for him shows sincerity and kindness on his part more so than his counterparts who do none of these things within the story.
All of these events that happen are through that sneaky bassist's desire for revenge against Mr Jabot's previous statements. He doesn't fit in with the high class as he keeps crashing into them and he has angered the lower class, leaving him even more stuck as an outlier character in this story. I feel this may have been a slight show to how people may have viewed social climbers in real life at their time. The climber tries to fit in within the high society, but he never truly joins it, and by leaving the others of lower classes behind, he angers them through his betrayal and new airs.
This week's reading with Töpffer's Mr Jabot I think had to be my favorite as it was very comedic. Using the "Comedy of Manners" and implementing characters of Romantic ideals, he mad a revolutionary move in the direction to the modern-day comic. It also would have had a great impact in how society changed and viewed the way things were done in that time through light satirization and helping push forward the idea of "self" instead of "hive."
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