History

Prehistoric Masking

I finished rereading Scott McCloud’s great book Understanding Comics recently. Like a good conversation with an intelligent friend, it keeps giving even after it’s over. It got me thinking about a few things. One such thoughts was about prehistoric cave art.

In chapter 2, the book argues (comics style) that simplified or iconic pictorial representations of things are more relatable, more accepting of us projecting ourselves onto them. We make a face out of a circle with two dots and a line inside of it, then let our imagination fill in the blanks. Since iconic representations are abstract, they are universal. This simple cup can stand in for the one on your desk, that rectangle can be your computer monitor and the stick figure is you, at least for a moment. The reason this is possible, according to the book, is that we do not see ourselves. My face is a mask that is visible to others, but not to me, so my mental image of my own face is very abstract. Now imagine if you are presented with a photo-realistic picture of someone, it would be much harder to identify with that picture. We might not see our own face much, but we see everyone else’s. A realistic picture is specific, not universal, and it makes you aware of its specificity just like you are aware of the details in the appearances of others. We “mask” ourselves in iconic images, and perceive otherness in realistic ones.