Research On "Shanghai Manga" Based On The Visual Rhetoric Theory Perspective

The Shanghai Cartoon,edited and published by the China Fine Arts Publishing House,was published on April 21,1928.From June 7,1930 to the 110 th issue of The Shanghai Cartoon was suspended because it was incorporated into Modern Miscellany.It is a very representative comics special issue of Shanghai in the Republic of China.In the eighty-ninth issue,it was written that the magazine "sold all over the world and readers more than 20,000",which shows its influence.The Shanghai Cartoon,which published works by early Chinese cartoonists such as Zhang Guangyu,Zhang Zhenyu,Huang Wennong,Lu Shaofei,and Ye Qianyu,reflected the dramatic changes in the lives and social concepts of Shanghai residents in the Republic of China and witnessed the modern transformation of Chinese comics and comic publications.This article makes a special discussion on The Shanghai Cartoon.On the basis of sorting out the layout of the publication and the content bias,it chooses three typical comic styles of cover comics,news comics and social customs comics.It examines the visual rhetorical methods of comics and presents Shanghai citizens Changes in life and ideas.The first chapter examines the founding and content characteristics of The Shanghai Cartoon,taking the early comic activities and the Republic of China comics as the main line,going back to the founding process and historical background of the publication.Three Days Illustrated and the Comic Society will accumulate experience for the creation of The Shanghai Cartoon.Zhang Guangyu,who has extensive experience in running newspapers,made the second life of The Shanghai Cartoon shine.The publication of the 110 th issue of The Shanghai Cartoon has also made it difficult for future comics special issues to be ignored.According to the printing technology The Shanghai Cartoon,it can be divided into two parts: color lithography and monochrome monochromatic printing.Four editions of color lithographs publish comics,and four editions of monochromatic prints publish photography,art,movies,prose and other content.According to the statistics of manga content,the manga works of The Shanghai Cartoon can be roughly divided into three categories: cover manga,news manga,and social custom manga.Chapters2 to 4 start from these three categories and analyze the comics based on visual rhetoric theory.The second chapter is based on the rhetorical identity view,and analyzes themethods of creating identity from the cover comics of The Shanghai Cartoon from three perspectives: Identification by sympathy,Identification by anantithesis,and Identification by inaccuracy.As the most important life of The Shanghai Cartoon,the cover of The Shanghai Cartoon needs to build a visual communication between magazine and readers when attracting the attention of the audience,and create identity through the production practice of image and text.The cover comic establishes sympathy in the compassion for the poor,the identity of Shanghainese and urban culture;the establishment of opposing identities in imperialism,dictatorship,old-fashioners,flowers of society,and consumerism;in modern content,urban themes,Rich colors,and artistic forms create misunderstandings.The third chapter explores the visual rhetoric framework of news comics in The Shanghai Cartoon,starting from the two categories of news report comics and news commentary comics,on the basis of elaborating the purpose of news comics.This chapter starts from three parts: rhetoric object,rhetoric goal and rhetoric method to build a visual rhetoric framework.In the visual rhetoric framework of news report comics,there are three main rhetorical methods: "A Bunch of Current Events" that focuses on major news,"Huang Huiru's Death" that presents news events linearly,and "Comrade A's Attitude towards Russia" that tells story comics.In the visual rhetoric framework of news commentary comics,there are two main rhetorical methods: characters plus words and scene reappearance to present commentary comics,integration and expressive symbolic commentary comics.The fourth chapter analyzes the social customs comics in The Shanghai Cartoon from the three basic analysis concepts of visual form analysis,visual discourse analysis,visual cultural analysis,and visual rhetoric.The visual form analyzes the symbolic elements in the focused image.The three most prominent elements of social customs comics are Shanghainese,daily life in Shanghai,and leisure life in Shanghai.Visual discourse analysis focuses on the discourse connotation of images.The most notable discourses in social customs comics are the conflict discourse under the gap between the rich and the poor,the discourse of the integration of Chinese and Western cultures,the discourse of westernization and the depraved discourse in satire.Visual cultural analysis focuses on the cultural codes hidden in images.The cultural concepts behind social customs cartoons are mainly reflected in three aspects: the prevalence of hedonism,the changes of customs and habits and the progress of social concepts.The fifth chapter is based on the theory of visual rhetoric,and explores the visual rhetoric practice of The Shanghai Cartoon in the process of realizing the modernization of comics from three aspects: the relationship between language and graph,rhetoric method and overall visual impression.In the practice of visual rhetoric,The Shanghai Cartoon learns the advanced western comic theory and painting methods,becoming an important symbol of the modern transformation of Chinese comics and Chinese comic magazines.In the practice of the relationship between language and graphics,the unified narrative only appears in the depiction of complex events.The painters of the editorial department of The Shanghai Cartoon lowered the proportion of dominating narratives,used dialogue narratives more,strengthened the status of images in comics,and gave images meaning beyond text.In the practice of rhetorical methods,similes,metaphors,comparisons,contrasts,irony,and allusions,a variety of rhetorical methods endow the comics with anomalies and a sense of destruction.In terms of overall visual impression,The Shanghai Cartoon presents a westernized look through the use of modern symbols such as Western symbols,Western comics drawing methods,dialog boxes,multi-frame comics,and comic strips in image drawing.