Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

As many of you probably already know, the title of this article draws from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, wherein Picard is kidnapped by an alien race with an “incomprehensible” language. This “Tamarian” language is based entirely upon a shared understanding of local metaphor, and so when Picard is thrust into conversation with one of them, knowing nothing of Tamarian culture, he cannot communicate until he learns more about their mythology and stories.

In the “real” world, outside of the Star Trek universe, there are a few different shared cultural mythologies which have allowed certain groups to establish a solid metaphorical language, with a truly shared understanding of all of the complexity and history of those metaphors. One of the oldest of these would be religion, with its adherence to a bible (or some other form of universally known text shared by followers/disciples). The shared understanding and memorizing of the stories, give followers a metaphorical language to draw from. In a very different vein, the long-running TV show The Simpsons has become so familiar to so many that it now forms a metaphorical language which people all over the English-speaking world share. A person only has to say something as benign and ridiculous as “You don’t win friends with salad” to convey that a) your vegetarian choice of diet is being mocked, b) no one wants to share your food, and thus you will be alone, c) the speaker is consciously being an ass, and is aware of their own hypocrisy and idiocy (because The Simpsons viewers are nothing if not self-aware). All of this is imparted in one short statement, because of the shared metaphorical language of The Simpsons.

It took many years to realize that my own immersion in popular comics had similarly affected me. Like a Tamarian stuck on Earth, I had inadvertently surrounded myself with people who couldn’t really speak the same language as me. Ultimately, as non-comic book readers they knew little of the mythology and stories that make up the background of my own metaphors, and so a divide grew.

This seems to be a common problem, that many people’s interactions falter and eventually fail under the weight of so little mutual understanding, especially in the face of so much denial. After all, we’re all speaking the same language, so there’s no need to assume that we’re misunderstanding each other… Some people might not read comics, but maybe they saw a comic-related movie, or picked up the funny pages of the newspaper once. So that’s the same, isn’t it? No, of course it bloody isn’t. As comic readers of a certain type, somewhat immersed in our world over most of our lives, we share a complexity of metaphor that others can’t imagine. There’s a shorthand of language and expression available to us, and we make use of it without even knowing that we’re doing so.

Recently when House of Final Civil Invasion stuff happened, many people cried Secret Wars II, and we all got it: this is another massive crossover marketing thing that may or may not have even one iota of literary worth. We all knew this because even if we only bought one or two titles in that era, we all remember The Beyonder turning up in them and learning to pee or whatever. It was so ludicrous that it became part of the pantheon of our shared metaphorical language.

This metaphorical language comes in extra handy when trying to evoke a certain kind of person or mood with this kind of verbal shorthand. “Going all Frank Castle” on someone clearly means killing them extra hard in an act of insanely cold vengeance, involving a disturbing amount of planning, intensity, and carnage. “This is some Electric Blue Superman bullshit” is used as shorthand for a convoluted, stupid, continuity thing.

“Retcon” , a phrase invented to describe the act of retroactive continuity, (i.e. changing the history of a work of serial fiction), is used frequently by comic readers, to the confusion of many outsiders. While its literal meaning is obviously regarding fiction, it works perfectly to describe the kind of revisionism practiced in the heat of a debate or argument, when facts are often ignored in favor of creating a winning rebuttal.

Having been to art school, it was always difficult to describe how intensely surreal, annoying, ridiculous and/or pointless some of the characters are in that kind of rarified environment. But then Eightball hit, and suddenly we can simply say “It was all very Daniel Clowes“, and the meaning is apparent. All of that angst, confusion, and terrible amounts of unaware narcissism are all conveyed by one simple evocation of the Daniel Clowes art school depiction.

Unlike a language comprising mostly of words, a language of metaphors allows for a rich tapestry of meaning and depth of emotional responses to be implied in a sort of verbal shorthand. Making use of this shared experience can only strengthen the understanding between fellow comic book readers, but how easily does it distance outsiders from us?

Not much ultimately. In my experience, once I acknowledged the scope of the medium’s influence on my language, it became something that I could easily explain. Most Americans that I’ve met seem to have at least a very superficial comprehension of the most iconic characters. While they won’t know what you mean when you say that someone’s “in their Fortress of Solitude”, if you explain that it’s Superman’s retreat, deep in the Antarctic, inaccessible to any human of normal strength, locked with a giant key which only Superman can lift, they’ll start to understand, because they do know who Superman is and what he’s capable of. Eventually, after a 30 minute discussion, they’ll start to picture the deeply private and remote nature of the place you’re describing, defeating the purpose of that metaphorical language, but slowly increasing the common understanding that is growing.

Like the X-Men, Sonia Harris took her self off to San Francisco, where she can blend in with all the other weirdos. By day she does a bit of a Clark Kent thing (but with less reporting and no glasses). By night she’s got a rather sedate Watcher thing going on. You can mail her at sonia@ifanboy.com.