Rhoda Kellogg: 20 Basic Scribbles

"All drawings consist of one or more Basic Scribbles used in various combinations. There are about 18-20 different kinds of basic markings which I have called The Basic Scribbles. All scribblings, drawings, patterns, shapes, designs, pictorials, and even language consist of markings which can be broken down into their scribble components". (Rhoda Kellogg; the 20 Basic Scribbles)

Grawlixes and the movies: chilly willy *!@?*W!!@

 

Tex Avery;  Chilly Willy: the legend of rockabye point (1955)

 grawlixes as silenced or censored curse

https://tellab.home.xs4all.nl/grawlixes/programming.html

 

grawlixes @grawlixes #grawlix #grawlixes @grawlix grawlix emanata @emanata #emanata  maldiciendo, c @symbolswearing #symbolswearing obscenicons @obscenicons #obscenicons @symbolswearing #symbolswearing  @# $% &*@!!?! @#$@@%%^& **!! ?! (..) %#@#$!! & #$@!!!

Grawlixes and the Kuleshov effect

 the Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov conducted an experiment in which he took a shot of an expressionless face and created three different short films, editing the face with a bowl of hot soup, girl in the coffin, or the seductive woman on a couch. 

Even though we know the shot of the actor exactly the same in each scenario, audiences read meaning into the actor’s face by the nature of the shots around it.

here is a variation that tries to show the effect of Grawlixes 

It shows the similarity between Grawlixes and 'affect'

"If emotions are personal experiences, then affects are the forces (perhaps the flows of energy) that precede, produce, and inform such experiences." (steven shaviro)

And according to Silvan Tomkins feedback of the facial response is the experience of affect

and thus in the grawlixes examples above the same affect can evoke different emotions

and the same expression is interpreted differently when connected to different affects

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gGl3LJ7vHc

 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Does-the-Kuleshov-Effect-Really-Exist-Revisiting-a-Barratt-Redei/d961622d70807f29ce0d2ca4422d9506eb454540

 

Grawlixes and the Self Assessment Manikin (SAM) test

The Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) is a non-verbal pictorial assessment technique that directly measures the pleasure, arousal, and dominance associated with a person's affective reaction to a wide variety of stimuli. 

by P.J.Lang

see also

http://irtel.uni-mannheim.de/pxlab/demos/index_SAM.html

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0005791694900639

image src; Affective Norms for 4900 Polish Words Reload 

Kamil Imbir 2016

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304673602_Affective_Norms_for_4900_Polish_Words_Reload_ANPW_R_Assessments_for_Valence_Arousal_Dominance_Origin_Significance_Concreteness_Imageability_and_Age_of_Acquisition

Kurt Cobain Nevermind Grawlixes

Kurt Cobain grawlixes (in Journals (2002))

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journals_(Cobain)

https://archive.org/details/KurtCobainJournals/page/n157

grawlix, grawlixes, cussing, programming with grawlixes, obscenicons, upfix, swirls, emanata, 

Grawlixes: Why cartoon characters curse like this

Grawlixes and Gender

'Programming with Grawlixes' has associated grawlixes with patriarchal stereotypes like rigid conservatives, drill-sergeants and controlling fathers who’s often smug, self-satisfied behavioral schema was cut-off by an unexpected event. (see programming with grawlixes #3)
In other words, the appearance of Grawlixes is also an indicator of the presence of certain gender stereotypes.
 A similar relation is made visible in research into the relation between gender stereotypes and swearing. For example in this study by Karyn Stapleton that states that:

1. Swearing is perceived as agressive, and in western cultural stereotypes agression is associated with masculine male behavior. Therefore, women who swear 'behave like men'.
2. Swearwords represent linguistic taboos, and these taboos play an important role in social hierarchies. For example in western patriarchal societies, men are less subject to these taboos than women. So women who swear challenge the cultural staus quo.
3. Women are also more likely to be judged on moral standing and character. Therefore, women who use bad language are associated with lower class.

This also implies that with the gradual deconstruction of traditional western patriarchal stereotypes, one might expect an increase of women uttering Grawlixes in comics.
This is only partially confirmed by the examples below, I found it is still not easy to find female cartoon characters uttering Grawlixes.
I think this might be because this deconstruction of classical stereotypes not only breaks down traditional gender stereotypes, it also breaks down the western objectivist binaries necessary for the production of Grawlixes. Therefore Grawlixes in general are increasingly rare in contemporary comics except maybe in comics that take a kind of retro perspective.

In the 1960’s Morris & Goscinni’s Calamity Jane is uninhibitedly

‘swearing like a man’ and clearly upsetting the traditional believes of the male actors on the set.

(Lucky Luke, Calamity Jane 1969)

'Cuss like a lady' ; Beetle Baily, Greg & Mort Walker (2015)

Breaking Out - It Ain’t Me Babe Comix, Carole 1970

(BITCH BITCH BITCH, Roberta Gregory 1994)

Within the Riot Grrrl zineculture of the 90’s women

 develop their own scripts that allow them to curse in their own right

Jessica Jones 2001

grawlix,
#grawlixes grawlix programming grawlixes emanata cursing symbolswearing upfix grwlx grawlix grawlix grawlix grawlix grawlixes grawlixes grawlixes #xogramming with grawlixes, grawlix, emanata, obscenicons, profanities, vloeken in comics,marc van elburg,  grawlix  grwlx

Grawlixes: Louis Forton (France 1879 1934)

( Louis Forton, 1928).

(from; http://delasaulaie.e-monsite.com/pages/livres-bd-revues/bibi-fricotin.html)

 emanata quimps grawlix grawlixes coises grosmots jurons #@!?!

Mort Walker (September 3, 1923 – January 27, 2018)

Mort Walker (September 3, 1923 – January 27, 2018)
(image source http://beetlebailey.com/comic_tag/swear-word/)
#grawlixes #grawlix

grawlixes: the filth and the fury

 

Basic Grawlixes appeared in a copy of The Daily Mirror in  1976 after rigid social conventions that were assumed to be generally accepted on British television were radically  broken by the Sex Pistols in their first Tv interview

Breaking the Frame

"Like other art forms, comics provide frames through which we are invited to see the
world, ways of seeing that suggest ways of being(..)
 The trick, for a radical artist, is to demonstrate, somehow, that this substitution of a world for the world, of a trammeled and blocked-in "worldview" for the "unspeakable" plenitude and plurality of things as they are, is the stuff of everyday life under domination (..)
We are always seeing the world through frames, a world as seen through
"enframing" (Heidegger). The anarchist project demands that we find ways
to reframe the world, to see it anew by breaking with the framework of
conventional perception, transforming the means of perception into its own object,
calling attention to the frame as frame, making ourselves aware that it is a frame -
and not the limits of the world itself."

(Jesse Cohn. Breaking the Frame: Anarchist Comics and Visual Culture (Belphegor 2013)
https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10222/47735/06_02_cohn_comics_en_cont.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y 


 

 Ernst Riebe. Mr. Block; He Tries the Courts (1912)

Grawlixes appear when a routine is cut off by an unexpected event. And
when they appear the anticipated frame-squence is put to a full stop.
The emotional response (in this case 'patriotism') to the unexpected frame-break indicates towards a deeply felt possibly innate connection to the anticipated path of the routine.

Grawlixes and first speech; Tom Gauld

Tom Gauld
Sketchbookpage 34
2010
www.tomgauld.com

Grawlixes & mathematical objects

E.Segar (1929)

A cunning, precalculated path towards an object of desire was cut-off by an unexpected event.
In the mind of the rigid character, without a mathematical object, the algorithm or automatic trajectory becomes an  infinite series of objectless computations with no progression towards a solution.

Jaffee Grawlixes

 

A.Jaffee. Tall Tales (1959)

The old couple holds a wishing bone.

 Both picture a path towards a future ideal.

Neither of the anticiapted paths is fulfilled because of an unexpected event;

 the bone does not break.

The path is no longer coordinated towards a future objective and as a consequence it continues as an uncoordinated scribble inside the thought balloon.

Grawlixes movies; Earl Hurd, 1917

 Bobby Bumps' Fourth (Earl Hurd, 1917) 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQCv-O3-QDY&index=14&list=PLH3kk91FHIVCDRQSrOwNcTjxzQ19784r7

Polly wants a cracker, but the expected cracker turns out to be a firecracker.
Grawlixes appear as stars, swirls and censorded (blanked) curses.

A silent film.

Grawlixes like stars and spirals do not replace sound. (see; programming with grawlixes 1,2,3).
However;
Most Grawlixes seem to have disappeared from the movies with the introduction of sound.

therefore it is likely that;

A. Grawlixes must have some relation with language
B. But not with spoken language

Grawlixes Saturn

(F.Opper. And her name was Maud (1904) 
from;http://www.stwallskull.com/
 
An involuntary experience, a 'wandering mind', a shooting star, an orbit with stars or phosphenes, singing voices, flawed speech, a very nasty racial stereotype that even makes the obnoxious farmer Si Slocum who is normally outsmarted by the mule look sophisticated,
also the earliest representation of  a Saturn I've found sofar.

Condorito Grawlixes

Condorito.René Pepo Ríos (Chile 19?)

The black cover makes it quite a literally example of the workings of Grawlixes.

The cloth over the cage activated a background routine (sleep)

The unforeseen removal of the cloth cuts the path of the routine.

The physical state of the routine is gone, but its anticipated path continues and comes to the foreground into attention in the panel as a series of 'Basic Grawlixes'.

Gaston Lagaffe Grawlixes (Gros Mots)

 

Andre Franquin: Gaston Lagaffe.

Gaffes, bévues et boulettes, DUPUIS (1973)

Osama Tezuka Grawlixes

 

Osama Tezuka

 

Basquiat Grawlixes

Jean-Michel Basquiat in Studio, New York, 1987 with some classic grawlixes in the top right
© Tseng Kwong Chi,