If you ever wondered what silence looks like, there you go! This absence initially is a bit of a riddle. The easy part is understanding the expression on her face. Then you need to interpret the empty balloon. Those who know anything about comics, will know that it’s not just a weird ellipse, but a bubble that’s missing words. Also, this is a speech, rather than a thought, balloon. So, this absence denotes speechlessness or silence. You may then just conclude that it’s her silence. Her emotions took the place of words. But it gets trickier. The tail of the bubble is pointing away from her – which standardly means that the bubble belongs to the “off-screen” character – one who is not a part of the visible scene. So if it’s not her bubble, this silence belongs to the person we don’t see! A double absence.
Comics are hard.
I love it. I hadn’t thought about off-screen figures as cases of absence perception. But you are quite right. Maybe it’s because the convention of having speakers out of frame leads us to expect such situations, so we don’t notice the absence.
As for silence, do you think hearing absence works the same way as seeing absence? Or do you need a second blogspot?
so roy lichtenstein i think or very much like him. He has many images of women where the whole thing is the expression. I have not seen one with an empty thought/word bubble–that is interesting. Something her partner wants to say but doesn’t?
I think that the term that would most closely fit here is “pregnant silence”. And since this silence is visualized, it is time to coin a new phrase – “pregnant absence”.