Images With(In) Books

The Secret of Kells is a very imaginative film in the sense that it creates an origin story for the Book of Kells. What is particularly interesting about this film is that it is animated. What that allows is for a much younger audience to become engaged with illuminated manuscripts as a whole. Illuminated manuscripts are something that most likely appear dull to a younger generation of people. And the Secret of Kells makes these manuscripts more appealing through its utilization of things like fairies and mythical monsters.
Furthermore, the film employs an idea of the illuminated manuscript that takes on somewhat of a magical characteristic. The Book of Kells in the film literally “illuminates” the reader, taking on a quite literal approach to the illuminated manuscript. The Secret of Kells depicts these manuscripts as being work of angels and being able to shy away sinners from reading it. Obviously this is a very religious take on illuminated manuscripts, and rightly so. Heavy notions of Christianity are not mentioned in this film, although the basics are. This makes it very easy for young people who are not entirely educated on the Christian faith to comprehend and process.
Something that the film does is paint the authorities of the monastery as being stern and unimaginative for most of the story. Brendan – a young boy and the main character of the film – has an uncle who is head of the monastery. He routinely refuses Brendan to partake in the making of the pages of illuminated manuscripts as well as exiting the monastery, which ends up being a vital part of the story towards the end. While this tactic that the filmmakers used makes The Secret of Kells more appealing to a younger audience, it is not entirely true. In fact, many young people in monasteries were educated on how to create illuminated manuscripts and continue the work that was being done.
While The Secret of Kells may not be historically accurate, it is an entertaining film to watch. It has the ability to appeal to and educate a younger generation of people on illuminated manuscripts, whilst illustrating them in a tasteful, enjoyable light. Overall, The Secret of Kells does a nice job with this and is an interesting film to watch regardless of ones age.

A theme I have noticed over the past week and a half is how art constantly transforms other things. Banksy’s maid graffiti was probably my favorite image we discussed in class because the artist took the concept of graffiti to the next level. Not only did he paint something where he wasn’t supposed to, he turned the wall into something else entirely. I saw this as almost rebellious, proving that the artist could not only paint wherever he wanted to, but also had the power to turn a brick wall into an easily liftable piece of cloth.

Illuminated manuscripts also seem rebellious in a really magical way. They broke the rules by coloring outside the lines and changing how text was presented. Things like calendars and religious scripts began to take on the appearance of fun, colorful story books.

It was extremely interesting to read about how mediums for expression transformed over time. In the film The Secret of Kells, many of the surfaces we read about appeared. For example, Brendan used paper, parchment, and stone. In addition, he used chalk, feathers, and berries to illustrate with. I loved, loved, loved the animation in this movie. In many scenes, certain characters or objects glowed, and it echoed the radiant gold in many illuminated manuscripts.

After watching “The Secret of Kells”, it was definitely not what I expected. To be honest, I anticipated the film would be similar to the BBC documentary shown in class or some other sort of “real-life” drama. I was happily surprised that “The Secret of Kells” was an animation, and I would go as far as to say this was one of the most unique films I have seen for a class.

My favorite parts of the movie were the artistic filming techniques and elaborate settings, mirroring the illustration of a manuscript. For example, the landscapes contained geometric symbols and some of the movie frames featured borders with detailed designs. I liked how the idea of intricacy manifested throughout the film. Additionally, I enjoyed the Irish undertones. Not many children’s movies, or movies for that matter, employ bits of Irish culture.

 

Course Description

How do you read images with(in) books? Can images persuade, seduce, or even lead the narrative astray? Drawing from the works on text and image from Visual Culture scholars, this interdisciplinary course focuses on visual textuality—the ‘book’ as a visible object of cultural consumption and production in the West and Mediterranean. This class reinforces the fact that the visual textuality of Visual Studies entails a complex study of the book and its ‘images’. Students will consider how the ‘text and image’ relationship alter and influence different acts of reading. In addition, students will undertake the task of understanding and analyzing this multifaceted art form by examining illuminated manuscripts, illustrated texts, and graphic narratives.