Blood in the Gutter

In the chapter blood in the gutter, McCloud talks about how we as humans use our own experiences to fill in the 'gaps' left by writers to create our own kind of meaning to a story in any kind of medium. We relate anything that we read or see to our own knowledge and background to understand the concept and ideas. We have so many experiences that we can feed on and everyone has differing views, so everyone who see's the same thing will have a different view and get something out of it. This can be directly related back to the previous chapter where McCloud talked about how we, using our own experience, can identify a few simple shapes as a face.

This technique is used a lot in film, where the film makers show parts of an event but don't the main part, but it is implied and the same feeling is generated, because we are able to fill in the 'gaps' and create our own meaning. The 'Shower scene' in Hitchcock's Psycho is a very famous scene that uses this technique. This scene shows very little but implies a lot. The whole murder act is shown through shadows and quick cuts. And because of this it is very effective in creating the 'realism' of the murder. Because we, as smart humans, know what happens when someone stabs with a knife, then it is not necessary to show a knife going into a body to know that that is going to happen. I think because they don't show this it is much more effective in capturing the event in the film, and this is why it is so famous.