So I finnished the Kindly Ones. Holy fuck. 975 page book with paragraph breaks that only excist every 5 pages or so. Fuck you. The book would have to be pretty god damned epic in order to keep my atension for that long. And it DID!!! YAY! Truely an amazing piece of literature that is well worth reading. A word of warning though, keep wiki handy because I had to go back more than once to brush up on my WW2 history in order to keep track of what is going on.
So yeah the book. Holy fuck there is so much to say I don't even really know where to begin. I mean so much shit happens in it. Ye gods. I guess I am just going to make a little list.
Interesting things.
1) The charecter's many dream sequences and hallucinations bring about all sorts avenues of discussion.
2) What the hell is up with dyareha? Hmm I have no idea how to spell it, I know that y belongs there though. Where does its significance with the dreams fall in with its prevalence throughout the book.
3) Comparing the main charecter's dwindling sanity as part of a paralle to the nazi jewish extermination project.
4) Examine the bueracratic absurdities that they applied to "the jewish question" along with their seemingly inability to halt the genocide process.
5) The main charecter as a complete failure to national socialism and as a soldier. In fact he is a terrible main charecter, who is propped up time and time again by both Mandlerbroad and Thomas.
6) Oh and WTF ending. Okay look the main charecter for most of the book isn't a bad guy. He is disgusted by the application of the "jewish question" he struggles to gain better treatment for the folks in Auswitz, and the horrors of war profoundly upsets him to the point of sickness and depression. Compared to his friend Thomas the MC is a saint. This is of course overlooking the fact that he killed his parents but whatever. No one is perfect and he was pretty much insane at that point in the book. But fuck FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. I hated the way it ended. He wasn't being insane there. He made a cold calculated manuver that was compleatly unessisary. Thomas would of carried him out of germany on his back if nessisary like he did for the whole fucking war. What the MC did was unacceptable. I loved Thomas, and sure I spent 25-100 pages trying to proove he was still alive and not a deranged hallucination but DAMNIT. Thomas is a badass and deserved better than to have his head bashed in by his best friend who he saved time and time again. Fuck you MC no wonder why everyone shits on you.
7) Twins. They are EVERYWHERE in the book, from Mandlerbroad's assistents, to the MC and his sister, to his sister's kids, to the midgets in the halluciation at the end of Staligrad, to... okay well anyway there are a lot of twins in the book and they interconnect thematicly with stuff going on.
8) Oh the relationship between the MC and Hitler and how the MC adopted Hitler as a father figgure. There are also his hallucinations involving hitler and the scene where he bites his nose. Yeah he bit hitler's nose! It was awesome!
9) The whole wierd gender distortion thing he had going on with his sister.
10) The structure of the paragraphs as gramatical unit and how they were broken up along with the information they carried. There is a lot to that topic as the author really makes good use of the elongated paragraphs for all sorts of purposes, which I haven't been really able to track,
11) There is something to all the dead animals in the zoo I can't put my figgure on what it is though.
12) oh and there is something worth writting about the feral children. I think in paticular it is worth going over how there was a pack of female feral children in russia but male children in germany and the relative diffrences between the two.
Anyway it feels like I climbed a mountain, and now that I don't have to carry that big ass book around with me anymore I feel more than a little lost. SADNESS! Oh well. I have some other things I am supposed to be reading so I'll grab a few of those before tackling another big project I guess. Over the next couple of days I might expand on some of these ideas. I just kinda wanted to lay them all out and give them a good think through. Okay well I am going to go do something else.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The Harm of Pornograph
I am one of those people who defend pornography's existence. However, I do so with a distinct lack of urgency. I can't particularly imagine with world being worse off without porn. I really can't, and at the same time the world isn't worse off with porn. It is there and it is something that will more or less always be present.
To call pornography a new thing is rather silly. Little smut books, pamphlets, and an entire genera of Victorian lesbian erotic has existed before the internet and its pictures.
Still. What I would like to adress is the idea of harm, and the potential harm that pornography can do.
Harm is a funny concept. An article which I just read and which put me in the mood to write this, compares the history of tobaco in the US with the history of pornography in the US. The article was, decent. However, at times I felt that it was spinning wheels and that it was overly touchy with its subject. So to begin some summary. Where I stand.
1) Pornography is not physically addicting, unlike say cocain or heroin. Any addiction caused by the end user is restricted to the end user. The end user has the same potential to become addicted to video games, role playing games, cooking, sewing, reading, religion, gamboling, or any other mundane activity. Pornography can not be held responciple for the foibles of its end user, espeically when there is no direct phycial component with chemicaly alters the body. The end users lack of willpower is more to blame than the product itself. So fuck you end user.
2) Harm caused by practising exotic possition or tecniques seen in pornagraphy. Same as above only replace end user with dumbass.
3) Art/not art/people/I'm offended. There is a funny contradiction right at the very foundation of this country. We have this whole rule of the people, voting, representative thing going on. This whole system empowers people to state thier beliefs long and loudly in the hopes that they will become law. Then we also have the freedom of speach thing, which states (in theory), "We don't give a fuck what you think in terms of this form of expression it will never be banned". When someone was discussing banning gay marriage with a constitutional amendment someone pointed out that the constitution traditionally gives us rights, not restrictions. The one main outlyer being met with hilariouse results. AND YET! Here we have the first amendment which says no matter how offended you are by pornoagraphy that one person over there has a right to view it and you don't have a right to stop him. Funny? Yes I think so.
Even if the majority were to find it offensive it still has the potential for expression, art, and the sort of thing that is important. EVEN IF 90% of it is what it is.
4) Everything in moderation dears.
HOwever, some of the people humping the harm element have a point.
It is thought excercise time. Go to goodsearch, make sure that the name of your favorite charity is selected, turn off the adult content filter, and do a search for soft core porn. NO SERIOUSLY!
Okay now try to find a picture of one or more girls just sort of standing around being naked.
Now open the picture in a new browser window and look at just the picture with no context.
Offended? If so then I think you are wierd but whatever go be offended I don't care everyone else will be joining you in a second.
For everyone who isn't offended I want you to add the caption, "look at my slutty 19 year old daughter who I am just dying to fuck". Now. Offended?
See for the most part it isn't the actual pornographic image itself but rather the context that it is consumed in. And mysognistic language is the order of the day. Words like stupid, bitch, slut, dumb, poor, are all used to describe the actresses/modles in the image or movie. I beleive that this right here is the source of our problems.
When we discover why this language not only excists but what purpose does it serve? Is it some sort of holdover from the "talk dirty to me" desire that some men have? Is it really mysoginy? Or is there much more at stake than we are recognizing? Most importantly how does this context colour our perceptions of the porn we are consuming.
A typical, "pornography is harmful" reading of your average porn scene is that the models are not compleatly shown. It is always closeups of penatration, tits, you know very zoomed in shots. This is because the pornography disassembles women into a series of parts ignoring the whole.
Why is it destruction, instead of enshrinement? Why do we look at a closeup of penatration and see the deconstruction of the whole instead of a tribute to the aweful pain, awkwardness, and beauty that is sexuality? Porn is never really editied, men acidently fall out of women, positionas are changed only with awkwardness, and no one keeps a straight face. This can all be cast in a positive light rather than a negative one. Yet we don't do so. THe production quality is a factor. Calling the modles useless whores before hand is another one.
This is one of those moments where I have a problem but no solution. It is a good question though, and finding an answer to it is nearly impossible. It goes straigh down to the, "talk dirty to me" desire that excistis in the first place, it holds hands with sexual repression which we still have 7 pounds of in a 2 pound box, and all sorts of other individual problems with feed into the societal one. Shit be tough yo.
Anyway. The fact that the slut talk is so wide spread definatly has something to do with it. The problem is that it is an idea. You can't build a law against it and you can never enforce it. You can only hope to change peoples minds.
To call pornography a new thing is rather silly. Little smut books, pamphlets, and an entire genera of Victorian lesbian erotic has existed before the internet and its pictures.
Still. What I would like to adress is the idea of harm, and the potential harm that pornography can do.
Harm is a funny concept. An article which I just read and which put me in the mood to write this, compares the history of tobaco in the US with the history of pornography in the US. The article was, decent. However, at times I felt that it was spinning wheels and that it was overly touchy with its subject. So to begin some summary. Where I stand.
1) Pornography is not physically addicting, unlike say cocain or heroin. Any addiction caused by the end user is restricted to the end user. The end user has the same potential to become addicted to video games, role playing games, cooking, sewing, reading, religion, gamboling, or any other mundane activity. Pornography can not be held responciple for the foibles of its end user, espeically when there is no direct phycial component with chemicaly alters the body. The end users lack of willpower is more to blame than the product itself. So fuck you end user.
2) Harm caused by practising exotic possition or tecniques seen in pornagraphy. Same as above only replace end user with dumbass.
3) Art/not art/people/I'm offended. There is a funny contradiction right at the very foundation of this country. We have this whole rule of the people, voting, representative thing going on. This whole system empowers people to state thier beliefs long and loudly in the hopes that they will become law. Then we also have the freedom of speach thing, which states (in theory), "We don't give a fuck what you think in terms of this form of expression it will never be banned". When someone was discussing banning gay marriage with a constitutional amendment someone pointed out that the constitution traditionally gives us rights, not restrictions. The one main outlyer being met with hilariouse results. AND YET! Here we have the first amendment which says no matter how offended you are by pornoagraphy that one person over there has a right to view it and you don't have a right to stop him. Funny? Yes I think so.
Even if the majority were to find it offensive it still has the potential for expression, art, and the sort of thing that is important. EVEN IF 90% of it is what it is.
4) Everything in moderation dears.
HOwever, some of the people humping the harm element have a point.
It is thought excercise time. Go to goodsearch, make sure that the name of your favorite charity is selected, turn off the adult content filter, and do a search for soft core porn. NO SERIOUSLY!
Okay now try to find a picture of one or more girls just sort of standing around being naked.
Now open the picture in a new browser window and look at just the picture with no context.
Offended? If so then I think you are wierd but whatever go be offended I don't care everyone else will be joining you in a second.
For everyone who isn't offended I want you to add the caption, "look at my slutty 19 year old daughter who I am just dying to fuck". Now. Offended?
See for the most part it isn't the actual pornographic image itself but rather the context that it is consumed in. And mysognistic language is the order of the day. Words like stupid, bitch, slut, dumb, poor, are all used to describe the actresses/modles in the image or movie. I beleive that this right here is the source of our problems.
When we discover why this language not only excists but what purpose does it serve? Is it some sort of holdover from the "talk dirty to me" desire that some men have? Is it really mysoginy? Or is there much more at stake than we are recognizing? Most importantly how does this context colour our perceptions of the porn we are consuming.
A typical, "pornography is harmful" reading of your average porn scene is that the models are not compleatly shown. It is always closeups of penatration, tits, you know very zoomed in shots. This is because the pornography disassembles women into a series of parts ignoring the whole.
Why is it destruction, instead of enshrinement? Why do we look at a closeup of penatration and see the deconstruction of the whole instead of a tribute to the aweful pain, awkwardness, and beauty that is sexuality? Porn is never really editied, men acidently fall out of women, positionas are changed only with awkwardness, and no one keeps a straight face. This can all be cast in a positive light rather than a negative one. Yet we don't do so. THe production quality is a factor. Calling the modles useless whores before hand is another one.
This is one of those moments where I have a problem but no solution. It is a good question though, and finding an answer to it is nearly impossible. It goes straigh down to the, "talk dirty to me" desire that excistis in the first place, it holds hands with sexual repression which we still have 7 pounds of in a 2 pound box, and all sorts of other individual problems with feed into the societal one. Shit be tough yo.
Anyway. The fact that the slut talk is so wide spread definatly has something to do with it. The problem is that it is an idea. You can't build a law against it and you can never enforce it. You can only hope to change peoples minds.
Well that was short lived
Man my neck hurts. Not the point of this post though. I for about a half hour, had a twitter account. I then decided to delete it.
I looked around it, poked around some famous people's feeds, and some feeds of my friends and I realized a few things. Twitter is about communication. People do comunicate on it rather well. When people communicate to each other it is a lot like slow motion instant messaging. And yet there is something ever so disingenuous about it. Maybe it is the format.
I don't know. There is a lot to be said for constraint though. I love haikus, I still think sonnets have something to offer the world, and writting under rediculous sets of rules is fun for me. And yet...yet...something just seems so fantasticly off about twitter.
I think part of it boils down to the fact that I want to know what my friends are doing and what they are interested in and how everything works. But I would like to be communicated to in chunks larger than 160 charecters ever couple of hours. It is handy for lots of things, but not for what I need.
Disapointment.
Oh well. I think I just prefer blogging. And reading other people's blogs. Of course just about no one I know blogs anymore so whatev.
I looked around it, poked around some famous people's feeds, and some feeds of my friends and I realized a few things. Twitter is about communication. People do comunicate on it rather well. When people communicate to each other it is a lot like slow motion instant messaging. And yet there is something ever so disingenuous about it. Maybe it is the format.
I don't know. There is a lot to be said for constraint though. I love haikus, I still think sonnets have something to offer the world, and writting under rediculous sets of rules is fun for me. And yet...yet...something just seems so fantasticly off about twitter.
I think part of it boils down to the fact that I want to know what my friends are doing and what they are interested in and how everything works. But I would like to be communicated to in chunks larger than 160 charecters ever couple of hours. It is handy for lots of things, but not for what I need.
Disapointment.
Oh well. I think I just prefer blogging. And reading other people's blogs. Of course just about no one I know blogs anymore so whatev.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Wake Up
Man writing fiction for the first time after taking a long break is really weird. I before E my ass that rule is bullshit. Anyway. Yeah.
To fill you in as to what the fuck I am talking about, I decided to start writting fiction again fer reals. It is important because it uses a diffrent part of my brain creatively. Yeah that is the main reason actually, I want to use as much of my brains as possible lest they break. Alot like the rest of the body the brain is, it will fall apart if it isn't used. And other shit you already know.
Sorry I am vaugly upset so this is coming out a little wierd.
ANYWAY. So I had all this writters block, writers block, block block block, then suddenly out of nowhere this story came out of nowhere. I hammered out 7ish pages of stuff, and then for variouse reasons I let it stew for a bit. Today I finnaly fixed one of the things stopping me, the printer ran out of ink and I was able to read over what I wrote and edit it.
It started off pretty rough, no doubts. But as the story progressed I could see myself waking up and writting better and better. It is kind of amazing to watch, as I started connecting important elements of the story together making for a larger whole. It isn't bad!
I had to sit down and come up with an outline as to how I wanted it to end, and I need to insert a few scenes here and there and rewrite a couple of paragraphs but that isn't so much of a big deal and I definatly look fowards to doing just that tomarrow...or maybe the day after it depends.
One of the things that really helped me out is that instead of doing a normal outline I instead made a thematic map of the story. I wrote down a bunch of themes, emotions, ideas, et cetera on a piece of paper. So that way when I wrote I could make sure that every paragraph had at least something to do with a larger idea, and it also made interthemetic reffrence much easyer. It was a great idea and I am glad I did it.
Okay I'm going to do something else cause my brain seems broke.
To fill you in as to what the fuck I am talking about, I decided to start writting fiction again fer reals. It is important because it uses a diffrent part of my brain creatively. Yeah that is the main reason actually, I want to use as much of my brains as possible lest they break. Alot like the rest of the body the brain is, it will fall apart if it isn't used. And other shit you already know.
Sorry I am vaugly upset so this is coming out a little wierd.
ANYWAY. So I had all this writters block, writers block, block block block, then suddenly out of nowhere this story came out of nowhere. I hammered out 7ish pages of stuff, and then for variouse reasons I let it stew for a bit. Today I finnaly fixed one of the things stopping me, the printer ran out of ink and I was able to read over what I wrote and edit it.
It started off pretty rough, no doubts. But as the story progressed I could see myself waking up and writting better and better. It is kind of amazing to watch, as I started connecting important elements of the story together making for a larger whole. It isn't bad!
I had to sit down and come up with an outline as to how I wanted it to end, and I need to insert a few scenes here and there and rewrite a couple of paragraphs but that isn't so much of a big deal and I definatly look fowards to doing just that tomarrow...or maybe the day after it depends.
One of the things that really helped me out is that instead of doing a normal outline I instead made a thematic map of the story. I wrote down a bunch of themes, emotions, ideas, et cetera on a piece of paper. So that way when I wrote I could make sure that every paragraph had at least something to do with a larger idea, and it also made interthemetic reffrence much easyer. It was a great idea and I am glad I did it.
Okay I'm going to do something else cause my brain seems broke.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Putting the thousand words to pictures
So every time my blog reincarnates I have a diffrent vision of what it is going to be like. Then it becomes the thing it actually is contrary to my vision. Oh well. So here is the deal. I spend a lot of time mounting this thing as a sounding board for things everyone should be seeing and watching but I don't really give away spoilers or analysis of anything so I don't ruin anything. Unfortunatly I am bored with that format. Bored to tears. I hate it in fact. So spoilers away. Yeah definantly. There was a part of me that wanted desperatly for people to read this. This is odd, it is something I've never felt before. For the most part I feel a vast indiffrerence to what I write here. I dunno what it is. It was also butting up against my desire to write something that matters. I don't know why I didn't equate the two. Oh well. Whatever went broke in my head is fixed now.
I've been coming up with lots of writting projects recently though which is snazzy. I want to start actually writting things about comic books though. I mean I've been talking a lot about how I want to write about comic books but I suppose I should make sure I can do it.
Sure sure I can do anaysis of comic books that's easy. Heart of Darkness and the Comedian, deconstruction of the super hero and watchmen, guest starring the dc/marvel universes, the humanity of rorcharc and how he takes off his mask at the end, mirror images in watchmen, and blah blah blah. Okay yeah so I can comfortably take watchmen and write about it for the rest of my life. There is also the invisables, there are all sorts of topics in there such as the nature/role of violence in revolution, the conflict between the rich and revolution, viewing the outer church as metaphore for whatever, redefining budda for the punk rock generation, rebelling against the rebellion and the true nature of rebellion, see it is easy.
The thing is though is while all these things are smart and fancy they don't really take advantage of the graphical format provided by the graphic novel. See I'd be treating them just like they were novels and interpreting them thusly. While that is perfectly acceptable and something I will do eventually, it doesn't really do anything exciting with the genra as a whole. I mean this is aa whole new format here, with a new language and sets of symbols and messages and everything. Not recognizing that is doing a grave diservice to the poor genra that is already in need of help. A lot of graphic novels that are acedmicly studied are really obviouse, kinda lame books. Sandman for example sorta has that "mud at the wall" system to it, where everything is so loosly tied together that you can get away with anything. And Maus. God damnit I wish people would stop humping Maus. Seriously, mice as peoples ZOMG we are scholars!!!!! Writting putting himself in the text and restling with representation ZOMG SCHOLARS!!! Then you just slather post modern theory all over it and wonder why the rest of the acedemic world looks down on post modernism *facepalm*. No really looking back now I realize that people have a hard time talking about graphic novles.
There is a reason for this however.
Mostly it has to do with the essay format and the way we quote things. Normally when I need to direct your atension to something in a book I say in this book on this page there is this line then I put the line right in front of you. Then it is up to you to go grab the context yourself should you need it. When writting about both comics, and film this whole system starts to break down. Paraphrasing just doesn't capture the same crisp clear essence that a well selected quote can. It also takes up space and burdens the reader with useless reading. It is handy for going over large topics or whatnot but definatly not for essay meats. THis is also especially true if you want to address the art itself. You need to see the art, which means putting the art directly into the essay. What this boils down to is me either downloading all the stuff I want to write about so I can post the specific pages I want to adress in the blog up here, or getting a scanner. This isn't just for here it is for school too. The whole MLA format is highly inadiquet when it comes to Art and motion picture. Hell it was prolly written when VHS still ruled and cd burners were luxeries. Things are diffrent.
Eh who knows its been ages since I looked at the hand book hopefully this is one of those things that changes as I want it to. Showing the art is important though. Critical I would say. I mean if I am writting a paper that uses the freakish body and the grotesque in Garth Ennis's Preacher it is one thing to describe the meat woman. It is another thing entirely to show it. Oh god. The meat woman what the fuck Garth there is something wrong with you. Something glorius
So what about the art.
Well I have a couple of leads I'd like to persue. The first baby lead is 100 bullets. It really is the perfect source for a project like this. 100 issues long (clever) 13 books long and it maintains the same writer/artist duo the entire way though. WIN! That minor detail aside what actually makes it perfect is that there are many occations where the main charecters will be talking about something, or someone will be waxing poetic about something off screen and on screen a compleatly unrealated thing will be going on. WHat is going on, on screen always themeaticlly adresses what is being discussed off screen but it is never directly related to the plot. In fact the off screen stuff doesn't relate to the main charecters at all. The writter is also a master of the side story which again thematicly ties into the larger tapestry. To call the work brilliant is a massive fucking understatement. I want to wait until it is finnished then I want to give it a fresh read through before I go at it. It is an impressive work and highly worthy of study.
The other thing I want to do is a lil bit more ambitiouse. It involves Animal Man Vol 2/3, Testemant, Air, and Kabuki Circle of Blood. I want to explore what the idea of the comic frame means. All the images take place in these neat little boxes, everything from love, to violence, to loss. However, what happens out side of the boxes, in those little white spaces between the lands of colour. All the books I listed explore these ideas in diffrent ways by having charecters or events happen outside of the little boxes that the action takes place in. Animal Man turns the reader into an acomplice to the horrors these charecters has to suffer and animal man saves all of our lives by thwarting an assault on our world by a legion of pissed off heros and villians. Yeah it is that cool. Air needs to get rolling a little bit more before I can get going with it but one of the major themes of the book is steping outside reality so having conversations between pannels with a metaphorical Aztec snake god is perfectly logical. Testement has all sort of things going on outside of the pannels, and in fact it is the easyest fit. The gods themselves are chilling outside of the panles chattering away about what is going on. The obviouse thing to do would be to link testemant and air but the similarities are superficial. I also like to leave obviouse arguments open so when people try to make them I can curbstomp them into oblivion.
Kabuiki is a wierd choise and wasn't included in the original project. It might also become a tangental project. The thing about Kabuki is that for a large portion of the comic it does away with frames altogether and lets the story progress in a very diffrent fluid sort of way. Since a major theme of Kabuki is dreams it works really well and I beleive it has a place in the over all project. Oh shit I should take another look at nightly news which is also frameless. It also has three unstable narators. Yeah I know right how is that ever possible? I don't fucking know but it is AWESOME. I'll see though. Nightly New's style might be to revolutionary for this project. It isn't really an examination of what the frames mean but more of ignoring what frames are in the first place and doing your own thing. It is kinda like what would happen if you grew someone in a jar told them all about graphic novels and made them create one.
Oh well. So yeah I wanna do that too. Step one would be to talk about what it is frames are doing in the first place. So I guess time to figgure that out.
I've been coming up with lots of writting projects recently though which is snazzy. I want to start actually writting things about comic books though. I mean I've been talking a lot about how I want to write about comic books but I suppose I should make sure I can do it.
Sure sure I can do anaysis of comic books that's easy. Heart of Darkness and the Comedian, deconstruction of the super hero and watchmen, guest starring the dc/marvel universes, the humanity of rorcharc and how he takes off his mask at the end, mirror images in watchmen, and blah blah blah. Okay yeah so I can comfortably take watchmen and write about it for the rest of my life. There is also the invisables, there are all sorts of topics in there such as the nature/role of violence in revolution, the conflict between the rich and revolution, viewing the outer church as metaphore for whatever, redefining budda for the punk rock generation, rebelling against the rebellion and the true nature of rebellion, see it is easy.
The thing is though is while all these things are smart and fancy they don't really take advantage of the graphical format provided by the graphic novel. See I'd be treating them just like they were novels and interpreting them thusly. While that is perfectly acceptable and something I will do eventually, it doesn't really do anything exciting with the genra as a whole. I mean this is aa whole new format here, with a new language and sets of symbols and messages and everything. Not recognizing that is doing a grave diservice to the poor genra that is already in need of help. A lot of graphic novels that are acedmicly studied are really obviouse, kinda lame books. Sandman for example sorta has that "mud at the wall" system to it, where everything is so loosly tied together that you can get away with anything. And Maus. God damnit I wish people would stop humping Maus. Seriously, mice as peoples ZOMG we are scholars!!!!! Writting putting himself in the text and restling with representation ZOMG SCHOLARS!!! Then you just slather post modern theory all over it and wonder why the rest of the acedemic world looks down on post modernism *facepalm*. No really looking back now I realize that people have a hard time talking about graphic novles.
There is a reason for this however.
Mostly it has to do with the essay format and the way we quote things. Normally when I need to direct your atension to something in a book I say in this book on this page there is this line then I put the line right in front of you. Then it is up to you to go grab the context yourself should you need it. When writting about both comics, and film this whole system starts to break down. Paraphrasing just doesn't capture the same crisp clear essence that a well selected quote can. It also takes up space and burdens the reader with useless reading. It is handy for going over large topics or whatnot but definatly not for essay meats. THis is also especially true if you want to address the art itself. You need to see the art, which means putting the art directly into the essay. What this boils down to is me either downloading all the stuff I want to write about so I can post the specific pages I want to adress in the blog up here, or getting a scanner. This isn't just for here it is for school too. The whole MLA format is highly inadiquet when it comes to Art and motion picture. Hell it was prolly written when VHS still ruled and cd burners were luxeries. Things are diffrent.
Eh who knows its been ages since I looked at the hand book hopefully this is one of those things that changes as I want it to. Showing the art is important though. Critical I would say. I mean if I am writting a paper that uses the freakish body and the grotesque in Garth Ennis's Preacher it is one thing to describe the meat woman. It is another thing entirely to show it. Oh god. The meat woman what the fuck Garth there is something wrong with you. Something glorius
So what about the art.
Well I have a couple of leads I'd like to persue. The first baby lead is 100 bullets. It really is the perfect source for a project like this. 100 issues long (clever) 13 books long and it maintains the same writer/artist duo the entire way though. WIN! That minor detail aside what actually makes it perfect is that there are many occations where the main charecters will be talking about something, or someone will be waxing poetic about something off screen and on screen a compleatly unrealated thing will be going on. WHat is going on, on screen always themeaticlly adresses what is being discussed off screen but it is never directly related to the plot. In fact the off screen stuff doesn't relate to the main charecters at all. The writter is also a master of the side story which again thematicly ties into the larger tapestry. To call the work brilliant is a massive fucking understatement. I want to wait until it is finnished then I want to give it a fresh read through before I go at it. It is an impressive work and highly worthy of study.
The other thing I want to do is a lil bit more ambitiouse. It involves Animal Man Vol 2/3, Testemant, Air, and Kabuki Circle of Blood. I want to explore what the idea of the comic frame means. All the images take place in these neat little boxes, everything from love, to violence, to loss. However, what happens out side of the boxes, in those little white spaces between the lands of colour. All the books I listed explore these ideas in diffrent ways by having charecters or events happen outside of the little boxes that the action takes place in. Animal Man turns the reader into an acomplice to the horrors these charecters has to suffer and animal man saves all of our lives by thwarting an assault on our world by a legion of pissed off heros and villians. Yeah it is that cool. Air needs to get rolling a little bit more before I can get going with it but one of the major themes of the book is steping outside reality so having conversations between pannels with a metaphorical Aztec snake god is perfectly logical. Testement has all sort of things going on outside of the pannels, and in fact it is the easyest fit. The gods themselves are chilling outside of the panles chattering away about what is going on. The obviouse thing to do would be to link testemant and air but the similarities are superficial. I also like to leave obviouse arguments open so when people try to make them I can curbstomp them into oblivion.
Kabuiki is a wierd choise and wasn't included in the original project. It might also become a tangental project. The thing about Kabuki is that for a large portion of the comic it does away with frames altogether and lets the story progress in a very diffrent fluid sort of way. Since a major theme of Kabuki is dreams it works really well and I beleive it has a place in the over all project. Oh shit I should take another look at nightly news which is also frameless. It also has three unstable narators. Yeah I know right how is that ever possible? I don't fucking know but it is AWESOME. I'll see though. Nightly New's style might be to revolutionary for this project. It isn't really an examination of what the frames mean but more of ignoring what frames are in the first place and doing your own thing. It is kinda like what would happen if you grew someone in a jar told them all about graphic novels and made them create one.
Oh well. So yeah I wanna do that too. Step one would be to talk about what it is frames are doing in the first place. So I guess time to figgure that out.
Monday, April 20, 2009
So its been awhile...sorry!
It hasn't been THAT long but it feels like a long time for me. Anyway I've been gone because the mission archetect came out for City of Heros, yeah just like it sounds you get to make missions and stuff. Honestly? I've been playing more than creating but I am also having a fuchovalot of fun and tanks are in super high demand which makes me happy! YAY!
I've also been reading The Kindly Ones, which is a 975 odessy involving WW2, genocide, incest, frenchmen with zepplins trying to prove the earth is flat, and I don't know what else. All that before page 400. Yeah not bad! It is decently densly written, and it is highly literary and reading it has just been an absolute delight. I will post much much more on it later.
My birthday is coming up and I will finally engage in my dream of getting to play Vampire the Eternal Struggle soon. Yeah been wanting to play this game since the 8th grade, and now I have plunked down the cash to do it. EXCITMENT!
Oh I also read Air which is something that deserves its own post.
And I reread batman rip which also deserves its own post.
So other things are going on to here and there. Mostly though, I am going to get older soon. I feel a lil meloncholy about that, cause I always do this time of year. Hopefully it will pass without a huge conglageration. Okay I am going to go to bed because it is 3:40 in the morning. NIGHT!
I've also been reading The Kindly Ones, which is a 975 odessy involving WW2, genocide, incest, frenchmen with zepplins trying to prove the earth is flat, and I don't know what else. All that before page 400. Yeah not bad! It is decently densly written, and it is highly literary and reading it has just been an absolute delight. I will post much much more on it later.
My birthday is coming up and I will finally engage in my dream of getting to play Vampire the Eternal Struggle soon. Yeah been wanting to play this game since the 8th grade, and now I have plunked down the cash to do it. EXCITMENT!
Oh I also read Air which is something that deserves its own post.
And I reread batman rip which also deserves its own post.
So other things are going on to here and there. Mostly though, I am going to get older soon. I feel a lil meloncholy about that, cause I always do this time of year. Hopefully it will pass without a huge conglageration. Okay I am going to go to bed because it is 3:40 in the morning. NIGHT!
Sunday, April 12, 2009
The Kindly Ones
So I woke up a lil to early.
Yeah I did. Oh well.
SO! I've been reading a book called The Kindly Ones. I had this idea of giving my impressions all throughout reading it but I am 200 pages in so I am not so sure that still applies. Of course the book is over 900 pages long so I mean I am not even half way through yet. Crazy right?
The weird thing about the book is that it is highly literary, by that I mean it is written to deliberatly cater to smrt people who have long atension spans who are interested in EVERYTHING. You gotta be. Right now I am in the middle of this suprisingly complex linguistic analysis of this tiny little region in russia that somehow managed to develop around 30 languages in it. The book calls it the mountain of languages and the linguist has been going through and discussing the origins of each language, diffrent phonetic sounds which seperates it from the other languages, possible origins of the language, and all sorts of other things. He then goes into some basic linguistic theory like how this Dr. can become functional in anylanguage in about 10-15 days, and can preform complex linguistic analysis that a child would never be able to do despite a much larger vocabulary. Maybe it is because I think linguistics are really really neat. Or maybe it is because I am a dork in general and I am reading about a dork, but I find myself lovingly attached to the main charecter.
In the previouse section he spent, oh god, at least 15 pages seducing another guy. He used Plato's symposium to do it. I wanna seduce someone with Plato.
Oh yeah so the book is from the point of view during WW2, a lot of this stuff is intermixed with scenes of genocide and horror that are, man they are just aweful.
Our main charecter has spent the first 180 pages setting up the story and running around the russian front. This is before they had the gas powered concentration camps over there so thier method of execution involved firieng squads. He talks a lot about how horrible the action was and how hard it was on everyone to spend day after day shotting inncocent people. At one point our main charecter became on the verge of nervose collapse and had to be sent to a rest home.
Enough on that though. Basic plot elements aren't very interesting to write.
What is interesting is that the book uses LONG paragraphs. They usually average 2-3 pages and the thing that interests me about this is how much ground they end up covering. Ack I goota go to work so time to be brief. Essentially, a paragraph will cover the main charecter waking up from a nightmare, doing ordinary office work, dealing with incompetent officials, watching or participating in acts of genocide, then going back to ordinary life. When the paragraph is considered as a grammatical unit that represents one idea, the texture of these long paragraphs becomes increadbly interesting. The book also has been cycling through the charecter's nightmares, the related traumas, then he would go to commit genocide, then back to ordinary life. It is almost as if he escapes his traumas through the genocide or highly acedemic endevours.
THere is also the language where everything from speaches, to writting reports, to off topic musings, to homosexual hookups, to genocide, to nightmares are all presented in this very clipped matter of fact tone, which is awesome. So yeah 200 pages in and I am still increadbly interested in the book. I needed to review some WW2 history to figgure out what the hell was going on, but once I did that things went a little easyer. The author also uses all sorts german military titles so learning the diffrence between them, and the diffrent jobs they do took forever. It prolly would of helped had I noticed the glossary in the back of the book earlyer though, stupid glossary.
SO yeah neat!
Yeah I did. Oh well.
SO! I've been reading a book called The Kindly Ones. I had this idea of giving my impressions all throughout reading it but I am 200 pages in so I am not so sure that still applies. Of course the book is over 900 pages long so I mean I am not even half way through yet. Crazy right?
The weird thing about the book is that it is highly literary, by that I mean it is written to deliberatly cater to smrt people who have long atension spans who are interested in EVERYTHING. You gotta be. Right now I am in the middle of this suprisingly complex linguistic analysis of this tiny little region in russia that somehow managed to develop around 30 languages in it. The book calls it the mountain of languages and the linguist has been going through and discussing the origins of each language, diffrent phonetic sounds which seperates it from the other languages, possible origins of the language, and all sorts of other things. He then goes into some basic linguistic theory like how this Dr. can become functional in anylanguage in about 10-15 days, and can preform complex linguistic analysis that a child would never be able to do despite a much larger vocabulary. Maybe it is because I think linguistics are really really neat. Or maybe it is because I am a dork in general and I am reading about a dork, but I find myself lovingly attached to the main charecter.
In the previouse section he spent, oh god, at least 15 pages seducing another guy. He used Plato's symposium to do it. I wanna seduce someone with Plato.
Oh yeah so the book is from the point of view during WW2, a lot of this stuff is intermixed with scenes of genocide and horror that are, man they are just aweful.
Our main charecter has spent the first 180 pages setting up the story and running around the russian front. This is before they had the gas powered concentration camps over there so thier method of execution involved firieng squads. He talks a lot about how horrible the action was and how hard it was on everyone to spend day after day shotting inncocent people. At one point our main charecter became on the verge of nervose collapse and had to be sent to a rest home.
Enough on that though. Basic plot elements aren't very interesting to write.
What is interesting is that the book uses LONG paragraphs. They usually average 2-3 pages and the thing that interests me about this is how much ground they end up covering. Ack I goota go to work so time to be brief. Essentially, a paragraph will cover the main charecter waking up from a nightmare, doing ordinary office work, dealing with incompetent officials, watching or participating in acts of genocide, then going back to ordinary life. When the paragraph is considered as a grammatical unit that represents one idea, the texture of these long paragraphs becomes increadbly interesting. The book also has been cycling through the charecter's nightmares, the related traumas, then he would go to commit genocide, then back to ordinary life. It is almost as if he escapes his traumas through the genocide or highly acedemic endevours.
THere is also the language where everything from speaches, to writting reports, to off topic musings, to homosexual hookups, to genocide, to nightmares are all presented in this very clipped matter of fact tone, which is awesome. So yeah 200 pages in and I am still increadbly interested in the book. I needed to review some WW2 history to figgure out what the hell was going on, but once I did that things went a little easyer. The author also uses all sorts german military titles so learning the diffrence between them, and the diffrent jobs they do took forever. It prolly would of helped had I noticed the glossary in the back of the book earlyer though, stupid glossary.
SO yeah neat!
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