Skip to main content

Week 11- Contemporary Literature

For this week, I decided on reading "Alice in Sunderland," an exploration of famous literature and how it relates to the numerous "wondrous" events that occurred at the city of Sunderland, in North East England. Specifically centering around the famous accomplished writer Lewis Carroll, this sort of biographical novel, sort of review of decades of literature is an interesting mix of art and writing styles. It explores the various connecting factors between the writer, Lewis Carroll and the Sunderland area, with wider themes of history, myth and storytelling. The greatest bulk of the story is told from an elderly “rabbit” performer in a near empty theatre, save one loudmouth youngster, who starts off very detached and jaded from his work and focused more on something as “mundane as age.” This relatively relatable, realistic setting as our basis for the story only furthers the imaginative themes discussed in the novel, and makes for a nice reliable background to go back to in between discussions. These kinds of comics as contemporary literature allow for a more visually sophisticated, (and very diverse representations) exploration of themes, and used very effectively by the writer and artist, Bryan Talbot. What could have been just another simple, (and let’s face it kind of boring) history and/or philosophy textbook recounting the accomplishments of other people is instead a recounting of epic storytelling and real-life human accomplishments; all while creating interesting art, imaginative literature, and producing memorable and engaging work that stands upon yet separate from the works discussed in the comic.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Analysis of Shaun Tan's, "The Arrival"

Jarod Frank Analysis of Shaun Tan’s, “The Arrival.” Shaun Tan's, “The Arrival,” is a fantastic example of conveying narrative themes and complex character interactions without the use of dialogue. Through the emphasis on gestures, body positioning, and facial expressions, we are able to “fill in” to a great degree what we imagine the characters are conveying; regardless of anything literally being said. One such fantastic example of this is when the main immigrant man is trying to find an apartment, beginning by asking another man where it could be. We see the quizzical look he local man as he looks over the immigrant, who pulls out a drawing pad and draws a bed, pointing to it. Such a natural progression of actions, reactions and continued actions are the basics of human communication, not necessarily needing words to convey an experience we all are familiar with: questioning. While the situation is mundane, the comic being able to convey this series of emotions here and n...
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 10 - Manga

For this week, I decided on reading “Death Note,” written by Osamu Tezuka, and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. A chilling murderous mystery based around Japanese folk lore and dark magic, specifically about the  Shinigami Ryuk, a dark spirit/god that drops magic into the human world out of boredom. Following the ensuing chaos that results from a young man and woman trying to use the murderous artifact known as the “Death Note,” the story has been very highly respected for decades, being translated into numerous other languages, has acquired world-wide publication, and even been reimagined as several live action films, an anime television series, and even a musical. While trying to rid the world of it’s villains, our main character, “Light” ends up being corrupted by his newfound power and even declares himself a “God of this New World,” prior to being betrayed, (once again, out of boredom) by the same Shinigami, Ryuk. Showing very dark results of good intentions creates an interest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Analysis of early adventure comics (Week 4)

The likes of Herge's "The Adventures of Tintin," to the original "Batman" comics by Bob Kane, despite being wildly different in seemingly every regard, basic narrative, characters, even locations and approaches to adventure literature; both are equally capable of inspiring morals along with having many similar approaches to conveying their individual narratives. For example, one massively popular trop of visual narrative is to start off with establishing shots that familiarize new comers to the literature or old fans to the location or characters, often with mental narrative of the protagonist informing the audience whats going on. Both comics also use sequential, action to action art where the start, climax, and ending of a particular action or gesture is explored by the artists, showing these characters "move" despite only showing static poses. Adventure comics as a whole create these larger than life heroes and characters that, regardless of their ...
Post a Comment
Read more