Women's Rights are Not that 1800's

As mentioned in my previous blog, I sense this comic to be more like a movie rather than a book. That is why whenever I am reading it I sometimes have to stop for a second because the images are so vivid and hard to deal with. As mentioned previously, Satrapi is telling her story, when she unfortunately was living a very hard time in her country. Through her pictures and dialogue I start to sense what she felt: fear, happiness, sadness, relief and more, which demonstrates the power Persepolis has. It has evoked in me the feelings and images that were going around and still are at the time.

Reading Persepolis has brought many memories to my mind, and I don’t know where to begin. I remember when I was a little girl my grandmother told me that when she was studying in the States she met a woman from Iran whose name was Zareena. She was sent by her family to study English in the States for six months and then she would have to go back to her family. My grandmother always repeated to me that it was terrible how women were oppressed, how they had no liberty and how they were always ignored by society. This impacted me so much, that when I lived in Canada and saw women with burkas I felt very sad for them. I always remembered what my grandmother had told them, and all I wanted was for them to be able to show their face. As I got older, I understood and respected that this was part of their culture, but still I was never able to feel okay with it. I felt as if these women were being ignored and oppressed. These feelings started to come back to me when I continued reading Persepolis and Satrapi was forced to wear her burka, or when she was made to wear again her traditional wear instead of jeans (132).

I couldn’t imagine what life would be like if us women, were oppressed by society, and we couldn’t even choose what type of clothes to wear. Before reading Persepolis I connoted women oppression with the 1800’s, but unfortunately that is not the case for all of the countries on Earth. 

Let The Games Begin

When I stated reading the article, “Why the Olympics are a lot like the Hunger Games” I was completely hooked. This may sound cliché, but I am obsessed with the Hunger Game movies because its so unreal, but somehow I find a way to relate with them, as does Samantha Retrosi.

I related the Hunger Games with war. Whenever 18 year old boys or older men were drawn into war because they had to defend their country, and their lives seem as the Hunger Games. You can look at it as the “game” to survive. In Samantha’s case she looks at it as the game to win.

Unfortunately, for her and for many athletes it is an extreme training, that made her grow “accustomed to gritting her teeth under the strain of various forms of pain.” With her article I was able to see the other side of this glorifying event, the side of pain and sacrifice. When I watch the Olympics I view it as if it was a magical event that only the best of the best can go, but I never put too much though about what it meant to be the best of the best. Samantha shows the fans the side that one should actually admire them for, the side of their pain, as towards their side of beauty and physical excellence.

After reading this article, I realizad how much the Hunger Games are in our society, and thanks to Samantha I was able to realize it. Of course, maybe her descrptions are a bit exaggerated so that her appeal to pathos convinces the reader of how terrible her glorifying experience was, but still its the other side to the story that I had never though about.

Congratulations to all those in the Winter Olympics, may the odds be ever in your favor. 

Movement

Comic books are organized in a strange way in which I wasn’t used to seeing. The different sized boxes, with some dialogue or no dialogue at all follows a sort of zigzag pattern that strangely my eyes are able to follow with no problem. The dialogue and image blend into one creating a sense of movement rather than stillnes, like the feeling when I read a book.

I have pondered about what I enjoy more, a comic or a novel and I haven’t been able to decide, both of them have their pros and their cons. When I read novels I am able to imagine the setting and the characters, which is one of my favorite parts. Its nice when I read a book such as The Great Gatsby, and it comes out in theaters and I can compare of what I imagined them to be like, and how they are in the movie. Imagining all of the characters, settings, and moments of a novel are the magical and unique sparks of reading a book. But when it comes to imagining the characters in the comic it’s a little more difficult. At the beginning of the comic I was immediately introduced to Satrapi and her family. Although the comic introduces me to their physique, my imagination leads me to picture their movement. Due to the images and the dialogue they create a sense of movement that I can picture perfectly in my head. It takes me about 30 seconds to read and observe the pictures and texts of the page, but it doest seem like it because I sense a feeling of a film rather than of a book. The great thing about reading a book or a novel is that my imagination is on a roll when I am reading either of the two, that’s the fun part.

As mentioned in my previous blog, Persepolis tells the story of Marjane Satrapi, a young girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. This was a very hectic and sad time for the Islamic people, specially the revolutions like Satrapi’s family. I had studied this time in Global Studies and saw how terrible it was, but its crazy to think that in that comic book I can picture everything, and feel as if I was their with Marjane accompanying her in her every move. I was with her when she had to put on her burka, when she went to the riots, but most of all I continue to be with her because I not only think of her when I am reading the book, but at times of the day when I give thanks of how lucky I am to have the freedom I have.  Satrapi demonstrates these times of her life with the different images that express her emotions as well as the actions that were taking place. Again it seems more like a movie than a book, because all of the images connect to make one story. As obvious as it might seem, it’s unbelievable.

 This page is an example of how I can sense the movement of the story. Here, a friend of the Satrapi's who had been in jail is telling stories about how they tortured people at the Prison. As I read it I felt as if it was a movie rather than just a book. I could imagine what his voice sounded like, and how the faces of the family was stunned. How they would move around the room shocked, as well as the reactions of the prisoners when they were tortured. Here we can also see the effects of the different sized boxes in the comic. They are small when its more like a sequency and just speaking, but when a big image as the one there appears, its because it is more important, or it is taking us back in time. 

Images Tell a Story of Their Own

My perception towards comic novels started to change when I read Maus. Before, I associated comic books with children and super heroes, but now I connote them with creativity and surprises because you never know what that comic novel can be about. I just started reading Persepolis (comic memoir) by Marjane Satrapi and it is no different. It is the memoir of a young girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.

Opening a comic book is similar to opening a regular book; you don’t know what you are going to find. At first I didn’t know what to expect about Persepolis. I looked at the front cover and I knew that it had to do with the Middle East due to the picture of a girl with a burka. Then I started passing those black and white images and found that it had to do with some kind of revolution and hectic time. Being able to decipher what the comic was going to be about by just looking at the images was very cool, I felt as if I was in third grade again; in a good way. Its funny to think that when I was little all I wanted to do was to be all grown up, and read a 500 page novel, whereas today the uniqueness of comic books is what’s brightening up my reading.

What most stood out to me was that the images are straight to the point just like the dialogue. It shows and says exactly what is necessary so that the reader can feel what Satrapi was feeling at the time. What give it a more realistic feeling to the comic, is that there is no remorse. For example, on top of page 52, there is a big picture of a man cut into pieces, and all the quotation says is “In the end he was cut to pieces” (52).  When I saw this image it made my legs feel weird and I sensed a feeling of disgust. These images make the reader approach the comic with pathos, which Satrapi intelligently utilizes so that the reader, like myself gets hooked to the book. Now I always want to know what will come next, but with caution because it’s full of surprises.

Does Objectivity Exist?

I started a comic book named “The Influencing Machine.” So far the book is about how a reporter named Brooke Gladstone, who “cant really process things unless [she’s] reporting them.” (12) This means that she has an obsession with expressing things she feels or hears about so that not only the public can know and understand them, but also she. In the comic she is expressing how she feels about the relationship between the media and the public.

At the beginning of the comic Gladstone makes interesting points about how society depends on the media, and how “we hunger for objectivity.” (13) But as I continued reading I realized that even though we might say we do look for objectivity we just search for what we want to hear. This can be clearly seen when presidential elections are taking place. There are certain channels that are more liberal or conservative than others, which mean that the people from the different political parties will go to their “parties” channel. Here the person is going to be content with what is being said, and will be convinced that who they are voting for is a genius, and he/she will probably win. And when we hear about another biased news, which is contradicting our opinion, we just say, “those guys are consuming lies. They are getting juiced up. Their media diet is making them stupid.” (13) Why? Because we are hearing things that we don’t want to hear.

With those points being said, I have drawn to conclusion that actually is more like a question. There is a strong relationship between the public and the media, both of them control each other. The media will say what the audience wants them to say, and the audience will keep on viewing that channel because they say what they want to hear.  So with those points being said I am left with these questions: who is really telling the truth? Is there an actual truth?

Visual vocabulary:

Punditry: someone who has been admitted to membership in a scholarly field

Craven: contemptibly lacking in courage; cowardly.

Libelous: a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation.

Tedious: too long, slow, or dull: tiresome or monotonous.

What Comes Next?

Finally, I finished “Everything Bad Is Good For You”. Johnson has a very interesting way of looking at our pop cultures new tools and habits, that even though most are frowned upon, he has the courage to defend them. Now, I can convince my parents and my elders that watching TV is good for my cognitive development, and how smart and analytical my brother is getting by playing Grand Theft Auto.

Johnson’s different points surprises me about how good everything that we use these days can be. After reading the book, just as I concluded on my previous blog, I can see how innovative and creative the people of my era are being. Humanity is pushing humanity to be better, and having more tools. Yes, many can be useless to us, like a heating towel machine, but still it accommodates our way of living. People are forced to be creative, just think about how many different sized of an ipad exist. Its still the same ipad, just with some different features, mostly physical. People always want new and different things.

When I finished the book I reflected on what I had said in my previous blog. I reflected upon how “innovative” my generation was. I started looking back into time and realized that maybe when humanity was more innovative was actually going back thousands and thousands and years ago to lets say, Ancient Greece. People started developing mathematical skills, architecture was unbelievable, and if we start going some years forward we arrive to the time where Cristobal Colon discovered that the world was round, people discovered and conquered new lands. Now that’s innovative. But does that necessarily mean that my generation is less impressive? Well no. All of the topography and basic knowledge has been discovered, but as Steve Jobs says it, “we focus on the details that are what really make the difference.” We are going into depth with the basic knowledge we find, and we are finding impressive things about the world that we live in.

I wonder what kind of things people are going to develop in the future. A prediction that I make is that years from now, humanity is going to know much more about space. At the moment we are like the Cristobal Colons of space. But I know that since science is evolving rapidly we will be able to get to know much more about our solar system and the universe. Also, there will be advances in medicine, that will make peoples lives better. Right now the sky’s the limit, even though many of us may think that we have reached our top, but the truth is we aren’t even close, and we probably will never be, because people want to keep on innovating.

I don’t know if this conclusion is what Johnson had in mind for his readers to conclude after reading the book, but its what Johsnon made me think. Of course, his arguments are very entertaining and bright, but I think a video game has more than just cognitive importance, it’s the effect it has on humanity to want to keep on discovering new games that pushes these game creators to come up with something better. Our generation isn’t one that is “dumbing down, its quite the opposite. The great-unsung story of our culture today is how many welcome trends are going up. We are innovative and creative, not “innate slackers.” (199)

Visual Vocabulary:

Innate: inborn; natural.

Omission: someone or something that has been left out or excluded.

Innovation

As I am arriving to the end of “Everything Bad is Good For You”, I have concluded that the era that we are living in can be described in one word: innovative. Our generation is pushing each other to develop more and more things to impress our minds, because we are always searching for more.

This weekend I watched Steve Jobs movie, and I realized how unbelievable the ipod, iphone, computers are I have taken these tools for granted because I have been familiar with them when I was eight years old. They have been a part of my daily life, and I have never analyzed the power that they actually have on my life.

If I did not have my music I would go crazy. The first ipod that was every created only had the capacity of storing 100 songs, now those 100 songs form only a playlist on my ipod. My computer, Internet, phone, are tools that I use regularly that have facilitated my tasks and entertained me. As I am writing this blog post, I can’t stop to think how people came up with these things. Yes, they are easy to use, but the geniuses that developed these tools are admirable because they took something that seemed unreal, and made it a reality.

Thank you to all those who have contributed to the innovation of our tools, who have made our lives easier and more entertaining. Who have worried about the small details, as Steve Jobs would say, because those are the things that mostly matter. Now it seems normal to have an HD TV, but as it is at my grandma’s house, you can still see little dots and a buzzing sound from her 1999 Sony television. Just as Johsnon says, “thirty years ago, viewers had no recourse available to them if they wanted to watch a scene again… there were no second acts. (167) If a person wanted to watch a show again “they had to wait six moths” for the channel to play it again. Now, we can stop, record, rewind, forward, all our movies and TV shows. And if we missed it, we can download them or buy them. Now its so easy!

Visual Vocabulary:

Genuine: truly what something is said to be; authentic.

Correlation: a mutual relationship or connection between two or more things.

Vigorous: strong, healthy, and full of energy.

Intertwine: twist or twine together.