Remix!

My Remix: 

http://Pixton.com/ic:38l36umn

Austin's Original:

http://www.pixton.com/comic/g2e4f7hx 

Blogging the Blog

Blogging is something that I never had an interest in and didn’t really care much about, but this class has altered my stance on it a little. The overall blogging experience was pretty good because Blogger is pretty user friendly but I did run into frequent problems with commenting on other people’s blogs. I really enjoyed the freedom given to us because these blogs didn’t feel forced. I’ve learned through this experience that communicating well online is equally as important as it is in person.  More than likely I will have to use the internet as a platform so this was a great experience to see the challenges of online educating.

Project Progress

Well I am going to take this time to vent about how our project is going. Our project has been a little bit altered from the original plan but things are ok. We are going to be making one or two trailers that cover all to most of the texts from class. This should be quite the project because Kunkle gave us so much freedom to choose how we wanted to presents these projects. Hopefully our acting skills will be up to par as we start filming. I can see my name up in lights already…

Persepolis Theme

Persepolis is a graphic novel that uses real life experiences and jams them in to a narrative that helps us understand the Iranian culture. Marjane Satrapi’s experience bleeds through this book and her descriptions of what her life growing up in Iran are eye-opening and have big impacts. The theme of innocence is recycled a lot in literature these days and it is found in this book when Marji finds a new home in a new country. She tries to fit in but she doesn’t understand why people act the way they do or believe in what they believe. For me, it just didn’t work. In all honesty, this book is a bit boring to read and adding in this redundant theme of “oh, I hope I can fit in, but not change who I am” is simply annoying. What do you think about this?

Pixton

My wonderful comic

http://Pixton.com/ic:1m1m3eb4

Comics!

Comic books are great. They bring people, at least they do for me, back to a time in life when things were easier, life wasn’t so complicated. The comic book has had a huge impact on the way young individuals gained perspective on important life lessons and basic means of behavior, but has only become deemed appropriate for teaching in the recent past.

Graphic novels and comic books are totally different, even if the differences are hard to depict. Graphic novels are memoirs that narrate ideas through the use of pictures that represent allegories and metaphors. Comic books also use these same strategies pretty effectively but they mean to carry more simple plots that don’t run as deep as graphic novels do.

Some great examples of graphic novels that I’ve read are Maus I & II. I’ve heard good things on other graphics like Watchmen and V for Vendetta. I hope to get around to more of these books and hopefully Persepolis keeps my interest for the rest of this magic carpet ride.

War, what is it good for?

One of the greatest war movies that I’ve seen is undoubtedly the film Patton. This movie shows the side of General George Smith Patton commanding the United States army during World War II. The purpose of this film was not to show the horrors of war and the huge negative impacts it has, but to show the art form and honor it takes to be successful through strategy and courage.

George C. Scott who plays Patton is remarkable in this film by the way he conveys Patton’s emotions and intense theories behind warfare and what it means to be a coward. This movie is similar to Slaughterhouse-Five in a lot of ways. Vonnegut doesn’t describe ghastly imagery of war, but rather the personal motives for soldiers. Billy says he wants his companions to leave him alone, he wants to quit and go back home. There is a scene in Patton where General Patton erupts on a soldier who claims he’s been injured and can’t go on. This side character is a lot like Billy because he doesn’t wish to continue on even though it may be dishonorable.

I think Mary O’Hare would not like this movie because it makes war out to be a complex game that is played by loony individuals that don’t have to feel the effects of war because they are simply controlling the pieces, not being the pieces.