2nd Persepolis Blog

(Question 11)
At the core of the book and the core of Marji is her family. Almost all of her stories are about the members of her family. They are the ones that shape who she is. From what I can tell her parents are a little less conservative and more "progressive or modern" compared to other parents. They got her an Iron Maiden poster and her mother was one of only a couple that would let her go out on her own. This seems kind of silly to me because she is a teenager and she still has to ask permission to go outside but this shows how oppressive standards were in Iran. I think her parents gave her the freedom to do what she wanted because that is probably the environment they grew up in (back before women had to wear a veil). And like any good parents, they didn't want to take away opportunities. I think Marji's parents got their strength from there own parents. When her grandmother came over we got to see where Marji's mother's morals came from. Before Marji had to leave to go to Austria her grandmother gave her some advice. She told her never to react to people's cruelty and to stay true to herself.

(Question 14)
Persepolis tells the story of a little girl growing up, and it comments on the importance of telling your own story. While reading the story I had the sense of relating to Marji but I could also tell it was something personal for the author. There are so many stories of her learning and growing up that it would be hard to deny that stories don't shape who you are. The stories you have are part of yourself. Uncle Anoosh's story influenced Marji's idea of a hero. After hearing that Anoosh went to jail she automatically thought everything he did was heroic. And there is also a moment in the story that Marji realizes she cannot be like her uncle because she would get executed. She was saying all of the beliefs she shared with her uncle in front of the class and her teacher told her mother. And her mother yelled at her about the danger of doing that. It was a turning point for Marji.

(Question 15)
My take on the past and the present after reading this book is that people change as they learn. Some people might think that people never change. But through the course of this book I have seen Marji develope into a more informed and sensitive per as she hears stories from her family and classmates who have loss people in the revolution. I think personal history is much more interesting and more real feeling than textbook History. It puts a face to the events that have occurred. Marji's family history must make her see where she is in history.
(**Note, I just posted my 1st Persepolis Blog, sorry it's a little late)

1st Persepolis Blog

(Question 1)
I haven't read very many comic books in my life but I think I should start reading them more often after reading Persepolis. I think so many other people and I enjoy reading them so much because they are visual and therefore easy to read and understand. I think she told her story in this format because she wanted to visually show the stories she had to tell. The aspect that it's visible gives her the opportunity to show us more the one dimension of a story because we can actually see the expression on a character's face. A conventional memoir spends too much time clarifying details and less time with the action of what's happening when a comic can make it seem more alive.

In class we have been talking about how the text and the images relay on each other. I see the connection in Persepolis. Well, since I have to make my own comic strip of course I was looking for the easiest way to go. And I think it would be easiest and my story would be most clear if I told the same amount of story with text and images.

I have read one other graphic novel before, Maus by Spiegelman. I see similarities between these two graphic novels because first of all, they are both historical. And second they are both told in a series of separate stories. In Maus Arty tells a whole bunch of different stories his father has told him about the Holocaust. And in Persepolis there are different themed chapters that sort of stringed together.

(Question 2)
I love fiction. Harry Potter... The Wizard of Oz... everything else. I think that fiction can teach you morals like the ones you hear in bedtime stories. But the stories that made the most of an impact on me were true stories, like the ones my dad would tell me before I went to bed. Not all of the facts in his stories would be completely true but the fact that it really happened made an impact on me. And same goes for Persepolis, Some things were exaggerated in the story to get a point across but everything in the book was her take on things. And it was powerful for me to see the way she grew up and what it would have been like to be Marjane Satrapi. In other memoirs you have to do a little bit of guess of what things would look like. Persepolis is different because you get to visually see what the author wants you to see and notice about their story. And the drawback of normal memoirs is that you might not be seeing what they want you to see.

(Question 4)
Like I was talking about before the book Persepolis is organized in chapter-like sections. Each section has a little story of Marjane growing up a little. She learns a lesson or something life changing happens, it is always important and relevant. Marjane's Emphasizes she had to learn growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. After hearing about torture from her parents she laughed and played games of "torture" with her friends, and then sections later at a protest she sees the reality of violence and learns to give it a little more respect. The passage of time is represented by the amount of truth she knows. And the drawings add to the narrative by the changes in appearance of all the characters. It does not have to be said that time is passing as the characters change.

Feed Final Project

Before I put together the collage of my Feed I thought about what it would be like to have one. And the first thing I thought about was the flashy pop up ads I see on the internet, because they get in the way of what I'm trying to do. So I think this helps explain consumerism in America right now and how Feeds are described in the book because they blocked the characters vision of the real world.

In the center of my collage I put a picture of the perspective of driving a car to show my vision of the real world. And all the things in front of that sight are the advertisements that would be on my Feed. There are ads for shoes, mascara, couture a laptop, many different things. These are all ads I found in something that I think is quite similar to a Feed, Seventeen magazine. I think these ads would be on my Feed because they already are. Seventeen influences people like me by giving the message that the most important thing is looking good. It's where people go to find the latest thing they should be consuming. It does actually work weather I want to admit it or not.

On the left of my poster there is a picture of Shawn Johnson advertising deodorant. That would influence me into buying it because I like gymnastics (and Shawn Johnson). But I don't know if it would matter too much weather things on my feed were marketed specifically towards me. I remember my mom and I went to the convention center and there was this guy selling these "special rubber brooms". At the time he made it seem like the best investment ever but we have not ever used them since we got them and they were just a waste of money. So honestly I don't think there really is any individuality with what I buy because I think it could be marketed to anybody and in the end we are all tricked into buying something.

The question is, are we anything without the feed? And I think the answer is yes because we aren't anyone with a Feed. In the story everyone is alike even though their Feeds market a little differently. In consumerism you lose your identity because you are brainwashed into believing something. You are all you can be without the Feed because you will think for yourself.

I think that a Feed would sort of be in a website format but in your head so above the road is a webpage like thingy with a whole bunch of different links for different products. And for those products are captions like "copy this:" "one color is not enough" "go big or go home". I put those there to show how persuasive the Feed could be. I imagine that it would tell you encouraging things like "well spent" after you bought something to keep you consuming. And in the very middle of the vision of reality I put the word feed in parenthesis. Because I think the Feed would want me to always remember to feed the only purpose in my life.

The background of my collage is of destruction. The reality of consumerism is very destructive, wasteful and ugly. I wanted to contrast that with my view of the world. With a Feed I would never really know how bad I had made it because I would be too occupied with my feeding. I don't know if this is a moral but I think the biggest message Feed shows is the destructive cycle with consumerism.

Resist the Feed!!

In these days I can sort of see how technology becomes a part of you. When ever I'm not familiar with something I can look it up on the Internet. The computer can almost become part of my thinking process. In the book Feed Titus describes the old feeds as your own lungs that you had to carry around because the feed was not being implanted into your head yet. I think this showed how much more our computers could become a part of us in the future; they could basically become part of our body.

The Feed not only gives them all of their information it also tells them what to think. The Feed has ads that tell them what to buy. These ads are pretty much like what we see every single day on TV, we hear them on the radio, pop up ads on the computer. The people in this book are addicted to consuming because there is always something better coming out on their Feeds. There is always something better than you already have. It's the exact same thing with ipods these days. You buy the newest prettiest ipod and then 6 months later there's something else better and prettier so you go out and buy that one when you "old" one works fine. I think living the consumeristic society in Feed they held less value to things in the past and there is definitely more of a value towards what is new.

So the question is how can we resist the feed? And I think the answer for that question is easier said than done. Pretty much everything I consume I consume because I've heard on advertisements that it's great and I should have the pleasure of having it. So I think the only way anyone can resist the Feed is by thinking for yourself instead of listening to the little voice of ads in your head.