THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE

LOOK OUT, THE SAINTS ARE COMING THROUGH

What is your reaction to the text you just read?
I find the story confusing. I feel like I drop in the middle of a story that was be paraphrased. I feel like I was miss key elements, or I was reading a journal that only made sense to the writer. I don't really have a connection to it. I didn't grab me and pull me in and make me want to read more. I didn't get to read the whole thing but I didn't see how the Bob Dylan song fit into the context of the story. 

What connections did you make with the story? Discuss the elements of the work with which you were able to connect?
I didn't feel a connection to really any of it. I didn't get why the guy beat the crap out of someone because he took his parking spot, and I didn't get why he started using drugs. I did get why that girl loved him, because sometimes you don't know why you love someone you just do, even if their a shit person. 

What changes would you make to adopt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make? 
I think if you took just a couple of important lines from each chapter and created a visual to explain the scene I story might make more sense. I think maybe a series of paintings or graphics with text embedded in the visual. I think it would be better if the story became more vague because the viewer can interpret it in whatever way they chose.   

THE SERIES

Series are an interesting type of storytelling and now more than ever, series are becoming more popular. As a person that grew up with series like, Harry Potter, Goosebumps, The Hungers Games, The Divergent Series, Friends, Seventh Heaven, Secret Life of the American Teenager, and That’s 70s Show it is an important part of young adult novels and movies. Series like this make the view have a connection with the storyline and characters. I think this is one of the reasons my generation likes to binge watch shows, we like to have an emotional attachment and become consumed by a show. I would concerned the series the original binge media consumption but my generation.  

After watching the final Harry Potter and Hunger Games movie, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I spent 12 years growing up with the characters of Harry Potter, I had an emotional attachment to the movies and when that ended in 2012 I felt like my childhood was gone. The same sadness and an empty happens when you finish binge watching show on Netflix. But I don’t think the effect lasts as long, because you just look for your new fix. But ABC Family cured that because 4 times a year they put on a Harry Potter weekend were you can binge watch the entire series in one weekend. And now they are doing the same thing with the Hunger Games movies. Networks like ABC Family make us long for our childhood by playing movies and shows from it, and that's how they get viewers.

But my generation and age group moved from binge watching and reading young adult media to shows like The Office, Parks and Recs, Game of Thrones. We grew up and so did the shows we watched. The programs we watch now are more focused on what's to come in our 20s and 30s and more grown up fantasy series. I think the media and literature that surrounds us is a really important part of how we grew up, and re-watching those shows, movies and books gives us nostalgia for our childhood. But moving on from childhood storylines is a good thing because we can’t relate as much.   

CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY

A game I really enjoy is Cards Against Humanity. I like the creative quality, the humor and the ever changing results of the game. It’s interesting that it’s a game based on the opinions of the judge, to award the most disturbing and hilarious card. I find it interesting that it makes all players social and the way it makes your face hurt after playing. Their slogan is the party game for horrible people, which I think speaks to me and my friends.

The game could be considered literature because it’s construction sentences and thoughts, and it starts conversations. And sometimes players have to justify and convince the judge that they have the best card combination. It also starts a dialog between players, it makes you think about shity things that happen in the world, issues we face, but also it brings humor to dark subjects. I think literature is meant to make a person think, give them a new point of view, and change what they already know. And I think Cards Against Humanity does that, but the players become the writers. The different authors makes a mix of different points of views, which makes players think of issues and ideas in new ways. Cards Against Humanity creates an atmosphere where you can let your freak flag fly, weird and funny thoughts are encouraged and rewarded. I think an atmosphere like that is important for creative people because it gets the brain working and processing new ideas. Without a new flow of ideas and subject matter a designer or artist mind becomes overworked and searches for new ideas.   

Not only are the players the authors but also the creators of the game, because they come of the phases and the fill in the blank cards. They give the players the words to create crazy thoughts and sentences. Creating the game is a very collaborative process, and the subjects and literature is ever changing.

Of course Cards Against Humanity isn’t considered a classic form of literature but I think it has the same qualities and ideas of classic literature.     

THIRTEEN REASONS WHY

I read Thirteen Reasons Why in high school so I was excited about seeing how a different medium would approach the story. The book was about a teenage girl who killed herself and leaves thirteen tapes with thirteen reasons why she killed herself behind to give to people who were involved in those reasons. Netflix put out a mini series, were each hour long episode was one of the tapes. Hannah Baker (the girl who killed herself) narrating the story through the tape and looked back at the reasons why. Then the story looked at the present and a boy named Clay who has the tapes, people that have already listened to the tapes, and Hannah’s parents. I found it very hard to stop watching the series, I started it Friday night and couldn’t stop watching till I forced myself to go to sleep and two thirty. I then finished the rest of the series in the labs Saturday. Even though I remembered what happened because I read the book I still couldn’t stop watching it. Netflix beefed up some of the events to make them more dramatic. The story had a thrilling effect that made me want to watch one after the other. I wanted to know what happened and why even though I knew how it ended. I became invested in the story and characters, I experienced angry and hate for both of them. Because the story deals with real issues that can break a person’s spirit. I think a lot of girls and women can relate to the modern day misogyny females experience in high school and beyond. After finishing the mini series I had this feeling, of now what? I’ve had the same feel after finishing shows, movie series, and books. You invest a lot of time into watching and getting attached to characters and storyline then it’s over. The show consumes your thought and you need to know how it ends. When watching Thirteen Reasons Why, it brought me back to how high school sometimes is and how end of the world everything feels. I hope that teenagers watch that learn that what they do affects the people around them.        

ASTERIOS POLYP

The text of each character has a different style to show the different voices and personalities of the characters. I noticed that the choreography and Asterios have similar text style, it’s all uppercase and very strong lettering. Which is interesting because they both have big egos. The text Hana’s has is delicate and lowercase showing that she has a different personality. The language used to describe art is very formal and makes the reader a little outside their element, which is important in understand Asterios.  

The illustrator made it very easy to understand how the conversation flows, If Asterios starts to talk over Hana the text bubbles start to overlap. It helps the reader understand the character more and the relationship between Asterios and Hana. During arguments Hana and Asterios are drawn very differently. Hana is drawn in a very loose hand and is colored pink, which I think shows her angry because when they argue it’s because of something Asterios says. But Asterios is drawn in blue and very structured and geometric because I don’t think he understand what he says wrong and he’s not very flexible when it comes to changing his opinion.    

The storytelling in this graphic novel has three different layers it jumps between, the past, present, and dreams. I think it’s an interest way to show Asterios growth as a character, but as the reader moves back and forth between past and present some of the aspects of his character are the same. We get a true sense of what Asterios character is like through the way he speaks and how he’s inner thoughts are illustrated.The illustrations are like a storyboard that goes along with screenplay. The graphic novel seems like the step before a movie. There is no descriptive language about direction or setting. Everything is dialogue like a screenplay, all the action the scene set up is part of the graphics. The way the chapter were laid out was interesting because they were quick scenes of the past that helped support the story in the present.       

I thought comics were only about superheros and the graphic novels were not basics in fantasy. I think the format of graphic novels is more loosely structured and doesn’t have to follow a strict sequencing format.

SOFIA COPPOLA

I watched three of Sofia Coppola’s, Marie Antoinette, The Virgin Suicides, and The Bling Ring.

In all three movies music was an important part of the work and set the tone from a lot of scenes. It helped communicate the moods and feelings of characters without using dialog. Like in The Virgin Suicides when the girls are stuck in there room and the boys call them and they play records back and forth to have a conversation without saying anything. She also uses a lot of extended silences that last a little too long and that make the viewer feel uncomfortable. The silences make the movies and characters feel realistic. We see they have inner thought but we don’t know what it is. A good example of that is in the The Bling Ring when Rebecca and Marc rob one of the houses and it’s a wide shot of the house and it’s silent for about a minute as you watch the house get robbed. It seem like you are watching a security tape. She also cuts to these dream like, unrealistic scenes that are not part of the story line, like in The Virgin Suicides When the sisters are in a field and the shots are hazy and are noticeably different from the rest of the movie. She also cast the same age range in all three movies the characters are in their teens. It seem like all of them don’t really know who they are and they are trying to figure it out, and get stucked into a bad place. Both Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides Two look to the past makes that makes the viewer feel nostalgic. Marie Antoinette is a period piece of royalty, so the set, costumes and food is extravagant and makes the viewer wish they were part of that time. The Virgin Suicides was set in the 60s or 70s and the set and costumes in that movie make the viewer nostalgic too. The attitude of both Marie Antoinette and The Bling Ring are very similar, they are surrounded by partying and the characters are submerged in this extravagant high social living. It’s also about money, fashion, drinking and having a good time.