Fun Home Ch. 1+2

team 2: time and motion;
since time flips around to different points in the authors past time is a big theme in this graphic memoir. the reader really has to interperet time from the naration mostly. with motion, there is some use of the occational "zip-ribbon." like on p11 they're used to depict the christmas tree falling and her brother running away.

i personally took particular note of the apathy in bechdel's depiction of her family. they had been raised in a way that it seems they could only get by without feeling. they're lack of emotion about death for example. but that makes sense seeing as she and her siblings were constantly exposed to it.
i actually find this interesting. unlike my opinion of beard's essay that i disliked because of her lack of control, i liked this and was intrigued by their reactions (or rather, lack of reactions). its curious that she mentioned how she had to look to others to experience the emotions she should be feeling vicariously. p45 she tells of how she would tell others about her father's death in order to access the grief she never felt.

i was also amused at the comparison of her family to The Addams Family. it seems an odd thing for someone to actually relate their family to, but at the same time it seems acurate.

Understanding Comics Ch. 4-9

while reading this, one of the things that caught my eye (besides the color pages) was the mention of popular attitudes. after reading through this book my understanding of the comic world was expanded. i appreciated their cultural importance before, but i now get the artistic significance as well. somehow after learning about that i was caught off gaurd by the talk of this form being looked down upon.
"any artist wishing to do great work in a medium using words and pictures will have to contend with this attitude. in others and in themselves..." (p150) and its true
one thing im not sure i agree with is mccloud's version of cavemen's early artwork. im not personaly sure of what i think happened but i dont like his simplified version of artistic creation.

Understanding Comics Ch. 1-4

i was suprised at just how much was involved in comics that i never even thought of. there's a specific, not formula, but just natural way that comics can be portrayed.
i've read japanese graphic novels, tintin, and american superhero comics but never realized the science that connects all the art forms. the triangular graph showing reality, abstraction, etc. showed me the aspects of comics that i never considered while reading them. the methods of transition explained made me appreciate the technical aspects as well.

Richards essay

i really did enjoy this essay. and im not just saying that because the author's coming in to class. it was easy to read and relatable.

i think that this essay is mostly narration and description. the part about her grandparents going fishing on page 6 was almost all narration, which makes sense seeing as she's telling a story. i think the narration was used well. it didnt take much description at all for me to understand the emotions she was going through. she didnt have to tell me what they were because it is just understood. the frustration at the desease taking her grandmother and the sudden onsets of saddness from the death they've seen.

im not sure by the end i fully understood what the purpose of the talk about the great-grandmother's house was. i liked it at the beginning, but what was the significance there that im missing?

Gopnik essay

i actually enjoyed most of this essay. for one thing i didnt feel like it droned on like some of the others have. and the POV seemed different from the others also. by what this essay says this is a succesful man with a happy family. a far cry from a gay teenage boy or a woman dealing with her grief by having copious sex.
i liked the idea behind the essay. he was just concerned about his daughter but ended up figuring out a bigger picture his society. and although not everyone's from NYC i think the image is more universal than that. he basically came to the realization that maybe people live their lives too fast and too busy for other people.
the only time i had a problem with the essay was pages 107 to 109. i felt sidetracked from the story and a little bored with all the history babble. i realized the necessity and point to it all by the end, yet still i could have done without all of the background. still, when the end of p 109 came around and the point was reached i think i got back to enjoying the bulk of it.

Strayed Essay

wow. that was long.
for me, the beggining at least grabbed my attention but for a while it seemed to play out as make believe. i could relate the first half to a crude attempt at creating a commercialized "bold" romance novel. she tried a little to hard for the shock factor. (p 293 "i fucked. i sucked.")
but after all that there was a lot of introvert talk about looking at her decisions and how no one is right about grief, blah, blah. it was interesting for a while, i just think it went on way to long. i lost interest and got a headache. i got what she was saying at least but i think her POV was something like an angsty teenager to me.