Schneemann's 'Interior Scroll': playing with the concepts of body, beauty, gender and sex.

Carolee Schneemann is an American visual artist who dared to show herself completely naked in 1975 to communicate a message.

Schneemann's 'Interior Scroll'.

Prior to my reaction to Schneemann's Interior Scroll, I would like to provide some context in the words of Elizabeth Manchester (2003):

'This print is one of several works documenting a performance Schneemann made at Women Here and Now, an exhibition of paintings accompanied by a series of performances, in East Hampton, New York in August 1975. In front of an audience comprising mainly women artists, Schneemann approached a long table under two dimmed spotlights dressed and carrying two sheets. She undressed, wrapped herself in a sheet and climbed on the table. After telling the audience she would read from her book, Cezanne, She Was A Great Painter (published 1976), she dropped the sheet, retaining an apron, and applied strokes of dark paint on her face and body. Holding the book in one hand, she then read from it while adopting a series of ‘life model “action poses”’ (Schneemann in More Than Meat Joy, p.235). She then removed the apron and slowly drew a narrow scroll of paper from her vagina, reading aloud from it.' 

Not only does Schneemann show her entire body but she also performs and reads in a vibrant way in front of the impressed audience. In this context, Schneemann gives art and reading a whole new sense: she wants to show human body as a beautiful painting, a sexy sculpture, a thriving tree, a love song and a holy prayer. Once again, postmodernist artists are deconstructing and re-creating the concepts of body, beauty, gender and sex.

In her book 'More Than Meat Joy' (1979), Schneemann explained why she chose her vagina as the source of the text she read during the exhibition:

'I thought of the vagina in many ways – physically, conceptually: as a sculptural form, an architectural referent, the source of sacred knowledge, ecstacy, birth passage, transformation. I saw the vagina as a translucent chamber of which the serpent was an outward model:

enlivened by its passage from the visible to the invisible, a spiralled coil ringed with the shape of desire and generative mysteries, attributes of both female and male sexual powers. This source of ‘interior knowledge’ would be symbolized as the primary index unifying spirit and flesh ... the source of conceptualising, of interacting with materials, of imagining the world and composing its images.'

'More Than Meat Joy' (1979).

What I find amazing about Schneemann is the fact that she ignores taboos while she

tells the world that the body itself can be another art piece. Furthermore, she is encouraging people to re-discover human bodies in order to find beauty in oneself and perfection in one's own imperfection.

It is also worth-mentioning that the vagina is not just a sexual object but a door to new life (creation).

All in all, I believe that artists like Schneemann have helped to expand the global artistic spectrum.

References:

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/schneemann-interior-scroll-p13282/text-summary

http://museum.cornell.edu/collections/view/interior-scroll.html

The Holocaust.

For some reason, I'm not keen on reading books or watching movies related to the World War II, specially the ones about the Holocaust. They give me weird feelings. I remember the very first book I read related to that and it was "The Diary of Anne Frank", however, as I was very young - I was ten or eleven years old - I

wasn't aware of how terrible the story was, even though at that time I knew that it was based on real facts. I suppose that I wasn't very mature to understand something like that, though. Then, when I was in highschool and had to study the World War II for my history class I couldn't help feeling sick about all the atrocities that happened at that time. Although I really enjoyed studying history, I just couldn't enjoy that topic. Since then I've been avoiding watching or reading things related to that. However, a couple of years ago I watched "The Boy in he Stripped Pijamas" and my old feelings appeared again.

Nevertheless, I dared myself to read Maus, even though I always avoid anything related to the Holocaust, mainly because never have I read a graphic novel before, and also because this story was told in a very different way, so I decided to give it a chance. The first thing that caught my attention was the fact the characters of the story are animals, but not any animals. There were mice, cats, pigs, etc. and they all represented a certain group of people. However, I'm still trying to come up with an idea of why the author decided to do that. In addition, I couldn't get why such a tragic story was portrayed in that way, using drawings, because at first I thought that this book was meant for children. But it wasn't

. Another interesting thing that caught my attention is the way Vladek tells his story to his son Art and the fact that he burned his wife's diaries that contained her experiences during the Holocaust. It seems to me that, as his wife died years ago, he didn't want his wife's story and perspective to be told, who knows why. But it certainly makes a difference in the relationship between Vladek and his son.

I would say that reading Maus gave me a more real perspective of what happened in the War, even though half of the story was based on drawings, which I think is kind of weird because most of the movies related to the Holocaust have characters that are portrayed by real people and most of the stories I have read are written in first person. But there is something about Maus that makes this story something different. What do you think? What makes Maus different from the other ways used to tell these kind of stories?

Maus, realistic examples and metaphores

Since I haven’t finished reading the comic, I would like to comment what has caught my attention about it so far.

First of all, there are many movies, books and documentaries which have tried to make us imagine how horrible the Nazi holocaust was, and I have to admit, that it was hard for me to connect a comic with this deplorable episode of history.

There are two aspects which I would like to emphasize about this master piece, which are how it relates the story of the holocaust and how its characters are represented using animals as a metaphor.

In this comic, Art Spiegelman narrates how terrible was the holocaust providing us with details which were provided by his father, who is a survivor of Auschwitz. It is interesting how he makes us to understand how awful and devastating this time in history was with clear and realistic examples of events, without sanguinary and sadistic details. I think it Art was really smart, since I personally believe that bloody details would make us morbid readers, losing the real sense of the story.

Also, what caught my attention was that I have seen different movies and documentaries related to the Nazi holocaust and also I read a book related to the atrocities of Auschwitz and none of them use metaphors as the comic does. The use of animals which represent the different character gives the novel and special and catching touch.

As a final comment, I have to admit that I have never read a comic before, since I prefer books than comics. However, I have enjoyed reading this comic and I would totally recommend it since it provides historical facts with a special taste. 

Jews as mice

Mice are seen as plague everywhere, and obviously no one wants to take care of them frightened of getting one of their infections. Besides, mice come from the streets, from the underground, and sort of interrupt with the normal development of life... Can you imagine how terrible would be to compare mice with people? Well, it happened.

This comparison did happen during the Holocaust, when Nazis had the idea of a superior human race, in which Jews did not fit in and were almost eliminated through horrific crimes and genocide.

The German word “Maus” in the title of this comic means “Mouse”, what’s more these two words sound quite similar. This similarity has the intention of making the reader relate these two words, and make a comparison between Jews and mice, being both a plague.

In this way, Spiegelman wants to show how certain human beings were diminished during that time, at the point of being seen as a pest, and therefore killed and tortured. Nevertheless, what happens here is that the “plague” and the people lose: one becomes a victim and the other become murderers.

So, after all and after have read the comic the question that comes to mind is: “Were Jews really the plague during that time?” If we take into account what really happened and what Nazis were trying to find (a pure human race), the mice were not exactly the Jews...

Maus and Animal farm

When I was reading Maus I could not avoid to think that this book is a
contemporay version of Animal Farm. Both writers used animals as a methaphor
to talk about the totaliarism. But, what these animals represent?
The animals' characters in Maus represent different races and nationalities.
For instance, the Jews are represented by mices. Thus,they are a projection of
pests or vermin as less than humans since the point of view of Germans.
On the other hand, the "arios" are represented by cats.Aninal predadors that are always
trying to catch the vulnerable and inoffensive mice.
The dogs are American, who save the Jewish mice from German cats.

The French are frogs, and the Gypsies are moths. The Poles are pigs,
 which does not seem as random when we consider that the Nazis sometimes referred to the Poles as pigs.

But again, Maus plays off the racial stereotypes, and even stereotypical 

thinking in general, by indicating where the allegory falls apart. The mice are not universally good, nor are the pigs universally good or bad. Mice can pass for other animals by wearing pig masks or cat masks. 

The allegory falls apart at times when the animal-humans deal with actual animals, as when Art’s Jewish

 therapist has pet cats , or when Art and Françoise have to use bug spray to get rid of bugs

 when they are vacationing in the Catskills, a reference to Zyklon-B, the pesticide gas used 

to kill prisoners in concentration camps.

Post modernism and Ghost World:

Literature has many characteristics depending on what trend, style or type is focusing on, but conflicts are the element that can never be missed when talking about literature. As we already learned during this semester, Modernism deals with Inner Crisis as one of its most important conflicts, placing humanity between a rock and a hard place about life, beliefs, traditions, change, evolution, identity and the influence of external factors like industrialism, war, religion, among others, representing all that features in different works.

But, what about Postmodernism? What relation can be made between postmodernism and Ghost World? As you can see in the picture, post modernism makes the human being deal with reality: Enid and Rebbeca have to put up with their reality and face it, they have to deal with adulthood, responsibilities, studies, changes in lifestyle; Postmodernism refers that although change is not bad, it is a must to overcome it, and that is basically what we as readers see the girls doing. Furthermore, adolescent’s way of viewing problems as well as changes is more chaotic and frightening, Enid and Rebecca are perceiving that their world changes too fast that moments that can be utterly absurd for readers can be quite important for them, as for example the pair of pants on the street that has been there for God knows how much time or the Ghost World slogan in many different places of the city because all this moments give them a sense of continuity, peace and stability (not everything has changed). Contrary to that, when the author of those graffiti shows up, this “inner stability” disappears; even when Enid prepares a garage sell and she seems no care about it, when she is back she is glad of her “teddy bear” is still there, keeping her childhood memories.

After reading the graphic novels and doing a long research, common techniques of Postmodernism can be identified in Ghost World, as for example Irony, Playfulness and black humor: those characteristics are the essential part of Enid, who most of the time is the one who plays mean jokes, highlights bad qualities of men and people in general, etc. Referring to the graphic novel, its fragmentation attempts the reader complete the rest of the story before and after each sequence of events/chapter; it is only shown what the girls can see and live that form part of their reality.

The lack of narration in the novel makes that images and dialogues transform in the only vehicle to give meaning and context to the story, leaving to character’s development and reader interpretation, reading images and looking at words. This can be related to Reader-response Criticism that places the reader with an active role during the reading in order to give meaning to the missing parts of the story. 

Do you think you can identify with Enid and Rebecca' life? Did you have so many problems when facing adulthood? 

smART re-creation

A bricolage sculpture by Frank Vagnone.

Postmodernist times witnessed the creation and re-creation of a wide variety of concepts in every area of study, including philosophy, politics, literature and sociology among others. In relation to that, visual arts were no exception.

Bricolage (French for 'tinkering') is a postmodernist artistic tendency characterised by the creation of a new work out of the parts or pieces of other related or non-related objects.

What is interesting about bricolage is the fact that it implies deconstructing the world around you in order to create something beautiful and meaningful. Furthermore, this postmodernist intentional deconstruction knows no difference among the employed objects as it justs rethinks the purpose and the usage of the things around as it puts them together. Moreover, by satisfying the artist's will, the creation of these works finds beauty in daily items while it also questions the randomness of these items.

The following picure shows an example of an array of rooms decorated using bricolage. It was designed by Kurt Schwitters in 1933.

Nowadays, this technique is still employed as a way to attach new meanings to the objects around us.

Marc Sparfel's bricolage sculptures.

'Oiseau Senufo', by Marc Sparfel.

 

Personally, what I like the most about this tendency is the fact that you can make use of long-forgotten items to communicate new ideas. Consequently, sculptures and bricolage works in general promote recycling.

References & more information

https://answersingenesis.org/world-religions/humanism/the-influence-of-postmodernism-part-3-deconstruction/

http://artofbricolage.blogspot.com/2011/11/marc-sparfel-european-bricolage.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricolage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schwitters

Anja's diaries: the missing half.

As I was reading Maus I started reflecting on how manipulated the information about our past and our family’s past is. Vladek is such a severe father, and even though he has his reasons, he in a way harms his son.

Since he destroys Anja’s diaries, he is preventing Art from finding himself, he is neglecting Art’s possibility of finding a meaning that goes maybe further or deeper than just being a survivor’s child and I want to clarify that I do not diminish the suffering of people who were in Holocaust, however, I think that giving such a pressure to the children of that generation is just cruel. And that’s why Vladek does not have any rights to destroy Anja’s diaries because for me, whatever the reasons someone could have for hiding the real (an subjective because everyone tells stories from his own point of view) History it is not valid, because you are taking a piece of someone else’s life. After all, what would you do if someone deliberately decides what you have to know?

Construction of reality

At the beginning of the unit was about the words sense ambiguity and in the linguistic side we said that the way we describe reality is reality. The only reality we know is the reality is the one culturally described and constructed and what we take for certain is actually imposed by society. It is for this that it is important to construct your own reality.

Applying this previous statement to the graphic novel Ghost World we can see expressed a different construction of reality, a construction based on the senses of these two teenage girls fed up with the superficiality of society and their attempts to depart from it. Their look of society is a bit cynical, ironic, and sarcastic and a lonely sense of independence. Enid all over the history tries to avoid being label which make her change her imagine again and again which in a way represents the importance of the images in our society and the typical label of a person according to their features that were all influenced by the mass media.

This continuous struggle to be different, not to fall in the game of what society labels you to be, think or behave is what can actually make a difference. However, the intensity of this feeling make Enid to also produce a superficial and quite judgemental personality just by trying to be different (hipster-like?) and not be labeled, she labels everything and everyone. 

Therefore, I can avoid but wonder until what point are we being influenced by the media and society?  Do we judge as the media and society does?

My experience at reading Maus

At the very beginning I wasn’t really motivated to read this comic since I had lots of thing to do, but once I started I couldn’t stop. I am not a person keen on comics and it took me a while to understand why I was so caught by the story, so I will tell you why you should read it.

First of all, the fact that it is a graphic novel helps a lot to people who are not likely to read, and for me it helped me a lot to take my imagination far, because it makes you feel everything more real, for example when Vladek explains the starvation diet in which his father put him. In other cases for example when it is talked about places in Poland it uses maps and that helps a lot to people with orientation problems.

Secondly the narrator is not only one, there are two narrators in first person, and the story is stated in a conversational style creating a sort of dialogue through the book by giving you two perspectives that makes the story more active, at the point that I started feeling like Art, feeling the same anxiety as Vladek was telling his stories. So in a way as you are reading it you become Art listening to his father carefully going through different emotions since the story is really cruel.

Furthermore, there are lots of things in this comic that I really appreciated, for instance, the fact that humans are represented by different kind of species considering the food chain. The fact that story graphics so well how all things took place in the Jew oppression by Germans. And how the story made feel so sensitive, thinking about all the people that lost their families, and how they suffered in this hostile era.

All things considered this novel is totally worth reading, but there is something that I didn’t understand, and that happened at the very end of book two, after his father has told the whole story finishing with a “happy ending” and it is when he called Art with another name, he called him Richieu, his older death brother. And if we consider that Art-Vladek’s relationship wasn’t too close, what does it mean? 

The power of graphic novels and comics

If we go back in human history time, we can see that the old days are an illustration of images which recite each unique event that occurred in our world or in our own lives. If we think, images antedated writing and it is believed that they have served a source for words. Moreover, in the earliest civilisations, nearly most of inhabitants were illiterate for the reason that reading was an activity that just rich people have access to. Alternatively of written announcements, in many cases cartoons and draws were used as a modest way to communicate ideas, feelings and thoughts to the working class populace. Considering that, the act of visualizing and conceiving the world through images by adding colour and shapes it is been a fundamental part of our nature.

 

 Although there is a little doubt about how the origin of comics and graphic novels emerged, we can say that its roots come from the days of pre historic man, when individuals told stories by utilizing images as a substitute of text. 

 Now, looking at our society in the current days, I ask myself why images have lost interest among the people. Why the current societies of the world do not include graphic novels and comics in the curricula? Is there any specific reason why our society has left behind a powerful source which has proved to be beneficial to our people?

 Well, in order to answer these questions, I would like to mention that when I was searching for the history of graphic novels and comics I found that there is lot of evidence of the advantages of including these materials in the educational field, however if we look at the current curricula of our education there is little not to say nothing about graphic novels and comics.

I sincerely believe that this has to do with the society that we live in and the people who control certain aspects and fields of our society such as the educational field. If we look around, we can see that for the elite powers there is no convenience for them to include these types of materials due to its positive impact in young generations. These materials such the graphics novels and comics can be use to educate from little children to adults in order to develop their thinking process, to develop their cognitive abilities and to build complex reading skills. In addition, they do not just promote academic skills, but they also prompt the critical thinking capacity and the abstract thinking capacity.

All in all, as pre-service teachers we need to be aware of how our current education is manipulated by the great powers, but more important we do need to have certain strategies in order to make a revolution inside our classroom. In other words, we need to be able to influence our students by providing them the right materials so our students will be able to think for themselves, we do not need to follow the traditional course, but we can take courage and include useful and powerful material that will make a difference in our students’ lives such as graphic novels and comics.

Ghost World-ish view of reality: What is it exactly?

As we know, the graphic novel Ghost World is immersed in the period we know as Postmodernism. This is a period which has been influenced by two world wars that have devastated the countries involved, not only physically, but also psychologically. One might say that people have lost faith in mankind after these episodes. Nothing makes sense anymore and people try to find their own way out of this reality. This is the case of Rebecca and Enid, two friends who are about to enter adulthood. This graphic novel has the particularity that does not narrate a story with a clear thread or plot. Instead, it tries to illustrate what goes on in the lives of two girls who are trying to find a meaning in their lives. As it is expected by the period in which they are immersed, they view reality in a certain way, their own way and no one else’s. For example, they always go to eat to a place which is visited by weird people. However, when more and more people start to attend the same place they don’t think it is appealing anymore. This is when the term “hipster” comes into play. These girls have created their own ghetto, in which only things and habits that are not appealing to the rest of the regular people are appealing for them and, once people have realized that it is appealing, they decide that it is not anymore.

The casual behavior that they exhibit is surprising. It is interesting how they seem to perceive the world in a different dimension than regular people. The dressing changes with no apparent pattern. It seems that the only objective is to differentiate with the apathetic crowd. For example, in a passage of the novel, Enid goes to a sex shop with her friend, Josh, who is the shiest but coolest guy she knows. At the beginning he, of course didn’t want to go, but she ends up convincing him.  When they are inside, there are several “creepy” people and artifacts that call Enid’s attention. However, she ends up buying a piece of clothes that looks like a leather cap that is part of a sadomasochistic disguise. She is excited telling this story to her friend on the phone, Rebecca, but she does not reveal what she bought. At the end of the chapter, she appears wearing this cap as if nothing were wrong and, when Rebecca sees her, she asks her to take that silly thing off.

This brief contextualization of the novel made me remember of a discussion that I’ve had with many good friends about our reality and how we shape it. To be more specific, the topic of football has been highly controversial these days. I love football; I wouldn’t be able to explain why, however, there are people that disagree with me, naturally. It is my reality which I have shaped with my experiences and beliefs. It is like wearing the silly cap in public. However, I might also not agree with the beliefs of the same people that criticize me. This is what postmodernism is about. No reality is absolute and, if there is one, we never look at the whole scene. Never. Maybe Enid wore that cap because she was trying to express this very same concept that she only wanted to give a connotation to that part of the disguise and not all of it. Advertisement is also based on this game of hiding reality; it only exacerbates certain features of the human body or the icons it uses to promote products, but it never shows what’s behind it. Many people criticize the World Cup because Brazil invested millions of dollars in building stadiums while most Brazilians are asking for education and health or because workers died in the construction of these buildings. I don’t agree with it either, I only like the sport, not the commercial connotation. However, how many of those people have stopped to think who is behind the shoes they wear or the jewels they buy, maybe an exploited kid in Indonesia or another one in Sierra Leone? Despite the fact that there is a partial reality that most of us try to grasp, let’s not forget that there are many others as well. I want to copy a quote by Eduardo Galeano, who addressed the topic of football. Enjoy and reflect.

“El fútbol sigue siendo la pasión popular más importante del mundo; les guste o no les guste a quienes siguen todavía aferrados a los viejos prejuicios de izquierda y derecha, que han tenido y compartido sobre el fútbol. Para la derecha, el fútbol era la prueba de que los pobres piensan con los pies; y para la izquierda, el fútbol tenía la culpa de que el pueblo no pensara. Esa carga de prejuicio hizo que se descalificara una pasión popular. Lamentablemente eso también pasa en la izquierda, o en una izquierda que todavía no se ha enterado de que Stalin murió; esta idea de que el partido o algún intelectual tienen el derecho de decidir cuál alegría es legítima y cuál no. Entonces, el fútbol era una alegría ilegítima, porque desviaba al pueblo de sus destinos revolucionarios. Una estupidez total, y los hechos demostraron que no tenía nada que ver con nada. Yo sigo siendo un apasionado del fútbol y a mucha honra"

Eduardo Galeano

Suicide Island

Suicide Island is a manga that is set in Japan in the near future. In this Japan, the suicide rates had grown alarmingly high. The problem the government has is that people attempting suicide is expensive for them, as they have to cover medical expenses and spend money on programs to get these people on track. So, the government looks for an alternative solution. They send people who have attempted suicide to an island near Japan, and there people are allowed to do whatever they want as long as they do not try to leave the island.

The main character, Kei, after failing his suicide attempt, is asked by the doctor if he wants to live or not. He answers that he does not, so they send him along other people to the suicide island. Upon getting there some people jump to the opportunity to do what they want, literally, as they jump off cliffs to kills themselves. The group that is left realize that they have no roof or food to survive on the island, so they start to search for a water stream and fruits they can eat. As they walk one of the people in the group asks the question that I had been asking myself: why waste energy trying to survive? The reason they are in that situation is that they did not want to live anymore so trying to survive when they could perfectly kill themselves is illogical. None of them have an answer, but they still carry on their task.

They struggle every step of the way while they try to survive. Finding shelter, having water, getting food, people giving up, people committing suicide are their main problems at first. But as human beings their biggest enemies are other human beings. In this island there are no rules, you can steal things or kill someone and there is no law to punish those actions.

One thing that caught my attention is Kei's struggle with hunting. At some point of the manga Kei makes himself a bow and tries to hunt a deer, but when it comes to the moment in which he has to shoot, he freezes. He sees this animal that has never done any harm and is pure and full of life, and he starts to think of himself someone who did nothing with his life and was the worst of his society. He questions himself, because how can he take a life when he so readily threw away his? What gave him the right to decide the fate of other living creature when he did not want a future?

These questions are the ones that give him the strength to try to survive. He decides that he is going to cherish life and by hunting he becomes part of nature after being isolated from everything back in Japan. This reminds me a little to The Sun Also Rises, as both Kei and Jake felt truly at ease when they were surrounded by nature.

I think this manga has some elements of post modernism as throughout the story most of the characters are disappointed of themselves and humanity, they question values and rules and struggle to make their own to regulate the behaviour within the group.

Writing, layout and symbolism

Writing, layout and symbolism   

     

All along the novel I have been fascinated by the different symbolism that Spiegelman played with both in the layout and in the writing itself. I am not referring to the idea of representing people as animals since I guess, without wanting to take the gloss off his great work, it has been merely based on what G. Orwell had done in “The Animal Farm”.  The first image that crossed my eyes and caught my attention was a Swastika placed as a crossroad when Vladek and Anja had nowhere to go. Secondly, The fact that every time the a double “SS” word pops up, it is written or drawn in runic alphabet as well as on the Nazi insignia, to refer to the Schutzstaffel (Hitler’s personal guard at first). Finally, the image that Spiegelman undoubtedly picked to represent his guilt was the one in which he finds himself in his desk on top of a pile of dead “Yids” as Spiegelman usually writes. However, there is something I cannot figure out. I do not want to find the answer on the internet, but I would like to come with my own answer or maybe you would help me too:

Whenever Vladek was hiding in Poland he dressed as a Pole officer and wore a “dog” mask. That is crystal clear. But  why does he (Art) and Pavel wear masks if they are not hidden?

Our Ghost world

I was not really into graphic novels nor comics until I read Maus and Ghost world, I found it a very special genre in literature, because with a short dialogue and just one image the author is capable of creating a whole story in our minds. It is also remarkable the fact that graphic novelists have a great talent when writing and drawing.

Ghost world is a clear refection of life, and of how we see each other, and as Raúl explained very well on his post, how we believe we see each other.

The characrter of Enid is quite special and reflects a lot of what postmodernism is, to criticize and to care only about yourself.That is shown in many aspects of the novel, for instance, when she and rebecca call a man  pretending to be "the redhead" with the only purpose of laugh at him. They are always criticizing people around them, even their friends, at the end of the novel, they are individualistic even with temselves, they are not the "team" anymore, and enid leave the town without her friend.


As I see it, we all are like them, we criticize everyone, their looks, their outfits, their behaviour, their likes, etc. And I do not think it is wrong at all, I mean it is part of our society, of the time in history that we are living in,just like Hemingway's characters in The sun also rises, and their lives after both World Wars, as the modernist poets, criticizing and questioning this new era, as Vladek Spiegelman acts after the horrors that he had to suffer, and so on.

All things considered, now that we are in a port-modernist context (or post-postmodernism) we cannot fall on deaf ears and pretend that we all care about each other and do not feel bother because of their likes or behaviours. In addition to that, we cannot left beheind the fact that the context influences literature, and how we interpret it.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

During the post Modern graphic novel period there many titles that got the audience attention, such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. However, what make Batman stand up from other graphic novels of that time is that Batman was the first of the superhero comics to reinvent itself and target a new, more mature, audience.   

Batman was first published in 1940 and like most of the comic superheroes of that time was targeted to a more young audience, therefore the topics of the comic were mostly innocent and did not relate to the reality of the times. There were always a bad and a good character and no room for any kind of ambiguity.

But all change after the end of the cold war. The audience no longer wanted comics that did not reflect the reality of the world and the sells of comics dropped significantly. That is when Batman: The Dark Knight Returns makes it appearance in 1896 by the hand of Frank Miller but instead of a comic was more like a graphic novel. Under frank’s style, Batman became more darker and mysterious than before with more adult and complex themes.

As a comic lover, I have always had a special place in my heart for Batman. In contrast with other superheroes like Superman, Batman was more fierce and sarcastic and were times in which i was not so sure if Batman was one of the good boys or one of the bad boys. Also, Batman was a regular person (if you consider a billionaire, fitness fit person normal). He did not have any super power besides his own intelligence and human gadgets.

I know a lot of people do not like superhero comics, because of this clean, nationalized (American) appearance they portrait. But if you ask me, i would advise you to give Batman a try because I do not think you would regret it.

HATERS GONNA HATE

   It seems that lot of people are quite fond into criticizing and looking contemptuously over someone’s ways of dressing up, taste of music, etc.

The truth is that all these people that go around criticizing have a social resentment caused by their feeling of not belonging or not having being able to fit in a world in which only certain people are considered beautiful and successful.

I personally believe that those who criticize the most are the one that would love to be part of that trivial trend if the opportunity ever arises. On the other side those who really dislike something, would try to avoid talking about it and it would become something invisible and worthless.

Nevertheless, it is been said that trends are fleeting, therefore only real beauty will prevalence. So I do not see the point in trying to making others feel bad for what they like or believe. 

Postmodernist elements in Neon Genesis Evangelion

In class we saw an overview of postmodernism and some of its characteristics, evidenced in the two graphic novels we were required to read. So as not to repeat the same information from other posts, I thought it would be interesting to take the elements usually associated with postmodernism and use them to analyze a very popular anime/manga, Neon Genesis Evangelion.

As seen in class, postmodernism is very skeptical of models, categories, and any claim valid for a group instead of each person’s relative truth.  Reality is questioned, reality is nothing.  The reality we know is only our own interpretation of the world. In modernity there is a search for meaning even where there is none. There is a search for truth. However, in postmodernism there seems to be a lack of optimism of there being a truth that answers all questions. This was brought on by the devastation of two world wars. Post modernity is full of questions, which is why postmodern works tend not to conclude with a neatly tied-up ending.

Postmodern elements can be found in Neon Genesis Evangelion.  According to Anno Hideki, the creator, evangelion takes place along the following schemata:

The year: 2015

A world where, fifteen years before, over half the human population perished.

A world that has been miraculously revived: its economy, the production, circulation, consumption of material goods, so that even the shelves of convenience stores are filled.

A world where the people have gotten [sic] used to the resurrection - yet still feel the end of the world is destined to come.

A world where the number of children, the future leaders of the world, is few.

A world where Japan saw the original Tokyo destroyed, discarded and forgotten, and built a new capital in Nagano Prefecture. They constructed a new capital, Tokyo-2, then left it to be a decoy - then constructed another new capital, Tokyo-3, and tried to make it safe from attack.

A world where some completely unknown enemy called the 'Angels' comes to ravage the cities.

This is roughly the worldview for Neon Genesis Evangelion.

This is a worldview drenched in a vision of pessimism.

A worldview where the story starts only after any traces of optimism have been removed.

And in that world, a 14-year-old boy shrinks from human contact.

And he tries to live in a closed world where his behavior dooms him, and he has abandoned the attempt to understand himself.

A cowardly young man who feels that his father has abandoned him, and so he has convinced himself that he is a completely unnecessary person, so much so that he cannot even commit suicide. (Anno Hideaki, reprinted in Evangelion Manga accessed 27 January, 2002, originally from (July 17 1995) Viz Comics.)

The series itself is an example of pastiche since it combines multiple genres. Ask anyone who has watched the show and they would say that it is not just your run of the mill mecha (robot) type show. Although the anime starts out with futurist fantasy and mecha elements, the central narrative and characters are later devolved and deconstructed.  There are a number of allusions to biological , military, religious, and psychological concepts. There are also references to older anime series. Intertextuality can also be highly evidenced in this series. However, I will not delve into the topic as it would take up too much space. 

More than the battle with the angels, Neon Genesis Evangelion is about the battle in ones own thoughts. In the last episodes of Evangelion reality and individuality are questioned.  For example:

“Is this the world where everything is set?” Shinji (main character)  asks his projection of Misato (another character).

“No,” she replies, “This is the world where you are the setting.”

Another example is the following conversation that the main character has with himself:

"Where am I?

What the hell am I?

[speaking to himself] So, you need the barrier of the mind.

What? It's me. The shape that I show to others. The symbol representing me. This, and this, and this, all these are representations of me. Nothing but the things that make others recognise me.

What am I? Is this me? The true me? The false me?"

Finally, Neon Genesis Evangelion ended without answering all the questions that had surfaced throughout the series. There is no neatly tied up ending. Many who viewed the series even reacted negatively towards the ending as it was too confusing and resolved nothing. We are too used to having everything answered for us. If watched carefully, the series actually did have some answers for us, but not the answers of the entire story as a whole. As stated above, there are a number of elements that can be analyzed from Evangelion. This was just a brief overview. I highly recommend watching the series and gathering your own interpretation of the story and how postmodern elements are interwoven into the anime.