Extra Credit Blog

[14] Like Alice in Wonderland who falls through a rabbit hole into a strange realm, or Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz who follows the yellow brick road, Chihiro together with her parents walks through a tunnel-like passage,⁹ across a dry river bed, into a realm characterized by disorientation, ambiguity and a sense of otherness.  For an engaged audience, the film itself, through its own artistry, can effect a sense of disorientation and liminal space.

            The first quote that I am looking at is the quote above that explains the “hallucinations” that Chihiro faced during her time when she walked through the tunnel with her family and that was when it started to happen. Just like it mentioned in the quote above about other characters like Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy from Wizard of Oz they too experienced not the same as Chihiro but similar in the way that all three of them didn’t know what was happening and how they got there and what they needed to do to get out. They all experienced a different world that wasn’t seen as normal because there were strange things going on. What I did enjoy about all these is that they were all interesting in different ways and the disorientation of them all gave a different aspect and look on things. They also all had double or more meanings that we don’t know about until we watch it again for a second or third time.

[2] Spirited Away is the story of a young Japanese girl named Chihiro, who, with her parents, is moving to a new city to live.  The first scene shows Chihiro sulking in the back seat of the car when her father takes the wrong road as they approach their new house.

            This next quote I liked because watching the movie I felt Chihiro’s “pain” or like upset because we have all experienced a time in a car ride and when one of our parents take the wrong turn its like we get so mad because now its going to take longer to get home. But watching this scene they ended up at a dead end and found a tunnel that they could only go through by walking and not driving. Chihiro was scared to go through the tunnel because she didn’t know what was on the other side and that reminds me of like when we have taken a wrong turn and its really dark out and me and my sisters are all always so scared making up scary stories to tell each other.

[10] The reason for this is that although we are grounded in this pervasive vital process, we are too often unable to connect with it.  Like a mirror covered with dust, the disposition of our personality, i.e., our kokoro, becomes clouded and opaque. Just as aspects of nature can become polluted -- a river can become dirty and foul-smelling -- so also the interior conditions of the human heart and mind can lack a sense of freshness and vitality.  When so polluted, we do things poorly and sloppily; our kokoro hardens and we turn in on ourselves -- the way children do when they sulk and refuse to openly and politely relate to others.

          I agree with this quote completely because everything that it is saying is true in a way. I like the part where it says a human heart and mind can lack a sense of freshness and vitality. And when we do things incorrect or badly we are like hurting or polluting ourselves as it says in the quote. An example of this is like when we are in a bad mood about something and we are around our friends or other people and we just get mad at them too even though they didn’t do anything. We just let it carry over to others and we aren’t nice to them at the time.

Blog 8

The texts that I enjoyed throughout this course were The Arrival, spirited away and also Life is Strange. I enjoyed those because they were the most interesting to me and kept me wanting to read/ play more. Also for me not being such a huge fan of this topic I didn't think I would have enjoyed reading different things that I am not used to doing but it was a really good change for me. I also enjoyed even though it wasn't a required reading, I enjoyed playing professor Shannon's challenge because the type of game play and reading was thriller and horror and that it right up there with the types of shows and movies that I like to watch. Times that I felt least engaged in were in we would talk about the text with our peers around us. I know for me I didn't really engage with many people throughout this course one because I sort of isolated myself because I don't want to say something wrong or act like I have no idea what I am talking about because I don't know much about this course. So it was kind of like I didn't want to look "dumb" because I didn't know much. I do blame that on myself because I should have gotten outside my comfort zone. I think that the few times when we broke in groups was when I talked more because it was only a few of us in a group so it's like I felt more comfortable. That is when I felt more engaged and also writing the blogs is also when I felt more engaged because then I could express how I felt in other ways rather than speaking it out loud, I had the chance to write it in my blog for not only the professor but for classmates as well if they went on my blog. I think that the class discussions should have more in control because the same people just keep talking and go over the class period. I think that this class should be longer than 50min. I loved the walking dead challenge because it was so good and creative. I do see these texts differently for example I read V for Vendetta in high school and I interpreted it differently then I did now but in  a better way. Now I understand it more because we go more in to detail. Even texts that aren't required like Persepolis or watchmen I also read those and they are graphic novels and now thinking and looking back on it, I should have looked at them in a different aspect then I did while I was reading them. What I would tell one of my peers about this course is that truly don't judge a book by it's cover. Meaning I thought this class was going to be boring and not help me or anything. But throughout the course I found myself enjoying it more and more because it's just something different that I'm not used to and it's just a different look at things. For my final project like I thought I was going to be miserable and not wanting to do it but like I found myself having so much fun looking at different views of how female superheros are portrayed. Like talking about my favorite superhero movies and incorporating that into a final project was so fun to me. So this course has really taught me a lot and I am truly happy that my advisor told me about this class because I got a lot out of it.

Challenge 2

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YS4k6xJtRAws-crQzkJO78wjM1GKTyynx9JZtWpMc5w/edit

Challenge 1

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-KTgc9ONgV28kKa5Bh8MljchxBRNbvfcd1rrMO4wEa0/edit

Final Project ideas

I think I want to do a scrapbook and like have different sections/ blog post and for the first one I want to look at the main superhero females and compare their roles to main superhero males, the second one I want to look at how females are portrayed compared to males, third I want to look at if they were to switch roles and how they dressed, fourth I want to look at females stories and how they became superhero's and comparing that to a male, and the fifth one I'm still not sure on.

Blog 6 Life is Strange

After reading/ playing the game Life is Strange it was something that was different for me. I have never played a graphic novel game before so it was a different experience for me. I have played like story telling/ role playing games before and I feel as though that was sort of similar to Life is Strange in the aspect that Life is Strange you are taking the role of the main character Max and living the life through her and I feel like that is the same as when I played one of those types of games on my phone before. But playing a graphic novel and actually reading a traditional graphic novel to me was different but in a good way because its like I got a different view from it. Meaning that it was just something different to see and it was more interesting to me because I felt like I was actually in the game as Max. Its just something about playing a game is more realistic to me because you are actually doing something whereas reading a novel you are just reading line from line and looking at pictures.


The purpose I got from playing this game through the lens of Max is that even though we are in college we were once in high school and not necessarily gone through what she has been through but its like something that we can relate to whether we have experienced it or has a friend that went through what she did. I think it has an effect on whoever plays it because it is something different and you feel like you are in the game actually experiencing these things that she is doing, helping people and saving her best friend and possibly the school. The meaning I think is that if not all but some of us can feel for Max and understand what she is doing and relates to people because like I said we were all in high school once and some people might of had the good heart that Max has by trying to help others.

Final Project

 Lauren Gold

I have always been interested in female roles when it comes to superhero comics or movies. Growing up I loved and still do love to watch superhero movies whether it's a cartoon or real. But what fascinated me was that there aren't many female superhero main roles that I have seen and I also I want to see how they act as the main role and as the sidekicks. So I will be reading two comics, one Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the second one is Carol Danvers from Captain Marvel. I will also be watching three movies and they are: Sharkboy and Lavagirl, The Avengers, and lastly X-Men in particular Storm.


Project Texts:

Text	Author	Format
Captain Marvel Vol1 “Higher, Further, Faster, More	Kelly Sue DeConnick and David Lopez	Graphic comic
Buffy Season Eight Vol1 “The Long Way Home”	Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty	Graphic comic
X-Men	Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winter	Movie
Sharkboy and Lavagirl	Racer Rodriguez	Movie
The Avengers	Joss Whedon	Movie

 

Blog #5

When reading the original text of the book Twilight and then reading the graphic novel, I thought that they weren't going to be similar at all for some reason because with a novel like Twilight I feel like it would be hard and difficult to try and portray almost the same effect and adaptations but the graphic novel actually did. From being a big Twilight fan and reading the books and seeing the movies, the graphic novel was equally as good. I say this because as I was looking through the graphic novel, it looked just like the movie and nothing really changed. So the adaptation in both of these were the same and usually that never happens because its always one or the other that is different from the rest but not in the graphic novel and the original book.

I believe that the graphic novel amplifies the original in insightful ways because just from reading the book you don't necessarily get all the big details and can't really picture it in your head, but once you read the graphic novel it's so much easier to understand and it makes the reading that much better.

Explication Paper

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kVlmNzd9dA8ubECurRTc9RgcYZSO-IlrswNVRJOJ2hE/edit

Blankets

Craig like the prisoners believing that shadows are "real" is in his own little world. I say this because as we see throughout the book Craig is so sheltered in his own world/imagination. He is like this because he is always surrounded by family, the drawings, and the imaginations that he is always having. So for him to be like the prisoners in believing that shadows are "real" I can see how he is like that just because of what we know about him. What Craig comes to realize is that he isn't the only one who seems to be seeing these shadows and living in there world. He notices that Phil is also living like this as well. But what Craig in the end notices is that real life to him is a struggle and it will never happen because he only knows what he thinks is real are his imaginations and drawings.

Plato's Allegory is similar to Craig because Craig throughout the book is having a hard time trying to figure himself as well as others out. It's like he doesn't know who he really is in  a way. Craig is then having to live the real life and let people in but soon finds out that it is actually hard to do and can't be done.

For Craig burning all his memories is like what happened at the beginning of the book. He burned everything in the beginning because he thought that that would help him get rid of his memories so that he could move on and he wouldn't have to remember anything anymore. So by him doing that in the beginning, maybe he possibly thought that burning all the memories of Raina would release all his memories of her so that he won't be thinking about the most beautiful girl in his eyes that he has ever met.

The Arrival

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VLAlES_UpKPimOnPJCHKudjEDRGsZaOdRs8SzoZxsgA/edit

Blog #2

1. In chapter 8, I noticed the concept of color first because as we can see that is the only color in the whole entire text. The color in this chapter specifically on page 190-191 it talks about what color is and the meaning to the color and why it is chosen on the different panels. On page 191 the first panel it says "color as sensation, color as environment. Color as color" so this means to me that color really enhances a picture and describes a picture better than just black and white. By having color it can tell someone's mood or the importance of the image.The next concept goes along with color and that is depth. On page 190 the one panel says "tones and modeling could add depth." By adding depth to a color image really enhances the picture and gives the picture more character.

2. In this image shown it is a picture of my favorite movie "The Avengers." We see that color and depth are shown in this very well because the color of each marvel character stands out and it is also showing action to action icon. I say this because we can see that the fire on the ground looks like it is moving and the background images with the fog and even the avengers are taking action. Depth goes along with this because the little details makes the image just that much better and I like how each avenger is the center and bigger but its not just one avenger who's bigger than the rest. 

3. McClouds theories "complicate" my reading of images because I never thought about images the way he describes it and the way he sees it. I never realized that there are icons to images and each image or reading we see actually relates to something and actually has more meaning to it than I thought it actually did.

Introduction

Hi my name is Lauren Gold, I am a junior here at Ship and my major is Human Communication Studies. I am on the women's basketball team here, if any of you like sports you can come watch us play!!:)  I like to do a lot of things, I will try a lot of things once and if  I enjoy it then I will do it again. When I was younger about elementary school I did have Yu-Gi-Oh cards but I couldn't really get into it and I did play video games like Pokemon and Zelda. I did enjoy those. I also like Marvel movies like the Avengers that's my favorite. But what interested me into this course is just learning more about Marvel since that is my favorite and other things that I didn't know about this whole course.

My current level of experience reading comics specifically is that I have never read a comic before, so this is completely new to me. I have read one graphic novel and that was only for one of my classes, it was Persepolis. Other than that I have never read a comic or even heard of manga before. I haven't watched anime before because I could never get into it, I did try watching it when I was younger but never really liked it. I did play video games when I was younger like Zelda, James Bond but once I got older I stopped playing. I do enjoy playing a lot of video games though and if I wasn't so busy I would play it a lot more still. I mean I never really had any pre existing attitudes about people who read comics and graphic novels. I would just hear about people going to comic book conventions and things along those lines. But I don't consider myself a reader of these texts. As of right now I don't really have any questions about these texts. I just hope to have fun in this class and learn more about everything in general since I'm not really familiar with any of it.