Persepolis Blog #2

4.)Percepolis is organized like what any other book is organized like, it has a beginning, middle & end. It has parts, like chapters, except, instead of saying "ch.1" she has big title headers ex. The bicycles, The water cell, Percepolis etc... What I thoght that she tried to emphasize the most during her childhood was "the innocence" of being a child itself. I bet yo that she's trying to say that even though there may be a war, revolution, or w/e that there is going on that a kid will always be a kid, no matter what! And you might think taht i'm thinking a bit too much but, I think that the time is presented by the way Marji thinks. At the begining and middle of book, I noticed that Marji, like any other kid, is really striaght fowward. LOL, yes, I still remember when I was a kid and when my mommy said that there was a monster living in my closet I believed in it. And when I thought that somebody's clothes were ulgy, I said it out lound, without thinking about the other person's feeling. Marji, in the book, believe her teacher when she said that the shah was chosen by god, and that a "vacation" was really a vacation. But then towards the ending of the book, she knew what a "vacation" really meant. And to me that seemed like a sense of maturity, and we all know that maturity meant growing up. & thinking about it now, I still do believe that monsters are in my closet! Satrapi's drawing are of course black&white. In a way the drawings help emphasize the piont of the novel& it helps explain more, adds more emotion to the story.

6.) The revoltion spread power by violence, force, religon & guns ( thats what i thought it was.) It doesn't matter if your rich, middle-class, or poor, if someting's gonnna happen, it realy gonna happen. It just deoends what side that your on. Lets take the Chinese Cultral Revolution, it was basically like Marji's revolution, exceppt in this revolution, all of the rich, smart, educated, were killed, or at least "went on a vacation" like what Marji said. And in deed, both were for the poor people rebeling. All those people left because they probably felt that it wasn't safe to live there anymore, like the boy, who she really liked, he left. And some of her relatives also left for America. I think that the reason why her parents didn't leave with her has to do with their loyalty to thier contry. To some people, weither it means life or death will stay. And her parents probably thought about their grandma. It pretty common among young kids to adapt to new places, & hard for older peole to adapt. Marji wouldve adpated better to the new envoiroment than her parents. & thats probably because she still has a long time to live. Where as her parents and her grandma are already used to "their" life...You know once in a while, my parents & grandma will say , "if only i was back at Laos, things would've been different, you would've have two or three kids already."SO they seent her away to have a new life, & for safety.

8.)In her memoir, hte civilans are completey monitered, and kept in check my gns and violenece. Remeber when her family went to the celebration of the little boy who was just recently born, there were sirens. Yep, that kept them in check.. You see, when they heard hat siren they know tat that meant they had to dissapear. & I think that religon, power, guns, probably keot people from being free. I remember reading, & looking at all the tanks and soldiers killing people. & after the soldiers finished killing people, there werent that many protests anymore. & I guess there "small: acts of disobedience" would be Marji's listening to music, her mom not wearing the veil, the family getting together, even thought they were ordered not to. In other terms to seems to be like the 18th amendmant, the banning of alcohol. Even though it was banned people still did it, and at th end it was repleaed.

Persepolis Blog #1

Questions I'm answering # 2, 10 & 12

#2.)I thought that if Persepolis would've been fictionalized, the book would've been more powerful. Some of the memoirs that I read before were of course Memoirs of a Geisha and I just recently read The Last Princess of Manchuria , in comparson to Persepolis,these two were of course aren't comics and they were pretty lengthy and they were fitionalized so I felt the books spoke out more to the reader. For instance in The Last Princess of Manchuria, when she got raped by her foster dad, I felt her aguish towards her life and I felt that her adopted daddy sould die. (He was freaking 59 & she was only 17!) Weither or not if her dad really did raped her we don't know(there weren't any records of the rape, but it was said that she tried to commit suicide when she was 17.), but I sure do know one thing, just because the author sort-of fictionalized that little incident, it feed the reader with a surge of emotionit felt real even thought it's different, also I felt as though Persepolis were a tiny bit too kiddish, (yes, I know that it written throgh the eye of a little girl, but come on if there was a war that was going on, I think little kids wouln't behave like that. Lets take my mommy & daddy for instance, I vaguely remeber my mommy telling me about parts of her childhood, they were first about playing around,when she turned seven everything changed. She had to go hiding insdie the remote jungles of Laos, to hide from communists who were after the heads of Hmong people, none were spared. And thats why I sort-of felt lke the author of Persopolis should've fictionalized more about her life, so we, as the readers can understand her more. Because throughout the book, she seems like she not at all puzzled, or shooken by it. Even after Anoosh was killed, (even thought she cried) She carried on lilfe & after the boy she liked left, she did the same thing. & of course in the begining of the book when the kids were playing around with the veils. Though I could say that I think she's really patriodic. And I guess thats the advantage of memoirs, the book is filled with emotions, and the bad things about memoirs is probably because its not exactly 100% correct.


#10) Umm.... I haven't read to the end of the Iranian war yet, but, judging from the begining of the book, she seems really civil. She wanted to be "god" right. She wanted to be god so that there wren't be anymore social classes. She felt that it was wrong, well according to history, the maids and the ladies of a house don't really sleep in the same place. But as we all know, Marji's & her maid, are completely comfortable with eachother. Marji even wrote her love letters so that she can pass it on to the next door neighbor. And in a way, I felt that I would do the same thing, I don't like this "social class" thing, it limits s, as people to a "crowd" of people. I know that it still exists in the world, I know it does in India. And Marji said that one she becomes god then shell get rid of the social classes, in which I glady support her! =]

#12) The roles of the women in this memoir...humm they are like the "lower people."I wasn't surpised by it, many places in the world still coined women as the weak ones, even in America. Up to this day men are still getting paid more than women. And also when I read the book, women were alwaise the one to sat sorry, even though they did nothing wron, like when Marji's dad was about to get caugt drinking, her mother had to apologized to the soldier even thought she did nothing wrong, and they were the one always getting pushed around. Jari's sister died in his place. Her mom was called a slut, just because she wasn't wearing a aveil. The teachers were freakin b******! Espcieally the one that suspended them, she had like the biggest attitude, I couldnt stand her. While Marji's grandmother is te character that is forgivable, the one who had lots of love to give & wisdom. She loved everybody! And I see Mariji as a little clever girl, she's really smart, remeber when she calculated the numbers of tanks destroyed? Smartness! GIrl POwer!

Composition Reflection Essay

Yeah, thanks Erin, for making me do this project on the weekend! & I definalty hate, hate this slow internet! Lol, and after 2 hours of "hard labor" I have to write this, KK nvm, I'm thankful for auto save now. I thought that this essay was gonna go to watse.

When I first thought about what was gonna go on my feed, it was instantly clothes, music, hair, fashion, Ipods, cell phone, shoes, movies, and more nuisance, but after refleting upon it for a while, I figured out that all of these things wouldn't matter to me if I don't have #1) family, #2) a goal, #3)People to share it with, #4) the money to buy it, & #5) the smarts to analyze things, by myself & not "pop culture to decide for me!" So I'm gonna try to balance the things on my feed. Comformity(what pop culture has) Vs. Individuality(what I would personally have)!

Thought I don;t think that my feed will be like the "teen" feed, my feed does say something about American culture. Its message; even though there are a lot of teens who do reckless & stupid stuff, there are also teenagers that do think before they do things & they don;t hve to be nessacerily nerdy!

Consumerism & Anti-Consumerism; Me, personally I woudn't take a side. But I do think that there is a limit to which we can buy things. I would say that going to a store to buy a couple pairs of shoes is ok, but then bying like 50, its over doing it. And especially if it hrts you in the end. Like Quendy, she got artifical lesions, all over her body, and what was it for? To make her look cool! And she actually paid money for it! I would never do that!

For me to say that the media, consumerism, reliance on technolgy, and/or popular pop culture doesn;t affect or mold me, I would be lying, but I don't let it shape me completely too. To be truthful I don't know weither pop culture molds us or we mold pop culture, because without people, there is no pop culture & with pop culture there's not trend. Asking that question is like asking "What comes first, the Chicken or the egg?" Ha! Answer that Erin. =] Pop culture helps define me by the way i dress, i guess. (just minus my fobbyish ways.) For example I'll rather wear a skinny jean than wearing bell bottoms. And I'll rather listen to Wonder Girls than let' say Alvis or something.

The author's message or "moral" to me, is simply warning us that if we do become a consumers socitey and don't give bak, we're gonna ruin ourselves. Remeber at the ending there was black snow falling down, and you can see Titus's mother teeth, even when she had her mouth closed. Yucky isn't it?

Yes, I do think that people is something without the feed. Throughout the book , I felt like the author only showed people who was dependant on the feed, and neglected people who didn't need the feed. Like Violet's daddy, all that we knew about him was that we was made fun of, and doesn't have a feed. The author didn't even metion the other 30% of the population that wasn't relying in the feed. Sometimes people focuse too much on the bad things rather than the good things & vice versa.

Everything must go, everything must go, everything must go!
It's telling us to don't by a lot of things & the author is trying to remind consumers if they go to far out like Loga, then technology isn't gonna save them. Nobody will.

Visual Essay May 5, 2009

Consumerism

Reflection

Hi! Everybody thats reading this, if you haven;t notice the theme i picked for my visual essay is consumerism. My message in doing this visual essay is "simple." I want people to know that if we as consumers are demanding the same thing co-ops are going to make products more simpler. And soon, we are gonna toss out everything because it is now "null." Violet once said "the feed was trying to build your profile so that the companies that makes products would know what would grab consumers attention. Therefore, they create more simpler things, that'll appeal to everybody. Gradually, everyone gets used to everything being so basic, so they get less and less varied as people, more simple." To which in my piont of view is really true in the first picture, because every single girl in that damn picture have the same suit,flats,purse,shopping,glasses,ponytail, and probably the same cell phone. To which directly relates back to consumerism.

I chose these pictures because they really caught my eye and the message that the pictures vibes off are really freaky&cool. The pictures importance,implications and influence are as is, when you first look at the pictures, they may seem like they are really plain, but after a few closer analyzing, I think there's a story behind every picture. The first picture is just like what Violet said, companies are gonna know just what consumers want so, they create a product in which everybody would accept joyfully, but then it's really common. The 2-4pictures are more examples of what "expired" stuff would look like. The reason they are "expired" is probably because they were really popular, a long time age. And it was during that time that the only people who had access to those products where the "cool" or "rich" people. But once everybody had a hold of it, its not so "cool" no more, people, teens, no longer desire it. Lets take CD players for example, about 6 years ago, if you go walking around downtown or something, chances are that you are likely to see a person listening to their CD player rather than a person listening to a IPOD, right. But now, chances are that you wont see a CD player, its either a IPOD Nano, touch, or phone hat your gonna see. Still, I can sense rivalry, because many phone companies are search for ways to get upgrades, instead of having regular cell phones, we now have cell phones that have camera's, mp3 players, msn chat...etc

One of the themes that I sort-of understand is conformity vs. individuality. I specially chose the last picture for this problem. As you can see, the last picture has two hands in it, both of them are really close, but aren't exactly touching. What it means to me is that a person, who is alone, wants to join in with other people, but is hesitant about it. It's sort-of tantalizing. It's like wanting to do something so badly, but you know that it's bad for you. Now, growing up in a recently migrated family really set me up for my individuality. When my friends go out and they ask me to join them, I always reply "no." Its like I'm prone to it. Sometimes I wish that i was a boy, so i can go out with my friends, but I'm always think in my head "just wait until I'm 18!"