persepolis Blog 2

-What is the role of women in the story?

In this story women have many different roles. The first place that I saw this was in the beginning, when women had to start wearing veils. There was a panel showing women expressing their belief by saying "the veil!" or "freedom!", so I wonder which one Marji was for. The women in Marji's family played the role of the women saying "freedom" which is one of the reasons Marji starts to rebel at the end of the story. On the other hand there are Marji's school teachers and the guardians of the revolution who believe in the veil and following the rules. Although Marji's mother was for "freedom", she also followed the rules for the safety of Marji, like when her dad was happy she told off the teacher but her mom was angry because she was thinking of the rules and what bad things could happen to her. And of course the guardians of the revolution played the role of the rule followers because that is their job, to punish those who weren't following the rules.

-In what ways is Persepolis both telling a story and commenting on the importance of stories in our lives.

Persepolis is the story of Marji's life during the revolution, and throughout this book there are mini stories of various people like her uncle, grandfather, and more. In my opinion stories are a great way to get a message of moral across, and many of the stories that Marji is told shape her life. Like I said before when Marji is a teenager she starts to rebel and part of that was because of the what her parents believed was right, another reason why she starts to rebel is because of these stories she hears about her families struggles. Like in the chapter The Cigarette Marji started to hang out with older girls and misbehave by skipping school, and at the end of the chapter she smoke a cigarette and says "with this first cigarette I kissed childhood goodbye". And in the very next chapter Marji's uncle is smoking a cigarette and talking about his son in Holland.

- At the core of the book is Marji's family. What is the family like?

At the core of the book things are becoming more dangerous and her family has to be more careful. Despite this her family stays strong by having parties, even though its against the rules. Even though Marji and her family could be bombed at any time, they have created a place for Marji to feel more safe. I also think that her family gets there strength through hope, that Iran will once again be a safe place for them to carry out there everyday lives.

Persepolis...Blog 1

-"In spite of everything, kids were trying to look hip even under risk of arrest". How did they do this?

One of the funny parts of this novel was when Marji went to the store by herself dressed in "punk" clothes. And she is caught, so she basically had to cry and lie to get out of it. Kids also dressed in "punk" clothes or in "hip" clothes when they went to parties "I got to go to my first party. Not only did my mom let me go, she also knitted me a sweater... I was looking sharp". In this type of environment I probably wouldn't have been as brave as Marji, and gone out alone with "punk" clothes on, cause I probably would have gotten caught and arrested. The ways Marji showd rebellion was by, dressing how she wants, speaking her mind at school, and smoking a cigarette. And this rebellion shows she is a normal kid because she likes to dress hip and rebel against her teachers. So she is normal, but different.

-Written as a memoir, is persopslis more powerful than if Satrapi had fictionalized the story?

The other graphic novels I have read is Persopolis, and Maus... twice. These two stories are actually alot alike, because they are both about struggles people have gone through, but written in creative ways. I thought Maus was a good book but Persepolis might be better, mainly because of the humor Satrapi uses. I think this book is better as a memoir than a fictionalized story because you get to hear some of her personal stories to help you relate to the book.

-What has Satrapi chosen to emphasiae in her childhood?

Throughout this story Marji has many experiences during the "Islamic revolution", and the pattern I saw through these experiences is, Marji likes to speak her mind and stick with what she believes. In the beginning she talks about being a prophet even though most people think its silly, and also when she was older she spoke her mind in front of her teachers even though she could get in trouble. Although Satrapi's drawings are pretty simple, I think the dialogue and drawings really complement each other, because the drawings help you imagine what is going in the story and without the dialogue you wouldn't know what exactly is going on.

Feed Reflection

If I had a cool camera and a little more time I would have wanted to do a cool video, but since I didn’t and I kinda procrastinated I decided to do a collage. I tried to think of a way to do a collage that was more original, so if you didn’t notice my collage spells out FEED. To fill my feed, I flipped through magazines looking for different advertisements and other stuff, like electronics, the target logo cause I love target (I mean really who doesn’t), Madea cause Tyler Perry cracks me up, and some of my favorite shows like The Office and 30 rock. My collage also has an arrow on the bottom that says in and out because Ashley is always doggin' on the Macs and you know what PCs stand for Piece of Crap, so I just felt like putting that in there. I think my collage shows one of the main things American culture and feed is based on, consumerism. All those ads and technology on my collage are some examples of the things people by everyday, and most of those things we don’t need. And although consumerism is a big part of American culture I think people shouldn’t rely on the media and technology as much and try to resist it. Personally, the media and consumerism affect me and I don’t even know it, like some people are addicted to there technology, and can’t live without their phones and can text with their eyes closed with one hand tied behind their back. And that makes me think man I’m glad I’m not that crazy, when I actually want texting and an ipod. And I think in a way we mold technology because like in feed they advertise things that they think people will like based on things that were previously bought.

I definitely think there is a moral to Feed that Anderson is trying to get across. The moral is we need to stop consuming and responding to the media the way we are or we will end up like feed, brain dead idiots run by the government. He conveys this moral through the characters and how stupid they act compared to Violet. In this story, I think people are nothing with the feed because all people really do is shop, they shop while there talking to there friends they can shop when there just sitting there they can even shop while there sleeping. But if I had to choose to have a Feed in that story, I most likely would because it would be a lot easier.

At the end of the book when Titus is sad and a jeans advertisement pops up in his head and says “Every thing must go… Every thing must go”. I think this could have meant 1. That they really needed to get rid of the jeans 2. Violet was dead and was going and 3. The world that they live in needs to be fixed and the feeds really need to go. Yeah I definitely think it’s the first one.

Visual Essay

The theme that I chose for my visual essay is consumerism. The world is built off consumerism, the best things in life are free yeah right tell that to MTV cribs. The pictures I chose for this theme represent how America has become the land of consumption, I mean its crazy, the things that are sold and even more crazy the things we buy. The picture of the American flag shows that consumerism has basically taken over America, at this rate were going to be like feed and instead of learning history or the "dead" languages, we'll be learning how to shop. I think the picture that best represents Feed is the one with the guy and all those ads around his head, its like Feed but instead of the ads on the outside of his head they would be on the inside, and this picture shows the craziness of the world. There are may themes in Feed that connect and relate to consumerism like, media, technology, individuality, ect. And I think reading this book has made me really think of how consumerism effects us. Before when I thought of consumerism I just thought yeah whatever we buy a lot of crap that we don't need, but if the world was to end up like Feed then wow we would have bigger problems. Even though I'm still going to buy things I don't really need I'll probably just by less of it.

CONSUMERISM

We the people vow to SHOP!

Our minds are taken over by the media

Give me lay away or give me death

Chat Stew... mmmmm meaty

If someone asked a teenager to not use any technology like, cell phone, computer, ect. They would probably say that they would die with out technology. When in Feed people would probably actually die without there Feeds. M.T Anderson dedicates his book "to those who resist the feed", which sounds kind of creepy but when you think of what it means it makes more sense. Because in are life the feed is the media, and some may not want to admit it but it is hard to resist. I guess the ways you can resist it is by not listing or "supporting" advertisements the media puts out there, and not purchasing stupid things like fake birds. Just like it is now, people in feed like to keep up with the latest trends which could be a disadvantage of resisting the feed/ media, because you might feel different or out of place because of how everyone looks around you. Another disadvantage of having a feed is described when Violet says that her dad didn't get a job because he didn't have a feed. To tell you the truth I don't really know how I resist the feed, because if I was in the time setting of the book I would probably want a feed cause all my friends have one and its easier to communicate with them and da da da, like myspace and facebook. If Feed was the future of our society I wouldn't really be surprised, because it feels like sooner or later a big robot Co. is going to take over the world I mean it was kind of disturbing to think that the Feed actually controlled their bodies, like when Violet's arms or legs would just stop working and their skin was falling off ughhh. But anyways, yeah the United States is going to end up like Ashley's pictures thinking where so cool cause are skin is falling off.