chapter 5 excercise one

Julie Charlop shows very good examples of how to refer to what others say in her piece and then switch back fluidly to what she says. She uses what other people say as the opening where she uses a quote and opens it with "Marx and Engels wrote....." to show exactly whose views are being presented. I feel that her views were being presented whenever She started with I or I'm or basically when it was not known facts. It was always obvious to me when it was truly her view because she would use I and would be talking about her own experience and try and sum up what class she belonged in.

chapter 4 excercise uno

I was a on the fence about my choice of Jean Anyons essay about education oppurtunity for differant social classes. She presents both sides of the argument citing examples from two sources. But as we get close to the end of the segment she is still to take a side. She seems to agree with both sources but does not directly disagree with either to take one side over the other. This essay made it very difficult to decide and i found myself reading the last 8 sentences several times to try and figure it out but in the end came out with nothing more

Excercise 7J

1. The article called "Fighting the Downfall: Youth and Rebellion Between 1987 and 1997" most resembled a magazine layout with the pictures and its column format. Though the information and citation resemble a research paper. It made sense in the way it was formatted because it fit with the subject matter of the culture of Generation X.

2. The format of the article makes the audience read it as a magazine, as the first thing they see is the pictures on the page instead of getting into the sometimes boring text. It draws in the younger audience which is the planned audience for this piece. The format also causes the reader to skim over the article and reading in on things that interest them instead of having to read in depth on everything in it.

3. If the format of this paper were changed from magazine style to make it look like more of a typical college research paper the whole topic chosen would look ridiculous and no one would want to read it. The only way this topic of pop culture of the Generation X can work is if its in the format of the conveyance of pop culture or a magazine style.

Persepolis the Revised Editon

With every caption written out, this story of a young Iranian girl’s unique journey captured my heart. Young Marji tells the story of her family through the fall of the Shah, into the grace period of rejoice for her Marxist family, into the dreaded rule of the religious extremists and into the war against Iraq. Her family is very unique, with several imprisoned uncles, a very strong willed grandmother, and a hero filled cast of others. Her story shows the hardships that the people of Iran dealt with and how their innocence was taken away to have the school kids playing torture for fun, and chasing a child with nails. This movie shows how lucky we really are to live in the place we do, with its grand uniqueness in story and style we can see even greater the perils they dealt with in life and look past our stereotypes. For an old style cartoon animated film, in black and white it brings out the best it could from the story.
Though the character’s voiceovers are in French, the tone that the actors use in their speech during the film helped me follow the fast pace of the movie. The use of captions made it hard to keep up with its seemingly quick pace and extremely quick movement from scene to scene. The story of the first half of Persepolis showed the lives of Marji and her family through several important stages in the history of Iran, and it gave us the perspective of the other sides of the issues and of the people of Iran. Many terribly tough situations are thrown into play in this movie, such as the notion of torture, the deaths of martyrs and revolutionaries but the movie puts a spin on them and turns them into somewhat funny images to help lighten them, such as the formation of hand puppets of the Shah. They director also decided to omit several scenes that took the graphic novel it was based on to new heights of horror, such as the scene of the burning down of the movie theater, and the shooting of the protesters. This omission helped not only keep the movie watchable but it kept the gruesomeness down to a level where the public could deal with it.
The special effects and sounds used in the movie help pull out and emphasize the scene that otherwise would feel dry . They are the exact same images that you see when you read the novel which makes it more believable and brings it back to the comic book feel. Because the movie moves so quickly and has captions as subtitles for non French speakers, it is a good idea to read the comic to get the full story and to be able to capture the full meaning and image that the basic picture that you see gives you. The movie still fills your heart with emotion and as Colin Covert of the Star Tribune put it “Satrapi has retained her tragicomic memoir’s universal emotional appeal. Marjane’s story is more tumultuous than most, but it’s one most viewers will identify with.” Covert is emphasizing the commonality of the family’s plight for political and social freedom, and that their situation can be grasped by the public. The beauty of the special effects and the flow of the movie is in its simplicity of the comic style motion pictures. This flow of the simple black and white pictures helps show how simple life was to the Iranians and it helped develop the inner feelings that were supposed to be drawn out of the viewer. The sound of music during several scenes helped bring out emotions like when the family was in trouble of being caught or the montage of “Eye of the Tiger” by Marijane helped bring out the emotion of the scene. Also when there was no sound at all, the pure silence of the scene would take the scene to a new level of emotion as Marijane was lost in herself and lost in the world.
Overall I felt the movie brought out emotion that we may not experience often and did so in very good fashion, especially It brought out the love images of a family, the freedom issues of a country and a people, and the further inner emotions of Marijane as she dealt with being alone and away from her country. The movie further transitioned you decently to get you through such a serious and in depth memoir into an under two hour film, while still getting the emotions out and the dire images out to the viewer. It was a wonderful watch, and if your interested in getting the full story of her childhood and of Iran’s passage the graphic novel will take you to even greater heights.

Rough Draft of the Movie Review

With every caption written out, this story of a young Iranian girl’s unique journey captured my heart. Though the character’s voiceovers are in French I still feel as if they are talking to me because of the change in tone they have and how it follows the moods of the scene. The story of the first half of Persepolis showed the lives of Marji and her family through several important stages in the history of Iran, and it gave us the perspective of the other sides of the issues and of the people of Iran. Personally for me it showed that not all Iranians are terrorists and fall under the usual stereotypes. Having read the graphic novel, many things were added into the movie and many things were left out. I feel like many important aspects of the family life that were in the book were left out of the movie. I feel that if you are going to make a movie on a memoir of that style you should not leave out important details that made the comic such an enjoyable read. I also felt they focused too much on the second half of the story which focused more on her being tossed as an outsider in Europe instead of her losing her identity as a Iranian because of her selfishness and self-centeredness.

The special effects used in the movie match the comic book which is great I feel. They are the exact same images that I see when I read the book which makes it more believable and helps me remember back to the book for things they left out or the meaning that I was able to take out of it. Because the movie moves so quickly and has captions as subtitles for non French speakers, it is a good idea to read the comic to get the full story and to be able to capture the full meaning and image that the basic picture that you see gives you. The beauty that I see in the simplicity of the comic pictures and the movement of it through the movie helps show how simple life was to the Iranians and it helped develop the inner feelings that were supposed to be drawn out of the viewer.

Overall I felt the movie represented the book in a very good fashion, especially when it came down to the use of the moving image of the family. In the book, whenever there was use of a whole page for one picture it meant something important was going on in Marji’s head and it was again brought out very well in the movie.

Gilchrist vs Ebert (Spidamannnnn)

These two reviews both seemed to be written by extremely professional reviewers and I enjoyed reading both to see the aspects that they happened to pull out of the movie.

Gilchrist seems much more negative about the movie, which I believe is because of his expectations that he has towards it. He felt the sequal should have been more like the first which was nearly straight up action and blow up scenes, where the movie he saw had the explosiveness but not enough to please him. Gilchrist felt the scenes were too drawn out and long for him, especially the ones dealing with Aunt May. He also felt like it was too much dialogue for an action movie, but I feel like the dialogue was needed, I also feel that Gilchrist didnt give very good reasons for not liking the dialogue except for the fact that it made the movie too drawn out. It is obvious that Gilchrist didnt understand the nature of comic books, when he was quite upset over the fact that there was no real resolution to the movie and it ended abruptly, but that is how comic books work, they leave you hanging in the midst until the next episode or issue.

Ebert was extremely differant in his explanation of the movie. First of all he was praising the movie for being so awesome. He took all the points in Gilchrists and showed why they were more important to the movie being good. He showed the scenes that he pointed out and said that they were crucial for the character development of the story, and were used to help show how Spiderman was still a human being and not a super human. I believe that Ebert was a comic book reader because he seemed to know and understand how the director was so good in making it more like the comic book and leaving the no resolution ending. He also noted on several scenes and its great use of special effects and how it made the movie even better, whereas Gilchrist didnt seem to mention them too much.

Persepolis: The Movie vs the Comic

Both the comic version and the movie of Persepolis are both great installments of the story. The movie seems to move a lot faster especially because of the subtitles involved and the french voice play. The comic on the other hand sets an easy pace that allows you to look more in depth at the crisis that faces her and takes more time to set up the picture. I feel like the movie moved much too fast through her early childhood, and did not take enough time at all to develop characters like her grandfather or uncle anoosh. The movie moved so fast that I had to miss alot of the details of the inner story and the scenes of the war. Through the comic book you are able to really see and understand better what little Marji went through with her family during the revolution, the war, and the after effects. Though the movie brought out the second half of the book about her return to Iran and her period in Europe, the comic book allows you to read and re read whatever you need to to understand more aspects of the lives of these special people.