angielavelle-el335-blog

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

Tumblr #17

Today we were asked about visual ethics.  There's usually a backlash at lying articles, but what of visuals?  Sometimes it's just assumed that people will understand what they are looking at is "a joke" or "photoshopped", but what if it is something that could really affect a person's reputation?  Or a company's?  This is where the idea of image manipulation comes under fire.  And yet, I am seeing more and more facebook posts and tumblr shares that show images misrepresenting an urban legend or misattributing quotes to famous people who did not say them. 

What's the allure of this?  Popularity, maybe?  Trying to use a person's ethos in order to forward your own viewpoint?  Or maybe people just like to spread misinformation.  It also seems to be becoming so common that people are starting to be more savvy on checking sources, which is one of the things we talked about when I participated on the panel discussion at iTeach Gallery at Seton Hill.  It's no longer the case that if you find something three or more times on the internet, it must be true.  Fact checking and making sure sources are reliable is getting more tricky, but also at the same time, definitely more important across the board.

A stock artist Kxhara http://www.deviantart.com/art/University-of-Wisconsin-Green-Bay-Stole-My-Photo-366114024 recently posted about a university using her photo in conjunction with a "The Onion"-style misinformation post.  It was inflammatory, and even though it did not use her name, she thought it could damage her online reputation, which is what her stock photo production is largely based on.  This is an example of how misattributing images, not checking copyright usage, and misinformation can cause problems in the world of journalism today.

#el335

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

Tumblr #16 - Assessment of the Graphic Novels in this Course

Which was your favorite, and why?  My favorite of the Graphic Novels we have read was "A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge" by Josh Neufeld.  I thought the art and more realistic cartoon renderings were very well done, probably my favorite style of comics.  Through the use of real dialogue and researched character depictions of real people, I became very invested in the characters' story lines.  I was intrigued with them, flaws and all, and wanted more of their interactions, more of how they would get through the tragedy and loss they were faced with.  Having different character focuses gave a different perspective on how different people were affected by the hurricane.  I also liked how the author chose to make a statement about the misinformed media and inefficient government relief by focusing on Denise's side of the story.  Not only did Josh Neufeld want to portray what these people went through, but he made a point about the need for change as well.

Which was your least favorite, and why?  My least favorite would have to be Joe Sacco's "Palestine."  Although I could appreciate why he was making some of the strategic decisions he made, they all added up to a little bit much for me.  The grotesquely exaggerated features of the characters conveyed a lot of emotion and perhaps gained more empathy from the reader, but it got hard to tell characters apart or see them as real people rather than caricatures.  The cluttered style of writing and how it was placed was informative, added to the chaotic feel of the story, and showed how opinions can overshadow the real picture.  Still it made the novel a challenge to read and the pages, for all his intent, often came off cluttered and messy to me.  I appreciated Joe Sacco's honesty in his ethos, but sometimes it seemed like he went to such lengths to portray himself as dislikable that it was hard to care about what his character as a narrator had to say.  So he made lots of creative and meaningful decisions in how he created his graphic novel, but they did not all work for me.

Are there any other graphic novels that you know of that you wish we had read?  Getting to experience some more fictional graphic novels would have been interesting.  "City of Light, City of Dark" written by Avi and illustrated by Brian Floca was one I remember enjoying in high school, and although it might not have been necessarily "college level" it would be neat to revisit it again from an analytical perspective now that I have studied graphic novels in class.  Since the class was mostly focused on graphic novels used as a form of journalism though, I really haven't read any other nonfiction graphic novels except for "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi, which many people in our class may have read anyway as a requirement since it has been used frequently in our college it seems.  After taking this class though I will definitely consider seeking out more non-fictional graphic novels such as the ones we have studied.

Other thoughts? As for the other two graphic novels we read, I did like both of them better than "Palestine".  I think "Burma Chronicles" by Guy Delisle would be my second favorite since I really enjoyed the way he portrayed himself and the people who he met along his travels, and the way he meshed the informative portions along with the narrative.  Whether because of the extended cat-and-mouse metaphor or the very blunt storytelling, I couldn't get into "Maus" by Art Spiegelman as much as some of the other graphic novels, but I enjoyed the interplay of the father and son relationship with the narrative, and I appreciated how faithfully and informatively he rendered the happenings of his father's history, and definitely liked the graphic novel very much.

#el335 #graphic novel #graphic novels

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

Tumblr #15 - Thoughts for Thursday's peer review of Graphic Novel project

I think that small groups (3-4 people) for the peer review would be helpful because it's a variety of face to face feedback.  It is more than just getting one other person's perspective, and although anonymous critiques can be more honest, we're all here to learn from each other and should trust each other to be honest face-to-face.  We could have group discussion where we could ask questions or for other people in the group's input.  The downside to this might be the time, because with a larger group it would take more time to read each person's draft and evaluate it.  That's why I went with a smaller number such as 3 or 4 if necissary.

#el335 #peer review #graphic novel #graphic novels

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

Tumblr #14 - Joe Sacco's ethos.

In class, we were talking about how Joe Sacco used Ethos, airing his own prejudices.  Sometimes this made him a very dislikable narrator, which might turn the readers off from being able to relate to him.  What we ended up doing at the end of class was finding a panel where Joe Sacco might have shown his prejudices, or any groups of panels really, and finding a way to alter his ethos in the section.  How would we choose to portray Joe Sacco's character so that it would be more or less appealing to the reader?

Now, I ended up feeling extremely and unexpectedly uncomfortable about this.  During the time when I was writing the last Tumblr, which I wrote about my reactions to the beginning of his graphic novel "Palestine," I did have my objections with his ethos.  I thought he might have went a little too overboard with portraying himself in a negative light.  I had a very negative reaction to his character and might have been less likely to want to see things from his point of view, so I thought I would have lots of ideas about how to change his ethos.  But when it came down to it, I didn't know what to do.  I realized that for all I might have disliked the way he portrayed himself, if given the choice, I wouldn't change a thing about Joe Sacco's ethos.

If I were to cut out something to make him sound more appealing, I felt like I would be censoring him.  Then I might like him more, but I'd trust him less.  I trust an author who can lay out his own flaws to accurately portray their materials.  Since Sacco is making a case for portraying exactly what he feels about and what he sees about Palestine as opposed to what we might have seen in the media, why should we trust him to not censor his thoughts if he has to censor himself?  What would make him different than the filtered media?  He would lose his impact.  I just trust narrators who can portray everything, negative and positive, even themselves.

I think I want to portray myself with flaws and internal thoughts in my own graphic novel project.  I want the reader to trust me, but also see me as relatable.  Not just an authority figure of information, but a person with her own opinions and prejudices, and hopefully someone who the readers can relate to. At the same time though, I do not want to completely put off the reader.  But with Sacco's subject material, I think he can get away with more, perhaps.  I still would not change or censor it. 

#el335 #palestine by joe sacco #joe sacco #graphic novels #graphic novel #ethos

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

Tumblr 13 - Palestine by Joe Sacco

First, I think I'd better get my feelings about the text arrangement in this graphic novel off my chest.  Then I think I'll be able to look at pages 1-77 more objectively - but hey, according to Joe Sacco's interview, he does not approve of the idea of non-biased media because we're going to have biases anyway.  So I feel pretty justified in airing out some of my own biases in regards to Palestine and then see what other conclusions I can come to afterwards.

This has not been my favorite graphic novel so far in this class for the sole reason of it being so hard to read.  I am not a fan of the cluttered text arrangement.  The author's narration boxes are scattered pretty much everywhere, sometimes so that you can't really tell which direction you are heading in. It also mixes in with the pictures so that everything feels very crowded together - which might have been part of the intention, but it gets hard to look at page after page.  The font of handwriting was also skewed enough to make it rather hard to read, (granted I don't have the greatest vision) especially when he would tilt it sideways, squeeze it into corners, stretch it across entire pages... I handled the bright colors of A.D. okay but the text of Palestine really threw me off.  

At one point, it completely breaks off from the graphic novel format and switches to more of a text novel with illustrations.  It's still in the same handwritten font that I found difficult to read, however.  I think that the entire book would have worked better this way.  Joe Sacco just seems to have so much to say with his internal monologue, his thoughts on the subject at hand, and the dialogue relating to the comic itself that it crowds out his incredibly detailed drawings and overfills each page.  If he'd arranged the text in blocks it would be much easier to read, and he still could have found ways to incorporate his illustrations.  It might not have had the same edge as having most of everything illustrated out, but it sure would have been a lot more visually appealing, I think!

So, now that my gripes with the pages are out of the way....I'm certainly seeing a lot of similarity with Guy Delisle's Burma Chronicles in that the narrator portrays himself as a cartoon character with exaggerated features. I am largely enjoying the very stylized approach he takes to cartooning overall. I know he says that he is always smiling, and maybe that explains his apparent fascination for rendering very large exaggerated teeth, but for his narrator his mouth is huge to the point of grotesque, eyes obscured behind tiny round glasses, and a pencil-thin neck.  

His caricature-style drawings, of himself especially, almost make Burma Chronicles' massive-headed baby and massive-nosed narrator look tame in comparison!  I tend to exaggerate facial features in my own drawings, so I figured if I can put up with my own big-eared, angular-faced cartoons, I've got to appreciate the giant-nosed, large-mouthed people of Joe Sacco's.  There were some panels where the characters really looked like each other because they had similarly exaggerated features, but usually they helped me tell characters apart.  It also brought out features an observant onlooker might notice on a person and made their emotions much more intense.  The focus on mouths might also relate to everyone having an opinion to share on the conflict, in spite of there not really being much of an answer.

Sacco's portrayal of himself as a character, cartooning aside, is a little strange.  He seems pretty crass and ...kind of creepy, especially in the scene where he's staring at teenage girls and describing the attractiveness of the soldier.  He completely forgets about the guy whose address he got and cusses out about begging kids.... Well, I guess I'll have to see if he's using the same sort of bumbling-awkward-foreigner idea like Guy Delisle.  

Overall I feel that I really have learned a great deal about the history behind the Palestinian conflict.  It's intriguing to see it portrayed from a different perspective than the Israeli that I have usually seen.  I've read now that apparently there has been a substantial donation to the occupied land of Palestine, and I wonder if it has improved the situation there at all.

#el335 #palestine #joe sacco #palestine by joe sacco

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

I was totally with you on the subject of Denise during the first part of the book.  She just seemed, as you and Dr. W said, very angry and abrasive.  What I did end up liking about her was the change she goes through.  After she is almost killed in the storm, she realizes that she's got to give up her pride and dissatisfaction with the conditions that characterized her before.  Her life and the life of her family becomes more important than living comfortably.  

At the same time, Denise does retain her mean streak through the rest of the book, and I think that's crucial to the author's intentions.  Not only was he seeking to tell the story of these survivors - their resilience, their loss, and what they went through - I think especially after reading the author's notes at the end he was also trying to make a point about the inadequacies of the government aid at the time, and the misreporting of the situation by the media.  He wanted to make these known so that hopefully they can be corrected by our government and society.  Denise's character allows her to be outspoken and find flaws and criticisms for the system that need to be said, as more favorably as we might have looked at her had she just been quietly grateful to survive the whole ordeal.  That is why he made the story he got from Denise one of the focal points of A.D. - because she was so critical of the system and demanding for change.

I was amazed at how fast I read this story. I understand that it is a tough subject to read, well not as tough as Maus was but it still dealt with tragedy. I do feel that the way the story was written made it read much easier. I will say that there were a few times where I was confused on how the...

#el335 #new orleans after the deluge

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

I understand your point - I was totally confused with the purpose of the Doctor in this story.  His story and the one with the pastor’s son didn’t seem fully developed enough for me.  

Maybe with the doctor though the author was trying to create a parallel between his story and Abbas’.  They both stay thinking that they can take on the storm.  One succeeds without the expected problems, and the other and his friend go through a near-death experience.  Some actually did manage to stay, whether they experienced terrifying conditions or not.  In addition, both their presences helped the recovery effort.  Abbas and his friend are shown giving water to people stuck in the storm, and the Doctor is shown helping the injured.

I think the root of your argument is that the foreshadowing was misused.  I did not see it that way as I saw the foreshadowing as more of the building tension before a giant storm.  Whether the characters in question were panicking or not, with the threat of a storm comes an undeniable tension.  I think that he wanted to capture what it was like to live through such tension, and the terror of having the storm happen.  Even for the characters who were away from the storm, there is still the terror of not knowing what happened to the people around them and their property, and the fear that their life will not be able to go back to normal again.

I mentioned in class last week my frustration over Neufeld’s use of foreshadowing that never comes to fruition. And people seemed to think that mean that I WANTED bad things to happen to the people in this nonfiction tale. That’s obviously not what I meant. I’d just like to further explain my…

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

math test: a farmer plants 7 crops of tomatoes and 3 crops of carrots what is the probablity his moms name is leslie

history test: the american civil war ended in 1865, explain how this had a defining role in the extinction of dinosaurs

literature test: explain what the author meant by, "the apple was as red as an apple"

physics tests: The aliens ate 3.4 doughnuts. Their crumbs fell to the Earth because of gravity. Calculate how many penguins are eating pancakes at the speed of light.

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

Tumblr #12 - New Orleans A.D.

Having finished the book, I can definitely say that it impacted me far more than what I had expected.  It was a fast and exciting read, since there was constantly danger, disorganization, and chaos - I was extremely invested in the characters and wanted to find out what would happen to them.  It was more than just a portrayal of what happened, though.  It's a story about loss.  Not just loss of life, or even loss of material possessions, but a livelihood.  There's something more than just physical about what you put together, what you collect, what you create, the communities you make.  That livelihood was taken away with the storm, and that sense of loss is most deeply explored in the stories of Leo and Michelle, and Abbas and Darnell.  Darnell doesn't know if he wants to go through trying to entirely rebuild his life.  Abbas had to rebuild his business, and I'm sure many like him with less determination would have just given up on theirs.  Leo and Michelle have lost their homes, but also Leo's collection of comics, an extensive array of art that inspired him.

It also had the feeling of an expose from Denise's point of view.  What the media said was not really how it necessarily was in the conditions of the survivors who were seeking refuge.  It seemed that the people in charge were inefficient and didn't even know what was going on any more than the people who they were supposed to be trying to help.  The "gang violence" in cases such as Denise's was really no more than people who were actually trying to go out and help the displaced citizens and find things they needed without the restrictions of organization placed on them by the government aid.  In this way, Denise tried to get her story of civilian-level heroics and government inefficiency out to the public.  This sort of message presents a critique of the system that glaringly demands change in the event of the next disaster.

Throughout the story he created in "A.D: New Orleans After the Deluge," Josh Neufeld got us to identify with the characters and see the humanity in all of them - struggling for survival, concerned about their own needs, but also trying to find ways to help others.  We experience their fears and losses through the more realistic cartoon portrayals and the way he used some of the actual dialogue from the sources he was writing about.  Everything feels real, a look into how it actually was at the time.  It does not concern itself with trying to piece together the entirety of Hurricane Katrina as a whole - at the beginning, it depicts the storm washing over the entire city.  But throughout, it focuses on how it impacted the lives of the individuals, their own feelings, their own experiences, their own story.

#el335 #New Orleans A.D. #New Orleans After the Deluge

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

I really enjoyed reading this graphic novel for the first half.  The story seems to move so fast, with large pictures and only a few things on each page.  I enjoyed the realistic details of each character - for this story I think it really helped getting to see the people as realistic.  In Maus and Burma Chronicles, we talked about how it worked for them to depict the characters as more cartoon figures, to perhaps make the horrors easier to swallow.  The strength of AD is how it shows so much realism between the events of the different characters.  You really want to be able to care about them, which the realistic characters add to.

The use of color was rather interesting - I’m guessing that the bright yellow signified the sun or the impending danger.  The blue showed the rain and storm, as well as the threat of flood.  It reflected the time of day as well as the status of the storm and the mood.  I didn’t really find it much of a distraction, but the shades of yellow could be seen as such.

#el335

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

Tumblr #10

My first experiences with interviews were in my high school days, usually interviewing a teacher, taking polls with the students on what their favorites were of a certain topic, or interviewing an award winning senior.  As non-professional as some of these might have been, these taught me the basics of what it meant to come up with questions that would have interesting answers, as well as ones that would lend itself to writing an article about them.  It taught me how to speak with people for the purpose of writing an article about them, and in those situations it was very formal.  The questions did not pose controversy or topics that might have been difficult.  They were generic, but as one would expect from a high school newspaper.

I got more experience through writing my interview article for Magazine Writing, a class I took last year.  I did an in-depth interview with one of my friends about her decision to have a double major in two difficult and demanding subjects, as well as finding out additional information from a secondary source about students and their double majors.  This is where I learned the possibilities that could come from deviating from a set script or set of questions for the interview.  It would require some thinking, in order to see what other options could branch from the answer to one questions.  It would also allow you to be open to ideas brought up from the one being interviewed, maybe taking the entire interview in directions that you had both not anticipated.

Etiquette is also something we have discussed in that class.  It is alright to want to develop a particular slant to an article or writing that has used an interview, or a particular direction that you want the questions from the interview to head in.  However, it is not alright to try to dictate the slant so much and without reserve that you are imposing your own desires on the person being interviewed.  One has to respect the interviewer's wishes and not try to twist their words to suit their own article.  Developing a direction for the interview's use is one thing, but it is another thing to disregard the opinions of the one being interviewed entirely.  It is disrespectful, and also can cause you as the author/one conducting the interview to lose credibility.

#el335 #interviews #interview #interviewing

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

Tumblr #9

In reading Maus by Art Spiegelman, I was able to pick up again on the ways that graphic novels stress the humanity and relatability of the lead character.  When reading Burma Chronicles, I noticed that the narrator stressed his own flaws and almost bumbling nature in order to portray his own humanity honestly.  This made him a relatable narrator, and one that we would be able to narrate.  

The author does this to his father in the first two parts of Maus, by portraying quirks and flaws that he has.  He is portrayed along with his character flaws - he gets angry easily, doesn't seem to love his new wife as much as his old one, and even throws out his son's coat because he thinks he should have a better one.  His father even says that he doesn't want his son to include all the details because they didn't have anything to do with Hitler or the Holocaust or the story that he thought his son wanted to tell.  He says that he doesn't want his son to publish these details because he thought the tale should be respectful and serious in the treatment of the history.  However, his son includes these interludes, such as the  first romantic relationship his father had that he seemed a bit ashamed of.  These show the humanity of the happenings, that they were real people who lived through the Holocaust, not sacred and flawless figures history has glossed over as no more than victims.

Speaking of humanity, I am still trying to decide why I think the author decided to portray everyone as animals.  Perhaps it is because it makes it more accessible to the reader, telling the story in terms of animals, the way George Orwell did with the communist revolution in Animal Farm or the way that cartoon violence was shown in Persepolis the way that the child narrator might have thought of it at the time.  It is not as harsh to the reader having to deal with such terrible things happening to realistic depictions of people.

There is also a question of integrity since he has portrayed parts of his father's story he said not to tell, but there is a great historical value to it and it changes the way we view him as a narrator.  I will have to wait until I have finished the book until I decide how I feel about that.

#el335 #maus #art spiegelman #burma chronicles

[angielavelle-el335-blog]

Seton Hill Chapel

[angielavelle-el335-blog]