Genres Web Paper 3

            Serials have become a regular part of most American’s lives, in the form of episodic television programs, such as House MD, Gossip Girl, and Grey’s Anatomy. 

            Thoughts of this paper were generated from the class discussion on 3/30/10. It consists of ideas that excited me at the time and continue to interest me today. And so, my task stands: I must formulate the March 30th, 2010 stockpile of raw brain material into a coherent paper; all of these separate thoughts need to have a connecting theme in order to make a strong and well-structured paper. What I have come up with is a larger theme running through this class as a whole.           

The style of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis is striking in that it is so bare, composed solely of black and white images and somewhat caricatured in its simple portrayal of events and individuals. Satrapi employs a purposeful minimalism and understatement in her approach to graphic narrative. This approach emphasizes the degree to which much of the horror and alienation she experienced as a result of growing up in an oppressive and war-torn society cannot be expressed or represented in any form. Instead, the reader is brought into a stark world of black and white that implies what cannot be fully communicated visually or textually.

Preface and Explanation

The following paper originally included photographs of pages from Marjane Sartrapi’s graphic novel “Persepolis.” I used these images to demonstrate my points to the reader. Upon glancing over the images, however, it occurred to me that I might make an even more effective point by attempting to describe the images in prose, rather than to demonstrate them in their original form.

   In the past the thought of a film adaption of a novel brought so much joy to my heart that I could barely contain the excitement. I hoped that by seeing my favorite characters brought to life on screen people like my sister, who did not enjoy reading, would be able to understand my love for the novels. Movie after movie was a disappointment. Ella Enchanted, “O”, Harry Potter, Cruel Intentions, The Joy Luck Club, North Country, Apocalypse Now, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc. I either found myself whispering “that never happened”, or “I promise it was much cooler in the book”. Frankly my heart could not take it anymore. I stopped hoping and learned to expect the worst.

                                        Books

                                            Movies

Presenting: Memory

“We can call a book that emphasizes the who over the what—the shown over the summed, the found over the known, the recent over the historical, the emotional over the reasoned—a memoir.” –Larson, Memoir and the Memoirist. “A discovery which then becomes the story.”

Louisa Amsterdam

English 209: Emerging Genres

The Online Journal as Separate from the Blog