The End

This is the last blog here. It has been a great experience blogging, because afterall, it is my first time! The end of Persepolis seemed like it left me hanging. It left me thinking about it. Someone once said that a true great movie is one that makes you think about it afterwards. I think the same goes with a novel, a really great one just leaves you thinking about it. Marjane ended the novel saying it would have been better to just go, with a graphic of her mom lying in her dad's arms. I couldn't really understand what she was saying. It felt like she left me hanging there. Though I couldn't understand what she was trying to say, I definitely felt what she wanted the readers to feel. A feeling of losing something forever, a feeling of never being able to turn back, a very upsetting feeling. Because Marjane ended the novel this way, and left me feeling so upset, I couldn't help but to think about it afterwards. I wanted to know what happened next, I didn't want the book to end there. I wanted to know what really happened to her mom, and what happened to the war. I desperately wanted to know that afterwards, everything turned out fine, because if it didn't it would be too hard to accept, it would be too dreadful. Of course, that would lead me to wanting to read Persepolis 2. But then would reading Persepolis 2 be better? Or is it better to just end there? Maybe leaving me hanging there is what Marjane is trying to do with her ending. Maybe knowing what truly happened afterwards wouldn't be true to the story. Maybe it's like a war story, in order to portray the true meaning of the story, sometimes the truth isn't even important.

Absolute Evil

After Sky's presentation and the song "Dear Mr. President", I started to think about something. We are always complaining about our presidents. Doesn't even matter who it is, every president has been hated by parts of the population. We seem to put the blame of anything and everything on our presidents. We describe them as awful people, we see them as a criminal, putting everyone one's life in danger, we hate them. We have so much to say, get so emotional, so upset and mad at our presidents when we hear of decisions they make in the news. When the news broadcasts criminals actually murdering people, all we do is say to our kids "don't walk alone at night". What is the psychology behind this? Why do we blame our presidents for everything bad that happens in the country? We say of them as if they were pure evil, they don't care about anyone else put themselves, and they simply don't care about people dying. But is anyone pure evil? Can anyone really say that he or she has no feelings when he or she sees someone die? Does anyone care about nothing but him or herself? Does anyone like to see homeless people? Does anyone like to see soldiers die? Is anyone just pure evil? Or is it just us wanting to blame someone, anyone, for the things that are just too awful to accept? Do we blame someone in order for awful things to be bearable? I can never imagine someone to be pure evil. We are all human, how can anyone be just completely evil? People can choose to deny themselves and pretend to be completely emotionless, to be completely ignorant, to be completely evil. People can be too prideful to admit that they have feelings too. But can anyone truely be emotionless or ignorant? Can anyone be pure evil?

President

What I remembered from Donald's presentation on the article "After Iran gets the Bomb" is that the USA has three choices 1st is to bomb them, which would take forever to do and impossible to do because we cannot bomb every single place, the 2nd is to talk to them, which would be really hard to do also because they don't really want to talk, and the last is to accept it and try to contain it, which would probably be the best solution. Listening to Donald's presentation, I could not help but to ponder on what I would do if I were the president. I cannot figure out how presidents live. Let's just take this Iran thing for example, if I were the president, would I bomb Iran? or would I try to talk to them? or would I just accept it and try to contain it? What should I do? Because I just know that whatever decision I make, someone will always think I made the wrong decision, I was really stupid, or I didn't know what I was thinking. No matter what I do, I can never make the United States happy, there will always be someone who hates me, who thinks I'm stupid. Then how do presidents live? How do you live knowing someone hates your guts? How do you sleep at night, knowing each decision you make can impact a million other people? I can't even decide on which restaurant to take my mom to when she visits me. So how do presidents live? How do they live with so much pressure on their shoulders? How do they live thinking about pleasing other all the time? How do they live knowing that the decision they make today will be learned by kids in school 50 years later? With so much pressure, so much hate, so much support, and so much love, how do presidents live?

Atruism

Are you selfish? Most people are more likely to say no. We like to believe that we are farely good persons, and therefore, we think of ourselves as somewhat altuistic. However, at least for me, that is only true when everything is going nicely. When I have a school to go to, when I have food to eat, when I have a home to live in, when I have a decent life, I am pretty altruistic. But what happens when I don't have food to eat? when I don't have shelter? when I am dying on the streets? Will my basic survival instincts allow me to be altruistic? or it'll simply bring out my selfishness? Reading the Persepolis, on pages 87 (where the two women are fighting for food in the supermarket), 107 (where Marji's aunt abandoned her new born baby), and 140 (where a bomb hit Marji's street), I wondered why these people in the book seemed so selfish.

From page 87, I made a conclusion that the two women were just selfish people, if I were in their position, I would definitely have acted differently. Reading page 107, I was not sure if it were just that the aunt was a selfish person. I was not as certain that I would have acted more altuistic than the aunt, because from my understanding, no one loves you as much as your mom. In my opinion, if anyone were to be altruistic, it would be a mom for her child. So if the aunt acted so selfishly to her baby under that situation, would I have been able to be selfless if I were her? Page 140, Marji heard that a bomb had hit her street, and it was at the end of the street, which had two houses, one was Baba-Levy's and the other was hers. Though the Baba-Levys were good friends of Marji, in that moment, she had wished that if there were to be someone dead, it were them and not Marji's parents. I knew right away that I could no longer draw a conclusion that they were just bad people, selfish people, I would have done better. I knew that Marji was not the selfish kind, I knew I would most likely have been just as altuistic or selfish as Marji. For pages 87 and 107, it was easy for me to just blame it on those people for being too selfish, I did not want to admit that maybe "they are just selfish people" is not the entirety of the problem, because that meant I might have did the exact same thing as those people did, under those circumstances, that meant I wasn't any better, and that meant, there was something more that caused the selfishness in those situations.

After thinking about it more, I realized that maybe those people weren't the problem. Maybe the problem was the situation. Of course, I would never know how I would react under those circumstances, I would obviously wish that I would be altruistic, but I would never know until I was in those situations. But maybe, under those life-death circumstances, our human basic instincts just lead us to the path of selfishness. Maybe it'd take an extremely strong will to be altruistic.

The Key

The key. The golden key to heaven. Reading the chapter "The Key" for the first time, I'm pretty sure everyone would think that the key is just a crazy propaganda for drafting poor boys to war. We'd all think that it is crazy to actually believe in the key. Without thinking about it further, I was pretty sure I would not have completely, totally, absolutely known that the key was just a trick from the government that wants to send me to war. However, thinking about it further, is everyone of those boys so dumb? Did not anyone, just one person, figure out that the key was just to send him to war? I'm pretty certain that the entire group of boys was dumb is not the answer to taking the key and going to war. What if they all knew what was ahead, what if they knew that if they took the keys, they would be sent to war and die. What if they knew that the key was only meant to somewhat trick them to go to war? What if they knew, but they still went? This made me think. Why would they do that? If they knew the road ahead was death, but they still went for it? What does it mean? Think about the religious people nowadays. For most religions, self-dicipline is probably to certain extends important, and valued. Why do people nowadays believe in the Gods they believe in? Most of the time, at least for Christianity, believing in a religion means giving up some of your so-called freedom and practicing self-dicipline. We do this to possess the key. The key to heaven, or to whichever equivalent in the religions. Maybe, just maybe, that sometimes, we choose the key over our so-called freedom, we choose the key over life because we simply want something better. So when we think we've seen freedom, we've seen life, we then take anything offered, in hope of finding something better than freedom, something better than life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoOoSoSePi0

Love <3

Love seems to have meant different things than what it does now. In the Persepolis, Marji's maid fell in love with the neighbor and was writing letters back and forth with him. The boy neighbor seemed to reciprocate her love for him. However, once the boy found out that Marji's maid was only a maid and was not a daughter of Marji's dad, he stopped his relationship with Marji's maid. It seems like Marji's maid understood very well how the system worked too, since she knew it was important to hide her true identity from the boy. Love seems to have meant love + social class + money + status. Living in the world right now, I obviously think love is simply love, love=love, and social classes, and status can't stop love. I would also think that what they called love back then is silly, and not true love. I would want to think that I am more courageous and would stand up for myself if I were truly in love. However, I have never lived in the world back then, so I wouldn't have known. It might have been the pressure from parents, judgement from the society, and other issues that I would never understand unless I lived in that time period. I wonder if the girls back then were always the ones who are more willing to just ignore the whole world and go with their feelings. Since girls seem to function more on feelings while guys seem to function on logic. Status is also a very important thing to guys, therefore, I would guess that girls back than are more willing to give up everything and pursue their true love while guys back then (unless the love they're pursuing is in a higher social status than they are) are more hesitant to give up their status and money for a girl they honestly, truely love. So what is love? All we can know for sure is that Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Is it Art?

What is art? Is graffiti art? Why is a picture with circles and a few lines art? People have been arguing about what is art and what isn't. Most of the time when we think about art we think about a painting in a frame. The painting is most likely painted with techniques we ourselves lack. When something is hard to draw and pretty looking, we normally can see it as art. But what about splashing paint on a wall? What about using those techniques to draw something on the street walls? The social contruction of our reality gives us the idea of what is art and what isnt. Many people would not consider graffiti as art, but sees a painting in the museum and whatever is drawn on it as art. We have been told since we were little what is art and what isn't. Though most of the time, at least for me, I cannot tell why it is art? My reality has been socially constructed that something is an art if it is something you cannot draw yourself. But when I start growing up, this reality doesn't seem to always apply. Something are called art, and art put in museums and I honestly would not understand why it is art? People see feelings and emotions and expressions in the paintings. Even though the techniques are so simple that anyone could have did the same thing, it seems to be called art, because it expresses emotions of the artist. If the expression of emotions is the standard of art, then graffiti would be art because it is full of emotions and expressions. So is the standard of art the techniques used in making it? or is it how much emotions it expresses? I think there isn't a set standard of art. Each individual has his or her own standards of art, as long as you see it or don't see it as art, that's all it matters. Enjoy the art that you enjoy, and let the others enjoy those you don't.

Persepolis as a graphic/movie

Responding to Katie's presentation on the Persepolis movie. After watching a short part of the Persepolis movie and reading the novel afterwards, I realized that the movie seems to be missing something. The movie did not seem as complete as the graphic novel. In Katie's presentation, she said that the movie is the complete Persepolis, containing both Persepolis 1 and 2. That is probably why the movie seems to be moving from scenes too scenes too quickly. When I watched the small part of the movie, I did not understand it that well, and I couldn't soak myself in the scene, I couldn't feel the scenes. When afterwards I read the novel, I could understand everything, and everything was going in just the right pace that I could feel each scene. Though the movie is nice to watch, the novel is probably the most original portrayal of Marjane's childhood. Also responding to the class discussion, why did Marjane write her memoir as a graphic? Why didn't she just write it as a traditional novel? Personally, I think the graphic speaks to the readers in a very different way than a novel would. Not only do graphics paint a more vivid image, it also speaks to a much larger crowd. Many people don't like reading novels, such as children or student like me, who don't randomly grab a book and start reading. But most people do enjoy comics, they are, in many ways, easier to understand. Writing her memoir as a graphic novel gives her so many extra tools to work with. She can use these pictoral tools to convey her feelings and message, which if she were to write it in traditional novel form, she would only have words as a tool. On page 43, as Marjane's mom is saying "NOW THAT THE EVIL HAS LEFT!" we see a snake/dragon-like creature surrounding the picture, giving us a whole other messege completely not given in words. If it were in words it would probably have meant "little did she know that when she said...she was completely wrong". The graphic gives it a whole other level of conveying the messege to us. We feel the creeping of something evil while seeing that on the surface, everything looked to be going perfectly. I doubt Marjane would have been able to convey the same feeling as well if she wrote it in words. Writing her memoir in graphic lets her book connect to the readers in a very deep and personal way.

Marji as a prophet

In page 7 of the Persepolis, Satrapi talks about how she wanted to be a prophet when she was little because she was born with religion and she wanted to change a few things she's noticed around her. She wanted to be a prophet because she saw that her maid didn't eat with them, she saw that her dad drove a nice car and also that her grandmother was in pain all the time. It's interesting that Marji, as a little child, notices these things that makes her feel unfair and uneasy. She also believes that being a prophet would change these things. Though that's what Marji says she believes, she also says that, in page 7, she is going to make changes by simply forbiddening them. She says she wants to be a prophet but yet the way she describes how she is going to rule seems more like a king, or ruler. It's interesting to see her view on prophets. To Marji, prophets are rulers, ones that set rules and people follow their commands. To me, prophets are outcasts, no one listens to them and they have no power.

Blogs and Facebook

After reading the articles on blogging and hearing Ms. Patton's story about how one of her students was tracked down by her father, whom she did not want to have contact with. Just because Ms. Patton had put her name on the internet for a little while, that student was tracked down by her father, and it was a big pain in the bum for Ms. Patton to take her name off the net. It made me think about exposing myself on the internet. Even though I don't have blogs (except for this one), but I believe Facebook is the same thing. Like most people my age, I have a Facebook page. Even though it is not a blog where I write paragraphs about my days and my feelings, but there are countless applications in Facebook that allows the users to do the same thing. One of them is Notes, where I can write whatever I feel like writing, just like a blog. I don't use that application, in fact, I don't put much information about myself on my Facebook page. The worst information that someone with a bad intention can use against me is probably my photos. But even that, I'm pretty sure that there aren't pictures of me on Facebook that can do much harm to me. So in the end, I think blogs or Facebook or whatever the site may be, it all just depends on what we're willing to put out there for people to know about ourselves. And if anything bad happens because of the information we post on the net, then we'll just have to take the consequences ourselves and learn from them.