Sunday wrap-up: We watch the watchmen

How's the comic book reading going? Alan Moore's other big comic book V for Vendetta was one of the first comics I ever read, so I am remembering my own experience of that as I think about your work this week.

As with the academic reading, it's not so much about having brilliant insights like lightbulbs going off, but about continuing to work at a text, interrogate it and look for those knots of contradictions that we've talked about. From reading your blog posts, I can tell you guys are doing that.

-Rick's description of the art made me laugh: "The shades and hues represent a bad night of acid and vomit."I think we could call this meta-commentary, as it's not just commenting on the text, but commenting on the text in a way that Alan Moore would like. Another good example of this is The Onion's (a joke newspaper, along the lines of the Daily Show or the Colbert Report) obituary of author JD Salinger. I hope you read The Catcher in the Rye or some of his short stories in high school (A Perfect Day for Bananafish?), but this obituary is written to sound like the narrator in The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger's most famous piece.
-Though it's not directly related to style, Kiveth had an interesting description of the characters

the heroes kind of have a mind of their own they do as they please, yes they help society, but still they do as they please. Is kind of like they take advantage of being the heroes. 

How does this seem different from what we normally expect from the superhero/masked adventurer genre?
-Desirey had a a similar reading of the characters, but also asked questions through a feminist lens, particularly focusing on who has control. This is an interesting way to think about power.
-Madison also has a great reading of power and politics. Watchmen definitely seems to be saying something about politics, but what? This is what Madison wrote:  I also think that they might have been added to joke somewhat about politics and how outrageous and stupid they can be.

You guys are also including some great visuals! (If you hover your mouse over the photo, you'll see the file name, which will give you the name of the classmate whose blog I grabbed these from.)

IMPORTANT REMINDERS!
-No class Monday. Focus on finishing Watchmen for our regular meeting of class on Wednesday.
-Part of your participation this week was commenting on my last post. Click here to check out what you need to respond to.