comp lit and mediaphilia
Source: Cherry Meltdown
In intermediate school (third to fifth grade), I loved Archie comics. I also loved paper dolls, and I hated that my friends never wanted to play them with me. One day I saw an opportunity and took it. After a good friend and I had made a killing (by fourth grade standards, at least–probably like $5-$10) selling the “fashion” trading cards we invented and drew together, I thought I would make photocopies of Katy Keene, an Archieverse character who was a fashion model, and then make clothes for her with little tabs so that they could be paper dolls. As I had secretly hoped, a lot of the girls in my class thought it was awesome, so I photocopied more for them, someone came up with the idea of using Katy’s body and making our own faces for a cast of characters, and then we had a great game going. I was far from the most artistic or fashionable of the bunch, but still, I started it . Also, I thought I was pretty awesome for just making variations of jeans with T-shirts using different “cool” symbols like peace signs, happy faces, and aliens, as were popular in 1998-9.
(Oh, hey, by the way, if you’re lame and uncreative and also independently wealthy, you can actually buy Katy Keene paper dolls made by professional comics artists, or at least upcycled items featuring old Katy Keene fashion pages. I won’t lie; I loved making my own but I would still love these.) Continue reading →
Posted in fashion
Tagged art , childhood , comics , creativity , fashion , nostalgia , the good the bad the fashion
Sep · 13
My mother likes to tell the story of how my sister, who is mixed but way, way güera , was assigned in elementary school to do a self portrait and colored herself with dark brown crayons, because the children she was friends with were brown, so she assumed she was, too. I like to not think about every time I’ve bought makeup and either bought it way too light because I tend to forget I’m not white, or I’ve bought it too dark because I go, “Oh, wait, I’m black,” but I forget that actually my skin is not the darkest of dark.
Backtrack. Yesterday I found this graphic narrative at Sadie magazine, and while it’s really not about this subject at all, it does bring up an episode from a Babysitters Club book in which Claudia recalls being assigned a self portrait and not knowing what the phrase means. So she draws herself as a colorful butterfly, because that’s how she sees herself, and she gets ridiculed by her teacher and classmates for it. Continue reading →
Posted in the diet
Tagged art , beauty , body image , books , childhood , comics , identity , nostalgia , race , the diet
Aug · 26
I am a huge consumer of media. It’s my favorite. I guess some form of media is everyone’s favorite, so that’s not a very interesting thing to say. But I will continue to elaborate on this as if it is a unique position to take. Just because I think the way and the reason I consume media informs how I pursue scholarship and creative writing.
I’m not remotely a visual artist, but I’ve always had a thing for collage. That probably speaks even more to my love for all kinds of media, since I love to read magazines and cut out phrases and pictures and use them out of context. In my head, my collages are a lot better than they turn out to be in real life, but regardless, I think de-contextualizing and re-contextualizing images and ideas can be really interesting.
My consumption of written media can probably summed up in a similar way. I view it as a web or a collage, where I glean ideas, moments, images, themes, and statements from various books, movies, essays, and songs and find inspiration or meaning. In terms of my academic interests, this usually means using older, seminal works and trying to apply them to newer ones, or applying theoretical concepts to genres that don’t usually use them. In terms of my creative interests, this usually means compiling some kind of dossier of things I find interesting that make me want to explore a theme in a novel or short story. (Thanks to Scrivener, I can now keep that list of interviews, images, current events, and media in the same document as the actual project, which is awesome.) I suppose that seems a little premature and immature, given that the last novel I completed was in 2000 (I just opened the document; it’s 20686 words long, which is just under the word count of the “novel” I am working on now), but that’s how I work. I get incredibly ahead of myself and come up with way too many ideas. In my defense, I think they are mostly worthwhile ideas, rather than the “book ideas” I came up with when I was in middle school, when I could easily come up with 10 a day, most of which had probably already been written. Also, I’m just ensuring that I’ll always have something to say. Also, if it’s true what they say, the first book is the biggest hurdle, and it gets easier after that. So hopefully I’ll finish this novel before 2012, and after that I’ll be able to be much more productive with my other ones.
Anyway. I like to gather interesting things together, and usually they start me on the road towards a set of characters, a plot, and/or a theme. For example, I think I might have an essay in the works using Libba Bray’s new novel, Beauty Queens , the argumentation paper on beauty pageants that I wrote my sophomore year of high school, and the latest issue of Lilith , which deals with “fashioning feminist identity.” I’m looking for a poem to go with it as well. There is a novel I want to do after I finish the one I’m still writing, and among many other things, it’s inspired by Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters , the death of Heath Ledger, and Sophie Dahl’s Playing With the Grown-ups . I love that I can say that and probably still give no idea what that story is. The thing that’s cool about de-contextualizing media is that it seems so obvious and directly inspired, but really it’s probably very original–at least original given that nothing is really original. Media collage is awesome.
Posted in writing
Tagged art , books , novel , writing
May · 18
I’m so excited to be out of school next semester and learn things in a non-traditional way, on my own terms. It will teach me to be self-motivated, and it will force me to keep to a schedule and keep being consistently challenged and/or creative in new ways. I’m going to take a fundamentals of drawing class to train my eye, because I think it will help my writing become more visual. I’m going to make a t-shirt quilt because I like to sew, and because I have so many t-shirts that I don’t need, and because wherever I move, I will never not need a quilt, because everywhere is colder than Tucson. I’m going to learn Hebrew and practice my Portuguese. I’m going to write. I’m going to read everything. I’m going to pull out my cross-stiching again. I’m going to take piano lessons again. And I’m going to do volunteer work. The next eight months are going to feel so good.
I also want to do a puzzle this winter.
Chronicle Books does awesome stationery, journals, and coffee table books. Love them. They have a sweet contest that I want to win, because I’ll get $500 worth of their fabulous stuff. Here’s what I want:
1. The Hebrew Alphabet : because now that I’ll be out of school, I’ll finally have time to teach myself Hebrew!
2. Real Vegetarian Thai : because I can’t get into cooking classes at the community college, so I’ll have to be an auto-didact.
3. Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking : see above.
4. Moleskine : because I’m a writer and I like to be pretentious.
5. Travel Journal : because I have so many miles and think that probably I will just up and go on a week-long trip to Rio or Dublin.
6. Stitchable Stationery : because I love to cross stitch, and I will finally have time to do it again!
7. Elephant Journal : because I don’t really like animals all that much, but I have a weird thing for elephants and turtles.
8. Old School Letter Set : because I am OBSESSED with stationery and have penpals.
9. Volume : because I love media. Obviously.
10. Whip Up Mini Quilts : because quilting is easier than being a seamstress. Maybe.
11. Urgent Second Class : because I’ve been neglecting my journal this semester, and that has to stop.
12. Photo Wisdom : because photography is not something I have a particular knack for, so I love seeing what people who are good at it have to say.
13. You Are Here : because it just looks interesting.
14. File System : because I could stand to be a little more organized.
15. Bon Appetit Binder : because I am so into cooking lately! Love it. Vegetarianism really makes you appreciate your kitchen and skills.
16. One Sketch A Day : because it will be useful when I take the drawing class.
17. Show and Tell : because I love children’s literature above all other kinds of books.
18. Bixology : because I have a secret aspiration to have no aspiration except to bartend.
19. Wine Bites : because what’s better than food and wine together?
20. Once Upon A Time : because I’ve been wanting to read this for a long time.
21. Same Place, More Space : because anywhere I move, I’m going to be poor and live in a box.
So many things to learn, so little time.
*by the way, a commenter on the winning blog wins the books as well. :-p
Posted in books
Tagged art , books , the future
Nov · 20
I completely stole that image off of Google, sorry. But it’s where I was this afternoon, and it was awesome. It houses the museum of Czech cubism, and it is the second museum that I went to just on a whim, knowing nothing about it and thinking that I actually would be underwhelmed, and instead I loved it. My favorite artist was Emil Filla . I want a print of his work, or an original if I can have whatever I want in the world, when I have a home to decorate. And the museum itself, in the House of the Black Madonna, is a cubist building designed by one of the Osma, the group of eight Czech cubists.
I realized that one of the biggest reasons for travel and for visiting galleries and museums is a completely hedonistic one, and I feel guilty about that. But I also feel like it’s inevitable. Why do we learn about other cultures, why do we eat new foods, and why do we discover new artists except to enjoy the experience? But is it cheapened if I think about how I want reproductions of Dalí’s plates in my kitchen, and how I want Torres-García and Filla and Renoir prints on my walls, and how I would love to be able to afford to be an art collector, and how I’d like to cook this or that, and how I prefer cava to other wines and champagnes, and how I want to go to Ireland to learn how to sing and then incorporate that into the songs I write? Or is that in fact the most authentic way to travel? I hate these arguments, but I can’t help thinking of them.
Posted in adventures
Tagged "philosophy" , art , culture , museums , prague , travel
Jul · 30
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