Final Project

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Langston Hughes’s poem, “Suicide’s Note” is incredibly short. I feel that since it is so short, this video has done a pretty good job of increasing effectiveness and mood of the poem. Putting the poem to the song “Tears for Fears” set a somber mood before the three lines and twelve words of the poem are slowly put on the screen. The music choice was excellent for this poem, as it guides the reader toward the sad feeling the poem’s title suggests. While the song does do a great job of setting an appropriate mood for this poem, its lyrics make it difficult to pay attention to the poem itself, and the message is somewhat lost. Also, the effectiveness of the song in this machinima version of this poem was lessened by the use of scenery and characters from the Xbox video game, Halo.
In Family Guy, Season 3, Episode 5, Stewie quotes from Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” Stewie and Brian are having a snowball fight when Stewie ducks behind a tree and comes back with a very large, mechanized snowball cannon. Before firing the cannon at Brian, Stewie says, “Now is the winter of [your] discontent.” This quote happens at the beginning of the episode just as this soliloquy opens Shakespeare’s play. In this situation, this quote was just hilarious. Shakespeare’s Richard was not so much protesting his discontent, as celebrating his family’s recent good fortune. More recently, “winter of discontent” was used to describe the British winter of 1978 – ’79 when strikes were widespread.

Suicide Note

Langston Hughes’s poem, “Suicide’s Note” is incredibly short. I feel that since it is so short, this video has done a pretty good job of increasing effectiveness and mood of the poem. Putting the poem to the song “Tears for Fears” set a somber mood before the three lines and twelve words of the poem are slowly put on the screen. The music choice was excellent for this poem, as it guides the reader toward the sad feeling the poem’s title suggests. While the song does do a great job of setting an appropriate mood for this poem, its lyrics make it difficult to pay attention to the poem itself, and the message is somewhat lost. Also, the effectiveness of the song in this machinima version of this poem was lessened by the use of scenery and characters from the Xbox video game, Halo.
In Family Guy, Season 3, Episode 5, Stewie quotes from Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” Stewie and Brian are having a snowball fight when Stewie ducks behind a tree and comes back with a very large, mechanized snowball cannon. Before firing the cannon at Brian, Stewie says, “Now is the winter of [your] discontent.” This quote happens at the beginning of the episode just as this soliloquy opens Shakespeare’s play. In this situation, this quote was just hilarious. Shakespeare’s Richard was not so much protesting his discontent, as celebrating his family’s recent good fortune. More recently, “winter of discontent” was used to describe the British winter of 1978 – ’79 when strikes were widespread.

Light of Thy Countenance

Alan Moore’s graphic novel, “Light of Thy Countenance” is a literary piece of work. The most important thing that makes a piece of work literary is its distinguishableness from other works, mainly its originality and its creative and/or artistic intent. Works that are considered literary are not written just to entertain, but also to deliver a message, or provide insight into some aspect of light. Stories like Harry Potter are not considered literary because they are written for entertainment purposes, and are to be read at face value, having little or no deeper meaning to read in to. This graphic novel is literary because it is original and it provides messages on many levels that apply to many. “Light of Thy Countenance” provides insight into the dangers of pop-culture and television. This novel was clearly not written for merely entertainment purposes, but to warn people about the direction that television is taking their society. Alan Moore’s novel is also filled with subtle suggestions. The beginning of the novel opens with a white dot that zooms into a pub in England, showing that this novel is applicable to the whole world and to individuals at the same time. This image of a white dot is recurring throughout the novel and is the white dot in the center of an old CRT TV as it turns on. At the end of the novel it zooms out to show the white dot, and this time it shows the white dot as an egg being fertilized by sperm. This shows that our ideals, our obsession with television, is being passed on to future generations throughout the entire world. I have seen it myself; in third world countries I’ve seen whole families, six to ten people, in their house, which is a single room with a hotplate, gathered around a TV. This shows how much people today value TV, these families, that share the same room to sleep in together as they also have to cook dinner in, spend what little money they have on a TV. TV helps us escape from reality, but Alan Moore is showing that we overuse it, like a drug. Also, Alan Moore’s diction throughout the novel is very scholarly. He uses large words with very specific meanings to deliver his message.