Kip's Lecture: 5

          So I assume our next project deals with personal narrative.  This should be fun, I like writing stories. I think my favorite topic that Kip covered today was Sally Mann's photography.  I really dislike how much the media has sexualized everything, and I appreciate Mann's perspective on the subject.  Because she is looking at her nude children from a maternal point of view, she is taking focus away from the inherent sexuality that is associated with nudity.  Her photos were not provocative in a sexual sense, but more stirring in a cultural context.  It is not a regular thing to see children above, say five years old, naked in a public setting.  So when Mann confronts us with her typical life, we don't know how to react at first.  Her photographs are beautiful and strange, and I enjoyed learning about her today.

          Lynda Barry's comic, The Aswang, was hilarious. I love stories like that.  Barry made the personalities of both her grandmother and her mother known through simple dialogue, and also tied in the complexity of mother-daughter relationships over the span of three generations, all in a few pages of a comic. Awesome!

          I'm still a little confused about Marlon Riggs' piece from Tongues Tied.  I'm not sure what it was about.  Did it concern a personal narrative in the form of snapping fingers? I don't know.  It was weird, and I feel like it was parodying something.
          I feel like I have a better sense of what a personal narrative is supposed to entail now. Bring it on!