Fun Home

Fun Home was not a real "fun home" at all. The family in Fun Home experienced various of crisis. Father was dead, Daughter was lesbian... How can we call such a family "fun home"?

I have to say I don't really like Fun Home, not only because I'm not interested in the topic, but also because the style Alison drew. I feel very hard to figure out what she was trying to tell us. There are so many words on each pages, which is not normal to see in a comic book. Usually, there would be more painting than words in comic book, but in Fun Home, I think words also played a very important role. Because there were so much information, I always got lost when I was reading it. I have to go back and forth to check precious information.

For the topic, I'm not against homosexuals, but I don't like the way she present it to us. On page 214, there are 3 pictures showing homosexual activities, which I think is too much and unnecessary. I don't think Alison wants reader to dislike homosexuals, instead, she showed support to homosexuals sometimes. But in the way she presented it, I don't think most people would like to see it. If she can just take out the last two pictures, it would be much better to accept homosexual relationship.

Although I don't really like it, I still think it's a good novel. I just don't think it's a good comic. The story was touching. To me, it's more about how daughter finally understands her father rather than homosexual oriented. Love between family members are the most valuable one. It will never fade away.

SKIM

Unlike the Japanese comic, Skim seems to be more realistic.

When I was reading it, I can easily imaging how they communicate with each other and why they were doing so. At that certain age, I guess girls all seem to be dramatic. We think we are different, unique. We think something special happened to us, or we look for something special and make it happen to us. In the comic, either Lisa, Kim, or Julie, they all think the world is going around them, they just showed it in different way. Kim tried to be a witch to show her difference from others, and she always think other girls are "stupid", all the things they did were "stupid". She tried to avoid to be similar as others. At the mean time, she doesn't want to stand out either. She just want to be a "cool girl". I think it's because she is afraid to get hurt from others. She had such an awful experience that being invited to the party dressing like a bear, but end up being left outside of the house in the dark. I believe this experience affected her badly, which made her not trust others anymore. That's why when Ms. Archer showed her friendliness to Kim, she felt so happy and over estimate about the "happy ending".

If it's a Japanese comic, those girls will be more romantic, and there will always be a special ending. However, although I'm a big fan of Japanese comic, I also like Skim, because it's such a realistic comic and everyone can find their shadows somewhere in the painting. We all had similar experience like that, maybe not that dramatic, without those experience, we wouldn't become the person as we are. Skim reminds us the time we experienced those confusions. It might not be the most wonderful time, but it's always the most memorable one for every body.

I found these pictures and the clip from youtube can represent some of the key terms of our class, such as body image, Barbie, make-up. I can see these image everywhere. The reason why I chose some Asian girls image is because I want to show you how we changed. In Kinky, Oriental Barbie says Asian Barbie have smaller breast, well, that was in the past. As Asian know more about western world, they want to be like a westerner. Now, the Asian models all have big breast and tiny waist. Also, they want to look like you, like you have Roman nose, deep eyehole, and small face. So you can see that they either make up to look like you, or have plastic surgery. I personally feel sad about it. I think we have oriental standard of beauty and you have western standard of beauty. We are different, that's why we can enjoy variety of beauty. If we all look like the same, I think I will get tired of this type of beauty. I prefer natural beauty. As long as I'm healthy and confident, I'm beautiful.

Late post of BJD...Sorry~ :(

I might have amnesia... This work should be done a long time ago but I just "kept forgetting" about it... If you see this, please introduce a good doctor to me... Thanks~
I'm just kidding~ LOL But I'm really sorry to have it done so late. Anyway, here I go.
For the two version of BJD, I like the movie better. One of the reasons is that I originally like movie better than book because I'm too lazy.. I prefer some one telling the story to me rather than explore it by myself. Another reason is that I think the movie did a good job to keep the form of diary. It's really hard to make a movie based on a diary because diary usually contains some routines and have a slow process of what's going on. The director cut a lot of routines and make the process a little bit quicker than the book, but nothing important was lost during this transform. The actors and actress were very professional. I saw a serious but gentle Mark Darcy. I saw a charming but flirty Daniel Cleaver. I saw a silly but delightful Bridget Jones. All the characters are kept as they appeared in the book. However, I do noticed a difference. In the book, Bridget Jones was the only main character, because it was her diary. Other people were just supporting roles. But in the movie, it seems like Bridget and Darcy were the main characters while Daniel was a very important supporting role. This change made the movie have a clear topic, which is the journal of finding true love for Bridget Jones. I like this change.

Kinky

Before reading it, I thought poem should be difficult to understand. However, Kinky is like casual essay in a poem form. Although it's still kind of hard for me to understand all of them, I can understand most. That's far better than I thought. :)
It's my first time read poems about Barbie. The poems I read before were about love, environment, and other noble stuffs. Barbie is just a toy(to me),which I never had one because I preferred Transformer toys better when I was young...
Although I'm not a fan of Barbie, I still like those poems, they are vivid. I can imagine the scene when I was reading it. When I read about "she could come from Japan, Hong Kong, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, or Korea. The little girl who plays with her can decide", I saw the scene that two girls arguing about what country does the Barbie come from. One might prefer Japan, the other might prefer China. Guys may never understand why girls argue about such "boring" stuff, because they don't understand how important it is. If the Barbie comes from Japan, she can wear Kimono sometimes, but if she comes from China, she might need to wear Qipao instead. It's different culture. When we play with dolls, we are serious about it. We will fit the doll into a typical kind of culture and treat it like a human being. The author did that too. In her poems, Barbie is not only a doll, she is also a human, sometimes a woman and sometimes a girl. Because she is a human, she also have emotion. I was impressed by "Bisexual Barbie". The author was so thoughtful, she created all kinds of Barbie, made it like real world. Why can't Barbie be a lesbian? If she is a female, then there is some possibility that she could become a lesbian. Just because we never thought that Barbie will like woman instead of man, doesn't mean she can be so.
I think Kinky is very humanistic, because in Kinky, Barbie can be anybody. She can be a lesbian, or a girl fell in love with her brother,or an Antichrist girl. Kinky is also sort of feminist, because Barbie began to be aware of her body and she was not the girl that everyone want her to be. She can be the girl she wants to be. The girl who don't like difficult math class, or the girl who needs a therapy. She's not the girl only stands for sexy, grace beautiful, and skinny, but also the girl stands for all the other girls. I like realistic Barbie more than the traditional one because she can share my feeling now, not like the old days when I saw her and thought:"It might be the right time for me to keep fit."
Well, I do have a question: Barbie is considered to be a underage girl's toy, but the author wrote so many "adults contents", so who are the target reader of Kinky?