I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.
The readings that I presented on this week were some of the most interesting and powerful that I’ve had the fortune of reading thus far in my grad school career. The use of semiotics is something that I understood to a greater degree as I read the text, and it is that understanding that made the series that much more powerful.
I just wanted to follow up all that I said in class with a little expansion on the topic.
A story – or a series of stories, rather – such as this is going to evoke emotion regardless of the format. But putting words on a page seems less than sufficient for the topics at hand. It is the photos, the drawings, the collages – the semiotics and semiotic theories that drive this series home like an arrow to the heart. They make it more than a recounting of tragic tales and create a world in which we have to step into and walk through to get from one side of the story to the other, and along the way, we get our hands dirty, our shoes get scuffed, we sweat, bleed, struggle to catch our breath. And with that comes not just tales from a distant land, but stories that live in the room with us as we read.
