I would like to further explore a concept covered in the class discussions of the book “Jimmy Corrigan.” While the themes of suicide run directly through the text in the potential (and yet undetermined) actions of Jimmy, we briefly touched on the possibility of a sort of “cultural suicide” in our analysis of the postcards. Running with this theme, I would like to look closer at what Ware presents on this topic and present a comparative essay which explores this idea of cultural suicide as Ware sees it and draw in themes of modern mass-media consumer culture. By comparative analysis of Ware’s bleak and self-destroying present and future, I would like to relate how current cultural trends driven by technology are leading us to this eventual fate. I plan to focus mainly on video game technology as the means by which we are committing cultural suicide in this modern age and relate this to the pinnacles of technology of the Columbia Exhibition which Ware accredits to be the destructive forces which cause the bland reality in Jimmy’s present. Through the exploration of this topic, I hope to relate current technologies which were more or less overlooked in class as being a more prevalent threat to our future than other topics exhausted in detail such as artificial intelligence and cyborg technology. Rather than being a direct threat to our existence, I hope to show how other technology such as entertainment can be just as, if not more destructive to our future existence.
1 comment:
I think it's a good & interesting topic. In order to keep it under control, I think you should "read" a limited set of video games, or at least use a couple as examples - it's an interesting topic, and you have a clear argument (although, weirdly, you never put it in clear language - you keep phrasing it passively rather than ever just saying "My argument is that video games are a form of metaphorical cultural suicide," or something like that), but the one danger is generalization - starting out with clear examples would be helpful.
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