Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Literature? Light of Thy Countenance


From the very beginning of the quarter, one of our goals has been to figure out what is literature.  How do we define something as being literary?  Personally, I believe that literature can be any written (or spoken) piece of work that represents a language or culture.  Therefore, based off this definition, I would definitely argue that Alan Moore’s Light of Thy Countenance is an example of literature—a truly unique form, but literature nonetheless.

What makes Light of Thy Countenance so unique is its format.  Told in the form of a comic book, it still would not be considered normal for that type of media.  Told in first person point of view, I also found the beginning horribly confusing, because I could not tell who was narrating the story.  Right from the beginning, the narrator appears to transition for being a god, to this particular woman with a troubled past, to an actress playing the role of that first woman, then back to some god?  It was not until a couple pages after that, that I realized that the narrator was actually a personified version of the television.  From that point, I started being able to understand more of what it was talking about and I could follow the points that Moore was trying to make via that television.

The points made about television in Moore’s work really portrayed American culture very well over the last few decades.  At first when television describes its first few decades, we can see that it truly played a different role in our culture back then than it does now.  Before, it acted as a way to inform people of news and what was going on in the world.  But after World War II, Moore points out that the television really became more about consumerism and gaining a profit.  Moore references Frankenstein a few times in this section to maybe suggest that the transformation of the television may have been for the worse, rather than better.  He even compares the television to the idea of religion and gods because he plays with the idea that our culture began worshiping the television more than they worshiped religion.

Because of the points and statements that Moore makes, I truly believe that it contributes to the argument of his work being literature.  While it is presented in an unusual way, its still literary to me.

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