What is maturity?

English historian John Finley wrote that, "Maturity of mind is the capacity to endure uncertainty," which I believe is an excellent definition to apply to Aleksander Hemon's Love and Obstacles. The nerve-wracking scramble for female affection, as other bloggers have pointed out, is a test of maturity that leads him into some gray areas riddled with doubt mitigated by his faith in the effectiveness of the "pill." The image I see clearest in the story is of a young man who is uncertain about himself, where a quest for sexual gratification mirrors a metaphysical search for identity. But when he is beaten and kicked by Franc and his woman chasing ends, the first thing he thinks of is his home, his regular family life, and his breakfast - comforting thoughts, but perhaps indicative of a reflex urge to return to certainty? How long did he endure? Was his pill perhaps symbolic of a lingering childhood optimism that finally gets washed away or was it like the freezer that malfunctions at the end of the story, rendering his journey moot?

Thoughts on Sbrenica

When reading on the atrocities that occurred at Sbrenica and the ineffectiveness of the UN to address leader Ratko Mladic, it got me thinking about how international institutions, though well-intentioned, consistently enable wars like these through their collective silence. One would wonder that if a leader's actions are publicly condemned, why would he still be allowed to participate in international circles and continue to receive politeness instead of protest? This reminds me of how a country can denounce one thing while still feeding their economy - a casual look-the-other-way, if you will...consider Equatoguinean President Nguema Obiang, who has been long cited by the U.S. for violation of human rights and political fairness, yet continues to receive support for his government-backed oil companies.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/7221.htm

Sanctions for abusers of human rights should be swift and absolute, and should, for all reasons, involve a dissolution from international trade and communication. Could Mladic have been stopped? I feel he could have been.

Aleksandar Hemon writes of Sarajevo

I was browsing Aleksandar Hemon's website, www.aleksanderhemon.com, and found one of his recent projects entitled, Nowhere Man, which I encourage everyone to visit. It contains a series of photographs and short entries of prose and poetry that are based on locations, like Sarajevo and my hometown of Chicago. His entry on the the buildings of Sarajevo, Not Buildings, was particularly chilling and a stern departure from the comical nature of Love and Obstacles, and presented a significant case against wartime violence with a slight nihilistic slant.

Humor and the Graphic Novel

One thing that I noticed while reading Persepolis was that owing to the work's visual content, the work was generally funnier than standard texts; I think this is because though humor is conceptive, it is also physical, it is also visual. This is the same principle that makes one laugh at a video reel of John Cleese doing funny walks but one barely snorts at a description of his outrageous postures. Had Satrapi placed the same tale in any other medium without visual context, I doubt the fragile humor would be well sustained. Perhaps this also speaks to the ability of the graphic novel format to "carnivalize" normal representations and make them more palatable to our senses. A good example of this is the graphic adaptation of Shakespeare's controversial Merchant of Venice by Gareth Hines, who carefully places the characters in deliberate postures to convey a certain degree of levity previously unnoticed. Take for example the following image: