Dracula, Frankenstein, and The T-Virus: Resident Evil's Victorian Roots

Like many gamers, Resident Evil was my introduction to survival horror. Growing up,  I was a Nintendo fanboy, so I didn't get to play the series until the Gamecube remake, but it still changed the way I look at games. A cautious gamer by nature, I was thrilled to finally discover a game that rewarded my play style but still challenged me. Since then, I've slowly played my way through most of the series (though I only just played and beat Resident Evil 2 via PSN download last month) while acknowledging but shrugging off most of the criticisms concerning the game mechanics and stories. I've also earned three degrees in literature. It's the job of the literary academic to place a work within the greater context of its time, its culture, and even with other times and cultures. I've made Victorian literature one of my areas of research and begun to connect some of it to one my favorite video game series.

This area of interest began whilst I was first playing Resident Evil 5 in 2009. As I played it, I was struck with the number of plot similarities between it and Sir. H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines--one of my favorite novels. Haggard epitomizes one of the most popular late 19th century British literary genres--the Adventure Story for Boys--and many of its characteristics are found in Resident Evil 5 (and even Resident Evil 4): travel to a distant land, horrific events, exotic women, and treasure of some kind, all found on the route to "manhood". But Resident Evil 5 and King Solomon's Mines share more than similar plots; at one point or another, both faced accusations of racism. I've written on this before, both online and for a conference, so I don't want to turn this into an academic presentation or a class lecture (if interested, here's a link to the Flash presentation on the topic that I made for my literature class).

Dracula? Frankenstein? Zombies? Could be anything in there...

But The Adventure Story for Boys was just one popular genre of Victorian literature. Others included the Suspense, the Invasion-Scare Story, and the Gothic novel. The bulk of the Resident Evil series embodies each of these at some time or another. For starters, anyone who's at least played the original Resident Evil in any of its incarnations can attest to the Gothic feel of the mansion--the game's chief setting. And many of the games in the early chronology use exactly the same style--ornate tapestries, grim period art, gas lantern-level lighting, brass key security, etc. It screams of late-19th century Gothic aesthetics, and the designers clearly had them in mind. For an even more over the top example, look at Resident Evil 0's Ecliptic Express. Have you ever ridden Amtrak? I have. It's nothing like that. Resident Evil 4 even takes place partially in a European castle. And Resident Evil 2's secretary journals even peak over the fourth wall when she writes about not understanding the police chiefs' obsession with renaissance-like art that he displays around the police station.

[Read the Rest at Bitmob!]

The 6 Steps of the Rhetorical Analysis: Weekly Student Spotlight

This week's Student Spotlight maps Scott McCloud's Six Steps to our Rhetorical Analysis essay. Incidentally, Chapter 7 is my favorite in Understanding Comics. For one, it raises important questions and discussion about art; how different artists approach the Six Steps (with Morgan Freeman mastering them at the end) is incredibly interesting. Secondly, McCloud's Six Steps can be applied to just about anything, and the application of them can force us to really consider the creation process, as Jakob demonstrates below:

Don't Judge By the Cover Alone

In all honesty I wasn't looking forward to reading this chapter at all. The first few pages didn't spark an interest. I did become interested once it started getting to where McCloud started describing each artist and the steps that he/she went through. Then I started thinking about all the work that I had been doing for each of my classes along with previous classes. Even when writing our rhetorical analysis paper do we use these steps. Idea and purpose were used for the content of our papers. Our form was the paper itself. Idiom is our vocabulary and subject matter along with structure being MLA format. Craft is used for our papers just by our will to "get the job done." Now surface in our paper is harder to put my thumb on. I don't really see how surface comes into a rhetorical analysis paper but I'm thinking that maybe it has to do with the way that the essay itself is presented. But, this chapter actually contains some valuable points in the pursuit of the understanding of comic value.

 Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Weekly Student Spotlight: More Scott McCloud!

I have some excellent student bloggers this semester! It's made this week's Student Spotlight choice very difficult. But there can only be one! Margaret's excellent summary of Chapter 6 of Understanding Comics is not only well written, but it's a fantastic quick-reference piece of the chapter's concepts, and that was one of the hopes for student blogging to begin with! So check it out, and give her some feedback!

Hurray for Show and Tell! The Balance of Pictures and Words

Scott McCloud explains in chapter six how comics are all about show and tell...The pictures show whats going on and the words explain in depth whats happening. There are different types of show and tell when it comes to comics. The different ones are word specific-which have pictures to show but need text to complete it, picture specific-words do more they are like a "soundtrack", duo specific-words and pictures do the same thing, additive- words or pictures "amplify" or "elaborate", parallel- the words and pictures follow different paths, montage- the words are literally apart of the picture, interdependent- the words and pictures go "hand in hand" they both need each other. Pictures and words work together when it comes to comics. They are a team and have to work together to accomplish a goal. There needs to be balance when it comes to comics.

 Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

How We Understand McCloud's Rhetoric...Weekly Student Spotlight

Last week, my Rhetoric of Comics class began blogging for the semester. Their first assignment was summaries of Chapters 3 and 4 from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, our main course text. In this week's Student Spotlight, heli143 discusses the advantages of McCloud choosing a comic to deliver his message about comics. It's an important observation since many students (including myself as an undergrad) take for granted how the medium of the text supports McCloud's rhetoric. It's a brilliant move, and it's one of the reasons why his book is so appropriate for a Composition classroom.

How We Understand Panels and Time....

In my opinion McCloud did a very good job at explaining and helping me “understand” both closure and time frames in both these chapters. I really like how this entire book is in comic book style. I am able to grasp the simplicity of reading a comic in an educational manner and I really think that's great. McCloud makes things much easier to understand while giving us examples of everything he’s trying to teach. This book so far actually has me interested! However I really want to color this book.

 Questions? Quibbles? Controversies? Share them on heli's blog!