Brave New World
"Our task in this project was to recreate a scene from the book Brave New World in a graphic novel form. Most students were paired into teams of authors and artists, though several worked alone and handled both aspects of the task. The authors wrote a paper analyzing one of the main characters in the novel and used noun-phrase apposites and concessive theses to make their arguments. Artists focused on key choices of moment, frame, image, word,and flow in creating a graphic novel about the chosen scene. Our exhibition featured both an art show of our graphic novels, and a seminar discussion about Brave New World."
ARTIST STATEMENT
- In the book BNW Aldous Huxley creates a crazy society where everyone is under the control of the government. There are different social classes of this society including; Alpha (“the upper class”), Beta (“the second upper class”) ,Gamma (“the middle class”), Delta (“the second lower class”), Epsilon (“the lower class”), Double-Plus (“the superior subdivision among Alphas”), Plus (“the superior subdivision among Alphas, Betas, Gammas or Deltas, but inferior to Double-Plus”), Minus (“the inferior subdivision among Alphas, Betas, Gammas or Deltas”), savage (“a person outside the integrated portions of society, and therefore separate from all classes”). They use different types of hypnopedia to teach “kids” to love their social class. They take soma (the drug resembles a hangoverless tranquilliser or an opiate) as a substitute for “happiness”. In the scene we chose, it describes how the reservation society thrives for rain and asks for it through a ceremony. Before the ceremony Bernard (An alpha plus, a psychologist) goes to Mustapha Mond (An alpha plus, World controler) to ask to go to the savage reservation and during that conversation Mond has a flashback and tells Bernard about it.
- In the graphic novel, on the second page first frame it shows Lenina and Bernard walking towards the balcony where they see the ceremony happening. This shows a choice of moment. On the first page, first frame it shows a outlook of the landscape around the savage reservation. This shows a choice of frame. On the second page, second frame it shows a native dancing around the altar asking for rain. This shows a good choice of image. third page third frame shows choice of word because in this it shows john entering the house and talking to bernard and bernard talking to john. The choice of flow that works well is the flashback Bernard has when he meets John because the DHC told him about a trip he took to the reservation years ago where he lost his girlfriend and she was pregnant.
- Throughout this project we both learned that teamwork is key.
Mckayla- Throughout this project I learned how to ask for peer critique. Sometimes I wouldn’t know how to draw a specific scene so I would ask my fellow artists for help. I used the five choices of flow, image, moment, frame and word. In my graphic novel I used all of the choices to make my novel have a better state of “flow”. For example on the fifth frame it shows when Lenina and Bernard are walking towards the ceremony and you know that they are walking and not standing because it shows choice of moment(s). I thought to put this in the novel because of feedback I received from my peers.