A Reaction to "Tailspin"'s Visual Vertigo

Undoubtedly, Christine Wilks captures the breeding tension of an uncomfortable family dinner between three generations of people in her piece of electronic literature, "Tailspin." What I especially liked about this piece was how it still functioned as what we would consider a "normal" narrative, in that I still got a feel for a "structured" plot, characters, setting, and meaning, in comparison to the works we read last week. Even though it was broken up and the reader could read the paragraphs in different order, you are still able to arrive to the same conclusion of the piece at the end. Additionally, I liked the fact that you could hover over the spirals and have the text, sound, and visuals, which helps to immerse the reader in that bubbling tension of the family. From the video game noises and characters, piercing sharp noises of the hearing aid, loudness of the plane, and the scraping of utensils against plates, it partly echoes the last iteration of the work, which warns the reader to cling on to the deafness of it all.

Again, I found the use of sound to be particularly effective in utilizing the potential of elit again. More specifically, I liked that Wilks used the video game Animal Crossing without ever explicitly mentioning it; however, she used the character art, as well as various sounds from the game, to add to what the grandfather was confusedly and angrily seeing and hearing. For an outsider of the video game, I can imagine it also gives off a weird, unsettling feeling too, with the noises so distinct to the game; I know if I didn't know the reference, it would come off as a nightmarish, twisted cartoon. It definitely added to the overall feeling Wilks was getting at, too.

Ultimately, I really liked this specific piece of elit, and that it drew from the interesting parallel between deafness and ignorance, or at the very least, wishing to forget. With its complex meaning, a narrative that you could follow, and effective computational elements, it helped pull the whole piece of electronic literature together to make it very compelling and satisfying.

A Postmodern Fairytale: Leishman's RedRidinghood

Out of all the works we were to look at this week, Donna Leishman's RedRidinghood grabbed my attention the most. I think what intrigued me was in the dark, distorted, and underlying sexual atmosphere within the piece, as opposed to the overall animated interactive narrative. While navigating the living digital story was an adventure in itself and added another dimension to reading and analyzing the fairytale, I think what worked for this piece was the fact it was so crudely drawn and animated, as well as the grotesque music and images we receive from RedRidinghood. Additionally, Leishman manages to achieve this effect because of the inspiration behind it; while experiencing the piece, I stuck around for the credits, and noticed that the author could not have done it without Angela Carter, because it would have been "impossible."

I was familiar with Carter's name because of having the pleasure of reading Wise Children, as well as reading some excerpts from her notable twisted take on fairytales.  When I saw her name at the end of the credits, Leishman's digital piece made a lot more sense to me. Of course, I immediately went to find the specific twist on Red Riding Hood that Leishman was inspired by, where I found the excerpt from In The Company of Wolves. In that specific narrative, Carter subverts the traditional ending of the story of inevitable death into a "happy," sexual one. Instead of either Little Red or the Wolf ending up dead, depending on what tales you read, it ends with them becoming lustful, taboo, and contented lovers.

I went back to Leishman's piece and explored it again, and definitely appreciated it more. Ultimately, her twist on Carter's own twist shows the new dimension in which literature can continue to exist and thrive in; through this element, Leishman demonstrates the thrill of tackling the computational narrative. Like Carter's story, it brings the same, if not more, perverse feelings, which we can see exemplified through the art itself. Leishman shows us the grotesque images of the child Little Red pregnant at the end of the story with the gun to her head, she shows us the lucid, weird montage that Little Red dreams in the field of cross-like flowers that make it nightmarish, and she shows us the suggestion of her impregnation with the cells splitting (which additionally insinuates The Wolf raping her while she sleeps). Additionally, the industrialized setting of her journey also adds to the feeling of postmodern unrest with the fairy tale. However, most unsettling of all, as I said before, is the background music. Again, it adds to that "lucid" and "nightmarish" vibe that the story is striving for; while Carter achieves the same thing with her words, Leishman takes it to another level through the different facets elit creates for the reader. In the end, I think that is what is most important as we start our journey in the class to understanding electronic literature; for me, this story illustrated the potential of the narrative world it can electronically create and exploit for the reader's own interdisciplinary pleasure.