Time Out

I wanted to touch on the differences between Japanese comics and western comics and how they both relate to time. I somewhat mentioned this idea in class but I wanted to elaborate on it a little bit more. When I looked at even the four frames from a Japanese comic strip in McCloud's book, I could already sense a huge difference in reference to time. In the Japanese strips it seems is if time is going on around the characters. This is evidenced by space moving past the subjects and the artist is able to create motion with this effect. I feel as if time is some sort of entity and it is giving permission to the characters to go through it. Now on the other hand, the western comics have the characters actually move through time/space, not have space/time move around them. I feel as though the western view acts as if time is there for the taking and so therefore we must consume it and make it ours. This is very relateable to the rest of the culture being that nothing is really sacred in the Western world, not even time. I feel the east has more of a respect for time and doesn't take quite a selfish view.

Also I really like the idea that both Erika, Mr. Reynolds, and most of the class have about how time is relative. For all we know our waking life could be actually a dream state of a parallel life. So in theory, this life could be no more then one nights dream of this other life. So in order to make life work in this world we set time relative to minutes, seconds and hours in the life that you and me live on this earth. We then relate all other forms of time back to this central comparison point, be it in our own dreams or our waking lives filled with new media content. Time seems to be going faster in our technology based society but when it is compared back to our central form of measuring time, it really is going no faster then before. Erika brought this idea up and I definitely agree with it. We are doing more with our time and therefore it seems to be going faster because we don't have time to notice that time is actually going by. Whoa, that was a sentence. Anyway I feel there is no true answer to the question of time and we should just use the time we do have to the best of our ability.