Comics, Video Games and Reading

Spent most of yesterday at the New York Comicon, which has more than comics and graphic novels. In fact watching the adults there--by the way, the most racially diverse audience I've ever seen at a trade show or academic conference--not only snap up the literature but play video games based, or not based, on the comics, was very instructive. Seen in conjunction with reading Henry Jenkins's white paper on digital literacy written for the MacArthur Foundation, it brings up many questions on the future of reading and, perhaps more so, on the future of how to teach and understand literature. The Comicon is extraordinarily participatory--hundreds of people dressed in costumes based on comics, video games and movie characters--which the diginabobs claim is the educational future. Could one involve readers in a similar way to teach Joyce and Proust? Perhaps not, but similar participation could provide insights into plot and language. I remember once acting out the death of Antony for a group discussing Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" but my interpretation was more Harpo Marx than Laurence Olivier. Afterwards, a student said to me, "I don't agree with your interpretation, but I'll never forget that passage."