ENL 003 Post #8

Alan Moore’s “Light of Thy Countenance” is an intriguing graphic novel that seems to blur the line between literature and art with its insightful and powerful take on the history of television. As for whether it is a literary text, it can objectively be considered as such due to satisfying all five frameworks that define literature. Being adapted from Alan Moore’s story, the language definitely retains its literary origin as it requires interpretation, due its ambiguous and poetic diction, to understand many of his descriptive metaphors. Aesthetics is also shown as it presents an argument with different modes of thought, produced by the combination of heavy chunks of text with an illustrative and symbolic backdrop. With the entire novel exposing the visual yet unexamined evils of television, social critique is more than met as its reveals the foothold it has made in many lives. Although its form initially comes off as rather haphazard, the graphic novel does possess a distinct plot as we are thrust into just one of the many worlds that television has to power to create and destroy. This is cleverly followed by the essence that is television presenting itself to the reader and acknowledging its own history through direct narration. As for outlaw language, both the text and imagery do not shy away from portraying some of the more explicit and darker realities that people have succumbed to since television’s arrival.
I personally think that this graphic novel has much to offer to the reader as it is both engaging and entertaining while bringing to light the serious issue of how our lives are swayed by television’s seemingly endless facades of fiction. Although Moore’s argument appears to be a bit dated due to the evolution of televised programming and emergence of new media, with the internet beginning to assume its mantle, it is still relevant in demonstrating how a single invention can become an all encompassing force of subtle control. As for the presence of the illustrations that accompany the story, I believe that they accentuate the story by dividing it into appropriate sections and recreating firsthand many of the allusions made by Moor, with some directly recreating the scene in question; a clever concept that could not be replicated with words alone. Although the literary aspect of the graphic novel is suitably text heavy to convey the tale of television’s path to power on its own, it would certainly make less of an impression due to the powerful imagery Felipe Massafera brings in this disturbing yet compelling adaption of Moore’s brilliant social critique.