Christopher Vincent

What a riot blog post

            Immediately in reading this piece I was struck by the formatting and the poetic decisions in the fluidity of the paragraph. I noticed how throughout the piece she had a sort of literary bookend with the choice of the Chorus and the spoken word/ poetic feel. The joker was a very interested character and seemed to have the most tactile influence in narration among the other characters. This could be considered immediately with the choice to name the character “Joker”.

            It gives the reader a suspicion immediately and makes them question the sincerity of the Joker. I, for example, found that many lines in my head became filtered with sarcasm because of the particular name. On page 7 as he talks about the bus spinning out of control I couldn’t help but picture the Joker from Batman, which I am sure many other readers have found too. To further consider the tactility of this character it is easy to take note that a lot of his lines influence action and create the conflict or peril, like with the bus.

             The ideas of theater of the oppressed really play into this piece, especially when considering historical events such as Rosa Parks when the Chorus chants “White mask, white mask.” This is ominous and a bit shocking to me how relevant this all is in the current age politically.

            I wonder how the ideas in this piece can be applied to the projects we are investing in. I studied the dark web and researched for the mind mapping and found out how much we don’t know about the internet and how much is hidden. The essence of the joker comes to my mind and it also makes me consider the influence that the characters had on each other and how one might change the mind of the other.

            Far beyond that the piece talks about Rodney King and the L.A riots and this is something I became more familiar with last semester when our acting teacher Rodger Smith showed us he spoken word piece about Rodney King and how much that catastrophic event has informed how things are talked about and dealt with today.