Blog Post 16

After a cursory analysis of several hits off the popular search engine, Google, I discovered that there is much more hype about our impending doom than I had originally realized. In present day culture, most everyone has heard of the upcoming apocalypse occurring on December 21 (or 23, there are opposing views) of 2012 that parallels the end of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar created by the ancient people, the Olmec, but is popularly associated with the Mayans. This calendar is linear and made up of 13 b’ak’tuns or about 5,125 years. There is no real explanation for this seemingly arbitrary end date, but some experts believe that this day must have help great importance to the Mayan people. Today, it is just another apocalyptic end to our modern world, very similar to Y2K that was supposed to occur with the dawn of the twenty first century.

Instead of capitalizing on Y2K, Hollywood let that catastrophe lie, probably because so many around the world actually believed that it would happen. In the case of 2012, there arose a movie in 2009, 2012, that created a realistic story of natural disasters all coming together to end the world as we know it. As well as the entertainment industry feeding off of this doomsday frenzy, many authors and website creators are adding to the fire. Facebook pages have arisen, as well as a variety of websites listing the possibilities of how our world might end, why in 2012, countdowns to our end, and so on.

In relation to my comic, all of this background information adds to the understanding of the humor in the comic, the artist’s own explanation of “why 2012?”, and a variety of other aesthetic elements. First of all, the characters in the panel are drawn in such a way that it can be assumed by the audience that they are ancient Mayans. Their clothing, accessories, and lack of footwear and the use of color all work to convince the audience that they set in an earlier time, but the accessories also add to the understanding that they are a rich and powerful culture as well, which is typical of the Mayans. The coloration of the characters also adds to our understanding of their ethnicity. They are dark skinned and have dark hair, both stereotypical characteristics that we associate with these ancient people and the region that they originate from.

After looking at pictures of the actual Long Count calendar and acquiring information about it, it is interesting to see that the calendar representation within the comic is circular and displays typical Mayan style artwork with the face in the center and the triangles to represent sunrays. In the photographs and descriptions of the Long count calendar, it was obvious that the calendar was linear in fashion and in one description it was emphasized that it is not the typical circular Mayan calendar. It is interesting that the artist still chose to represent the calendar as circular in the comic. This is probably a decision that he made with his audience in mind, the average American newspaper or blog reader. This stereotypical representation of a Mayan calendar allowed him to keep the explanation of the images in the comic to a minimum and allow the viewers to focus on the dialogue between the characters.

I am glad that I looked into the cultural relevance and history of the 2012 phenomenon. It has allowed me to better analyze the character interaction as well the other images within the comic. It also gives me a better understanding of the thought behind its creation and meaning behind it.