Microserfs and Polariods from the Dead -- A comparison of themes, issues, and ideas...
...ugh celebrities”(156). These examples show a society obsessed with changing their outer appearance. Coupland also mentions Marilyn Monroe, who is and always will be an image of beauty. Coupland writes that her grave is the most visited grave in Los Angeles, people come to see the grave because of what Marilyn represented; she represented youth and beauty in its truest form. This shows societies need to worship youth and beauty. Coupland uses his design features in Polariods from the Dead to bring across this point. The pictures are old photographs from magazines and other sources. The pictures capture a moment in time, they lock in everything and that picture, and even when these things age as time goes on they stay the same in the picture. The pictures keep everything in them preserved, in a sense they will always be young and beautiful. In the novel Microserfs the issue of trying to maintain youth and beauty is show through the characters and their jobs. The majority of the characters are in the computer business, this is a business where software and computers are outdated almost weekly. The characters are computer programmers, it is their job to continually write and update software, in order to keep it young. “A good piece of technology dreams of the day when it will be replaced by a newer piece if technology. This is one definition of progress.” (179) Coupland also uses his characters and his humour to discuss this topic. Although the characters in the novel seem almost detached from society they too find themselves analysing their bodies from time to time, but they present it in a humorous fashion. “Karla kept on talking about bodies, her obsession, tonight, about an hour ago before she fell asleep and I, as ever, remained wide-eyed and awake.”(72) “Karla and I were here in my room, lying on my bed—bare legs akimbo—and we made this really embarrassing observation that neither of us have tan lines—that we spent all summer in the crunch mode to meet shipping deadline.”(66) “I can’t imagine losing her. I must make myself stronger. I must build a better me. I must become Bionic man” Coupland uses the humour to make the reader enjoy the book and remember what he has written. In the novels, Coupland also addresses the issue of the amount of power that technology has over our lives. Coupland presents these issues in a negative way and a positive way. Coupland uses his humour, his characters, his diction and his design features to present this issue. In section two of the novel Polariods from the dead there is a short story about how technology is affecting humans. In this story Coupland writes in the first person, this view makes the reader feel as if they are talking to the narrator, the narrator even asks questions to the reader. The reader can easily connect with what Coupland has said because almost everyone has experienced something along the lines of what Coupland has described. Coupland uses this character to discuss the power of technology. “Like many people my age, I was exposed to extreme amounts of well produced, high quality information and entertainment from birth onward”(112). “So I guess my head is stuffed with an almost endless series of corporation-sponsored consumer tableaux of various lengths.” Coupland poses the question that if he had grown up in a non-media culture, would he still be the same, or would his “personality” be different? The character also suggests that in the future the planet will be entirely populated by people who have only known a world with TVs and computers. Coupland says that his character life is in a permanent power failure, he says when he meets people he imagine them in a world of darkness. “I’m switching off the power, trying to help us both, trying to see you and me as the people we really are”.(113) In another section Coupland says that our society relies on, and can do so much with technology like the internet, because now things like regularized daily contact has become an “obsolete indulgence”.(180) In Microserfs Coupland brings up issue of the power of technology. Throughout the novel the characters communicate using e-mail, the main character is even introduced using his e-mail address rather than his name. Coupland uses odd stylistic features to indicate that technology is taking over the main characters life. The novel is written like a journal, and scattered right through the novel are pages or paragraphs of random words, binary code and repeating words. In an interview Coupland was asked whether technology has influenced his writing. Coupland says that; “On a mechanical level, not as much as people might think. I write longhand, I can't type, (two fingers) and before I start any book, I know exactly where I'm going, and so I never go back and insert and much around. In a broader sense people think I love technology and use every chance I get to put it into my books—which is just plain weird. Inasmuch as it's a part of life, I write about it. All my characters now use Google, because it's a part of our real world as it is lived. But this gets back to what I said earlier, about how schools strip you of options and limit your art supplies. Becau...