"Looking For ALibrandi" by Melina Marchetta - Changing Perspective

Everything and everyone changes. Some people adjust well to change while others have trouble wanting things to remain the same. You might often hear older people in society say, “things were so much better in the good old days”. Young people meanwhile complain, “I miss being a kid”. Change and how we get used to it can help us develop and mature. Instead of resisting change we should go along with it and use it as a way of learning about ourselves and therefore improve our own and other people’s perspectives of the world and each other. I intend to discuss three texts about changing perspectives in the modern world.

The first of my three texts is a cartoon by well known Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig. It is called, “if you’re such a bright young thing, how come you wear so much black?”The cartoon has two characters talking about identity. Let’s call the character dressed in white, Man 1 and the character dressed in black as Man 2. Man 1 questions Man 2 as to why he wears black clothes. The answer that he gets is that, firstly, he could still be ‘bright’ on the inside, and, secondly, he wears black because he is always going to his own funeral.

At the end of the cartoon the cool and stylish character in black crumbles right in front of your eyes into a smiling fool as his real personality is revealed.

Man 2 desires to hide the person he once was: the ‘boofhead’, the ‘dag’, and the ‘dork’. Instead of being what he was he wants to appear to the world as a ‘bright young thing’, a cool, stylish man that is distinguished and in full control. Man 2 has tried to change culture’s perspective of himself, and his own perspective...