Perception of identity

Well, it is time The Great and Mighty Presto's adoring public, to switch up topics once more. Today The Great and Mighty Presto seeks to speak of something he noticed recently while reading The Great Gatsby(ugh unoriginal name right?). There seems to be a disconnect between how mortals are perceived by themselves and other mortals, and especially the latter is absolutely essential to the mental well-being of a mortal. For some reason regardless of who a mortal really is, they seem to have an inner desire for others to think highly of them, which is strange, The Great and Mighty Presto has never felt this need... Likely because he already knows of his majesty, yes! He merely has no need to prove himself, especially to the mortals that inhabit The Great and Mighty Presto's world. Though it is not so for a mortal, Gatsby from the aforementioned book is evidence for this. He seems to have a need to prove himself to others, just to make himself feel stable. All this wealth he seems to have acquired as well as the extravagance surrounding his identity all seems to be in place to hide his true self. This becomes evident when he is around Daisy, he changes from this very confident, cool persona that's been built up around him, to being incredibly nervous. He can not even build up the courage to ask Nick to help him arrange this meeting himself, he has to enlist Jordan Baker to ask Nick for his assistance. Not only this but during Gatsby and Daisy's meeting, he can hardly stand still, literally quivering for a considerate portion of the time, hardly able to engage in conversation with her. Even after the ice brakes slightly and they journey to Gatsby's house, they aren't even comfortable allowing Nick to leave as they're too nervous about being around each other. All this leads to the conclusion Gatsby is actually quite a nervous man, why though does he seek to make others see himself as more than what he is then? Well it has to do with his true nature actually, he quite obviously lacks confidence or a positive view of himself, so he wishes for others to have no way to perceive this. He wants to be known as something so separate from himself, because regardless of how others feel about his true self he sees it as shameful. Hmm, builds himself up as a grandiose figure, uses pretentious language to improve others opinion of himself... somehow this sounds familiar... Wherefrom though The Great and Mighty Presto has no recollection, carry on with your days now Mortals, and be enlightened by the majesty that is me.

Oh no.. not again

        

        This topic greatly disturbs and confuses the Great and Mighty Presto as he has stated in the previous post to this, so he will try to keep this brief.

The image on the rights text reads: "Bolshevism without its Mask", and is a piece of anti-semitic propaganda. It's meant to show that the soviets and jews real intentions are to ignite wars and quite literally set the world ablaze for their own good. The star of david encircling the signature hammer and sickle representative of the soviets at the time is meant to convey the idea that the jews are secretly controlling the soviets, just as many members of the nazi party thought about most anything they disliked. This was meant to incite fear in the hearts of the german people( well, the ones they weren't systematically eradicating), and rally them to support the german government. In the image on the right though, the mortal Art Spiegelman shows the truth of the situation: the jews weren't attempting to set the world ablaze, they were being set ablaze themselves. He uses this to connect with the piece of propaganda and mock it, as he is so very fond of doing throughout his work. His work in general actually holds many connections to Nazi Propaganda. Even the idea of showing the jews as mice was actually copied from plenty of Nazi propaganda that showed the jews as rats, or mice. He used this, and instead of how the Nazis used it: to dehumanize the jews, he uses this to mock them even thinking to do so, and gives them empathetic qualities and real human attributes, showing visually that no matter what they were thought of as by others, they were still people.

Wow, even if you're all inferior to The Great and Mighty Presto , at least The Great and Mighty Presto isn't a racist... Geez.

Well, at the very least you mortals HAVE impressed The Great and Mighty Presto, but not in the good way. You people are really horrible to each other aren’t you? If you would all just become a subservient species to The Great and Mighty Presto as you should be then things would be so much simpler… At the very least if not for you for me! You would think that you all would have learned to accept each other by now if you insist upon being individuals instead of The Great and Mighty Presto’s eternal servants, but no. The Great and Might Presto simply does not understand you all, at the very least it would be expected that those of you who have been inside as great of tragedies such as the holocaust would have learned that discriminating amongst each other for things such as race is a pointless and cruel endeavor. Just look upon The Great and Mighty Presto, who looks upon you all as inferiors equally, is that so hard to understand? Look even at how this mortal writer portrays how this african American Mortal speaks, in a very stereotypical way, that which probably any racist would imagine him to just to make his point of his father's racism more exaggerated, even when his son’s wife points out his hypocrisy, he says that African American Mortals can’t even be compared to Jewish Mortals! My, my, you mortals need to straighten your logic out, he sounds just like how the Nazis thought when they attempted to exterminate the Jewish mortals. They thought that the “Noble Aryan race” couldn’t even be compared to the Jews, Hitler himself even saying that the jews were a race, but not humans. How can this mortal not see the blatant hypocrisy he is exhibiting? You Mortals truly astound The Great and Mighty Presto sometimes.

Hah as if!

A certain mortal attempted to tell I, The Great and Might Presto, that I was not allowed to write this post for this weak, he said that the topic was too "sensitive" or that "you would end up making something serious into a joke and people will think both of us are assholes!". Well worry not my adoring public, for The Great and Might Presto is here, and all it took was assuring him that The Great and Might Presto would not make fun of any holocaust survivors here, which is quite easy, after all,The Great and Might Presto only writes fact and detailed analysis nothing offensive, any mortal who says otherwise simply does not have the proper intellect to adequately admire The Great and Might Presto's masterful writing. So, since The Great and Might Presto also agreed The Great and Might Presto would still meet the requirements for the blog(he sure is needy isn't he?), let's use the top of page 47, of Maus volume two.  Prior to these panels, Art had become overwhelmed, and morphed into the image of a child, then after visiting his psychiatrist, had morphed back. On these panels though, we see the once again adult Art listening to his voice recording from back when his father was alive. Art was feeling stressed at this time, and he cared very little for what was going on in his father's life, all he cared for at this time was finding out more from his father about the holocaust, and so he snaps at his father, the Art listening to the recoringsvisably recoils, and returns back to the image of a child. Spiegelman is using this transformation into his younger self to show his guilt over him feeling he was a bad son, and over he feels about the publication of Maus because of this. Spiegelman turns back into a child when he feels guilt to show how helpless he feels about these things, they're in the past after all, what's done is done. It also makes him revert to show how he probably feels inwardly, he remembers his father and this makes him feel immature of the way he handled his father, impatient, only thinking of his wants. I am now being cut off here, Both of The Great and Might Presto's other conclusions were deemed "immature", and "offensive", so The Great and Might Presto encourages you mortals to just imagine something witty as I'm sure you know The Great and Might Presto always does in all his writing.

What? That's such a bad title, that makes no sense!

This mortal, David Foster Wallace, must be very confused, because

THIS:

is water. Ugh, he even got it right at the beginning, but then lost it as he went, those with alzheimer's truly are tragic. Though I must say that I don't believe that fish are capable of talking... After all I-The Great and Mighty Presto, would surely know if they could. Also how would this one know of the conversation the fish had? Some would say that this is an attempt at an anecdote, but The Great and Mighty Presto says no, he must be delusional, and remember, The Great and Mighty Presto's opinion is fact! He does have a point that all mortals worship on a daily bases though, but he seems to be under the assumption that not all worship me on a daily bases... This is concerning, we may have a heretic on our hands. Regardless of the possible heresy of this mortal though, there is also the issue he's another one of those cooks like we dealt with last week! Talking about "The real important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people" ugh I can't go further it's too disgusting! This one seems to think that true freedom for mortals involves the ability to be able to-ugh- "care" about other mortals. Who's going around and telling mortals these grotesque falsehoods? They seem to their own ideas about freedom, well I should probably set them straight, real freedom is the ability to care for no one but The Great and Mighty Presto, who cares about other mortals? Their problems aren't your own, all you need to do is think for yourself, and faaaar more importantly, me! All this about paying attention to your surroundings and those around you is worthless, after all, The Great and Mighty Presto says so!