Week 10 Reading: Insights

Here are two things that I noticed from this reading, that I'd like to point out because I'm not sure if I could make sense of them in class off the top of my head:

One of the follow-up questions to Jacinto Jesus Cardona's "Bato con Khaki's" is "Why is bato 'too bold' a word for the speaker's 'mother's blood?" (339). Then, right after that, in Jamaica Kincaid's essay "Girl," a dominate voice, probably female (perhaps a mother, older sister or older family friend) speaks to a girl about how to grow up appropriate. The connection between the two pieces highlights how it is the responsibility of the mother/female to raise the next generation both male and female, which is probably obvious because it falls into that domestic sphere.Then, wouldn't it also be presumed, that those children's failures are automatically projected onto the mother? It becomes the mother's responsibility (and shame) when her son becomes a bato or her daughter a slut. Considering all of the outside influences that act upon children--media, technology, peers, other adults, history, it's quite unfair that females are forced to bear this responsibility alone. Katha Pollit supports me (or I guess, I support her), when she wrote "They let parents off the hook--no small recommendation in a culture that hold moms, and sometimes even dads, responsible for their children's every misstep on the road to bliss and success" (399). And isn't unfair to fathers that they aren't given (more) credit for the responsibility or shame that they bear for their children's futures?

Although McQuade and McQuade do a reasonable job to separate gender and race into different chapters, race is still a significant factor to consider when talking about gender (some people debate that it is completely inseperable when speaking of gender). I thought Judith Ortiz Cofer's "The Story of My Body" hit the nail on the head at the end, when she writes,

In college, I suddenly became an "exotic" woman to the men who had survived the
popularity wars in high school, who were now practicing to be worldly: They had
to act liberal in their politics, in their lifestyles and in the women they went
out with (349) [emphasis added].

The questions of exoticism and exploitation are really interesting. Conversely, in "How to Write A Catchy Beer Ad," when the ad makers were filming the ad, they wanted women "to look hot but approachable, someone I wouldn't be scared to talk to" and thus went with twins who were "All-american and real" (391). (Funny--of course they're real, they picked living, breathing humans?! And what does it mean to be All-American?!) They wanted women who were similar to themselves, but "approachable" which could be read as non-threatening, subservient, less than. And are exotic women thus oppositely viewed as other and scary?

Week 10 Reading

Yes, I am posting on Thanksgiving. Some people may make a big deal out of this, as in this isn't much of a holiday if I'm doing school work, but what's a better way to chill out and digest than blogging? Probably watching a movie, but blogging it is.

I was anticipating this week's reading, because I have a vested interest in gender studies (I wish more people did). Mainly I tell people I have my degree in English, but I doubled, and also have a degree in Feminist Gender Sexuality Studies. Try not to let the F-word scare you.

More or less I found that McQuade and McQuade had good insights and asked several important questions. I highly suggest:

• p. 343 Judith Ortiz Cofer's "The Story of my Body"
• p.353 Marjane Satrapi's excerpt from "Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood" - if you haven't seen the film from this graphic novel, Persepolis, Netflix or rent it IMMEDIATELY. It's brilliant (and entertaining) and showed me a world vastly different from the few stereotypes I had in my head about Iran.
• p. 366 Jane Slaughter's "A Beaut of a Shiner"
• p. 370 Portfolio: Nancy Burson
• p. 378 Susan Bordo's "Never Just Pictures"
• p. 390 Chris Bollard's "How to Write A Catchy Beer Ad"
• p. 398 Katha Pollit's "Why Boys Don't Play with Dolls"
• p. 402 ARMY ad "There's Something About a Soldier"

I don't have a highlight this week, however I will post a few insights I had (immediately following this post--yes one rock, two birds.) But I will end with this food for thought from Pollit's "Why Boys Don't play with Dolls."

Every mother in that room had spent years becoming a person who had to be taken
seriously, not least by herself.

Week 9 Reading: READING ICONS

I'm going to do this week's recap of the reading a little differently. I was surprised (and yet, not surprised) that the icons the chapter chose to use and questions it asked, were icons I had seen in the past week and questions that had been asked in other design forums. I found this very coincidental, and expected, they are icons after all and chances are their "easily determinable meaning" is often parodied and reconstructed for that very reason.

So, to go along with the bathroom icons on pages 499-505:
I like this design very much, particularly for the angles of their heads. However, if could easily be misinterpreted as one bathroom being for well, number one, and the other bathroom for number two. Nevertheless a good try. And much better than the image of the dog's face on p. 504 from Hong Kong, which I don't understand at all... anyone?




Then to go along with p. 508, Grant Wood's "American Gothic." Which I've seen parodied a hundred times, but really knew nothing about, and was very glad to read Guy Davenport's "The Geography of the Imagination" for insight, I present:



















This chapter's Profile is of Tibor Kalman, who altered the racial identities of high profile people, pages 546-556. In true Kalman style, someone/some people altered the racial identities of Barack Obama and John McCain--who to give credit to, I'm not exactly sure:
















To sum up, I'd like to look at the Mercedes ad on p. 520-21. It says "Glimpse at them for a split second, and you know exactly what they mean." I feel like the reason we redesign and parody iconic images, is because as message makers we understand that NOTHING has a definitive meaning, icons change according to audience, culture, time, place etc. I'll admit I might be putting words into people's mouths, but this is the way I'd like to see the world: We, as image and message makers, toy with these icons because as much as we create design and images to market, persuade and sell ideas, we'd much prefer to market and sell to an astute and interested audience who would rather read messages and interact with images, rather than "glimpse at them for a split second."

Week 8 Reading

Real quick, some good parts from Chapter 3 in McQuade & McQuade.

• Tom Brokaw's "An Ode To Loved Labors Lost" p. 253, mainly for the sentence "and sensing for the first time in my young life the genuine excitement of wrestling with big ideas, and the force of intellectual curiosity." I heart that excitement.
  
• "The First Thanksgiving" by Sarah Vowell, p.256
• "Fish Cheeks" by Amy Tan, p. 261, Amy Tan can break my heart with words.
  
• Art Spiegalman, p. 300. He wears an upside down peace pin (p. 302), I wonder if he's turned around yet.
• "Vivian, Fort Barnwell" by Ethan Canin, p. 323. My brother has a photo on me and him on his wall as kids and I think it's really sweet, (he's pretty separated from the family), that I didn't have the heart to tell him it wasn't us--or at the least not me. I think it was some family friends--also biracial asian kids.
  

There's a lot of good stuff in this chapter. Highlight: Savulich's portfolio, p. 274-278. I'm interested by the fact these images have captions. I'm not one for gruesome things or heartbreaking things (like watching a jumper on a hotel roof), so I'm wondering about his need to include captions. He says that he feels he's "recording something that's really happening." which I definitely understand. There is action and a story in those photos, so again, why use the captions? Is he just concerned that we interpret the "correct" story?

Week 6 Reading: Bang!

I really liked and really disliked this book. I thought it accomplished what it set out to do, but I had the occasional disagreement. (And what's with the cover? According to her writing, the way the white pops insinuates that she is the most important thing--I would have thought the title. And why the "mediation" configuration? I suppose the centered-ness makes the reader focus on it longer, but it feels much less dynamic.)

Dislikes:
Her word choice/tone. Example: the word "innards," the story of her art prof. on p. 52, referring to "drunken blood shot eyes" in a kid's book (I'm going on the basis that this is intended for kids b/c that's where the library shelves it). I think she's trying to be casual (or un-intellectual), but she kind of comes off as a know-it-all. Her over explaining gets tedious. Her redemption was flipping the page and reading, "The wolf looks stupid now..." (p. 34). That was laugh out loud hilarious.

Likes:
I thought her Little Red Riding Hood images were successful. Principle #9 was helpful, to paraphrase, we associate things of the same color as being together more than things of the same shape. I also enjoyed the image constructed by the 8th grader at the end of the book.

Highlight:
The images on page 82-83. To paraphrase again, some pictures are contained within their space and the viewer is left outside of it, but when our eyes notice an object within the picture, we move into the picture. I though the corresponding images to this idea were perfect. As a beginning designer, I see (and make) some really bad design, but am not sure what it is that's missing, why it feels so amateur, and now I realize that usually it's because the viewer wasn't brought into the design, the piece existed in its own space without the viewer. Being aware of this is going to be helpful.

Week 5 Reading

Here are a few gems from this week's reading in McQuade & McQuade, Chapter 5: Tip, don't skip the reading pieces this week.

• "How to Live" by Annie Dillard, p. 426-428
• "Coming into the Country" by Gish Jen, p. 434-436
  
• "Cool like Me" by Donnell Alexander, p. 440-443. I really fell for this one, when I read, cool is "about making a dollar out of a 15 cents." I think this could be a starting point for a discussion on the connection between the current "hipster" cool that steals from low-class culture--trucker hats, flannel/plaid shirts and mohawks/mullets. Originally I thought an article on cool was going to be, well, lame. But Alexander really does understand cool. The synthesis of difference and living by it, not just wearing it or speaking it, but being it.
  
• "24 People for whom I haven been mistaken" by Roger Shimomura, p.474-475
  
• "National Museum of the Middle Class Opens in Schaumburg, Il." by The Onion. p. 488-89. What was greatest about this piece is their decsribing the middle class workers work week--eight hours a day, five days a week, and weekends off, and it makes it so clear that this is NOT the way we, people, have to live their lives. It's how we choose to or are made to choose to. The work week is just a construct and I think everyone's lives would be a lot better if the system would reevaluate what is best for the people and the economy regarding the balance of work and life. (I strongly support afternoon siestas and shutting down for the month of August. Ohhh France!)

Pick of the Week: Nikki Lee's collection from p. 407-419. The images were fairly intersting in their own right, but when I was reading her bio and realized that it was her in every image, that she had worked her way into each of the different subcultures, I was blown away. Mostly, I'm curious about how she infiltrated these cultures. She altered her "hair, makeup, clothing, body language, and even weight to fit in." It seems and makes me question the level of deception. Did her new friends know nothing about her project, did they know anything of her when the make-up and clothes were off? If so, how did they feel? If not, how did they feel when she was suddenly no longer a part of their lives? (I'm making the assumption that if she didn't tell them, she must have removed herself from them, because how could she maintain so many facades simultaneously.) The photos ask who are you and what makes you you? But they also seem to be answering that you are shaped wholly by your environment. Perhaps, if we were provided with her personal feelings regarding her experience, we could see the role that nature (ie genetics, ethnicity etc) played and/or intertwined with environment.

Week Off

Wow, it's a really great thing W&I isn't meeting this week.
With a slip of the hand, I deleted my entire "project 1: profile" folder. Ack. Sigh. So, I'll be spending a good few days redoing it. Thankfully, the project is already handed in. But I feel like I might still need it.

On another note... I'm also spending this week off from W&I figuring out what to do for project 3. I'm thinking on something about reading more/literacy. Or something from The Foundation for a Better Life, because I love this organization and their ads. They have about 30 different values to choose from, so I'm thinking about reading up and then choosing one... but I'm thinking that I might love them too much to redo it well. So, we'll see...

Week 2 Reading: Afterthoughts

So just a quick note on last week's readings:
In Sternfeld's series, p. 192-198, isn't it strange how there are no people? Particularly in a photograph of a tourist attraction (Mt. Rushmore) and in the middle of a thriving city (D.C.)? I wasn't sure what was making the images so effective in translating the tragedy, but I realize the omission of people feels very eerie. Surely, this was purposeful. Other things that enhance the images eeriness: the darkened windows in the grocery store that look like they're hiding something, the billboard that looks strangely heavenly amid rubble, and the way the bus stops glass reflects only slightly.

"Homeplace," page 210, was the story of a family whose house was blown over by a tornado multiple times and refused to leave. Sanders believes that they stayed because they "had invested so much of their lives in the land... it was a particular place, intimately known, worked on, dreamed over, cherished." I had lunch with a friend who just started law school and he set up a scenario that he was reading about on land-property-or-something-like-that-rights. If someone owns a piece of land, but does absolutely nothing with it for like twenty years, and some people come and squat on the land and build a house and take care of the property for like ten years... who rightfully owns the property? It turns out that laboring over the land (for some amount of time) actually gives you some rights to the property--he hadn't gotten to what those rights would be exactly, but it was interesting to know that the efforts of the "squatters" wouldn't be for nothing.