DC COMICS!
Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson founded DC in 1930; although it was originally known as National Allied Publications, by 1937 the name and top management had changed. The name DC Comics came from the first extremely popular series that this company produced, Detective Comics; this is where Batman was first introduced in the late 1930’s. DC has come a very long way from its humble beginnings to become a leader in the industry that they played an integral part in creating. This company has survived changes in popularity, a war that painted average villains as, well, average, and even public banning of comic books.
Superman was created in 1932 and put into publication six years later in Action Comics #1. Written by Jerry Seigel and illustrated by Joe Shuster; Superman could be considered an American icon. Soon after, in 1939 the ball really started rolling when artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger proposed and produced The Bat Man as the superhero identity of billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. It was this innovation that secured the place of DC Comics in the graphic novel industry.
My favorite “superhero” could be considered more of a vigilante than a “hero.” Jonah Hex was a bounty hunter in the 19th century Western United States. His alcoholic father beat him until selling him sold into slavery to a local tribe. After a hard life, bouncing around the United States, doing what he thought was right (fighting for the confederate cause in the civil war, then defecting to the North and killing most people who did him or his friends harm); he became a bounty hunter targeting wrongdoers. Most of the comics that he appeared in were littered with gore and pain, much like his life. The illustrations depict a deeply violent, yet moral man who did what he believed to be correct. He did not have any super powers or an obscene amount of money to fund his actions but he did have the skills needed to take down the most hardened criminals in the Wild West.
I had originally intended to write about the Green Arrow, a Robin Hood-like character that defended Star City from criminals and villains. However, the fact that Jonah Hex had no money or advantage in life, yet still did what he could to help makes him much more intriguing to me.
DC Comics has created so many heroes and villains that it is difficult to choose a favorite. This is why they have not only survived, but also thrived in an industry that many times has looked as though it might fail.
Jane Austin, the author of Pride and Prejudice is well know for her wit, satire and humor. All of these qualities show up in her literary works mostly in the form of dialogue. This film representation did not shy away from using great amounts of speech in conveying the message. In contrast to her satirical side, Austin also was a great capturer of human emotion, which is something that the film focused a large amount of time depicting. Emotion is expressed often through words; in the case of Pride and Prejudice these words were spoken most eloquent fashion. Verbal literacy is a great way of showing emotion, but when contrasting with the 1994 film, The Piano, I believe that raw emotion is often best conveyed through a visual medium.
The large cast including a quantity of talkative females causes most of the literacy in Pride and Prejudice to be expressed verbally as opposed to visually, something that is done expertly in The Piano. I believe it is fair to say that the visual elements in The Piano replace the verbal element in Pride and Prejudice and vise versa; nonetheless both stories convey an obvious emotion. The way that both directors depict this emotion varies; in the case of Pride and Prejudice speech is the obvious choice.
With regards, to The Piano, Ada’s silence shows a character that is at first perceived as mysterious and impenetrable. This complexity is shown not through two-sided dialogue but rather through visual elements and excellent acting. Ada is shown as almost childlike in that her feelings are pure and real. And as she is a mute she must show these emotions in other ways; visually. Ada’s daughter Flora is, for lack of a better phrase, a firecracker; she is sharp, talkative and nearly lacking a filter. She speaks for both herself and her mother allowing others to understand the sign language that her mother uses (a mix between Scottish traditional signs and made up signs that only Flora would understand.
Finally with regards to location and cinematography I believe that The Piano has the advantage when looking at these films from a visual perspective. Shot in New Zealand, the beach and forest are most obvious examples of the great way that scenery can effect emotion. For instance, the wide camera shots taken in the beach scene when Flora and her mother first arrive shows a loneliness and sense of fear of the unknown. The New Zealand bush is secretive, moody and frightening; the trees in the forest take on an almost mythological quality. As for Pride and Prejudice, scenery was used, but not to the same extent as The Piano.
The Piano and Pride and Prejudice both illustrate emotion well. However it is with the former that one finds the great balance of visual and verbal elements.
credit:lovetoknow.com
The dragon is a central component of Chinese culture and has been for thousands of years. In the 1980s a statue of a dragon was found in Northern China, it dated from the fifth millennium BC. Different dynasties used the dragon to mean different things, in the Zhou Dynasty the four-clawed dragon was the dragon of the nobles and the three-clawed dragon was given to the ministers. The Zhou reserved the five-clawed dragon for the son or heaven, commonly known as the Emperor. This dynasty differed from others with the assignment of dragons to social classes. For example, the Qing Dynasty also reserved the five-clawed dragon for the Emperor but left the other two versions for the commoners. (Bates).
The benevolent version of the dragon that is found in Chinese folklore and culture is very different from the havoc reeking dragon that knights fought in European fairy tales. In China the dragon is much more friendly than other depictions of the beast and it is usually associated with water; they are seen the rulers of rivers and seas. In a BBC article, academics suggested that when referring to the Chinese dragon, westerners should use the Chinese word, “long” in order to differentiate the two distinctive mystical beasts. (BBC).
Also in Chinese culture, the dragon is associated with luck; in the zodiac calendar the year of the dragon is supposed to be the luckiest of all years. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Chinese often schedule important life events to take advantage of the luckiest times.” We are currently in the year of the dragon, during the last time that this happened, in 2000; Taiwan saw a boost of 202,000 babies compared to the previous year. The dragon is held in high regard in many Eastern Asian cultures. (Wang).
In both Hinduism and Buddhism the dragon is associated with water and is a protective entity. The dragon was often seen in temples and places of, for an example, in the Textile Museum that we visited as a class there was a tapestry that would have hung on a pillar in a temple that depicted a never-ending dragon.
Bates, Roy. Chinese Dragons. Beijing: Chinese History. Googlebooks. Web. Mar. 2012.
“Fiery Debate over China’s Dragon.” BBC.com. BBC, 12 Dec. 2006. Web.
Wong, Shirley S. “Having a Baby in the Year of the Dragon Is Too Lucky to Be Left to Chance.” Wall Street Journal. 23 Jan. 2012. Web.
credit: Yasushi Nagao
The outing to the Newseum this past week was my second visit to this institution, and I must say that both times that I was there I was equally interested in all of the exhibits. With this said however, the first time that I visited I was more focused on the freedom of the press aspect of the museum rather than the visual or the artistic aspects of news and the museum in general.
The first place that I decided to look at when we visited last week was the section dedicated to Pulitzer Prize winning photographs. The photographs and themes of these pieces that were on display varied greatly depending on the year. If there was a war, if natural disasters were prominent in the news, if anything altered human interaction and life; this all played into the selection of the photographs. The most striking photograph that I came across was that of Otoya Yamaguchi assassinating Inejiro Asanuma, a Japanese Communist Party politician. The photograph taken by Yasushi Nagao in 1960 shows Yamaguchi drawing his samurai sword out of Asanuma after stabbing him in the abdomen on a stage. I found this to be the most interesting photograph for a variety of reasons, the white and black play very well off of each other; the Japanese writing in black on the white cloth with the black backdrop gives this picture great contrast. However it is the shadows that really drew my attention, the timing of the shot perfectly captures the moment in action, the shadows on Asanuma’s suit and on Yamaguchi show a single moment in time during a historic moment in time. Once I was drawn in by the shadows and action of the photograph I became very intrigued by the expressions on the faces of the participants, the two primary figures in “The Death of Asanuma” show strikingly different images and emotion, as could be expected as one is killing the other.
Although I spent the most amount of time in the Pulitzer exhibit, I was intrigued by many other parts of the Newseum, primarily the sections dedicated to the Berlin Wall and the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. These three sections demonstrate how imagery (both still and moving) can easily evoke great emotion in the viewer.
Propaganda is usually biased or misleading information that can be used to show a political view or something of that nature. For this assignment I chose to use a picture of Tony Montana from the movie Scarface sitting down at his desk in front of a large quantity of cocaine. However, I replaced Mr. Montana’s face with that of past president George W. Bush. The title of the picture is “G.W. Coke”. With this picture I am trying to show anti-right wing political propaganda. It is said that in his youth, George W. Bush dabbled in cocaine usage. I ran with that and showed Mr. Bush in an exaggerated fashion, using a well-known movie scene involving cocaine. The whole scene is meant to depict the gross responsibility by showing a party leader in a obscene situation, partaking in immoral activities. I debated weather there should be a sub-caption saying, “Eight years of taxes and oil buys a lot of cocaine.” I decided against this and went instead with a more simplistic design, only showing the fake George W. Bush, the pile of cocaine, and the caption “The Republicaine Party.” This play on words is catchy; a trait that is desired by a propaganda maker, in order to spread the message that is being conveyed.
For the effect of propaganda to be optimized, an audience needs to be found and then the message must be targeted towards this population. With this propaganda I am targeting a wide audience but I think that the population that will be must effected by this will be voters in the coming election as this will serve as a reminder of their sentiments in past election years towards the Grand Old Party and in this case, George W. Bush. I faded the colors a little bit to give it a softer but still bold coloring. The red letters were used because it gave contrast against the other colors in the photograph and also because it is a strong and noticeable color.
I do not own Photoshop on my computer, so I made this image in Paintbrush, in hindsight; it was a foolish decision as this program has very few tools that can be used to make a shopped photo more realistic.
Named for obvious reasons, “Shan Edward” is above all, striking. For this reason I feel obligated to explain what is happening in the scene. This is an advertisement for a South African music group called Die Antwoord (The Answer), a group that can be classified in many genres, ranging from rap and hip-hop, to electronica and rave. They are known for over-the-top performances and racy lyrics, as well as short “mock-umentaries.” I first started listening to them because of an interest that I have with most things extraordinary, and Die Antwoord is more than anything, extraordinary. The members are caricatures of Zef culture in South Africa and are extremely entertaining.
In the middle of the photograph we find Yolandi Visser (sometimes spelled Vi$$er), in a pink costume with blood spatter on in, to her left is Ninja in the mask and gloves, and to his left is somebody representing DJ Hi-Tek. The two men on the other side of the picture are not part of the music group but are used to make the picture more aesthetically pleasing. They also help with the representation of Zef South African culture.
This photograph signifies who they are as a group, a diverse collection of cultures and people; much like their nation is. Personally, this image signifies a few different things. Primarily it is a photograph that makes me smile, not because it is funny, or even because it is over the top. This photo puts a grin on my face because it brings me a feeling of joy, their music is not exceptionally great but it is the freedom that they have to create anything and everything they want, that gives them something great. And this really inspires me, not to make music but to try new and exciting adventures and experiences. I can say that since I first listened to this group I feel different about my own opportunities, if these people who were once considered the underprivileged of South Africa can do whatever they want, I feel like I can as well.
With regards to the image, there is a definite focal point in the middle with Yolandi in her pink attire. This photograph is simplistic with a straightforward symmetrical formation but it was a formation that was thought through and planned by the photographer (this is evidentiary because the two men on the left side are not a part of the music group). The blue writing on the wall, Yolandi’s pink getup, and the dark green grass all add color elements that contrast each other while still keeping the tones of the palette calm. For me this photograph is both ecstatically and emotionally pleasing.
“Difficulty finding a parking spot?
There happen to be plenty right here”
“Ride Your Bike to School Day, 2012.”
We have chosen to use a photograph of two bikes locked up on a bike rack on the American University campus as our advertisement for this assignment. When first looking at this photograph it may be difficult to establish the purpose of it. But, coupled with the caption it is easy to tell that we are advertising the “Ride Your Bike to School Day, 2012.” We decided to use this photograph as our advertisement after going through various ideas, including a proposal using the September 11, 2001 memorial that is on campus. We found that reducing the carbon footprint here at American was a cause that encompassed both the assignment to advertise something, and our own views on the environment. American University has many bike racks but very little encouragement for the students, the faculty or guests to use them. We took it upon ourselves to promote use of these bike racks while cutting our carbon footprint and staying healthy. This event has not yet been established at American University, because of this, we hope to start a new experience on campus.
The photograph shows two bikes locked up on a nearly empty bike rack showing that there is plenty of space for others to also ride to campus. Also, we messed around with the coloring on the photograph to give it more contrast and make it more intriguing.
With regards to demographics, we decided to target various types of people. With this advertisement all students and faculty at American University are encouraged to partake. However, this does not apply to those who live on campus, roughly one quarter of the AU population. With this being said, many of those who live off campus own or have access to bikes but chose to either drive or take the bus. We are targeting this demographic: American University students and faculty who have access bicycles yet regularly do not use them.
As the official national bike week is in the middle of May according to The League of American Bicyclists, and seeing as American University ends classes prior to that, we decided to make “Ride Your Bike to School Day, 2012” the final week in April.
I chose to upload a photo that I took of myself and my friend Keeva a few months ago. I messed around with the coloring but decided to keep it how it originally was. I really like the contrast in this photograph; between eye colors and also between light and dark. This a clear and simple photograph yet at the same time, I feel like the contrast of light and dark makes it almost abstract, or at least something different. 
update: The photo is more cropped than I had hoped.
Charles 