For this practice essay it was on the political cartoon by Adam Zyglis, called “Rule of Law”. This referenced a 2005 video with lewd and inappropriate comments about touching women as they will let you do anything to them because they are ‘stars’.
For my essay I analysed the text and the images used in the political cartoon. For the text I discussed the title of the political cartoon which is shown on the base of the statue. I also discussed the papers in the unbalanced scale and what Trump is saying in the speech bubble. For the images I talked about the elephant caricature, the statue itself and the #metoo movement poster.I got 9/10 points.
To improve I could make my analysis more detailed and give more examples of irony as well, while explicitly referencing juxtaposition. If I was considering the other criteria, for organising, to improve I could separate the juxtaposition from the two paragraphs rather than including it together like I did. There was a lot of Irony in this political cartoon so that would be a better option. In general I could vary my sentence structure and make sure my spelling and grammar is accurate. This was a good practice essay and next time I will make sure to be more detailed in my analysis to improve that strand.
Through the past 3 classes, we have been analysing political cartoons by various artists. We looked at techniques to look for in the political cartoons and we looked further into the meaning behind them and the situations they were based on. The techniques that we used to analyse the political cartoons were: irony, analogy, symbolism, labelling and exaggeration. Irony (or sarcasm) is the difference between the way things are and how they should/ expected to be. An analogy is a comparison between two unlikely things, something complex explained with something familiar. Symbolism is using symbols or objects to mean larger concepts. Labelling (or captions, notes, stereotypes) is used to make objects clear for what they stand for. Other things we could look for in the political cartoon is colour and visual weight.
One of the examples of a political cartoon was “Assault on Lady Liberty” by Bruce Mackinnon. This cartoon is showing a republican (as labelled by the elephant design on the cufflinks) on top of Lady Justice pinning her down to the ground representing men being above justice and how women are usually submissive to men and could be considered beneath men. This cartoon is directly related to the sexual assault allegation made by Christine Ford against Brett Kavanaugh after Kavanaugh supposedly assaulted Ford when they were high school. She came public when he was up to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, which he became regardless. This caused people to think she did it for publicity. Others thought it shouldn’t be cared about as it happened in high school and the allegation wasn’t definite. In my opinion, this shouldn’t matter as it’s still an issue that others face and this would raise awareness for other situations and others might speak out due to the bravery of Ford saying this against a Judge.
Another cartoon we looked at was “Rule of Law” by Adam Zyglis. This referenced a 2005 video with lewd and inappropriate comments about touching women as they will let you do anything to them because they are ‘stars’. On the image, it shows Trump and an elephant man, representing a republican, with black ink on their hands and behind Lady Justice with black ink handprints over her. She holds unbalanced scales showing the injustice with all of these other situations weighing down equality and on her sword the #metoo movement as something to fight for. This is representing the way people have an unspoken rule when it comes to sexual assaults that they, meaning rich men can get away with it even if it’s against the law.
(SEE PAPER 1 PRACTICE ESSAY FOR MORE DETAIL)
The third cartoon we looked at was “Tic Tac Trump” by Nick Anderson. Again this referenced a comment made in the 2005 video mainly talking about how Trump needed a tic tac as if he sees a beautiful woman he would just kiss them. This image is exaggerated with Trumps caricature-like style and the expressions on the three women labelled as Liberty, Justice and Truth. Trump trying to kiss these women is representing him taking advantage of his power to abuse these three values.
The final political cartoon was “Young lady here to see you now Mr Weinstein” which is referencing the many sexual assault allegations towards Harvey Weinstein an American film producer. He sexually assaulted over 80 women throughout his career but they only came to light around 2016 which was the start of the #metoo movement. Lady Justice bursting through the door represents Weinstein abusing the justice system to get away with these assaults. Though the way the door is broken of the hinges represents how women are fighting for justice, the red door symbolising a red carpet in reference to the number of celebrities who have spoken out against him.
After 2 lessons of Lang and Lit, I am already confused. I don’t know what the assessments will be. The learner profiles we have to do make no sense and I don’t know what I would have to include into them. What are the different categories of posts I have to do?
In Art, we used a portfolio to show our process and the plans for our art. In Criterion C in Design, we kind of used them to record how we made the product using photos and small reflections on the changes we made. In the Personal Project, we had to use one as well.
Throughout all of DP, it might be hard to sustain the blog with one entry per week and they might become less detailed as I get tired as the course progresses. It might be hard with the assessments to link everything across but eventually, I will figure it.
Evie's Learner Portfolio 