WP2: Statement of Purpose

For my second project I have chosen to analyze the comic strip shown above. I found this comic a couple days before Halloween posted on the news section of the yahoo website and was illustrated by a man named Aaron Johnson. My primary audience for this project will be Mr. Ware, my teacher. He is the most important audience because he will be the one placing a grade on my work and likely will look at it the most extensively. The most likely secondary audience I also have to take into account will be my fellow classmates because several of them will see my work through the pier review process. With these two audiences in mind, the most effective way for me to format my project will be to state the point i am making, then clearly support the claim with several, clearly written paragraphs followed by a summarizing conclusion. This will allow my paper to be easily interpreted by both my audiences. It is also important to keep in mind that the medium in which I am writing is a blogpost as opposed to a paper or an article. As far as my project goes, this means that my audience will be viewing my text from a computer screen. Sense my project is based off of a comic strip, I need to make sure that my chosen comic appears clearly on the computer screen so that my audience has something to refer to while I am making my points. It will also be important for me to make effective use of paragraph spacing and indentation to best help the audience follow my paper while viewing it from a screen. The point I intend on making in my project is that The Halloween comic above Is not only intended to be comical, but also argues that some functions in todays society are set up to only benefit a select few. Johnson accomplishes this through text, visual hierarchy, vectors of attention and contrasting elements.

The context in which this project will be composed is simply as a writing project in early November through the medium of a blog posting website. It will include traditional text as well as multiple hyperlinks and multimedia elements. My goal should be to make all three of these things work together effectively to help support the my point. It may be hard for my audience to see where I am coming from with my view that the comic represents an unfair distribution of rewards in society, so I will first need to establish what I feel each of the separate elements represents, and then build on how the separate elements work together to make the point that I see. My goal isnt necessarily to make my audience agree with me, but at least show them my point of view and logically take them through my thought process. To do this I also plan on an in depth analysis on what I feel the logos, pathos and ethos within the comic appeal to.

Blog Post 12: Comic Background Info.

I found my chosen comic strip from the news section of the yahoo website. It comes from a series of comic strips entitled W.T. Duck written by Aaron Johnson. He publishes a new strip every day on a site named whattheduck.net. The comic strips cover a variety of comical subjects, and every one of them feature a duck working as a photographer as the main character. Another thing all of Johnsons strips have in common is they are always three frames in length. Sometimes each frame acts as a separate seen and other times, like in my chosen comic, the three frames act together as one.

As far as the context goes, we know that Aaron Johnsons main goal when making any of his comics is to have them be consistantly funny, so that in turn, websites like yahoo publish them daily. This helps Johnson to build his audience as well as make more money. The particular comic I chose was published on October 27 of this year, so we know that this comic is very recent and is likely rhetoricly dealing with issues of modern day society.

When I origionally saw the comic strip, I kind of had a clew that this series of comics always included a duck, just based on the title. What I didnt pick up untill after was that this duck was always a photogropher. It's hard to say for certain why Johnson chose this particular profession for the duck, but I would guess that a photogropher acts to represent bot the average working class American, as well as possibly just a third party observer of situations. After looking through some of Johnsons older comics, i also noticed that the cartoons included besides the duck are normally either another duck, or humans. In my chosen comic, he instead chooses to incorporate monsters. This is probably largely due to the fact that it is near holloween, but also could be that this comic pokes alittle at discrimination and it may have ben uncomfurtable to place human charactors in this situation.

The chosen medium is also a large factor in the context of this piece. When people see this text, they will likely be either brousing through comic strips in the newspaper or skimming through the comics page of some website. This means that the target audience will likely be in a sort of mood for laughter and comic relief. This is a far diferent situation then in Johnson was trying to make a point through the medium of writing a book or publishing an article, just beacuase people would not view it in the same light. Johnson uses the medium of a comic to discretly shape opinions of current issues he feels are important while the audience most of the time thinks they are just getting a good laugh.

Blog Post 11:comic strip

This is the comic I am going to analyze. I chose this comic because at first appearence it is simple, funny, and to the point. The interactions between my characters are visually develloped by five common monsters all focussed on a duck to the far left of the strip, holding a camera. The interactions betwween my characters are textually developed by the duck stating, "I bill for my time, The ugly get charged more." The Frankenstein monster responds by calling it discrimination. The wearwolf, swamp monster and witch then all respond by what appears to be symbols representing a swear word and lastly, the invisible man says, "sweet!"
At first look, it is easy to just assume this comic is making a holoween joke, but one could also look at this piece with the perspective that the comic is playing to some idea or theme in todays society. For example, the holoween theme could be used to set up a current day context, The first four monsters could represent people who stand out in todays society, and the invisible man could represent one who stays under the radar. So, the rhetorical meaning of this comic could be something like those who stand out today get screwed over.
Another interesting component to look at is the quote by Frankenstien where he says, "That's Discrimination." This also sort of creates a sort of current day context as we hear people the topic of discrimination so much in the news. It also creates a sence of irony within the piece as every cartoon is extreemly different yet the duck can somehow still be accused of discrimination. This brings up another possible rhetorical meaning for this piece, that in today's society, its hard to do almost anything without being sued or accused of some sort of discrimination.
The relationship between the panels is established by a transition of colors from orange to white to purple backgrounds. It is interesting because these three boxes could easily all be put together to appear as one scene, but for some reason, the author decided to divide them. It is posible that this was incorporated as a strategy to create a visual heiarchy to bring the audiences eye from the left side of the comic to the right.

WP1 Authors Note

The first thing I did when I was just starting with the rough draft of this paper was to come up with a thesis or direction to go with my paper. I looked back through the excersizes we had been doing for the past couple weeks and read through some of the ideas I had thrown out there already about my chosen photograph. I came down to having two possible rhetorical meaning for my photo which were highly contradictial to each other. One was that the author was making a statement about how the new elements and old emelents in Barcelona come together as one, and the other was that the author felt that commerialism was starting to overshadow parts of the city's history and culture. I ended up choosing to work with the second idea, mostly because it was the viewpoint that I figured less people could come up with themselves from the photo so I figured it would be much more fun to work with.
As far as the content of the paper itself goes, I really wanted to focus on the lighing and contrast within the photograph. Anytime you have a black and white photo, the contrast and balance of light and dark shades always plays a key role in conveying the photos meaning. My strategy was to break the photograph down into several smaller elements, analyze each of them individually, then relate them all back together to the photo as a whole.
As far as my revisions go, the first thing I did was added a meaningful conclusion which acted to tie all of the ideas throughout my paper together at the end. This included a "So What" statement as well as restating my thesis in a different way. I next added a couple photographs of parts of barcelona in which I fealt expressed some of the cities history or culture because in my paper, I am arguing that culture is being overshadowed. I slightly rephraised my origional thesis to be alittle less explicit and leave alitlle more room for interpretation on the part of the audience. On my final revision, I added alittle analysis in the conclusion of another photograph of the same area in barcelona. I fealt this helped to offer an additional perspective and also really helped build on the context of the Barcelona Nights photograph itself. I then mostly focussed on finding some additional facts about the history of Barcelona because if I was going to argue that the history was being overshadowed, it made sence to tell alittle about what that history was. I choose to incorporate most of this research near the beginning of my paper so the audience would be able to use it to build on the context behind the photo. Lastly, when analyzing the photograph one final time, I found a fw more, smaller elements, such as the lighting of the windows, which I decided also held some importance to the photos meaning so I chose to also incorporate alittle bit about that into my paper. Overall, I really enjoyed this project in comparison with writing projects I had done in the past, mostly because it left us so much room with self expression and developing our own ideas. We had some say in what we were writing about which definatly made the project more fun.

WP1 Final Draft

Barcelona, the Spanish capital, has a population of over 1,600,000 and is one of the major economic centers of Europe. One could closely compare its significance to Spain to that of New York City is to the United States because of its finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts and international trade. The city's history is ledgendary, rumored to have been founded to Hercules, 400 years before the building of rome. While this may or may not have been the actual manner in which the Barcelona came into being, there is a definate romen influence present as anchient roman ruins can still be found there to this day. Barcelona has seen many different periods through spanish history including the spanish monarchy, civil war, Franquism and modern democracy. Today, Barcelona prides itself on the Placa Catalunya, which is known as the city's historical center where much of the old 19th century buildings and artwork can still be found. The city also prides itself on its 68 parks and 7 beaches, providing points of beauty throughout the city.(Wikipedia.com) The documentary photograph I have chosen to analyze is entitled “Barcelona Nights” and captures two of modern Barcelona’s most Iconic structures; The Torre Mapfre, a very large commercial building, and the Hotel Arts which includes a hotel, casino, shopping center and restaurants. I feel that the lighting, contrast of colors, and visual heiarchy are the elements which play a key role in expressing the argument that Barcelona's rich historical culture is fading away behind the rapid urbanization of the city.

“Barcelona Nights” was documented on May 25, of 2009 by Liam McAllister. (pool.org.au)Anytime that a photographer chooses for his work to remain in black and white, there is usually an important reason behind it, so I felt analyzing the rhetorical strategy behind this color choice would be a good place to start. In the photo, the ground and the sky are almost completely black. What seems to appear in between and almost divide these two elements is an illuminated, triangle shaped area of white light. This illusion of a triangle is formed by two very bright street lights at ground level, and then a bright display on the top of one of the towers. This works to create hierarchy within the photo where the audience first focuses on what is highlighted by the center of the triangle, the two towers, and then work their way out towards the corners. These buildings, with the exception of some illuminated windows, appear almost black within this illusion of a white triangle which create a heavy contrast and helps to emphasize this hierarchy. This lighting strategy brings logos to the piece with respect to its argument. For example at first glance, almost anyone who looks at this picture is going to see the two tall buildings due to their positioning and high contrast, but if one spends a little longer examining the photograph, they may also see a few other small structures as well as some palm trees, sort of hidden by the shadows. This in itself makes the statement that the two tall structures in the center are overshadowing and drawing attention from whatever else is in the photograph. We can also choose to view the greystyle coloring as a method to historisize the photograph as a whole. Black and white is naturally what you think of when you consider "old" photographs, and although this photo was taken this year, it is possible that the photographer wanted the audience to interprit this piece through a different context. The rhetorical strategy behind this could have been for the audience to see this photo as historical, and then easilly be able to pick out what in the photo dosnt "belong."

Next I chose to look at the sources of lighting in the photo itself. As stated earlier, the three brightest areas in the photo are positioned in such a way as to form a sort of equilateral triangle, dividing the piece, and directing attention towards the center. The manner in which the lights appear is also important. The light to the left of the photo is by far the brightest and is almost two bright to see what exactly is its source. The light near the top of the photo is caused by spotlights along the tom edge of one of the towers. The light to the right of the photo appears to be caused by two streetlamps very near each other. The fact that the light to the left of the photo is so overpowering and even drowns out some of the photograph creates a sort of imbalance and tension with what seems to be the focus of the piece. One possible explanation for the photographer’s decision to include this imbalance may have been to appeal to the pathos of the argument, or how the audience feels when they view the photo. For example, If the audience feels the photograph itself contains some tension, it is also possible they may relate this feeling of tension towards the city of Barcelona itself. If the center of focus is these two highly commercial buildings, then this tension may be a reflection upon them suggesting that they possibly don’t belong.

In a black and white photograph, the contrast often plays an even larger role in determining the photo’s meaning to the audience. In “Barcelona Nights” in particular, there are even very few shades of grey used. The photo almost seems to be divided into what is illuminated, and what is not. As I already stated, the tall buildings which are dark form a contrast with the bright sky behind them, but there are also a few multiple other dark shaded elements, which I also believe hold significant meaning in this photograph. Mostly to the right of the two towers, you can make out the outline of several palm trees. They all appear to be fairly low to the ground, and the only tall one, ironically is almost hidden as it stacks on top of the dark color of the building. It is quite possible that the photographer intended these trees to represent a certain part of Spanish culture and maybe how he feels they are becoming insignificant. Barcelona is along the coast of the Mediterranean, and possibly the meaning of these palm trees being overshadowed is that the beauty of the Mediterranean itself is now being overlooked. On the other side of the two towers is what appears to be some low to the ground, older looking structure. Even though this object is obviously much closer to the camera then the buildings, it is still nearly impossible to make out what exactly the structure is. I feel that the photographer also did this intentionally to build on the statement that the palm trees were making; that some of the historical parts of the city are falling into shadow. The fact that the audience cannot even identify what the building is possibly reflects that in Barcelona, smaller shops or businesses are losing popularity.
If one focusses on the lighting of the windows of the buildings themselves, it becomes apparent that one building is active at night and the otherone is not. In reality, this is simply because the building in the back, the Hotel Arts is a casino, and would often be busy at night time, but it is still important to analyze why then the photogropher chose to take this photo at night when one of the buildings were empty, and why the active building appears behind the empty one. I would say that his intention was to build on his rhetoric while playing with the visual heiarchy. For example, Having a building with no lights on right next to a building compltely lit up creates a very high contrast which draws attention. Then, the visual heiarchy will automaticly draw attention to which ever structure is in front. So with this contrast in the audience's mind they will naturally develop a feeling of emptness with this empty building being the highest on the visual heiarchy scale. The photographer likely wanted to use this effect to draw attention to the fact that the Barcelona night life of Casinos and hotels shouldnt be glorified, but is instead sort of an empty and dark theme, do inating the city.

So what could we say the photogropher himself truely wants the audience to take away from barcelona nights? The photograph dosnt really defame the Torre Mapfre or Hotel Arts in any way, but instead I think just tries to point out that somethings are being overlooked, or falling into the background. For example, in this last photo, we can see that the Hotel Arts and Torre Mapre in reality dont stand out nearly as much as they do in the Barcelona Nights photograph, so we might be able to assume that the photographer was trying to represent the cultural importance of the buildings as opposed to the structural. The way in which he makes them such a center of attention in the photo would imply that he believes what they represent has become the center of attention in the culture of Barcelona. We could say that he values the rich history of this historic spanish city and that he does not want to see it forgotten.