Project Reflection
In this assignment we researched and talked about different types of propaganda and looked at some example of some from World War 1. During that process we had to think of what we were going to do for an original poster. In this you had to pick which types of propaganda you were going to use and who it was going to be for and against. Mine was from Germany (hence the Iron Cross for the flag) and used fear and flag waving.
Some of the refinements that I had to make were the picture I found on Google (I Photo shopped it). Before all that though I drew a draft of the earth and some eyes that looked really cool, but very creepy. I didn't want to copy it in Photo shop and continue it all because I thought it would take too long and I would become a perfectionist and it would be late. I back to Photo shop and changed the color and the eyes. In doing that it completely changed the photo. Another thing I had to do is the eyes because they didn't seem fierce enough so I pasted another pair of eyes and recolored them too make it creepier. Then I had to make the final adjustment and that twas the flag. I didn't want the flag on there and we picked the iron cross of Germany in the eyes to make it seem more German. In the analysis I had to change my entire second paragraph because it seemed too short.
I feel very good about this project because it seems really good and the intended audience did seem fearful, not of Germany, but of the poster in general. I like the eyes on earth because it shows that the people are watching you and they might be watching everything you do. I didn't like the wording in this because it seems like it could be explained just by looking at it. I really enjoyed the making of the project because I forgot how to use Photo shop and I got to learn it again and I'm better at it now. The other thing I'm enjoying is the poster in general because it seems really cool and it makes me tingle to think that I made a propaganda piece for my own.
I learned to never cram and jam all of the work in a small amount of time because you'll get it done at the last minute and then if something goes wrong, you lost a pretty decent grade. The main idea of this project to me is that you need to back up your work and put it on something more than just a flash drive. I lost my flash drive and had to start over again and I finished it in 5 min. after that.
I would change the words because I think all I really needed to put is that that We Will Win. I think this now because even though I like it I think that I could have made it way simpler by doing that simple thing.
We Will Win We Are Watching
Welcome to the wonderful world of propaganda posters from the 1st World War, we will be exhibiting a more resent looking one that has many different features to it. On the viewer I want them to actually show fear, flag waving and oversimplification because it seems that in this poster it shows many parts to all of those in it. Fear is simply to get some intended audience to be scared of something, for example; when you smoke, you start like the coolest kid ever, and then when get in your 50’s you look like you’re in your 80’s. Most people don’t want this to happen so they won’t do it because they are scared. In this poster it shows this by the German’s saying that they are always watching, that would be very scary to know that a man is watching and waiting for you to screw up and get you. Flag waving is literally in the title, flag being the key term; they show a flag on it anywhere. It is a way to attempt and justify an action and in some way benefit a group or country (Germany in this case). In this I show it in the eyes to show that it is Germany. The whole flag isn’t there, but the iron cross is and it was (in WW1) on the flag. The last is oversimplification which is very easy to explain. This is like saying “do it” or “buy it” there is no really reasoning behind it, just a few simple words like “we want you”. In this poster I show it by intensifying the word to show “We Will Win” and “We Are Watching”. In this all of these things come together as a threat to any of the allies and not the central powers (it should give them confidence). In this we have seen the things that make this poster and what is should do to people if it were real.
This poster fits in with WW1 by showing Germany’s iron cross and saying that they will win this war. In this, the reason Germany was fighting was because Austria/Hungary and Germany were friends and they thought that they could destroy Serbia and have more power and land for themselves. When the war started they thought that with the right amount of intimidation plus all of their forces, which they could win and gain more power. In this war, they thought that they could achieve more power and could get more land to rule over. Though Germany lost the war, they actually were pretty powerful through having so many weapons and many people and Austria/Hungary as support for them. They could last a good while in a fight till they had lost so many men. This piece would be effective then because it shows that they were powerful and confident that they would win and that, thought they might lose, they had allies everywhere that would help watch people for mutiny, rebellion and threats across their land and other lands too. It would show the people that they were a force to be reckoned with, and if they didn’t back down, then they would die.
Ultimately I think that propaganda is a positive and negative force in society because though they have negative effects on the person it might be trying to hit, it will be doing something good for the other man. In political commercials like voting for a mayor in Durango you will get a little speech from them that will tell you what he will do and you might like it and that would be some propaganda usage. Negatively I think that it leads people in a direction in a way that might hurt them, like smoking campaigns; Smoking is cool and everyone does it, it sounds cool, but later in your years you will most likely get sick or have problems later and you’ll realize that that wasn’t the best idea. Those types of things will turn a seemingly good thing into a negative thing like that. I don’t personally feel like it affects me that much because I don’t pay much attention to the posters, ads, and commercials because when I was really young I looked at everyone of them and I bought something that looked cool on T.V. and I it didn’t do anything it was said to do. Plus, my parents and I are not interested in the show we are watching and not the things happening in between. I don’t like it that much but I just ignore it so much it becomes a habit for me.
Poetry Project:
Roj Bash Kurdishstan. N.p., 10 Dec. 2009. Web. 7 Dec. 2010. <http://northerniraq.info/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4844>.
1. In this it talks about the mother of seven children who were in the gas attack Halabja. They heard the explosion and ran outside for a second and ran back in. When she was helping the baby, her oldest sons told her he was burning and she went to help him. Soon all of them were burning because of the mustard gas. She woke in a hospital and her kids were dead (as far as she knew.) Her youngest survived and was living in Iran. He finally came back and found his mother. He was only one out of 41 other lucky children; about 5,600 were killed by gas in Halabja.
15 Checkmarks, It is pretty good because it shows information about a man that survived the gas and his mother and how they found each other. It’s a short writing about it and is easy to read, it’s not that difficult to read at all.
It’s going to help because it shows me more about what happened to the families in the attack. It’s really going to because I’m going to need this information if I am going to do a piece on the gas attacks on Halabja.
“I’m burning!” How fast the gas traveled to the town though it was far away when it blew up.
Human Rights Watch. GENOCIDE IN IRAQ. N.p., July 2009. Web. 7 Dec. 2010. <http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1993/iraqanfal/>.
2. A man is set free from being a war prisoner and goes back to see his family. When he gets back he comes to find that his family is no longer there and cannot find them. He searches and there is no trace of them as he can find.
10 checkmarks, this piece is good for me to use because it tells the story of a man that cannot find his family after he comes home. The wording is simple and all the links below it all work properly. It can help me by showing people that prisoners came home and couldn’t find their families.
I learned that this man lost the most important thing to him and is searching still (shows the family members names), is telling his story about coming home and there is nothing (showing the pain he feels)
Kurdishstan Democratic Party. HALABJA: BLOODY FRIDAY. Ed. Alex Atroushi. N.p., 11 Mar. 1994. Web. 25 June 2007. <http://www.kdp.se/old/chemical.html>.
3. All about some of the tragic deaths in the gas attack in Halabja. 75% of the people that died were women and children. All together there were 5,000 innocent lives lost. That 75% were the people that died on the spot. They were bombarded by planes flying with cluster bombs and gasses like mustard, tear and cyanide gas.
19 checkmarks, this website showed so much information on this attack and the pain and death it caused at the time. People at the hospitals were in pain from removing burning skin filled with mustard gas and pus. If they couldn’t get to a hospital because of soldiers, they died running back into their house. Their links all worked and they bring you to interesting pieces like this one.
It explained exactly what happened in Halabja that day and what the soldiers did to help all of the survivors in the hospitals and explain where they were going when they died.
Some of the pictures of the account:
Human Rights Watch. APPENDIX A. N.p., July 2009. Web. 7 Dec. 2010. <http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1993/iraqanfal/APPENDIXA.htm>.
4. Documents and talks by Al-Majid, he is saying something about why should we share with this other land. He calls them all donkeys and his reasons for his actions are just that he wants to destroy them and there is nothing that can stop him from doing it. He says that nobody lives on a main road of life so nobody should. He is sick of this so he wants to get rid of them all.
14 checkmarks, this is a really good source to use because it can help with getting more information on one man in this genocide, the big man. It’s showing me what I can do for this by giving me the explanation for this genocide which was really a bad reason, to gain land that was “truly” theirs. I can use this in my project by explaining that process.
This is going to help me develop this project by giving me a backup reason on why all of this happened to the people in this genocide and why it happened to them. I can put that in the script and in the board too.
Everything that he promised he would do to them. “There will be no more villages” He said he would wipe them all from the face of the earth
Poetry Project:
Boone Grigsby
My content inspiration was By-Standing: The Beginning of an American Lifetime because this poem talks about her life and I thought that that was great. I think this because she talks about the times that were the most memorable to her and that were fresh in her memory. In my head it is close to the same, we both remember a few of the main details of both of our lives. I wanted to talk about how life is rough and the way she put it made it the best I think. She talks about how in school people gave her flags to wave and not knowing why she had them and how she could be misinterpreted as a boat person. I talk about how my life was and how I think it could have been. I think that this is the biggest content inspiration just because it is the most noticeable; how we put ourselves in it. It is a hard thing to do when you are writing a poem that is going to be that powerful. In this I use the time in it also because knowing what is happening in the life of this kid is crucial because I want people to know what was happening to him. In By-Standing she does the same thing; she changes the times on you after going into detail about what happened to her.
My form inspiration is “By-Standing” where she did different years about what she has seen in her past. I’m taking the time slot piece for it because it seems pretty good for one that involves school and different times. I have taken the repetition of it because if I said that it was 8 a.m. and stayed there. In her poem she writes, “1986 I remember a third grade classmate talking about the commies and how blowing them up was a good idea.” I took the date and turned it to a clock for school. People wouldn’t get it and it is important to the poem because it is a poem about a single day at school for a little kid. Repetition is a good thing too to get your point across to people. If you don’t (on some poems) it might not be as obvious to the reader. So with repetition it really works with what I want, a place where a child doesn’t feel safe because of the others in it that hurt him.
My performance will be verbal toward the audience because I don’t think it would give it much justice if I put it through a computer alone, I think that it would be more powerful through words and you would get the message easier if they heard it from a kid with experience of this problem. I am modeling my performance as Kelly Tsai did in “By-Standing: The Beginning of an American Lifetime.” I chose this way of presenting because it is powerful and when you speak it your audience hears it from a person that makes the meaning amazing. If you just read it off a piece of paper, it doesn’t sound as good. I am incorporating her tone that she is using and the arm movements that she has in it. It really brings out her poem and I think that it is a great idea to have because it shows the power and emotion more than just having it in your hand and doing a cold reading of it. It just doesn’t work as well as having the motion and the tone she gives in it to show the mood. I chose this also because I am anticipating a few challenges, all including, people doing something none verbal and computer related. I want to do it this way because there needs to be some variety and in what this exhibition has got.
- Description of this project. What was the project about? What did you do? What did you learn? Think of this as an overview for people who are not familiar with the project.
This project was to make a poem out of peace, violence, or war. We wrote a poem that we would perform in front of the class and everyone who came to the exhibition. We had a choice of performances though; we could either paint a painting (you’d still perform your piece), make kinetic text to show and record yourself doing your poem, or just perform it. The project was about violence, peace or war. These were the main topics that we had this year in humanities so we used these. These are also really powerful topics for poetry. I learned that poetry is a very hard thing to write because it’s either good or bad, there really is no in between. Also that it is very opinionated, I say this because when we went back to older poems, there was one that was about a stroll in the snow with a horse. A man reading it thought it was about death, so did many of the kids in our class.
In this too I learned that when you are doing something specific like doing a rhyme scheme, you can’t change it up in the middle and start something else with it. When you do that, it might confuse your audience and then the poem is ruined. The way to keep this from happening is through knowing what you are going to do with your poem and not have second thoughts after writing half of it.
- What have you learned from this process about how to use writing, language, and performance to affect your audience?
I have learned that writing can really affect your audience through the it being personal to you; When I made my poem and finalized it, I have my family and my director for many years read it and all of them said the same thing; wow. Writing is powerful if it is written personally and even if it isn’t personal and it’s about another person or topic that isn’t that powerful, you can make it powerful. You need description and power in your voice then. Your language is another key thing in this, I have learned that language is a big thing when you are trying to affect your audience because the way you say it can really affect how it turns out in how the audience interoperates this poem. If it’s about how you are dying of cancer, you aren’t going to be saying that it is a beautiful thing with positive things in it. Your language is going to be saddening and people are going to want to feel sorry you have this and you are dying. If you use language that doesn’t match to your poem, then it is just going to hurt your poem and it isn’t going to be as good as it can be.
Your performance aspect for your audience (to me) is the most crucial aspect in affecting your audience. I have learned from theater and from this rehearsal that you have to show no fear to your audience unless that is the character you are portraying. This is a big thing because on stage you need to know what you’re saying and not worry about what the other people are thinking. If they see you’re nervous or feeling something other than good, they will get bored and leave. You need to be cautious about how you act and make it interesting.
Body of Lies
Nothing is happening at school,
That's a lie.
8 a.m. pinned to the wall for being here,
In this agony I feel fear.
9 a.m. thrown against a locker for accusations of sexuality.
The rumors are all wrong. A truthful kid in a body of lies, no compatibility.
Nothing is happening at school,
That's a lie.
10 a.m. bullied in front of the teacher,
What did she do? Nothing. I seep into depression
Deeper
And deeper
11 a.m. loser, weak, useless, friendless,
I know that I am not like this.
12 p.m. lunch money threats today,
Someday I hope that they will all pay.
Nothing is happening at school,
That's a lie.
1 p.m. I see people together in the halls.
Where am I? Alone, hidden within the walls.
2 p.m. it's almost over, finally, I'll be free,
But for now I'm still drowning in a social sea.
3 p.m. the bell rings, even from my “friends” I feel rejection.
My parents take me home not knowing the tension.
How was your day?
…Good...
That's the biggest lie.
What would it be in a world traversed?
In four years could this be reversed?
How was your day?
Good…
That is not a lie.
3 p.m. my friends finally accept me, my enemies still show rejection,
Parents take me home not worried about the suppression.
2 p.m. It’s almost over; finally I’ll be free,
I’m not feeling suppressed, I feel glee.
1 p.m. I still see people in the hall.
Where am I? With friends hanging out in the mall.
Nothing is happening at school,
Is it a lie?
12 p.m. lunch is now peaceful and calm,
Finally, it won’t go off like a bomb.
11 a.m. loser, weak, useless, friendless,
I feel immune to names (more or less).
10 a.m. no more bullying in front of the teacher,
The mental scars stopped getting
Deeper
And deeper.
Nothing is happening at school.
Is it a lie?
9 a.m. I’m safe near my locker, though people still call me queer,
It’s all still a lie, but it doesn’t hurt to feel fear.
8 a.m. still getting pinned to a wall for being here,
For some reason it doesn’t hurt me to see them jeer.
It’s the choices you make that will end this session,
If you don’t, you’re just adding to your own oppression.
