Graphic Design Post #3

          

Graphic Design 

Post #3

Sexual Graphic Art in Advertising

          While scouring the web for other blogs that have an interest in sharing sexuality and graphic design, I found this blog called The Dot. It is very interesting to see how sexuality has been booming in advertisements recently and how far advertisers will go! One of the most interesting ones, I think, is number 10. Graphic design artists created a stamp which has been placed on benches at a local bus stop. Whenever someone sits on the bench with exposed skin, the stamp gets nicely imbedded into their exposed areas and they are forced to walk around with the embarrassing text until their skin recovers. Another one that I felt was pushing the envelope between public pornography and public advertisement was number 12: Victoria's Secret. Now, this franchise has been displaying their products sexually from the beginning, which half naked woman dotting their stores and graphic ads, but I haven't seen anything like this yet. If you have a smartphone, which I'm sure many Americans do, you can just simply scan the code on the advertisement and poof! Suddenly, the woman's sexy lingerie is fully visible on your phone! I think this have definitely gone too far... Number 20 of part 2 in also quite interesting. I'm not sure if the graphic designers intentionally had a sexual innuendo in this piece, but the author of the blog sees it. It's concerning how prevalent sex has become in society's advertising.


-- Sammy McCracken

Sexism and Racism in the Film Industry

            Sexism and racism are two prominent forms of discrimination in the film industry and while progress is starting to be made more steadily by women and minorities it has not always been that way. One example of both sexism and racism is that it took from the time the Academy Awards began in 1929 until 2002 when Halle Berry became the first African American to win the award for Best Actress almost 75 years after the awards began while Sidney Poitier was the first African American to win Best Actor in 1963. While this is one example there are many others including the fact that an Asian Woman has never won the Best Actress. Only one Asian woman has ever been nominated for that category, Merle Oberon in 1935 who hid her racial background for years to avoid racism. The first American woman to be nominated for Best Director was Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation while the first woman to win in that category was Kathryn Bigelow in 2010 for The Hurt Locker taking over 80 years for this award to be given to a woman. So although it has taken a while to get where we are progress is being made to lessen and eliminate this problem although it may never be removed completely.

Gucci Models

Photography Post # 7

Alysha Reed

The Truth Behind Photoshop

Photography Post #6

Alysha Reed

The media takes an already beautiful woman and preps her for hours making her more “beautiful”.  Not only does the media cake make-up on the young woman’s face, but every aspect of the woman’s appearance is altered in some way-shape-or-form from the initial frame.  In the end you can see that all the alterations were not sufficient enough.  Her neck needs to be elongated, her eye bones tweaked, and her hair thickened in-order for her picture to finally appear on the billboard.  The worlds image of beauty has been so skewed.  Young girls see these photos and the women in them as idols.  In reality these idols on the billboards and in the magazines do not even exist as they appear to exist.  With the technology behind the photography, a picture may speak a thousand words but it is hard to know if those thousand words are all lies.

Sculpture – Post #2

HIV and AIDS Depicted in Zimbabwe Sculptures

In the summer of 2010, a whopping 15% of adults in Zimbabwe were estimated to be HIV positive. And according to AVERT, an International HIV and AIDS charity, African American individuals are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS. In 2009, 21,673 adult African Americans in America were diagnosed to be HIV positive and 16,759 individuals were diagnosed with AIDS. That’s nearly twice as many people diagnosed with HIV and AIDS than Hispanics, Asians, American Indians, Pacific Islanders, and mixed-race individuals combined. And with the health care system being overwhelmed by these large numbers of AIDS patients, most people living with this disease are forced to be cared for in their own homes by elderly individuals.

            By delving into a research article by Alexander Rodlach, we will be able to see just how detrimental the AIDS epidemic is in Zimbabwe. However, out of all bad things come good things as well. In this case, Rodlach allows us a peak into how this epidemic has allowed those suffering with AIDS, and those around the disease, to create beautiful wood sculptures capturing the essence of the disease and how it affects Zimbabwe, and its culture, as a whole.



Figure A

             The specific artist that Rodlach interviewed while in Zimbabwe is named Sheunesu Shumba, a man who studied under Zephaniah Tshuma. Tshuma’s sculptures were “caricatures of human life and experiences” (3) and some of his work even focused on the AIDS epidemic and the preconceptions of the disease in the area. Figure A depicts an “intokolotshe” on the left, a sorcerer’s familiar, casting a spell on the man on the right. According to Zimbabwe’s culture, “encountering this familiar and being a victim of ulunyoka (the spell) is believed to result in symptoms similar to those of AIDS” (4).



Figure B

             Another sculpture by Shumba represented “male promiscuous behavior” (6) and showed a man moving away from the two women who have committed to him in order for him to desire another woman. This represents the spread of HIV/AIDS because in Zimbabwe, the majority of people feel that the faithfulness of the man is one of the largest contributing factors to the spread of the HIV virus. Rodlach explores this idea even further, going as far as to say it shows conflicting views in the lives of many Zimbabweans. For one, the man is expected to be faithful and restrain from extramarital sex. But the man is also expected to have many sexual partners or he’s not a “real man” at all (11).



Figure D



Figure C



            Women in Zimbabwe are not exempt from unrealistic expectations and stereotypes. According to Rodlach, a woman’s position in society heavily influences her sexual behavior and in very rural areas women are more “likely to be dependent on their guardians—either male relatives or, after marriage, their husbands—who speak on their behalf” (12). This first sculpture, titled Window Shopping has a woman looking at an item she desires, while also exposing her butt in an attempt to attract men. According to Rodlach, she does this because “she is realistic and knows that her appeal to men (husband, boyfriend, or lover) determines to some degree whether she is able to get what she desires,” therefore saying that women in Zimbabwe feel inferior and dependent on men to have any sort of meaningful life. The second sculpture showing women’s “common position” (12) in society, shows a woman stretching seductively so she can be physically appealing to the men around her. In rural Zimbabwe, women feel like they need to be seductive and visually appealing or they won’t end up with a man that will support them.



Figure E

             The problem with this dependency is that women can’t afford (both economically and politically) to take care of themselves. So when a woman feels her husband is unfaithful, she fears contracting HIV and therefore is hesitant to engage in sex with her husband. According to Rodlach’s interviews, women said “when husbands indicate a desire to have sex they expect their wives to comply.” The sculpture on right, titled Martial Rape, depicts a husband grabbing his wives’ breasts forcefully. The woman looks distressed, and the husband is, symbolically, devouring her, which in Ndebele, is a metaphor for killing her. In this case, how he kills her is by infecting her with HIV.

            HIV and AIDS are a huge problem in not only Zimbabwe, but also the entire world. According to the Guttmacher Institute’s “Sex and HIV Education” survey, 33 states and the District of Columbia mandate both sex education and HIV education classes in schools, and only 13 states require the information to be medically accurate. HIV and AIDS affect so many people, and we’re not taking this nearly seriously enough. HIV is not a “gay only” infection, and neither is AIDS. Shown through the sculptures Rodlach inspected in Zimbabwe, it’s men who are unfaithful with other women that cause the most distress about this disease. These wooden sculptures depict the everyday struggles those living with AIDS face, and the very real fears those without face living in a country where HIV is spreading faster than ever.

Bibliography

Rodlach, Alexander. "Popular Images of the AIDS Epidemic: Contemporary Wood Sculptures from Southern Zimbabwe." African Arts (2010): 54-67. Galegroup.com. Web. 18 Mar. 2012. <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?retrieveFormat=PDF_FROM_CALLISTO&inPS=true&prodId=AONE&userGroupName=lom_emichu&workId=PI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-50.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-51.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-52.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-53.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-54.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-55.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-56.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-57.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-58.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-59.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-60.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-61.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-62.JPG%7CPI-0438-2010-SUM00-IDSI-63.JPG&docId=GALE%7CA241277804&callistoContentSet=PER&isAcrobatAvailable=true>.

"Sex and HIV Education." State Policies Brief. Guttmacher Institute, 1 Mar. 2012. Web. 18 Mar. 2012. <http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_SE.pdf>.

"United States Statistics by Age and Race." AVERTing HIV & AIDS. AVERT: International HIV and AIDS Charity. Web. 18 Mar. 2012. <United States Statistics by Age and Race>.