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My favorite painting by Khalo

Is the painting with cut hair because it makes her look bit he feminine and masculine.One even may say gender fluid. This especially resonates with the global issue of woman being influenced by stereotypes about femininity. Frida perfectly shows that femininity is not about beauty or in this particular painting length of hair.

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One of my favorite scenes from the novel is the one on page 141 mainly because of what Susan says to Ben about how her feelings are independent of him and that their marriage is actually falling apart. She does that in such a decisive way that this sentence really stuck in my mind

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My Reflection after the Mock IO:

How I prepared:

After I chose the fragments,I had to think of a global issue which was though and I changed it several times. Finally I have decided to focus on gender oppression in Live of Others and The Handmaid’s Tale

Firstly I have prepared an outline and after it was accepted I started practicing it by recording myself and measuring time. Maybe I could have made more notes in the process not to repeat my mistakes

I did it around 20 times

What I could do better is to prepare for the questions more thoroughly and analyze the fragments better. I should not read the fragments from the book. More in depth analysis

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Frida Khalo: Her Life and art by Hayden Herrera

Three things which surprised me:

1. Unconditional love for Diego

2. Her will to live

3. How she was able to separate her body from her mind

Two things to explore:

1. Symbols she used in her paintings

2. Her auto portraits

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Some annotations in Dry White Season

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Additional notes from the lesson about „Dry White Season”

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Self study

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First Stasi document

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The Handmaid’s tale project

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Advertasing notes part 2

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Marlboro Ad Analysis

The campaign originated in United States and was used from 1954 till 1999. It was first created by Leo Brunetti in 1954. At First Marlboro cigarettes were advertised only for women since the filter was considered less manly. It all changed during war times when cigarettes became very popular among army officers. In 1949 Life magazine published a copy featuring a cowboy with a white hat which became an inspiration for Marlboro ads. Just then cowboy became a symbol not only of cigarettes but also of truly American values.

Advertisements are of course made to be admired but they are also made to provoke. Audience when seeing an ad (a good one) should ask questions and think about the message behind it. In the professional language it is called a visual narrative. Therefore, I can imagine people (especially men) looking at the ad asking themselves the following questions: Will smoking Marlboro cigarettes make me as strong as the cowboy in the picture? Will I feel as free and careless? Will I be perceived as more manly? The reason for this is the fact that the man looks as if he was coming back to where he belonged-the Marlboro country. The message of the advertisement is to encourage or even make men feel that it is necessary to smoke cigarettes in order to be successful, manly, independent, strong, powerful and in general better than your non-smoking colleagues. It looks as if all his troubles were left behind; he is entering a better world. Americans wanted to buy Marlboro cigarettes because they associated the brand with freedom and independence, their core values which they were taught since they were kids. Europeans however bought them just because they wanted to feel more like Americans that they looked up to. The slogan itself was a very important part of the Marlboro campaign: Come to the Marlboro country- The name Marlboro country was created so that customers could associate it with being successful and the highest quality of both life and product itself. If you smoked Marlboro you were as successful as the brand. The Marlboro country was a land of manly men, all in positions of power, where people were listening to them. They had no bosses above; they had no children and no wives which meant no worries at all.

However, I do not think that visuals are a strong and important part of this advertisement I can certainly notice the vertical axis with tiny space in the middle which makes the advertisement look as if it was a magazine. The two parts highlight each other but could work completely separately. . Given the fact the advertisement is separated it makes you look first left at the packets and then right at the cowboy. The colours are natural. There is a lot of green involved which creates the illusion that smoking is actually healthy. If you want to feel the connection with nature you should smoke Marlboro. The cowboy is wearing the iconic white hat which symbolises that he is a ‘good guy’. When it comes to the packets they provide a contrast against the background, they are brightly coloured and visible at first glance. What is worth noticing is that there is no any kind of endorsement used to promote the product. The cowboy depicted in the ad has a regular, recognizable, almost familiar face that is similar to so many other American faces. The person who sees the ad for the first time automatically desires to be as ideal as the cowboy. Therefore, the only thing that can make you this flawless and powerful is smoking Marlboro cigarettes.

Marlboro Company created a campaign based on values dear to every American man. The ads featured figures like cowboys who were examples to follow if you wanted to become manly and powerful. The Marlboro ad for a spare second could take its viewer to the land of freedom and justice-land that was different from the US at that time. This explains why the campaign was so successful. Its core was a myth about truly American cowboy and for many Americans there is nothing more important and nothing to be more proud of than that. If, you were a manly man you were not even afraid of lung cancer or other diseases being side effect of smoking cigarettes.

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Advertising notes part 1

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Some annotations from my Othello copy

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Othello notes from my notebook