Street Art

Thought I’d share with you some pictures from a street art community board I follow on Pinterest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

xoxo,

The Musician

In the Eye of the Beholder

While watching the satiric comedy “Galaxy Quest”, many of our classmates found many parts of the movie very amusing. However, The Musician and I saw that some scenes weren’t as funny as the rest of our class did. Although the movie is called a comedy, it doesn’t really mean that everyone will think it’s funny. This goes the same for any work created for a viewing audience. Whether it is a popular song, painting, movie, or computer game, you can’t expect everyone to have the same perspective. Some may think a painting is a masterpiece; others may think that it is just another picture you put up on a wall. No matter what is being created, everyone will have a different point of view about it.

The Thermians’ behavior is unusual and different than alien behavior we’ve seen in other movies, and some of their behavior is humorous to some but not to others. For instance, the sounds they make when they communicate are made in a way that we may find amusing. For instance, the sound that Laliari makes due to the malfunction of her translator may seem humorous to some because of the craziness in her voice; for others it might not be amusing because they think it is irritating and random. Another example is the Thermian laugh scene. Everyone in the class roared with laughter at the sound of it, but The Musician and I didn’t see the laugh was amusing. Alien behavior in movies is made to seem different than human behavior, and some of their behavior can be made to be funny for the audience. However, not everyone will see the behavior as humorous, but see it as unusual, random, and sometimes irritating.

Guy Fleegman (Sam Rockwell) is considered as the funny character in “Galaxy Quest”. Many of his moments in the video are the ones that most people consider amusing. His scream after encountering the Thermians, his nervous breakdown on the flight to a nearby planet, and his insecurities as a minor character are parts that I found humorous. To others there might be scenes of Guy that they consider funny to them, but as stated before, no one is expected to have the same opinion about a subject or idea.

In this clip, we see Gwen (Sigourney Weaver) and Jason (Tim Allen) pass through the chompers in the ship. What I found amusing about this scene are the character’s reactions to how they have to go through a seemingly impassable obstacle that was built because of the show they acted in. And Gwen’s comment about the obstacle at the end was the most amusing part of the clip. Now, I don’t expect others to think that this scene is hilarious as well. No one’s opinion is exactly the same as another.

In this scene, Gwen is complaining how repeating the computer’s response is her one and only job in the crew, not matter how idiotic the job is. Her reaction to Tommy’s complaining of her constant habit of repeating the computer because she did it on the show is considered humorous to some. Others may think it is just a normal anger fit some people may have. It’s not an expectation to have everyone agree on an idea but without people having different opinions, there would be no uniqueness in the song, picture, etc. It would all be the same thing everyone agrees on and nothing else.

-The Little Artist

Art in the Great War

Take one look at these posters. The only things you see are people asking you to join the army. But looks, and even artwork, can be deceiving. Posters like these represent how young men who join the army for reasons they get from the media and their own perspectives are oblivious to the reality of war. When men join the army, they think that fighting in the war will be easy and they won’t have much to worry about. However, their thoughts change when they get to training and fighting the actual war. In Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front”, the narrator, Paul Baumer, joins the army because he thinks it would be easy. His comrades thought the same thing. When young men are recruited, they are unaware of how dangerous, deadly, and harsh war really is until they are caught in the heat of the battle. As Baumer and his comrades go through training at camp, they think about how imperceptive they were about being recruited. Advertisements of Propaganda and Uncle Sam show only the positive and uplifting side of being in the military: fighting for justice and honor for your country. The cons however hold to be much greater. Risking the lives of your comrades or even your own, possibilities of getting injured or killed daily, the repulsive terrain, harsh conditions of training camp, and shellshock, are not things that men don’t know of until they are engaged into battle. Although some men in the army know of the risks they are taking in battle, others don’t tend to know at all until the lives of their friends or their own are physically on the line. After Kemmerich’s death, Baumer finally sees the reality of fighting in the army for their country: putting the lives of many soldiers at stake, including his friends and his own.

Another example of how people are mislead about the concepts of war is these posters shown. The poster on the left asks women to work in factories to build weapons and ammunition for the army. When women see this poster, they would think that working in the factory is easy because they aren’t the ones fighting the war and their craftsmanship can come in handy. But in reality, women that work in factories making weapons don’t really have it easy. Their working conditions are just as bad as the soldiers’ training camp and battlefield: constant working machinery, handling dangerous substances that are used to make the weapons, and the polluted air from the smoke in the factories. Some women have suffered in these conditions and a majority of women got sick or injured. The concept is the same for the poster on the right: asking people to work to help the army but not showing the cons of working for the army. Even if in most posters they show as if working for the army other than being a soldier is good, the working conditions in factories are as bad as working conditions during the industrialization of Great Britain: hard, gruesome, and terrible. Even though some might say that it is better than training in the army, working in a factory is just as gruesome and hard as fighting in the war.
It’s really quite fascinating that art could play such a large part in this Great War. That goes to show how art can greatly affect us as human beings. It plays with our emotions. It persuades us. The art used in all of the propaganda could have been the small push that a man needed to go and sign his life away. That is such an incredible reality!
-The Little Artist