Are You My Mother Analysis

Distinctively visual representations allow the audience to envisage different purposes crafting emotions which stay with us forever. Graphic depiction is a fundamental characteristic within distinctively visual, thus the audience is able to be exposed to the intense illustrations exemplified by composers. Spudvilla’s portrayal of “Woolvs in the sitee” demonstrates the child’s inability to reconcile with himself. Contrasting to this notion; the playwright “Shoe-horn Sonata” to expose the brutal reality of POW camps during WWII. Therefore, distinctively visual forces the audience to succumb to the barriers society creates.

Not many companies can influence the childhood development of many Americans like the Walt Disney Company. Disney, named after their founder, began as just an animation studio called The Walt Disney Studios, which the company describes as “the foundation on which The Walt Disney Company was built”. Today, Disney produces various items targeted at children like toys, clothing, and animation (“Company”). In the paper, Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney’s Cartoon Heroines From The Little Mermaid To The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Celeste Lacroix of the College of Charleston assesses the portrayal of female heroines from Disney animated films that depicts human main characters, examining the sexualization of non-European or the “exotic” others, and brings to light Disney’s strategy to instill an attitude of consumerism in children. Despite my memorable sentiment with Disney animations as a child, I agree with Lacroix’s assertion that Disney impose consumerism onto children, especially with DVD commercials, tie-in products and “apps” on smartphones and tablets.

The way Bechdel decides to depict the characters through her art is a major factor in how the characters are developed, and can be a major factor in how the story is perceived. At a first glance, the depiction of Bechdel’s persona, Alison, in “Are You My Mother?” appears to have very masculine features. An uninformed reader may at first assume that the story is about a man. However, through the dialogue and narration it is quickly revealed that the drawings are depictive of a homosexual woman. Bechdel’s portrayal of herself in the graphics as having very masculine features says a lot about her self-perception. She creates her own persona, so the character seen in the cartoons is Bechdel in her own image and likeness. Clearly, Bechdel illustrated her comic so that the character bared a strong resemblance to her own self-image. Later on in the story, starting on page 83, Alison is depicted wearing glasses and she bears a much stronger resemblance to actual pictures of Bechdel. In several scenes throughout the story, including the opening scene, Bechdel has dreams of herself as a child. These scenes showed a young Alison, dressed in what would widely be considered boys clothing (Bechdel 73). The illustrations as a whole are very sexually ambiguous. This may be perceived as an allusion to Bechdel’s struggles with her own sexuality. However, the refrences to Bechdel’s struggles go beyond the art.

The author of Animating Revolt and Revolting Animation, Judith Halberstam, uses rhetorical strategies to speak to her point that animated movies can be used to reach a wide ranging audience to convey deep underlying messages in a way that is entertaining for all. The author points out how Pixar movies brings non-traditional characters to life and faces them against real life struggles but does so in a happy ending manor that captivates audiences. This is accomplished by the author introducing a plot line from a Pixar movie that illustrates a struggle or classic battle and then describes the characters that are in the struggle and how they live through it. The author then describes an actual real life struggle and relates it back to the animated movie.

The post-modernist Julie Rrap is a contemporary artist whose focal point rests on the basis of femineity and the way the female identity is represented historically within art. She is a feminist who accuses the ‘male gaze’ of instigating a predatory activity that is accustomed with the norm of society. She relates this norm to existing social structures that are attributed with a patriarchal society, where women were nothing more than sexual objects. All in all this term, the ‘male gaze’ evaluates the predatory voyeurism of society, where the male is the active subject and the female is a passive object of representation.

In Liza Long’s blog titled, “I am Adam Lanza's Mother,” she documented her struggles with her own 13-year old son, "Michael," who suffered from mental illness, and just days before the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, had been hospitalized after threatening to kill her and kill himself. Except for the brief moments when he experienced such rages, he was a sweet kid who loved Harry Potter, she said, and has an IQ that's off the charts. The main argument that Liza discusses is that all mothers, including her, of children that suffer with mental illness, have no options to help their children, besides sending them to

Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, documents the author's discovery of her own and her father's homosexuality. The book touches upon many themes, including, but not limited to, the following: sexual orientation, family relationships, and suicide. Unlike most autobiographical works, Bechdel uses the comics graphic medium to tell her story. By close-reading or carefully analyzing pages fourteen through seventeen in Fun Home one can get a better understanding of how a Bechdel employs words and graphic devices to render specific events. One can also see how the specific content of the pages thematically connects to the book as a whole. As we will see, this portion of the book echoes the strained relationship

Often the most important trait a person can posses is to be aware of their surroundings. If someone is aware of their surroundings on a physical, mental and emotional level, they have the power to fully immerse themselves in their experience, without hesitation or limitation. In Saidiya Hartman’s memoir Lose Your Mother, the reader is presented with an orator who lacks complete awareness of their surroundings, which later translates to a lack of self-awareness, while in both Jamaica Kincaid’s and Caryl Phillips respective memoirs the reader is presented with authors who are fully aware of their surroundings and thus self aware as well.

In Henry Giroux’s book, “The Mouse that Roared” he argues that Disney animated movies lead to the end of innocence in children. He focuses mainly on the images that Disney portrays towards gender roles and gender stereotyping. He primarily targets the issues that women are portrayed as being subordinate to men and are viewed as property and objects of desire instead of as human beings. Giroux is unconvincing in his argument because he writes above the level of thinking and comprehension that most children who are exposed to Disney films would posses; by focusing on specific scenes, while ignoring the overall morals throughout the rest of

The essay by Gillam and Wooden attempt to prove that in many Pixar/Disney films, the often male protagonist goes through a change where they are “stripped of their identity” and made into a new more female like character (470). The two authors assert that Pixar has been making movies that create a new model of masculinity – one that does not follow the ideals of the “ubermacho Gaston” but rather a gentler and more understanding man (471). Gillam and Wooden assert this to appeal to the reader who has seen all or some of the movies they are refrencing not only to prove a point but to make the reader aware of what has occurred in the movies.

In John Berger’s essay “Ways of Seeing,” he shares his view on how he feels art is seen. Mr. Berger explores how the views of people are original and how art is seen very differently. By comparing certain photographs, he goes on to let his Audience, which is represented as the academic, witness for themselves how art may come across as something specific and it can mean something completely different depending on who is studying the art. The author goes into details of why images were first used, how we used to analyze art vs how we do today, and the rarity of arts. He is able to effectively pass on his message by using the strategies of Rhetoric, which include Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.

Alison Bechdel’s memoir, Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, focuses on Alison and her relationship with her mother. Her relationship with her mother affects the way she relates to people, especially her mother. Bechdel begins this portrayal of Alison’s relationship with her mother on the cover of the book. The red, wood-like background of the cover of the book, is behind all of the other objects. This background is most likely a desk or table of some sort with several objects sitting on top of it. Firstly, I notice the mirror. Mirrors are typically seen as a symbol of self-indulgence and vainness. The mirror is golden and the title of the book, Are You My Mother? is placed in the mirror itself. Secondly, I see the red beaded necklace. The beads are not completely on the book cover. Beads, jewelry, and the color red are often seen as signs of affluence and richness. Next, I see the black and white picture. What appears to be two females are present in the picture. One is older than the other. The woman in the picture looks like she is sitting and appears to be smoking and reading some sort of book, magazine, or newspaper. There is a girl off to the left side of the woman in the picture, clasping her hands, smiling, and watching the woman from a distance. Finally, I notice the lipstick on the cover. The lipstick is in a white container with a gold band. I can clearly see that it is a red shade of lipstick. Again, red lipstick is usually seen worn on someone of importance.

Last Year when Bad Moms was released, I stated that the film felt like an R-rated version of Modern Family, sitcom-level writing trying it’s hardest to be edgy. Lo and behold the story hasn’t changed much with A Bad Moms Christmas as you have much of the same except it is exponentially worse. Riding on the notion once again that the most difficult job on the planet is being a mother, the two horrible mothers along with their semi-competent friend are back this time dealing with the pains of their own horrible mothers, it’s like a pattern. There isn’t much of a plot here, it is the same crude humor and f-bomb dropping every third line that makes this feels like a 90-minute sketch some Viner on YouTube would put together (and those videos are

Traditionally, animated films have been made for and consumed by children, with the plotlines and themes being relatively basic and forthright. However, recent years have seen the release of animated films that explore significantly more adult themes and thought provoking ideas. Perhaps the most confronting example of adult themes in an animated film is in 2016’s ‘Zootopia’. The film forces viewers to think about concepts such as racial segregation, nature vs. nurture and the debilitating effect of stereotyping. Although Zootopia features anthropomorphic animals, it is easy to draw a connection between the film’s prey vs. predator narrative and racial divide in our own society.

The film All About My Mother is a drama which sees a mother, Manuela, on a search to find the father of her son. This journey comes after her son, who has always desired to meet his father, was tragically hit by a car and killed while chasing down actresses of the play A Streetcar Named Desire. This play, which Manuela was an actress in twenty years earlier, becomes small piece of her son she holds, since it was the last thing she did with him before he was killed. This desire she feels to be complete is a trait which recurs in a few other characters during the story. The characters that the desire to feel complete is most shown in is Manuela, Esteban (her son), and Huma.