Blog Assignment # 4: Facebook

On Facebook, a persona can be created with photos, comments, videos and status updates.  As we un-tag ourselves from objectionable photographs, we create a character that merely portrays the outer surface of our true selves. We cannot fully exhibit who we might be because it is often flooded with parents, or employers looking to evaluate individuals based on what their portrayals of their facebook persona. 

As with upholding a certain persona on facebook (especially when involved in a sorority), its important that I do not post pictures of myself with alcoholic drinks in hand or anything that could be thought of as suggestive when wearing apparel or items hat signify my sorority. I feel it is important to uphold a brand that you have chosen to openly exhibit. It is also about representing the organization in a good light and being respectful towards the organization itself. Often times, in college, it is easy to create stereotypes that could hurt the organization or strain efforts to recruit new members. The University of Florida states that individuals representing organizations on campus should remove pictures that contain alcohol or drugs or anything suggestive. Generally, it would be too difficult to point out every single person who is guilty of this, but as a woman I feel it is even more important to uphold a certain ideal, especially on a social network that can be viewed by mostly everyone. In choosing to place pictures that do not portray me as a drunken college student, I am trying to portray myself as a responsible, careful individual. This persona I am creating is not at all entirely true because like all other college students, I choose to drink but the difference is I choose not to place evidence of it on facebook. The picture I have shown below is typical of what I may post in a party-like scene. Although, anyone who views my facebook can tell that there is a party in the background, (this usually consists of a darkly lit room, tons of people in the background and usually plastic cups everywhere) I make sure the pictures I post have no one in my sorority holding a cup or beer in their hand.  As you can from this picture, there is clearly a table behind us (my sorority sisters) and we made sure right before the picture was taken to place the drinks down on the table before we posed for the picture. The second picture shows Amy and I posing for a picture with brothers from another Latin Fraternity. This picture is a good example of a picture that did not contain any alcohol (even though the kitchen 2 feet away had plenty of it) because we were both wearing necklaces that had our Greek organization’s letters and colors on it. 

My facebook tends to portray me as an out-going, friendly individual who loves taking photographs as memories. The truth, which would be revealed unless they actually knew me personally, would be that even though I tend to enjoy the company of others, I tend not to carry a camera when it comes time to take pictures. Typically what ends up happening is that someone else will take a picture of me or of me in the picture and will later tag me so that that same photograph will show up in my photo albums. To date, there have been maybe ten photos that I myself have placed on facebook. Consider this first picture below. It is a picture of myself but as the viewer can see, it was taken at an angle that someone else must have taken the picture. Furthermore, the picture shows me turning around to my left side to pose for the picture for the person who is in the backseat of the car. Often times when I go out with friends, they just tell me where or when to pose for the picture and I oblige. The second picture below is one of the few pictures that I post in my photo albums that are picture of me taken by me.  I added blue and green hues to find it more interesting and instead of smiling, I chose to look thoughtful. I notice I have fewer self-portraits than most facebookers. The reality is that although I am grateful that I am able to have so many memories from others taking pictures, I tend not to be the one is taking the pictures hardly ever. 

The Story of My Existence...

Everyday it seemed, I was happy to be a part of such a loving and close-knit family. To be in a large Mexican family meant every Sunday, cousins, aunts, uncles, and others of the sort would come over to eat Sunday breakfast and get together to make sure everyone was caught up in each other’s lives. To be the daughter to parents who had been together for thirty plus years, only brought more stability and love into my life. I have everything because of my parents. My brothers were so much older than I was that they had left to college before I had even started kindergarten, but having two over-protective brothers wasn’t a bad thing at least till later. So here it goes… The story of my existence through the eyes of my family…

          

He hadn’t expected for him to fall in love so easily. After all, he had only been in Lake Worth, Florida for a short time before getting to know this new woman he called a mystery. She wasn’t like other girls. She fought him on everything and he enjoyed it. She was a challenge and a girl that couldn’t have one pulled over on her. She called him Antonio, which only his family called him. They married mere months after they had had their first dance.

Not long after they were married in a small court ceremony did they conceive a son by the name of Pete. Both Antonio and his wife, Lupe, worked two to three jobs each to provide for their son. Four years later, another son, Mark, was introduced to the family. They were polar opposites. Pete was more serious and tended to blow things out of proportion while Mark was more of a clown and was more prone to crack jokes at his brother’s expense. They both got along really well because they were close in age.

Antonio and Lupe had decided it was time to build a future for their children. Antonio was so devoted to work, he knew he could start a small business and build it from the ground up. His specialty in construction was drywall. His motivation led him to take the examination for the drywall specialty. About nine weeks later, he received the letter in the mail that said he has passed the exam and could now hold a drywall license. Both Antonio and Lupe were ecstatic.

He had asked her, “Would you help me build this company into something we’ve always dreamed about”?

She responded, “Of course, haven’t we survived already”?

 They toiled to find someone who could estimate the cost of the contracts they acquired. Soon, they found a man named Joe. It was with the three of them that the company was able to begin. They had decided to call the company, Boynton Drywall of South Florida, Incorporated. Antonio thought it had a nice ring to it and that he would be able to receive many clients this way. They started off with small jobs here and there and as they became more and more experienced about how to manage a drywall company, they would get bigger jobs that came along such as public schools and big downtown buildings. The company would be fully running within two years and would later become a successful, expanding business for the whole family to join.

It wasn’t long after they had started the company that Lupe had found out she was expecting again. This time she would have a daughter, and they called her Bianca. Her first name was Toni, but as she got older, it was too confusing to have two people who were named the same so she decided to use Bianca. Her mother would put her into dance classes the minute she was able to. She would go off to an arts school for dance and right after she would go to a dance studio for another couple of hours. Dance consumed her life and also consumed everyone else’s. 

Her parents were happy to have something to keep him or her busy and would always go to every recital and competition. They were always strict on her when it came to her grades, which only helped her later in high school when she was accepted to the University of Florida for the fall of 2007. For Bianca, it was a hard pill to swallow leaving home. It meant leaving the beach, leaving her friends from high school, leaving her comfort zone, but more importantly it meant leaving behind her family. She was able to do it because she knew she was to begin the next chapter in her life…

Analysis: I placed my photos in non-sequential order so that it was harder to determine what my story was actually about. I did this because I believe if I had placed them in order, it would maybe have been too easy to decide what it was about. At the beginning of the story, I wrote in first person because the narrative is truly about how I came to be about in my family. Right after the first paragraph, I developed the hermeneutic code because the enigma was finding out the story of my existence or how I came to be. I wanted the readers to question… Who is this person?

            I combined my words and images in a pattern that involves switching every photo from the right to the left and back to the right and so on. I did this while also placing the photos next to either the paragraph that corresponds to it or the paragraph before it corresponds to the photo. I feel that when readers view the photos I have placed at the beginning of the blog, it allows them to get use to the style I have posted in the story. I also believe that when the readers view the photos, they will devise a story that starts from the end of my story and work its way backward. I try to create balance among the photos by placing them on either side of the words while also alternating. The photos themselves allow the readers to devise a meaning with ease. Some photos are more literal such as the map of Lake Worth, Florida or they took more interpretation such as the dancing photo, which could take on several meanings. I wanted the story to flow and not be choppy, which is also why I designed it the way it  is in the story. There are also small events  (proairetic code) that lead up to the development of my enigma. These events can include the forming of my family, the development of the family business and me dancing. These events are not reversible and also add the enigma. 

          

Blog Assignment # 3

Interpreting "The Sixth Sense"... 

The scene opens with the camera on the police officer’s hand, which holds a flare that is being lit. Then it switches to the cars that are involved in an accident (one car is smoking) and we see people standing outside their cars waiting for traffic to subside as we are led to Lynn and Cole’s car. “Geez, I hope everyone is okay. You’re quiet. I know you’re mad at me for missing your play. But you know I have two jobs that are really important for us”… *HER: Lynn and Cole are stuck in traffic because of a car accident that ended the life of the woman. This is the moment that sets up suspense and a look as to what is to come later in the narrative. The promise and formulation of an answer occurs with the shot-reverse-shot of dialogue between Cole and his mother. Cole tells his mother, Lynn, that he is ready to communicate with her and tell her his secrets. The partial answer is when Cole discloses to his mother, “They scare me too sometimes” referencing the ghosts he sees. He says “They want me to do things for them”. This is a partial answer because he is just slightly skimming the fact that he can talk to and see ghosts. The disclosure is when Cole tells his mother that he can talk to or see ghosts. The disclosure is even more evident when he tells her of details pertaining to her deceased mother (“She said she saw you dance” and “she said you came to the place to where they buried her, asked her a question. The grandmother wanted Lynn to know the answer was “Yes, cveryday”). **ACT: One example of this code is when the flare is actually lit. Another example is when the image of the bloody, dead woman appears in the window next to Cole. Finally the last scene where Cole says, “Mom” and they reach out to each other to hug and cry together. ***SYM: The way Cole’s mother tries to be understanding while trying not to say the wrong thing to her son while he is revealing his secrets could be an indicator of a mother/son relationship, especially one that is loving. Also, the flare at the beginning signifies a car accident that must be kept away from the public, but more importantly it symbolizes an event that is setting the atmosphere. Because the scene opens up with this atmosphere, it is usually a signifier of more bad things to come later in the film. Also, when Lynn is crying from hearing about her mother. This is symbolizing grief but in a way that Lynn may be experiencing closure from having heard that her mother had actually gone to her dance recital and that she was proud of her everyday. 

Blog Assignment # 2

      The original image creates a contrast by having the background and bathtub a completely white color while the shoes the women are wearing are colorful in red, green, and yellow. This would also bring to attention that emphasis is placed on both the shoes as well as the instruments in each one of their hands. It allows for the eye to be drawn to these items right away. The designer of this shoe advertisement most likely wanted to draw attention to their product, the shoes, as well as draw attention to the women as being Grammy-award winning country artists, the Dixie Chicks. A form of emphasis is also given to the lead singer, because she seems to be the only artist directly looking into the camera, while the others are either looking away or have their eyes closed. The color allows less attention to be made to the shower curtain, the bathroom tiles, and the showerhead. When first examining this image, the narration might lead the viewer to think that this is a happy image because all of the women are laughing or smiling. The image is conventional because it is a typical advertisement that is meant to persuade consumers to buy the product. Some may suggest that the image is suggestive because the women are not fully clothed. The image creates balance by having the two women on the outside holding an instrument. It is also unbalanced because the two women to the left are crossing their legs one way (to the left) while the one to the right is crossing her legs to the right. The original image contains little to no text, so the image alone is left to speak for itself. It is up to the viewer or whomever is viewing the image to draw meaning from the image and it is ultimately from their point of view.

Adding captions or text to an original image changes the way an image is perceived. In Picturing Texts (p. 52-55), I learned that “When we use visuals as a form of communication, we count on broader cultural and historical contexts”. I agree with Roland Barthes in his argument that “form” or writing is more creative than language or style. When we view images, an image can be concise and create a mental picture or excite our emotions, but like Mitchell Stephens  (Picturing Texts) pointed out, we cannot create spatial or temporal connections as we could with both writing and images. As with this assignment, adding text to the image changes the desired effect. Before the text, the designer would have wanted the viewer to look at the shoes and maybe wanted the viewer to be excited and ultimately want to buy them. It is simply a marketing tool. With placing the text about children in underdeveloped countries having to go barefoot because they cannot afford a pair of shoes, it may bring the viewer to think about how superficial our society is with the numerous amounts of styles, colors, and sizes we can purchase shoes in. In my attempt to be creative, I wanted to draw less attention to the shoes and more on how we could give back to communities. In this sense, I used words to bring to mind mental images of village children in a country such as Peru, where most are walking around without shoes. I created an image that would have normally been conventional and added my own “form” to it, which then allowed it to become creative in the sense that now the image draws a completely different meaning.