How do you analyze a political cartoon?

What I  already know about analyzing political cartoons:

These cartoons are usually filled with literary devices such as symbols, metaphors, and irony

Looking for these things in the cartoons will make them easier to understand. Sarcasm typically seems to be a theme in political cartoons, and generally the angle of the cartoons in disapproving of the political matter being expressed.  If you don't understand the event being referenced in the cartoon, then you won't understand what the cartoon is trying to communicate to you (the audience).

What I didn't know/ What I learned: 

Exaggeration is often a very large part of political cartoons, and labels are given to things so the audience knows exactly what the cartoonist is discussing.

Going forward:

As I continue analyzing political cartoons, the following will be by analysis process:

1. Look at the illustration as a whole
2. Look a little bit closer at the individual parts of the cartoon.
3. Find devices that carry the cartoonist's message
4. hypothesize what the image is about and what the author's angle is

Cartoon 1:



This is a cartoon depicting 3 children holding hands and the American flag. The caption reads "Hurrah for the fourth of July! We're coming in on independence day celebrations, too."
The cartoonist is making a negative statement on the US "adopting" territories.

Cartoon 2:

Uncle Sam is opening the gate to the Philippines for other countries to come in and stay.

Cartoon 3:



Uncle Sam not knowing that to do with the Philippine islands.



I analyzed each of these cartoons by using the process I wrote earlier in my post which seemed to be useful, because I was able to understand the cartoons rather easily.

Sources:

Guide to analysis

Phrenology Observation Research

Today I did some observations on my classmates about how they researched an artifact. I first did my own observations of the object from a distance, I ask my own questions so I knew how I to prompt the group. They each took a different approach to their initial google search, one person searched the artist, another the title and the author, and my last group member searched the artist, title, and the company that produces the replicas.
The group immediately separated what is true and fake about the information on the bust. For example, different parts of the brain do in fact have specific functions, however the diagram on the bust is completely inaccurate.



this is similar to the bust we examined today

Gibson Girl

The Gibson Girl: How she changed the American Image

     Charles Dana Gibson started out just a cartoon artist who drew a picture of a beautiful woman. Well little did Gibson know that this young woman inspired by Evelyn Nesbit would become the famous "Gibson Girl". The images of this so called Gibson Girl were published in Life, Collier's, Harper's weekly, and Scribner's. After all the publicity of these images, Gibson Girl became the woman that all American women aspired to be. An article in the New York Times called her the "dream of american femininity". She was tall, stylish, well-educated, artistic, and  athletic, she was Everything that women aspired to be, and she was the dream girl to every man.  

     Charles Gibson took his inspiration from, as I stated earlier, Evelyn Nesbit. She was discovered at the age of 16 and became the Gibson Girl. Some people believe that Gibson Girl was Gibson's wife or even his sister, but I believe that I was truthfully Evelyn to inspire the creation of the Gibson Girl.I believe so because when comparing an image of the Gibson Girl to Evelyn's features, they align almost perfectly. Evelyn became famous for her likeness to the Gibson Girl, making her as stated by an article on evelynnesbit.com,  "America's first bona-fide sex godess". She was the Marilyn Monroe of her time. 

      Gibson Girl wasn't entirely perfect though, she, like any other human being had problems. This is what made her realistic, she experienced love and loss, This is illustrated in Gibson's comic,"The Widow and her Friends"

Obviously based upon the drawing's title, She has lost her husband. She has fallen into depression. 

These men look at her as in she is a prize to be won, rather than a woman with a broken heart and great sadness.

Note that in image 2 she is "exercising" in a graveyard, perhaps after all she has been through she is visiting her husband.

6) You can see the unhappiness in her face as she is hated by other women
7) Gibson Girl was always shown as a well educated woman. 

After much distress and heartbreak, she finds where she is happy in spite of the troubles she has faced.

     As it can clearly be seen, Gibson Girl wasn't perfect, but every woman in the USA wanted to be just like her. They aspired to be the woman who every man wanted to have. The Gibson Girl was originally a "marketing tool", a way to get women to shop, she was a way to update women on the latest fashions and trends of the time. She then went from said marketing tool to an inspiration for women all over the country.

     

Sources:

PBS on Evelyn Nesbit
I used this source to find out more about Evelyn Nesbit

New York Times article on Gibson girl 

I used this source to read more about how the Gibson Girl was perceived in her own time

scalar,usc.edu on the Gibson Girl 

This was the source that sparked my interest in Evelyn Nesbit. After seeing this source, I began to do further research on Evelyn Nesbit.

Library of Congress 
This website helped me to find the different themes and characteristics of the Gibson Girl

Wikipedia on the Gibson Girl

I used this source to get initial and general information

Korn, Jerry, ed. "The Gibson Girl." This Fabulous Century 1900-1910. N.p.: Time, 1969. 183-91. Print. This Fabulous Century.

This was the source I used for my pictures

Research on Human Migration Patterns

     During class today, I did research on how people move around the world. Some of what I found was actually very surprising. For instance, based upon data from just 2 years ago, the United States has one of the smallest populations of refugees. This really surprised me because of all of the wars going on in the world, I had always thought that people would at first flee to a neighboring country to escape but then make an attempt to get to the US. I can see now that this was a naive assumption, because not everyone can afford to come to the US, and not everyone wants to run that risk.
     I also took a little quiz on "Human Sorting" which again surprised me, but also in a way was not surprising. Now I know I just completely contradicted myself, but allow me to explain. This quiz asks you to classify people based solely on their looks, and to guess their ethnic background. I got mostly incorrect answers which initially I was shocked to see that answers which I thought through carefully were incorrect. But at the same time I wasn't very shocked to know that I was wrong. I'm sure that my answers were very common misconceptions, which goes to show that we can't judge a book by its cover. behind every person's face and skin color is a whole family history.

Philanthropy Research Summary

     Today we discussed what philanthropy is and how different it is from charity. I heard Alexa say something that really made the difference clear to me. She said something along the lines that charity is to fix a problem in the moment, and philanthropy more about the future and how to make it better. If I had the money, I would be a huge benefactor to trying to help people, not just in the US but around the would, to get a safe and affordable home and to help them put food on the table. I believe that there are too many people in the world who can't afford basic human necessities. What ever I could do to help to fix that would be one of the most amazing feelings in the world to me. I strongly identify with why Carnegie wanted to "benefit all mankind"

Thinking About Success

     When given these four words: luck,opportunity,skill and hard work, it isn't hard to discover how I would rank them. I would rank them the following way: luck, opportunity, hard work, and skill.
The reason that I rank them this way is because I can apply this ranking to every aspect of my life. For example, I have a job as a hostess and curbside server at a restaurant. The way I got to success in my job was first by being lucky enough to have known someone who was leaving their job at the restaurant, and to have them put in a good work with my application. By being given the opportunity to have the job, with hard work I developed a skill and become good at what I do around the restaurant. I believe in working for what you have. This same order can be applied to my school work.I was lucky enough for my family to have moved to Huntsville in 2009. From that luck,  I was given an opportunity to go to Randolph, and after lots of hard work I have developed certain skills or aptitudes for certain subjects. At other subjects I have to double the amount of work I apply.
The process for analyzing the success and happiness in my life is really owed to these 4 simple words and the concepts behind them. I can apply this to my friendships, to sports and even to my life at home.

This is a picture of what I find to be the symbols of my hard work that ultimately yield success

Industry and Innovation

     I spent this class period reading a few articles about how the fashion industry, specifically Zara and H&M, have done so well in such a competitive retail market. They accomplish this by having strong company to lay the foundation that gets their product our into the world. while have a solid brand is very important, it is also key to have a company full of people that can get the job done and work cooperatively as a network. 
     As explained by a Forbes article I read about H&M, "An all-important shared pursuit of the three companies is a deep understanding of their customers’ wants and needs. All three have built systems for identifying consumer preferences." The pieces are designed and reviewed over and over again until they are deemed high enough quality to be hung on racks for consumers to buy. The lower prices in combination with their quality of clothing is what makes them such a success. 
     Zara has a similar network to that of H&M, but they do have one more advantage, a technological advantage. Zara has technology that allows them to produce new items at an extremely fast rate. With constantly changing collections, they have the edge of bringing in consumers more frequently to