Mother Russia Needs You!
Have you ever heard of Russia’s Uncle Sam bear? If you haven’t, then read this. I wanted to put a twist on Russian pride posters for WW1 and relate it to the United States’ Uncle Sam propaganda poster. Instead of “we need you,” I put “Mother Russia needs you” in Russian which looks like “Мать Россия нуждается в вас!” It helps add to the whole Russian idea by adding the Russian language into it. The flag in the background is the Russian flag that was used during WW1 and the flag put a little more effect in the background. The flag gives the photo a more historic look to it and it makes it clearer that I’m trying to represent Russia. The bear in the middle replaced Uncle Sam which makes the poster represent Russia better because the bear represents the Russian war bears. The bear is talking and it’s saying “Mother Russia needs you” or “Мать Россия нуждается в вас!” There are two different techniques that this poster is using: testimonial and flag waving. The bear in front of the flag represents the flag waving. The bear talking and advertising that Russia needs recruits is testimonial. The effect that I want this poster to have on people is just to make a different perspective on a poster that has already been made except for a different country.
My poster has a few color effects and symbols that would relate the poster to World War One. One of the symbols is the flag behind all of the other items on the page. The Russian flag has changed many times, but the flag that is behind the other things on the page lasted until 1917 and was Russia’s flag at the time of the war. The Russian language in the poster wasn’t specifically for World War One, but it helped add more effect to the poster. The bear has always been a symbol for Russia, but the bear was still used for propaganda as a symbol for Russia during World War One. The Russians were mostly at war with the Germans, but when they were pushed back by the Germans, the Brest-Litovsk treaty, which gives the Germans 20% of Russian territory. That’s when the Russians pulled out of the war. Before that happened, they recruited more troops to attack Germany.
A lot of propaganda today is about politics. I’ve seen a lot of political propaganda and it really has not affected me at all. There are pieces of propaganda that may have affected, but I haven’t noticed at all. There are many people that believe in propaganda and then there are the very minimal amounts of people who don’t. Sometimes the posters can be negative propaganda somebody/group that represents something they’ve done or who they are. For example, there are many offensive or negative posters about how Obama is either a bad person or a bad president and represents that by showing all the things that he hasn’t done or fixed. A lot of people believe this and sometimes it ends out to be true and then there are times where it’s not true and they just want to express their own beliefs. There are also a lot of propaganda that relates to the economy and the state of the world. There is a bunch of propaganda about BP’s oil spill and also global warming. People are making BP look bad because of one incident and their even trying to fix it.
Propaganda Project Reflection
This project had two parts to the project. The very first part is the main part of the project. The poster was the main part. We are supposed to make a propaganda poster for a specific country involved in World War One. Then, we make an analysis on the poster we just made. The steps that I took in making my poster and analysis were very tedious steps. First, I made the rough draft by drawing it. Then, I made the poster in Photoshop which made it look better. Finally, I made my analysis based on what I had done and what my original idea was.
My revisions were not too extreme with each of my drafts. I had put the poster into Photoshop after I had done my rough draft which looked completely different from the original draft and it made the draft look a lot better. I made these revisions to get a better idea of what my final project will look like. I really did not have many tips that helped me much with my poster. The tips helped more with the analysis. On my poster, I actually translated what I was going to say originally into Russian which helped add more definition to my poster. Another revision was the color variation that I made to all aspects of the poster except for the text. When I actually described the propaganda types that were used in my poster, it helped make the analysis more understandable.
I feel like I did really well in the poster more than in the analysis because I completely believe that a picture is worth a thousand words and I used that to my advantage which made my poster more interesting. I mostly like the roaring bear in the middle of the poster because it really helped me present my point better. I don’t dislike anything about my poster because I think that I made my point quite clear. I enjoyed the whole piece of art that I had done because I had really though that I took the time to plan and create my poster.
In this project, I learned that I really need to have your analysis clear enough to make it easy to understand my poster because I really did not explain my poster enough to where it would be clear enough to understand. I really did not do that, so I believe that I could do better and I will improve on making my work easier to understand.
If I had the chance to improve my analysis, I would work harder to make it have enough information and description to make it clear. It would really help other people understand my poster and my analysis better.
Project Reflection
My Genocide Video link:
Genocide Project
The aspect I focused on was the medical experimenting in the concentration camps throughout the genocide.
Artist Statement
The Evolution of Death
The Herero and Namaqua genocide started with German colonists buying Namibia in 1905 and the native people rebelling after being labor slaves. The Germans didn’t take kindly to the natives rebelling. The Herero fought the German army led by General Lothar von Trotha at the Battle of Waterberg. They lost the battle and then they were either enslaved or executed. After the battle, the people were enslaved in concentration camps. A scientist by the name of Eugen Fischer performed medical experiments on the Herero. They injected the test subjects with Typhus, Tuberculosis, and Small Pox. This is the issue I focused on, the idea of medical experimenting in genocides throughout the 20th century. I found this to be interesting as it also connected to most of the tests in the Holocaust. I also found out that this was the first genocide ever that was involved with medical experimenting. It laid some groundwork of the most gruesome, horrible experiments of the 20th century in one of the worst places on Earth, Auschwitz.
My research is basically what formed my movie, except for the voice recording and Windows Movie Maker. In Annika Westman’s article “Nazi Forefathers Ravaged Africa,” she explains how “In the camps, Fischer made experiments on especially persons of mixed origin - the typical cases were children with an African mother and a German colonialist, sometimes results of rape.” (Section 2, Paragraph 2) This research had an influence on how I was to have shown the racial experiments that he performed and who he performed them on. After reading this article,
In Mahmood Mamdani’s book, “When Victims Become Killers,” he states that, “It was also among the Herero in the concentration camps that the German geneticist, Eugen Fischer, first came to do his medical experiments on race, for which he used both Herero and mulatto offspring of Herero women and German men.” (Page 12, Paragraph 2) This helped me understand who the test subjects as they were both allies and enemies to the German army.
I want people to realize the connections and the significance of this genocide compared to the Holocaust. People need to realize how these people were treated and compare it to how the Jews in the Holocaust were treated in concentration camps. This is not a commonly known genocide like the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a lot larger than this one, but one of the most relentless, brutal scientists known in the 20th century, Josef Mengele, Fischer’s apprentice. Mengele performed all of the brutal, ruthless experiments on the Jews in the Holocaust.
Each of the parts of my project explains themselves. Each picture is a picture of the victims, the test subjects, the concentration camps, or the scientists themselves like Eugen Fischer. The voice narrates the picture and what happened. There’s a video clip in the movie that talks about the concentration camps. All of these parts come together to make a pretty good description about the issue I focused on. I’m not the physical art type; I’m more of a digital media type of guy. That’s why I chose to make a movie. I think that the pictures I chose for the movie were pretty accurate for the voice. What I currently like the most about the project is the concept of the experiments. I feel like it was a key part to this genocide.
Project Reflection
Genocide Project Reflection
1. With my project, I’m the most proud of the aspect I took out of the genocide because I felt like it was something that people see as important because biological weaponry is something that worries everyone, so I looked at it as something that would bring people to learn more about the genocide. This helped add more of a purpose to my project as it brought out more information than just the aspect itself.
2. If I had one more week to work on this project, I would work on clearing the voice recording up so that it would be cleaner. For example, where I was explaining the diseases, there were scratchy parts.The recording was scratchy and needed some editing, but between the bad editing program and what I could use, I wasn’t able to do much better.
3. I think that my project does the best in the focus category because I was able to put my aspect into my project and show it well. In my project, it shows pictures of each of the diseases that were used for the experiments during the genocide. I felt like that my project showed all of the aspect that I was going for.
4. I think my project is the weakest in professionalism because I felt like I should have found a better video editing program to improve the quality of the video. The video lacked the effects and the quality in the pictures that it needed. The audio recording needed editing as well, but a little more than the video. Overall, the whole project needed to be a little more professional, but otherwise the project came out well.
5. Professionalism-B
Connections-A
Focus-A
Audience Engagement-B
I think that my final grade for this project should be an A-,90% because I felt like I put a lot of work into this project and it came out well. It could have been better because there were a few parts where I messed up the recording. In the video itself, I made the clips perfectly in time with the audio. Also, I included some good quality photos into it. So, I believe I should get an A-.
Peace, War, and Violence Poetry
The Eagle
The eagle has pushed so far.
Unnecessary persistence for “safety”
Drives the insanity.
As it feeds us lies,
We starve.
As it shelters us with persistence,
We’re homeless.
While it drowns us with “comfort,”
We are thirsty.
Good people are evicted,
Convicted,
For things they didn’t want to do.
But being pushed to the brink
Leaves them no other choice.
Influential downfall
Has us by the throat.
All because of our ignorance shadowed by its wings,
Their deceit covered by its pride,
And the lust for power shining in its eyes.
But as we struggle,
For that last breath of air,
All we can rely on,
Is the eagle.
But all that might be left,
Is the smell of smoke filling the air,
The crackling of fires that consume
What was left of this proud country.
The American dream,
Turns into the American nightmare.
The eagle,
Turns into the vulture,
Feeding off
Of what’s left of people’s confidence,
Trust,
Hope.
Artist Statement
My content inspiration came from the article, “Violence and Peace” by Johan Galtung. My poem is based off of the idea of the government hiding important information from the people of the U.S. Part of my poem is based of the idea of psychological violence. This idea has been a big part of my teenage life. I’ve always thought about this and it has always been in that deep part of my mind. Parts of my poem explain the psychological influence and the downfall of people sanity and how secrets degrade people and make them feel like they’re not a part of something. For example, when I say, “Influential downfall has us by the throat,” it explains how as we’re influenced, we start to learn more about what is being hidden and as the secrets get to us, it degrades our trust. Part of my poem also shows the idea of physical violence. It shows what the influential downfall will bring the world to and how we’re going to lead to our own downfall.
The form I’m using is free verse. I enjoy using free verse because there are no rhyme or rhythm4 expectations and there are no real limitations to the form or the style. The free verse style brings out the words that are jumbling in your head and at the same time, you don’t need to have a specific style, but you can. One of my inspirations was the poet ee Cummings because she wrote a lot of free verse poetry which, even though more cheerful than my poem, she wrote a lot of powerful poetry which inspired me to use this style of writing. In her poem, You shall above all things be glad and young, she says, “it will become you; and if you are glad whatever’s living will yourself become.” I’m inspired by this because there is no rhyme scheme to this line and the rest of the poem, and I plan to use this form.
I’m using spoken word as a presentation style. A poem that inspired me was Rock Out by Anis Mojgani. When he recited his poem, it really came out as a powerful and intense message and if he had done it any other way, it wouldn’t have felt the same. I want to have listeners feel the intensity and the power in the message and my poem. I feel like spoken word would really express my poem well because my poem has its soft point and its strong points which vocals would express the tones and the feelings of the poem. So, a powerful poem should have a powerful way to present it.
Peace, War, and Violence Poetry Project Reflection
The poetry project was about finding something that we have done or have read about and relate that to our poetry section of this year. For the project, we were able to choose whatever style of poetry that we wanted and we were able to use any article for our content inspiration. For example, some people used other forms of poetry that were shown to us during class in our starters.
Throughout this project, I learned a lot about digging deep into the imagination and finding many different ways to express your ideas. For example, I used the free verse style to express my poem because my poem had a very intense, dark, and deep feeling to it and I felt that other poem styles would have held back the potential of my poem. Overall, some people used a type of content inspiration before they made their poem and some found their inspiration afterwards, so it was a little backwards in some cases.
I’ve learned that using different styles and types of writing can really affect the audience in a good way, or a bad way. One way you can affect how the audience feels when reading your poem or writing is by using different writing devices based on the style. One example is the idea of using poetic devices. Using devices like cacophonies or similes can determine how the audience can experience your poem and there are other devices that can determine how the audience feels.
The performance really affects the audience by creating an atmosphere. That atmosphere creates a certain feeling or emotion in the air that emanates from the speaker presenting his/her poem. I learned this when I performed my poem in a spoken word format and when I presented, there was a sort of dark and intense feeling because my poem is meant to be really down and dark, not a cheerful and jumpy poem.
