Textual Poaching

Jenkins discusses how the boy’s investment in his toy made the Velveteen Rabbit become real. It came through time. The boy integrated the rabbit into his life. That is where I struggled with this assignment. Although I am happy with what I have, I don’t think it is an accurate representation of something that has been integrated into my life. The ideas behind them play a very big part in my life and identity, but not the media I chose to represent them. The challenge of trying to find a way to use media to relay my thoughts to an audience reminded me of what Chris

Purdie said in class—that art is finding ways to convey metaphysical thoughts in physical ways. My thoughts and opinions have come to be through experiences I’ve had and essays I’ve read—so I don’t first think of media as a way to share these thoughts, but I think that if I am to make rich art and meaningful media in my lifetime, then I need to keep trying with this challenge.

 I changed from my initial idea in order to better fit within the given constraints of the assignment. I chose to focus on my “female-ness.”  There are several frustrations I have with how I have been treated as a woman. Although I thought our society had moved past thinking of women as second-class and less intelligent, I have experienced that this is not completely the case. So to start off with, I found some old media—the poster—and put some of my own experiences with it. Then I found an old movie poster, “The weak and the wicked.” I don’t know what it is about, but I chose to not find out, to just type “strong and smart” into google image search and use what came up. I was surprised to see such a matching find. From there I went to find mediated representations of some frustrations I have and I added my own thoughts. After setting up with the older media, I wanted to use media from modern times, foreign places, and local to show that I see this a current world-wide problem.