Estimated time: 2 hours
Due by 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, March 13th
The goal of this exercise is to vividly describe your exhibit for your intended reader and to practice lens analysis.
First, review my comments about the potential exhibits you found for Exercise 2.2. If you need to find a different exhibit, you might check these websites: adsoftheworld.com, coloribus.com, adforum.com.
Review the Visual Analysis handout. Then, in one paragraph, vividly describe your exhibit. Start by stating what your exhibit is and when and where it was used (e.g. “This movie poster for King Kong was first released in print in America in 1933.”) Make sure that you focus on elements like: central image, composition, organization, setting, size, colors, shading, and text.
Review the Lens Analysis handout. Then, in one paragraph, argue clearly that some specific aspect or element of your exhibit can be considered a “monster” or “monstrous” according to Cohen.
Post your response as a comment below.
This poster is for the second season of the Netflix Original Show “Stranger Things” released in October of 2017. The poster looks as though it has been colored with colored pencils with an art style that is very similar to many horror/thriller book covers existed before the 2000s. The entire image is organized from top to bottom careful details so there is barely any empty space. At the very top is a giant creature with a spidery body with each “leg” having a root-like structure. The head of the creature is elongated and is absent of any facial features like eyes, nose or a mouth, but it does somewhat have a chin. The poster seems to have a night setting which can be gathered from the dark sky with stars. The creature at the top is red and black in color and it gives off a red aura that spreads almost entirely throughout the dark background at the top of the background until it meets the blue light in the background at the bottom of the poster, to give away to a purple and pink color in the middle that would result in the mixing of red and blue. Directly underneath the monster, there is a young girl about 12-14 years old with a nosebleed in a normal t-shirt with a determined and almost angry look on her face, extending both her outstretched hands towards the audience in a firm motion. Out of all the other humans portrayed, this girl is given the largest scale on the poster, and she is the only one that the monster is “touching” or is connected to in the poster, and she has the red light of the monster shining on her. There also appears to be lightning that seems to be protruding behind the girls back, it seems that the lightning is coming out of her because the lightning bolts are bolder near her. The light bolts also seem to be behind the monster but not as prominent as it is behind the girl. Underneath the girl, at the center of the poster, we see seven people positioned in various poses and sizes around a boy, who is in the center. The boy is about the same age as the girl. The boy has a very frightened look on his face as he looks up at something with horror with his mouth slightly agape. This boy and the other characters also have red light shining on them but they have a purple background. Underneath the boy, there are three other boys of the similar ages in bikes with some contraption attached to their backs with matching uniforms. These three boys seem to be on the actual ground as a setting unlike all the other portrayed characters, and they are in front of a dark pumpkin patch with their lights shining on the pumpkins. These boys are directly over the large retro horror font logo “Stranger Things 2”, and they are in a blue background that spreads out with decreasing intensity. In the background of the poster, on the right, we can see a car with headlights on in the dark, an “arcade” sign in front of power lines with dense forest trees with heavy clouds. On the left, we can see a dark scarecrow that seems to be sulking followed by more dense trees. The ground itself looks uneven and cracked, and it is tilted right with blue shadows. The whole poster is almost arranged like a tree. The bottom is spread out with pumpkins like a foundation, the people are like a tall stump and the monster on top looks like a head of a tree.
In Thesis III:”The Monster is a Harbinger of Category Crisis” of “Monster Culture(Seven Thesis)”, author Jeffrey Jerome Cohen defines a monster as a “disturbing hybrid whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration”(6). In other words, a monster’s external is a grotesque hodgepodge that does not allow easy categorization by known ways of categorizing things. In the poster for “Stranger Things 2”, the top spider-like being, namely “Mind Flayer”, can be perceived as “monstrous”. It is a “hybrid” of a spider. It is not completely a spider because spiders do not have root-like legs or a formless face, and they certainly aren’t taller than trees! It cannot be classified as any natural animal or phenomenon, so we can’t simply pass it off as an animal. Initially, it looks like a spider, but it is really is not quite it. Therefore, by the definition of a monster by Cohen, the “Mind Flayer” is a monster. Why would advertisers choose to portray this giant monster so prominently at the very top of the poster?
The movie is x-men apocalypse 2016.
We are shown a mutant woman with yellow eyes almost like that of an animal.blue skin with scales covering most of her body.yet she appears to
Indicate a sense of innocence by her scary yet calm face almost like that of a model yet because she is blue it creates this repulsive response .she has red hair and short.her name is mystic and her appearance confirms her name for she is mystic.
Hhh
The poster came out in the year of 2009 and was designed by the company of P+A. The first thing that stands out a lot is the very large amount of monster that was put into this poster. Especially the details on the monster, its chappy lips, long nails and striped fur of light brown and dark brown, it seems to resemble not a soft kind of fur but a rather raggedy and tangly fur. Then there is the little boy who is white skinned and seems to have light brownish hair or blonde possibly. He seems very small when standing next to the monster and he is in a moment of screaming and it seems to be from fear the way his eyes are shut and the monster’s hand is placed on his shoulder as he screams. The boy is also wearing a bunny onesie with the matching hat and a gold crown on his kid but his onesie seems to be all muddy and dirty as well. In the background it is a very lightish pink color, close to the colors of a sunset and there are may trees behind the monster but also very small and thin, allowing the monster to be the biggest object in this poster. There is also some type of leafy, muddy ground, a type of ground that is usally found in forests. Its leaves are very close to the colors leaves turn when its the fall season and there are many broken branches on the floor as well. Then there is the one line of writing right in the middle of the poster that is written in white and says “There is one in all of us” and then at the bottom in also white letter but a much bigger font is the title of the movie “WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE”.
In Thesis 1: “The Monster’s Body Is A Cultural Body” of “Monster Culture(Seven Theses)” by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, he defines a monster and its physique as “The monster’s body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy(ataractic or incendiary), giving them life and an uncanny independence” (4). In other words a monster’s body signifies what underlying issues or fears that may be going on in a particular society. To some people it can give a takeaway message or a learned lesson and to others it can be a world one would love to live in but isn’t real. In the poster of “Where The Wild Things Are” the monsters body and the way his arm is just laying on top of the little boy seems to show a fantasy world, a world where the boy is in the woods with his monsters or the monsters he fears since fear is seen in the way he screams. The title can also give away the idea that it is a fantasy world because it is a world where “wild things” are or can be found.
http://www.vision1.cn/Article/idea/200701/20070123112510.html
In “Thesis III, The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis,” Cohen describes
monsters as “disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to
include them in any systematic structuration” (6). it can be understood as monster is whose appearance combined with two species which makes it out of any organization system. In these animal protection advertisement , we can clearly see the central figures is animals sewed with humans organs, fr example: cat with human’s hand,rabbit with human’s ear, dog with human’s leg. So they can’t categorized as complete animals. Furthermore, they are ” hybrid” of animals and human. People may feel softhearted when seeing these helpless eyes, but these abnormal organs would make people uncomfortable immediately. According to Cohen, these “animals” can be defined as “monster”. But how this weird combination relates to animal protection?
This poster came out in October 2012 for Zicam Cold Remedy. In this advertisement, we first see in white all caps bold words with scratches all over them, “DON’T LET A MONSTER OF A COLD CATCH YOU.” ,that fills up almost the entire poster. After reading the words, you then see the horrendous portrait of a monster behind it. It is green and has fur all over its body. He has big red puffy eyes, a wide warty red nose, and a wide mouth. This monster is horrific with dry wrinkly skin and terrible sickly look. On his big warty nose thats in the middle of the poster, is disgusting globs of booger dripping out and over his top lip. He also has 5 bottoms teeth that sticks out the right side of his mouth. On the very bottom on the left side is two sentences that says “That first sniffle, sneeze or throat tickle? You have a Pre-Cold, the first sign of a full-blown monster of a cold is coming. Time for Zicam, the completely different kind of medicine that clinically proven to shorten a cold.” They have a blue circle stamp like thing with white words saying “THE PRE-COLD MEDICINE” and the words “ZICAM. GO FROM PRE-COLD TO NO COLD, FASTER” under the two sentences. On the right side of those words is a pictures of two Zicam product packed in orange boxes and the Zicam website underneath.
In “Thesis I: The Monster’s Body is Pure Culture,” Cohen calls monsters as made of literally “fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy” (Cohen 4). Zicam’s cold monster is exactly what Cohen means by a monster; we fear the monster for its hideous features and the fact that he has a cold that we don’t want to be in contact with. We desire to not become as sick as this monster. We are anxious that if we do get sick we end up looking as horrendous and disgusting as the monster. And we are interested in the fantasy elements of this out of this world creature. The Zicam monster is the definition of what a monster is to Cohen.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/557320522622811291/
This movie poster for “Humanoids from the Deep” was released in print in Italy in 1980. This poster was painting with oil.At the middle of the poster, there is a terrible-looking monster with pink eyes and sharp teeth who is stretching out his arms in the water. There is a undressed woman screamed and tried to reach the beach. The monster was attempting to walking toward the helpless girl.
In “Thesis III, The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis,” Cohen describes monsters as “disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration” (6). In the poster for “Humanoids from the Deep”, the central figure has characteristics or form resembling human beings, but not a human. so he is neither a human nor completely a monster. Thus, he is a “hybrid” of human and monster (6). It cannot be classified as any natural animal or phenomenon.Therefore, by the definition of a monster by Cohen, the “Humanoid” is a monster.
This poster is from the movie “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” first released in America in 2011. The poster shows two people and the gigantic robot in the center with background of destroyed city. The fear and terror in the two people’s face emphasizes the armed robot and the destroyed city behind them and produces curiosity of “what was happened in that city?” and “who are they afraid of?”. The gigantic robot is standing behind a man and a woman, which seems to be protecting them, and the weapons and the flying alien ships foreshadow the movie is involving the war between the robots and the invaders. Burning destroyed buildings and the weapons rolling on the ground show that the battle was intense and dynamic.
If you look closely, you could find the giant robot in the center is composed with tires and car frames which we can find in our ordinary life. From “Thesis III: The Monster is a Harbinger of Category Crisis” in “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)”, author Cohen defines a monster as a “disturbing hybrid whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration” (6). In this movie “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” the gigantic robots and their fighting are science fictional fantasy that will never happen in real life. However, this movie mixes the robot’s body with the cars and other vehicles, which are familiar with the people, so the audiences can connect themself with the movie. The characteristic of ordinary cars and vehicles attract people with their familiarity, but their transformation into a gigantic robot pushes themself into the fantasy. Therefore, their conjoined body of a gigantic robot and a vehicle is a “disturbing hybrid” that Cohen defined.
The poster is for the 2007 American scfi horror film based on the book by Stephen King “The Mist”. In the poster a man is carrying his child inside of a glass building which is also a department store. We can tell this by seeing the shopping cart on the sides. We also can see that the environment outside store is covered in mist. He is trying to hide from the mist where the unknown creature lurks.
In Thesis II:”The monster always escapes” of “Monster Culture(Seven Thesis)”, author Jeffrey Jerome Cohen defines a monster always escapes. In the movie “The mist” Monster lurks in the mist and it gets what it wants. After it is satisfied the monster gets away and escapes in the mist. “
This movie poster for Jurassic World was first released in US in 2015, as the fourth part of Jurassic Park series, as we can see the poster is set in the jungle, we can see a lot of trees and lianas hanging from them, also a lot of vegetation. Looks like the poster was set up at night because everything looks kind of dark or dark colors, but we can also appreciate there is 2 lights, one is coming between the trees, like moonlight and illuminating the 4 dinosaurs and the guy in the motorcycle, the other light is coming from the motorcycle and going forward. In the center of the poster we can appreciate 4 dinosaurs, velociraptors and between them we can see a man riding a motorcycle, the velociraptors are running with him, their skin color is between dark grey and dark green, 2 of the velociraptors are in the background, right next to the motorcycle but for the way the poster is set, looks like they are running in the background, showing their claws and with an angry expression on their faces, the other 2 are in foreground, they also have similar expression but one of then is locate at slightly higher position in the poster and is not just showing his claw but also his mouth is open and we can see he sharp teeth. The man is between the velociraptors as that an impression as he is the central character of the movie, because the position and because the effect of the moonlight does on him, making him shine. In the bottom of the poster we can see the name of the name of the movie utilizing a logo with a dinosaur skeleton in black, dark grey and white, also the date the movie is released and information about the theaters.
The poster from Jurassic World fits into Cohen’s description of monster not just because there is 4 dinosaurs but also because we see something incoherent 4 dinosaurs running next to a man in a motorcycle and gives de idea that they are not just running next to him but going with him, like some kinds of companion or pets, something that doesn’t make sense or it’s incomprehensible, as Cohen’s described in Thesis I, “ The monster’s body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety and fantasy (ataractic or incendiary), giving them life and an uncanny independence. The monstrous body is pure culture. A construct and a projection” (4).
This is a print of the advertisement for Sweet From Heaven which is a candy brand, and the print was first released in South Africa. It is an oil painting. There is a very big title “Sweet Freak” on top of the print. Under the title, it has a more detailed subtitle “an exhibition of human oddities and freak of the sweet”. On the bottom of the print, the print shows the slogans of “the amazing hamster child”, “wonder as he transforms himself by stuffing his cheeks with jawbreakers”, and “displayed to quench your curiosity for the outlandish and weird”. The print looks very plain because there are not too much bright colors in the picture. The white color and cream-colored occupy 80 percents of the whole print. The background is white, and it does have anything except a boy present in the middle of the picture. The boy like a soldier stands on a tiny circus stand with red and white stripes, and he stares at you. He has white and curly hair, black pupil, and absolutely big cheeks. His swollen cheeks make him look like a chipmunk. If you look at his face in the distance, the boy’s cheeks will look like there are two flesh-colored golfballs on each side of his mouse. Between two “flesh-colored golfballs”, a mouth was set in frown. He seems like chewing something. Interestingly, he wears a suit of boy scouts: cream-colored long sleeve, blue neckerchief, black shorts with a black belt and a pair of black boot. Comparing the plaint and neat picture, the boy’s garments are very sloppily. The crumpled long sleeve has a corner out of the black shorts. Additionally, the right side of the white long sock is higher than the left side, and the tongues of the boots slide to one side. It is hard to see the shadow in this print, so the boy should stand right below the lights. When I first time looked this print, I think it is a sweet and hilarious picture. There are not too much exaggerated or cool colors in the whole picture, just a little cartoon-style image of a little boy, which make me recall the cartoons I watched when I was a kid. Definitely, the boy’s cheeks are the most attractive one in this print of the advertisement. When I looked his cheeks with two round lumps, the image which comes out of my brain is a chipmunk eating nut, and the chipmunk is a greedy guy who put the nut into its mouth as much as possible. That arouse my curiosity that what he is eating or keeping in his mouth. Because this print is an advertisement for a candy brand, the intended audiences are the people who like to eat candy, such as children. As an advertisement for candy brand, its purpose must promote their products and convince customers to buy the products. How can promote their products better? The answer is that arouse audiences’ interests in your products. In this print, the candy company and advertisement designer, therefore, use a weird boy to catch audience’s eyes. Then the audiences will start to care about what the boy is eating, so they will go to inquire more information in this print. According to the print, the designer and the advertisement try to convey their audience that their candy is the most special one. When you eat “Sweet from Heaven” candy, you will be appealing to the crowd as well as the boy in the advertisement.
In the thesis VI: “Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire” of “Monster of Culture (Seven Theses), the author Jerome Cohen states: “[t]he monster also attracts. [t]he same creatures who terrify and interdict can evoke potent escapist fantasies; the linking of monstrosity with the forbidden makes the monster all the more appealing as a temporary egress from constraint”. (16) In other words, because the monstrosity is the one which usually is prohibited and is avoided to discuss with the public, people are more curious to the monster. However, the boy in “Sweet freaks” is the least monstrous one comparing other monsters in other advertisements. There are so many monsters which can catch people’s attention, why do advertisers still choose this little boy?
https://fearappealsarethebest.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/examples/无标题/
This poster is from WWF(World Wildlife Fund) ads, the slogan shows on the buttom “Stop climate change before it changes you.” In this poster there is only one character show out form a dark black background who has a middle-aged man body but fish face . Moreover, his skin was dark yellow and rough.and wearing a blue shirt. His eyes filled with tears and looks desperate.
In Thesis III, “the Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis,” Cohen appearance that monster is a mixture or hybrids. He mention that “disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration” (6) In this poster, the character neither man nor fish. This has broken our grasp of what is normal. As Cohen has mention in his essay, monster “refusal to participate in the classificatory order of things”(6).However , monster’s appearance is always to give people warning. Just as this post warn us don’t wait until claim get worse that change us, do it now.
http://www.ffdy123.com/movie/15987.html
The film is made in 2010 by director Paul Hertzberg,
The movie brings back the ancient legendary monster the Mongolian Death Worm, it’s a huge blood red insect in the sand dunes of Gobi. It had a Long and thick body with a red-blooded body appearance. It travels underground and when they track down their prey, they will spray highly toxic liquids which melts and kill any living organism instantly.
In Thesis III “the Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis,” Cohen Claim that monster is a creation of mixed cultural. As he mentions “disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration” (6) We can simply tell that the Mongolian Death Worm has a very close look with the skin color of earthworm mixed with the outlook appearance of Bobbit Worm from undersea. Which they can never be categorized or classifie.
This movie poster for The Mummy was first released in print in America in 1999. Three pyramids stand in the middle of the boundless desert. Above them, the mud piles up a mummy face. There are eyes, nose and mouth on its face. The eyes and mouth are open. The colors of the desert and the three pyramids are deep, but the face is bright. Around the face is blurred and indistinct. When I saw this poster, I thought the mummy’s face was a bit scary. However, three pyramids attracted my attention. Pyramids and mummy made me feel that this was a horror film about archaeological themes. It reminded me of a comic book I saw when I was a child. I am very interested in the civilization of ancient Egypt because of this book. I also fantasized about being an archaeologist when I was a child. Thinking about this made me feel impulsive and want to review that comic book. This poster was used to publicize the film. It attracted people who are interested in history, ancient Egypt, and archaeology to see the film. The poster was created to be horrific but mysterious, so that it could cause the curiosity of the people. It can be a specific example of the rhetorical context and intuitively express writer’s idea.
In “Thesis IV, The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference,” Cohen states monsters have “monster theory” (9), and it is very active. The reason why a monster can develop into a theory is inseparable from its culture. Cohen proposes “culture gives birth to a monster” (9). In other word, the monster has life because of culture. In ancient Egypt, people advocated eternal life. The royal family and the noblemen did not be corrupted after their death, so they made their bodies into mummies. They hoped that they would be able to resurrect in the future. The immortal culture made the mummies flourished and endowed the life of mummies. Some films borrow the immortality of mummies and shoot the resurrection of mummies. The mummy is one of them. Therefore, according to Cohen, the resurrected mummy is a monster.
http://i.mtime.com/hanyingblog/blog/7483555/
This movie poster for Twilight was first released in print in America in 2012. The tone of this poster is dominated by dark tones. The main composition of the poster consists of two vampires and one wolf man, and there were ferocious wolves around them. The central image of the poster is that Edward and Bella are in danger, and Jacob will help them in the crisis. In this poster, Edward, Bella and Jacob can all be considered “monster” according to Cohen. Because Edward and Bella are vampires, Jacob is a wolf man. Besides, the love of Bella and Edward can also be regarded as a monster, because the love between them is the love of the human and the Vampire.
In “Thesis III, The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis,” Cohen describes monsters as “disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration” (6). In the poster for “Humanoids from the Deep”, the central figure has characteristics or form resembling human beings, but not a human. so he is neither a human nor completely a monster. Thus, he is a “hybrid” of human and monster (6). It cannot be classified as any natural animal or phenomenon.Therefore, by the definition of a monster by Cohen, the “Humanoid” is a monster.
In “Thesis III, Cohen describes monsters as “disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration” （6）
sorry. something’s wrong with the mouse, it is not easy to hightlight the chosen area by clicking and holding down the left mouse button. so just copy same sentence in the text.