7 & 8

1) The diagonal placement of the stitches in the first panel creates a feeling of movement and when placed into the context of the next panel, a feeling of confusion. The next panel sets up the story of a lost child in a city, and the following panel shows medications. The final panel seems to be a collection of random words.

The story they tell for me is a story of what this child, lost alone in the city, is seeing and feeling in the first panel. The chaotic mix of objects and lines show the confusion and emotional and visual overload the child is experiencing. The next panel explicitly sets up this story in fragmented speech reflective of the quick shift of thoughts and gaze shown in the first panel. The following two panels show the ramifications of such an experience; now the child requires medication to deal with the anxieties of being left alone and the last panel shows the change in thoughts to disconnected ideas without meaning. These words are indicative of the child's mental state following his or her new drug regiment.



3) I think throughout the exercise I was aware of the possibility of my answers strongly reflecting the ideas embedded by advertisements and overall consumerism, and I think because of that the answers I drew or wrote I consciously made an effort to separate them from my original advertisement based instincts. I wonder if this affected other people's responses as well, because for me it's hard to tell if the answers come from the influences of consumerism. The story about feeling pain seems like a separate and purely humanly felt experience, separate from ideas of pain or fear generated from television or otherwise. With the medications, I guess it's reflective of the kinds of medications we'd take; there are no examples of any sort of natural remedies or otherwise. My experiences with medications are limited to what I can buy from the store as opposed to what I can make myself, so this panel has some taints of consumerism. It's easier, and it is portrayed as being easier and more effective, to take these kinds of medications that can be obtained and manufactured by someone else than it would be to seek some sort of natural solution to our aches and pains.