Pete Hall WR 7&8

Pete Hall

Response 7&8

As I start this response, I wonder if it is possible to really get out of our ‘media-polluted brains’. Our media polluted society is everywhere, always; how do you get out? But perhaps that is exactly the point of this exercise.

In looking at the exercise at a large scale and considering all of the squares at once, there seems to be little similarities between all four. The drawing squares are similar in that they are all simple line drawings, symbols really. I assume that the people who drew these symbols were simply looking at drawing the first thing that came to mind quickly. Thus symbols make the most sense at quickly relating the image that came to their head when the corresponding word was given. Perhaps this exercise was created with the supposition that we would draw simple symbols. I’m sure some people will say that symbols are used heavily in advertising to remind us of brands and create instant recognition for the consumers. Such as the Target bulls eye. Most people probably associate a red bulls eye with Target stores. But symbols were not a creation of advertising corporations; humans and even animals have used symbols for thousands of years, they are a natural tool. It is true that advertising corporations adopt symbols, but I think this exercise is trying to say that we drew symbols because of our ‘media-polluted brains’. Which is, in my opinion, not why we drew symbols, we drew symbols because we had a short amount of time and symbols are quick easy representations of ideas. The word house is not a house; it is a symbol for the idea of a house. Our lines are simply symbols for a word, a quick idea, not a representation of our media polluted brains. Now this of course would be a different issue if we had drawn the Target bull’s eye.

On my sheet, the only part that jumps out to me as production driven/ consumerism is one of the drawings on the bottom right square, the elongated oval with the bisecting line. This to me looks like a pill, Advil perhaps. Specifically to me it looks like an Advil Liquid Gel. As far as I can remember I’ve never taken an Advil Liquid Gel, or at least never bought them myself, but I still know what it looks like and know the full brand name. I don’t know if the person who drew this was thinking of an Advil Liquid Gel, or even a pill, but I’ve seen enough commercials and spent enough time in this consumerism “cult” to make the connection in my head. I would really like to know the word that prompted this drawing. Was it ‘Medicine’? I can easily see a pill being drawn for that. Or was it ‘Health’? If it was health that would strongly point to a consumerist, easy way out, tendency to over medicate for small problems. Perhaps seeing so many drug and pharmacy commercials has made us a nation of hypochondriacs. We’ve seen Swine Flu reported on so many times that we can convince ourselves that the normal flu, or even a common cold, is swine flu. We’ve seen it on the TV, why couldn’t it happen to me?