Lesson 3. Student Model for Self Criticism Paper

Description: This cartoon is divided into two scenes, around 20 years apart. In the first, a small girl, wearing a cute, childish outfit, is happily pointing to a glamorous billboard featuring a beautiful supermodel smoking a cigarette. The setting is very limited, and established only by a road along side the billboard, primitive depth techniques, and a large sun in the right-hand corner. The second scene features the same girl as a young woman, 20 years later. She wears a drab outfit and has an overall dingy and unhappy appearance. The background is again very primitive, and only two walls in severe perspective represent the room she is in.

Analysis: My point of view is one of anti-smoking. I deliberately attempted to distort the two figures in order to draw a very large contrast between them. The first is the stereotype of an adorable little girl with every potential to grow up beautifully like her idol, the supermodel. The skirt, pigtail, and large smile all represent this. The second is her antithesis, an unattractive older woman in ill-fitting clothes with stains. Her unhappy expression, dingy hair and awkward appearance all represent the visual evils that come with smoking. I chose to illustrate this difference between them to emphasize all the bad things that can happen to a pretty girl because of smoking, even though it might be advertised by supermodels.

Interpretation: My political cartoon basically states that smoking is bad for you, but more particularly, that advertisers lie to the public about this fact. I used the symbol of the beautiful model on the billboard to represent this false advertising. The woman in the right panel represents the truth of what really happens to a smoker, versus this lie. In addition, there are small symbols of the bad results of smoking all over the woman on the right. These are pointed out all around her. The mood of the work is a little depressing, as the small girl becomes an unhappy, disillusioned woman. This is also seen in the captions. In the left one, the innocent girl wants to smoke in order to grow up into a beautiful woman. In the right, she has smoked, but received very different results. She's upset and confused: "What'd I say?" She doesn't realize why she became so ugly and unhappy when the supermodel looked so pretty and happy.

Judgment: I showed my cartoon to a good friend. She did receive my intended message from the cartoon. She thought that my cartoon said, "Smoking is a bad and unhealthy idea." Although the drawings themselves were very simple, the text boxes in the right part helped to emphasize the meaning for her. She also thought that this cartoon had the power to make people think about their cigarette habits and perhaps lead to a change of mind for some! However, she did not immediately think about the whole false-advertising meaning that I intended until I pointed it out. So, if I were to redraw this, I would emphasize this part of my message. Perhaps I would include something in the second caption such as: "Why don't I look like a supermodel?" As in many other cartoons, I used only those background features that would help to communicate my message. A bit like Ben Franklin, my cartoon is very simply drawn. I think that I will create my next cartoon on the subject of extremely thin women and eating disorders in society. This is an important issue to address because there are many young women who believe that they have to be very thin to be beautiful, and this view is completely wrong. I hope to create an image that will actually change the minds and viewpoints of its readers and cause them to rethink their image of beauty.