TOW #21: Visual Text

In this political cartoon by Andy Marlette, a political cartoonist for the Pensacola News Journal in Florida as well as the nephew of Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Doug Marlette, Marlette presents the issue of Donald Trump's popular image within the Republican candidacy.  By placing Donald Trump as  the new and upcoming Father Time going into 2016, Marlette is trying to emphasize how big of a role Donald Trump will play within the year due to his already popular image in the media.  By making Donald Trump tell the old father time of 2015 “You're fired loser,” Marlette paints as picture for an audience of voters how immature and ignorant Trump i of others.  He makes Trump out to be the control freak that he is by taking over 2016.  Overall, I believe that this is a great representation of Donald Trump due to the message it sends to the public.  While the cartoon is strong however, it lacks in a sense that it only references how big of a threat Donald Trump is in the year 2016.  By doing so, Marlette recommends that Trump does not have a chance at winning the presidency.  While his view is that he obviously opposes Donald Trump, he must make it clear to his audience members how big of a threat Donald Trump could be if his campaign does end up succeeding.  By just referencing 2016, the political cartoon comes off nearly as a joke as to how Donald Trump's presidential race appears currently opposed to a message about the dangers this presidential race could lead to.  This is how Andy Marlette message tends to fail in informing his audience of the repercussions that may occur as a result of the 2016 presidential election.

TOW #20: IRB Post

In the first half of the book entitled Blood Will Out: The True Story of A Murder, A Mystery, and A Masquerade, Walter Kirn, the author and main character of the plotline, goes back to the summer of 1998 where he befriended the modern day monster known as Clark Rockefeller.  What started as a Kirn simply selling his three-legged dog from his home in Montana to New York City to give the dog to Rockefeller , turned into a 15 year friendship between the two.  Clark Rockefeller was a strange man who claimed to be a banker and an art collector, inheriting most of his wealth from his family past as one of the wealthiest families in American History.  Written in past tense, Kirn tells his story of his encounters with rockefeller as past experiences, making the audience initially aware of Rockefeller’s true identity: A serial imposter, murderer, and Child kidnapper by the name of Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter.  By doing this, Walter Kirn attempts to put his audience in his shoes; trying to make them spot the signs that Kirn could not spot himself while unaware of Rockefeller's past.  While this seems clever however, I believe that Kirn does not do as good of a job as he could have at putting his audience in that position.  Portraying to an audience interested in true mystery, the audience expects a story full of detail.  The one thing I do not enjoy about this book is how despite how close Kirn was with the imposter, he does not provide enough detail to put the reader in the position he was in.  Being that he had physical contact with Clark Rockefeller himself for a 15 year period, you would expect Kirn to apply an abundance of detail to his storyline, but in most cases his recalls of the past are merely him explaining what happened as opposed to letting the reader figure it out themselves.  Because of this lack of detail I believe that the first half of the book was weak at its ability to appeal directly to its audience.