Final Blog Post

 Wow, time flies! I cannot believe that term is over and we had a lot of fun in this class. In this class, I really can feel free to share any thoughts I have, anything I want to say. I am glad there has been a chance to share my thoughts about masks and all of my friends show their most support to me. 

From the last two classes, I found some interesting sentences to connect my mask topic. 

" It is the reflection of a profound reality." COVID is the most important thing all over the world, this influential issue made everyone wear masks. People with masks on reflected our society in the truest representation.

"It masks and denatures/ it masks the absence of a profound society." Absence really can understand something missing due to the COVID, and denatures is true as well. When we just knew about COVID, it was like a dream, and never can believe that it would be such a long time.

For my Instagram post, I tried to make it a global perspective by including different races and cultures. Also, I do not want to only limit our campus people, which also ask for pictures from other countries or cities. I also collect some fun pictures at the same time. Hope this account can bring awareness and happiness simultaneously to everyone!

At last, this class is over, my mask thing is never over. Feel free to follow me to see any more new posts in the future!

Alexandra Bell's convocation

I am so sad about missing such a good convocation on our campus, also one of my friends played the flute. But Jonnie gave me an alternative video to hear. It is the recorded video when she gave a talk at the University of Kansas in 2018. 

With an interdisciplinary and journalism background for Bell, her "counternarratives" is so famous and some examples she showed really give me another understanding of journals and newspapers. In one of the examples about newspaper layout, Bell changed the position between wines and the breaking news. As we all thought, breaking news should be in the most obvious place in the newspaper, but the breaking news is about black athletics, which arranges under the picture about some normal wines. I am working as managing editor in our campus newspaper right now, also will meet some similar problems in my future work. I hope I can do a good job of layout and some wordy descriptions. 

Bell did a lot of changes to the New York Times, she rewrote news, change newspaper pictures, even delete some "unimportant" details from original writing. When she changed a picture from a blurred video screenshot to he is wearing a cap and gown, which represents that she is fighting for justice. She used her academic knowledge to put anything in a more objective place.

The network becomes more and more popular, and people have more chances to express their ideas and have more media to hear different perspectives. I hope we still can keep our real thinking, be the real self, and be objective people with the double vision to analyze anything we met.

Artist Talk--Andrew Norris

 

                                          Today LU welcomed a guest today to share his artworks and his experience. The one that attracts me most is Toxic Masculinity. This term describes a group of males in our real life, they never show their fragile self in front of people even they do feel sad. Some of my guy friends, always show off their bravery and courage for no reason, especially in front of girls. I remembered when I went haunted house with some guy, they just like who will pay today's dinner if they scream during the play. There has no reason to make such a promise, having fun is the basic thing we should do. However, they even never open their eyes during play, but they still say I will protect girls, trust us. To be honest, their sentences even make me feel more insecure.

                              My research about toxic masculinity gave me a deeper understanding of this term, especially some traits like suppressing emotion, trying to appear tough, and physical aggression. The guy in this painting does not have any facial expression on his face, we never know what does his real mood look like. Also, he is in the superhero outfit and every body part shows strong muscle and a perfect body shape. He acts like a model in the magazine to attract attention from different audiences. 

Norman Rockwell

                 

The sweetness and bitterness are flowing under his brushes. In his paintings, we can feel the vibe for different festivals and the happy moments when the family reunited. All of these paintings are in a romantic or warm color, everyone will be immersed in a peaceful mood when they look at these paintings. Also, he did not paint some grand views but painted some small things around his daily life. His models even from his neighbor and family members might be a reason why his painting is so popular in our normal lives. In his paintings, we all can act naive and childish like kids under his painted dreams. Some little girls and boys have various facial expressions, they interact with adults exactly like how do we interact with our parents. 

However, his painting also likes a timeline to mark the development of the United States. From barefoot boys in the summer heat to astronauts on the moon; from lazy small-town storefronts to skyscraper offices; from colorful fairy tales books to the television screens. His works cover the two world wars, the Cold War and the economic depression, and racial problems in the United States. 

All his paintings are like a mirror to reflect the important time and event, different age groups and different kinds of people all can find their interests and commonality in his paintings.

Hyperreality comes to the best reflected in his paintings like some people cannot realize they are looking at a painting rather than living. I remembered a painting named Freedom from Want is painted during World War II. The setting should be gloomy even sad because a lot of people suffered from hunger issues and worry about their safety. However, his painting has a huge turkey and all family members are staring at that turkey in a smily face. Family, love, and safety are all represented in his painting, it is hard to think about the condition we were suffering. 

"Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.--Norman Rockwell. "

Easy living, easy painting, and easy thinking!

Something new & something OLD

"mask-people-cool" has more and more posts nowadays, it is a time to visit Amber's exhibition. You can find love, humor, even culture in my exhibition. Hope everyone can give me some feedback either to improve or change my Instagram account. I have so many ideas but just do not have any idea when I express :(

The sad news is I infected COVID last Thursday, it is a time to let me know COVID is really around us. I wear a mask all the time when I got the result from my self-test kit even in my dorm room and all the way to the quarantine hotel. Double KN95 is such a terrible thing for me, my soft ears even cannot hold, only can use my glasses to support. The hotel gives me room car and self-care kit by putting them in a box to grab by myself, I like homeless people to find them in the cold winter, also with some of my stuff for quarantine. So during the quarantine time, I have more reflections and thoughts about mask, post at least 4 posts every day, hope posting can be a happy thing during this sick week.

Project Update No.2

 

    What is your first thinking when you saw this figure?

    For me, either mask on or mask off, people should be the same that cannot classify them into different groups. The uniquity of each group brings a various world to all of us. But why do we have discriminations and social biases toward them? My project will collect people in different masks to show their identity but in an equal and critical viewpoint.

    Oregon has decided to make people of color exempt from its mandatory mask policy in 2020 June invoked my interest in public health and policy, On the one way, people of color always be the victims of harassment or violence, making them mask off can help them get rid of this condition. But if we think about COVID, wearing the mask is a basic way to prevent the virus from spreading. So I hope my small project can make people around me think about, mask not a subject but a story to know our society!

    In my project, I collected people with different masks and from different races. So every mask I collected is a short story to share with everybody who sees his/her mask. By doing my project, I read a lot of stories about masks even some stories about front-line people, masks start to have a different status in my mind. Even life is fragile but also strong sometimes, masks cover people's facial expressions, but they convey a safe and compassion to others. Moring always comes after evening, why not wait a little bit longer to welcome our sunshine!

Project Update No.1

    

    To be honest, I keep thinking about how can I connect my mask topic with our textbook contents. The textbook always brings some new even weird but interesting points to us. But when I was thinking about the connection between reality and imagination, the interrelation between real life and animation or movies is a good starting point. For here, I REALLY recommend all you guys watch the movie named The Truman Show, this is a good movie to explain what is my basic thinking!

    The plots of movies are always made up by directors and some plots will based on the true story, which they more like the imagination. People who show up in movies should give people a fake feeling. But when we think about reality, people wear masks every day to cover their real faces and leave a kind of magical impression. People rather think movies show more realistic details than real life. So people start to design fancier masks to disclose the uncertainty. 

    We always say "the eyes are the windows to the soul" But we still found some masks that are transparent, people can see whole facial expressions like no mask on. If I was around people wearing this mask, I think our distance becomes closer than around people who wear normal masks. All real people wear real masks, is there any possibilities to show hyperreal? When a baby comes into this world during the pandemic time, they might think masks play a role like our outfit. If people without masks around them, they might feel weird rather than normal. I will keep brainstorming and trying to make my ideas more cleared!