No matter how far away you go, you’re always going to remember where you came from. That saying is no different to me. Even though I have spent many years away from my home and have traveled countless miles around the world and miles away from David City, there is always one object that can sweep my back to my bedroom in that rural Nebraska town with just one smell. That object is my big, pink blanket.
Now, I know that many children grow attached to blankets at small ages and it is customary that they need to become detached from that blanket by the time they enter middle school. I had that blanket and we separated paths in my childhood but it was not the same as my big, pink blanket. My big, pink blanket was more of a comforter than just a throw towel. It’s a very faded and dulled pink color that used to match the sheets of my childhood bed. The edges of the blanket are trimmed in a simple white lace that has threads dangling off of it is many different directions and little holes cut through it in patterns of four to look almost like flowers. If you were to look over it very carefully, you’d find a large darker stain on the corner of one of the blanket’s sides, this came from a spilled pop on a long vacation drive with not very many napkins to wipe it up.
Another very interesting fact about my big, pink blanket is that she has a twin. My older sister who left the house many years before me had kidnapped her blanket from my parents house as well. When we were younger and shared a room, we each had our own twin size bed with our twin sized blanket. After we abandoned the beds, we never could tear ourselves away from our precious blankets. One year, on our way to a family vacation skiing, my sister and I both brought our big, pink blankets to sleep with in the car. At one rest stop, we both threw our blankets onto the car’s floor and ran inside. When we came back, we got into a huge fight over who’s blanket was who’s and which one smelled like ours. Surprisingly, we each believed our big, pink blanket carried a very distinct smell that we wanted back. After that feud was settled we decided that we needed a way to be able to tell our blankets apart. Ever since that day, my big, pink blanket has gained the addition of a very small permanent marker dot on one of her corners.
Every night when I cuddle up to my blanket, I’m always reminded of my sister and her blanket, and the days we used to spend together in our little room. It’s almost like we each have one side of the locket that keeps us connected back to our roots.
As long as I can remember, I’ve always grown attached to certain objects. I give many odd materials special meaning and then they seem to almost become a part of me. The most important of these would probably be the piece of jewelry that many have coined as my “hoodie string.” Now, to say that this is object is a piece of jewelry is probably a far stretch because it looks the same as a shoe string, but to me it means so much more. The black lace entered my life about two years ago, when I started dating my present boyfriend. We were on a walk together on a brisk night and he started picking on me, playing around and tickling me. In my defense, I grabbed whatever I could to get him to stop and accidentally pulled the string out of the hood of his favorite hoodie all the way out. I froze and stood down at my hand, knowing how much he loved that sweatshirt and when I looked up at him he was smiling. “Way to go! You ruined it,” he said tauntingly. I smiled back and said, “It’s not ruined. It’s now a…bracelet!” From that day on, I’ve worn that string on my wrist like a religion. Now, two years later, it’s worn down, shorter from pieces breaking off, and dabbed with random dots of paint. It seems to be just another part of me until someone gives me a really weird look as they watch me tie it on my wrist. I had to learn an odd way to tie it on because there is no way that I’m going to ask for help to tie on this string everyday for two years. The knots tied onto the end are to help the string to prevent from fraying even further and to help it from untying as well. There was a chunk of time in those two years where I thought that I had lost my hoodie string for good. I was heartbroken and felt like I had almost let myself down. It’s always amazed me how attached I can get to something that seems so insignificant to others.
The idea of good verses bad has always been a theme for many movies throughout time. But what about those movies where good and bad aren’t so black and white? America has started to learn that people aren’t always what they seem and you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. Now we have movies where the audience falls in love with the character who is supposed to be “bad” by definition of what they are doing. For example, The Outsiders, the book that Atreyu’s video is based off of, makes the audience take a view into the life of the rebel kids. We learn that the jocks that the city loves and believes are so good are actually bigger jerks than the greasers who the community views of hooligans. This whole theme calls to the readers pathos because we all have been misread at least once in our life. We all sympathaize with the idea of being mislabeled and not given a true chance to prove who we are. A person’s logos would be intrigued by the interesting way that the band used the story to tie into their song. It’s an obvious comparison and they tend to follow the plot pretty closely. The audience’s ethos are tended to be because of the interesting ideas they put into the movie. The camera angles add cool effects and the idea about the rain getting harder and harder as the conflict grows also draws the audience in. Not to mention it is a very well made video. Everyone wants to see the underdog win every once in a while. In this video, all of those needs are satisfied.
The video that I have chosen, “Falling Down,” by Atreyu, mocks the storyline of the famous book The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. The members of the band portray the characters in the book who were called the greasers. Throughout the movie, the members of the band are shown doing many different acts that the kids who were considered rebels would do. They are smoking, stealing, and fighting. For the majority of the time you see the band actually playing they have set up their stage right in the middle of a drive-in movie. Obviously purposely trying to obstruct the movie-goer’s view, the band continues to play. While they are rocking out in front of the screen, the people seem to get more and more annoyed with them but the band doesn’t seem to care. Later in the video, we see one of the characters stealing alcohol from the general store while his friend distracts the cashier. Other aspects let the viewer know that these greasers are not the goody-goodies that the boys in the letterman jackets and the girls in the poodle skirts are. The band members are also linked together by their leather jackets, which they seem to wear with pride. At the highest tension point of the video, we see all of the greasers meeting up with the jocks in a large field at night. When they are confronted, the leader of the jocks taunts the leader of the greasers by saying, “Hey, Alex, long time no see!” From here we learn that they used to be friends back in the day and when they started fighting, the Alex character decided to join the greasers side while his old friend joined the jocks. At this point a huge fight breaks out and punches are thrown everywhere. The fight ends with the jocks’ faces in the mud and the greasers shouting victoriously.
These greasers were viewed somewhat as social outcasts in the public’s eye. But this was only the stereotype that they were given. They were also seen as the rebels of their era. I believe the members of Atreyu chose to replicate this setting for their music video because they were able to relate to the greasers in that book. All of the members of Atryeu had hard times fitting in when they were younger and all of their lyrics tend to attract kids who have struggled through the same problems. They group has always had a rebel tone to it, with all of the heavy music, screaming, piercings, and tattoos. Throughout the video, a light rain starts to come down on the band as they are playing. This creates a really cool effect when the drummer hits his cymbals but I believe it has a deeper meaning than just for looks. As the video continues, the rain gets harder and harder until the point when the fight breaks out and the tension is incredible. At that point, it isn’t just raining, it is straight down-pouring. The leather jacket that each of the band members wear shows a bond between them and also an acceptance to the rebel stereotype. A leather jacket has always been viewed as a rebel article of clothing, and by them all wearing it proudly, it seems as if they are proud of the stereotype that the rest of the town has created for them.
Art has been a part of every society since the beginning of time. Pictures were found carved into walls of caves by primitive beings, some cultures such as Egypt used art as their form of communication, and countries like Italy express their art in every angle that you look. But the topic of art is a very vague idea. Who is to be the one to determine what art is and what it isn’t? Typically thought of, art is when an artist sits down with their blank canvas and adds to it. He continually adds and adds layers of paint to the picture until the masterpiece is complete. But is art only addition? What if art was created by the idea of subtraction instead?
The piece of artwork pictured above, “All we are is dust in the wind…,” shows the artist Alex Orion working away at his creation in a subway tunnel in Sao Palo, Brazil. To create this masterpiece, Orion has taken water, sponges, a variety of scraping tools, and GreenWorks, an organic cleaner to clean his creation out many layers of the dirt and suit that have covered the walls. The black walls that surround him are covered in years of grime that no one has bothered to clean off, until now. But Orion is only one of many who follow this tradition of the Reverse Graffiti Project, which is believed to be originated by Paul “Moose” Curtis. Curtis started this project in San Francisco after he had spent many years working in very dirty restaurant cleaning pots and pans. One day he leaned over to clean a dirt spot in the wall and after he wiped it up he realized that the clean spot he had left was much more noticeable than the dirt to begin with. His statement for why he works so hard to create these clean creations is that he wants people to realize the matter at hand. When trying to explain his occupation he struggles. “I’ve never found that easy way to explain what I do. I tell a person that I make pictures by cleaning…the whole core of what I do is based around drawing in pollution and writing in nature.” ("The Reverse Graffiti Project") Many of his creations depict settings of the ancient types of trees that used to be planted there before these tunnels were created. His idea is trying to remove the dirt to reveal the past.
Alex Orion, on the other hand, took a much more morbid approach to the mission. Instead of creating images of life that used to inhabit the area where the tunnels are, he has created a mural of what will be there in the future if people don’t learn to respect the earth or each other. His title for the creation represents the irony of the ideas that when our bodies decay, we return to the dust state, but dust is also represented to be dirt which is the original problem. By naming this piece, “All we are is dust in the wind…” Orion is sort of stating that we are the only ones to blame for our own future. This photograph instantly calls to the reader’s pathos from the simple image of a skull. People relate skulls to death and that is a topic that most people tend to be sensitive with. The skulls seem to bring a shocking factor to the problem of pollution. The audience’s pathos were also considered because of the large amount of dirt. Most people tend to care enough about the world to realize that that’s pretty bad and guilt is one of the strongest pathos that hit humans. On the other side, a person’s pathos are called to because many people appreciate the art of taking something ugly and turning it into something beautiful. The process of erasing and cleaning symbolizes a new life and a second chance. In turn, this creates a contradiction. The skulls bring up the idea of death and the ultimate end but the cleaning reminds the audience of rebirth, hope, and that there’s still time to change.
The ethos of the picture are very well put together. Each of the skulls display a very bright white that creates a contrast from the black suit. This drastic contrast is very esthetically pleasing to the eye and makes the skulls really stand out. Each of the other murals that were created from the grime look like a great amount of time was taken to be sure that the images appeared as clean as possible. In fact, many people walking past the murals have said that they don’t realize that these images are wiped away until they get up close and personal with the shapes. This technique creates an optical illusion that offers the idea that the white images were added on top of the black, not the black being pulled away to reveal the white.
Finally, this portrait calls to the audience’s logos because it offers straight facts that make them realize what this world has come to. These tunnels are obvious pieces of evidence of how horridly our planet is polluted. There is no better proof than standing in front of these murals and realizing how white these walls used to be. The cleansing process shows people the steps to fix the problem at hand. Many people have called this work urban graffiti but it offers a totally different element. Graffiti has always been considered as “markings, as initials, slogans, or drawings, written, spray-painted, or sketched on a sidewalk, wall of a building or public areas.” Graffiti has also been coined as a derogatory statement of a group of people defacing public property. But are these grime artists really hurting any property? If an image is viewed as offensive, could it not just be washed off? Maybe this is what it will take for the city to learn to clean itself. If someone put up an image that people found offensive, the city would send a crew over to erase it and ultimately clean the tunnel and solve the initial problem of the pollution.
The Reverse Graffiti Project helps create a variety of visual rhetoric that helps open the eyes of the public to the problems that are all around them. These images also help motivate the people to make a change and realize that life is more enjoyable when one is surrounded by beauty instead of dirt. The cleaning of the tunnels help people learn to take pride in the cities where they live because it’s part of their home too. As the creator, Curtis, states in defense of the environment, “Nature’s voice, if you like, is written in dirt as if it were written in blood.” ("The Reverse Graffiti Project")
Works Cited:
Lithgow, Michael. "Reverse graffiti turns city grime into art." Art Threat. 17 Nov. 2008. http://artthreat.net/
"The Reverse Graffiti Project." The Reverse Graffiti Project. 2008. Oil Factory Inc. Production Company. 19 Nov. 2008. http://www.reversegraffitiproject.com/
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No matter how far away you go, you’re always going to remember where you came from. That saying is no different to me. Even though I have spent many years away from my home and have traveled countless miles around the world and miles away from David City, there is always one object that can sweep my back to my bedroom in that rural Nebraska town with just one smell. That object is my big, pink blanket. 
