Crocheted Me a Pop-tart

My Comments:

When I first received this contribution I was so excited. This was the first physical representation I received. The pop-tart is crocheted but has a pocket up top and inside there is a movie poster for “The Hunger Games”, a picture of The Declaration of Independence, a picture of a bird flying out of a cage and a meme with a quote from Albert Camus that reads, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” This made me think about the various ways freedom can be depicted from a legal document to a movie poster. While they might express different kinds of freedom, they still both carry that theme with them. I loved the idea that the filling of this Freedom Pop-tart was these different “tastes” (if you will) of freedom. This creations did one of the best jobs in capturing the message in an abstract way.

Nyan Cat

My Comments:

For anyone who hasn’t heard of the Nyan Cat….

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyan_Cat

This post made me think of the ways in which people can change their representations to please their audience. This contributor knows I love cats so found a way to bring that into their representation. This picture can be taken to represent the Nyan cat’s birth or rather spike in popularity on the internet, but more likely it’s taken as a play on this popular internet figure. While it’s a fun representation of pop-tarts, it doesn’t quite grasp the freedom part of the quote. This shows the ways in which people can pick apart messages to represent what they found significant in them.

Tumblr World

 

Contributor’s Comments:

With a .gif you get the picture with the quote and you can see the person actually moving and reacting and it captures the feeling behind what they’re saying better than if you just text the words.

My Comments:

This represents the new culture formed by Tumblr very well. .gifs have become very popular and one of the reasons is you get more context then just the quote itself. With .gifs and comic shots like this you get to see the characters, their expressions and can even get some action. It conveys more emotion and the viewer gets a fuller picture. Although it does leave less to the imagination. It was one of the most effective ways of conveying this message exactly because it’s where I grabbed the message from. It brought the quote to life in the exact way I first found it.

Society’s Judgements

Contributors Comments:

“Time for a pop-tart!”

My Comment:

This contributor chose to focus more on the pop-tart and how pop-tarts can be perceived by society, as contributing to obesity. While a loose argument could be made for having freedom over one’s body, it would more likely be taken as a judgment on pop-tarts as a food. This is a prime example of ways people can understand a message differently, or ways messages can get restructured through interpretation. This interpretation doesn’t represent the original message, instead it makes it’s own message.

Married to Chocolate

 

Contributor’s Comments:

A woman in an abusive relationship is like being in a prison. If you find something (for me chocolate candy – for Lorelei pop-tarts) that will piss off the abusive husband if he knew about it and it gives you pleasure at the same time, you feel a bit of freedom and independence while doing it.

My Comments:

This contribution decided to not only represent the message, but make a sort of social commentary on what she considers a form of prison. This medium not only takes on and represents the original message, but makes an even bigger argument of its own. In this case, the new message overshadows the old. This is a prime example of what can happen as a message gets circulated, since it won’t mean the same thing to everyone, it can take on and be passed around with new and different meanings.

Patriotic Pop-Tart

Oh, what did we eat by the dawn’s early light
We so quickly inhaled all the ice cream while screaming
All doughnuts and Twix bars by the stroke of midnight,
And the Netflix we watched was so gallantly streaming
And the watch’s red glare, the crumbs stuck in my hair,
Gave proof through the night that hunger was still there.
Oh, say do your roommates kindly yet save
Us the rest of the sweets and a slice of the cake?

Contributors Comments:

This quote made me think of freedom and independence through the lens of pastries, which led me to rethink the national anthem to be about a very important midnight snack. Music tends to be a rallying cry and very symbolic—I wanted to take something symbolic and profound, like those words, and compare it to something ridiculous, as the quote does.

My Comments:

This interpretation pulls together the theme of the quote as well as the humor behind it. This is one of the interpretations that pulled at the freedom aspect of the quote more than the pop-tart. It catches the essence and feelings behind the quote perfectly.

Picture of Freedom

Contributor’s Comments:

I wanted to carry on the theme from Mom Gilmore – but wanted it to be represented by a women who for me achieved so much – not for herself but for her and other generations, and for women and men

I wanted first someone like Virginia Woolf and played with that theme, but in the end picked one of the favorite persons from my generation of living. Unfortunately it probably doesn’t work for most – because few will realize that the young girl is a very young Eleanor Roosevelt.

My Comments:

This contribution focuses more on the character who originally says the quote. This contributor tried to find someone who he felt not only embodied certain parts of the character, but also the meaning of the quote.  This contributor focused much more on the freedom portion of the quote.

Feminist Pop-tart

My Comments:

When I first saw this I was first taken aback by the hands that were flipping me off. It actually took me a minute to find the pop-tart. As soon as I did I started laughing. To me this image spoke more about gender freedom than freedom as a whole. It shows the way the artist was able to take the message and personalize it to her own belief system in order to find a way to reiterate it. It still has aspects of the original quote, but again it takes the message and adds it’s own message into the mix.