Power

Power

1. The Power Of Seduction

• This type of ‘power’ can start from a young age but in a different manner than what people would usually assume seduction to mean. Young daughters can manipulate their fathers into buying them what they want. It’s the flutter of the eyelashes and the puppy dog eyes that young girls learn works.
• As a woman gets older they quickly learn that a little female attention can be used to get them what their hearts desire.
• Women don’t plan to be this way it is just instinct, just as a mans instinct is to protect whats his.
• Women in ancient times were meant to have seduced men to gain protection and food in order to survive.

When I was trying to research this there was loads of websites for men to learn how to seduce women, it was quite interesting to read what these different men thought, I found some of it quite funny. One guy had two points which he thought definitely work for everyone because he did it himself,

1. Find a good aftershave.

2. Get involved in social dancing, learn a couple of dance moves and women will melt in your arms!

He claimed that he goes to dance lessons himself and he makes sure that he dances with every woman so not one of them thinks they own him!

This lead me to think about the power of advertising and if sex actually sells, i found this website whilst researching, its funny how it seems so obvious that they have used sex to sell these items when you wouln’t really think that would be the most obvious thing to use, its like they have no other ideas so have just gone for the one they think works.

http://inventorspot.com/articles/ads_prove_sex_sells_5576

“Suit Up”

Also on this website it mentioned something about every man having to own a suit, this lead to to a little idea of having various portraits of males or females in their everyday clothes and then having some more images of them in suits/dressed smartly/for work etc, but using these images to show the contrast between the two and show how much power wearing a suit can give someone. If you see someone wearing a suit I would get the immediate impression that they are important or have money, and usually money equals power.

“Suit Up”, a quote from the American TV show ‘How I Met Your Mother’. Also Superheroes ‘suit up’ when they put their outfits/costumes on and this gives them power and makes them seem superior to other people.

‘The true power suit is worn by the man who makes things happen with a wink or a nod. This man does not manipulate, cajole or sell. He simply makes a decision and the world around him conforms to his vision’.

I have decided to look into something a little bit different for my power artefact, it is a little bit similar but I am going to be looking into things like the power of females and how they fress to impress and also the power of beauty. I have read a few articles about Gok Wan’s new TV show and how he supposedly humiliated his contestants, personally I didn’t think there was much wrong with what was done.

http://itn.co.uk/news/1af0a127ca4f8cb03f0ea4002dc846d1.html

http://celebgalz.com/gok-wan-gok-wan-miss-naked-beauty-contest/

‘ There’s nothing girl power about Gok Wan’.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/alice_klein/blog/2008/10/22/theres_nothing_girl_power_about_gok_wan

Gok seems to be under alot of scrutiny after this ‘Miss naked beauty’ show. I haven’t watched it myself so I probably can’t comment, but I didn’t see that much of a problem with him throwing water over the girls. I suppose it was sort of a metaphor for stripping them of all their make-up and beauty products, making them be their own natural beauty.

Workbook

                                          

                                                       

                                          

                                           

These are some pages from my workbook where I have explored the theme of power. On the page with the two people kissing I have described a piece of art work which I seen whilst I was at the Tate Modern. It was a video by Rineke Dijkstra, who had tried to show adolescents in the process of defining themselves. Setting up improvised studios in nightclubs, she shows the teenagers’ awkwardness and vulnerability as they pose, smoke, dance and try to look sophisticated.

This is a phone video of the piece that I found on You Tube, its pretty bad quality but it gives you an example of what i seen.

She had a few different subjects as the piece is 26 minutes long, but these examples only show a couple of people.

After seeing these I was thinking about looking into underage drinking and how people from the age of 15 or even younger try to get into pubs and clubs and try to get alcohol. They wish they had the power to buy alcohol, I think that it is definitely something to do with growing up because I know I was the same when I was younger. You would ask an someone old enough to get you the cheapest alcohol possible (usually cider) and drink it down the park or something. It would taste horrible but just feel the need to drink it, because alcohol gives you confidence which I would say is a type of power.

                                                 

Another thing I looked into was gun crime because of an image that was pasted up on the front of the Tate Modern, it was one of six pieces of street art that was on the bank side of the Tate. This piece of artwork was by JR.

 

JR’s images can now be seen internationally, but he started out on the streets of Paris, using only his initials because of the illegal nature of his work. He is known for pasting large-scale photographs of people in public spaces. ‘The street provides me with the support, the wall, the atmosphere, but especially the people. Depending on where I put the photo, the whole thing changes,’ he says.

For one project, JR created portraits of ghetto inhabitants of the suburbs of Paris – the scene of riots in recent years – and installed them on the walls in the city centre. In doing so, he aims to provoke and question the social and media-led representations of such events. JR’s work often challenges widely held preconceptions and the reductive images propagated by advertising and the media.

 

His work with Palestinian and Israeli citizens explored the similarities of their daily lives, rather than focusing on the ever present divide, highlighting fundamental human emotions. Israelis and Palestinians doing the same job – such as taxi drivers, teachers and cooks – agreed to be photographed crying, laughing, shouting and making faces. Their portraits were posted face-to-face, in huge formats in an unauthorised project, on both sides of the separation wall [security fence] and in several cities, demonstrating that art and laughter can challenge stereotypes. For his new project about women in post-conflict situations and the Third World, JR has already travelled to Sudan, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and is planning to visit India, Asia and South America.

 

This image challenges a major issue in today society. You double take at this image as you are lead to believe that this is a young man holding and aiming a loaded weapon, but is usually a young man holding a camera. It forces us to rethink our assumptions.

As I wrote up what I thought about this is lead me to talk about gangs and how you would cross the road if you seen one. I put a couple of newspaper clippings in my workbook, the boys look as young as 16 and posing with guns seem to make them ooze authority and power.

I also wrote that it is a very stereotypical thought but you would usually assume black people to be associated with gangs, but I believe that these thoughts are due to what we see on TV and in film. Also there is a lot of coverage in the media about the tragic shootings and stabbings in London, which the majority are black boys.

‘ Local TV also tended to focus on acts of crime by black perpetrators on white victims in ways that strengthened racial stereotypes and animosity towards African Americans’.

(Mass media and society 4th edition: James Curran and Michael Gurevitch 2005)

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http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/streetart/artists-jr.shtm

I have been looking back through my workbooks and I remembered looking through a book by Robert Walker called ‘Colour is Power’, I only looked at this because it was obvious and had power in the title,

I just thought I would metion that I had a look through it becuase this is where I got the idea ‘power of seduction’, becuase the titile ‘Colour is Power’, was used as a slogan from Avon – and I wondered power for what? Power to seduce? Power to control? Then after this it lead me to the work at the top of the page.

I didn’t know if some of the things in my workbook are going to be marked as I’m not sure how it works – because I have bits and bobs on this and in my workbook, I have tried to make it sort of equal. I thought I would mention it because there are things on here that are not in my work book and vice versa. There was a quote which I believe was from this book I just really liked it:

‘ The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible.’      -  Oscar Wilde

http://www.thamesandhudson.com/books/Colour_is_Power/9780500542590.mxs/27/0/