#detournementmeme

For this gif I wanted to use the commonly known image of Marilyn Monroe’s dress going up. I surrounded her image with images of the Korean War which took place during the same time period as Marilyn Monroe’s popularity. I wanted to show how the media distracts us from the terrible things that are going on around us through sexuality and popularity. 

The original Mona Lisa is known for the smiling woman at the front, often leaving critiques of the background sparse, save for in art-centric circles. This is similar to how environmental issues are often overlooked by those who do not want to see it, and would rather shift focus to what they see as beautiful. To critique this perspective, I edited a video of a garbage dump, displaying all of the human waste collected there. The moving background against a static well known image draws the eye away from the foreground, in an attempt to remind the audience to look further into environmental pollution.

I cut together stock footage of a suburban house and part of the music video for MGMT’s song When You Die. “I’m not that nice” is the opening lyric. I wanted to sort of display the notion that things oftentimes aren’t what they seem behind closed doors. Somebody can seem like they’re doing perfectly fine when in reality they’re going crazy. 

This meme features the painting “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” with Donald Trump/ Putin’s face. This meme is meant to comment on Trump’s proposed border wall as well as his notorious relationship with Putin. The border wall and his relationship with Putin are two issues highly covered by the media, so I thought they would be an effective way to comment on American politics.

I chose to create a GIF using the American flag, a popular symbol of our country’s strength, justice, freedom, and liberty.  I wanted to contrast these attributes with a harsh reality occurring in our country: that of racism and the systemic oppression and mass incarceration of African Americans.  I used images of a colored man behind bars overlaid with the stripes of the flag as well as blood dripping down from the stripes as symbols of this oppression.