TOW #13 – “Mobile Lovers” by Banksy

Done in Bristol, famous graffiti artist Banksy creates a satirical warning toward modern technology based on how much time we spend on it. This piece aims to convey to the general public that we should live more in the moment and less on our phones, and it is expressed through the main idea in which, despite having someone right in front of them, neither of the two subjects look away from their phone to acknowledge each other whatsoever.

The use of irony in the main idea is the most prominent message of the artwork. It translates to what some assume to be the reality of our interactions in modern day society, and it also exaggerates the limit of phone snubbing just enough to perhaps make fellow ‘mobile lovers’ recognize their behavior toward others in their presence and try to change it little by little. Most would assume that no one would ever think to pull their phone out of their pocket while embracing someone they are close to, however the visual serves to only emphasize the ironic habit of choosing online contact over personal in order to get a response.

The colors also aid in passing along the message as well. Banksy’s graffiti is generally dark in its color palette, but the obvious bright blue lights emitting from the cellular devices in both of the subjects’ hands draws the eyes of the audience to the faces of the subjects themselves. Their expressions are detached and emotionless as they focus on the screen just over their companion’s shoulder despite the intimate position the two are in, and it only furthers Banksy’s argument to lower the amount of attention we give our screens when there are people around us to interact with as well. While many may do this to a lesser extent, it is still a reasonable argument for the artist to make when phones are often present during face-to-face conversation between friends.

TOW #12 – "The Color of Water" by James McBride (IRB)

In a tribute to his mother, along with all mothers, James McBride, recipient of the National Book Award in 2013, shares his mother’s story along with his own story for everyone else to experience. It is with his past in which he conveys to his readers that the concept of race, of identity and of religion, are not our central issues. These qualities can easily be overcome by love and sheer will power, and such is expressed by his mother as she endured her hardships from life.

The first half of the book is a telling of the two’s childhoods; it tells of how his originally Jewish mother moved to America when she was only two years old, and how James McBride grew up in Queens as a mixed child in a predominantly black community. His mother, Rachel McBride, lived with a strict and largely unaffectionate family. Her father only stayed for the benefits of being an American, and her mother suffered from polio which disabled her entire left side. When she moved from her hometown of Virginia to New York where she married two black men, she was ostracized from her Jewish community, the white community, and the black community alike, however she powered through the discrimination thrown her way to focus on her twelve children, James being the eighth. James never had much alone time with his mother, and to gain some was truly a feat in his early years, but as he grew older, his question of his identity grew ever stronger. He wondered constantly whether he was black or white, despite his mother’s constant attempts to steer him from unnecessarily focusing on such ideas, and he often tried to figure out her past through his pestering of what exactly he and his siblings were supposed to be considered (most of them sided with the black community).

His take on identity, race, and religion shows very little throughout the first half of the book on his side, a fleeting mention during a certain time as he reminisces his past, but his mother’s idea of the concepts shows constantly in her unwavering answers to his stubborn curiosity. James once asked what color God was, but when his mother answered that he was a spirit, he merely asked what color his spirit was instead. “’It doesn’t have a color,’ she said. ‘God is the color of water. Water doesn’t have a color’” (McBride 51). As she pushes for this idea, McBride structures the text in which their stories switch in perspective with every chapter, and from his plain text we jump into his mother’s italics as she retells her own past, and it is in these moments where we see just how affected she was as a teenager by the mere thought of race, identity, and religion. Her struggles, forming a jigsaw with her current ideals, allows us as a reader to piece together the bits and pieces ourselves, and through this we can hope to better understand the validity in the McBrides’ claims simply through their personal experiences. The casual approach that comes along with it also helps the audience put the two narrators on a more human and mundane viewpoint. The book is told almost as if we were conversing with the McBrides ourselves, and it aids in allowing us to feel sympathy more easily for the events they share, bringing us even closer to understanding the unimportance those three ideas should really have in our lives overall as we try to relate to their obstacles in life.

TOW #11 – Chief Seattle’s Oration of 1854 (Text)

          When asked to give up Native American land for the sake of the United States government to use instead, Chief Seattle, the leader of his tribe with a desire to accommodate white settlers rather than fight them, merely agreed. He did not yet speak for the entire tribe when he did so, but he knew moving was not so big of a deal because of the way their culture was, and the focus of that culture was not simply in the place they lived. In 1854, he gave a speech to a presumably white council on the topic of this move, and within the speech he argued for the respect of his people as well as their ancestor’s land.

            Chief Seattle’s words were seemingly successful in their endeavor to make white Americans feel as though they are responsible for taking care of the land as well as the rapidly decreasing Native American populace. This idea of family, of “white chief” and “our father” before he declares Indians to be mere “orphans” may strike an emotional chord in the white settlers with a family of their own. That emotional appeal to sympathy could aid him in convincing the Americans to take care of the land as well as his people since they essentially seem to have nowhere else to go.

His structure of the speech also serves to persuade, and to agree only to show why they may not because there “is little in common” between Native Americans and Americans would seem like a convincing factor to address and work out in order for the white settlers to actually win over the Native American land. His single condition seems fair and almost easy when it appears like the majority of the tribe could agree to the exchange, so the Americans would see no issue in providing the respect they ask for if it meant getting what they wanted when it seemed so close to their reach.