Response to "Album" and "Images of the Everyday"

"Album"

Okay, at first I had no idea what was going on.  Of course the second reading cleared that all up a bit.  

"At 4 pm on the street I am always surprised by the indifference of the people crossing each other's paths."

• I think this just about everyday.  I think that on the bus on the way to school.  When someone sits next to me, I think, the person is so close, why don't we talk?  Usually listening to your ipod allows you to avoid that question...  Also, the only time that someone talks to me on the street is when I am with the little girl I nanny for.  Something about a cute little kid opens people up.

"Images of the Everyday"

"The habitual manners of behaving, (which were) governed by custom, passed on by tradition, had to be replaced by rules"

• Ahh oh my gosh, why do people think they can have that much power?  I guess because they do.  It's amazing how easily it is to "trick" people in to behaving in certain ways, even without them knowing it.  But making them think they are taking control, when there really don't have any.

"For him, women as homemakers enter into his model simply as the means for transmitting middle class values to the working class.  He does not consider how the home economics classes - because they were taught to and carried out by women - shaped the subjectivity of women in particular."

• Just another example of how people think they should be able to have this kind of power over others.  

"By portraying herself within these stereotypes, Messager acted out how advertising had influenced her.   Yet her drawn activities appear exaggerated and highly unnatural, providing a parody of the stereotypes and rising above the media immersion, signaling a critical perspective that Lefebvre would have thought women could not attain."

• I really like that Messager did this.  In a really simple way, she was able to say so much with just sketches.  She admitted that advertising has an affect, and it does.  But she was of course, able to rise above it and make fun of it.  Women are not pawns, it is easy to see through the attempts of advertisers to trick women into buying certain products or ideals.