The Theme: Materialism (The theory or attitude that physical well-being and worldly possessions constitute the greatest good and highest value in life)
The media is enormously responsible for the way society view beauty and wealth. Nowadays people misuse beauty to make money and use money to get beauty. Humans integrated these two earthly possessions and made them almost inseparable. Beauty and money are neither good nor evil. It depends on a situation, intention and its effect on others. Throughout this essay, issues on the good and bad part of materialism will be discussed and also the visuals on both images are compared.
Visually both pictures are different from each other. The medium for both images are totally different; ‘before and after’ is a synthetic polymer on canvas whereas ‘rolls of bills’ is done with a pencil, crayon, and felt-tip pen on paper.
The first image “before and After” is a 2D black and white piece of art using smooth and simple lines with varied thickness to accentuate the drawing. The drawing as a whole is a clean drawing because of the limited number of lines used and the simplicity of it, just contributes to its neat cartoonish appearance. The image is more indirect in the way that it is a liberal picture, viewers have to first compare and identify the changes in the “before and after” picture then they can come up with the theme of the image.
The second image “Roll and Bills” has some color in it and shading is apparent to emphasize the image and make it appear more 3 dimensional. The usage of coarse and thin fine lines in this drawing makes it a little bit more messy compare to the first image but also more realistic because it captures the actual lighting in an authentic environment by using different shades of grey to highlight particular areas and color to stress that feel of green American dollars. The second drawing it speaks directly for itself. It does not have any background or funky color to distract the viewers. The space around the object is minimal which actually strengthens the focus on the object. The message in this particular drawing is simple, straight, forward and strong.
Thematically both pictures are talking about beauty and wealth, which make these two pictures related to each other, because rich people uses their wealthy in order to make themselves beautiful and confident somehow. The plastic surgery was the first thing that it came to mind because people nowadays are trying to change part of their body just to be more beautiful, pretty and attractive and in some way they want to show themselves off and want to say that they got money and they got everything. These are the icons that people want in their life and they are dying for these materialistic things. The meanings of both pictures are in conflict because both of them represents good and also bad.
The unpleasant side of the first image portrays human ego, vainness and their shallow minds. Human in general want to be accepted in society and what our society wants is beauty. They set a standard for beauty and this has caused havoc in the minds of insecure humans. The perception is then to reach the standard set by a bunch of equal Joe’s or stay at the bottom of the social class for life. The second picture is more about greed and dirtiness. Money is the root of all evil; but then again money is what develops a country, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and it just makes the world goes around. Money is a top priority in most household these days and more people are beginning to realize how fallacious this is. But still people do not change. They are selfish and flaunty.
The good side of the first picture would be that beauty is subjective. It’s not wrong to go after beauty, it’s human nature to find beauty and want beauty in their life, people want to hold on to beauty. Boundaries do not exist when one wants to determine if something is beautiful. The only rule is that one loves it and wants to cherish it. It is a personal view and idea where no one is suppose to judge and say if it’s a right or wrong view. It is not restricted to just one specific trait; example things can be beautiful, birthday celebrations too or even someone’s personality. Beauty is confidence. As for plastic surgery it’s not completely bad; for instance people who were involved in an accident might be severely disfigured and it would be really good for them to have plastic surgery on those damaged body parts.
The good side of the second picture; is that those green paper notes are able to help people, share money in order to help others and to develop new medicine to cure diseases. Basically to survive in this world and getting our basic needs such as food, water, transportation and more. It makes the world goes around.
In summary materialism should not be judged because it possess goodness and also evil. These two pictures are just reminders that there are boundaries between want and need. Almost all the time we are not able to differentiate those two and we end up being sucked into the media’s lie. Yes it is human nature to be greedy, vain and selfish but it is also human nature to have human compassion and love.
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