2 Responses to Morph-Troi Barnes

1. troibarnes says:

   January 28, 2014 at 4:07 PM

   May I please have feedback on my post.

   Feedback provided, —DSH

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2. davidbdale says:

   January 29, 2014 at 4:02 PM

   Troi, I have only 20 minutes between appointments so if I don’t lay enough trouble on you this first installment, I’ll come back. 🙂
   P1. I’m unclear what you first claim means. Surely the two men do not look similar in the left and right photos, right? So do you mean instead that you were surprised how well the morph works, that it looks so much like Obama while at the same time looking eerily very much like Bush? That I would understand, but I don’t see the language in your sentence that would communicate it to me. Obamabush looks like both of them despite their dissimilarity. Yeah?

   Now, by way of analogy, suppose I said, “When I first saw a picture of your father’s first wife next to a picture of his second wife, I was surprised at how similar they looked!” I’d be making a hidden claim that maybe your dad lacks imagination, or something, always falls for the same type, wanted to replace his ex, something. In the next sentence, you’d expect me to elaborate on which of those possibilities I meant. Your third sentence adds nothing that I can see to the paragraph. Back to my analogy, imagine I followed up my first comment by explaining, “I see two women who had the same place in your family at different times and the different ways they spent that time.” What in the world would that mean? Do you see the problem?

   P2. I think what you mean by your first sentence is that one interpretation of the image illustrates your impression that the country is improving under President Obama. Don’t you think? Otherwise, we really have to guess how the image represents support for him. The morph only shows America moving from Bush to Obama if you read it from left to right. I think the natural progression is from the outside toward the center. You don’t necessarily have to refute my point of view, but you should be aware of it, and that you’re unintentionally arguing with me when you discount it.

   At this point, if you were re-writing, you might want to refer to the two “poster” images in my post “Forcing an Interpretation.” One appears to adopt the left-to-right progress; the other pretty obviously moves both directions toward the middle.

   P3. I see wisdom in your reflection that confronting an unexpected image openly and actively can waken our awareness to our unexpressed feelings and opinions. We might think we don’t strongly support or disparage one party or political pole over another, only to feel somehow attacked when our favored leader is insulted. There’s something quite wrong with the syntax of your final sentence.

   Otherwise, this P is fine if a little “pat.” I wonder if instead of the patriotic theme music you could investigate a little further whether those middle images disturb you a bit. Does Obama always perform like Position 5 Obama for you, Troi? Or is he a little too much Position 4 on the environment maybe, and even Position 3 on, say, gun control, corporate tax breaks, government surveillance of US citizens? Just a thought. That sort of thoughtful, detailed, more engaged writing is where the good grades are.

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