Some of my classes are researching the real story behind their favorite films. A few of my students are looking up stories of Holocaust children as they write about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I have a few students studying the religious influences of Cesar Chavez in order to better analyze the recent Diego Luna biopic of the farmworker leader. To spice things up, I’ve asked them to provide a visual analysis for their respective movie posters.
Me, I’m sticking with Frida.
In my English composition classes, I encourage my students to go beyond their text. In their mental health research papers, I’ve asked them to analyze visual arguments. They are to examine the relationship between image and text. Here, Pilar Carrazco has read an excerpt from Marya Hornbacher’s Wasted; now she searches for meaning in a public service poster for the prevention of anorexia.
Everywhere we go we are bombarded by visual text: television, advertising, web pages. There is no escape. In the following spaces, my students are to explain the persuasive power of visual rhetoric. They are going to explain how specific images push us into action.
Once, upon a visit to Frida Kahlo’s Blue House in Coyoacan, Mexico City, I had the opportunity to see Frida’s Diary in a glass display case. It was filled with arresting pictures and self-portraits that reflect a life-time of suffering. It inspired me to write a short story that would become my first published work. The title: Frida’s Diary.
A picture is worth a thousand words? I think so. Here I’ve decided to analyze the movie poster for Salma Hayek’s Frida.
