Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Painting

 The painting that I chose to look at in terms of rhetorical situation is titled "The Dancer in Her Dressing Room", and was painted in 1885. 

I think that the most difficult part of rhetorical situation is the first part, purpose.  It's always difficult to make your own assumptions on what a painter is trying to get across with his or her art.  But, since I do know a little about Lautrec, I know he did many paintings at night clubs or dance halls, especially the Moulin Rouge, and my guess is that this was at one of those places.  So it seems to me that maybe the purpose is to give the people who look at his work a behind the scenes look.  A chance to see what goes on before he usually draws what he normally does.

As I sort of began to say with purpose, I think the audience would be the same people who looked at his previous work.  People that want to know more about the places his paintings are set in.  All they would have seen before was dancers who are totally prepared, but now they can see a glimpse of their life behind the stage.

The genre, clearly, is a painting.  But what makes this different is the colors he used and how he made them all kind of blend together in a really cool way.  It makes it not as easy to see what all is going on, you really have to focus and take in all the colors.  I think he would have wanted that effect, so people would stop and take longer to notice what's going on inside it.

Stance is always something that I personally find a little bit tricky with paintings.  There are no words from the creator to give you a hint at what's in their mind, so you have to go on instinct.  I think his feeling towards the painting is definitely a good one.  Instinct tells me he wanted people to see the life that was behind what he normally painted.  I feel there's a certain beauty in this piece, and he wanted to be able to show what these halls and clubs were like when you couldn't see what was happening.

And lastly the medium would be a painting , but the design is really up to Lautrec.  He made his choice, to put in lots of color, and blend them together to make the admirer look just a little bit harder.  I don't think this painting would be the same if he had made it so easy to define who is who and what exactly is going on.  I think he made the perfect choices. 

Wait, taking away TV's?

When I first read this topic I just kind of laughed about it.  In my life I've never heard of TV being spoken about like it was all anyone ever thought about and should be taken away forever.  At least that's what I got from the quote.  The writer may not think people think it's the center of the universe, but it must be pretty close.

When I was little TV was like a privelage.  We learned it's more fun to play games or be outside than sitting inside all day in front of a TV.  My brother and I never thought of the TV as the most important thing in our life, it was simply a fun thing to have in the house. 

And think of all the shows that are teaching kids about things, like Sesame Street, or any of the new shows they have now like Dora.  They are designed to help kids see things and hear things that they're going to be learning, it's just pushing it in farther in a fun way.  I watched Sesame Street and Arthur, and Lamb Chop as a kid, I turned out just fine.  I'm not a TV addict, there are just shows on that you want to watch for fun.  As long as you teach kids there are more fun things out there everything is going to be fine.  In my opinion the author was making TV sound a little more evil than it really is. 

The Power of Advertising

I think that the advertising can definitely be powerful to people.  Think about how many times you have seen a commercial or an ad and thought "I want that!".  It happens to me all the time.  Especially with makeup, it's something I don't use a lot of but I love to buy it because the commercials make it look so nice. 

Advertisments can have the power to make people want to do a lot of things, from buy food or other products, or getting people to buy their product because it will get them what they want.  And they do a very good job of it, I don't know how many times I've wanted to go shopping somewhere because their advertisements make their clothes appealing and look good. 

Advertisers know how to make things look and what colors or designs to use to make their items appealing to the right kind of audience.  Sometimes it may be deceiving, like cigarette ads that don't put the important information where the reader can see it clearly, but they get points for doing their job well.

They have always done the same thing, which is to get people to buy their products.  I don't see this changing anytime soon, because the goal is always going to be the same no matter how much time goes by.  So we just have to keep using our heads to determine whether it's really a good product or if we're being tricked.