Blog Post #1

From the Archive - Real Cowboys, Minneapolis, MN

Lake Street USA (1997 - 2000) 

When first examining this photograph, you see an older man, wearing south western influenced clothes, standing in a parking lot in a somewhat run down area. 

By looking deeper into the photograph and the text in which it came from, we discover that he is from El Paso, and has had two cancer operations which resulted in the loss of his vocal chords. He made his living by operating heavy machinery but his passion was always music and training horses. Singing and horses still remains a big part of his life despite his dealings with cancer. 

Margaret Atwood used the concept of "othering" in The Handmaid's Tale, when she portrayed the Commander as a man who uses his power to obtain sexual favors from Offred. Atwood accomplishes this portrayal through the use of single person narrative, only showing the Commander through Offred's eyes. Wing Young Huie uses the concept of "othering" as well with her photographs. For example, in the photograph above, she portrays the man as someone stern and serious due to his standing position and lack of color (it's in B&W). Just by looking at the photograph, the examinee would look at the image with the bias that he is just a normal guy that lives in the south west. The reader would not be able to know what he has gone through: cancer, the death of family members, his loss of his vocal chords. 

In conclusion, both texts: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and Real Cowboys by Wing Young Huie uses single narrative style to portray the character in a certain light. Atwood accomplishes this through her language of having one narrator, Offred. In contrast, Huie accomplishes this affect through the color of the image and the lack of background information.