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Inanimate Animated Objects

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Being able to speak to Mr. Fish last week was a real treat.  Jacqueline and I were able to get feed back on the ideas we had for our final assignment and we as a class were given the opportunity to see caricatures and political cartoons in the eye of someone who makes them for a living.  His choice of topics and artistic talent are very fun and though they may be controversial, add the satirical remarks in regards to all.  With this, it makes it very difficult for one to call him racist.  When hanging posters there was some controversy over the zebra comic.  One speech bubble had the word white trash and the other had the n word.  Considering that zebra's are both black and white and a derogatory word was used for both races, it seems that there wouldnt have been quite as much controversy.  However, this was not the case   After speaking with Mr. Fish as well as reading many of his cartoons, I don't see them as male oriented topics, unless one considered politics to be a male specific topic.  For me, politics has grown to be such a topic in equality what with  women voting and women in politic positions that using these topics as a means for a laugh is just as equal as the rights we have acquired in history.  Even though I don't believe that Mr. Fishs cartoons are male specific, there are cartoons that are indeed male specific.  From what I've seen, these kinds of cartoons involve women being dummed down and inferior to the male.  Not that this is right but, some people get a kick out of it.

 

Mr. Fish

Mr. Fish was probably one of my top speakers that I have seen here at Alfred, he was amusing and had a good sense of humor, which is different compared to past visitors. I enjoyed meeting him and talking about my work and projects and what my future plans were. I felt that he was actually interested in the students rather than just coming to talk about himself. I really enjoyed his talk even though I feel like many people around Alfred had mixed feelings about him due to the posters. Being stopped in the hallway and told not to continue hanging them up was a bit shocking.. but people are entitled to have their own opinions. As far as his posters being stereotypes I feel like yes they are, but at the same time I feel like that is his angle that he goes after.. It seems like he tries to go after stereotypes that will get a reaction out of people. I don't feel that his cartoons are looking at any sort of gender, I mean from the cartoons I have seen he mocks both males and females. For example the Jesus comic and the Georgia O'Keefe cartoons are making fun of both genders. Which is something I find okay, I feel that people should be able to laugh at one another and not take jokes so seriously towards their personal opinions. I feel like if someone were to make a racist joke towards me I'd be able to laugh right back, but that is the problem with today's society people take it personally and don't know how to laugh about it. which is what I like about Mr. Fish because he takes these stereotypes and make people laugh and talk about them.

Comedy's Shock

It's funny this past weekend I watched a movie called "Man on the Moon" starring Jim Carey and Danny Devito. This movie was a biography of one of the greatest performers of all time Andy Kauffman who's comedy rooted from shocking the people. Before I wrote this posting this I skimmed through Jacquline's posting and almost forgot that Mr. Fish's art mostly used this kind of comedy in his artwork. I just thought it was an important point to bring up. I highly recommend watching " Man on the Moon" its really strange and in a way depressing but its very interesting.

Mr Fish

Mr Fish was probably the best artist talk I've seen here at Alfred. I think a lot of people were misguided by the posters that were going up around Alfred. Some people thought he was just some angry person who found it funny to poke fun at religion, politics and so forth. I was glad I got to speak to him before other students did I was excited to know who he was. Furthermore I'm happy to say that he shot passed my expectations ,in his presentation he seemed like more of a philosopher and artist than that of a politician or political artist.What makes meeting up with him was the fact that he was so humble and down to earth, which is where I believe artists of all kinds should be. What we all are practicing are levels of communication through two dimensional and three dimensional media as well as other types of media such as audio.

From what I heard after his presentation in Homes lots of students reevaluated their reasons for being in school and what continues to drive them to be here. Many of the students were really happy to see that Mr. Fish's knowledge of Philosophy Politics and Concept all seemed to be equally balanced. Im glad I got to meet him.

Post For 04/22

Since this post is supposed to be done on Sunday of Hot Dog Day, and I know I'll forget, here is my commentary on the Mr. Fish presentation that I just attended. I thought it was great first of all, I had never really gotten anything out of any other artist talks that I've attended here so far, but this one I got many things out of. He made a lot of good points, I thought. I also thought that he answered a lot of the questions that people, and myself were posting about for last week. He said that his purpose of these cartoons was not just to argue politics, but to have fun, and make some dirty jokes. He said that he doesn't think that he trivializes world catastrophes, but rather enables the viewers to have an uncomfortable/controversial conversation upon viewing his pieces, instead of an academic one. I think this point is very important, and interesting to think about as attending school here at Alfred. I think that more conversations need to be controversial, I don't think you learn nearly as much from a one-sided point of view as you do from looking at the issue from many points of view. He creates his work in hopes that it will cause a little bit of confusion amongst the viewers so that these conversations occur.

Yeah, I remembered this post

I have some questions for this, Mr. Fish fella.  I want to know if people ever judge him for drawing comics.  I think that's something he'd likely experience; comics get a bad rep.  I want to know more about his favorite cartoons, comics, taste in music- maybe a good joke if he knows some.  Does he think of himself as a funny guy?  What's the part of his job that drives him to the brink of his sanity on a daily basis?  What other artistic enterprises does he engage in?  Do cartoon artists really live like the cartoon artists in the movies; i.e. James Bond, James Dean- or is it like R. Crumb all the time?  Has he ever tried to do the whole 'superhero' scene?  How did his old work train him for his new work?  What jobs has he held in order to support his cartooning addiction?  Is he addicted yet or can he still get the patch?