Parody. Analogy.

The parody exercise caught my eye because it had a bit of humor in it. The actual definition of parody is "A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule."(Free Dictionary, 2009). Homer Simpson was next to all the artifcacts of the "Spirits of the Sepik". This seemed out of place, and demanded the attention of the reader to find out the message behind this. The significance of this image is that it allowed the reader to look at history with a new perspective. It allowed humor in; which is something that isn't common in historical literaries. A reader may ask themselves "What did the people of Sepik have in common with Homer Simpson? The beauty of this question is that it's left up to the reader to decipher why this image was choosen. The hypothesis I had about humor may not have occured to another reader, or vice versa. If a person really looks into it, that presents a strong image. When it is left up to the reader to figure out, it opens so many doors instead of specifically telling the person what to look for. The same goes for ethnographers. As mentioned in class, it is their job to observe scenes they have never seen before. They interpret everything as they see fit, which is going to be different than what someone else sees. The picture of "Spirits of the Sepik" does exactly that. It is up to the reader to decipher, and up to the reader to come to the conclusion as to why Homer Simpson is in the picture.


Analogy is finding the similarity between two things with respect to their existing features.
People use analogies to understand all sorts of differtent concepts in life. We even use analogies to successfully live everyday as Abraham Lincoln publicly stated, "We know nothing of what will happen in future, but by the analogy of experience" (Lincoln 1839). In the exercise, the first image is of a boy stepping out of a window. We aren't shown where the window is located nor the reason why the boy isn't using a door. The second image is of a puppet holding the strings himself, thus controlling his own actions. Both images can be anologous of each other if we assume that in the first image, the window represents restrictions and captivity and the boy jumping out of it represents freedom and gaining control of one's own life. Thus, the second image can also represent freedom and choice as the puppet is the controller of his own life. Just like how I compared the two images due to their similarity, ethnographers can also use visual perceptions, cognitive thinking and prior life experiences to relate different situations and actions. Ethnographers rely on the critical technique of using analogies to understand and relate to different cultural lifestyles.