Max's IB Lang and Lit Blog

This cartoon from The Economist in 2016 depicts a caricature of Donald Trump reaching out, presumably to embrace the statue of liberty, which is shrinking away from him and brandishing its torch. The caricature of Trump has a small body and hugely exaggerated head, making him appear like a baby, implying immaturity on his part. The fact that the statue of liberty has left its pedestal, possibly symbolizing a lack of freedom and liberty under Trump, is also significant. The artist of this cartoon uses an exaggerated drawing style, which draws attention to Trump with his massive head, and contrasts him with the relatively proportionate statue of liberty. This adds to the effect of Trump's depiction as immature in this cartoon, as well as his words "Come on, babe! Give your new boss a kiss!" This text adds to the effect of immaturity and lack of professionalism expressed by Trump, and references his background as a businessman and previous scandals. These stylistic choic...

I feel like this practice paper 1 went fairly well. I was able to describe the two texts in detail,  and effectively analyze the similarities and differences between them. These two texts were  somewhat easy to compare, due to them focusing on the same specific issue and both being  somewhat concise in their storytelling. In my paper, I focused on the texts’ focus on gender  stereotyping, particularly of young girls, during the 1980s, when these texts were written.  Overall, I feel like I was able to write a relatively effective paper, and feel generally confident  about writing similar papers in the future.      Text 1 was a cartoon depicting a conversation between a new mother and a nurse where the nurse assumes the mother's baby's gender through its stereotypical features. Due to the visual style of this text, it was somewhat easy to analyze. The style of the characters, as well as the exaggerated emotions expressed by th...