UWCSEA Learning Journey

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/09/07/he-claimed-to-be-a-heroic-war-photographer-but-his-photos-and-identity-were-stolen/

“He posed as a heroic war photographer – and the news industry believed him”

This news article is about a war photographer – “Eduardo Martins” – and how he “faked” his war photos by taking them from other photographers without permission. His publishing name is not even real, and he used other people’s photos to show his personal life. This text’s purpose is to expose and criticize the news industry. The intended audience of this article is the journalists, especially other war journalists who might relate to this situation.

The author’s subtle word choices can be seen throughout this article. In the title, it says “The News Industry Believed Him” – the irony between the news industry, an industry of supposed real events broadcasted, and “believed him” – the sentence almost seems like the news industry is a young child who believes what it wants to believe.

This article creates a contrast between “Eduardo Martins” and his scandal as the first few paragraphs introduced this person as if he is a real war photographer. Until it states: “All of this, it turns out, was false”. In which afterwards are the stories of the people he used images from. By creating the contrast, the article can connect to the audience and hook the audience into the desire of wanting to know why this scandal was caused.

This article itself is an irony to the message it is trying to convey. As The Washington Post is a news website, it is posting an article describing how the news industry believed fake news. This article was posted in 2017, the same period when the idea of “fake news” was popular. The Washington Post used the popularity of the idea “fake news”, and connected it to the criticism of war photography, it efficiently conveys the message across, as well as attracting the audience to read this article.

(Image source: https://escapingtheclutchesofreality.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/documenting-memories-of-war-from-a-photographer-inspired-by-a-war-photographer-carol-ann-duffy/)

When they consider all the Modern Love essays you’ve read, written by different people, how do the essays seem to converge (come together, share similarities —in STYLE, not subject matter) or diverge (go different directions from similar starting points)? 

After reading several modern love personal essays and watching several adapted television episodes, I figured the series of Modern Love seems to converge as stories always convey certain meaning to the audience and the stories all resonate with the audience to some extent. For example, When Cupid Was a Prying Journalist conveys the message of not giving up your love even if you missed it (open to different interpretations), whereas You May Want to Marry My Husband conveys a sense of the author’s perseverance to love, it also creates a sense of sympathy.

On the other hand, this series diverges as each personal essay describes a different life scenario. It is what’s different between each story in Modern Love but this characteristic also defines the series, because different experiences can cause authors to express different emotions.

(Image source: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Love-Season-1/dp/B07VKRJNQH)

This text is not organized AT ALL like any fiction or non-fiction you have been taught to do for the IGCSE or other school tasks.  Mark it into three sections (Beginning, Middle, & End). Does it have a thesis —a guiding idea— that the anecdotes and details support or prove or give nuance for? If it has a thesis, what is that idea? 

• I think the beginning is the interview, the middle is the Journalist Deborah’s memory of her life in Paris, as well as Justin’s attempt to engage with Kate, and the ending will be the discussion in the restaurant.
• This is a narrative essay, it has a thesis that one has to fight for love before it’s too late. The anecdotes and details all support this guiding idea/thesis.

---

 

Every time I read non-fiction, I ask how much I believe it. Even the best of us, in recounting a memory, is tempted to flatter ourselves or justify our actions. What details enhance the credibility of the author? Where do you think it might be “soft” in authenticity?

• There are many quotes in this narrative essay, which means that to an extent the story must be fictional.
• However, it has to be a real story that happened because the story progression is very natural and sounds real to the audience.

---

 

If you were to make a 30-minute movie of this, what scenes would you want to include?

• If this is transformed into a movie, I would include the interview scene, the journalist’s memory of her life in Paris and how she got together with his husband, Justin’s fight for love with Kate, and the restaurant scene when they are together sharing their anecdotes.

---

Full Text: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P7XiVHZxaQnXmYnzmhXcJI84qGlG12aL/edit

Explain an idea that Vargas Llosa seems to be exploring and show how the two quotes you’ve chosen relate to this. You can use OTHER examples or ideas, too, if you like.

Idea: Reality and imagination are in conflict

Quote 1: “I couldn’t have been more upset, and broke off my reading to inform her that what she was listening to was not a faithful, word-for-word recounting of the incident she’d told me about, but a story, a story, and that all the things that I’d either added or left out were ways of achieving certain effects: “Comic effects,” I emphasized, hoping she’d see what I was getting at. She smiled at me, if only out of pity for my misery. “But that’s precisely the point,” she protested vehemently, not giving an inch. “With all the changes you’ve made, it’s not a funny story at all any more. ” (Page 123)

Quote 2: “What is realism, ladies and gentlemen—that famous realism we hear so much about? What better way is there of creating realistic art than by materially identifying oneself with reality? And doesn’t the day’s work thereby become more tolerable, more pleasant, more varied, more dynamic?” (Page 135)

From the above two quotes, we can see the problem that reality and imagination are in conflict. In Quote 1, Mario used one of Aunt Julia’s past experience to create his story which Aunt Julia believes is too fictional. She argues it changed a lot of the facts which happened. However, Mario explained to Aunt Julia that often arts are created to achieve “Comic effects” and they are not the same as news reports which always have to be factual. In Quote 2, the Bolivian Scriptwriter Pedro Camacho questioned “what is realism?” He believes that the realist arts that we know are merely fictional arts decorated with elements of reality. The audience knows from Mario’s depiction that Pedro Camacho pretends to be the character he writes in his soap operas – by dressing up and physically adapt himself into his character – in order to “get inspired”. This acknowledges the argument that reality and imagination are in conflict. It’s because if reality and imaginary soap operas are similar and familiar, Pedro Camacho wouldn’t use any effort to try to “be” the person in his own soap operas. They both have a vision that the nature of arts runs counter to reality and that “unreality” is a signature of the arts. This idea also links to the plot progression of the novel. The life of the narrator Mario is itself a series contrast between imagination and reality – he desperately wants to get married and want to live on the streets of romantic Paris. However, he realized he is underaged and must need his parents to approve his marriage; Pedro Camacho is thought to be a great person since the beginning of the novel, but we soon discover that his personality is not that great after all – to an extent where he has to be taken care of in a mental asylum.

Chuck Close is an American painter. He makes massive-scale photorealist portraits. He often paints abstract portraits of himself and others. At the age of 28, he painted a self-portrait that is 9-feet tall. The paintings seemed like photographs. As he grew older, his style transformed with his life journey. As we can see in the picture below, the two paintings differ a lot. When he was young, the painting seems a lot more in detail than that when he grew older, as a lot of details fade away and are pixelated.

Chuck Close overcame struggles to become a renowned artist