3-D Rhetoric paper

The Toy Trap

By: Brett Babigian

Mrs. Fliescher

English 1A

March 18, 2014

A 3-D object can convey one or several messages at the same time and is easy to view and touch to get a sense of what you are looking at.  People have been creating 3-D images and sculptures to communicate messages for as long as we know.   This form of art can be abstract and have no defined meaning or it could be concrete with a very specific meaning to it.  Throughout my paper I will describe my object and the choices I made to create  it as well as relate it to my message,  and share the similarities between my  object and the three texts I wrote about previously.

            I created a visual object to convey my message about fast food commercials, I purposely used specific size, materials, colors, and tones to make my message purposeful and stand out.  The object I made was a television set with three buttons, an antenna, a black swirl background and a toy spider suspended in the middle of the box.  I used a shoe box to create the television because the box was the perfect size that I was looking for to get my point across.  Using black sharpie I drew swirls around the back of the television to symbolize a type of brain wash effect that takes place when kids watch fast food commercials with toys in them.  I chose to put the toy rubber spider in the middle of the television and the swirl because that is all the kids see when the commercial comes on, they are instantly lured by the toys that they see.  The reason that the toy is a spider is because I feel like the commercials are a sort of trap and spiders set up traps with their webs and just wait to snatch their prey.  I used very plain colors like black and white and brown on everything except for the spider which I put bright pink colors into because just as  in the commercial, the vibrant colored toy is the first thing you notice.  The intended audience of my object would be parents because they need to know the effects that these commercials have on their children.  Each of these aspects was created specifically to get the viewer thinking about what they child is really watching.

My object was made to reflect the overall theme of the three texts I wrote about previously and it carried a specific message I was trying to communicate to people.  The message I was trying to get out to people is that fast food commercials are targeting our kids with incentives like toys to lure them into buying kids meals or getting their parents too.  I believe I was successful in conveying this message because the black swirly background resembles luring and brainwashing which is exactly what these commercials do to kids.  The toy in the middle also helps prove my message because that is the incentive for them to get the kids meal.  The object is very similar to the three texts I wrote about like the journal article because in the article the author talked about how commercials were targeting kids with these commercials.   The McDonald’s advertisement I wrote about was an image of toys you could get from a happy meal and it didn’t even include a picture of the food.  This is just like my object where all you have is the toy in the television because that’s all the fast food companies want you to see.

While trying to think of an idea and create my 3-D object I had several challenges and successes that I encountered.  At first I was very stumped when it came to thinking of  an idea, all I could think of making was a McDonalds golden  arch but I couldn’t figure out how that would convey my theme.  When I discovered the idea of making a television out of a shoe box with hypnotizing swirls I knew that was exactly what I needed to do.  A problem that arose though was finding a toy to dangle in front of the swirls.  My mom found an old McDonald’s toy that was perfect for the assignment and it even had a clip to attack it to the box but then my teacher told me that it would be plagiarizing so I had to go back to the drawing board.  Luckily I was able to find an old creepy crawler bug making set in my room that I then used to mold a rubber toy spider out of to put on my project.  This worked even better than I expected because the spider could symbolize a trap as well as a children’s toy.  The final problem that I found myself puzzled over was how to make a good antenna for the television to make it stand out.  I think I deserve an A on this assignment because my 3-D object is creative and represent my theme and message very well.   I also backed up each thing I put on my object with detailed reasons and support so that the reader knows exactly what is there and why it is there.