Artist Lecture #1 - 2.16.10 - Hank Willis Thomas

I attended the Hank Willis Thomas lecture and thought that it was good. Particularly his stuff that deals with advertising. I thought it was funny what he said about MasterCard having an ironic name because most of us are in debt to them. His series Br@nded was really cool, and I found it interesting what he said about when he was showing the series people didn't know that they weren't advertisements. It makes me wonder how much people were even paying attention, because although they have the language of advertising, they clearly are 'advertising' a different agenda. My favorite piece was this one,

I thought it was interesting how he has shown basketball as a means of holding down black people. It seems that the media has convinced many black men that basketball or rap music is their only way to success, limiting their progression in other areas. And something interesting he said was "we came here in chains and now we're still wearing them." And of course, the reason is not as any sort of memorial, but rather a perpetuation of the media's portrayal of black men.

I also thought the works where he removed the text out of magazine ads were very interesting, but I found myself wondering what kind of crazy subliminals he could find if he didn't limit himself to portrayals of black people. I understand that the portrayals of blacks is central to his idea, but it is clear, to me at least, that advertising has always been building and perpetuating some strange TV world of misplaced ideals and skewed interpretations of real life.