I immediately started work on “The Journal and the Mind” after I had completed one of my favorite books I had ever read. Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is a utopian novel that takes place in the year 632 a.f. (After Ford). Brave new world is a very insightful novel and somewhat of a prophecy for its time. Aldous Huxley wrote the book to show people where he thought our country was going in 1932. In Huxley’s novel he addresses the social problems of being desensitized to sex, drugs, and death. In the novel we see all the characters interact in a completely socially perverted way. We come to find out that, from birth, children are socially “conditioned” through process called hypnopedia. Children are trained by hearing hundreds of repetitions of phrases in there sleep. After reading “Brave New World” I couldn’t help but compare our world to Huxley’s fictitious novel. I became obsessed with the comparison of the media to hypnopedia.
My collage compares the subsequent effects of everything around us and how it conditions us. I wanted to address the main problem I see in the world, social conditioning through the use of media. There are four specific symbolic items I put in my collage to represent specific ideas, the hournal, the candle, the soma bottle, and the inkpot. The journal is any thoughts of any person; I want anyone who looks at my painting to see the journal as how they perceive the world. The candle represents the light in a bad situation; no one wants to feel like there is no light in a dim situation. The soma bottle is there to show that society tells us that if there’s a problem there is something materialistic to cure it. Finally the inkpot represents the spoiled thoughts, the thoughts that get created because of societies hypnopedia double, the Media.
When I was reading “Brave New World” there was a metaphor that made me think about how we all could be blind to how dysfunctional our society has become. “not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest of granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.” (“Brave New World”, pg 28) This metaphor sparked an idea in me. By the age of 18 the average child will have spent more time watching television than sitting in school. I wanted my collage to open people’s eyes to see that the media is all around us. Anything and everything is media and it all works toward making you think one way or the other.
When constructing my collage, I wanted to let the sealing wax metaphor be the main idea of it. As I see it, children are the unspoiled hope for humanity. I played off of this idea and used the idea of growing up as a way of soiling ones thoughts and becoming dull to the issues in society. I used the journal to create two different sides to the collage, the young light side and the glazed over soiled side. On the left side of the collage you have youth, unspoiled (no wax). Then on the right side you have age, and the spilled inkpot and wax dripped over the page. I wanted these ideas to contrast so as the bridge to the gap I used the image of the girl being pulled by her mother to create the boundary between a child and adult.
Our society is facing serious problems because of the media. Today, whoever controls the media influences the masses. I am not saying we aren’t capable of creating our own thoughts; just that America has become dull minded and only follows what the majority thinks. There is another word for the media, Power.