s unlike the comic I have chosen. Piraro generally likes to use both humans and animals in his illustrations, and they are most always given human characteristics. I chose this specific piece because of its more realistic features, yet you still know it is a cartooned image. This comic also strays from what Piraro’s comics usually possess because the characters are neither human nor animal (except for the rabbit of course). I find that for this specific comic, problem- solution arrangements best fits these overall meanings. The snowman comic contains a variety of unreal activities, but also captures some real events that the audience is able to connect with, which is what I want the audience to specifically notice from my argument. When looking at comics, we see them as just a cartoon but the idea had to come from somewhere right? Real events taking place in an unreal environment. First off, while looking at this comic we notice the basics (i.e., characters, setting, mood, etc.). There are two snowmen present, as well as a rabbit. The snowmen themselves take on the traits of what a generic snowman should look like, but they also are engaging in human characteristics. The snowm
an on the left we know is female and the snowman on the right is male. The rabbit could be either sexes, male or female, but for the typical outlook on society I am guessing male would suit this rabbit more. My reasons for the assumption being male is because the rabbit is taking on a more masculine look versus feminine, and men are looked at in having a higher rate in violence than women. It is also simple to point out that the rabbit is definitely the “bad” guys and the snowmen are the “good” guys. We know that all three of these characters hold human qualities because they can control their bodies and are defending themselves when put into danger.
The two snowmen are held up by this rabbit and the male stands to defend himself with a broom. The female snowman is somewhat set to the side in the situation as the male snowman and the rabbit engage in a stare-down. By our knowledge of rabbit, we can put together that he is most likely after the carrots which take place of the snowmen’s noses. But, to make it more clear we are given the words from the female snowman “It’s not worth it, Roy! Let’s just give him our noses and let him go!” By depicting these words, you can tell she is frightened and probably yelling or using a stern voice. The word ‘worth’ is also underlined which gives off its importance to her being serious with the situation. All of the text is also put into capital lettering and a more bold font. The font itself looks to be a handwriting type, which gives the piece some personalization. Typography comes into play at this point to help the audience understand the full meaning and expression through the text itself.
Although this comic is not an actual event, it does reach out to showing societies problems. If these were not snowmen and perhaps humans instead, this would be an extremely serious and unfunny situation. In today’s world this happens every day. It could be from the stress of not having enough money to pay the bills or just simply for a rush of excitement. No matter what the situation is, it happens. Depending on the audience alone, this comic could be taken seriously or just for laughs. In a more serious way on looking at society, the snowmen could very well represent the wealthy part of the population while the rabbit is taking the role of being poverty stricken. In times of need, people (or rabbits in this case) will do the craziest things. Obviously, this comic was made for humor purposes but the ideas came from real life situations, hence the comic being true and false at the same time.
Another aspect that I want to point out is the gender roles being played. As a society, we have made up our own socially constructed roles to be played out by a certain gender. Males are supposed to be tough, protective, masculine, aggressive, etc., while females will tend to show the opposite (i.e., proper, emotional, defenseless, feminine, etc.). As we can see in this comic, the male is protecting his kind
; he is acting mean and tough, and also supporting societies color for the male gender, blue. Next to him, we have the helpless female who is scared out of her mind. She also happens to be wearing gender specified colors (i.e. pastels of yellow and pink). We can point out these simple details just by examining their emotions from the facial expressions as well as how their “bodies” are positioned. The female snowman has a sort of frown on her face, as well as the male snowman too. However, what really makes their facial emotions differ are the eyebrows. The male snowman has angry looking eyes unlike the female who has raised eye brows full of fear. We know the rabbit is serious and mad, by looking at the way his ears are positioned back and his firm grip to the weapon of choice, the hairdryer. How the rabbit holds the hair dryer, with two hands rather than one, is also relavant because it shows more emotion with him being serious. He is also standing on his two back legs, rather than all four, which is an exageration from how a typical rabbit would keep himself up. The hairdryer represents a symbol of a weapon, but to these snowmen the hairdryer is a direct threat of heat. When analyzing the snowmen themselves, they are generally just a giant symboled typography. The balls of snow stacked on top of each other represent the body, the carrots are the nose, the coals are eyes, mouth, and buttons, and the sticks are for arms.
Lastly, if you look closely near the tree to the front and left of the comic, right above the signature, you will notice a small alien creature. Piraro started to include small, hidden icons in within his daily panel to hold a greater fascination than the cartoonist’s political agenda.
“At first I did it entirely to entertain myself,” he explains. “And instantly I started getting floods of e-mails saying, ‘Hey, what’s the deal? Am I the only one that noticed this? Is there a secret to it?’ People wanted it to be something important. So I indulged them. I said, ‘Yeah, it’s a whole big secret, and you’re the only one who knows.’ But little by little I added more and more, because people just enjoyed looking for them. So I put an entire section on my website about the secret symbols and made up nonsense philosophical reasons for what they stood for.” (Robinson)
For this specific symbol of the alien, Piraro states that it represents the immense and immeasurable universe and all its possibilities. Even though there are many different symbols which Piraro uses for his comics, I couldn’t agree more than to use the alien for the snowmen comics. This strip definitely represents all the types of possibilities that can happen.
I find that deductive reasoning functions best with the context in which I have provided about this comic. My reasons are for the most part, because of my disagreement with inductive reasoning and its relation to this piece. I do not agree that because this rabbit is evil and holding up the two snowmen, that all rabbits in the comic world are evil. The ethos of this comic should also help the audience to relate and understand the meaning behind what is going on. The visual effects represent what is occurring at the time being and the text provided also clears up what is happening. Gender roles, secrets, and fearful events all occur in every day life which is why I wanted to point out a variety of descriptions that make this comic so real in an unreal setting. This comic is very descriptive and provides a good amount of truth.
Works Cited
Robinson, B. (2006, April 19). Panel Tricks. Retrieved November 8, 2009, from Metro Active: http://www.metroactive.com/bohemian/04.19.06/piraro-0616.html
Heintjes, T. (n.d.). The Dan Piraro Interview. Retrieved October 28, 2009, from Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoonist Index: http://cagle.msnbc.com/hogan/interviews/piraro/piraro.asp
Wikipedia. (July, July 16). Dan Piraro. Retrieved October 28, 2009, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Piraro
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