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Social Studies 5: How to Analyze a Political Cartoon 636 Views


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Description:

Not every cartoon is meant to entertain small children while their mother gets some "Mommy time." There are also political cartoons, which are meant to entertain adults while their children get some "Kid time."

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

When you think of

00:14

cartoons you probably think of stuff like funny exciting adventurous [Bart and SpongeBob appear]

00:18

hilarious But did you know that cartoons khun be serious

00:21

too That's right These puppies air called political cartoons and

00:25

adults love them well not all adults Some adults love

00:29

um summer still pretty into spongebob but that doesn't mean [Woman watching SpongeBob]

00:32

you can't get into them too especially if you learn

00:35

how to understand and analyze them Who knows You might

00:38

end up liking the more than spongebob so let's get

00:41

to analyzing Check out this official shmoop made and shmoop

00:44

themed political cartoon...... From now we'll admit that this political

00:54

cartoon is already more interesting to look at that most

00:57

So analyzing this one should be fun right We promise

01:00

you can keep watching spongebob once we're done analyzing So [People watching cartoons]

01:03

the first step is to begin with the visuals let's

01:05

list the people and objects we can see in this

01:08

case we see david Siminoff the founder shmoop he

01:12

also see some sort of machine with the shmoop logo

01:14

on it a bunch of books and some kids eating

01:17

apples from the machine got it good The next step

01:20

is to look for symbolism Symbolism is when an object

01:23

or symbol represents or stands for a larger idea cartoonist

01:27

use symbolism all the time to get their ideas across [Political cartoon image appears]

01:29

So what might be some symbolism here Well we can

01:32

see that the machine is turning those books in tow

01:35

apples and because the machine has a shmoop logo on

01:38

it maybe the machine is supposed to symbolize shmoop as

01:40

a whole once you've nail down some of those symbols

01:43

is time to take a close look at any captions

01:45

words phrases or dates present So what seems to be

01:48

most significant Ah good Places start would be the labels

01:51

on the books and the apples on the left The

01:53

books are all labeled things like flooring i'm confusing while

01:56

the apples are labeled with the word knowledge so it [Knowledge written on apple]

01:59

seems like the shmoop machine is turning boring and confusing

02:02

things into knowledge that kids can consume Now we're getting

02:05

somewhere so what does it all mean We're not sure

02:08

yet actually time to describe an analyse It seems like

02:12

the cartoon is showing how shmoop turns curriculum that can

02:15

sometimes be boring tedious and confusing and turns it into

02:18

delicious bits of knowledge and david symon off he represents [Person watching Shmoop]

02:21

the hardworking shmoop employees that help make that happen but

02:24

you know that just yet Now we have to ask

02:26

ourselves what seems to be the cartoonist opinion on the

02:29

issue in this case we can look at what david

02:31

is saying and see that they are it is clearly

02:33

likes which move is doing by implying every student should

02:36

get an apple and hey deposition makes sense considering shmoop

02:39

produced this cartoon but now you know how to analyze

02:42

political cartoons So is this cartoon really all that wrong

02:45

We said is it Really all that Oh you're watching

02:49

other cartoons That's Fine We'll just be over here munching on apples. [Man sits down at table with apple]

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