The name of the picture I chose was Death Metal Girl that was taken by Wing Young Huie in Lake Street USA (around 1997 - 2000).
Denotation:
In this picture, there was a woman wearing dark clothes with bare feet, was standing on the sidewalk with her face painted appeared to be very scary. She looked very suspicious, as if she was going to harm someone; but when looking with more attention, the calm (and a little sad) expression on her face would make people to sympathize with her, as if they would feel sorry for her to be not like normal people. Behind the woman, there was a little girl trying to get on her bike as if she was running away from the woman because she was scared. There were only two of them in the picture. The surrounding appeared to be calm but it gave the effect of an abandoned or deserted place because it was in black and white.Connotation:
In the text that the author provided as he quoted what the woman had shared with him, it showed that the woman enjoyed being herself. She enjoyed doing whatever she felt like she wanted to do, disregarded of what people would have thought about her. Normally, people would think that those who listen to heavy metal would appear to be scary and having psychological/mental problems, or they would always have their dark sides (joining gangs, smoking, doing drugs) under the appearance of looking dead or unholy. People would simply want to stay away from the woman just because of her appearance, and also because of the stereotypes that people had made based on their own judgments. She said that it was funny to see how people reacted when they saw her walking around outside with her face painted. It made me feel at ease that she was such a cheerful woman as she did not feel wrong about being who she was. By looking deeper into this picture, we can discover that the woman who was judged wrongly because of her appearance had the story of her life just as normal as we would. She was not different because she chose to be herself, but she was seen differently by the people around her, by the society that she lived in.
Both Margaret Atwood and Wing Young Huie represented the concept of "othering" through their work as they all try to accentuate the emphasis of stereotypes that would appear in any society and under any circumstances. There will always appear the stereotypes between the ones who hold higher social status and the ones that have lower social status; between the ones that would appear to be "normal" in people's eyes and the ones that would be seen as "unfit", regardless of whatever they think would be normal for them to do, they would still be seen as abnormal; between people who have power and people who don't. The way Wing Young Huie shaped the concept of "othering" in his work was excellent as he tried to draw emphasis of the picture on the woman by using the colors back and white, which gave the effect of having more contrast between the woman and the surrounding. That way, we could focus more on the details that the picture contains, and draw conclusions about the woman. Her story was placed right below the picture intentionally with the purpose of sharing the side story of the woman in order for the audience to get to know her more, and to see her as who she was instead of focusing on making assumptions based on her appearance. The othering was shown as Wing Young Huie showed us that people would have classified the woman in their minds as she was less human than they were (for she appeared to look dead/unholly). Margaret Atwood also did an excellent job with creating the concept of "othering" throughout her work. As she constantly told the side stories/the memories of Offred, she intentionally wanted the audience to focus on getting to know who Offred actually was, besides her name and what she wore. The "othering" was shown as in the text, she was just a handmaid without power and less value than other women. She was viewed as a woman with nothing more but her duty was to give birth to the child of the Commander. Her story that she told at Night was what that defined who she really was.
