This photograph is titled "Street Musician" and it is photographed by Wing Young Huie. The place of publication is Minneapolis, MN in 1982. After a denotative examination of this photograph, one can see a black man and a woman sitting on the side of the street. They have shopping carts on either side of them that are filled with lots of things. When applying a connotative examination of the text, I would assume that they are homeless and their only belongings are in their carts. A big picture concept that can be derived from this image is that there are two ways one can live their life: you can choose to be happy no matter the situation or you can let uncontrollable circumstances control your happiness. From looking deeper, I discovered that the man is living a good life and making the best of what he has, while the woman next to him is ashamed of her way of life. I can conclude that the woman is embarrassed of being homeless and the negative stereotypes that fall with it. She is almost hiding behind the man and her body language suggests she does not want to be seen. On the other hand, the man, who appears to be playing an instrument, has a big smile on his face. Being that he is homeless, he does not have many materials but I can infer that he cares much more about making good memories and having a good outlook on life, rather than obtaining physical goods.
Wing Young Huie in the "Street Musican" and Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid's Tale present the concept of "othering". Othering is defined as treating an individual(s) differently and/or not classifying them as "one of us". This can be applied to Huie's depiction of homeless people in his photograph because Huie's photograph uses body language to show the people's emotions. The concept of 'othering" can be seen in the woman within the picture because her body language reveals that she does not feel like she is treated the same and that she does not fit in. There is no color in this photograph because it is black and white. This bleak color scheme reveals the gloomy tone of the woman's attitude towards her homelessness. In the same way, Margaret Atwood uses the color red to establish handmaids, blue for Wives, and green for Marthas. Color symbolism within Atwood's novel is a large part of establishing the characters forms of bias and popular culture of the novel in the Republic of Gilead. Atwood presents the concept of "othering" in The Handmaid's Tale when the handmaids are oppressed by the rest of the society of Gilead. The handmaids are not treated the same as other women even though they are the only ones that can save the population crisis in Gilead. Atwood also uses language to further describe handmaids as insignificant through the eyes of the rest of the society. For example, Atwood says, “The name is composed of a man’s first name, Fred, and a prefix denoting “belonging to” so it is like “de” in French or “von” in German, or like the suffix-son in English… “offered”, denoting a religious offering or a victim offered for a sacrifice” (Atwood xv). This example of Atwood's language is a deliberate manipulation of the audience because it provides the word with a dual meaning. The audience may not pick up on all of the clever meanings that Atwood established. Both Huie and Atwood use color and language to present the concept of "othering".
Works Consulted
Atwood, Margaret Eleanor. The Handmaid’s Tale. Random House Inc, 2017.
Huie, Wing Y. “Street Musician.” Wing Young Huie, www.wingyounghuie.com/p939060484.
