Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Day 11: Chiquita Banana

Based on this classic Chiquita spokesbanana. Yeah, I'd never heard of her either. But here's a YouTube clip of a commercial she starred in! I'm as disturbed as you are. (Okay, you're probably more disturbed that I spent an hour and a half drawing her. :P)

I had a lot of trouble with the eyes, actually, so I ended up giving up and making her eyes half-closed, which gives her an even more seductive look. :D

(Pencil in sketchbook.)

3 comments:

  1. Great drawing you definitely have many skills. I just wish you had pick another subject.

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  2. Actually, drawing this led me to read up on the United Fruit Company and its role in inducing the CIA to topple the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala (Operation PBSUCCESS), based on faulty intelligence that Arbenz was in league with the Soviets, when he wasn't, and thus leading to 52 years of civil strife in which hundreds of thousands would die, and millions would be displaced.

    It was really interesting and sad, especially how the CIA at the time saw Guatemala as the gold standard of how to stage a coup, but it's now clear that it was a total disaster.

    And actually, one of the most fascinating parts of it all was how the coup was staged in part with the propaganda services of Edward Bernays, self-styled "father of public relations" (though that title was in itself a bit of PR). He was a big fan of influencing "third party authorities", who would then convince the public of the good of the product. The concept of PR is fundamentally disturbing to me because it's all about hacking our brains.. and the public has the short end of the stick in the arms race.

    Hm. This comment has gotten so long that I think I'm going to turn it into a blog post.

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  3. Okay, I just turned that comment into a post on my main blog, and I added a Diego Rivera painting to the end of it.

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