I Love the Smell of Napalm

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 While writing satire, it's important to take a bold stance on the matter at hand. Obviously, it's impossible for every reader to understand the point being made, writing in a bold and obvious fashion increase the likelihood that the reader will understand. Satirical writing thrives on being quirky and non-obvious. It's essential that the topic and style of writing isn't one that is overused and cliche. 

In hindsight, I should've written the preceding paragraph in a manner that encompasses more than just writing, but I'm too lazy to fix it so we're moving on to Banksy's artwork. The piece was the one of the Napalm Girl. 


It's important to know the context to this picture, so here's the original photo of the Vietnam War: 


In the original photo, the first thing that caught my attention was the Mickey Mouse and the Ronald McDonald. Both of these were considered to be staples of the American lifestyle. What's interesting about the Vietnam War was that the American government lied to the people about the true state of the war. The people would be blindly believing in the so called successes of the military there thus supporting the military. The Americans were the reason that the Napalm girl was so badly hurt and the two characters flanking her go to support that. 

The background of the piece is gray which brings the character of the black-and-white image to the art piece. This creates a very bleak tone in the artwork replicating that of the Vietnam War. In general, this piece does an excellent job of criticizing the American people and their involvement in the Vietnam War. It brings to light an example of the horrors that government can create. 

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