Blog 10- Homeboys

The visual and textual rhetoric of the shirts have no effect on me. I see a lot of graphic T-shirts all the time at work. The "Jesus is my Homeboy" and "Mary is my Homegirl" T-shirts just seem like another design that does not stick out to me. The only graphic T’s that get a reaction out of me are ones with Spongebob on it because that is my favorite cartoon, or one that implies something sexual and twelve year olds are walking around in it. I do not see the shirts as a parody because I just do not take graphic T’s serious unless there is negative cursing towards an object or something like that. To me it seems as if Mitchell expects people to notice a small difference in someone’s appearance. He says, “I expected someone to say something, anything. But no one did” (Envision in Depth 324) and that is what I would expect. If it is not something extremely different and bizarre then no one would notice it. Wearing a shirt with a painting of the Crucifixion at a rock concert is different, but people are not there to judge fashion. They go there for the music. I am not deeply religious so that may have altered my perception about this. If the shirt just had the text and not the picture, I do not think the way I acted about it would have changed. The way I interpret Jesus in each shirt is just a religious figure that people are comfortable enough with to talk to about anything.