Project Prospectus - Cultural Context

 During the final tutorial I talked to Steve about my cultural context. He told me about how I should look into previously made projects or stories similar to what I plan to do, giving an example of Babar the Elephant. Now this was a title I haven't heard in a long time and even completely forgot about. I mentioned it being a childhood story of mine and I even brought it up with my family. This led to a rabbit hole of rereading the story of Babar the Elephant and realizing the horror that is his marriage with his cousin that I had no recollection of.

On the bright side this example gave me the chance to research previous stories I watched or read that I had long forgotten, stories like Okja, a Korean movie on Netflix about a special pig who was stolen from her friend to be marched around for the profit of greedy humans and eventually slaughtered for food. There was also Dumbo, a Disney classic about a clumsy elephant escaping his life in the circus. 

With the new angle I planned for my story I asked my sister for a book recommendation that she thought of when it came to animal abuse or animal cruelty, she suggested "Beatrice and Vergil". I googled it and realized it was a story of taxidermy animals representing a tale of jews fleeing from prosecution during the holocaust. Clearly the story was too dark and my sister was of no help, but I suddenly realized that perhaps the darker ideas that I had when first coming up with my story were a family trait.