How to set or get a cookie value in django

This is my code:

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response, get_object_or_404
from django.template import RequestContext
from django import http
from django.http import HttpResponse 

def main(request, template_name='index.html'):
    HttpResponse.set_cookie('logged_in_status', 'zjm1126')
    context ={
              'a':a,
              'cookie':HttpResponse.get_cookie('logged_in_status'),
    }

    return render_to_response(template_name, context)
    #return http.HttpResponsePermanentRedirect(template_name)

It raises this exception:

unbound method set_cookie() must be called with HttpResponse instance as first argument (got str instance instead)

What can I do?