For this week, read "A Soldier's Legacy" and this article from The Onion. To accompany these articles, you also need to read the following keywords:
Representation
Queer
Make sure you have all of this read by class on Tuesday. As you work through these two very different readings, particularly with "representation" and "queer" in mind, examine the different media from which the articles come. Think back to your posts for last week and be ready to discuss how The New Yorker is different from The Onion. A more difficult question might be, how are they similar? Recall our discussion of parody last week and think about how this technique is employed by The Onion. Think also about the ways in which each article is concerned with other media, such as Wikipedia and the comment features on countless Internet sites. The second article may be particularly useful for the group working on Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook.
For this week's assignment to write a semiotic analysis, I want you choose something you encounter everyday, take a photo of it to include in your post, and write. If you are not able to take a photo, then find a similar image online, but make sure you cite your source and even write about the difference between taking a photo of something you "really" encounter, versus writing about an image captured by someone else. As you write, keep in mind the work we did in class, particularly how we separate form from content. We will talk more about strategies for writing this post in class on Tuesday, but you should choose your subject as soon as possible and begin writing before Tuesday. When grading this post, I am going to pay close attention to your argument. I have noticed that for last week's post, many of you fell into a trap of describing your group's method without setting up a clear argument about the relationship between medium and audience. The key for this next post will be to craft a coherent argument about your object of analysis. Do not write a description of the object--with the photo you include, the reader could do this on his or her own. Rather, give the reader an analysis, using the critical reading strategies we have employed in class. You should also incorporate keywords from our book to help you develop your argument.
1 comment:
Critique of a curriculum
Its a shame that I've only just now become aware of the discussion on the topic of Kathy Deserly's "overtly racist" Blackberry ad. Certainly at this point in the semester your class has moved on to Subway's heinous $5 Footlong advert or the latest episode of Family Guy. Please include me next time around.
Students, I understand that this blog, being 10% of your grade is somewhat important to you, hence the extensive use of your thesaurus, but your ideologies are somewhat confused, grammar weak, and tone intolerable. In tribute to your papers, I should fail to support the preceding statement.
However, I'd like to point out a few things about the the blog with the large scarlet "A", titled The Everyman's Burden. The article screams "first college paper!!" It still uses techniques championed in 8th grade. Start bold, pick a word- then define it, then ramble on with big words trying to relate the topic to something larger. The word chosen here was Noble Savage. How does this consultant convey the condescending concept of the Indian's universal essential humanity? Is it because she stated that her husband is Lakota. Does this apply to all acquaintances of Indians? Or was it because Blackberry filmed her in the countryside? (You may not know this but some places in the world still have lousy reception. In these places people stop, get out of their cars and finish their business in this manner.)
It is remarkable that despite lengthy descriptions entered into policy at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, regarding what makes one Indian, your class is able to discern one simply by looking at it. Your assumptions that she carries the white man's burden are uninformed. Kathy Deserly is my mother. She is part Choctaw (that's a noble savage), part Guatemalan and Mexican (¿Indio, no?), and part cowgirl. She doesn't claim her Indian heritage partly because of others' concept of what Indian is. She has, however identified personally with our peoples from an early age. That is why she helps.
If you'd like the background, here it is. Blackberry publicly asked its users for stories. My mother offered an example without compensation. Why? Maybe she's racist. Anyway, they liked her story and flew her to NYC for a shoot, then a crew came to Montana to film the promo. She was later compensated modestly for her time.
Perhaps Blackberry simply wanted to show a variety of people using their product for different purposes in different environments. It was after all a commercial. Why did Nina Garcia of Elle, or Maribel Martinez Lieberman, the Chocolatier of MarieBelle also comply with this plot?
Between Paper and Machine approves, "I am glad to see you exploring more closely the underlying—or perhaps simply overt—racism of this advertisement... ...you are so right that the advertisement suggests a kind of burden that Kathy must confront... ....BlackBerrys as tools of colonialism, perhaps?... Maybe “reality” budges to the point of disappearance, then?"
Whoa. "What if "dog" spelt backwards was c - a - t?" - Ogre, Revenge of the Nerds.
Lena L. has been greatly influenced. "...now I can look at ads in magazines or watch commercials and see things differently". Suggested reading: Don Quixote, consider the windmills.
What is the real danger of encouraging these students? Maybe nothing more will come of this than a few exasperated parents at Thanksgiving, wondering why they paid money to have their children return from their freshman experience pontificating about noble savages and the wrongs of $5 footlongs. Then again it did get the kids out of the house. The only evidence I see of racism shown in the white man's burden was in these students and their instructors' leap to decry the foul against the Indian. Did you think we weren't smart enough to notice if we've been insulted?
A class in which students must write in a virtual medium should bear in mind that their posturing/grandstanding may be seen by and offend those who they are judging.
Sincerely,
Matthew Deserly
p.s. Crystal, your instructor is going to tell you how great it is that you've really started a conversation, and great job. No, you just talked trash about my mom.
“Things are so deep and people are always trying to read sh** into things that real simple. Some people try and tell you what the songs are about and it bores me to death.”
-Lars Ulrich, Metallica drummer, philosopher
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