TOW #19 - “Hollywood Needs to Fix Itself”

     In lieu of the Oscars tonight, I’ve decided to write my TOW about one. Recently, many people have been upset over the fact that the Oscars are white-dominated. Most people blame the fact that most Academy members are white and male, and the author agrees. However, the author, Slate writer Aisha Harris, argues that the problem is not just in the Academy members but in the Hollywood industry itself, which I agree with. The real problem is the issue of diversity in the entertainment industry, not just within the awards.

     Harris writes, “How many nonwhite and/or female studio execs are deciding which projects deserve to be greenlit? How many talented up and coming writers and directors of color are being sought after and mentored by more established directors, writers and producers? Where are the adventurous casting agents who don’t automatically assume that a character written of nonspecified background has to be white?” Here, Harris is getting to the root of the matter. Of course awards are going to reflect the industry, so in order to have more diverse awards ceremonies (that are still fair), there needs to be a change at the root of the matter. It’s not enough to just change the surface of the problem.
     Just making the members of the Academy more diverse is like affirmative action. It may change the end results (like who wins and who gets accepted), but it doesn’t actually address the root of the problem. The film industry will still be white dominated, and there is still an education and economic gap. It’s much more difficult to fix the root of the problem, but that’s what needs to be done in order to make a difference in the world.

TOW #18 - The Joy of Psyching Myself Out

     This week, I've decided to read an editorial piece published by the New York Times called "The Joy of Psyching Myself Out". The author, Maria Konnikova, is an ex-psychologist turned author. In her piece, she discusses the underlying misconceptions behind writing and the scientific pursuit of the mind and how, despite their differences, they both require exact-ivity and creativity. Additionally, separating the creativity from the world of physiology is not only unwarranted but also downright destructive. To emulate this, Konnikova utilizes concrete examples and employs parallel structure to add factual support and a sense of convictions and passion.

     In order to make the argument that the freedom to explore is crucial to scientific discovery, Konnikova talks about the revolutionary psychoanalysis Sigmund Frued. She first gives background on his methods of studying and researching- and how he relies on creativity to come up with his hypothesis. Because of his willingness to think abstractly, he was able to achieve success. This creativity made him  “a breed of psychologist that hardly exists anymore: someone who saw the world as both writer and psychologist, and for whom there was no conflict between the two.” That boundary melding allowed him to posit the existence of cognitive mechanisms that wouldn’t be empirically proved for decades.

     Konnikova also utilizes parallel structure to end the editorial on a powerful note. At the end, she refers to the reasons why she left the field of phycology; saying, “ I left psychology behind because I found its structural demands overly hampering…most new inquiries never happened — in a sense, it meant that objectivity was more an ideal than a reality. Each study was selected for a reason other than intrinsic interest.” Then, immediately following this claim, she declares, “I became a writer to pursue that intrinsic interest. But I do so having never quite left the thinking of the psychologist behind” and foes onto talk about the merits. This structure revolving around the word intrinsic interest and the comparison of pros and cons leaves the reader with an underlying feeling of torn interest. It is up to them to derive their own opinion through the information presented oh so jumbled and befuddled by Konnnikova.

TOW #17 - Logo Baby (visual)

     The baby depicted in this image is covered with logos of various prevalent companies in today’s culture. The maker of this image (uncredited) is most likely arguing that we are influenced by the media and advertisements around us now more so than ever, even from the moment we are born. In this way, today’s kids are more products of advertising and the media than ever before.

     This claim definitely applies to many aspects of today’s world. Nowadays, all you have to do to keep a kid busy is give them an iPad. With the Internet at their fingertips, they are now so much more connected to the rest of the world than we were at their age. Although they have more resources, they are also exposed to the media and commercials more often. In this way, they are molded by and made a product of the media from a very young age.
     For example, my younger sisters got their first iPhones in elementary school, while I got mine in eighth grade. Today, they are so much more in touch with pop culture than I am. My youngest sister is obsessed with Snapchat, Instagram, and Musical.ly. Whenever she’s bored and standing around waiting, she whips and nae naes. It’s kind of embarrassing that she knows more about pop culture than her teenage sister, but it makes sense since she’s been using her iPhone from such a young age.
     However, this does not apply to all people of the world. There are still many people without access to advanced technology or Internet. Although the picture makes a great statement about developed countries like the one we live in, not everybody can relate to it.
     Overall, the maker of the image’s claim that today’s kids are exposed to technology and the media at a very young age and that this exposure makes them a product of pop culture has merit but cannot be applied to the entire younger generation since there are still many people without access to technology that we have so readily.

IRB Intro Post #3

     This marking period I’m reading another book that’s connected to one of my dad’s audiobooks. However, I’ve mixed it up a bit by choosing to read a science book. I’ve decided to read Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History by David Christian. I can’t wait to get started!

TOW #15 - The Lorraine Motel and Martin Luther King

     I read this article in the spirit of MLK day, the reason we don’t have school today. In this article Allyson Hobbs writes about the motel in which Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the Lorraine Motel. In order to effectively describe its history in a moving way, Hobbs uses descriptive language and quotes from people who stayed at the motel in its heyday.

     When describing the Lorraine today, Hobbs writes, “The large motel sign features “Lorraine” printed in a dramatic script against a bright yellow background, and ‘Motel’ is written in large red block letters, each letter stamped inside its own white circle. A large white wreath hangs on the balcony outside Room 306, to memorialize the spot where King stood at the time of the assassination. Standing in front of the motel transports visitors to a bygone era. If you close your eyes, the iconic photograph of King’s friends pointing off into the distance, at the place from which they believed the shot was fired, comes into sharp view.” Instead of just telling the reader that seeing the motel is like looking at another era, she shows us by painting the picture. This allows the audience to become more immersed in the story and the scene and better understand what the Lorraine is like today.
     In order to help readers understand the Lorraine of the past, Hobbs uses quotes from people who stayed there. She writes, “As Isaac Hayes reminisced, ‘We’d go down to the Lorraine Motel and we’d lay by the pool and Mr. Bailey would bring us fried chicken and we’d eat ice cream. . . . We’d just frolic until the sun goes down and [then] we’d go back to work.’” This helps readers much as the description does, but since Hobbs mostly likely wasn’t at the Lorraine around the time it was in its heyday, she has to rely on other people’s descriptions. These descriptions still have the same effect as hers.
     In order to describe this important historical motel, Hobbs uses descriptive language and quotes. Today, the Lorraine is no longer a motel. Instead, it’s been converted into a civil rights museum. The room that MLK stayed in when he was assassinated, Room 306, still stands today for visitors to gaze at.

Martin Luther King, Jr., lies at the feet of civil-rights activists pointing in the direction of his assassin. The Lorraine Motel, where King was murdered, later became a civil-rights museum.CREDIT PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSEPH LOUW / THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION / GETTY

TOW #14 - Free People Commercial

About two years ago, a clothing brand called Free People released a commercial for its new dancewear line. While unnoticeable to the untrained eye, it is obvious to any dancer that the actress who claims to have been dancing since she was 3 has no formal training in pointe what-so-ever. Although overall ineffective because of this one giant mistake, Free People’s commercial does have some redeeming qualities: the cadence of the voiceover follows the movements, and the camera crew strategically blurred obviously bad blunders of the “ballerina.”

The commercial starts with the girl says, “I don’t even think about it at this point; I just express myself and I let myself go and it’s not really--I don’t think about what I’m gonna do I just do it?” This sentence, while grammatically incorrect and redundant, move and flows just like the “dancer” and the music do. This adds to the effect of movement, which is the desired effect for the brand’s movement theme. Unfortunately the actual content of the actress’s statement is atrocious. While this would be okay to say for almost every other style of dance, it is not okay for ballet. When a ballerina dances, she is always thinking; if she doesn’t she falls and gets hurt.

However, someone along the way of the product of this video must’ve known how untrained in pointe this actress was. At 1:12 there is a strategically blurred clip in which the “dancer” attempts a step that she obviously looks bad doing. While covering one of her bigger blunders is a plus, this person on the production team wasn’t versed enough in ballet to be able to cover all the rest of the dancer’s mistakes.

Overall, Free People tried very hard to fool people into thinking they hired a trained ballet dancer but failed miserably. On the off chance that the actress really was a trained dancer in a different style of dance, the brand should’ve showed off her strengths. Either way, the commercial had the opposite of the desired effects. I know I’m definitely not buying any clothes from a store that hires fake ballerinas that make ballet seem easy.

TOW #13 - The Case for 'Hamilton' as Album of the Year

Hamilton Poster

     I got an early Christmas present this weekend: tickets to see Hamilton! Actually, it was more an overly obvious hint but TICKETS TO SEE HAMILTON, a Broadway show that is sold-out for months in advance! So, in honor of this awesome surprise, I’ve decided to read an article about this show. In his article, The Case for Hamilton as Album of the Year, Spencer Kornhaber pulls quotes from songs and compares Lin Miranda, the lead and writer of Hamilton, to other artists in order to argue for Hamilton as the album of the year by rhetorically analyzing it.
     Like any good piece of rhetorical analysis, quotes are absolutely necessary. He writes, “it probably took a month alone to figure out the right phrase to rhyme with 'revolutionary manumission abolitionists.' ” By implementing quotes into his writing as shown, he allows the reader to make decisions for themselves and see first-hand how Miranda used certain techniques to create certain effects. In this way, he can show the reader the intricacies of Miranda’s writing and musical technique, proving Hamilton to be the best album of the year.
     Kornhaber also includes comparisons to other artists, including hip-hop artists like Kendrick Lamar and Drake. He writes, “You can find this Hamiltonian idea of hip-hop refracted through rap’s other great works this year. You hear it in the verbosity, the craft, the daringness, the desperate idealism, and the death-obsessed drive of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. You hear Hamilton’s obsession with legacy, his unwillingness to back down when challenged, his profligacy—'why do you write as if you’re running out of time?'—in Drake’s multi-mixtape 2015 output.” In this way, Kornhaber proves the validity of rap as an expressive tool in musical theater, perhaps even more effective than just singing. This is seen in the song “Farmer Refuted,” in which “Hamilton tears Samuel Seabury’s words apart by literally speaking between them—basically, it’s Miranda proving the supremacy of rap as a form of expression.” Kornhaber argues that even though Miranda’s use of rap is unconventional, it’s wholly effective in musical theater.
     Kornhaber’s direct quotes from Miranda’s song and comparison of Miranda’s songs and other artist’s songs allows him to successfully rhetorically analyze Hamilton all while supporting his argument that Hamilton should be lauded as the album of the year. In this rather rare piece of rhetorical analysis in the “wild,” Kornhaber has made me even more excited to go see the show in New York!