Thursday, November 19, 2009
I'm too fast for Swine Flu
Let's break it down:
The Video:
The Action we're being persuaded to take: Get a swine flu shot
The Reasons: -It is easily spread -It can kill -It can effect you even if you don't normally get sick.
The Tactic: Pathos. The video is trying to scare people into getting swine flu shots in order to prevent an epidemic. The scary background music, the use of the elderly and children getting ill, even the oddly cheerful-sounding narrator, all make this video scary and would make people feel like they ought to get a shot.
Also, I just think it's kind of funny. My two favorite parts are "Joe brought it home from the office and gave it to Betty, and one of his kids". Why not the other kid? That's bittersweet! On one hand you don't have swine flu, but on the other hand your dad doesn't love you enough to give it to you. My other favorite part: "In California, Betty's mother gave it to her best friend Dotty, but Dotty had a heart condition and she died". I just like this part because of how happy the narrator is that Dotty kicked the bucket. I imagine in the time it was made this video was pretty effective.
Actually, He's a Boy
As some of you know, the topic that I've chosen for class is men and women in nontraditional careers. (Nontraditional careers meaning careers in which less than 25% of the people employed are of one gender) Our next assignment is to persuade our audience that they should get involved and take action regarding our topic.
Our instructor showed me this video from the Onion News Network, a website that satirizes news programs. The video is about choosing masculine costumes for effeminate boys on Halloween.
It's hysterical. What this video does is take stereotypes to an extreme in order to show how ridiculous they are. Believe it or not, there are parents out there who try to force their children to conform to gender stereotypes, not allowing girls to play sports or get dirty, or allowing boys to join ballet or participate in the arts. This video is basically saying "Do this to your kids" while actually saying "Don't do this to your kids".
I'm hoping if you've read this far, you've watched the link from above, but if not, it basically chooses super-masculine costumes for effeminate boys, examples being soldiers, robots, a bear (with a giant head to "muffle his lisp") It uses stereotyping descriptors like "giggly" "lady-boy" and "faggy-acting". To anyone with a sense of humor, it's pretty harmless, and since the Onion's audience (see I can use ideas from class in my blog) is basically the same audience as The Daily Show and Colbert Report, i.e. politically-minded people generally on the liberal side of the spectrum, it is assumed that the audience agrees that forcing your children into gender-roles is silly and ultimately harmful.
If you still haven't watched the video, watch it now.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Lord Voldemort is the Hitler of the Wizarding World
-Hitler = part Jewish, tried to get rid of the Jews. Lord Voldemort = Father was a muggle (non-wizard), he tried to get rid of “Mudbloods” (People with non-wizarding blood)
[Added a few days later] So in the wizarding world after Voldemort returned to power the Ministry of Magic started to register all people with non-wizard blood, and they took away their wands. This is kind of like how Hitler started with the concentration camps. No obviously murderous intent, just the desire to have these people registered, controlled and afraid.
To my Knowledge, J.K. Rowling hasn’t come out and said that Lord Voldemort is Hitler, but there are certainly enough reasons how he could be.
Make 'Em Laugh
So if the difference between convincing and persuading lies in the Pathos, I think that one of the strongest tools someone can use to persuade is having a sense of humor about the topic.
In class we talked about those commercials with the sick children in Africa, or the polar bears running out of glaciers and food because of the scourge of man. What seemed to be the general consensus is that these types of Pathos have become ineffective. It certainly isn’t that we don’t care about the children or the polar bears, we have just found a way to guard ourselves from feeling too guilty about it. That is, if we haven’t already changed the channel.
This is why humor is one of the most important tools I think should be used to persuade people to join a cause. Laughter relaxes people and makes them comfortable. When a person is relaxed and comfortable, he or she is more likely to have a positive response to a call to action.
If I Could Be a Superhero
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what kind of superhero I would want to be.
Triumph of the Will
A while ago in class we talked about whether we would have gone along with Hitler if we’d been Germans in the 1930’s. In class I think I was a little too idealistic, I hoped that I would be able to be wary of the dangers that Hitler’s ideas would unleash. Realistically I probably would have been carrying a spade at the RAD ceremony. I mean, besides the whole gay thing, I have the potential of being a poster boy for the Aryan nation. (Also I’m not anti-semitic which could prove to be a problem) But I’m tall, German, I have blonde hair, blue eyes.
Crappy Movies: My Legacy
If I have one legacy, it’s that most of the people in my life will think of me when they see any crappy movie for the rest of their lives. I have one of the best/worst tastes in movies, no movie is too ridiculous or stupid for me.
Lots of people go to the movies to learn something, or at least feel like they look smarter to the people who saw them leaving the theater. There are tons of dramatic, thoughtful films, (that no one understood) that find themselves on thousands of people’s favorite movie lists, because they want people to think that they like these types of movies.
That’s not me.
Give me a crappy movie that makes me laugh and I’m content. If I want to be inspired, I’d rather find that inspiration from the real world. Movies, for me, are a place to escape.
These are the top characteristics I look for in a movie:
-Teenage Angst (always amazing)
-Some sort of supernatural element. (Obvi)
-Love Story
-Any type of gender-bending
-Melodrama (my personal favorite)
-B-List Horror movies
I like movies that make fun of them selves, in a smart way. I like movies with crappy special effects. I like movies with underdeveloped plots. Let’s put it this way, I went and saw “Bratz: 4Real” in the movie theater.
You may be asking yourself what all of this has to do with my English class.
The answer is that it doesn’t really have anything to do, I just felt like sharing.