Progression

This week I have been in the library 3 times continuing to research. There are two articles that I think are very concrete and perfect for my arguement of Tupac not being viewed through a rhetorical scope. I also mapped out my video on one of those charts you (Justin) gave us. Watching Jay and Alizza really helped me in realizing how central and strong your scope and arguement needs to be. I think I need to focus some more time on the question of "What's at stake?"

Over Thanksgiving break I'm going to try to knock out all my filming. I would really love to get that all finished so the following week I can delve into my editing. I've decided on which songs I want to use in the video to showcase Tupac, but I think I may have too many. I would rather focus on just a few of his songs then overwhelming my audience. I NEED to focus on the "What's at stake?" question. I know in my Project 1 my video may have been great, but my arguement could have been must stronger. I do NOT want that to happen in this project so my internal thought process of why this is so imporant is critical. I want there to be meat on the bones of my project.

Tupac

"Cops give a damn about a negro. Pull a trigger kill a nigger he's a hero..." (Tupac, "Changes"). That was the first lyric I heard from Tupac Shakur that made me think, "Wow. That is a very weighty lyric." I started the song over and listened to everything he said intently. His song was calling out to African Americans all over. Saying to them, I understand that things are tough. I understand that we are still under intense discrimination, but you can't keep living the way you are. Tupac begs his people to start making changes.

I have always been interested in how African Americans feel about the Civil Rights Movement, Black Nationalism, and the African American culture. I am a middle class white female, so hearing perspectives from black males and females interests me. American is the "land of the free", but do African Americans truly feel that way? That's where my thought process began for my project.

Hip hop was and still is a way to give a voice to middle or underclass blacks. It was an arena to talk freely about their frustrations, emotions, and giving a window into a life that blacks could relate to and whites had no idea about. The topic at hand is that the general stereotype of hip hop and rap is that it is vulgar, sexually charged, and violent music. I absolutely agree that it can be just that. However, I want to push up against that stereotype in my project. I want to call into question how hip hop is rhetorically savvy. Tupac knew his audience, his time period, and his purpose and that made him a rhetorical genius.

I want people to start questioning the "lens" that they see hip hop and rap through and ask themselves if they need to be looking at it through a different lens. I want to address the idea of hip hop being vulgar, but allowing my readers to see that it HAS to be to relate to the intended audience. If I don't develope my argument well, my entire project will crumble. If I can't guide my readers to understand the African American culture during Tupac's time as well as how he was a rhetorical genius, my project is in vain. I have to develop an understand of hip hop culture during Tupac's time. I think the general population who is not a fan of rap and hip hop constantly asks "Why?". Why does it have to be so violent, why does it have to be so sexual and vulgar? I want to answer those questions and ask a few questions to my audience of my own. What would be a stake if it wasn't?

I think this project is very culturally relevant. Tupac may be dead, but his music is known as the most influential and progressive for hip hop and rap. I also think that there is still racial tension in America today. Rap and hip hop have become an American staple for our culture. Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Dr.Dre, Kanye West, and countless others say they have been influenced by Tupac. If they have been influenced by Tupac and are some of the most popular musicians today, it is extremely relevant. I want to allow critiques of hip hop and rap to question their reasons for disliking it ,and I hope that in the end they walk away with a new found appreciation for hip hop, rap, Tupac, other rappers, and African American culture as a whole.

"All I'm trying to do is survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave me." Tupac Shakur

Progress

My project 2 has had a pretty frustrating start. I couldn't narrow down what I wanted to do. I was in this ambiguous idea of music, Tupac, Malcolm X, modes of communication thing. After talking to my teacher I finally decided I would be doing a rhetorical analysis of both Tupac and Malcolm X. My research thus far has included a few sorces my teacher gave me and then saturating myself in both Tupac and Malcolm X. I downloaded a few of Tupac's albums and a few of Malcolm X speeches. I have been emersing myself in them. I listen to them in my car constantly. I want to first just listen to the music and speeches without delving deep into them. I want to look for trends and themes I see consistantly in both, and find where they differ as well. I am looking for thread of unity and split ends.
My plan is to start dedicating my time on Monday and Wednesday after class and before my next class at 3. Everyday after class just spend that hour and half working on the project. Whether thats research on my topic or getting on the JUMP website and researching that as well. I want to understand their audience, time period, culture, similarities, and aspects of logos, pathos, and ethos. I'm going to rent out my friends camera over Thanksgiving break and capture all my film that weekend and begin to piece together my final project. I honestly haven't decided if I want to conduct interviews. That is an aspect I need to discuss and develope further. This is a topic I think can be really interesting and I'm passionate about so the research aspect hasn't been very difficult for me at all.

Tupac vs. Malcolm X

Folly

In Anne Wysocki’s, “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty” we delve into the ideas of “beauty”. Wysocki argues for a different understanding of beauty, aesthetic, and form that is rooted in the particular rather than universal generalities and tenets that visual designers use for composing images and texts, universal rules that were developed first through Kant’s philosophy.

One of Wysocki’s arguments is how distant we as readers feel to the woman in the text Wysocki analyzes. The distant emotion is due to the fact that the person is in fact not a person. We see her as an “object or abstract body” (Wysocki, 157). Wysocki later states, “When women and other Others are subjected to this aesthetic formalizing, they are made distant, objects to be observed, not people to be lived with” (Wysocki, 168). My idea is to argue that in the context of such advertisements, covers, or visual texts found in The New Yorker or Vogue or any “hip” and “modern” text that is not the goal. Readers are not trying to find a soul or “people to live with”, and that is why Wysocki’s argument is weak. She is taking the images out of context. The context of such texts is to stimulate a chic, high fashion, or highly sophisticated tone. A huge reason why this interests me is because I am an active reader of magazines and have never “felt” the anger described by Wysocki, because it would be foolish to expect that. It would be folly on my part to flip through visual texts today and expect to see an overweight woman in a bikini selling lotion, or for me to see an acne faced girl on the cover. I have never felt that because that is bringing emotion where it does not belong. You cannot expect to walk into Burger King and get organic fruits and vegetables; just as you cannot expect to open The New Yorker, Vogue, Time, or Vanity Fair to see in visual texts someone that is not distantly beautiful but looks just like your gap toothed sister.

Wysocki also argues that we do not focus enough on the “strangeness” in beauty. That we should look to make “objects unfamiliar” (Wysocki, 171). The problem with these statements is that some of the most strange and unfamiliar beauties are found in texts such as The New Yorker or Vogue. Tell me, is it more common and familiar to see an overweight, poorly dressed, bleach blond haired woman walking down the street next to you today, or a 6’1 green eyed, bone thin, wheat blond haired woman? The women portrayed in specifically Vogue for example completely dissipates Wysocki’s argument towards the particular. In such contexts as Vogue we are not supposed to focus on the soul of the woman. Who opens up a magazine and thinks, “Man, I hope I see someone who looks like my Mother in here so that I actually feel something towards the model instead of feeling distant from her.”? The main purpose of my argument will be that Wysocki and others who feel the same way cannot expect to buy organic food from Burger King nor can they expect to see women in magazines or visual texts as someone they know, but someone who truly is unfamiliar.

Absolute vs. Relative

I am certain that I want to write on Anne Wysocki’s chapter “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty”. I enjoyed the intricate and complex ideas thrown out, and I think its a very relative and modern topic that I would enjoy. The main idea that I think Wysocki is interacting with is the view of Absolute vs. Relative beauty. How can we define what "beautiful" is? Can we? Why is it that when I open up a magazine and see a woman I can say for certain, "THAT is beautiful."?

I think my purpose in this is because I do not even know what I think yet. I do not know if beauty is absolute or relative. I think I know what I think, but I have no reason why I think it. I would love to delve into possibly different cultures and see how they produce "beauty" in multimodal texts. (i.e. South African magazines, German advertisements, etc.) I also wonder if because of media and technology today if the cultural standards of beauty have become more generic and not as different as they used to be. I wonder if what used to be ugly to America and beautiful to Asia is now not as vast or stark of a difference. This would call me to really delve into a lot of cultural aspects and research of beauty. (Possibly see how "beauty" has evolved over the past few decades?) Wysocki argues that beauty is not a tangible object but an essence; however, what if it is a tangible object? What if certain forms of beauty transcend culture or background or time?

#4, All Ears

PART I

Do you hear that? There are sounds all around us everyday. We have become so acustom to noise and sounds that we rarely listen. In Heidi Mckee's, "Sound Matters: Notes toward the analysis and desgin of a sound in multimodal webtexts" she dives deep into the process and importance of sounds and even states, "We live immersed in sounds" (Mckee, 335). Mckee's essay argues the importance of sound and the different approaches or type of sound. The main elements that Mckee focuses on are volcal delivery, music, special effects, and silence.

As a culture "immersed" in sound we are not coming across the problem of how sound interacts with writing. Mckee opens this essay by asking questions. Questions such as: Where can composition instructions begin when it comes to interacting and diologuing with students about sound? How can we begin to develop a vocabulary and intellegent discussions about sound and its role in our writing? (paraphrase, Mckee, 336). She came to these questions when she cotaught a creative multimodal web composition course. Mckee uses both academic, scholoarly resources as well as personal experience to strengthen her aruguements.

Writing is no longer alphabetic text on a piece of paper. As technology developes and expands so does our form of writing. Mckee begins by stating, "With the continued developement of digitized technologies, sound is also becoming integral to our writing process as well" (Mckee, 336). Sound is central to multimodal texts and communitcation today. The role of sound is to enhance what alphabetic words or pictures are already present. Sound is the adgent that draws out the deeper meaning of a text, film, or webpage.

As Mckee takes us deeper into the thoughts of sound, we derive from her arugements and quotes from other academic professionals that sound stimulates meaning. The combonation of both a visual as well as an aural can evoke a high sense of meaning. "There is no separation of I see in the image and I hear on the track. Instead, there is the I feel, I experience through the grand-total of picture and track combined" (Mckee quote of Douane, 1985, 56). We may be able to seperate both visual an aural but the affect that the comination can have on an audience is worth putting the two together. The combination of the two allows the audience to no longer participate in 2 out of the 5 senses, but something that transcends. We as an audience now step into an emotion instead of merely a natural sense. Sound helps to create that emotion.

Meaning is not solely carried in one element but in many. Verbal delivery is another element used in sound that Mckee finds important. Within this element there are different facets that can affect the quality of the verbal delivery such as tension, breathiness, volume, pitch, or vibrato. Mckee argues that spoken performance or the delivery's composition can dictate the mood (paraphrase, Mckee, 341). Deepending on the facet of the verbal delivery, we can be drawn into a mood or aura. A simple change in pitch, volume, or breathiness can result into a type of context for the audience. Verbal and vocal delivery can "set the scene" more than we know.

Music is a key component to the puzzle of sound. Music can make powerful or subtle statements when it comes to writing. Mckee offers the idea that music can add a "layered" or "complexity" to a piece (Mckee, 346). Music is a messanger used to represent. That is why music is typically not a monomodal form of composition when it comes to writing, but it is a representation and a reverborator of what is already being "said" or "shown". Without the element of music we can lose such complexity in writing.

"Clearly sound effects matter" (Mckee, 347). Sound effects must be placed with precision and tact. Mckee states that sound effects DO in fact matter, but must be used properly; too many effects and the piece can "disrupt" the experience (paraphrase, Mckee, 347). Sound effects can be used to even hold the audiences attention. Mckee used the example of watching an eight minute video clip that did in fact hold her attention, "...part because of the power of the images in relation to the text and in part too because of the soundtrack, which is both mesmerizing and jarring" (Mckee, 348). The importance of sound effects is pivotal to holding a viewer's attention and keeping it there.

Sound is an important form of multimodal writing that can often be overlooked. "Sound is not something to be added as an afterthought. Sound and all the elements of sound play crucial roles in such important areas as setting the mood, building atmosphere, carrying the narrative, directing attention, and developing themes in multimodal works" (Mckee, 352). Mckee wants instructors as well as students to understand the importance and gravity that sound carries. Mckee may not know where to start with the education of sound in society, but she does call forth that we need to begin studying and discussing sound with students and instructing peers alike. As we study writing and composition, to exlude sound from those would only be folly on our part.


PART II

One of the passages that quickly took my attention was the passage about silence. Rarely do we think of silence as a strategically placed sound. Mckee explains how silence is not an absence but a presence (Mckee, 349). Mckee quotes Alberto Cavlacanit, "Silence can be the loudest of noises, just as black, in a brilliant design, can be the brightest of colors" (Mckee quote of Cavlacnit, p.111, 349). Silence is often overlooked and filled in American culture as we busy ourselves with constant aural distractions. We have become a culture that fills the silence, whether thats an "awkward pause" in conversation or discussion or not being able to study without some background music. We have become a culture addicted to sound that we have become deft to silence. "When there is noise on the screen there are also silences to be heard...Silence should not be considered separate from sound but rather an integral and important element of sound, one whose relationship to the other elements needs to be analyzed" (Mckee, 351). Do we even hear or note the silence in multimodal texts? When visiting other countries I have learned that there is something sacred about silence. That in silence you can find things, ideas, or thoughts that you would never be able to find in noise. Silence represents comfort. How many times have we heard someone talk about the people you are closest to are the ones you can sit in silence with and it is not awkward. What if a multimodal author of a text could integrate silence in such a way as to stimulate comfort?

Appealing Still Image

This Axe print ad is sheer genius. Axe's lead product is the fragranced aerosol deodorant body spray and marketed towards younger men. This ad is showing that men do not have to choose between the "bad boy" or the "nice guy" that ultimately, you can be both. Axe is wisely scattering the seed into young males' mind that you can be the male on the left (a man who has a stunning young woman and is looking at the "romance" section) ,but you don't have to give up your "bad" side either (the other half of the man's body who is looking at adult entertainment). I find it ironic (and perhaps Axe did this on purpose) that one part of the man is leading with his heart (on the left) and the other with his crotch (on the right). Axe is offering both your emotions and heart, but not forsaking your primal and sexual instinct as a man. Space is a key element used in this ad. The large space in the middle of the ad allows your eye to focus on the man and woman on the right first and then realizing that his legs are left on the left hand side. Then, your eyes naturally gravitate towards the text or "Romance" and "XXX Adult" which is also a form of repetition. This is repeating and reinforcing what the image is already "saying". I think the overall vibe from Axe can sometimes be that its ok to not be in monogamous relationships. This could perhaps be a cultural implication, that men today do not want to commit to one single person. Why would they when they can have two? This ad might even give off the idea of being in two places at once, which implies an invincibility of men.