Reflective Post

I really enjoyed having Comm 335W: Rhetorical Criticism with Professor Guler. I feel like I learned a lot about how to evaluate a text or oral speech. One of my favorite exercises that we participated in class is when we read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and analyzed it. We then proceeded to hear him actually read his speech during his big delivery. It was amazing to compare how we perceived the speech on paper, versus actually hearing it. I wish we had listening to him giving it in full. I think that was extremely beneficial. I also very much enjoyed when we commented on each others' blog postings. I thought it helped us to understand the different types of criticisms when we had to actually apply our thoughts to another classmate's artifact. I think I will be able to take the different criticisms taught in class and apply them when reading other texts or hearing speeches. It will especially help me when I pursue my graduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the fall semester. I think Pentadic Criticism will be the most helpful to me in the future because it makes it easier to comprehend the messages and ideologies when broken down into simple statements. For example, the website is stating its purpose as "this". I really enjoyed the class and I would most certainly recommend it to any of my fellow communication peers.

Artifact for the Second Essay

I decided to choose the artifact I analyzed for the fantasy-theme criticism post. Since I already described it in the last blog, I re-copied it for this assignment:

The artifact I chose to analyze for fantasy-theme criticism is the new Harry Potter Theme Park in Orlando, Florida. I thought this was perfect because Harry Potter has become so popular, there was certainly a shared vision encompassed when coming up with ideas for an amusement park meaning a symbolic convergence present. The setting theme is the actual theme park itself with all of the individual sections, including rides and different places. For instance, the school Hogwarts will have a different atmosphere versus the train station. The character themes are all of the different characters poured into this theme park with the help of J.K. Rowling's vision through the original Harry Potter books. There will be a ton of wizards and witches and the muggles (non-magical humans)who are essentially the tourists have the option of pretending to be wizards or witches. The action themes will include anything of energy value. The rides are included in this. The making of a wand and casting a spell is considered an action theme. The Harry Potter theme park is a regular world transformed into a land of fantasy and magic through the shared vision of many people, including the tourists attending with certain expectations of what is to come.

Fantasy-Theme Criticism Artifact

The artifact I chose to analyze for fantasy-theme criticism is the new Harry Potter Theme Park in Orlando, Florida. I thought this was perfect because Harry Potter has become so popular, there was certainly a shared vision encompassed when coming up with ideas for an amusement park meaning a symbolic convergence present. The setting theme is the actual theme park itself with all of the individual sections, including rides and different places. For instance, the school Hogwarts will have a different atmosphere versus the train station. The character themes are all of the different characters poured into this theme park with the help of J.K. Rowling's vision through the original Harry Potter books. There will be a ton of wizards and witches and the muggles (non-magical humans)who are essentially the tourists have the option of pretending to be wizards or witches. The action themes will include anything of energy value. The rides are included in this. The making of a wand and casting a spell is considered an action theme. The Harry Potter theme park is a regular world transformed into a land of fantasy and magic through the shared vision of many people, including the tourists attending with certain expectations of what is to come.

ONFilm Festival: Amelie

I went to the movie Amelie during the ONfilm Festival. It was a foreign film, all spoken in French with English subtitles. Amelie had been introverted her whole life, ever since she was a child and witnessed her mother's death. As an adult, she lives by herself and has no friends except for the people who work at the same cafe as she. She decides she wants to be a person who does good deeds to make other people happy so she plays all these games with people to make their lives more fulfilling without them knowing. She does this for everyone but herself.
This movie contains elements of ideological criticism because it is Amelie's belief that life is too short not to be happy and she tries to create a "Mother Theresa-esque" character out of herself. Her goal in life is to make other people genuinely happy without their knowledge that she set up these plans for them.
Even though Amelie does not put her own happiness first because she is painfully shy, she longs for a man to love her more than anything. She brings two unhappy people together by telling them the other person is in love with the other. Her father is obsessed with his garden gnome but want to travel. Amelie photoshops pictures of the gnome in places all around the world like with the Sphinx in Egypt. She always puts other people before her own happiness but then eventually finds love through her antics and everyone ends in happiness due to Amelie's involvement in their lives.

Pentadic Criticism Analysis

The article I chose to criticize pentadically is a website produced through the Humane Society. This website can be found at www.thehumanesociety.org. Through pentadic analysis, we describe our life experiences through dramatism.

AGENT: The Humane Society

ACT: To easily navigate to important information and to advertise The Humane Society

SCENE: Animal life: stories, how to get involved, images, links, and descriptions

PURPOSE: To highlight the importance of animal well-being and appropriate treatment

AGENCY: website on the world wide web, easily accessible to everyone everywhere

Ideological Analysis

The artifact I chose to analyze is a book by Larry Miller called Spoiled Rotten America: Outrages of Everyday Life. Miller is an extremely well-known comedian who uses his personal life experiences as a tool for expressing the lessons he learned. Each chapter tells a different aspect of Miller’s life, but the book is unified with a common theme. I chose to analyze this book in particular because the author incorporates his philosophies and ideologies in the stories which is very intriguing.

Miller presents ideologies about life, specifically speaking to upper middle class and upper class readers. He imposes ideas that they take too much for granted and should step back and realize the important things that truly matter in the world. He speaks of relationships between himself and his wife and how important it is to treat one's significant other with honor, respect, and affection. He relishes in the fact that parenthood is one of the greatest pleasures in life and while it is inconvenient, hard work, and relentless, it is the most rewarding jobs one could ever enjoy. Miller also preaches about religion. He expects a tolerance for not only his religion of Judaism, but for all beliefs everywhere.

The way Larry Miller expresses his ideologies is creative and gets the message across in a way that is unexpected. He begins each chapter by complaining about all of the negative aspects his subject matters entail, but then flips it around near the end and explains why his philosophies and ideologies are the exact opposite of what he lead the reader to believe. This certainly catches the reader off guard by grabbing his or her attention to understand why the ideologies are surprising.

Artifact Choices

1. The first artifact I think would be appropriate to analyze is Disney films. I would compare and contrast the gender roles in various classic Disney "princess" movies. This would be great for ideological criticism because it proposes an ideology around women's roles versus men's roles that are being imposed on younger children.

2. The second artifact I think would be interesting to analyze for ideological criticism would be a book by Larry Miller. His book Spoiled Rotten America: Outrages of Everyday Life reflects Miller's ideologies about certain aspects of life, including religion and parenthood. He writes the narrative in first person so it would be fairly invigorating to evaluate his direct thoughts.

3. The third artifact I think would be perfect to analyze for ideological criticism would be the social networking internet site Facebook. As a communications major, it would be interesting to take a closer look at the layout of the website, such as personal pages. It would also be appropriate to evaluate the different types of ideologies presented through group pages, fan pages, posts, and pictures chosen to be displayed.

Ideology

Ideology is the values, beliefs, or assumptions a person may have about a certain object or idea, such as religion or gender. There are various types of ideology including dominant ideology.
The primary components can be considered as a system of evaluative beliefs which come from our own perceptions.

Blog 2: neo-Aristotelian criticism

1. Neo-Aristotelian criticism is presented in the book as a form of analyzing rhetoric mainly focusing on the outcomes of the evaluations instead of the process. It consists of many factors including the canons of rhetoric. It takes into consideration the older philosophies of men such as Aristotle as a basis. Herbert Wichelns also largely contributed to the original creation of the Neo-Aristotelian criticism, wanting to make a distinct separation from the field of literature.

2. The textbook lists the three basic steps of analyzing an artifact as "(1) reconstructing the context in which the artifact occured, (2) application of the five canons to the artifact, and (3) assessing the impact of the artifact on the audience." It is important that a thorough investigation is given in order to present the facts found in a structured fashion. The audience needs to be persuaded in a thoughtful and charismatic manner. The aftermath of the presentation should also be analyzed to gain an understanding of the full impact achieved. Analyzing an artifact is a crucial and critical process which will inevitably help the progression of the artifact at hand.

3. The textbook lists the five canons of rhetoric as "(1) invention, the location and creation of ideas and materials for the speech, (2) organization, the structure or arrangement of the speech, (3) style, the language of the speech, (4) memory, mastery of the subject matter, which may include the actual memorizing of the speech,and (5) delivery, management of the voice and gestures in the presentation of the speech." The organization of the speech is just as important as the delivery in order for the audience to remember the key points. The creation of the speech must be done keeping in mind that enticing the audience in the main goal. All of these canons must be incorporated in an innovative and creative way in order to produce a successful speech.

Blog 1: Introduction

Hi Everyone! My name is Alexandra and I am a senior at ODU. I am working towards a major in Communications and a minor in English. I am apart of Pi Beta Phi sorority and hope to go to graduate school for Communications. I like Rhetorical Criticism because I feel like it possesses strong elements of philosophy which I find extremely interesting. The purpose of my blog is to explore new thoughts on rhetorical criticism and learn ideas I would have not considered otherwise. I am expecting the assignments given will serve as some sort of online diary where I can present my thoughts and analysis of texts being evaluated. I really hope I introduce just as many new explanations and philosophies in my blog as I learn from the blogs of my classmates. Good luck this semester!