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.