Blog
November 12, 2019
A question that I have surrounding my thesis statement is whether or not it is specific enough. I want to look at the role of animals in Disney films yet I wonder if it is necessary to specify one film rather than the whole lot of films. I do not feel that my thesis statement would change if I were to make this adjustment yet it might change the way I do research and what is available on the topic.
November 7, 2019
Disney films have created a mindset about animals that animals should only be regarded as precious and vulnerable creatures because they are often represented in films without portraying death, raw instincts, and as defenseless beings creating a society which finds all animal-related practices cruel.
October 8, 2019
Background: knowing the background of mercury poisoning, as revealed in the 7th episode, makes us re-read, reevaluate, and reinterpret what we learned and read in earlier episodes. We are able to give certain behaviors and events cause and reason now understanding that it is because of his ailment.
October 1, 2019
Two terms that are connected are background and foreground. These terms can apply to many different facets of a book, movie, podcast, etc. The background are those events and characters that occur but are not necessarily the main event, or main focus. The foreground are the main characters and events, the key players. I feel it is often the background that helps bring the foreground to light and accentuate the details of the these characters and events. Both help build a story and contribute to a given plot, simply in different ways.
September 24, 2019
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From Pope, the terms author and authority apply to episode 3. These are applicable to me because Brian has control over both of these throughout the entire S-Town series. He is able to "author" the story of S-Town through how he portrays each individual throughout the podcast and it the one making decisions about what events are emphasized and minimized. Brian also is the main authority figure because he is making cuts and edits of dialogue, presumably leaving lots of information out that may not seem important to him but, in fact, are.
September 19, 2019
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Gaps and silences stood out to me in this section of lexicon reading. I think this term is really interesting because it is recognizing that not everything may be expressly written in a story/article/poem/etc. so that you may create meaning in these gaps and silences. I feel that when some of a written piece is left to the reader's imagination, they are more likely to connect with the text and find residual meaning within.
September 17, 2019
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The connections that I am starting to make in episode 2 is that it is a trend for society to be unaware of mental illnesses and rather dismissive of the signs, some areas in the country are neglected and because of such seem to be stuck in a different time, and that not everything is what it may seem to be at face value.
September 12, 2019
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The contemporary approach which I find most appealing from Pope is the gender and feminist theory. Both of these heavily influence the lens through which we view different situations and I find it interesting how this can skew someones view of a specific situation. We see the role of gender a lot in older texts and the voice of the male in text as they were the only ones who were participating in law, government, and the majority of academia. For my future career, I want to go into either sales or communications, both which gender can effect as there is bias towards both male in female in such roles.
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I would be interested to analyze textbooks and how the admittance/omittance of information was influenced by the gender of the author.
September 10, 2019
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From a "new critic" perspective, I would look closely into the culture of the town. It is noted multiple times that there are racist undertones, some in plain sight, that would not be acceptable anywhere else in the country. I would look at how these symbols play into John and the ways in which Brian reacts to them as he is seeing them for himself.
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As a formalist, focusing on the structure of S-Town, I would look at the tone Brian creates with his side comments and the blurbs when he explains what is going on in John's stories.
September 5, 2019
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Notice: The first thing that I noticed when listening to S-Town episode 1 was the accent of John.
Pattern: A pattern that stood out to me was that John mentioned numerous times he would get depressed when he was not emailing Brian.
Contrast: There was contrast in the episode when John took Brian into the labyrinth and couldn't find a way out. This contrasts with the way John is usually portrayed: in control and hyper-aware of what is going on around him.
Feeling: The overall feeling of the episode was that John was all over the place, overwhelmingly negative about his live, and hiding something from Brian.
September 3, 2019
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In response to reading Rob Pope and viewing the video, The History of English in 10 Minutes, it seems to me that both share a similar view of "Englishes." Both mediums touched on the origins of language and how we came to be a speaking, reading, and writing species. Pope, however, viewed the origins of language as a means to become more in-tune to the text and become more critical of what we are consuming. On the other hand, The History of English in 10 Minutes delved more into how the origins of language stem from a mix of cultures. The video walked us through this history in a chronological order from the creation of the anglo-saxon language branch to modern day linguistics. Something that stood out to me in this video was when it was mentioned that "Shakespeare himself created over 2000 words." While both touched on the where language comes from, the two mediums differed most in that they offered different viewpoint on how we use language today.