Being relatable to the audience (in style, vernacular, and content)
Creating ways for the audience to respond to the text (either through independent actions or feedbacks loops)
Passion on the part of the speaker
Using prominent figure heads or styles to promote the message
having a distinct form of circulation (the internet seems to make this easier.)
However, we have not only seen presentations dealing with texts, but have seen 3 projects that deal with how symbols function and change in the public sphere, and we will actually see another one like this tomorrow. These texts have shown how racial slurs, the word retard, and the image of La Malinche have been used by various texts for various purposes. For example, when Benjamin Franklin was talking about how the ocean currents retard he was expressing something very different than when Jennifer Aniston referred to herself as a retard.
My question for you today lies at the intersection of these two concepts. I want you to pick a word/phrase from the text you discuss in your paper, and show how it helps to connect the audience to the speaker. Then, I want to you think about if the word/phrase would be received the same way, if it was used in a different context. If you were one of the 4 who are tracing symbols, just use a text that uses your symbol for this response. If your primary text does not have words, use scales, instrumentation, or something like that.
While these presentations have all focused on different pieces addressed to different publics, and each presenter focused their presentation differently, there are still a lot of similarities between the presentations. One of the common themes between all of these pieces, and one that I consider worth looking at more in depth, is their focus on why these texts have become popular. To an extent, all of these texts were created to be popular. The speakers fashioned their utterances to appeal not only to a specific subpublic but also to the mass public. In this class, in this blog, and in the presentations, we have discussed the various ways by which speaker's try to make their utterances appealing to the public. My question to you is: which of these texts do you believe to be constructed most successfully to appeal to both the speaker's subpublic and mass public? Please explain your opinion using different ideas that we have covered throughout the semester.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
For tomorrow we were going to read an article by Dominique Mehl titled, "The Public on the Television Screen: Towards a Public Sphere of Exhibition." However, since I pushed back the due date for the final draft of your paper, I decided not to give you the reading; my hope was that instead of reading you would spend this time doing what Ballenger terms "preparing the final manuscript" (211). Nonetheless, I think that any examination of the public sphere, especially any discussion that attempts to understand the essay's relationship to the public, needs to include the work of Mehl. If you are interested in reading the article you can click here.If you are not interested in reading the article, I summarize it below:
Mehl's thesis is most clearly stated at the end of her piece when she says, "Here [on the twenty-first century television screen] public discussion is sustained by private experience; learned arguments are replaced by the recounting of life histories; expression is as important as formulation; the witness takes the place to the expert; exhibition or display rather than demonstration takes pride" (27). What Mehl means in this quote is that television does not focus on rational arguments made by people like sociologists, historians, judges, or journalists; instead the lives of average people, which are given the status of arguments, are put on display for public consumption (22). The public empathizes with these "average people," who Mehl refers to as "witnesses," because they are either representative of the mass public (the average person) or representative of a group (couples in a sexless marriage, alcoholics, teenage mothers). If the audience is able to identify with the witness (perhaps they think that their marriage might be in trouble, were close to becoming a teenage mother, or have issues with addiction in a different form) then the rhetoric jumps from "me" to "us." The audience sees themselves as a part of the same public as the witness.
Mehl explores four interesting effects of this type of public discussion:
The loss of the expert: Since we are getting our information from the personal narratives of private individuals, we have little need for those who "devote their time to making presentation of their knowledge, involving their expertise, defending their ideas and making the case for their positions" (24). Mehl argues that these people take secondary roles to the witness. Further, she argues that since we are so focused on the internal, personal aspects of these arguments that the only experts who are really able to thrive in this environment are psychologists and pseudo-psychologists (think about Dr. Phil, Dr. Drew, and Maury).
It is nearly impossible to argue against the witness: In the classical understanding of the public sphere, ideas, opinions, arguments, and ideologies confronted each other constantly. However, since the public sphere of personal experiences is based on (supposedly) genuine accounts, then it becomes difficult to refute these stories. Mehl shows that we lose rational argument to personalized stories; "'This is what I live' takes the place of 'This is what I think...'" (25).
These programs lead to the emergence of a particularly active public: Though there is little discussion about these personal experiences on the shows, the audience has a tendency to discuss the issues on their own after they turn off the television screen. In the workplace, the home, the playground, the nail salon, the gym, and an indefinite amount of other social spaces, the audience of the witness-based television program argues over the validity what the witness has said. Generally, the audience supports or refutes the values and decisions they have heard on television. Mehl argues that since there is not an absolute social institution forming our identities for us, these discussions of other's personal issues are one of the ways that we form our own identities.
The private/public sphere: Mehl argues that understanding public and private as separate spheres with distinct boarders is inherently flawed. Instead, she says that in the twenty-first century we should see publicness as processes by which people attempt to keep some things open and other things intimate. For Mehl, in the twenty-first century what an individual chooses to keep private and what one wants to keep intimate are completely up to his/her discretion.
My questions to you are these: Do you believe that "exhibition" is the new form of public discourse? Is this a good thing, a bad thing, or a mute point? Finally, if Mehl's model is how the public now communicates should experts/academics/intellectuals embrace this mode of discussion, push against it, or is there another option?
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Students,
I do not want to distract you too much from working on your paper. So, please respond to this post with your favorite color, and get back to working on that final draft.
-Mr. Harley
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
NOTE: THIS IS THE BLOG POST FOR THE WEEK TO BE RESPONDED TO BEFORE CLASS ON MONDAY. THE DAILY CLASSES WILL BE POSTED ABOVE BEFORE THEIR RESPECTIVE CLASS TIMES.
The essay we read for this week is particularly complex; Warner jumps from a discussion of stylistics (common language, defamiliarization, precision, and opacity), to a problematizing of the public intellectual (is the public intellectual actually a part of the public? ),to a description of three different types of discussions by which publics exchange ideas and ideals (polemics, problematization, and journalistic style), and finally ends by saying that changing how publics function is difficult because "it is a way of imagining a speech for which there is yet no scene, and a scene for which their is no speech."
While the entire essay is fascinating, I am realizing that I cannot, in one blog post, discuss all of the issue that he tackles in this chapter. Instead, I need to focus my efforts to one of the above sections, and since you are all burgeoning scholars (at the very least being doused into the academy for the next four years), I figured that a discussion of the function of the public intellectual might be the most beneficial to you.
Warner's discussion of public intellectuals begins with by showing the traditional understanding of the term, which he defines as a group of experts who reach a mass audience and guide their audience towards the right/just/prudent political path. For Warner, this conception is flawed. Warner argues that by virtue of their "expert status" (if they are in fact experts on the particular topic being discussed) intellectuals cannot be a part of the public.
Warner states that "expert knowledge is in an important way nonpublic: its authority is external to the discussion. It can be challenged only by other experts, not within the discourse of the public itself" (145). For Warner, experts work in a type of meta-public that is not really a part of the public (think about how in class we discussed scholarly secondary sources as existing in a meta-discourse, in which they write about what is being discussed in the public of which our primary sources are a part.) Finally, Warner asserts that even if public intellectuals could enter into public discussion, there is no reason to believe that they would be more effective than anyone else (147).
Of course, for intellectuals this is a scary proposition. First, in the type of publics that Warner describes the intellectual seems impotent. The intellectual has the ability to discuss political issues, but she is unable to influence the public discussion. Even if she could enter the discussion, there is no guarantee that her voice would be any more important than any other voice, since publics aren't based on rational critical debate but are instead based on "uptake, citation, and recharacterization" (145).
In class recently, we discussed the absence of intellectuals in the public sphere. However, we did talk about the diffusion of intellectual ideas through others in the public, which (when viewed from a certain light, while squinting) looks like intellectuals are actually influencing the public.
Of course, this entire argument really hinges on how the word intellectual is defined; a definition that Warner does not provide us with. Despite the unclear definition of intellectual, it seems that Warner uses the term primarily to talk about academics and those who work in think tanks--what he calls the "professional class of intellectuals" (147). I think it could be argued that there are other intellectuals who are reaching the public. As usual, lets explore this idea by looking at some music videos.
I would first like to look at "Prison Song" by System of a Down from their 2001 album Toxicity in which they criticize the war on drugs and the prison industrial complex:
Of course we can't just look at this utterance on its own, but should see this as a part of a public conversation, let's look at "Get By" by Talib Kweli from his 2002 album Quality. This song seems to deal with the same issue as System, but in a way that seems a bit more holistic:
Still, this does not exhaust the amount songs about the prison industrial complex and what many believe are the social problems that it attempts to sweep under the rug. The song "Money" by the band Choking Victim on their 1999 album No Gods No Managers. Is an interesting take on the issue being discussed. This song is particularly interesting because of the introduction by the famous public intellectual Michael Parenti:
So here we have three artists who, in the early 2000s, were discussing political issues in a very public manner, the question is: are these artists intellectuals? As an aside, I am also curious if you believe that the American academic still has a place in the public sphere.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
As I was reading the Ballenger text for this week, I began to realize that the skills required to make serious, meaningful revisions to our own texts are the same skills required to do serious, meaningful critical readings of the works of others. When we are looking critically at our sources, we are investigating what the purpose of the work is, why it matters, and what the thesis is. In short, the skills needed for good reading are the same skills needed for good writing.
Following our idea that we can use music as texts, I wondered if I could break down a song in the same manner that Ballenger tells us to break down our own essays. Here is my attempt with the song "We Used to Vacation" by the band Cold War Kids on their 2006 EP Up in Rags:
While I think that the song is up to personal interpretation, I would say that the purpose of this song, not explicitly stated, is to explore the painful effects of alcoholism on both the individual and his family. I would say that the song becomes relevant to me (has a "so what" as Ballenger would say) because it helps me see what I've seen before in a way that I haven't, and it moves me emotionally. However, I would say that the way this song is most interesting to me is because there are very few remorseful songs about alcoholism told from the alcoholic's point of view. Finally, I would say that the main point of this song is to show how addictive alcohol can be, through the narrator's constant want for a drink and attempts to justify his drinking.
I think I did pretty well using a song as a text, and critically reading it for global issues. I bet I could take this a step farther and explore the organization of the song, in the same way that you will be doing for your reverse outline. The song starts with a day in the life of the speaker in which we see him drinking and the negative effects this has on his family. The audience needs the description given in the first verse in order for the bridge, where the speaker attempts to play down the awfulness of the story, to make any sense. The refrain takes us away from the speaker's justifications, and focuses on his family, who is so hurt by his actions that they have made him promise to stop drinking. However, the end of the refrain, with the repetition of "this will all blow over in time," returns to the speakers attempt to downplay his actions. The second verse is the speaker again trying to justify himself as a good person, while simultaneously showing how normal his life is. We then go back to the refrain, but this time with the inclusion of the "accident" and the alcohol anonymous "meetings," which highlight the severity of the issue. I believe that the text is organized this way to make the audience slowly aware of the problems the speaker has caused, which makes the topic easier to deal with, and allows us to feel sympathy for the speaker and not just see him as a villain.
Here, using the same strategies Ballenger provides for revision, I was able to critically read a text. These skills are not only helping me to become a better writer, they are helping me to become a better reader as well. For this post, I would like you to exercise your critical reading skills. I will not ask you to outline a song, in the same way I did. Instead, I am asking you to choose one of the three songs below; show the purpose, "so what," and thesis of that song; and provide some justifications as to how you came to the conclusions you did.
Before I get into this post, I want talk about the expectations for this week's blog. Since we are on spring break next week, I do not expect you to comment by 3/18. Instead, you have until 3/25 to reply to this post. Also, as I promised, here is a link for the Radiolab episode that you are supposed to listen to for class tomorrow.
As for this week's blog post, I think the idea that publics create a worldview is fantastic. The reason I like this idea is because it goes farther than just the argument or purpose of a piece; this section of Warner's essay says that the terms we use, who we reference, the audience we address, how we circulate ideas, our style, and many more factors all come together to influence how we view our world and how we understand our place in it. Of course, I am using the word "we" here not just to refer to us as authors, but to us members of (a) public(s). For example, let's take the song "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore on his 2012 album The Heist.
Of course there is a lot to say about this video, but I am just going to hit some of the highlights. First off the style sets Macklemore in the public of youth culture immediately. The dance beat and the standard hip-hop rhythms make this song seem really accessible via its style. Further, use of words like "pop some tags" and "come up" show him as part of this particular public. The references in this song are interesting because they are mostly set in the past, but for his audience this is a shared past. The idea is that his audience is familiar with what John Wayne looks like, remembers R. Kelly's sex scandal, and remembers a time when Velcro sneakers were popular. What's interesting here is that Macklemore uses his language very skillfully to set himself into a particular public and genre, but he then critiques that same culture in his song.
This song exemplifies how, even if the argument of a text is counter to the general consensus of a public, it can still demonstrate that it shares the worldview of that public. The idea that style is a self-created, unique expression of the individual that cannot be mimicked by buying expensive, brand named items flies in the face of artists like Gucci Mane (whose named after a brand), Nelly (who wrote entire songs about a type of shoe), and Kanye West (who doesn't rap "to push a fucking Rav-4"). Compared to these other artists, Macklemore almost seems like a Marxist when he says that buying a fifty dollar shirt is "getting tricked by a business." Despite this difference in his argument, Macklemore still shares the fun, care-free, confident worldview that says that young people can improve their station in the world (if not the world in general). In short, though Macklemore's argument might not seem to fit into the public, his worldview (as seen by his vernacular, medium, genre, and audience) does fit into that public.
In Publics and Counterpublics, Warner goes on to show that utterances in a dominant public can take this "lifeworld" or worldview for granted, "misrecognizing the indefinite scope of their expansive address as universality or normalcy" (122). This is different from counterpublic utterances "in which it is hoped that the poesis of scene making will be transformative, not replicative merely" (122). In short, dominant publics can keep producing the same style because they want to keep the same general worldview; counterpublics use different styles because they want to see the worldview altered. To test this idea, let's look at a song from the number one selling record in the country: "When I was Your Man" by Bruno Mars off of his 2013 album Unorthodox Jukebox:
The issue of worldview gets a bit complicated when discussing these two songs because Mars' lyrics are focused on sense and Le Butcherrettes' lyrics are less so. What I mean is, as Warner would phrase it, Bruno Mars' lyrics can be "summarizable" (115), while Le Butcherettes are more focused on "the poetic-expressive dimensions of language" (116).
My questions to you are these:
1.) While it is obvious that the arguments of these songs are different, how are their worldviews different (or are they)?
