Thesis Statement and Outline

     As of right now, you can find my thesis statement and outline here.


     My thesis statement as of right now is "Through the eyes of director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, we see the foundation of a company crumble beneath its feet, thanks to her delicate and precise use of rhetoric throughout her documentary."

I responded to these three blog; 1), 2), and 3).

Pre-Writing Activities

     For my pre-writing, I utilized SOAPSTone and and observation-inference chart. I extended my SOAPSTone to encompass a more direct view on Gabriela Cowperthwaite and how she voices her viewpoint throughout this documentary. I feel focusing more on the speaker and her audience helps capture the essence of this documentary, and the rhetoric she is trying to achieve. The Observation-inference chart I created by watching the documentary and writing down observations. From there I could utilize the observations made to write down inferences about the documentary. All my pre-writing information can be found on this document.

Personal Response

http://www.blackfishmovie.com/news/

   

      After reading and analyzing #LikeAGirl and HONY in class over the week, I did not feel like I could connect to either piece. I feel like it is not in my place to talk about Always and their audience, as I agree with their cause, that we need to empower young girls as opposed to ostracize them for being who they are. Humans of New York is quite fascinating, however I felt like there was too much information there for me to build an essay on. Therefore, I chose a different topic for my essay. I will be focusing on the documentary Blackfish, which discusses the ethics of marine mammal captivity.
     Personally, I found this documentary eye-opening. First, it exposed something I had never really thought of, are marine mammals really better off in captivity? The film would argue no, while SeaWorld still believed it was better than being in the wild. Second, it allowed me to question both the theme park and the director of the documentary. Which one was really correct? Who had the most accurate information? The answer to these questions are left to your interpretation
     After many debates, all the different articles written by both SeaWorld and Gabriela Cowperthwaite, the OSHA ruling and most recently, the California Legislature movement to ban breeding of marine mammals in captivity, I realized this debate has moved from pertaining to the death of a trainer, to something much greater.
     I felt disgusted, disturbed and most of all, betrayed while viewing this documentary. Growing up, I had gone to SeaWorld, because I loved the ocean and all the creatures that inhabited it. I did not even question the fact that these whales were living in such poor conditions, because I was merely five years old. At this age, I was not questioning the logic or  integrity of a theme park, rather I was just going along for the ride. When a company makes its consumer question their judgement at five years old, it might want to reconsider the product its selling.

HONY Observations/Inference

Observation	Inference
Speaker interested in portraits, he is young and has many motivations	He works well with many types of people, would be great at learning many people's stories.
Sporadic, impulsive, risk-taker, down to earth	Could not hold down traditional job, needed something more organic
Not just pictures of faces	Respecting other individuals preference
Expands past America	Shows us that there are issues on the same scale as New York in other countries.
Draws in a large audience	Audience is excited/ engaged in his photography

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/NYC_Top_of_the_Rock_Pano.jpg/1920px-NYC_Top_of_the_Rock_Pano.jpg

     By far the most interesting part of HONY in my opinion is the stories told. From the portraits, we can assume some things about these people. For instance, anyone dressed in rag clothing and has an unshaved face we may assume is just a homeless person, probably an addict or mentally unstable person. In reality, we are just labeling these people without actually learning about their lives, or their story. Brandon allows for this gap to be filled by sharing their story as well. He also has visited other countries and documented similar stories in Iran and Syria.  If I were to use HONY for my essay, I would analyze Brandon and compare his use of people in Iran to people in New York.

Humans of New York SOAPSTone

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_york_times_square-terabass.jpg

     I am really fascinated by the Humans of New York photo-essay. I have only been to New York once, but I could tell there was a diverse group of people living there. After analyzing a few photographs and reading some biographies, I can confirm this is true. The speaker of HONY is a photographer named Brandon. Brandon is a sporadic, interesting man. He doesn't seem to hold a job well, and enjoys photography. He decided then he would document people living in New York, and blog about it. The occasion of this blog is to allow for the documentation of all different people living in New York. The audience for this blog is people who are fascinated by stories of other people's lives, bloggers, and people who enjoy professional pictures. The purpose of this blog is to keep a record and inform the public about what its like to live in different parts of New York City. It gives you thousands of people, and he has expanded to Iran as well. Its essentially a snapshot into another person's life. The tone of this photo-essay is serious, as many of the people he documents has struggled throughout life.

#LikeAGirl SOAPSTone Essay

https://pixabay.com/get/5dcd0a700bb3e0520a77/1444543442/soap-bar-154036_1280.png?direct

     After I watched #LikeAGirl, this is my analysis of these commercials. The speaker in these commercials is the photojournalist and director Lauren Greenfield. She is known for her many publications about how women are treated in today's culture, from her photo-essay Girl Culture to her documentary Thin. The occasion this is written for is to treat doing something 'like a girl' not as an insult, but rather as something to aspire to. Greenfield makes this point when she asks girls if they want to 'redo' running like a girl. The audience for this commercial is young women, and any women watching the Super Bowl. It has also become a commercial that plays before random YouTube videos, so it has reached all audiences that do not utilize AdBlocker. The purpose of this video is to change the mindset of society, and maybe even making 'run like a girl' synonymous with 'winning the race'. The tone of this commercial is lighthearted, then it becomes very serious. We realize how we treat girls not only effects their outlook on life, but ruins their confidence as well.

Revise and Reflect on Bloomberg's Essay

     I learned a lot from outlining Bloomberg's essay. I learned how to look analytically at a topic, rather than look for the ideas, context and just summarizing what happened. I also learned that it is difficult to recreate a paragraph when you don't have all the information to go off of. I ended up writing a completely different paragraph then the Bloomberg's essay. I also learned through outlining and recreating this paragraph that it is hard to capture the why without having the topic sentence from the paragraph. I had information about what and who this paragraph was about, but the why rhetoric was missing. Thankfully, I get a chance to improve my paragraph and show I have learned something through this exercise.
     Redraft of Bloomberg:
     Lauren Greenfield utilizes the male view as both a vehicle for 'objectification' of women and as a background for the success of these women. For example, in one image we see a tall blonde women walking through the streets of New York. She constantly fights off the men cat calling towards her. Another image shows us men at a toga party reading some risque magazines. Though there are not real women here, the women in the magazines are being objectified. In both of these situations, women are not directly being attacked, rather their integrity is being questioned. Lauren Greenfield's photos allow for us to get a feeling for not only how those women are treated, but a view on why girls act a certain way. If they are only exposed to a sexually charged male atmosphere, than it explains why girls grow up to have body image and other issues in the future.

Group Rhetorical Analysis of Girl Culture

     Rhetorical analysis is a great way to analyze a situation, but can be hard to do alone with a topic as broad as girl culture. Therefore, we analyzed it as group. Our group's summary of the Girl Culture Essay can be found by following this link. I chose to rewrite the paragraph about the objectification of women. In my words, it would have gone something along these lines.

Objectification of Women in Girl Culture

     Even in today's culture, with the forward thinking of the feminist movement and the acceptance of all people, women are still being objectified. It appears to be getting worse as we try to fight for women's rights and level the playing field. Anyone from teenage boys to political candidates will find a way to discredit and dehumanize women, simply because it's still an integrated part of our culture. 

     Don't believe me? Look at the media, movies, TV shows, and especially video games. The Gamer-gate scandal is a prime example of how teenage boys will objectify and dehumanize women, because it is 'funny' and 'just part of society'. Movies like Entourage or TV shows like Game of Thrones sometimes have a way of making women less of an equal, and more of a sexual object. Even people running to be the President of the United States will objectify women, because they feel it helps them bond with their decomposing white male audience. It's sickening, and Lauren Greenfield shows us through her photography how common it is every day.

     Lauren does an excellent job portraying the 'male view' of her subjects. By this, I mean she finds a way to show how girls are being treated, through the eyes of a man. Whether its a tall blonde women walking through New York fighting off men cat calling to her, or teenage boys oggoling over a risque magazine at a party, Lauren shows how men objectify women, instead of respecting them as people. This theme seems to penetrate all walks of life, regardless of how you were raised or which culture you were raised in. 

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SOAPSTone:

     In the paragraphs I rewrote for the analysis of Girl Culture, I utilized SOAPSTone in the following ways. First of all, the speaker I identified was Lauren Greenfield, the photographer. The occasion for this paragraph was women growing up in the late 90's trying to fit in with the United States definition of normal. The audience of these paragraphs are people who recognize the sickening fact of life, that men are objectifying women more and more as life goes on. The purpose of this analysis is to inform the public about the problem of objectifying women. The subject is everyone who objectifies women.  The tone of my paragraph is serious, but not dissertation-level serious. 

I commented on Kat's blog and Kian's blog.

Visual Analysis of a Photo

http://www.instituteartist.com/exhibition-Girl-Culture-Lauren-Greenfield

     For my visual analysis, I chose the picture above as my subject. I thought this photo really portrayed how young women believed they should act as they mature, and how wrong it is of society to push these views onto young girls. 

     First of all, lets look at some visual strategies that Lauren Greenfield used. First, she made sure the angle of this photo was head-on, so we could see the personalities of each girl. They are all framed so one girl is not the center of the attention, but all of their facial expressions are on the same plane. We are supposed to be drawn to their faces, which is dominant in this picture. These girls are just about to go into eighth grade, yet some of them appear ready for high school. The balance feels thrown to the right, as we are drawn to the girl in lavender more because of her interesting choice of facial expressions. The contrast appears to come from the position of the girls and what their dress color is, as the darker colored dresses are on the outside. Everything in this picture appears to be on the same scale, as all the girls are roughly the same height

     Next, I will analyze the photograph itself. I found the most interesting aspect of this picture to be the fact that these girls are all the same age (roughly 13) yet they look like they are all different ages, and at different maturity levels. I believe this is what Lauren wants us to take away, the pressures of society are changing the way young girls who are transitioning into women act and feel about their bodies. I believe this is especially true, because Lauren makes a note to draw our eye to the girls' facial expressions, and especially the two girls on the right. The one in lavender appears 'more mature' than the rest. In contrast, the girl in a high necked, black dress appears offended by the facial expressions of this other girl, and you can see so in her face. The way the balance and framing of the photo plays out helps me determine how these girls are feeling, and how they feel about each other. We all had friends who were more like lavender girl; an early bloomer who believed she was the 'best' at everything. We also had friends that were like white stripe girl; girls who took longer to develop into women, and seemed displeased by this fact. I believe this photo could also be a claim to how puberty and what girls are exposed to during puberty could change the way they perceive and are perceived by other humans. Clearly, some girls get a more sexualized outlook of life, while other girls have a more innocent view on life. 

Optional Blog: Word Cloud

http://worditout.com/word-cloud/make-a-new-one

Unit 1 Reflection

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kitten_and_partial_reflection_in_mirror.jpg

     Monday in Dr. Bell’s class, we reflected on our writing process and how we got to the end result. For me, this was a bumpy road that started off smooth sailing. I learned how to integrate new skills and tools, but also brought my own cards to the table.

     One tool I learned how to use well was Google Scholar. I used this search engine to find about 85% of all my sources. It was so much easier to find articles for a science major than a database like JSTOR, at a fraction of the cost. Another tool I explored was a visual mapping software called draw.io. This website actually helped me in this class, and in Chemistry, so that was a major plus. I know I need to improve my skills when it comes to staying on topic. I felt like my essay was so broad, that I either gave too much information, or just didn’t say enough.

     Communication? That doesn’t occur as often as it should in my field. I learned there is lots of disconnect between the public and scientists, as well as science and ethicists. There is even some disconnect between scientists. I don’t understand how scientists get thing accomplished, because it is nearly impossible for them to keep their stories straight. A lot of the time, it seems like science has a general consensus when it comes to a certain topic, then another group comes around and completely levels the playing field. I find it quite destructive to the community, and it confuses the heck out of the public. 

     I have greatly improved my writing over this one assignment. For one, I stayed on topic more than ever before in this essay. I found it easy to discuss the topic, as well as the rhetoric (or lack thereof) throughout my field. 

     For my next assignment, I plan on staying on top of my blogs all the way through the assignment. That was the hardest thing for me. I don't normally draft, draft, draft, reflect on my drafts, and draft some more. The blog allows for creativity to occur within the weeks before the deadline, not the night of the deadline. I know I can get myself to adapt to this multiple draft writing style, its just something I am not used to. 

     The most important thing I have learned about my writing is that it takes time and effort to develop a well written paper.