TOW #13: Führer Humor: The Art of the Nazi Comedy

Many a user of YouTube has seen a parody meme that goes something like this: a scene from the German movie Downfall, a biopic about the last days of Hitler, depicts an enraged Hitler screaming in fury over Nazi failures; however, the subtitles are parodied to make it seem as if Hitler is screaming about late pizza, learning Santa isn't real, or any number of ridiculous topics. This lampooning of the genocidal dictator has become commonplace in the decades following WWII, and is seen as a "defanging" of the Nazi regime. However, turning one of the most insidious leaders in history into a joke has its detriments according to Atlantic writer Daniel Gross. Following the release of a German Hitler comedy, Look Who's Back, Gross argues that while seemingly harmless in nature, these comedies dehumanize the atrocities committed by Hitler. 

As early as Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator Hitler has been the butt of comedic ridicule as society tries to demystify Hitler and reinforce the fact that Nazism was defeated. However, Gross argues that this demystification has distanced society from recognizing the magnitude of Hitler's atrocities. To prove this point, Gross effectively presents a counterargument and then refutes that counterargument in order to develop an objective and analytical view that proves to the viewer that Hitler's lampooning detracts from society's admission of his horrendous acts. Gross explains how this lampooning can be good, saying "Every time Hitler dies on a movie screen, every time he's reduced to a pathetic and bumbling fool, society reasserts its loathing for Nazism. Films that ridicule past injustice can help distance society from a history we’d rather not repeat". However, he then asserts that this distancing from history can be too effective: "But that distance is also the key disadvantage of Nazi slapstick. When audience members laugh at The Great Dictator or parodies of Downfall, it can become harder to imagine the thoughts or motivations of actual Nazis". Through juxtaposing his counterargument with his refutation, he not only establishes ethos as a level headed source, but logically conveys to the reader that Hitler comedies have good intentions but detrimental effects. In doing this, Gross shows us that while we must distance ourselves from the horrors of the past, we must not go too far or else we are doomed to repeat. 

TOW #12: IRB "War"

War is a concept that is almost incomprehensible to those who have never experienced it first hand. It matters not how many times someone has seen Saving Private Ryan or American Sniper; ultimately, war is still fantasized and glorified to them. One might think that they have a good idea of the PTSD and mental trauma that soldiers experience, but they never will until they find themselves in a firefight. Sebastian Jungr, author of the critically acclaimed and harrowing nonfiction account Into the Storm takes on the challenge of portraying the effects of war in their most raw state in his book War, an account of his time in the Korengal valley of Afghanistan while on assignment from magazine Vanity Fair in 2007. In this book, Jungr does not glorify the valor and courage of war but rather presents it at face value in its rawest form. In doing this, he uses extremely vivid and lifelike imagery to thrust the reader into the real world of war and its barbaric, dehumanizing nature.


Written for the American whose only exposure to war has been in the form of TV, movies, or short news clips, Jungr's main purpose in writing War is to objectively expose average Americans to the harrowing nature of war. Jungr spent varying increments of time over two years in the Korengal valley with American soldiers at the extremely remote and constantly imperiled Restrepo Outpost. His accounts of the constant threat of Taliban insurgency are extremely detailed and tense, and he perfectly encapsulates the constant state of heightened anxiety that the soldiers in Korengal constantly experienced. In one expository passage, Jungr's imagery perfectly encapsulates the constant grinding stress that the soldiers of the Korengal endure: "First Squad goes thirty-eight days without taking a shower or changing their clothes, and by the end their uniforms are so impregnated with salt that they can stand up by themselves. The men's sweat reeks of ammonia because they've long since burned off all their fat and are now breaking down muscle.  There are wolves up in the high peals that howl at night and mountain lions that creep through the KOP looking for food [...] one species of bird sounds exactly like incoming rocket propelled grenades; the men call them "RPG birds" and can't keep themselves from flinching whenever they hear them" (Jungr 53). This exhaustive passage, a passage fraught with tormenting imagery, takes the reader right to the heart of the Korengal. The reader feels as if they are there themselves, waiting in a constant state of fear and exhaustion for the next RPG to soar past the outpost, or worse, hit it. Jungr's imagery appeals heavily to the reader's sense of sympathy as it creates a feeling of constant suspense that could be cut with a knife, or the gunfire of a Taliban sniper. The reader is easily able to see how soldiers are in a constant state of mental and physical stress, and this reveals to the reader that soldiers are in a much worse state than short apathetic news clippings and movie glorifications admit. Jungr shows us that war is not a fantasy of valor and heroics, but instead a purgatory--constantly waiting for hell to erupt.

TOW #11: The Genius of Star Wars

There is something about the substance Star Wars that makes it so recognizable that at the first screech of a passing TIE fighter or the blaring horn section of John Williams sprawling score the viewer knows exactly where they are and where they are going. This familiarity, a kind of nostalgia comparable to coming home to the same smells and sounds of childhood but for millions around the world, is the biggest challenge facing J.J. Abrams and the team taking on the franchise's newest reboot, The Force Awakens. With the movie set to release in mid-December, seasoned TIME Magazine entertainment writer Lev Grossman explores what has been called "The Star Wars vernacular" and argues that J.J. Abrams has not only achieved creating this vernacular but has brought it into the light of the 21 century.

Star Wars is perhaps one of the most widely known and beloved franchises in the history of motion pictures. This worldwide love of the classic space opera is what creates such an exacting pressure for the new franchise to deliver the same phenomena that the original trilogy did. In his essay, somewhat of an attempt to assuage the fears old fans have about the new movie's merit, Grossman uses comparison and juxtaposition of the new movie to the original trilogy in order to show that The Force Awakens does indeed live up to its momentous expectations. Grossman follows a pattern of first stating facets of the original trilogy that distinguished it stylistically as a film, saying of the original "One of the eternal mysteries of Star Wars is that it looks like science fiction, with robots and lasers and such, but at the same time it's set far in the past and has the dustiness and feel of ancient history" and then following up with how the new movie holds true to this style, saying that Abrams intended the new movie to "have a history that stretched back before the start of the movie. [That] it was the weat and tear that was on a particular ship or a droid, all of these things implied this very rich history from which the story came". Through comparing how Abrams kept true to the extremely specific stylistic details of the original movie, Grossman shows how The Force Awakens lives up to the original movie's vernacular. However, Grossman also juxtaposes the new and the old, showing how The Force Awakens has a more modern spin by saying that the old movies were essentially "a movie about white men fighting to regain their rightful position as rulers" whereas with the new "the cast alone is more diverse" and "women figure in a more dynamic, physically powerful capacity". Through juxtaposing the outmoded parts of the old movies with the progressive additions to The Force Awakens, Grossman shows how Abram's was able to reconcile the essence of the original films with modern day sentiments. Thus, Grossman shows that while some things have changed in a galaxy far, far, away, to the delight of the viewer many things will remain just the same.

TOW #10: The Silicon Valley Suicides

Times have changed in high schools. Whereas adolescence used to be associated with rebellion and carelessness, it is now associated with high expectations, stress, anxiety, and depression. Especially in affluent high schools, students are continually becoming more unstable as the pressure to do well is piled on from peers, parents, and students themselves. Hannah Rosin, national correspondent for The Atlantic and author of the book The End of Man, takes on this topic in her investigative essay "The Silicon Valley Suicides". In this piece, Rosin analyzes the negative implications of overachievement by focusing on a cluster of suicides in highly affluent Palo Alto, California. She uses poignant anecdotes from former students who dealt with academic pressure in order to show that the pressure to succeed in affluent areas has created a toxic culture of depression amongst adolescents.

Rosin writes her essay to the unknowing parents of stressed out students, who unconsciously catalyze the ideology amongst students that success is the only option. Rosin argues that despite positive reinforcement, achievement based parenting is still detrimental to the mental health of teens. After delving into the lives of many of the afflicted former students of the Silicon Valley area, she deduces that parenting where achievement is seen as the only justification of parental satisfaction is extremely damaging to students. She argues that this causes students to think that success is the only way to gain approval from their parents. To support this claim, and her main claim that the culture of achievement has created and extremely depressed group of teens, she uses heart wrenching anecdotes from students who suffered from achievement based depression. One such anecdote is of former student Taylor Chiu, who said that after an academically drowning semester that she wished "that someone had broken up with her, or that she was anorexic, or that she had some reason to explain to her parents why she felt so sad." and that  "She didn’t want to ask for a break, she said, because people would think she was lazy. “But having a mental disorder? That’s serious. People would listen to that.” It would be, she thought, like a man being held back from a fight: He would never have to admit he couldn’t win" (Rosin). Through including Taylor's anecdote, Rosin is able to aptly embody what goes through the minds of stressed students. Her inclusion of the last metaphor, relating Chiu's unwillingness to quit to a man being held back from a fight, especially encapsulates the mindset of students who believe there is literally no other option but success. 

Thus, Rosin adeptly shows parents how the values which they covet so much--studiousness, intelligence, overachievement--are making their kids absolutely miserable. Rosin's essay is heart breaking and revealing. After reading, it leaves the reader with a sense of bitter irony; that good intentions and dreams of the best success are what are slowly killing students. 

TOW #9: Visual Text

There have always been two definitive parties within American politics, whether it be federalists and antifederalists or democrats and republicans, there have always been parties representing two different sides of the political spectrum. However, in recent years it has been more common to see smaller more radical factions developing within the two larger fundamental parties. This is topic of seasoned political cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune Scott Stantis's September 2010 cartoon, The Tea Party. In this cartoon, aimed at the average American voter, Stantis uses juxtaposition to show how the Tea Party had become a large burden on the Republican party.
This visual text depicts a fiery young girl demanding that a large, seemingly bewildered elephant drink his tea at her tea party. However, on a deeper level, this humorous cartoon jabs at the American right wing political faction: The Tea Party. The elephant, the symbol of the GOP, represents the Republican Party. The little girl represents the Tea Party: a radically conservative (perhaps that is an oxymoron) faction of the Republican party. In this cartoon the Tea Party is depicted as having a comical control over the larger, yet scared, Republican party. Stantis shows this through his juxtaposition of the little girl and the large elephant. The large elephant would seemingly be stronger than the little girl, reflecting on how the Republican party should be stronger than the grass roots Tea Party. However, the little girl appears to be extremely loud and demanding, whereas the elephant is passive. This comparison of the small but verbose Tea Party to the powerful but easily cowed elephant shows how the Tea Party is able to control and hinder the Republican party despite its power. Thus, Stantis's comical juxtaposition effectively shows the absurdity of the fact that the small Tea Party is deeply and negatively affecting the larger Republican Party.

IRB Intro Post 2: War

For my second independent reading book I will be reading War by Sebastian Junger. This book was recommended to me by a fellow friend and classmate, who said that the book read like a narrative and was very fast paced, which are qualities I tend to look for in a book. The book, written by Sebastian Junger (Author of the famous book Into the Storm), focuses on the time Junger spent as a journalist in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan with U.S. troops. It follows the American soldiers through their harrowing experiences, and shows war from an objective point of view. I was especially interested in this book after realizing it was the text that corresponded with the documentary Restrepo, one of the rawest and most moving documentaries I have ever seen. I am very much looking forward to reading this book, and am interested in seeing the un-romanticized and un-hollywood aspects of war.

TOW #8: IRB Please Kill Me (2/2)

The first half of the book Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain focuses on the early roots of the Punk movement, as well as the burgeoning careers of many Punk symbols such as Iggy Pop and the Ramones. The second half of the book does the opposite: it focuses on the fall. While the book in its entirety is an amalgamation of the chaos that made up the Punk movement, the last half seemingly acts as the swan song to a movement that could never be maintained. McNeil and McCain artfully show--rather than tell--the labyrinthine odyssey of punk, drawing on their first hand experiences as pioneers in the movement: McNeil was the first to coin the term "Punk". They present the chronology of punk as a linear narrative not told by the authors themselves, but rather through first hand accounts from the punk symbols themselves in order to create a feeling that resembles that of a documentary. Through the use of these varied snippets of first hand accounts, McNeil and McCain are able to skillfully convey to the reader that the chaos that birthed the punk movement was also responsible for its death. As the first hand accounts of punk lead the reader down a path of sex, drugs, nihilism and insanity, the instability of those involved becomes evident. There was no unifying mantra or code amongst the vast and varied subgroups of punk, only a common sense of rebellion. This is expertly exemplified through the carefully chosen first hand account of Jeff Magnum, bassist of the band The Dead Boys. When recounting an extremely tumultuous encounter with law enforcement, he says "All I wanted to do was play the base real loud. I didn't want to hang out with these maniacs. Jesus what is this" (323). What prompted this outburst were the actions of bandmate Cheetah Chrome, who "threw a bunch of shit out a window and called the cops" (324) and said "'Come get me. I'm mental. Please come and get me'" (324). Magnum was further baffled by these actions, and said "I'm on mars. This can't be right. This can't be the way you're supposed to be in a band" (325). Through including this first hand account, McNeil and McCain show the chaos and disparity that plagued Punk bands. Magnum's description of his bandmate's crazed behavior and his obvious disapproval of it shows how the punk movement had no linearity, and that there was extreme polarization amongst those involved. Thus, McNeil and McCain showed how this polarization would crumble the punk movement as fast as it was built. McNeil and McCain's hands off approach to Please Kill Me in this way accurately epitomizes the rise and inevitable fall of punk culture.

TOW #7: Pond Scum: Henry David Thoreau's Moral Myopia

Walden Pond is one of the best known works of American Literature. The book, written by celebrated author Henry David Thoreau, focuses on the benefits of embracing wilderness, solitude and simplicity. It is seen as a keystone in the mythos of America's "Great Outdoors" and is a common read for many high school students. However, as Kathryn Shulz--writer for the New Yorker and Pew Research Journalism laureate--points out, Thoreau's Walden Pond might not have been as idyllic as the American nature lover might think. In "Pond Scum" Kathryn Schulz explores Thoreau's most famous work, as well as opinions of his contemporaries, to reveal the darker side of Thoreau. Using his own quotes as well as those of his friends, Schulz argues that Thoreau was not a champion of nature and living the simple life but rather an egotistical, narcissistic, self absorbed nihilist. Schulz's criticism is intended to be read for the modern American who is familiar with the works of Thoreau, but not necessarily educated in Thoreau's personal life or the deeper implications of his works. Due to this, Schulz juxtaposes Thoreau's reality to that which he fabricates in Walden Pond to discredit the idea that he is a paragon of simplicity and environmental virtue. For example, in order to paint Thoreau as a pompous and condescending hypocrite, she fleshes out all of his exacting standards of living without luxuries only to point out how some of his descriptions in Walden Pond might have been slightly blurred. She says "In reality, Walden Pond in 1845 was scarcely more off the grid, relative to contemporaneous society, than Prospect Park is today. The commuter train to Boston ran along its southwest side; in summer the place swarmed with picnickers and swimmers, while in winter it was frequented by ice cutters and skaters. He also fails to mention weekly visits from his mother and sisters (who brought along more undocumented food) and downplays the fact that he routinely hosted other guests as well—sometimes as many as thirty at a time. This is the situation Thoreau summed up by saying, 'For the most part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. . . . At night there was never a traveller passed my house, or knocked at my door, more than if I were the first or last man.'" By juxtaposing Thoreau's reality with his impossible fabricated realities, Schulz shows not only how the values that Thoreau preached so pompously to his "lessers" were unrealistic and impossible to obtain, but also that Thoreau could not keep to the morals which he himself fabricated. Through this juxtaposition, Schulz shows that Thoreau was not a god but rather a charlatan and a hypocrite.

TOW #6: We count pitches to save arms, It;s time to track hits to save lives.

High school football is an American institution. Where quarterbacks are lauded as high school heroes, and Friday nights are dominated by high school showdowns for many a Middle American town, football reigns supreme in the American high school hierarchy. That being said, as of late this fall tradition has come under fire for its blatant disregard for the safety of its players as traumatic brain injuries become more and more common on the football scene. Senior sports writer for TIME Magazine Sean Gregory takes on this topic as he argues for the implementation of preventative measures that would in theory reduce the devastating brain injuries that mar the face of American football. In his op-ed, Gregory argues that much like the pitch counting in baseball to preserve the pitcher's arm, football should implement "hit counting" where the number of hits to the head of a player are counted in order to potentially prevent brain injury. As he argues to his audience of football watching Americans that it is necessary for these precautions to be implemented, he effectively uses statistics and comparisons to prove his point. When speaking on the magnitude of head injuries amongst football players, he says "Last month, the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University said 87 of 91 brains of deceased NFL players showed signs of CTE, a devastating neurological disease believed to result from blows to the head" (para 10). Through this statistic and others throughout the text, Gregory appeals to the reader's sense of logos by supporting his assertion that traumatic brain injury in football is a large problem with facts from credible sources. He also compares football hit counts to baseball pitch counts, showing how it is nonsensical that football does not count hits when baseball pitches are counted--and pitch counts protect arms not lives. This comparison once again appeals to logos and shows to the reader that it is obvious and logical for a hit count system to be implemented in high school and professional level football.

TOW #5: Visual Text

In this visual text, a U.S. propaganda poster from World War One, one can see the extremely patriotic and sometimes far reaching nature of wartime propaganda in the early twentieth century. The poster, not necessarily authored but instead published by the United States Treasury Department, shows its bias in authorship through its creation by a government agency for government motivations. The poster was created in 1918 as the United States entered the First World War. Like any country in a time of war, the United States was in need of support from all of its citizens, men and women alike, and in this case was in need of monetary support. Monetary support in this poster would appear to come in the form of War Savings Stamps, stamps marketed to the common American that supported the military and that could be transferred into war bonds. This advert targets women of the United States as its audience, and its purpose is to convince women to buy war bonds by means of showing how ordinary women could "save" their country by doing so. In order to do this, the poster ineffectively employs a comparison of Joan of Arc to average American women in a way that seems forced and unintentionally comical. The text on the poster reads "Joan of Arc saved France--Women of America save your country--Buy War Savings Stamps" and has a picture of a woman in armor who is assumedly Joan of Arc. The comparison is lack luster and stretched at best, comparing two completely unrelated things under the pretext that they both involve women and war. The image Joan of Arc as a strong female war figure and comparison of her to every day Americans attempts to invoke feelings of female patriotism, but it falls flat as Joan of Arc is an outmoded and French, not American, example of female empowerment. In addition to the out of touch use of Joan of Arc, the fact that the image is used to show how women could be similar to her by buying stamps is even more outrageous. Joan of Arc "saved" her country through her religious fervor and questionable military knowledge (she was fourteen, she couldn't know much) while women of American can "save" (according to the poster) their country by buying stamps. The fact that America was not in need of saving at the time of this poster (America was not under attack during WWI) as well as the fact that stamps could not save America in general, shows that this poster is overreaching in its abilities and comically bombastic in its claims, and thus ineffective in its use of rhetoric to serve its purpose.

TOW #4: IRB "Please Kill Me"

Please Kill Me: An Oral History of Punk, is exactly as its name would imply. It is an oral history, written through alternating interviews with first hand witnesses of the punk movement, that captures the crazed, strung out, nihilistic conundrum of the 1970s punk movement. The book, written by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, gains credibility through the fact that its central narratives are told by the narrative's subject's themselves, as interviewed by McNeil and McCain, who are also first hand participants of the movement as writers for Punk and Spin magazines. The book begins by following the eclectic projects of Andy Warhol in the late 1960s, as he launched the first wave of avant garde counter culture with Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground. The book then proceeds to follow various famous (and infamous) punk figures such as Iggy Pop, Jim Morrison and the Ramones from Hippy and Beatnik culture to the advent of punk, showing the reader the unbelievable dysfunctionality that enabled punk to gain its iconic insanity.
The book, written with a sense of 20-20 hindsight by those who were making extremely bad decisions in their punk youth, is written for those who were involved in the time period as well as the new youths whose vices are relatively mild compared to those of the punk era. With this audience in mind, the authors intend to show to the reader that this defining era in pop culture was born out of dissidence, chaos, and no real unifying movement. The authors prove this through their style of using juxtaposed polarizing opinions of those they have interviewed to show how there was no order during the time. For example, when speaking on the unhinged lifestyle of Doors frontman Jim Morrison, some acquaintances of had extremely opposing opinions on the famed musician. Ray Manzarek, Doors keyboardist fondly said "Jim was a shaman" (McNeil McCain 31), while (juxtaposed directly below Manzarek's opinion) record executive Danny Fields said "Jim Morrison was a callous asshole, an abusive, mean person" (McNeil McCain 31). Through this inclusion and juxtaposition of a spectrum of views on the punk era, the authors reveal how the punk movement was less of a movement and more of a gathering of extremely different groups with one common love of chaos. Thus, the authors effectively prove their purpose that the punk era was extremely chaotic and disconnected.

TOW #3: The Coddling of the American Mind

The Coddling of the American Mind is an article written for the magazine The Atlantic by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. The article comprehensively describes and analyzes what the authors believe is a growing problem within the United State's collegiate academia: overwhelming hypersensitivity to "microagressions". The authors define microagressions as "anything that can be perceived as discriminatory on virtually any basis" and use common psychological theories to describe how the overzealous condemnation of people for committing microagressions has created a toxic environment within America's universities. The author's establish their credibility early on, describing themselves as "a constitutional lawyer and the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends free speech and academic freedom on campus, and has advocated for students and faculty involved in many of the incidents this article describes; [and] a social psychologist who studies the American culture wars". The authors wrote this essay, the cover story for the September 2015 issue of The Atlantic, in response to growing polarization on college campuses as college students accuse fellow students and faculty of minuscule microagressions, such as one case at UCLA where students staged a protest against a professor after he told a student to uncapitalize the word "indigenous" (the student said it offended their ideology). Throughout the text, the authors appeal to logos within the audience (the American public and more specifically college communities) through expertly applying the rhetorical modes of cause and effect and definition. They start each section by defining a term such as trigger warnings, microagression, labeling, and magnification, and then exploring how each term factors into the culture of offense within college circles. This helps appeal to logos as the reader follows a cohesive and reasonable breakdown of the psychological and mental causes for the new trend. For example, the authors define "trigger warnings" by characterizing them as "The idea that words (or smells or any sensory input) can trigger searing memories of past trauma—and intense fear that it may be repeated" and then describing how this has affected the recent college culture by saying "explicit trigger warnings are believed to have originated much more recently, on message boards in the early days of the Internet [...] Search-engine trends indicate that the phrase broke into mainstream use online around 2011, spiked in 2014, and reached an all-time high in 2015. The use of trigger warnings on campus appears to have followed a similar trajectory; seemingly overnight, students at universities across the country have begun demanding that their professors issue warnings before covering material that might evoke a negative emotional response". Through this use of definition and cause-and-effect, the authors effectively appeal to the reader's sense of logos, thus achieiving their purpose of showing the reader how excessive coddling and hypersensitivity in universities is detrimentally affecting the academic freedoms and mental health of students.

TOW #2: New Yorker Visual Text

In an age where it seems that the news is constantly and exhaustively inundated with stories of unjustified police brutality, the above image provides a striking summation of how many American citizens view police. This visual is a cartoon drawn by political cartoonist Art Spiegelman for the respectable New Yorker magazine. The cartoon, which also happened to be the cover art for the issue that it was featured in, was drawn in response to the excessive shooting (41 times) of Amadou Diallo, an innocent unarmed Guinean immigrant, in 1999. The cartoon created waves among The New Yorker's readers, and Spiegelman received many threats for his drawing. The cartoon, whether controversial or not, undoubtedly provides a striking image for its audience: the generally ignorant (or so they seem to the author) American public. The cartoon depicts a police officer preparing to fire his weapon at a shooting gallery that reads "41 shots, 19 cents". Through the cartoon's sugary sweet pop art style and dark subject, Spiegelman is able to completely convey his purpose to the reader. His purpose is to reveal to the unknowing reader a recurring yet unspoken trend among American police officers: the excessive and unnecessary violence that is often reserved for black Americans. He relays this purpose to the reader through a dark metaphor in which the shooting of Diallo is compared to a carnival shooting gallery. This image appeals to pathos in the reader, as the idea of the shooting gallery invokes images of the officer gleefully playing target practice with a person whom they view as subhuman. The metaphor is effective in its goal of painting the officer as the overzealous and violent attacker of an innocent who is depicted as a non-threatening "target". Whether grotesque and immoral or not, this cartoon effectively conveys to the reader its intended message through appealing to emotions of anger and disbelief in its audience. 

TOW #1 Stephen Colbert's Night Vision

In this article, written by James Poniewozik for TIME Magazine, Poniewozik weighs comedian Stephen Colbert's possible effects on the late night T.V. industry as he takes on the role of Late Show host, and also delves deeper into the real Colbert, who often hides behind a cast of colorful caricatures. Initially, this article appears to simply be an entertainment piece to highlight Late Show's new host; instead, what Poniewozik produces at the end is a complex character study on one of America's most iconic, yet somehow equally ambiguous T.V. figures. Poniewozik is an established writer for Time and consistently appears in the magazine's weekly issues. In this article Poniewozik's main goal is to show the reader--generally Americans who watch late night television--a different and more complex side of Colbert than he usually allows the public to see. In order to do this, Poniewozik employs various rhetorical devices to create a humorous but also inquisitive tone. He uses colorful metaphors to convey to the reader who Colbert really is, saying of his role on network TV, "Colbert seems as if he was born inside a television, built from the archetypal idea of what A Guy From T.V. looks like--when he smiles, you half expect a CGI gleam to flash from his teeth with a sound-effects chime ... He's TV's inside man, a guy who can comfortably be given the controls of a network battleship yet cheerfully steer it off the map, humming a chipper little tune" (Poniewozik 90). Through this analogy Poniewozik tells his readers of Colbert's TV facade and avant-garde approach to mass consumer network television, but in a way that invokes pathos and appeals to the reader's sense of humor and whimsy. In addition to this, Poniewozik also explores an inquisitive tone in a series of rhetorical questions aimed at shedding light on the elusive "real Colbert". He poses questions on which persona Colbert will bring to his new role on The Late Show, asking "Which of these hosts will we see in September--the one man repertory of characters? The deliberately clueless interviewer? The political satirist? The genuinely curious mensch?" (Poniewozik 87). Through this exploration, Poniewozik travels with the reader to see who really is Stephen Colbert? Thus, he establishes ethos as he shares the same curiosity with the reader. Through these strategies, Poniewozik effectively serves his purpose of revealing who really is the complex person behind Colbert.

IRB Intro Post #1

For my first IRB I will be reading Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. The topic of my IRB is the origins of the punk movement in the 1970's and the implications of the nihilism and counterculture that were present in the era's punk youth. I chose to read this because I find 70's punk culture very interesting and would like to know more about what caused such a rebellion amongst the troubled youth. Through reading this I hope to learn more about an era and subculture that is rarely brought to light in terms of historical context.

"The Devil Baby at Hull-House"

Jane Addams, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and celebrated philanthropist wrote The Devil Baby at Hull-House in 1916 during her time operating the Chicago located Hull-House. This “settlement house” was essentially a halfway house for struggling, low-income women. The house attracted many struggling mothers, and in 1916 it was rumored that one had given birth to a deformed Devil-Baby. While completely false, the tale attracted much attention from the surrounding population, especially women. What followed from Addams’s observations of these women became the topic of The Devil Baby at Hull-House. Addams analyzed the various women that made their way to see the Devil-Baby, ultimately surmising that there was an underlying motivation for the women’s curiosity. Addams made the revelation the women’s fixation wasn’t purely curiosity; instead it was born of a desire to find meaning in anomalous events in order to cope with conventional woes. As she explores this concept, Addams writes “all human vicissitudes are in the end melted down into reminiscence, and that a metaphorical statement of those profound experiences which are implicit in human nature itself, however crude in form the story may be, has a singular power of healing the distracted spirit” (Addams 15).  Thus, Addams’s purpose of informing the reader to this revelation is evident as she argues that humans seek meaning in the metaphorical (the Devil Baby) in order to heal their spirits.  Addams relays this to the reader by using the rhetorical mode of classification and division. After describing the circumstances surrounding the Devil-Baby, Addams begins to classify the visiting women. She contends that there are three types of women visiting the baby: old, sage-like women who have lived long sad lives; women hoping to instill fear in their husbands through tales of the Devil-Baby; and failed mothers who can relate to the sadness of a lost child. Despite their obvious differences, Addams asserts that these women share the same motive: they hope to find peace through interpreting that which they cannot understand. Through this classification, Addams relays to the audience of assumedly other women her argument, thus achieving her intended goal.

The Women of Hull-House
The various women who came and went to Hull-House provide an interesting look into the sociology of females. (Via voicesinwartime.org)

"Pamplona in July"

Written in 1923 for the Toronto Star Weekly, Ernest Hemingway’s Pamplona in July is a soberingly simple account of Hemingway’s brief time in the 1920s spent in Pamplona, Spain, where he witnessed the famous Festival of San Fermin bullfights. Known for his brevity in writing, the celebrated writer of classics such as A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea writes with a matter-of-fact, uncomplicated style that serves well the seamless picture that he paints in Pamplona. He takes the reader on an effortless trip through timeless Pamplona, recounting in successive fashion the events he encounters. He and his wife are strangers to Pamplona’s World Series of Bullfighting. Hemingway describes the colorful and foreign (to him) customs he encounters: the famous running of the bulls to the colorful Basque Riau Riau dances. The affairs build until the culminating event: a riveting and graceful bullfight won by the champion matador, Algabeno. Through his writing, Hemingway attempts to entertain the reader while constructing an image of distant exoticism in Pamplona. His writing aims to transport the reader to a dreamy, far-away land that is far from the tedium of the reader’s assumedly ordinary life. In order to convey this to the audience, who would likely be Americans seeking respite from their ordinary lives, Hemingway utilizes various types of rhetoric, including prevalent use of imagery. He appeals to the reader’s sense of sight as he recounts the vivid images of Pamplona, saying “The cafes under the wide arcades that run around the Plaza de la Constitucion have every table crowded, the tall Pilgrim Father sombreros of Andalusia sitting over the sane table with straw hats from Madrid and the flat blue Basque caps of Navarre and the Basque country” (Hemingway 2). Hemingway’s detailed, yet still somewhat terse descriptions facilitate the reader’s ability to visualize Pamplona, thus effectively developing his purpose of transporting the reader to distant Pamplona.

Fiesta de San Fermin, Pamplona
Pamplona's colorful backdrop provides the perfect setting for Hemingway's descriptive narrative. (via Associated Foreign Press)

"The Crack Up"

Many readers associate the name F. Scott Fitzgerald with his life's most beloved work–The Great Gatsby. However, in stark contrast to that Jazz Age drama, his essay The Crack-Up (written in 1936 and featured in Esquire magazine) deals with a much less magnificent topic: midlife crisis. Although somewhat of a generalizing phrase, Fitzgerald's essay can be understood as simply that: an existential crisis catalyzed by the time-transcending buzz-kill of age. In the essay, Fitzgerald chronicles his personal "crack-up": a loss of self-identity leading into a spiral of declining self worth. The reader is led through Fitzgerald’s psychological journey: feigned direction in life; the sudden realization that all stability in his life is a façade; the black depression that follows as he realizes he has lost trajectory in life; and finally, tentative acceptance of an existence that is far from ideal. Throughout this journey, the reader is uncertain as to what the author’s purpose is. Fitzgerald’s account is highly personal, and seems to lack any objective in its narrative. However, if the reader persists on through Fitzgerald’s melancholy trek, they are rewarded with a bitter-sweet resolution and purpose. Fitzgerald resolves that, in order to bring himself from the grip of depression, he must accept that he is not as relevant as he once thought he was; and that he must reserve himself to the role of jaded miser in order to salvage his ability to function in society. Thus, through informing the reader on the topic of gradual depression–or “Cracking up”–Fitzgerald is able to prove his point that life manages to creak on, even when all seems lost. In order to make this point, Fitzgerald employs various types of rhetoric, but most prevalently an extended metaphor involving a cracked plate. He compares a person’s depressive breakdown to the cracking of a plate. Like the cracking of a plate, depression can happen slowly over time until it consumes a person. But also like a cracked plate, a person can be repurposed, though not to their former glory, thus connecting to the author’s argument that a “crack-up” isn’t the end.

Fitzgerald Cracks Up
Like these plates, Fitzgerald is cracked–not broken. (photo credit Tamara Maynes)