Assignment 11

 

Assignment 11

Questions about Audience

What does the composer assume the audience knows or believes?

Stein assumes and expects us to know a little bit about a lot. She expects us to be familiar the founders of Apple, the Macintosh personal computer, Apple’s competition, George Orwell’s 1984 novel, an array of different movies, and a little about advertising.

“Titled ‘1984,’ the ad evokes the dystopic George Orwell novel of the same name, with its Big Brother figure ceaselly intoning the slogans of Newspeak.” (Stein 279)

This quote is proof that she expects us to be familiar with George Orwell’s novel, 1984. I know this because she never wrote about the book beforehand. She never wrote about Big Brother, or Winston, or Oceania, or anything. She just made a reference to it and expected us to know what she was pertaining to.

Questions about Purpose

Is the purpose clearly stated or easy to determine? If not, why might the composer have decided not to make the purpose obvious?

According to Stein, she wrote, “The, ‘1984’ Macintosh Ad: Cinematic Icons and Constitutive Rhetoric in the Launch of a New Machine,” to give her audience a better “understanding of the integral role ads play in contributing to and drawing on ideological and cultural discourse.” (Stein 280) She wants to examine how ads borrow from the underlying culture but also change that culture at the same time. That’s the most obvious purpose.

I think her purpose was unclear because she expects her audience to argue against her points and to maybe form new ideas. For all intents and purposes, this whole class revolves around interpreting text, and that’s why she wrote this article the way she did. She expects us to study and interpret her essay as we would any other critical examination academic essay.

Questions about Context

Is the composer respectful of the audience, treating them as intelligent, thoughtful people?

Stein is very respectful of us. She does treat us as intelligent and thoughtful people. If this wasn’t true, this essay would be easier to read. On that note, she wrote this essay, fully expecting us to read it thoroughly, to break it down into little pieces, and in the end, understand her resolve.  

Stein’s decisions to write to us specifically, to make her purpose unclear, and to treat us as thoughtful and intelligent individuals all affected my interpretation of the text. Put simply, all of these choices made reading her essay really difficult to read. And this goes back to the point I was trying to make before. She demands a lot out of us. She expects us to think critically about the subject, be thoughtful and to come to a deeper understanding of the role of advertisements play in today’s culture.

Assigment 11

Group Work Reflection

Paige and I worked really well together. Once we were assigned our topic for our one pager, which was, ‘The Rhetorical Context of the “1984” Ad, we immediately went to work and started brainstorming. Together, we decided to focus on technophobia, Stein’s comparisons between anti big government and anti-corporate supporters, and the Association of American Advertising Agencies’ attempt to reengage cynical viewers.

I don’t think Paige and I had any problems working together because our ideas were in sync or in tune with one another. Having said that, I think some people may find it difficult to work with another person because those two people do not have the same ideologies, morals, and rules to which they live their lives by. Additionally, two people can have the same goal in mind, but just have different opinions on what path to take to reach that goal. I see this a lot when I watch the show, “Celebrity Apprentice”. Sometimes, the contestants work really well together and sometimes they don’t.  

The recipe for a good working relationship is similar personalities, ideas, sense of humor, and patience. If two people do not share these commonalities, they probably need a little bit more patience.

With all that said, I think studying with another person is always a good idea. Studying with other people allows us to come up with new ideas as well as bounce ideas we have come up with, with others.

The group that focused on, ‘The Rhetorical History of the Macintosh,’ for their one pager intrigued me with the quotes they decided to use as well as the art that painted a picture of what those quotes said. I thought this group did an overall really good job. The quotes they used are the ones I would have chosen had I been assigned the same topic. I actually highlighted these quotes when I first read it. One of them reads, “Apple’s origins grew out of such a sensibility and reflected the early manufacturer of personal computers as a sort of cottage industry.” The picture they drew of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak is a good representation of this quote.

Their question is, “Since Apple was a small company at the time, do you think this helped their revolution?” In my opinion, I don’t think the size of their company did all that much to help them with their revolution. I think it was a combination of things that helped them with their revolution. I think what really helped them more than anything was in fact the “1984” ad and their desire to create a personal computer that ultimately undermined IBM’s authority in the computer industry.

The group that focused on Stein’s, ‘Introduction,’ did a really good job of capturing the very essence that is Stein’s introduction. In their one pager, they included a quote from Stein’s essay that said, “In retrospect, it was a defining moment, not only for the heralded computer revolution but also of what has become our media landscape.” In addition, they described Stein’s reasons for writing the essay, which was to give society a better understanding of the important role ads play in ideological and cultural discourses.

 Stein’s use of comparable media examples to the “1984” Macintosh ad and her interpretation of the ad that limits itself to the constructs of Charland’s, Goldman’s, and Benjamin’s theoretical frameworks helped me to better understand the meaning and purpose of her essay. I will elaborate on this more in my interpretive essay, but this is my controlling purpose.

Assignment 10

Assignment 10

Questions

·        Why does she specifically use the theoretical frameworks of Maurice Charland, Robert Goldman, and Walter Benjamin to analyze the Macintosh Ad?

·        How does Stein explain the use of constitutive rhetoric in her analysis?

·        Why does Stein constantly write about extreme/advanced capitalism?

For example, on page 297, she wrote, “She equally represents a political figure, one aware of the repressive powers of advanced capitalism and willing to use revolutionary tactics in response.”

·        Is she relating the woman in the commercial to Winston in George Orwell’s 1984 novel?

Summary

               The “1984” Macintosh Ad: Cinematic Icons and Constitutive Rhetoric in the Launch of a New Machine by Sarah R. Stein is an extensive critical examination of the Macintosh Ad. In this extensive critical examination she gives a description of the commercial, writes about the theoretical frameworks that describes the content of the commercial more thoroughly, provides a rhetorical history of the Macintosh, describes the rhetorical context of the time the “1984” advertisement was released, and gives her final analysis and conclusion. The final analysis and conclusion sum up everything she already wrote about in her essay and gives an insight into her personal opinions.

Questions

1. Why do you think Stein might have wanted to research and write this essay?

Stein wrote this essay because the Macintosh Ad had never been subjected to such extensive critical examination before and she felt it needed to be.  Also, she was a great resource for academics like us to go to for information at the time this essay was written. Unlike now, the internet was not as great of a resource for researching as it is today. Additionally, she wanted to study the effects society and advertising have on each other. Stein wanted to know whether society was the independent variable or dependent variable.

2. What do you think she might have hoped readers would feel, think, or do while and after reading it?

I think Stein expects and hopes that anybody who reads her essay will be appreciative of the in depth analysis of the advertisement. The ad has been admired ever since it came out, but until Stein wrote this essay it was never criticized. Her criticism of the Mac ad allows for a better critical interpretation.

Personally, I really enjoyed her comparison between the Mac Ad and Blade Runner, the Wizard of Oz, the Terminator, Metropolis, and of course George Orwell’s 1984 novel. These comparisons gave me a better understanding of the Mac ad and her essay.

This excerpt from her essay led me to my answers for the previous questions: Although the “1984” ad has been the subject of ongoing popular media attention, it has not been subjected to extensive critical examination. It’s standing as a rhetorical text of enduring power and status warrants a closer look at its internal dynamics as well as its cultural impact, and criticism provides the means by which this may be accomplished. In examining this text for its complex interweaving of ideologies and cinematic icons that elevated the cold rationality of a machine into the realm of fantasy and the mythic, this essay contributes to an understanding of the integral role ads play in contributing to and drawing on ideological and cultural discourse.  

Assignment 9

Assignment 9

My target audiences for both of my interpretive essays are my peers and the professors who will be grading my final portfolio. It was their age, level of education, upbringing, gender, and knowledge of the topics that I had to keep in mind when writing these two papers. Thankfully, writing to this audience was not too difficult of a task because the group discussions gave me a sense of just how much everyone knew about the two different stories. And they allowed me to hear each and everyone’s individual response to Standing By and Lifelike. My own writing works to build relationships with these people because I took into account all this necessary information to write a productive essay. Also, my paper was not radical or reactionary in any way, so anyone can read my paper and understand the message I am trying to convey without being offended. Or they will not feel the need to dispute anything I have to say. The majority of my peers’ beliefs are consistent with what I believe in, so that made writing these two papers a lot more easy as well than it would have been had I been trying to build a relationship with a different audience. All of us are academics with the same goal in mind of achieving a degree, so I think we are better prepared to appreciate what another person has to say without being too argumentative.

               Here is an example of my efforts to build a relationship with my audience. This is my introduction for the first interpretive essay.

               Everywhere people go, people judge others based on their occupation, political party preference, ethnic heritage, appearance, race, religion, gender, creed, and even the clothes they decide to wear. People may not always be aware that they do it, and that’s because most people do it subconsciously. Without being completely aware of what they are doing, people tend to judge others based on their appearance, match that appearance with a certain stereotype, put that person in a certain group given the stereotype, and then compare that person to themself. It’s an innate, human habit that David Sedaris suggest all people may have and he unveils this idea in his story, “Standing By”. He also brings up the idea that, perhaps the airport is a forum that allows people to show their true hateful selves. This is the message I believe Sedaris was trying to get across to his readers. I believe he wants his readers to think twice before judging others. I believe he wants his readers to not judge others based on their appearance. He successfully conveys this message of his story by recreating an atmosphere that most people can relate to, using humor, using characters that most can relate to, as well as putting the reader in situations that are very familiar and hilariously so.              

               I am going to include more “I” statements to improve the quality of my paper. In both of my interpretive papers, I am very well removed from my writing. It is an interpretive essay, so therefore I need to give my readers a better sense of who I am and what I have experienced, so that my writing becomes more credible.