Blog Assignment #5: Representing Others

For this assignment, you should respond to both Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others and Clint Eastwood's film Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), placing them into conversation with one another.

You should write one academic-style paragraph in which you make a claim about the topic we have been covering this week (representing "The Other") and use Sontag's book and Eastwood's film to expand your claim.

Remember: Make connections between the two texts and make sure your claim is broad enough to encompass everything you discuss in your paragraph. Also, give enough background about the quote you use and the scene/image you chose to discuss so that your reader understands what you are talking about.

Requirements: 300 words minimum. Use one direct quote from Sontag's book and discuss either a scene from the film or the film in general terms. Due Friday October 1 by 5:00 pm.

Blog Assignment #4: My Online Persona

In class we have been discussing argument and the representation of “self” in new media contexts. Specifically, we talked about the creation of personas on social network sites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, etc.). Persona can be defined as one or more versions of “self” that all individuals possess. Each persona you enact varies according to a given social environment and the impression you wish to make on people that belong to the subculture at hand. So, you may encompass one persona while with your friends and others while at work or with your family.

The objective of this assignment is to reflect on the persona you have created of yourself on Facebook. Look at all the elements of your fb page that are visible to your audience: your profile, your status updates, any text written, links shared, videos posted, and (perhaps) most important, your pictures. Ask yourself: what have I represented about myself and my life?

Questions to consider during your reflection:

(1) Reflect on the people that make up your “friend” group. How fb “friends” do you have? How many subcultures do they represent (e.g. high school friends, relatives, people from work or class, teachers, bosses, friends of your parents)? When composing content on your page, do you consider how your persona might be interpreted differently by members of these different subcultures?

(2) Which aspects of your fb page are composed for a large audience? Who is your audience? What social borders do you collapse by “friending” people from different subcultures to which you belong? Is the collapsing of social borders problematic according to the content you choose to display about yourself? (see. p.159)

(3) How do small details within individual photographs or images reveal things about a subculture to which you belong? (see p. 155)

(4) When reflecting on the persona you have created on fb (as a whole), which details about your life have you chosen to exclude? How does the exclusion of certain details affect possible interpretations of your persona? (see p. 166)

(5) How does your persona (or, maybe, just an image or detail) reveal your larger beliefs about what an ideal student, son or daughter, friend, --fill-in-the-blank) should be? (see p. 167)

(6) Thinking about the notion of the “photo-op” (e.g., birthday parties, vacation spots, achievements, events, etc.), chose an image that represents a photo-op that is specific to our culture or to one subculture to which you belong. How does the photo’s composition reveal your values and/or beliefs about what constitutes an “ideal world”? (see p. 168, 422)

(7) How is this context (Facebook) different from more traditional forms of personal representation (e.g., photo albums, home videos, diaries, etc.)?

Requirements: 1 argument and 2 paragraphs (1 claim each) written in the following format:

Argument (one sentence): _________________________________

Claim 1 (one sentence): ___________________________________

Support (develop your claim with explanations, examples, quotes from outside sources, photos or screenshots, etc.):________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

Claim 2 (one sentence): __________________________________

Support (develop your claim with explanations, examples, quotes from outside sources, photos or screenshots, etc.):__________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

300 words minimum, at least one image to support each claim you make regarding your reflection/analysis of your persona (that means 2 images minimum).

Blog Assignment #3: Clip Analysis from The Sixth Sense

For this assignment, we will be working from Roland Barthes’ notion of the “writerly” text. According to Barthes, “…the writerly text is ourselves writing” (S/Z, 5); therefore, you, the reader, will be interpreting the text (in this case a clip from The Sixth Sense) in order to produce meaning from it. Using Barthes’ Five Codes of Meaning, you will identify the codes within this clip, labeling them as Barthes does in S/Z. It is important to note that Barthes does not only identify the codes, but he discusses their meanings in detail. In your analysis, you should explain why you believe a code exists, and what meaning you derive from it. Barthes claims that we should be able to appreciate the plural meanings derived from different interpretations of a text. Therefore, there are not necessarily right or wrong interpretations – so long as you can fully support your argument for the existence of a code within the text, we should be able to derive multiple meanings from even a short text such as this one.

Since we are dealing with a movie clip, the codes can take the form of spoken dialogue, auditory cues or music, visuals, and/or editing choices. Remember, Barthes says that “Each literary description is a view” (55). He describes the writer (read: artist of any kind) as someone who places a frame around reality, creating a perspective from which we see the story being told. Every decision the artist makes creates a frame. Decisions to include or exclude details, to frame characters in a particular way, or to place actions within a specific chronology all affect the way we interpret the scene.

CLIP à http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLyYYHqVTsE (The Sixth Sense, 1999)

REQUIREMENTS: 300 words minimum. Post must be live by 5:00 pm on Friday, September 10, 2010. Mimic Barthes’ writing style (see handout for examples), which means: describe the detail you are discussing in italics then identify each code with a star (first code = 1 star, 2^nd code = 2 stars, etc.) and support your claim for each code immediately after identifying it. If you are going to discuss different moments within the clip, you should separate them into different paragraphs. Barthes wrote separate paragraphs for individual sentences or groups of sentences in his analysis. You should do the same, no matter if you are discussing a visual detail or spoken dialogue.

Barthes’ Code:

Hermeneutic Code (HER) = denotes an enigma that moves

the narrative forward; it sets up delays and obstacles that maintain

suspense.

DELAYS:

1. Thematisation. What in the narrative is an enigma?

2. Positioning. Additional confirmations of the enigma.

3. Formulation of the enigma.

4. Promise of an answer of the enigma.

5. Fraud. Circumvention of the true answer.

6. Equivocation. Mixture of fraud and truth.

7. Blocking. The enigma cannot be solved.

8. Suspended answer. Stopping the answering after having begun.

9. Partial answer. Some facets of the truth are revealed.

10. Disclosure of the truth.

Proairetic Code (ACT) = organizes small sequences of

behaviors

Semic Code (SEM) = signifiers (people, places, objects) to

which unstable meanings adhere (Sarrasine, wealth, beauty)

Symbolic Code (SYM) = meanings that are only represented by

metonymies (figures of speech), which renders the text open

to different interpretations (castration)

Cultural Code (REF) = reference to scientific or cultural

knowledge

Blog Assignment #2: Image Analysis

Step 1: Find (and post) an image of your choice.

Step 2: Chapter One in Picturing Texts offers some terminology for how to talk about the composition of images. Using these terms, write a paragraph below the image in which you analyze the image you have posted to your blog site. What is conventional or unconventional about this image and its composition?

Step 3: Roland Barthes believes that an artist’s form is vulnerable to becoming a convention once it has been released to the public. He claims that creativity is an on-going process of continual change and reaction. Thinking about the conventional/unconventional aspects of your image, in what way(s) could you add text to the image that would change/build upon/modify the conventional composition? Post the image below your paragraph from Step 2, this time adding either a caption, advertisement box, or text superimposed (or some combination) on the actual image to change it in some way.

Step 4: Write a second paragraph discussing the way(s) your addition could change the perception of the original image. For this section, you must reference someone we have discussed in class. You should identify an argument and either agree or disagree with it, supporting your own claim. Since this is a blog, you are not (for this assignment) required to site the source according to academic regulations (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.). But, you MUST identify who made the argument you are discussing. If you know the text (e.g., Barthes’ Mythologies), please put that information in parentheses.

Requirements: 300 words minimum; two images à one without text/caption, the other with your own text/caption added to it. Due: Sept. 5 by 8:00 pm.

EXAMPLE of an altered image: