The rhetoric of documentaries

Modern communication systems, specifically the internet, is able to capture history and society on many different levels. Documentaries especially, are able to synthesize the development of a society with a particular subject. The documentary, "The most dangerous drug in the world" easily portrays to the audience the way that a society has developed. The documentary arranged the information in an effective way that effectively emphasized the downward slope that methanpehtamine drags a society into by analyzing the development of the economy in Thailand that forces the people and the economy to be dependent on the consumption of meth. Documentaries have the ability to easily portray a large ton of information and synthesize it for a largely visual global audience.

Unfortunately, documentaries, though good in intention, do not really do much to inspire the change the most seek in the global community. Documentaries are able to engage the audience's emotions by making them aware of the problem, but most viewers can walk away from the documentary without any desire to spark that change. Documentaries do not really inspire the ideas of others, but are rather percieved as information to know rather than information to use and apply. This is evident in even the "the most dangerous drug in the world" documentary, because even though it proposes a powerful warning against meth, it wasn't effective enough in seeking a proposal, consequence, or application.

Documentary Rhetorical Analysis

The World's Most Dangerous Drug. Perf. Lisa Ling. Netflix. National Geographic, 18 Oct. 2006. Web. 27 May 2013.
"The World's Most Dangerous Drug" is a documentary on the many different detrimental effects of methamphetamine and how the rising drug has taken a dangerous hold on many different societies around the world. Methamphetamine was invented by the Japanese and used in warfare in WWII, and quickly took hold of the population of Asia, with 60% of meth users living in Asia. Meth has rooted itself in societies such as Thailand and today, has been seen in the youth worldwide. By the late '90's, meth has began to grow as a drug in the United States, originating in Oregon and spreading westward. Meth has caused people to become more violent, taken their lives away. The documentary makes it clear that since meth is cheap and easy to make and dangerously addictive, it is easy for meth to destroy the foundations of society and have the most devastating effects of any drugs, physically and socially.
The documentary at times was able to convey the magnitude of drug problems in other countries because it was able to evoke fear in the audience of the drug and those who use the drug. The most effective portion of the documentary that epitomized the drug taking root in societies and corrupting the youth of populations worldwide was an anecdote of the working class in Thailand. Meth is encouraged by the working industry to increase productivity by forcing the user to stay awake and not eat, forcing an incredible amount of hyperactivity and focus. This deep rooting of meth into the working class of Thailand has festered out of control, and this was emphasized by the documentary's news broadcasts of violent acts driven for the possession of meth. This evoked fear in the audience because they feared the dehumanization effects of methamphetamine. This was able to emphasize the documentary's purpose because it not only spread awareness of the magnitude of the problem, but it also did it's best to deter the user from turning to meth.
The documentary also used a lot of parallelism to tell the devastating effects of meth on a population. It compared meth to other drugs and showed that it was incredibly dangerous in comparison to other infamous drugs and showed that it was even worse by a significant amount. The documentary also used lab rat experiments that explained the looping mentality of meth users and how it destroys their sense of accomplishment and drive for achievement in the real world outside to the audience. This showed the audience that meth was able to root itself in any case just with one mistake of deciding to "try it" and made the user sad for the loss of many lives that had good potential in life.
Overall, the documentary was extremely ineffective at portraying an accurate representation of the drug problem overall, but the devices were not as effecive because they tended to be repetitive of the effects of the drugs and did not offer a resolution for the drug taking root in the world. It just made the viewer feel helpless in a world being posessed by an evil and dangerous drug while also underplaying the dangers of other drugs. It was an extremely unproductive documentary.

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TOW Reflection

AP English has been a boot camp of a class for me. It really whipped me into shape really quickly, something that for some reason couldn't have been achieved for me all of my conscious writing career until this year.
I used to focus a lot on style, thinking that it was the only thing that made good writing. I  thought that varied sentence structure and diction was the only essential tool, and even though I maintained that illusion for a while, I didn't understand quality sentence structure and diction. I saw that throughout the year, I had been able to pay attention to different tools of grammar to make writing more than just simple, but I learned to control tone with effective diction and syntax. It was beyond adding a couple clauses to my sentences. My posts went from okay sentence structure and a somewhat sophisticated tone that used to be the crux of my formal writing to being able to shape my tone around the context of the article I wrote about and having a real voice of my own. I was able to engage an internet audience by creating a persona of a curious, appreciative reader; creating an authentic reader meant making someone who was amused with an amusing article, emotional with a sad movie, or serious with a traumatic event in world news. I was able to show that I developed as a reader that responded to the texts I read.
I continued to improve my writing by also being able to move away from my excessive focus on "complex" sentence structure and focus on context. I went from listing the TOW requirements one sentence after another and began to really delve into the pieces of the article that made it effective or not effective. I was finally able to connect ideas between the different rhetorical devices in question and its relationship the different areas of rhetorical strategies such as author, purpose, genre, context, and so and so forth. I didn't focus on meeting every area of the assignment that seemed to demand these things for each post and began to make active rhetorical decisions on what to include and what not to include.
I also enhanced my content by not only delving deeper into the articles, but choosing interesting unique articles that weren't just editorials of politics and the news. My texts could have been either an interesting statistical analysis, an info graphic  or an interesting article about the science of paper. This demanded my interest and forced me to give stronger attention to detail. This new choice of articles gave me the opportunity to ask myself clarifying questions to guide my post such as, "why did I love this article?" and "how do I tell people why I love this article?"
Despite my improvements, I could still improve on choosing articles that would enhance my vocabulary and also practicing better vocabulary. That would come in handy for being able to express myself properly. I feel like a lot of my emotions and opinions could be oversimplified in a post if I were not to find a perfect word for it. I feel like a lot of times, I struggle to find the perfect word for a situation, and I would love to be able to write freely without the crutch of trying to search for a synonym for a word that already doesn't quite fit.
On top of that, I would also like to be able to explain my analysis more clearly and feel like my writing could benefit by uniting the piece overall by relating it back to my own purpose and thesis. This would improve overall clarity and build a more convincing argument.
Overall, I was impressed with the "kill two birds with one stone" effect of the TOW assignments. Throughout the year, they forced me to be able to have "meat" to bring to the table when I was required to bring evidence to argument papers. I also was forced to practice my weakest essay type of Analysis. To me, analysis required the most connection of different complex English ideas I had never explored or paid attention to before in my English career.  I was very fuzzy on the idea of writing and Analysis paper, but I realized that writing the TOWs gave me better practice of reading critically, analyzing clearly, and writing with clarity for a reader. Remembering my thought process on the TOWs gave me a clearcut path to a good Analysis paper and I hope that these skills as a critical reader and writer will continue to improve.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

When I watched this masterpiece this weekend, I couldn't explain why this movie had such a moving effect on me. It was a film that transcends mere entertainment and even just a sad story to something that was profoundly philosophical. Kauffman's piece is the story of Joel, a man hopelessly attached to a dead-end relationship with the spontaneous and emotional Clementine. Confused when he learns that Clementine had him erased from her memory after all of the things they've gone through. Joel feels like he must go through the same thing and soon falls in love with her all over again when he re-experiences the passionate early moments of their relationship. Kauffman masterfully employs effective arrangement, color, and parallelism to emphasize that you can erase memories, but you can not erase emotions, alongside a lesson that it is better not to forget, but to learn.
The movie impressed me with it's arrangement. The movie decides to take a weird timeline twist that goes from Joel and Clementine's break-up to the more intimate parts of their relationship. In that, the author shows that what Joel and Clementine had was real. He was able to show in the beginning the two had effective chemistry, despite an awkward first meeting, and by the end of the movie, shows that that wasn't the first time they met after all. It was a second chance at their relationship after their relationship had already ended and they had their minds erased. This emphasized to the audience the author's purpose because they were able to contrast the terrible ending of their relationship with the beautiful beginning and the audience was able to understand how genuine their relationship is. As movie critic Dave Sizer says, "you can't erase true love," and the audience was able to understand how deeply their bond went and how it will ultimately transcend the memories being erased.
Along the entire plot line, it is hard not to appreciate the color schemes of the movie. The movie is mainly grey and uncolorful, except for the truly beautiful things that the author must come to appreciate to understand the purpose. The bright colorful scenes of the happy memories, and also Clementine's ever-changing hair characterize Clementine's passionate, rebellious personality as well as emphasizing the beautiful parts of their relationship.
Parallelism firmly concretes the purpose of the powerfulness of emotions with additional subplots with supporting characters. These plots, such as affairs that resurface even after having memories erased and a scumbag supporting character that tries to pursue Clementine with the same things Joel had done in their relationship shows that memories are concreted with the emotions associated with them, and that emotions are overall the most important aspect of relationships and life itself. This parallels with the idea of not learning from the past.
This movie was something that was a truly effective masterpiece because of its unique theme and execution. It was beautiful not only in purpose, but in representation as well. It is unexpected and emotionally profound and sad. It also is able to give some hope to how real relationships and love can be, and can turn a cynic into a lover in an instant.

The Peculiar Physics of Crumpled Paper

One of the most overlooked phenomena in the world is the simple existence of a piece of paper. What no one even seems to consider is the contradicting properties and behaviors of paper. The strength, the weakness, the random and yet, the sophisticated algorithmic behavior of folding paper has stumped scientists recently. Newscientist recently explored this behavior of paper and effectively portrays to the reader that paper is actually quite mysterious and enigmatic and is something that needs to be further investigated.
The article effectively employs the use of antithesis between the properties of paper that make it seem like an object of a different universe. For example, the article talks about the weakness of paper in that it tears so easily, but then quickly prompts the reader to think about why it is so weak in one way, but so strong when pulled on in a straight manner. The paper can handle so much force, but not a lot of pressure. The article engages the reader in this antithesis because it stumps them as well as making it clear that scientists are stumped as well.
Another way the article effectively employs antithesis in another sense. It contrasts reality and expectation of the behavior of paper. The article writes, This wasn't an entirely unexpected finding, but the second thing the 3D images revealed was. You might imagine ridges would arrange themselves randomly inside the balls, but the reality is very different. Weirdly, the interior of the ball was a series of orderly layers." This effectively captures the new unexpected observations of paper, and encapsulates how detailed the research goes. This adds ethos to the reader because it makes them aware of the legitimate steps taken towards understanding the behavior.Overall, I thought the article effectively portrayed a really obscure and out there topic by sort of summarizing the expected uninteresting aspects of paper we overlook, and arranging them in such a way that makes us realize that we really don't understand the behavior of matter and how science is so deeply rooted into our everyday lives.

The New Yorker: Becoming Them

It is strange to think of that one breaking point where one transitions from child to adult. What is that defined by? James Wood redefines the beginning of his adulthood with the realization that he is becoming his own father. James Wood achieves this definition through many different rhetorical techniques that create a tone of reflection.
James Wood opens his piece with an effective anecdote. Imagery helps to paint a peaceful and ideal lifestyle that he misses from his childhood. He writes, "When I was growing up, Sunday morning...could almost have been the eighteen-seventies." The imagery builds the memory of the audience to help them to understand why becoming more like your parents are ideal and what a child tends to do. This helps him to achieve his purpose because he defines becoming your father is when you become an adult, and you have matured once this is realized.
To further create a tone of reflection, Wood uses repetition to ponder aloud. Wood writes, "Perhaps he is too busy....perhaps this is just my fear projected onto him." This pondering allows for him to show that he is reflecting on the connection between us past and present and builds a transition for his future. He transitions from pondering and thoughts to rhetorical questions. The act of rhetorical questions asked to the audience show that he is confused and engages the audience. This gives the idea that his worrying for his parents' role in his future as being a universal concern by engaging the audience.
Wood's self-reflection is effective because it allows for him to redefine his present and future by looking at his familial past. Its caused for me to be able to realize that as humans we naturally accumulate off of our experiences in the past to establish a universal idea of the ideal. Wood's idealization of his father is a purpose that applies to not only familial life, but the societal role of role models in general and their positive effect on the development of wholesome individuals.

Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)

Art throughout history has tended to romanticize war instead of portraying the true diplomatic, moral, and social consequences of war. Evolving immensely from the times of painting grand pictures of our European generals and leaders like Napoleon, art didn't have much of a voice against humanity's innate flaw of being unable to compromise effectively. Six months before the Spanish Civil War, surrealist artist Salvador Dali took a critical look at his country's state of civility, and created a critical piece against the human condition of selfishness, and how that innate human flaw leads to a fragile and tentative state of "peace," and ironically his critical evaluation of the human condition was proven right with the start of the Spanish Civil War.
Dali is able to create a sense of peril in the audience through the placement of figures in the painting. The placement of the terrorized at the top of the painting indicates that even in the top rungs of society and diplomatic success and power, humanity still seeks to destroy itself in its greed. The construction of a perilous structure through body parts emphasize the selfishness of humanity because many different lives are wasted in the pursuit of power.
Dali is able to further his argument with the use of colors. The bright colors modernize the painting  contrasting it to war paintings of the past. War paintings of the past usually consisted of dark, monochromatic and pale colors that were rustic in nature. Dali is able to distinguish his pieces to the audience because by contrasting it to the past, it makes the audience aware of the context of the message being in the present day. This furthers his criticism of his own society because it allows the audience to be aware of the magnitude of the importance of proper communication and compromise rather than war.
In being able to express his ideal society in which people can establish a stable foundation for civility without the destruction of desperate grabs for power. Art has taken a huge responsbility in contemporary times in being able to critique the world in a way that audiences can easily be able to understand the emotional depth of the innate flaws in society itself.