Break.ing the Ru!es

Posted on October 31, 2008 by

Language Log has an interesting post on periods, that is if you find punctuation interesting. I can. I’ll admit it. And if you’d like a pretty cool book on the subject, then I’d recommend Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Hey, it’s got spunk.

Anyway, my stance on grammar is this. Grammar is meant to be utilized as a basis for us to understand each other. When that meaning gets muddled because the structure is crap, then correct grammar and punctuation would be beneficial, but if the meaning is still comprehensible even with supposed punctuation “mistakes,” then I’m pretty okay with it. Now, I won’t go so far as to say that I’m completely on board or anything. There are things that would stick out to me. It’s pretty hard for it not to with my background, but if grammar rules are broken for stylistic purposes and the meaning is still comprehensible, then cool. Lay your meaning on me.

A Little Plug (‘N Play)

Posted on October 25, 2008 by

Gauti Sigthorsson posted his Screen Studies Conference presentation creatively titled “Home is Where My Archive Is.” It runs about 20 minutes and is most definitely worth the listen. If not for the actual complications Gauti brings up, but also for sentences like: “you’re functioning as my 3D PowerPoint presentation.”

Robot Bears!

Posted on October 17, 2008 by

Maybe it’s being surrounded by fairly, hmm, let’s say “quirky” people, but it seems like I’ve been confronted with a Robotic vs Organic concept since my youth. In my earlier years, it was the infamous Ninja vs Robot Debate, which was a continuous argument about who would win in a fight. I was on the Ninja side.

Even now I belong to a forum that calls its members “bots.” Bots who type with robot fingers.

My experience is not an anomaly. Indeed, I can bring up a ton of examples of the Mechanical Anxiety that shows up in the media.

Dishwashing Bot

Sex and Marriage with Robots

Um, Colbert anyone?

Even The Onion weighs in:

In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?

And the one that perked my interest:

CNN’s Scientists: Humans and Machines will merge in Future

As a writer, it peaks my interest. How is it that we’re all nervous about the same thing? Well, I guess this might be a purely American anxiety. I haven’t run into articles from foreign presses with the same kind of stance, but I also don’t look at foreign presses. It’s the language barrier. Predictable maybe, but true.

Anyway, I call it an anxiety, because none of these articles/videos really go out of their way to embrace the mechanical, the robotic. I mean, it makes sense to be nervous about something that effects everyone, yes. Like the economy right now–it impacts everyone. But something like this–where it seems so trite and trivial and downright silly. Have we all watched one too many matinee movies on the SciFi channel? Or is there something about our humanness that we’re trying to grasp onto, to cling to, to keep ourselves from forgetting. Through our own industrialization and our so-called technological advancements, we are still fragile. We are simply skin and bone and tissue.

Ah, but let me ask you this: does skin and bone and tissue really make you human?

Call Me Mademoiselle Homo Sapien

Posted on September 6, 2008 by

There are few things that send me into a tizzy. I’m a generally calm kind of person that doesn’t really get caught up in the little things. I mean, I like my things the way that I like them, but I’m not going to get caught up in your stuff.

That is, unless you’re rude. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about friends ragging on one another or some situation that demands very specific attention and some foot laying down action. At those points, I think you’re beyond what is required out of politeness. But when someone I don’t really know is rude for really no apparent reason beyond opportunistic and ambitious tendencies, it just irks me. (My issue, I know.)

This got me to thinking, though. On an evolutionary scale, how did politeness help? Where was the day when Caveman #1 turned to Caveman #2 and said “Would you mind possibly passing a piece of woolie mammoth leg?” I can just imagine Caveman #2 grabbing a piece of woolie mammoth leg meat and smacking Caveman #1 over the head with it. Hmm, politeness didn’t quite work out for Caveman #1.

So, where did this sense of fair play come from? This humanistic desire for what is “right” and “polite.” And how is it that my Cavemen ancestors made it through the evolutionary ladder with a sense of anti-rudeness?

Now, I am sitting here, putting this into the perspective that politeness is a good thing, but I could just as easily say that all it means is that my ancestors played by the rules set up within the society that they lived in. Never going beyond or away from what is expected of them. But that’s the part that trips me up. What was expected at that point was to survive at all costs. And I don’t think survival would be a realistic goal when you’re asking if it’s okay for you to eat, sleep, and drink.

So, how did we get to this point? Where did this idea of “right” and “wrong” that we all seem to live so strongly by come from? How has that form of communication outlasted the a woolie mammoth leg over the head? I mean, I’m glad it did, but I still wonder why.

Well, I’m beginning to believe that my ancestors thought too much. And that it’s a hereditary condition.

Who’s Whispering to Whom?

Posted on September 4, 2008 by

I have seen a handful of episodes from the show, The Dog Whisperer, with Cesar Millan, and I’ve always been impressed by how Millan interacts with the pet owners. He always says he’s training the humans, not the dogs.

In fact, a lot of times he doesn’t call the people owners. He calls them humans, which very interestingly divorces any statement of power in the relationship — probably because these humans are often in a submissive role.

In one particular episode, Millan visits a family of four (a heterosexual couple with a daughter and son) to help a dog behave properly and not so, um, affectionately toward her humans.

Millan discusses the dog with the family, and portions of the discussion are spliced with footage of both the dog misbehaving and of Millan speaking to the camera and explaining what he notices. What he notices is just as much about the family as about the dog herself. The mother and daughter clearly dominate the discussion, he says, while the father and son remain quiet. The dog, he argues, has identified with the females in the family, and her show of love toward them, particularly the young son, has not been one of a pack member but of a pack leader over the submissive males in the family.

Fascinating. Extreme feminism exists in the canine world too.

But since “training humans” seems to be a constant theme in Millan’s show, I wonder whether counseling offices are going to begin (or already are) including animal psychologists as an indirect way of handling human problems. Hmm. Whispering to dogs in order to whisper to humans.

Here’s a segment of the show if you’re curious:

Protest till you’re Red in the Face . . .

Posted on September 4, 2008 by

You shouldn’t wear white after Labor Day. Did you know that? (And did you know that its proliferation comes from class-based discrimination? In response to the burgeoning middle classes of the early 20th century, strict rules had to be made to let the nouveau-riche know what’s up.)

(Over)hearing this phrase several times in the past few days has me paying a bit more attention to clothing. Especially in protest. So in celebration of Labor Day, here’s quick smattering of how color is being used rhetorically in protest:

While I don’t think our Labor-Day-Dress-Codes seep south of the border, protesters in Mexico got all their white-wearing done just in time anyway. Just a few days ago, over a hundred thousand people marched through the streets of Mexico City, protesting a recent wave of killings and kidnappings. Combined with the silence during marching and the thousands of candles lit by protesters at night, wearing white for the expression of solidarity is effective in my opinion, if only because it draws on the centuries-old binary (well, about 2041 years old) of White = Good, Peaceful / Black = Evil, Aggressive. Binaries may be boring, but they work.

The Democratic National Convention in Denver just finished up last week. As far as protesting goes, the usual (predictable) tactics we used. However, Denver Police took no chances with the convention on their turf — the streets were swarming with futuristically outfitted officers (paid for with a 50 million dollar grant from the Federal government) . As one of my friends reports from the frontlines, “It’s the new Cool Fascismo look.”

One of the protest groups at the DNC where color plays a central role in communicating their message is CODEPINK, an all female collective that assembled in order to put pressure on the Bush administration to get out of Iraq.

This is what their website has to say about the name: “The name CODEPINK plays on the Bush Administration’s color-coded homeland security alerts — yellow, orange, red — that signal terrorist threats. While Bush’s color-coded alerts are based on fear and are used to justify violence, the CODEPINK alert is a feisty call for women and men to ‘wage peace.'”

CODEPINK draws on the carnivalesque in its tactics, with wild outfits being encouraged. Pink brings a femininity — a certain kind of it, at least — to the protests, perhaps opening doors to some by showing protests aren’t all black-clad dudes chanting angry rants. In fact, a lot of the pictures on their website show middle-aged women, all smiles. The color, it seems, expands access to protest, a gateway of sorts. An argument could be made that it changes how others view the color too, because it seeks empowerment through the quintessential “girly” color.

In the most disturbing video I’ve seen come out of the DNC protests, witness below a cop jack a CODEPINK activist in the chest, knocking her to the ground. And when you watch it, please don’t think, “This is an anomaly.” It’s not.

Also in attendance, of course, at the DNC (and now quite active at the RNC) are Black Bloc affinity groups. While comprised mostly of anarchists, I’m pretty sure they’re open to anyone who’s anti-capitalist. Black Blocs got a lot of press after their central role in shutting down hearings at the 1999 “Battle of Seattle” Anti-WTO riots. They’re also the scape-goat of many who are convinced that protesting would make great strides if only it weren’t for those (Scooby-Doo voice) “meddling kids.” Sadly, these groups are more often than not presented as simply “misguided youth” who think wearing black is cool. I’ve known even the most critical of thinkers to fall prey to this dismissal. One way to start reconceptualizing the Black Bloc in an effort to combat this reductionism, is to explain that it’s not an organized group. It’s a tactic. Which is to say, it’s rhetorical.

One website describes one aspect of the tactic thus:

In it’s essential form, each participant of a Black Bloc wears somewhat of a uniform (see the Clothing section). The idea of wearing this uniform is that if every single person in the Bloc looks relatively alike, it is hard for the police to determine which individual did what. For instance, if a Black Bloc participant throws a brick at a store window and runs into the Bloc, she will easily blend in with everyone else. However, if a person wearing normal street clothes happens to throw a brick and run into the Bloc, chances are that she will have been filmed or photographed and later caught by the police.

This makes it all sound very pragmatic, which I’m a little hesitant to accept wholesale. There’s also the undeniable attribution of “trouble” attached to black. Which in this case is quite purposeful. Wearing all black and marching in a sea of black works to put you in a certain mindset, one that perhaps steels you for the fight that’s about to come.

And I suppose that’s one of the main points of this post, even though it’s obvious: Different colors put one in different mindsets — and this is especially true when it comes to expressing solidarity with large numbers of protesters.

Are you paying attention?

Posted on August 29, 2008 by Kate

Speaking of coffeeshops….

While sitting in one the other day, I observed a group of people obviously involved in some kind of meeting, surrounded by computers and tensely discussing what seemed like matters of some import. Every so often, I noticed that one person (I should mention, the only man in the group) seemed to be spending significantly more time e-mailing, texting, and even taking a phone call in the middle of the conversation. I could practically see the steam come out of the others’ ears

Now, I don’t want to make any tired generalizations about modern culture, manners, or the ills of technology. But this experience returned to mind while I was reading something about audience responsibility and rhetorical response… and for the first time I really thought about the expression “to pay attention.” So of course, I went to the OED and found the following definitions of the verb “to pay”:

to appease, pacify, satisfy
to give or transfer goods/money in return for goods or services, or in discharge of an obligation
to give what is due or deserved

And for attention:

earnest direction of the mind, consideration, or regard
practical consideration, observant care, notice

This common phrase, then, has some interesting underlying assumptions — that careful notice is what is due to a communicator, what is deserved by the one (or many) who puts forth a message. That service, in effect, demands recompense in the form of that seemingly simple but rare “earnest direction” of attention. If the attention owed is not paid, the transaction simply cannot go through. And the debt multiplies exponentially.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of audience responses lately — especially as we audiences are awash in political rhetoric that can all too often leave us feeling passive — and this phrase brings to mind yet again Krista Ratcliffe’s concept of rhetorical listening, “a stance of openness that a person may choose to assume in relation to any person, text, or culture; its purpose is to cultivate conscious identification in ways that promote productive conversation, especially but not solely cross-culturally” (Rhetorical Listening 25). This is more than mere granting of attention; it is an active participation in the work of communication, which can only occur under conditions of equal exchange.

So that guy playing on the iPhone wasn’t just rude — he was a thief of sorts, or perhaps just a cheat. By refusing to grant his attention, he failed to hold up his side of the communicative bargain. His attention was being paid out everywhere but to his immediate colleagues — who couldn’t help but recognize the lack of value he placed on their conversation.

As far as I can tell, the only ways to repay such inattention are to refuse to listen in turn or to refuse to speak. Either way, there’s a breakdown in collaborative conversation, a rejection of the shared responsibility of rhetoric — and that’s a pretty high price to pay for a text message.

I can only hope he at least picked up the tab…

conventional wisdom

Posted on August 29, 2008 by

This past week, I made a conscious effort to catch the major speeches at the Democratic National Convention (including Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Al Gore, and Barack himself).

“But why?,” I was asked last night.

Hmmmm…. because I’m a Democrat? Because I study rhetoric? Because I’m trying to decide who to vote for? No, no, no.

Really, I guess it’s because I want to be inspired. Because I want to hear motivating speeches that promise Americans the best, that tell us we deserve the best, that make me feel a part of something larger than myself… a part of a big community that shares my social, cultural, and political values and goals.

Is that, in fact, the sole (or “soul”) purpose of these conventions? Because, let’s face it: these politicans don’t tell us anything we don’t already know, they can’t possibly accomplish all they claim they will, and they never really tell us what exactly they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it.

Is it all about the use of rhetoric to INSPIRE–to MOTIVATE the American people? to stir our emotions just enough to reinstate our belief in the government and to cast our vote in November?

Well, these 6 people did that for me. They told me exactly what I wanted to hear. They made me feel exactly how I wanted to feel.

Creatures of Habit

Posted on August 28, 2008 by

I often go to coffee shops to work. At home too often I stare out the window or doze off, but at cafés I can only gaze off into space for so long before people will think I’m crazy. And sleeping in public is just weird. If the time comes that I’m comfortable enough to go to cafés in pajamas, it’ll be both a sad and liberating day.

There’s a coffee shop in particular I visit about once or twice a week. When I go there, I expect to get good work done, and I generally do. It’s like Pavlov’s salivating dogs and the ringing bells: For me, visiting this café = work. It’s great. I’d go every day except it’s hard to avoid conversations with other café goers now that I’m a regular (and I’ve ruined other cafés for myself by giving in), and I know I can’t sustain on a daily basis the kind of productivity I experience there, and forcing it would ruin my relationship with the venue. It’s too precious to me.

I was there one day, tucked into one of my usual spots at the edge of a long bench seat with a small round table in front of me. I was deep in my own world, typing away like mad. I sat there with walls to my back and left, laptop in front of me, decaf latte next to it, book bag to my right, and iPod somewhere in the vicinity and attached to my ears: I sufficiently blocked out the venue, sounds, and people I’d just driven out to join in the first place. Yes, my life is full of ironies.

I was lost in my own world (for several hours at that point, might I add), when a hand slid a napkin into my view. I saw something was scrawled on it in pen, but first my eyes followed the hand to find its owner. (The rhetorician in me needs context first.) A girl had sat a couple tables away at the same bench where I was seated, and she’d similarly spread her belongings in a half circle around her against her corner of the space. Our workspaces were symmetrical.

My eyes went back to the napkin, and I read her note. She asked if I knew of a book on creative directors. My brain paused. I am unfortunately one of those pitiful people who when asked a random question often blanks out and has to ask the person to repeat the question even if it was fairly clear the first time. Since the question was written down, I didn’t have to ask for a repeat, but the words swam in front of me, and I had no idea what she was asking.

I turned off my iPod, removed my ear buds, and turned to ask her what field of work or study she meant. But before I could ask my question, she took the napkin and began writing again. Was I still a student at OSU? “Yes,” I said, nodding my head and wondering how she knew me without my remembering her.

She began to write on another napkin more quickly, messed up, scribbled it out, paused, and began to look flustered. In an aloof sort of way I watched, waited, and wondered why she kept trying to write even after I’d turned off my music and given her my attention. I had work I needed to return to. And then slowly my mind began to wrap itself around this puzzle. Her gestures. The lack of any sound or utterance. And then shame began to override my impatience. She was deaf, and she was communicating the best she could with me while asking for my help.

Rather than watch her struggle with writing on a napkin, I figured she could type out her question more easily on my laptop. Perhaps, like me, she was one of those people who can’t write comfortably by hand when someone’s waiting (or for that matter parallel park when someone’s watching. Sigh).

I got her attention and pointed to my laptop. She looked relieved. I went to my email account and opened a composing space so she could type out her question more clearly, and when I handed over my laptop, she opened a new window and began searching for her book. That’s fine, I thought. Finding the book would answer my question just as well and probably even faster. With my source of work gone, I watched. And then I helped her with the book search. And then I tidied up the sentences she wrote to a librarian (recalling how confused I was by her initial question). And then I went ahead and added another sentence or two to that same note. And then she hit send. And then we got sucked into conversation.

I had questions for her (naturally), and rather than be offended at my lack of knowledge of deaf culture, she brought up various sites to show me the kind of projects she was involved in. (I wish I remember them so I could add the links here.) Using the URL space of the browser, we wrote (she started it; I wouldn’t have thought of it). Aside from Firefox 3.0 trying to preempt us with various popular addresses on the Web as we typed, our conversation went smoothly.

Our interests overlapped quite a bit: She was one of the people who produce the kind of content I analyze. Her story was that she was a graphic design artist, had been offered a new position at her company, and was researching what was involved in it. She selected one of the magazines she’d spread around her, pointed out certain features, and wrote about why certain designs and layouts appealed to her. If I didn’t have piles of work waiting for me, I would’ve had a ton more questions for her.

All the while, though — and I’m embarrassed to admit this tendency — I kept trying to figure out her pattern of error. I don’t usually sit and pick apart every writing error I see, but her patterns were unlike anything I’d seen in the years I’ve worked as a language tutor and writing instructor. It was yet another puzzle for me.

It turned out that she was Ukrainian and had learned English in a very short time. The usual cues I would have expected — an accent, pauses and “uhs” in speech — were exactly those I obviously could not hear, but I was also blind to them in writing that day. It made me think that a lot people learn languages by immersion, by being enveloped in the daily sounds and conversations that surround us. I assume, then, that a person who learns language by signing and reading is probably going to pick up certain features of language more quickly and fluently than those that a hearing person would and therefore would have different types of interferences from their other languages as well. Fascinating.

Finally, I told her about Harlot, cordially asked her to consider submitting her work to us, and then we went back to work. She got my attention again a little later, and I stopped and turned off my music. But not without a moment of hesitation. I knew my music didn’t matter, but it didn’t seem right to leave it on. It was the same feeling I get when I wear sunglasses and talk to someone who isn’t wearing any. It seems rude if I can see the other person’s eyes but that person can’t see mine. (I actually buy sunglasses now that aren’t entirely dark just so I don’t have to suffer the discomfort.)

In the end, though, I wonder whether her eyes caught the strange looks we got from someone sitting nearby or whether with the aid of her half circle of magazines, placed like a barrier around her, that she’s trained herself to block out sight of the rubberneckers. The day left me both happy at what I had learned of deaf culture but also saddened that people still shamelessly gawk at individuals with disabilities.

OBEY the Commander in Chief!

Posted on August 20, 2008 by

Yep. They’re everywhere.

I can’t walk down the sidewalk in Columbus without seeing a poster or sticker with Obama’s face on it. Do these look familiar?

Am I a little annoyed? Yeah. I’m annoyed. But not for the reason you might suspect. My annoyance (and deep fascination) springs not from the man depicted, but the man who designed it.

Alright, you recognized these images around Columbus (and my guess is that even for our outside-of-the-heartland readers this image isn’t unfamiliar) — but do you recognize these?

Yes? Good. But for any urban dwellers out there that haven’t (and I’ll try to say this without sounding condescending), it’s time to open your eyes when you’re out-n-about in the city. Seriously. They’re everywhere.

What is the face of Andre the Giant doing gracing cityscapes all across the globe?

The “OBEY” campaign is the brainchild of Shepherd Fairey, perhaps the second most famous street artist of all time (Banksy is hands-down the first). In the late ’80s Fairey started posting stickers with a crude drawing of Andre on it with the saying, “Andre the Giant has a Posse.” He plopped stickers wherever he went, eventually creating a stir of rumors and conspiracies. In candid interviews Fairey tones down his typical pitch about how the campaign is an “experiment in phenomenology” and admits that he just thought it was funny confusing people into thinking random and fantastical thoughts about what such a sticker could possibly mean. How deep.

Fascinated with how messages embedded in the cityscape communicated differently, Fairey expanded his reach, bombing stickers and wheatpasted images across the US. Soon ascending the short ladder of hipness, Fairey was able to support himself financially, becoming a full time street artist. He now operates an extremely successful brand. OBEY now sells clothing, limited edition prints, and books.

You may have surmised by my tone that I find Fairey a less than compelling figure. It’s true. Without being overly bitchy about it, I think he’s a shallow hack and capitalist pig.

And this isn’t just a case of “I used to like that band before they got famous.”

Street art — stenciling, wheatpasting, and some varieties of tagging — carries with it certain philosophies (that I’ll do my best to explore in a follow-up post) that Fairey has little respect for; but more generally, Fairey has little respect for originality, a key component of street art. He’s a flagrant, unapologetic plagiarist masquerading under a revolutionary veneer. Gross.

Mark Vallen, an astute art critic who has done the research to expose Fairey’s careerism, puts it eloquently: “When a will to plagiarize and a love for self-promotion are the only requirements necessary for becoming an artist, then clearly the arts are in deep trouble.”

Here are just a few clipped shots from Vallen’s site, which is linked to above:

But I want to be careful here, since the use of art in resistance is a tricky area. Appropriation, replication without granted permission, subversion through irony, and a deep distrust of all authority are all common features in street art. But when you make your pay by stealing other people’s aesthetics and allowing it to pass as original stuff, you’re nothing but a banal jerk.

Oh my. Now that I’ve ranted for so long I’m out of breath to talk about the Obama image as rhetorical situation. But a few thoughts before I go slam a cup of decaf:

* When subculture aesthetics and practices mix with political propaganda (they’re often close cousins in many regards), the results can be mixed. I’m wondering how the practice of illegally “tagging” and “bombing” posters on walls and stickers on lampposts gives the campaign a subversive “a revolution is happening!” feel to it. There is a pervasive irony here, right? I mean, blatant dismissal of city law for a “higher purpose” isn’t ironic when that higher purpose is ultimately fighting the fundamental adherence to city law. But what about when it’s for someone who’s job it is to maintain that fundamental order? I’m polarizing camps here, making the question slightly misleading by being reductive. Nevertheless, subversive overtones (undertones?) can really help a political campaign in building momentum.

* The image itself deserves a solid rhetorical analysis of visual composition. It departs significantly from your standard American campaign headshot for a poster. The simplicity of it all, combined with the steely gaze of Barack can’t help but make me think of this other leader — I think his name was Chairman Mao. Or am I thinking of Lenny?

Seriously, doesn’t this poster have an aesthetic aura to it that gestures towards revolutionary leaders of the East?

(thanks to garlinggauge.com for pulling these shots together)

* Hillary caught on a little too late to the power of revolutionary propaganda, the current cultural cache of retro, and the potential of hipster politics. Did any of you see this poster, released by the Clinton campaign near its death knell?

HOLY COMRADE CLINTON!!!

Anyone out there up for another quick game of juxtaposition? This hopefully will leave us on a good jumping off point for a rowdy Harlot discussion . . .

Harlot

A revealing look at the arts of persuasion

Category Archives: Culture