Category Archives: Culture

doo dah, doo dah . . . the clowns are coming to town . . .

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Thanks to the indomitable Chris Higgs for passing along this news link:

http://asheville.indymedia.org/article/107Clowns

Given this town’s love for subversive humor (cf. Doo Dah parade), this story will undoubtedly find some supportive listeners. Will someone PLEASE write about dark humor and the rhetorical strategies of these avant-garde-esque responses to entrenched ideologies? Is their unusualness their effectiveness? How is it that laughter and dalliance can challenge hate groups? Are demonstrations like these fundamentally different than the satire we’ve become accustomed to (like the Daily Show)?

I should also point out (for those of you who read the article linked above), that the chant “Who’s street? OUR street!” is most likely taken from the Reclaim the Streets movements that happened in the late ’90s. Viewed as rhetorical occasions, these events are fascinating: mobs of people are covertly alerted to a gathering at a specific time and a specific place, where they “flash” on the scene and basically throw a party in the streets. The trick? Pavement is ripped up and trees planted in the middle of the road (while others provide cover). Talk about rhetorical strategy! These events (in my own opinion) were the precursor to “Flash Mobs” which earned notoriety a few years ago.

Alright . . . enough from the kid who is looking to make a dissertation out of the rhetoric of social movements . . .

Persuasive gaming

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I’m watching The Colbert Report, where the guest is Dr. Ian Bogost of Persuasive Games, an organization that designs and distributes videogames intended for persuasion, activism, or instruction. From their site (www.persuasivegames.com):

“Our games influence players to take action through gameplay. Games communicate differently than other media; they not only deliver messages, but also simulate experiences. While often thought to be just a leisure activity, games can also become rhetorical tools.”

I’m fascinated by their claim that not only can games be used rhetorically, but that they offer distinctive forms of influence through experience.

And I can’t wait for some conversations in Harlot about the rhetorical potential–and actuality–of games of all sorts…

Check out this cool site about the cultural uses of videogames.

Role of Intellectuals

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From Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual:

“The central fact for me is, I think, that the intellectual is an individual endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public. And this role has an edge to it, and cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d’être is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug. The intellectual does so on the basis of universal principles: that all human beings are entitled to expect decent standards of behavior concerning freedom and justice from worldly powers or nations, and that deliberate or inadvertent violations of these standards need to be testified and fought against courageously… Least of all should an intellectual be there to make his/her audiences feel good: the whole point is to be embarrassing, contrary, even unpleasant… So in the end it is the intellectual as representative figure that matters—someone who visibly represents a standpoint of some kind, and someone who makes articulate representations to his or her public despite all sorts of barriers.” (11-12)

I’m a little hesitant about claiming the faculty to represent the diverse communities and individuals within “the public,” and I’m not sure how many professional intellectuals “cannot easily be co-opted”… but I admire the ideal. And I hope that Harlot somehow manages to please its audiences even as itchallenges them.