Seriously Funny              

Mindmap

Here’s what I want you to learn during this unit.

Invention work: Listing

Satire often starts with a grain of irritation. The satirist wants to point out something that’s wrong, and push the rest of us toward change. Ready to get irritated?

-What pisses you off? Take five minutes and list as many things as possible (if you put 750s on the list, I will make you eat your paper).

-Richard Nixon had an “enemies list.” On it were his top political enemies. Make your own enemies list of public figures.

Pick your top 3 in each list. Expand and explore those three by writing out their vices & follies, their biggest flaws, what you really can’t stand about it/them.

Finally, let’s make these things concrete. Let’s embody these flaws. For each of your irritations, pick one representative person and action (e.g. lack of empathy irritates me, so I might portray a trust-fund kid telling a homeless guy to get a job). For each one of your top enemies, pick one action that embodies their biggest flaw. This action can be real or an exaggeration.

Process Writing

“PRKA” is a super-short piece, and I’d like you to read it at least twice. The first time, just read Saunders’ text. The second time, read my comments on the side, too.

I included the comments for a couple of reasons: to help you make meaning with the text, and also to model annotation, so you can continue to develop your skills in this area.

Here are some process-writing prompts:

Is this satire?  If so, what makes it satire?  If not, why not?

Why did Saunders use the form of a manifesto?

Who are the targets (remember to support all your claims with evidence from the text)? What do the targets have in common?

What’s the underlying message?  What change or reform does Saunders want?

What abstractions is Saunders talking about?

This manifesto makes me think of horrible, depressing things 😀 .  Why should people bother to read it?  (Or why shouldn’t they read it?)

Hey students—

Here’s a link to the mid-semester course evaluation that we’ll be doing in class.

This 750 is all mudpit, all the time. This is the last mudpit for this essay, so feel free to go beyond 750 words. We’ll talk and write about “Ken Sent Me” in class, so you’ll want to make sure you still read and annotate that awesomely.

Mudpit

What does your text or artifact say about what we value (and don’t value)?  What does it say about how we see things?

How is this text or artifact representative of us?  What truths does it tell—or—what myths does it perpetuate?

Look at it through the lens of race, class, age, gender, or sexuality (e.g. In Superman I and II, Lois Lane is an ambitious reporter, nervy enough to get herself into enough trouble, but not strong enough to get out without the help of a (super)man.  The movie, filmed during the conservative backlash of Reagan’s 1980’s, serves as a rebuke to feminism.)

WWKS?*

*What would Klosterman say?

Messages & Meanings: As you would in a book report or poetry analysis, offer your “reading” of the visual text. Don’t just give a re-telling of what the image looks like (this would be like stopping at plot summary if you were analyzing a novel). The following questions will help you continue with your analysis and interpretation.

Who is the audience? Identifying the target audience is an important part of your analysis. Speculate about different variables in the audience: region, race, age, ethnicity, gender, income, religion.

How do you know? What evidence can you offer to support your claim?

What is evoked? Pay attention to your emotional response to the text, then try to figure out what’s inspiring that response.

What emotions are evoked by the text?

What’s creating that response?

What’s the relationship between that feeling and the use of the text?

Does color symbolism come into play at all?

Has the text been exaggerated or modified in such a way to heighten a mood or feeling? Why?

What makes this text appealing to its audience?

How does this text create excitement or anticipation in its target audience?

Mudpit

For your last 750, you spent some time in phase 1 of analysis on your text or artifact: naming & noticing. Now you’ll want to proceed to phase 2: making connections. Here are some questions to help you in phase 2:

Do any of the components relate?  Do you see any patterns? Can they be grouped in any meaningful ways?

Do any of the components remind you of anything else?  What associations can you make?

Personal connection: what is your reaction to the text? How might you explain that reaction?

Now you’re ready to take the leap into meaning with phase 3. Here, you’ll look to connect to something larger than your text/artifact; here, you’ll look to move from the banal and obvious to the surprising and profound. Following are a few prompts to help you make that leap.

Pretend you’re a space alien studying our culture.  What does this text say about our society?

What does this say about our fears, desires, cultural norms?

Do the components you’ve named & noticed connect to anything larger?  Any myths, values, systems of belief?

What’s the cultural context?  What was happening in the larger world when this text/artifact appeared?

Mudpit: Naming & Noticing

Your small-groupmates helped you get a start on this phase of analysis on your text or artifact. Now you’ll extend this phase in your mudpit by adding a whole bunch of concrete, specific things you notice about your thing.

It’ll help to have your text or artifact in front of you so you can examine it closely. Failing that, check out an image or schematic on the internet. Do what you can to get your artifact in front of you so you don’t have to go from memory.

Remember to slow down & pay attention to each detail. Resist making judgments or jumping ahead to conclusions now, because they’ll most likely be pretty obvious, shallow interpretations. Remember, too, that the more time and energy you sow in the early stages of analysis, the more goodness you’ll be reap in the meaning-making phase.

: : :

Process Writing for “Billy Sim” (remember to bring your annotated copy to class so you can refer to it in discussion)

Mandatory one: From p. 16: “Clearly, video technology cages imagination; it offer interesting information to use, but it implies that all peripheral information is irrelevant and off-limits. Computers make children advance faster, but they also make them think like computers.”

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why? Back up your claims with specific evidence.

How do Klosterman’s ideas develop as the essay goes on? How are they challenged (by himself and others)? Does he seem to change his mind about anything? Is your mind changed about anything?

Process Writing for “Porn”

Think about the way that your generation uses the Internet. What does it say about your generation? What can it “teach us about ourselves?” (Klosterman 112) What is it that you all want?

Is it different from what you all want in real life (like Klosterman’s example on page 113 of the guy in the bar)? If so, how do you account for the difference? What does the difference say about the internet and/or your generation?

Pornography was a big driver of internet growth in its first decade. Social media has driven the better part of the last decade. In the way that Klosterman “reads” internet porn, read social media. What does it say about us? About what we want?