Paralysis

I believe Richard really wants to move to the North, and thinks there’s hope in the future in the North, but is having trouble emotionally admitting that. Lately, Richard has been faking emotional solitude and a sense of not caring, but those aren’t his true feelings. Richard is trying to grow up, and he believes that the way to do this is to become emotionally hardened and not have any emotions whatsoever to become a man. I believe every boy goes through a period in their life where they try to be a man at a very young age, it is just unfortunate that Richard is going through such hard times, and chooses now to try an grow up.

Racism toward Jews

Jews have never done anything to Richard, it is simply what he was taught. This is a time period of hatred, and he’s simply a little boy. He believes what he is told without question, which leads him to believe many prejudices. He thinks he has had many experiences, but really he is believing things that other people have told them based on their real, or fake experience. It is a shame that people are telling him these lies, because he’s such a sweet boy at heart, but it doesn’t show with his racism. This is how racism begins, with simply believing things you haven’t experienced. It has now continued on to society today, and it is how racisms fester.

Richard's hunger

Richard’s hunger is not only a hunger for food, but a hunger for what brings the food- his father, and a loving family. All that Richard wants is a functional family that’s loving and caring. His dad is what brings the food, therefore his hunger is for his father- who isn’t as cruel to him as his mother is. Also, he is physically hungry because of lack of food. Richard is hungry for love and affection, and a positive relationship with someone. Richard gets beaten by everyone, scolded, and harmed, and all he really wants is someone to love and care for him. He doesn’t understand what’s going on.

school is necessary

As much as I sometimes say that school can be annoying and unnecessary, I can’t truthfully say, or agree with at all, that we don’t need school. The only way society progresses is because of new knowledge, and is able to thrive because people are educated enough to keep up. If people didn’t learn mathematics or proper English, we wouldn’t be able to function is society and it wouldn’t be effective. In order to keep progressing, our society needs to keep gaining intelligence, which wouldn’t be possible if people weren’t being educated. Our society isn’t at a point that they can do this. Even if it was, everyone needs to know the basic knowledge that is taught in school. Although home-schooling could accomplish this, I believe the teamwork and social skills learned in real school is important an critical to learn how to cooperate and converse with others of your generation.

nonacademic classes

I value the nonacademic education I’m receiving because I believe it will make me a better and more well-adjusted person. Like Horace Mann said, nonacademic school subjects prepares society for when they are out in the real world without guidance. These skills are very important to learn. I understand that physical education class will help me understand that I need to keep my body healthy, and my music and art classes will teach me to be a well-rounded person. Such education is important because the government cannot rely on the parents to teach their children. A lot is important to be taught in elementary school such as brushing teeth, taking care of yourself, etc…, but also health and culture should be promoted through middle school and high school. I value that one day when I get out of high school, I will be a well-adjusted, cultured, healthy person that is ready to be an active and effective participant in society.

media

I agree with Kendall in that the media does have a large impact on how people live their lives everyday regarding life style and investments. People see how characters on television act, and they aspire to be and live like them. The problem is that the media never shows the television character’s financial issues. People see the characters go out the a fancy restaurant, coffee shops everyday, but no one ever seems to have problems paying the bill, even though they work low to middle class jobs. Not so educated people will think that this is relevant to real life, will do the same thing, and fall into debt. In order to improve this, the media needs to make their reality TV a little more realistic. Everyone pays bills, and not everyone can have five computers, eat at St. Elmos every night, and live in a mansion while working at McDonalds (yes, I know, exaggeration).

presentations

I think that the amount of rhetoric used in architecture is fascinating. Almost every business has some sort of rhetoric device used in their appearance to lure customers into their store. I also thought it was interesting how absolutely everyone did a piece of architecture. I especially liked Noah's comparison of the two street signs in Zionsville. It is strange to see two streets change so drastically within a block in the same town. I thought that everyone did very well, and the project was successful. I liked this project a lot, and I hope that we get to do something like this again!

Rhetoric on the school!

We were supposed to take pictures of the town, however I don't live in Carmel- in fact, I live very far away from Carmel. So, instead of taking pictures of Avon, I thought it would be interesting to take pictures of the school! My main concentration was the study area.
I took a picture of the marble mantle that's behind the sofas. The black suggests that there is a core foundation like there is in the school (The 5 core values). However, the little specles of different color symbolizes the individuality of each student in the school. The windows behind the sofas in the study area suggest that this is an area that has no limits. Students are free to express our ideas and study abroad in this area.
The library in the study area has a few books on the shelves, however there arn't many and they are messy and disorganized. This suggests that our library, or the school, is just beginning, and still trying to find organization in their system.
The general organization of the study hall area with the sofas and the tables suggests that it is a relaxed area, yet is still for studying.
I believe this is a very accurate assesment of University High School. Everything in our school, represents the school as a whole.

Mainstreem

Gitlin is saying that the streams of rhetoric that pours out of America homogenizes cultures into a uniform sense of “fun”. Such examples include Disneyland, and other corporate organizations that are expanding upon the world. Gitlin believes that this is bad because the homoginization of cultures isn’t good because each culture needs their own sense of “fun”. I disagree with this because I think everyone can have fun at Disneyland, and it shouldn’t be limited to America. It is corporations and products such as Disneyland and others that bring countries together to simply enjoy something instead of fight and promote violence. Things like this are important for our world because they unify everyone for good, fun causes, and they promote a certain peace. I believe these are good for our world, and should remain standing.

According to Killboune, it is dangerous to depict women and men as sex objects because it promotes the objectification of both sexes. It is much easier and practically guilt-free to do something violent to an object, like they’re portraying people as in these ads, than a human being equal to yourself. They’re saying that the other sex is an object, therefore you can abuse them and it will be fine. This is awful because people take this seriously, and it promotes rape and violence toward people, especially women.
The objectification of women is more troubling because it is more apparent and used much more than the objectification of men. Also, it is much more dangerous for a women to have sex because of the consequences such as pregnancy. I believe if there was more objectification of men, then it would be equally troubling.

superbowl ads

I must say, some of those Superbowl ads absolutely INFURIATED me. I found numerous ads, especially the Doritos ad incredibly SEXIST and derogatory toward women. Nudity and sexual comments should not be the basis of society and entertainment. It displeased me very much to turn on the superbowl and just see a variety of insulting commercials that were supposed to be funny. I believe we should all avoid the products of those us were sexist and derogatory toward women.
Although those commercials disgusted me greatly, they were tailored toward a certain audience, and I imagine were quite affective toward that audience. The stereotypical audience of the superbowl, would be men that like football, etc… I imagine all sorts of Steelers loving football men will go buy Doritos now, so good for them.

The bias of Language, the bias of Pictures

In “The Bias of Language, the Bias of Pictures”, Postman and Powers say that we use language to alter the meaning of statements, questions, etc… Our original discussion of language was about perception. A color, an object, or a place is only a perception that society has developed as a unified reality that we all accept. To describe this unified reality, we use words and language. Each word represents something or someone in our unified reality that we all perceive and accept to be “true”, and “reality”.
This piece agrees that our language is a representation of society’s unified perception of reality, however it digresses to form a new perspective toward language- the manipulation of language. We use adjectives for description, but when using certain adjectives and certain language features and tones, you can alter the meaning of text. Language is bias, because however you write, no matter what words you use, you will always be giving a certain perspective of the matter at hand. However, pictures are quite different. Pictures are completely nonbiased because they tell accurate accounts without anyone’s altering. A picture tells the story without any connotative meanings, or verbosely bias adjectives.