Born Into Coal

The documentary “Born Into Coal” was a well thought out accumulation of a variety of narrative styles both human interest and standard narrative. The producers used a variety of different shots to create a personal connection with the audience, which makes the viewers intrigued with the lifestyle and hardship that these families endure each and every day.  The way the documentary is portrayed in an emotional rollercoaster that develops human interest while the monotone and storyline lays the road for a typical standard narrative. A shot that stood out to me was when Arianne is swimming in the pool in circles behind a house that looks to be poverty stricken and not so well maintained with the voice over explaining her hopes and aspirations the film almost creates a sense of visual rhetoric. The visual rhetoric is presented with the corroded house in the background with the girl swimming in a pool, which could be thought to be a luxury while she discusses her luxurious hopes and dreams for the future. This shot standout because of the way the shot is so large while Arianne looks so small in the large body of water. Water also symbolizes a lot of metaphorical things like tranquility, and peacefulness, which could also play a factor as to why this shot in the documentary, is so intriguing. Overall the documentary is very emotionally compelling and at the end you feel for the families.

Death Penalty and Visual Rhetoric

Both series of images are intriguing in the way that they are both unique in their objectives yet essentially portray the same things. I personally like Hargreaves series better than the last meal project because he is able to channel personality through the photos while the last meal project is making more of an attempt to persuade and disgust the audience. Both use an overwhelming amount of visual to get their point across however I feel like Hargreaves reeks of visual rhetoric because he portrays the meal as light and adds personality behind it while he is essentially describing to the audience what a death row prisoner consumed for his last meal. The last meal project portrays the prisoner as scary and uses very basic images to represent their meal, and while I was looking at the photos of the food I felt as if it was being used in a comical sense, almost cartoon like. I think there are not very many other presentations that could present such ironic things food and death unless you did something with like old people on hospice and how they decide to carry on with their lives. I think that they layout of each of the series is very important in the overall theme of the pictures each uses red ink to symbolize death I would imagine and the last meal project uses black and white mug shot pictures as the background to food creating an overall eerie mood. The red text on the crumbled notebook paper is an attempt to add to the eerie mood and almost gives it an official sense. The authors possibly were cuing at an official thing with the ruled notebook paper however depict it being crumbled to show that it is in the past or not as important. Both series of images use an array of characteristics to portray visual rhetoric in regards to the death penalty and the last supper each prisoner is given.

REFLECTION

My shark tank proposal speech could have been improved in a number of ways. The first thing that I noticed while watching my video was my body language and demeanor was very light and I could have been more energetic and confident to better engage my audience. However, even without the improvements I felt as if I was able to connect with the audience with a calm tone and some slight body language, probably not the best.  While I was presenting I was unaware of how I was crossing my legs and looking up at the ceiling that is something that I would have certainly changed! I expected my speech to be a better than it was, just because I am comfortable going up and talking in front of people but I feel like I may have not had enough fact or organization to go the entire three minutes with a more serious tone. I am unable to see the comments that you made however they probably had something to do with tone and organization, I feel that is what I struggle with the most when presenting speeches. With practice like this hopefully I will be able to improve what I do wrong and become stronger at delivering speeches.

The Rise of Black Men in the Land of Opportunity

Wesley Morris’ s article “The Rise of the NBA Nerd” is an accumulation of well thought-out examples that make an attempt to uncover the reasons as to why black males of stature are dressing in a certain manner. In the beginning Morris makes an example of Kevin Durant and the way he dressed during a press conference and makes a wholehearted attempt to explain that people 10 years earlier would have been degraded or ridiculed for dressing in such a manner. However the way Morris tries to explain this phenomenon is really confusing, especially from a white female perspective because the majority of his examples are people that I personally am not familiar with aside from Kanye West. Morris goes onto say that this fashion statement is evolutionary and is a huge change since the days when black males wore slouchy clothes and could careless. However I believe that this “fashion revolution” has a deeper meaning than Morris is getting at; black males are now being given the opportunity to excel to a height that is equal to white males and that is a huge ideal, he even mentions this in the article “Kids knowing they can be president of the United States, it might be more crucial to the expansion of black identity” with this statement Morris allows for his focus on sports to be broadened to a political level which I praise. This equal opportunity for success calls for an “upgrade” in appearance in the eyes of the world. It is human nature for people to judge a book by its cover and these successful black men are becoming more aware of their social and political appearance and making people respect them in ways more than just as an athlete. These men are setting themselves up to be looked at as intellectual individuals and they could not be setting a better example for the future generations of America. Some may deem this a type of cultural assimilation however to be equal I do believe we all must take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves in equal ways; such as the way in which you dress. I do believe that what we wear can be an argument in many ways however I do not find this situation as visual rhetoric because these men know exactly what they are doing and they are taking advantage of social image to present themselves on top of others. The only possible visual rhetoric in this situation is a societal image being construed and mixing the image of a “nerd” or a super white person with the vision of an athlete and in the eyes of the world it may feel wrong but these guys are completely aware of what they are doing; and raising the bar for future generations. I strongly believe that their fashion “statements” are a big shootout to the younger generations to get their shit together and so far it is making a statement beyond the conference room.