The other day I was helping a member at work and they got all passive aggressive with me and my coworker. They were inquiring about some washers/dryers. First of all, although I work inside a Costco, I don’t know anything about washers/dryers. I went to look for an actual Costco employee, while my coworker tried to answer their questions. Naturally, my coworker started reading the labels of the dryers and the members dismissed him, claiming that “we want someone who knows what they are talking about”. At that point I had found a Costco employee and he went over to help them. He ALSO started reading the information labels. The members looked him in the eye, and said with the most insulting tone, “So you know as much as us.” I don’t feel as if writing this on paper can justify how sarcastic and rude their action actually was. Nonetheless, we all gave up on helping them due to their actions.
Reading Response 5 – Friday Night Drinks
Melissa Gregg dives into the ideologies of how the workspace functions — in and out of the work place itself. She dives into how the work place is evolving and how social interactions take place. She does so by drawing comparisons and evidence from Six Feet Under and applying different theories. One theory in particular, which just so happens to be the name of the piece at whole is the ‘Affect Theory’.
The theory is described as: “[Affect theory] is a theory that seeks to organize affects, sometimes used interchangeably with emotions, or subjectively experienced feelings, into discrete categories and to typify their physiological, social, interpersonal, and internalized manifestations.” (Tomkins). The theory seems quite broad, which in all respect it is. But nonetheless, it covers some very important ground. Especially in her example of ‘Six Feet Under’.
Gregg discusses the concerns of the new workplace. The creative workplace desires the notion of new types of emotional management, one example being ‘snark’. She describes it as “a less than fortunate side effect of the copious ways the contemporary workplace relies on simulations.”. In other words, she is saying that the workplace has lost its authenticity, and that people act much different at work versus when they go out for drinks afterwards.
Personally, this article reminded me of so many other shows we see today. I thought of The Office and Parks and Rec, and how the characters in those shows interact and display these theories. Although they are all done satirically, they display different behaviors while at work than out for some “Friday Night Drinks”.
Plan for Project 1
Exigence: The film makers wanted to address the ideology of gambling as a solution.
Audience: The targeted audience was anyone, they simply wanted to get people to come and see their movie. In reality, it struck with people who have a gambling issue – and stats showed the audience was particularly younger.
Genre: It is told in the form of story about a character, which ends in tragedy.
Choices we can make: Making a podcast or video of some sort, with a script revolving around what we analyzed.
Project 1 – Rough Draft – Christian and Sam Keller
Intro: Sam and I decided to partner up and do our rhetorical analysis together. This should be interesting with him being an Econ major while I am an English major. I will see things different from him, and obviously vice versa. I believe this will allow a little more insight to what we will be looking at. We will be using the rhetorical strategies and theories that we learned in class from: Lanham, Zelizer, Shipka, Bourdieu, and common rhetorical devices and terms.
Project: We are interested in making some form of video content for this project. Whether it be a podcast with a recording of us, or perhaps a set of rhetorical interview questions that we set up and ask people their thoughts. That leads me to our Artifact/Product.
Artifact/Product: We want to look at the new movie, ‘Uncut Gems” as out artifact. This movie revolves around money, and the rhetoric behind it is very enticing. More specifically, we observe the main character Howard, portrayed by Adam Sandler. We thought this movie could be a prime example for a rhetorical analysis.
Background Knowledge: The movie is directed by two brothers named Joshua and Benjamin Safdie, who are from New York. These two individuals are Jewish, which has a large influence on the tone of the movie. Furthermore, in the year 2012, the movie takes real individuals (celebrities for that matter) and throws them into the path of a gambling addict (Adam Sandler). The celebrities being Kevin Garnett and The Weeknd. They serve as rhetorical tools for the main story line.
Summary: “A charismatic jeweler makes a high-stakes bet that could lead to the windfall of a lifetime. In a precarious high-wire act, he must balance business, family and adversaries on all sides in pursuit of the ultimate win.” (IMDB).
Further Information:
1. Lanham:
The stuff in this movie is definitely the jewels and gems Howard is selling. That transcends into the fluff, that people are not paying attention to what they are purchasing. For instance, KG is so addicted to the gem that he starts paying attention only to it, rather than his career – which is basketball, and they are in the playoffs, which in turn makes him play bad basketball. The attention to the stuff in this movie is quite evident. Everyone wants to get their hands on some form of jewelry. Howard’s rhetoric only influences the attention and desire more to these gems. You could also address that Howard’s lack of information given adds to his persuasive rhetoric.
2. Zelizer:
If we identify the rhetoric of the characters, not much is left to interpretation. It is all straightforward and we can identify what the characters are trying to do. Howard is trying to persuade everyone that what he is doing is worthwhile. He is pathologically believing that what he is saying is true, and that others have no choice but to believe it. So from his perspective, he is trying to be productive, while as viewers all we can do is foreshadow and interpret what is most likely going to happen, because like I said earlier, its all pretty straightforward. The interpretative side of things would come from analyzing the movie in its entirety. Perhaps: What effects does gambling have on the home life? Does the urban setting of New York have this issue with gambling? Is this movie anecdotal, and the directors noticed a correlation between Jewish people and gambling? Through that interpretation of the movie, is where the production comes to us as the viewers. We learn about a different way of life and culture, and how they interact and handle money.
3. Rhetorical Analysis and Occasions:
“an effort to understand how people within specific social situations attempt to influence others through language” (or any other kind of symbolic action). In this movie, this is seen through the rhetoric of Howie once again. He is constantly lying and deceiving people in the name of persuasion for covering his mistakes. The tone and word choice to certain individuals shows his range of rhetoric. Whether it is to a customer in his shop – persuading him to buy the most expensive jewelry, or if it is a loan shark that he owes money – convincing them not to hurt him or his family.
Forensic Rhetoric:
Well, we start the movie and the rhetoric lets us know that Howard is $100,000 in debt, but he has acquired a gem worth “millions”. This gem is allegedly his get-out-of-jail free card. Furthermore, he always tells every one of the past and how he has always owned up to what he said, or paid back whomever he owed.
Deliberative Rhetoric:
Howard ends up employing people into his issues, all with the promise that he will pay them back. He promises them his good word, and that everything will work out in the future. At the root of it, he uses money as his collateral.
Epideictic Rhetoric:
This movie presents an underlying rhetoric of family values. They show Passover in the midst of all this turmoil and show at the core of things there is still the ethics of family. Howard is a terrible family member but tries through forgiveness to mend his instable home. The community values of the rhetoric are completely masked in this movie due to how sever the issues revolving around money actually are.
Rhetorical Canons:
The style of this rhetoric is very straight forward. It is in the form of dialogue between characters. Issues are presented, and the main character tries using his manipulative and persuasive skills to get him out of the situations.
Rhetorical Appeals:
The appeal to ethos is not apparent in Howard, for no one really trusts him, due to his instable actions of manipulation. If anything, this movie displays the perfect counter example of what ethos should be. The pathos may be a stereotypical appeal from the directors, because the movie centers around the Jewish community, and through this movie, in this setting the absolute most valued thing is money. Once again, this movie serves as a great counter example to logos, because everything the main character thinks is rational, is completely irrational. His logic is that gambling will solve everything, and if you don’t win one time, you’re bound to win big eventually.
Irony:
The absolute irony of this movie is the ending. After two hours of sitting through Howard getting beaten down and down, he finally does win big. He has enough money to pay off the loan sharks and then some. But, once they arrive, they simply murder him.
4. Shipka:
The genre of the movie is described as “full of mystery and crime”. I would say that it is a thriller in regard to the management and relation to money.
5. Bourdieu:
Social Capital:
In the movie Howard has a lot of social capital – he has a lot of connections. He has ties to NBA players and up and coming rappers. He has influence over an NBA player and what he should do with his money. Although he has a lot of connections, we soon realize that not all of these connections are ‘good’ and it can come back to harm you.
Cultural Capital:
There are two forms of cultural capital being displayed in this movie. There is the home life that entails: religious and family values. And then there is the cultural capital of gambling. These are two very different types of culture, very far apart from one another on the spectrum.
Economic Capital:
The main character has a business in which he sells goods and services to customers. We are led to believe that Howard was once very wealthy. We can believe this through his material objects, eg. his cars, house, wardrobe, and jewelry.
6. Further Rhetorical Questions and Understanding:
What is the situation described by the author of original piece?
The situation is that the main character owes a lot of money to his loan shark brother and needs to find a way to repay him. He does this by finding a lucrative ring diamond and trying to sell it to Kevin Garnett for good luck at his game. Then, after making a bet on Kevin Garnett to play well, he again is assaulted. This forces him into yet another situation where he must strive to recoup the money he has lost.
Who is the writer/author/speaker?
The writers are Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie, and Benny Safdie
What is the primary goal of the analyzed piece of text, article, or public speech based on the author’s intentions?
The primary goal of this piece is to show the power that money has over people. In the movie Arno, who is loan shark trying to get his money back from his brother in law Howard . Arno is willing to go to the extremes of hurting Howard over the money that is owed. I think the other point this movie is trying to demonstrate is just how easy it is to get addicted to gambling and find oneself in a place that is near impossible to get out of.
Who is the author’s target audience (age, nationality, gender, preferences, location, interests, and other factors)?
The target audience of this movie is a younger generation between 18-40 as the film is rated R.
- People with a gambling hobby would be interested in the film as that is the entire plot
- People who live in big cities especially metropolitan NY can relate to the film as this is where the film is shot
- People who like basketball would be interested in the film as Kevin Garnett is featured
How does the content of the main message sound?
The theme of this movie is the power of addiction, specifically gambling. The main character Howard makes two new bets even after being in debt with loan sharks, getting beaten and thrown in a trunk, and being divorced from his wife. In the end his addiction ultimately leads to his death which is just another emphasis on how addiction ruins so many lives
Does the main article’s or speech idea successfully complete the author’s intentions and primary objectives?
Yes, the movie demonstrates the power of addiction as well as provides an overall entertaining story for audiences to enjoy.
How do the rhetorical strategies/ways to interact with the readers help to achieve the main purpose of the writing?
The author deploys Zelizer’s theory of the different transaction types and the social ties. In this movie the compensation transaction is deployed as Howard needs to pay back the money that was loaned to him. Often the compensation transaction is very impersonal compared to other economic transactions. Since Howard’s brother in-law Arno is willing to hurt him to get back the money that is rightfully his: it shows how powerful this form of transaction is.
Free Write – Economic Questions
While I have quite a few economic questions, I feel as if I have some anecdotal economic answers that may steer me a certain way. My questions pertain around the morality of sales and economics. I have worked in sales for like the past three years, and I have come to the conclusion that you almost have to be a piece of garbage to be an exceptional salesmen. By that I mean, literally taking advantage of people. I am literally trained to phrase my wording to people to try and suck the most money out of them. Well, I take that with a grain of salt when my superiors come and try to teach me how to sell. Because in the business of selling phones, I have found that being a money-hungry shark only causes problems. By that I mean that, if you make a huge sale you probably honestly screwed the person over with stuff they don’t need, and then sooner than later they will be coming back around to come yell at you. Once I got to the point in my job that these industries are just desperate for workers in this area, I stopped trying to “sell,sell,sell!” and started being more transparent with people. By doing this method I have been more productive I feel like. Although I may not hit goals every month, and not earn commission, I have the least amount of people coming back and cussing me out. And to be honest, I’m completely fine with that, because I don’t want to make a career out of selling people stuff. None the less, my main question is and was, are the people who are in charge of sales jobs have any sort of morality or ethic code, or at least aware of one?
The Education Gospel – Reading Response #4
At first, I was confused by the terminology “For-Profit Colleges”, so naturally I looked up what that was on Google. Before clicking enter on any of the searches, I noticed an interesting correlation between all of the most searched topics revolving around For-Profit Colleges. There was a very negative connotation — all of the suggested searches said things like: “For-Profit Colleges Horror Stories/Scam/Bad/Lawsuits/Closing”. Well, with that in mind, I read this article through a particular lens, mainly in a pessimistic way.
Initially, I thought Tressie McMillan was going entirely for a feel-good story with this person named James, but I think through James, Tressie learned more about issues of For-Profit Colleges. She was trying to do her job as a recruiter when it kept seeming more and more unethical. McMillan obviously knew what she was doing, but eventually the realization hit her. This school she was recruiting for wasn’t interested in education, but rather the sheer number of students they could reel in and make money off of. For each student they could get to commit, not only were they making money off tuition, but Federal Funding as well. McMillan wanted to help students, and get them on the right path, while her superiors wanted to use the students as a finite resource to secure money in their pockets. This drove McMillan to research the ideologies behind For-Profit colleges.
McMillan dug deeper into the situation. She looked at socio-economic statuses and their relation to the pursuit of higher education. She found that these colleges were presenting an opportunity, but at what cost. Students were getting admitted, but they weren’t receiving a fair education. This all relates to these students having four characteristics that fluctuate the For-Profit colleges’ agendas. McMillan pin-pointed that these students have four distinct relationships that underpin their social contracts, which in turn make acquiring fair higher education more difficult. These four characteristics are job mobility, labor flexibility, declining internal labor markets, and the risk shift. These economic characteristics put a lot more pressure on students who are already financially struggling. After diving into this, McMillan has been in search of an answer to benefit those who have attended For-Profit colleges.
Reading Response #3 – The Forms of Capital
In “The Forms of Capital” Bourdieu attempts to dissect the traditional ideologies of capital in the world. He views it from a more abstract and interpersonal viewpoint rather than a system of labor and profit. He identifies capital in three different forms respectively: the embodied, cultural, and institutional state. The embodied state is a long-lasting list of dispositions of the mind and body that cannot be transferred simultaneously. The objectified state takes shape in the forms of cultural goods such as pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments and machines. Additionally, the objectified state serves as a trace of realization of theories or critiques of these economic theories and economic principles and can be acquired symbolically. Lastly, the institutionalized state confers entirely original properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee. In conclusion, Bourdieu believes that understanding these different forms as one entity may change how capital works in the social world.
He does so by going into detail on capital as two different entities: social and economic. It is to my belief that he thinks capital cannot function properly if the two do not coexist. For instance, Bordieu states that, “[social capital is] is a continuous series of exchanges in which recognition is endlessly affirmed and reaffirmed. Implies expenditure of time and energy and so, directly or indirectly … not profitable.” I found that interesting in the every day life of things. I interpreted it as; people who help one another should expect a turn of profit for themselves as a separate income, aside from their wage. I just thought that was interesting — because I was basing my thoughts off the ideology just being a good person and helping one another for the well-being of everyone. Bordieu interpreted it as an accumulation of labor therefor you should be gaining some sort of external capital for your relationship. I understand that ideology in the work force, but at an inter-relational level with your peers and family members you shouldn’t expect to be turning a profit.
Bourdieu reinforces the idea that the means of capital as two different entities do not justify the ends. He believes that the little man or unspoken person is going unnoticed. For example he talks about the patriarchy and “the eldest, most senior member of the family” speaking on behalf of their ‘institution’ and how majority of the time ends in corruption. He was using the metaphor as the family to symbolize how businesses work. That much like the little sibling of the family, employees get bossed around by their ignorant big brother. This just shows the skepticism Bourdieu has of the relationship of capital amongst its three forms.
Bourdieu can identify and conclude that all these forms of capital derive from basic economic principles, but he isn’t completely persuaded that they function best as social and economic principles. The separate forms cannot be entirely reduced to just an economic form. Social and economic capital will continue to clash as separate forms, whether it is good or not.
‘Law Professor’s Response to Student offended by their shirt’ – Christian, Sam, Jake, Ian 2-5-2020
The genre of this writing would be considered informative and informal (in a style that is traditionally formal) through a debate of letters between a student and professor.
It is fair to state that the professor is being rigorous in their work. They are ‘nit-picking’ and identifying premises from the student with the idea of educating them.
This form of academic writing is in the form of dialogue between letters amongst a professor and student. Furthermore, the professor is picking apart key components of the letter itself in the forms of locating premises and rebutting them with his/her personal critique. Us as readers are being taught and are learning about the ideologies of law within the realm of this dialogue.
The argumentation is unique because we see the perspective from a particular student and the professor in the form of letters.
Reading Response #2 – Payments and Social Ties
I think viewing the world of currency through a social lens is very interesting. The fact that Zelizer boils it down to three types of monetary payments is quite simple, yet complex. Those being, payments in the form of gifts, entitlement, and compensation. I never really identified it beyond a transactional level — I always viewed it at the surface level. After uncovering this information, I found it very interesting to see how to world of money operated at this level. First off, it was interesting to view gifting items as any sort of ‘monetary payment’. I view it more as something graceful and a gift shouldn’t come with the connotation of a payment. That simply implies that; you think, or someone thinks that that gift was necessary because you owed the receiver of the gift something, and you are compensating them for what they have done. That ties into the ideology of ‘compensation’. It’s a direct exchange of goods for quantitative work. That makes sense in the realm of monetary payments. The overarching monetary payment is then entitlement. Whether you are the employer of the gift-giver, if you are making a payment of some sort, you are at fault of having a some sense of entitlement. At least by definition of Zelizer, where she states the monetary payment of compensation is simply “the right to share [your] goods.”. With that mindset, every transaction ever has one side being entitled.
I think the concept of these different monetary payments is increasingly interesting in regards to segregating money within peoples lives. People will start putting money in different places and assigning values to things they wouldn’t necessarily have in the past. Furthermore, i think it is interesting that as an employer you can see what type of workers you have by emphasizing these monetary payments. You can see how they react and how they take what they are given. People who receive gifts show more compassion and are willing to work out of respect. While others who receive compensation for their time at work display a type of determination or even desperation. Entitled recipients may show some sort of resentment and lack of effort. With that being said, digressing from traditional methods of viewing payments as more or less just transactions creates an evidential divergence in people that can be observed.
Engagement 1-29. Rhetorical Analysis of Uncut Gems
If I were to look at the textual context of this movie I would aim to look at the world of sports betting.
I would observe the Directors and see what their motivations are. Maybe look into their past and see why they chose the setting and casting of people they did.
I have the hunch that based off this movie and some external research that there were was an issue in New York City within the jewish community of gambling. Or at least, at some point in the directors lives there was an incident within the jewish community of sports gambling.
Christian's English Blog 