Unsettling the Drafts, Essay 2

Find your thesis and remember that it should:

• Include a few general interest sentences or a hook to get your reader interested
•   Explain in detail what you are analyzing (include specific names of the song, the artist, and the commercial/movie clip/parody/TV clip)
• Preview the parts of your analysis (the subpoints or the story for each song/video)

Example:  An analysis of Fun’s original video for “We are Young” alongside the Chevy “Sonic” Super Bowl commercial reveals that although the videos have similar elements, such as lyrics, slow motion camera movements, and chaos on the background, Fun’s video is ultimately a cautionary tale while the Chevy “Sonic” commercial is a about embracing youth and reveling in the moment.

Here are some other ideas to help you unsettle your draft: 

• Do you have a paragraph that discusses only the song lyrics on paper? Would doing so help set up your analysis better and/or help you show HOW the song changes when paired with a music video?
• Have you thoroughly described the setting, the character, the clothing, the music, or any other details of the videos you’ve only alluded to or briefly mentioned in your essay?
• Add dialogue or lyric quotations from the videos where you have only general discussion or brief descriptions. Be specific!
• Do you have a Works Cited page? Is it MLA correct? Do you have all 3 sources cited?
• Do you have an author’s note?
• Go through your draft and highlight/circle all of the pronouns (you, they, them it, he, she, etc). Replace vague pronouns with who or what you are actually referring to. For example, change “they argue” to “Geico argues” or change “he says” to “the camel says” or “the banjo player says.” Be as specific as possible! 
• Write a conclusion—think about what a reader can learn about visual rhetoric through this analysis. How can looking below the surface of a song change the way you see the world? How did the visual analysis change the message/story/argument of the song? Does your audience leave your essay with a feeling of why this topic is important? Does the video analysis teach any moral lessons—about relationships, about power dynamics, about music, about visual rhetoric, about emotions, about depression, about ANYTHING you find important or prevalent in your essay??
• If you think you are completely finished with your essay, read through your essay and write a paraphrase (one sentence) about each paragraph. If you need to write more than one sentence, your paragraph may need to be split into two or more paragraphs. After doing a paraphrase for each paragraph, read the paraphrases in order, as if it were it’s own paragraph—do your ideas flow? Does anything seem out of place? Do any paragraphs need to be re-ordered?

How to Attend Your ENGL1100 Conference

After you schedule your mandatory 1-on-1 conference on the Google doc, please do the following:

1.  Prepare for your conference by completing and bringing your 2-3 page draft (hard copy OR laptop/tablet).

2. Come up with 2-3 specific questions about the assignment/your draft that you would like answered.

3.  Understand that your conference is not a time for me to read your draft and make commentary on every single piece, but I will read over and offer suggestions if you have a specific question in mind about something in your introduction, thesis, transitions, body paragraphs, etc. I will answer any questions you have during the allotted time, but if you do not prepare any questions, I will not give you any feedback.

4. To receive the full 10 minutes, arrive to your conference on time or even a few minutes early. If you are late, you will only be allotted the time left. (i.e.—if your conference is at 9:10 and you arrive at 9:15, we will only have 5 minutes to talk).

5. If you miss you conference time, you will receive an unexcused absence.  

Making an Interpretive Leap

As you begin your Unit 2 essay, you should be practicing heuristics such as Notice and Focus + Ranking, The Method, and Paraphrase x3 to help collect data before you begin analyzing the lyrics and visual rhetorics of your essay. 

For homework, you should read Writing Analytically (pgs. 72-78 AND pg. 82), which contains sections on distinguishing analysis from argument, ethos and analysis, analysis vs. summary, and making interpretive leaps. I recommend reading this assignment thoroughly, making notes and highlighting key passages, as this reading will play a large part of creating your Unit 2 essay. We will discuss these ideas fully in class on Wednesday. 

In Writing Analytically (pgs. 76-78), the text describes how analysis must make an interpretive leap from observations (found through heuristics) and making sense of what those observations might mean. After you have analyzed your song lyrics and videos, read this passage carefully and then make an interpretive leap about what your song's lyrics and visual rhetorics might mean. You will notice the reading from WA provides examples of interpretive leaps and how to intertwine summary (description of the text) alongside the analysis. Pay attention to the example and the chart on page 78 for a clear idea on what kinds of analysis and interpretation this essay is looking for and how you might use this method in your own writing. 

Post your work (analysis and interpretive leap of your texts) on your blog before class on Wednesday, September 18th. 

How to Write a Thesis for an Analytical Paper

When you receive a prompt for an analytical essay, keep in mind that these types of assignments can usually be reduced to a simple question. The assignment will ask you to write for a specific prompt "question" and your thesis should provide an answer to that question.  

For Unit 1, the general question could have been phrased as, "What does an analysis of a commercial reveal about rhetoric arguments in advertising?" so your "answer" (the thesis statement!) could have been something along the lines of the following:
"An analysis of the 1951 Pillsbury deluxe cake commercial reveals that Pillsbury attempts to sell its product to a wide audience by convincing the viewer that their cake is more delicious than any other through repetitive slogans, visual images of moist cake, and casting the commercial with people of all ages."

For Unit 2, the question could be phrased as, "What can you learn from analyzing the visual rhetorics of 2 videos with the same underlying  text (the lyrics) at the same time?" 

 If you were analyzing the Fun song "We are Young" that we looked at in class on Friday, your "answer" could be something along the lines of, "An analysis of the visual rhetorics used in Fun's original music video "We are Young" and the Chevy Sonic commercial featuring the same song reveals that although the texts may seem to be the same, the texts have very different meanings. While both videos contain A, B, and C, a visual analysis reveals the original video to be about X, but the commercial is ultimately about Y.”

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Unit 2 Topic Proposal

Over the weekend, you should begin sifting through ideas, songs, movies, commercials, and musical genres in order to come up with a topic proposal for the Unit 2 essay. You will need to choose:

1) an original music video (and its lyrics) 

AND

2) a clip from a TV show, commercial, or movie that includes the original song

For example, you could chose Fun’s video for “We are Young” and the Chevy Sonic commercial featuring “We Are Young.” Or you could chose Lana Del Ray's “Young and Beautiful” and analyze the lyrics, the original music video and one of the scenes from "The Great Gatsby" that features the same song. The purpose of this assignment is for you to analyze how visual arguments can change the way we perceive textual arguments. Even though the lyrics are the same, your 2 videos likely tell very different stories. 

You should choose something that interests you! Your topic proposal is due on Canvas before class on Monday, September 16.  Your proposal should include the following:

1)Which song you want to analyze

2)the original artist/original music video

3)a second music video/clip that presents the song in different way
4)some beginning ideas and thoughts about what you would want to accomplish this in an essay