Thursday, February 2, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Phineas and Ferb
As I was sitting in my dorm room trying to find some sort of
rhetoric to write this blog I turned on the TV. I turned to Disney which is one
of my favorite channels and the show that was playing is Phineas and Ferb which
is an incredible show that uses many rhetoric techniques that keep me
interested in it. If you never saw the
show it is about ten year old stepbrothers who invite many impossible
inventions while their older sister tries and fails to show their mother
exactly what is going on. The outrageous creations and Candice failure to “bust”
her brothers is not what makes the show interesting, but the commonplace,
logos, and ethos is what adds humor to the show and keeps e watching.
In
every episode we see a teenage love story between Candice and Jeremy which is
made funny because regardless of the ridiculous stunts she performs their
relationship survives. Just like in all movies the couple goes through many
things and gets back together. Another interesting love story is between
Phineas and Isabella where the girl secretly crushes on the male protagonist and
he is completely oblivious to it. Another commonplace is the weird friendship
between Baljeet and Buford which is the common nerd-bully relationship which
was explained in a musical called Frenemies. Lastly, there is the common
struggle between Perry the Platypus and Dr. Doofenshmirtz where the good guy
always prospers even though Perry does nothing. The characters fit the stereotype
of their characters in a way that pokes fun at the typical characters in movies
and shows.
In
addition to the commonplace characters there are catch phrase that when heard
people will laugh in remembrance of the show such as “Where’s Perry” and “What
are we going to do today”. The producers of the show realize that this sayings
have become commonplace so they turned this into songs that are catchy. That is
why I decided to write about my favorite show Phineas and Ferb.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Rhetoric Blog 1
Online has the possibility of being a great source of rhetoric. You are able to post opinions on to your facebook page which opens up a discussion for friends and family members. You are also capable of using links to newspapers to prove why your belief is accurate.In addition to that you are able to tweet opinions and use hashtags to connect not only with people you know, but with other people who care for that topic. This form of rhetoric comes with limitations though. For one when you are online people tend to not see you as another human and attack your beliefs on a more personal level. As if you are wrong for seeing things differently instead of looking to see the arguments you present and whether or not they are accurate and can possibly be correct. A second limitation that we see online is that there is many people who are ignorant about the topic who just enter the discussion to bully people into believing that they are right even though they have no proof to back up their opinions. A third flaw is the only arguments that are used online is logical ones this is mainly due to the fact that newspapers articles only show the numbers and the data and most people use data to show they are right since you can not refute numbers. This makes the arguments less rhetorical since we are not creating our own arguments anymore, but relying on the facts presented before us.The last limitation in online rhetoric is that we use our arguments to win as if the person we are discussing an issue is our opponent not a fellow citizen with different opinion of an important societal issue.Rhetoric is meant to find common group and to try to better society, but with this modern view of it we see rhetoric used to win a battle. Even though online rhetoric can possibly be great it has many limitations that need to be addressed.
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