I am interested in speaking to someone who is involved in publication. I don’t yet know who, but a few options would be people working for local newspapers. I would like to conduct an interview with the actual publisher, the person who finalizes the drafts and sends them through to be printed. I think this would be an interesting position because I don’t really know that much about the job, although it something I think that I would be good at doing and am interested in learning more about. After conducting this interview, I would like to do observational research, maybe shadow this person for a day at their office, and learn a little bit more about what writing they do on a daily basis that they may not even recognize. I am interested, especially, to know how it feels to be writing and publishing without really having your name in the spotlight, or really be given that much credit for the work that you do. I wonder if it feels fulfilling, or taxing, or if it feels as though their creativity is able to be unleashed. Finally, I think I will search for a textual primary resource, from someone in a similar position, in order to compare and contrast what they wrote with what my interviewee said.

We discussed the engagement with Eileen

1. How do you think that writing is the carrier for the “information economy”, and therefore, how do you think literacy is essential in your workplace? Even in a business that is not specifically dedicated to writing, how do you use writing in your day to day life? Do you use it enough that you would say you “write for a living”? How do you think you could have been better prepared for this role in your education? Would you have taken more English/ writing classes throughout college had you known where you’d end up working?
2. How is writing essential to the economy based on the amount of writing that goes unnoticed in the day to day operations of a company? How much writing is taken for granted in the workplace, how much goes unnoticed?
3. I would be curious to conduct an interview, and then subsequent observation of someone who does a lot of writing in their career, but may not necessarily believe that they “write for a living”, or may not consider themselves as a “writer”. I believe that a lot of writing goes unnoticed or is taken for granted in a functioning work environment, and that a given employee may not even recognize all of the writing that they do. The interview would allow me to grasp personal responses to those mentioned questions, and therefore understand individual writers and their points of view. On the other hand, observational research would be a less formal way to see this writing in action, and to notice the writing that may otherwise go unnoticed throughout the day.

In an ideal future career, I think that I would like to be involved in publication- specifically, nonfiction work. In this field, writing is clearly an essential tool to have. Beyond having well rounded literacy, and being able to read, understand, and work with written texts, I would assume that within publication there will need to be written communication in between the office, and the author that the agency is representing, between the office, and any press releases, etc. Writing will likely come into this job in ways like forming outlines for novels, and giving feedback, emails and other letters in between different sections throughout the publication and printing process, and more.

In my analysis, I am trying to make the point that beauty is often sold as a commodity, and therefore could be viewed as a factor in our economy. I hope that it may work to solve the problem of the unrealistic standards that someone could purchase beauty, or that beauty has a price tag on it.

With this argument, I think that young girls are the best target for my project. I think that it is easy, while you’re growing up, to believe that if you buy the shoes from TV or the perfume from that magazine ad, that you will be as beautiful as the models that they hire to sell those products. Or, in terms of my artifact, that if you are as beautiful as the actress in the movie, you will be able to pick up a rich, handsome, and surprisingly good hearted man who will bring you into his lifestyle and support you to the fullest, no matter what.

With this in mind, I am going to create a magazine spread, complete with advertisements, an editorial and a movie review for Pretty Woman, to show the ways in which people are exposed to a constant onslaught of “beauty for sale”, and the ways in which that is an entirely unrealistic standard, and why.

In Jia Tolentino’s piece on the #MeToo movement, she uses rhetoric to differentiate the ideas of a movement versus a moment. A movement, she says, is lasting and withstanding and will eventually be able to fix some of the problems that it arose in face of. A moment, however, is a brief period of time when the world is focused on this issue, when sexual assault or harassment victims come forward, but then nothing happens to fix these issues. Perpetrators get away with their actions, and Tolentino argues, that they may even be rewarded for them.

Her rhetorical analysis of the movement/moment, shows that while the hashtag was started, there has still been no real progression in the face of sexual harassment/assault. She argues that what is meant to be a movement, has been continually pushed down and quelled into a mere moment.

Option 1:

Roommate,

When my lights are out that means I’m sleeping! 🙂

The genre of this passive aggressive note is in between roommates, where tensions can arise and are often quite difficult to combat. I think what makes it passive aggressive is that there is no acknowledgement of what the roommate is doing that warranted the note and in fact, the smiley face strives to reach a lighthearted feel, however, in the underlying tones of the message, it is clear that the writer is quite displeased with the other person. To acknowledge the problem face to face and say instead “Hey, when my lights are off could you try and keep your noise down? I have an early class tomorrow,” would be a much more direct way of facing the problem.

In this reading, Melissa Gregg takes a look at the ways in which the “privileges and security” that once came along with a white collar, salaried job have begun to change and may be under some sort of threat. For example, the essay says that “employees who [were once] valuable assets… based on the knowledge accumulated through length of service… are likely to find such skills secondary to… ‘flexibility’ and ‘dealing with change’”. In other words, to be a valuable asset to your company, you must be able to keep up with every new wave of technological change as it comes. This leads to a sense of constant anxiety and “lifelong learning”. However, Gregg argues that the little encounters that a working person has online or offline may both help and hurt the isolating working conditions of the current office place. A factor the feeling of isolation in an office place seems to be the never ending sameness of office life. This factor is covered comically in many tv shows and movies, but it seems that there is a growing sense of this underlying fear in the real world, too. The essay explains that “standardized displays of affection” i.e. secret santa, or team building office parties paired with the following separation by cubicles actually hinder any work relationships that people may build with their coworkers and this increases the use of online communication platforms as a way for employees to escape the banality and isolation of their cubicles. Gregg also discusses other toxic workplace behavior and attributes, such as the passive aggressive memos left about some offending behavior, or the difficulties for temporary employees to make connections with their coworkers. 

1. The exigence that my piece will be trying to mediate is the idea that beauty sells and could be viewed as a commodity. The audience to best mediate this, in my opinion, would be magazine readers, in specific women and girls
2. I think it would be interesting to use an online magazine with advertisements and models to show how people are really buying beauty rather than the product that is advertised.

For this project, I will be looking at the movie Pretty Woman as my artifact. This movie is about Vivian, a prostitute who is picked up by businessman, Edward, who hires her for the weekend. Vivian is incredulous at Edward’s wealth, and he is entranced by her beauty. In any other situation, a wealthy businessman picking up a prostitute would not be able to be anything other than the exploitation of wealth and sex and therefore,  I am interested in studying the ways in which attractiveness or beauty could be considered a commodity here, or how it plays into the economy. What would the movie have looked like if Vivian wasn’t played by Julia Roberts, and instead by someone average looking. What does this movie say about our society and the way we treat beauty as a sort of currency? 

In studying this movie, I will take a look at the Zelizer reading, Payments and Social Ties, to explore the ways in which common social ties are broken and typical boundaries are overstepped with regards to the characters interactions with money. I think that particularly significant to the interpretation of this movie are the ideas of compensation (direct exchange), entitlement (the right to a share) and, gifting (one person’s voluntary bestowal on another). Importantly, I will look at the relationship of all these three forms, and the ways in which they can easily be misconstrued for one another. For example, while Edward may feel as though he is giving Vivian something wonderful, she may feel as though it is merely a payment of compensation for her work and time. Therefore, we can take a look at the complexity of these types of payments and how uncomfortable a social tie can become when distinctions are not made between them. 

I will also explore Pretty Woman through the lense of Lanham’s article Stuff and Fluff. I am wondering if it would be viable to view Vivian as nothing more than “fluff”, and a byproduct of today’s “rampant consumerism”. I think it is safe to say that when Edward sees Vivian on the street corner, he doesn’t immediately find her intriguing because of her personality or wits, but rather sees her as a commodity that is “for sale”, a beautiful object that he would like to display in his fancy home. As the Lanham reading says, “you’ve got to dig it, grow it, or build it, everything else is just fluff”, leaving Vivian’s good looks to be nothing more substantial than the newest model of computer or the newest style of clothing. It can be bought, but it will not last, and in this consumer driven world, it will need to be replaced. 

To complete this project, I will try and recreate a particularly potent scene from the movie Pretty Woman with more realistic outcomes, and in response to the questions “what if she wasn’t so beautiful?” or “what if he wasn’t so rich?” and, why are those two questions asked in tandem.